Steel And Flame (Book 1)

by Damien Lake

  A little man, and a very anxious one, he spent the entire time he talked washing one hand with the other despite the fact neither soap nor water were present. He bobbed up and down like a floater on a fishing line in which the fish have taken an interest.

  “Oh, thank goodness! You are the men we asked for, aren’t you? Aren’t you? I do hope so!”

  Fraser climbed down from his mount. “We’ve been dispatched by the Crimson Kings to deal with a raider problem in this area.”

  “Oh good, so good,” the little man exclaimed. “We’ve been ever so worried you see. Another village a few miles away was attacked only a few days ago and we’ve been ever so worried. We’re so glad you’re finally here, so glad!”

  “Amazing,” muttered Marik to his friend. “Someone actually glad to see us?”

  The little man continued. “This has become such a problem, what with never knowing if we’re safe or who’s going to be next. They’ve taken several women you know, dreadful, it’s so dreadful. We’ve been gathering whatever we can use for defense, but we’re so glad that you’re here now, so glad indeed!”

  “Tell me everything that’s been happening lately,” Fraser commanded the little man in a gentler tone than his men had ever heard him use.

  “Yes, of course. Of course! Please, do come this way, you must be tired! Would you like a drink? Yes of course, please come and I’ll tell you everything I can while you have your drink. Oh, Maurice! Please help the rest of these good men will you? You can, uh…”

  He seemed at a loss for a moment before rallying, “The long house will do! We haven’t been able to fill it what with all this going on. There should be enough room in there. Yes, that should do nicely.”

  With that, the little man whisked away the sergeant while Maurice led them to the village’s center. He proved a good deal quieter than the first man, mumbling the necessities to Sergeant Giles, offering only the bare facts.

  They found themselves in a supply warehouse that noticeably lacked supplies. Marik leaned against a half-empty grain sack to comment, “It must be a sad bunch of bandits if they’re stooping to raid places like this.”

  Hayden replied from his place over by a support post, “Yeah, most likely, but I’ve learned never to take anything for granted on the borders.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Strange things happen from time to time, and usually when they do, it’s when you’re near the border.”

  “Is that a superstition?”

  “No my boy, it’s personal experience.”

  * * * * *

  Hayden’s words might have been prophetic, had he been a follower of that particular sect, which he was not. Like most in the Kings, when he felt the need to pray he offered his words to Ercsilon, a god with dominion over conflict, rather than the Goddess Fate.

  Still, as the summer progressed, Marik suspected Hayden of a secret change in faith. A simple band of highwaymen given to raiding small villages should never be giving them this much trouble.

  To begin with, they could never corner the bastards. No matter what clever plan Fraser and Giles cooked up, it never proceeded the way they intended and their targets always escaped. Matters were made worse when following solid information on the bandits at times led them away rather than closer. Twice they had been miles off when the raiders descended on a different village than expected.

  This led to arguments among the men. Tensions ran high. Marik was as frustrated as everyone else, but he had his inquiries to help distract him. At each minor village they passed through, he questioned everyone willing to speak with him. He found many opportunities to speak with every village member since the long chase frequently brought them through the same settlements four or five times. The buoyant joy of working toward his goal quickly lost its uplift when the inevitable negatives relentlessly matched their failure to catch the bandits.

  Then, after several eightdays of fruitless effort, the Kings finally caught a raider while the other bandits slipped through the mercenaries’ fingers like sand. It might never have happened had Kerwin not been taunting Edwin about his so called capabilities with the bow, seeing as they had yet to bring any rogues down.

  Already frustrated to the point of fighting even fellow unit members, Edwin had vowed the next time they found the bandits he would shoot at least one of the slippery, gods-cursed, thieving eels. Kerwin started a betting pool against this likelihood that soon involved everyone. This so incensed the archer that he managed an impossible shot from a range he should have been unable to reach. The mercenaries apprehended the bandit, who promised to talk if they would pull the arrow out of his leg and treat the wound. Edwin walked with a wide smirk while Kerwin paid out the long shot winnings, not smirking in the least.

  Their prisoner soon unraveled the mystery. He looked rough, yet young for all that. Marik doubted he could claim as many years as himself.

  A hedge-wizard led the little bandit group, one who had discovered how to control his talent, then decided to take advantage of it. He had gathered other men of questionable morality and organized his band near the border. The advantage, as Dietrik had already surmised, was that if they found themselves facing the authorities, they could duck across the border to hide.

  “I could have guessed most of that,” Hayden scowled. “Always on the border…”

  “That hedge-wizard must have figured out a scrying spell of some sort,” Landon mused. “It explains why we can never find them. They always know where we are.”

  Fraser responded decisively, “Then what we need is speed. We’ll give the horses a good rest and press hard the next time we find them.”

  He issued orders. The two units returned to the nearest village.

  “Aren’t you more worried now?” Marik asked Hayden.

  “About what?”

  “We have to face a wizard! Isn’t that enough to worry about?” He sounded appalled and fearful at the same time.

  “A hedge-wizard, not a real one.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I suppose—no, wait a moment.” Hayden organized his thoughts. “It’s like the difference between the you now and the you yesterday.”

  “What?” Marik felt thoroughly lost.

  “You’re pretty good with your sword now, aren’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “How about the first time you picked it up? I bet you waved it around and tried a thing or two.”

  “So?”

  “So,” he went on, “what if nobody ever showed you the real way to use it? You’d just keep swinging it around, maybe figure out a trick or two, but never really be good at it.”

  “And that’s what this is? A wizard just figuring things out by himself?”

  “Or some kind of magic user. Thing is, most can only work out how to pull off one or two spells, and that takes them a long time. If he’s figured out a scrying spell, odds are that’s all he knows.”

  “So you’re not worried.”

  “Not really, no. If we can only catch them, that ought to be the end of it all.”

  Further information from their prisoner revealed the hedge-wizard usually did his ‘seeking’ in the morning when they set out. He also let slip, when a Third Unit man twisted his thumb against the arrow wound, where the group planned to camp the next day.

  The Kings rested their horses and gave them extra feed. They spent the night preparing.

  In the morning, they set out as they had been, walking the horses in a different direction than the bandits were supposedly going. Once Fraser and Giles felt the hedge-wizard must have finished working his witchery, the mercenaries turned east. They rode with greater haste to a pond at the base of the Cliffsdain Mountains near the Stygan Gulf.

  The Cliffsdains stretched north to south down half the kingdom, forming much of the border between Galemar and Nolier. There at the gulf the range continued straight into the water. Far north at the Stygan’s opposite end, mountains emerged from the water to form much of
the border between Olander and Gusturief. Though probably the same range, the mountains there were known in Traders Tongue as the Gemrocks.

  They burst upon the bandits, who had stopped for the day. The rogues were slow to react before they finally attempted to flee on half-saddled horses. None were skilled warriors; the weak and timid were the only opponents they could prevail against.

  Those ill-mounted riders fled up a slope that became a mountain canyon further on. All were ridden down by the Kings. Afterward, the riderless horses stolen by the thieves milled freely on the mountain slope.

  * * * * *

  Fraser ordered the horses gathered so they could be turned over to the nearest town that had been raided. He also ordered the nearest men, which included Marik, to check the canyon heights to ensure no bandit had escaped that far. After all, he had been fooled before and learned to never assume a position was abandoned until verified with your own eyes.

  Once again, Marik wandered deserted rocky ground, expecting to find nothing and seeing exactly that. This time he did not even find broken laces or cracked arrow shafts.

  Two men from the Third Unit also searched with him. He did not know them, though had seen them around the barracks all winter. Farther below where the steep grade lessened and the walls were less narrow, Duain and Edwin waited, feeling no need to exert themselves on a climb to see rocks and dead brush. Several other Third Unit men loitered nearby.

  Time to get out of here, Marik thought, but then whimsically decided to take one last look. He drew his dagger, using it to clean beneath his fingernails and turned back to a boulder cluster he had only peripherally glanced at the first time. It took him a moment to register the gaunt man in sweat stained leathers with several pouches strapped around his waist. Before Marik’s brain fully woke, the man raised his hands.

  Each hand held something. He suddenly clapped them together, mixing the two handfuls which puffed from his fists in a cloud of, what seemed to be, ashes.

  The gaunt man barked a word unlike any Marik had ever heard. It did not in fact sound like speech at all. Marik’s spine turned to ice.

  Then the world shattered. Unbelievable pain! A white hot, searing burn penetrated every pore, touching his very soul to fire. Reeking char invaded his nostrils. His sight filled with a blazing sun expanded to consume the entire sky, terrible and painful to behold yet surrounding him, engulfing him, inescapable. He fought to close his eyes, to look away, but it was everywhere! Marik wanted to scream, to shriek. Opening his mouth filled his lungs with burning mine gas that robbed him of breath.

  Something within him tore loose. Marik felt his body rip apart while his heart exploded. His body jerked uncontrollably as his tendons spasmed. Every nerve shrieked, destroying his brain in a furious torrent as far greater agony welled from within.

  In the midst of the endless torment, a darkness rushed nearer from a great distance. Marik knew it for death. He reached for it, yearned for it while the fragments of his mind teetered on insanity’s edge. With all his remaining will he stretched out for release from this searing torture.

  The sweet void of oblivion rose to swallow him. It blanketed him in unfeeling non-being…claiming him for its own.

  * * * * *

  “Screaming shit!” yelled Edwin when the hedge-wizard decided he would be unable to hide after all, stepped out and launched a horse-sized ball of white and blue fire into the three mercenaries. Edwin’s shout attracted attention from both below and above.

  He pulled an arrow from the quiver at his back. Above, the gaunt hedge-wizard quickly reached into his pouches, withdrawing new handfuls of spell components. When Edwin loosed the shaft he mixed the two components and chanted different words.

  Air shimmered before the gaunt man an eye blink before the arrow passed through. Edwin’s shaft disintegrated in a puff of ash. The iron arrowhead tumbled harmlessly away.

  Across the narrow canyon the shimmer spread, separating the hedge-wizard from those below. Anger shook Edwin’s fingers while he nocked a new arrow. He knew it would fare no better but he would rather waste the arrow than walk through that shimmer himself. Besides, other men were arriving, summoned by the noise. Better to show them than waste time explaining.

  As expected, the second arrow met the same fate as the first. He reached for another, furious at what had happened to the three men above, especially Marik who’d been in his unit and begun to grow on him as a friend. Blinding wrath drove him to continue, hoping that this arrow would find its mark.

  The hedge-wizard descended to his shimmering wall. He again drew components from his pouches in preparation for further spell casting. Edwin tensed.

  A ball of the same fire that had taken Marik flew with unnatural speed, incinerating Duain beside him.

  “Spread out!” shouted Sergeant Giles from below. “Spread out so he can’t get all of you at once!”

  How about “Retreat so he can’t get any of you?” I like the sound of that better. But Marik, and now Duain, kept Edwin drawing arrows.

  Two more fireballs lanced downward, the first missing when the man it sought nimbly dove aside, the second killing two men farther below who were running closer in response to the shouting.

  Giles screamed for men to fall back. A moment later Fraser repeated the order. Edwin back-stepped down the slope, still firing shafts into the strange barrier.

  Fraser yelled for men to crawl up the mountainside and circle behind the hedge-wizard. A fireball incinerated a horse.

  Edwin descended the slope. He had nearly passed beyond bow range when he noticed the gaunt man no longer stood alone. A shadow moved behind the shimmering barrier, twisted and inhuman.

  A black specter of death slowly hunched its way down the slope. It shuffled, back bent like a drunk about to vomit. The wraith labored for every step but soon stumbled to the hedge-wizard, who remained oblivious to the shade’s presence. This dark figure fell in a heap behind the gaunt man, who suddenly screamed and clawed at his back.

  The veil shimmered no longer. Edwin wasted no time before running back up the slope. In moments he had closed enough distance to feel confident of the shot. He pulled and released.

  No disintegration this time. The arrow planted itself in the hedge-wizard’s torso. Centerline kill.

  The other mercenaries stopped fleeing. Others ran toward the bodies of those fallen. Floroes made cursory inspections on the bodies downhill. They were corpses. Dietrik grabbed him by the shoulder shouting, “Forget them! Check the others up top!”

  Dietrik ran hard up the steeper slope, only pausing long enough to kick the dead hedge-wizard’s head sharply before dropping beside the specter’s body with Floroes.

  “Bloody gods above, it is Marik!” He took in the sight; Marik’s clothes were blackened ash stuck to his charred skin, his hair completely gone, all his flesh blistered, bleeding and raw. Dietrik glanced at the gaunt man. “And that’s Marik’s own dagger in his back!”

  Dietrik reclaimed his friend’s dagger. In a fit of rage he drew his rapier, plunging it through the hedge-wizard’s eye, rotating and twisting the blade as violently as he could.

  “Well?” he shouted at Floroes.

  A peculiarity had caught the large man’s attention. He leaned his ear against Marik’s chest. “Switch me, he’s still alive! Don’t ask me how.” Listening closely, he added, “I don’t know how long he’ll stay that way though.

  “What the bloody hells do you mean you don’t know? You’re a cursed field chirurgeon, so chirurgeonate or whatever you bloody call it already!”

  “Look, Dietrik, I know you’re close friends, but the best chirurgeons I know can’t help him like this. He needs a genuine Healer. Or a priest!”

  “Then we’ll find a gods damned priest!” Dietrik shouted back, ignoring the contradiction inherent in his remark. “All those towns and villages around here, there has to be at least one decent priest! You,” Dietrik yelled at the men standing around. “Ride out and find a priest! Go!”

  T
hey stood still for a moment, unsure. Fraser decided to reclaim command. “Do it. All of you over there, get your horses and spread out to the nearest towns! The rest of you, bring your cloaks over here.”

  Everyone ran, glad to have clear orders during the chaotic situation. Fraser consulted with Floroes on the dangers of moving Marik in his condition, then decided to risk it. They carefully wrapped his blistered body in the cloaks. Dietrik, Edwin and Hayden bore Marik down the slope to the pond. There they doused him with its cool waters. It was all they could do for him at the moment.

  Later, when sun neared setting, two mercenaries returned with priests from local faiths.

  * * * * *

  General Adrian Ceylon paused outside the great hall to adjust his uniform. Since he already suspected what his king’s proclamations would be, he needed to look his best. One always presented a perfect image to the court, lest the hungry sharks and wolverines and social plotters perceive weaknesses.

  The reception hall with its open ceiling, elaborate indoor fountains and carved benches had already filled with the lesser aristocracy, meaning the hall behind these massive double doors would be packed with the topmost ranks.

  Adrian tugged on the embroidered vest that displayed his medals and awards of merit. The general’s thoughts never strayed from the state of affairs opposite those massive doors these days. He delayed his entrance as long as he could by again trying to decipher the truth.

  He had served his king and kingdom since childhood with loyalty and fierce determination. Unwavering service to the Eleven Point Crown had always fed his spirit as food fed his body. Appointed the commanding general, he’d remade the army into a machine of precision, efficiency and integrity. Adrian had overseen many campaigns for his king and friend using the steel-like army he’d forged from the dilapidated iron it once had been.

  Neither had the luxury of casual relationships, given their positions. Their responsibilities precluded friendship with others, requiring instead they surround themselves with competent, yet distant men. They’d come to recognize their similarities after countless council meetings and strategy sessions. One evening after many years, the king had invited the general to his private chambers to share a glass of wine and continue a discussion regarding the current campaign.