by Damien Lake
A conical roof sheltered the platform from rain. Only a foot-tall railing protected the sides open to the wind. Still soaked from the battle, Marik shivered when he sat cross-legged on the floor. Fortunately the darkness concealed their elevation, or his unease around heights would refuse to allow him within five feet of the edge, despite the railing. That short barrier would never guard against pitching headfirst over the side.
He took in the surrounding lands, wondering how the other two men in this crow’s nest with him could decipher anything at all. The rain clouds blocked all star and moonlight from the world. These lookouts would never see an enemy until he stood atop the earthworks and waved a hand in greeting. Well, that’s why Fraser sent me up here.
Marik opened his inner eyes, using his magesight to examine the terrain surrounding the depot. Darkness no longer hindered him. The uniform glow of diffusing energy illuminated all. This land, rich in growth, glowed the bright green of healthy plant life, black rain slashing through. Normally the bare earth between the vegetation bore a very faint aura of its own if he studied it hard, caused by the insect life within the soil, but the water soaking into it tonight turned anything not actually alive into a dark void.
Tollaf had yet to explain that to him. Water being the basis of life, as most priests he had ever known claimed, Marik would have thought it should glow with its own cool blue aura to match its reality. Instead, rain, rivers and standing pools were so dark they might as well have been black and depthless. It turned the field of grass and trees into a floating celestial garden adrift it a starless sky.
Tonight the plant life shone brighter than usual, the shades of green unmatched anywhere on the physical plane glowing vibrantly. Many men had died this day. Their life energies rent prematurely from their husks had settled into the ground. Though much of the liberated energy immediately evaporated into the free-floating etheric mists, the majority saturated the flora. Eventually it too would dissipate. For the moment, it enriched the soil. By summer’s end this field, if left alone, would burst forth with thick vegetation.
Far across the glowing green field, the Nolier auras were plain. Most were orange or yellow, a few reds sprinkled throughout. From this view they looked no different from his friends below. To his talent’s hidden eye, race and allegiance made no difference.
But it was not his place to say such, especially around the Galemaran soldiers. Instead, he settled in to watching with his water skin and the bread loaves he’d snatched from the cooks before Fraser had deployed him up the tower. On an impulse, he glanced back at the page, catching movement from the boy quickly averting his gaze when he saw Marik turn. He studied the boy’s aura, discerning the faint swirl in the energies he had learned to associate with hunger.
“Hey, sprat!”
The boy looked up. He nearly dropped the loaf Marik tossed to him, then barely managed a grip before it tumbled away.
“Might be a long night. Best grab a bite while you can.”
“Thank you, sir.” He grinned in reply.
“Don’t mention it.”
Marik spent the next candlemark nibbling his bread while sorting the Nolier auras. Attempting an accurate count would have been an exercise in madness. As men moved around, the colors shifted and blended together, splitting apart when men with similar colors moved away from each other or merging while they approached. What he most wanted was to read their nature if at all possible.
Plants and the like might share similar auras, but creatures, especially men, shone in a wide variety. As Tollaf had taught, he’d come to recognize a person’s personality usually defined their aura’s color. Most soldiers and mercenaries were bright yellows and oranges. It seemed to represent their confrontational nature as warriors. Red cropped up at times though he noticed the fighters held no special claim to the shade. One tavern keeper on the Row in Kingshome glowed a brilliant red, and everyone knew him to possess the shortest temper in town. Others who shared the color also shared that same trait, so he felt confident that the color represented a quickness to anger.
Oddly enough, when he had looked at Sloan the first time, he’d been amazed to see a steady green. Far from the bright green that plants gave off. Closer to the deep shades of moss on fallen tree trunks. He still groped for a handle on what to make of that. Everyone else in the Fourth Unit shared the normal yellows and oranges.
In the Nolier camp, Marik focused on specific auras, his mind drifting about the camp like a wandering spirit. His ability to seemingly leave his body behind by using the magesight proved useful. It allowed him to walk among them.
Discerning anything specific that lacked an aura remained a problem. He found the head officer with his assistants and hovered nearby while they discussed matters…except sounds from the physical world failed to penetrate into the etheric, which made this other plane silent as a tomb when he drifted outside his body. Marik concentrated on the maps they passed between them while they debated. To his eyes, they were dark squares without details. In the light from their auras he could see the squares were indeed maps, yet he could no more read the markings from the etheric than if he held them in a thick forest on the darkest night of winter.
Finally abandoning the effort, he retreated to his vantage from atop the lookout tower to wait. They still made ready to move. He spent a moment searching the nearby lands for lines of power flowing silently through the not-ground of the etheric. There were two, and both were very small, hardly an inch in diameter. All the heavier life concentrations were elsewhere; in the Green Reaches and the towns miles off. The plant life, abundant as it might be, only gave off so much excess energy. Most of it formed the mass diffusion in this area, only slowly collecting in the lines. Forget about finding a knot anywhere in this region.
The Noliers remained still so he drifted, looking for signs that a magic user might be with the group. Nothing. Or nothing that he could distinguish. He had no idea what signs to look for in the first place.
Marik had been on the tower one mark and half of the next when the Noliers began their move. The rain and clouds provided perfect cover, hiding them from the eyes of their foes, but not from Marik’s. He watched their auras creep forward through the darkness, bright as if they moved at high noon.
“Boy.”
The youngster had slipped into a light doze, bored and cold. He jerked at Marik’s voice.
“Run and tell the major the Noliers are moving. They’ll be on us in a quarter-mark at their current rate.”
The boy nodded and scrambled to the steps.
“Where?” demanded one of the other lookouts. He strained his eyes against the dark in a losing battle. “I don’t see anything.”
Marik pointed. “They just left their camp. You can’t see it since they haven’t lit any fires, but they’re coming.” He refocused on the auras inching south. “Looks like they haven’t left anybody behind. No one’s in the camp now. Can’t tell if they left any of their gear behind.”
“Are you crazy? You can’t see anything out there!”
“Maybe you can’t, but it’s as plain as day to me.”
The lookout continued to challenge, glaring at Marik until a new man rose through the trap in the floor.
“Major Enson!”
The major looked at the man. “You say the Noliers are moving?”
“Not me!” he vehemently denied. “This chaco is hearing bells and seeing stars!”
He started apologizing for dragging the major from his rest. The major ignored him to question Marik. “You’re Earnell’s pet mage, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marik replied unhappily, but honestly. “Though actually only a mage in training.” The lookout jumped backward in horror, nearly doing the header over the short railing Marik had envisioned. “I can see through the darkness, as long as there are people to look at, and maybe defend against a spell or two from an enemy mage. I’m a much better fighter with my sword in my hand.”
Enson nodded. “Where are they then?”
>
“They’ve covered about a quarter of the distance between their camp and the trench. It looks like they’re angling to the west. Maybe planning to hit the breach where the ramp usually sits.”
The major considered for a moment before ordering Marik to keep an eye on them. He descended the stairs, leaving the lookouts to their eagle’s roost.
Marik glanced at the man who had tried to discredit him and noticed him huddled in the furthest corner, back turned, staring into the night with fervor. He could think of nothing to say and discovered he didn’t want to anyway. The man had not endeared himself to Marik, yet the knowledge that every new encounter for the rest of his life would likely result in such cringing put Marik in a depressive mood.
He watched the Noliers, deciding they were indeed circling around the depot’s western side to reach the breach in the earthworks. They must figure it for the weakest point in the defense, especially in this dark. Luck had favored them, the cloudy night obscuring every step and providing steady rain to hide any sound of their passage. After covering half the distance, they still remained undetectable to Marik’s ordinary senses.
Major Enson issued fresh orders. Marik watched the northern defenders moving through the dark to take new positions in the west. They congregated around the barricade filling the breach. Officers sorted them out, assigning new positions along the western stretch. Several soldiers stayed on the north earthwork to hold in case the Noliers spilt or doubled back. A sizable group ran across the compound to the south to do the same.
Not a torch moved. All were left along the north mound or scattered about the grounds where they had been set previously. Marik could see the darker shapes of bows in every hand near the breach when Major Enson reemerged from below.
“Report.”
“They’re closer, sir. They should reach the breach in five minutes or so.”
“Good. Let me know when they come into bow shot, then let me know when they cover half that distance to the barricade.”
“Right.”
Marik watched them close, then needed to revise his time estimate when the Noliers spread out. Their main concentration stayed parallel to the barricade while half their forces split north and south. He reported it to Enson, who nodded once, saying only, “I thought they might.”
The Noliers spent ten minutes moving into position for their planned attack. Two groups Marik estimated at three-hundred apiece poised at the northwest and southwest corners of the depot while the remaining seven-hundred massed directly west. Runners sprinted from the main. When they reached the corner groups, each moved forward.
“Hoping that we’ll think they split in half for a simultaneous assault,” Enson thought aloud. “It might have worked, too.” He turned and spoke to the stairs.
A boy Marik only then noticed rose from the steps to dash down while a second followed after. Two new youths climbed and took positions on the top steps.
The swordsmen without bows were mostly grouped together at the north and south fringes of the Galemaran force. After the two boys dashed into the twin masses, the sword fighters moved swiftly to the corners.
Soon the Noliers were close enough for bow shot. Marik informed the major. Once they were halfway again to the earthworks, Enson grabbed the rope for the alarm bell and swung it once into the side, creating a single peal to shatter the constant rainfall. As one, the archers clustered in the middle turned left or right, unleashing a swarm of blind shafts into the two Nolier feints.
Other hands struck flint and steel together. In moments a torch forest blazed across the western mound. Dark man-shapes were revealed and the archers drew fresh shafts, at last having visible targets.
The Nolier forces paused, the element of surprise in full force but not in the direction they had expected. Their hesitation cost lives as the archers practiced their skills. Shouts flew from their officers, unheard by Marik as he observed the battle while drifting the etheric plane. After the arrows flew a second time, the Noliers surged forward.
Foot soldiers drew their swords. This time they jumped the trench, many falling short, others landing below the first stake line.
The Nolier army’s dark blue uniforms merged with the night and made them appear wraithlike. They had coated their blades in weaponblack so no stray, betraying light would reflect. Combined, it made them into phantoms; heads floating atop nothing as empty hands dealt death from a distance. Or perhaps a demonic horde escaped from the lowest hell to wreak havoc wherever they could.
In the darkness the archers were having a harder time picking out targets than earlier in the day. The Noliers who reached the top owned the advantage over the Galemaran swordsmen. With their blades blackened, they blended into the night despite the oil-soaked torches, all of which sputtered in the falling rain.
It would have been a disaster for Galemar if the Noliers had been able to swiftly climb the earthworks. But the climb was slow, so though the darkness and their own camouflage gave them an advantage, the Galemarans still outnumbered them man-to-man. The defenders were able to hold at the cost of taking heavier damage than earlier. Archers picked men off the slope when they could, the swordsmen ran to cut them from the top if they could not.
Marik quickly retreated to his body so he could speak, maintaining his magesight to watch the Nolier auras. “Sir, the center group is moving for the barricade! They’re going to hit it while everyone else is busy!”
“Bow shot?”
“Not yet.”
The major rested his hand on the rope, waiting for Marik to declare them half the distance from the outer range of the archers. When Marik did so, he sounded the bell again, this time hitting the ringing metal curve twice.
Galemaran archers fired their next volley into the approaching hidden mass. Several went wild. Many found marks in the darkness. With the redirection of the arrows, the Noliers climbing the muddy mounds gained the top in greater numbers. The swordsmen were forced to fight for their lives as well as for the supply depot’s defense.
“Where are they?”
“On the other side of the barricade! They’re swarming up the side!” Marik quickly drifted for a closer look. “They’re going to chop it apart!”
The barricade was sectional, built so it could be taken apart from inside as needed. It consisted of two log walls, their tops sharpened to points, with a hollow space between. Men who scaled the front would find themselves trapped while defenders used long spears to kill them through holes cut for the purpose in the inside wall.
Several attackers made it over the first wall with minimal damage from the sharp points. Defenders inside brought them down with their spears but Marik could see it would quickly fall. The barricade had been designed to be defended by archers atop the earthworks to either side of the breach…except the rain, clouds, darkness and Nolier uniforms made shooting with accuracy nearly impossible. Already the axes wielded by the Noliers had split the logs, tearing apart the bindings of the first barricade wall.
Enson rang the bell three times. The spearmen snatched up small casks. Others grabbed axes to break apart a line of the small barrels nestled against the inside wall. Men climbed the inner earthwork, which rose as tall as the barricade, and tossed their loads over. Casks landed on the earth between the barricade walls or on the heads of attackers who had jumped over. They burst apart and splashed their oily contents. It spread quickly across the wet ground. Spearmen dashed the broken casks against the wood.
Warning shouts rose while the attackers spilt apart the first wall. The Noliers poured into the breach to begin work on the second. Different shouts followed when the nearest defenders threw torches over the wall or at its base. Flames exploded in a tower of brilliant fury and roaring howls, engulfing the wall in an instant, spreading across the breach’s sodden floor. It had been dug at an angle so the oil flowed into the trench away from the depot. Axe-wielding men were killed in an instant. Nearly fifty others behind were set afire from the feet up.
Panic quickly
spread among the Noliers, a wild beast nearly impossible to tame. Blazing men fell backward into the trench, landing on those who had been pressing the attack. Others jumped with their legs in flames. They landed across the trench and rolled, trying to extinguish themselves, quickly learning it was not so easy to put out Galemaran war oil. Douse it in water and still it burns unless completely smothered in sand or dirt. A lucky few managed to save themselves by burrowing into the mud, so injured afterward they could barely move. Most ran, desperate to save their lives, screaming in agony as the flames burned through their wet clothing. Human fireballs streaked across the dark field in mindless terror, throwing themselves at others in desperate hope, a gruesome imitation of how Marik had viewed the stealthy advance with his magesight.
Confused, uncertain, the swordsmen on the earthworks hesitated anew, leaving themselves open for crucial moments. The defenders took advantage. Bright, towering flames illuminated the attackers. It robbed them of their unearthly presence. Plainly distinguishable, they fell to the renewed onslaught. Confronted on one side with the superior number of defenders and on the other with a blazing conflagration and the horrible screams from their own, the Noliers turned in retreat.
Most fled west, away from the depot and the light. Marik’s eyes marked them where they ran. He left his body behind, following them until they stopped a mile away. The Noliers were exhausted from running in full gear or nursing wounds and burns. Several auras walked from man to man. They would be the officers, working to reorganize everyone.
Once they had gathered everyone they thought had survived, they set off as a group. To the south this time, rather than the north.
“I think they’ll cut east to get back into the Green Reaches once they’re clear of us,” Earnell offered. He had come up the tower to report to Enson and check on his man.
The major nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. They lost half their men and only caused us minimal damage. They need to report and regroup with their own forces.”
“I can still see several men out there,” Marik informed them. “Individuals and pairs mostly. They didn’t rejoin with the main group. Probably they’re lost or injured.”
