by Damien Lake
“Are you close enough yet, mage?”
Marik shook his head. “It would be better to get as close as possible,” he gasped back. He pointed north to a gradual incline. “Over there, I think.”
Colbey frowned and tugged his mottled tunic, then led them through the picket line.
Marik left his inner eyes open, finding concealed men as easily as if they waved torches. After the cold stare he received from the scout when he pointed them out, he kept silent and watched, intending to assert himself when Colbey verged on making a mistake.
That seemed unlikely to happen though. Colbey proved as capable as Marik at knowing where the Nolier men were, and he reminded himself the scout was a Crimson King, not an army soldier. He must have passed the qualifying trials to enter the band. Marik recalled Hayden on the wall, speaking about the squad Colbey hailed from.
They’re the specialists. A lot of them are B Class fighters to a various degree.
Given that, Marik decided to trust the scout instead of trying to prove his value.
Eventually Colbey led them up the slope, finding a position away from the picket that afforded them a decent view. Marik leaned against a large oak tree, studying the forest clearing and the Nolier base, sorting out what he could.
When he searched for a line, he only needed to concentrate on the feel of the energy and his sight would travel through the very ground as far as it could to show him what he needed. With further practice, Marik thought he might be able to control it enough so he did not need to be in a direct sight line with unfamiliar targets. For now, the process remained new enough that he commanded minimal control. His target in sight, he could shift his focus from here to there with little trouble.
First he studied the encampment’s structure. The tents were scattered at random, which might be intentional to prevent an outsider from locating the command tents. Though the tents were devoid of regulated formation, several direct paths had been left clear to the forest. Wagons dotted the area with no horses in sight to pull them. He searched the camp, mystified by their absence. The few horses in theater were nowhere near enough.
He widened his field of vision, searching the surrounding forest for auras, finally finding them a half-mile off. Several soldiers were leading them back to the camp from a creek that supplied their water.
Casual activity filled the camp. Men went about their business, comfortable in their safety. Marik studied their auras in an attempt to determine what he could. He found little success. To his sight, these men were no different from his fellow Galemarans across the ridge. Tollaf’s aura had never been remarkably different from anyone else’s when Marik had studied the old mage.
What am I doing here? I told Trask I couldn’t help, but he doesn’t want to hear that!
The captain also did not want Marik to come back without intelligence he could use, so he continued scanning the camp, back and forth, praying to learn anything at all.
If he could read the enemy’s maps with his magesight, then that would have been useful, or even if he could accurately count enemy forces. So far, picking out men from their hiding places remained the only useful application of his gift. As helpful as that might be, it merely confirmed Marik’s believe that mage talent was unworthy of the trouble.
“Aren’t you finished yet?”
“No. Shut up.” He must have sounded as cold as Colbey but he disliked having his concentration interrupted.
Marik wanted to stop brooding, knowing once he started he would go on for marks. Instead, he recalled what little he knew about magicians, which turned out to be almost nothing.
Tollaf would die laughing if he could see this.
If the Noliers retained a magician, he would need components for his spells. Marik spent several minutes searching for those, fully aware he had no idea what to look for. Objects tended to be dark shapes without detail. What little he could distinguish seemed perfectly usual in a normal camp.
One of these tents must be his alone. I doubt he would want anyone else disturbing him. If there’s a magic worker here at all!
Examining tents walls and passing through them like a wandering spirit revealed only men sleeping, eating, dicing or repairing possessions. Not the merest suggestion of magic. He decided to tell Trask that Donnel must have taken out the enemy mage when one last notion occurred to him.
Marik ignored the camp and studied the clearing instead. He looked not at the shape forced onto the etheric plane by the physical world. Rather he looked at the etheric plane itself, at the mass diffusion’s pale mists. The purple haze that hung in the air, that formed the air, reacted to the slightest traces of mage workings the way smoke swirled away on a mere puff of breath. He had witnessed this during his practices with Caresse.
He allowed his eyes to wander where they willed, subconsciously looking for any minute pattern in the random chaos. From the corner of his eye, he noticed a faint distortion. When he looked directly at it, it seemed no different from the rest until he relaxed his vision.
The etheric energies had altered, like throwing a rock into a fast moving stream. In still waters, the expanding rings across the water could be seen clearly but in faster currents, the rings disappeared in an instant. Or so they seemed to. If watched closely, a person could sense traces of the rings’ movement through the faster water. As soon as that person’s attention wavered, only the sun sparkling on tiny dips and waves could be discerned.
Here, the same principle appeared to be at work. A faint distortion surrounded one tent. If the etheric mists had been cloth, Marik would describe this area as worn thin. No other tent harbored any disruptions in the energy around them. Marik drifted inside.
A man slept on a pallet, no different from anyone else, except the mists around his aura were scraped the way the mists around his tent were. In a clothing pile, he barely distinguished twin belts with several small pouches tied to them. Marik decided he had seen enough.
He came back to himself at the same moment Colbey’s hand descended onto his shoulder in a firm grasp. “The pickets are moving. It is time to go, mage.”
Marik shook off the hand and noticed the dimming light. Sunset had begun with full dark close behind. “Fine. I’m ready.”
Colbey brought them back west. They followed a different course this time. The scout’s knowledge of enemy movements struck Marik as nearly supernatural as his own. At one point Colbey stopped entirely, standing frozen while his ears twitched.
Eventually they broke through the picket line into the empty Reaches. “Why run?” Marik asked, still feeling the effects from the last dash. “It’s safer to move slowly, even if you do know the paths around here.”
“Fine. Then you can feel free to climb over the ridge in the dark. Don’t expect any help from me.”
Marik winced. “Never mind. Let’s go on then.”
Colbey did that strange shifting of his aura again. This time Marik watched for it, and he still did not understand what the scout had done. He would think about it later. For the moment, he could only hold onto his sword to prevent it from swinging too much while he ran after.
Chapter 25
The nine men Colbey brought across the ridge were excellent hunters by their outland standards. They had mastered the art of moving silently through woodland terrain while tracking prey in the forests near their home. Better by far than the officers he had led the previous day, though they still sounded loud to Colbey’s ears.
Each man carried a long bow with a range of nearly four-hundred yards on level ground. Colbey’s mission demanded that he bring them closer than that. Accuracy suffered with every additional foot the arrow needed to travel. The strike against the forest supply base depended on taking out the seven Nolier scouts watching this pass.
Four were situated on the far side of the ravine that cut through the ridge. Eighty yards separated the two sides. Colbey positioned two archers for every Nolier directly across the way. The lookouts had spent seasons sitting in the same positi
ons and were long since bored. They expected trouble to come along the ravine floor, not directly across from them.
Colbey took the last archer with him toward the nearest of the three Noliers on this side. Trask’s orders had been simple. Make sure no enemy scout escaped to report back to the main camp. The captain had refrained from burdening Colbey with a flood of details, and that was the way the scout liked it.
He had scouted this area all spring and knew it as well as he knew every curve and branch in the Euvea groves. The Noliers had never once shifted the lookouts. Scouts were in the same positions as when Colbey had first marked them. A Nolier strategist learned in theory yet lacking experience had studied the land’s lay, decided the best positions and assigned lookouts to each. To his mind, that ended the matter. Now, it would cost them.
Colbey signaled to his companion using gestures agreed upon beforehand. They would risk no speech this close to the Noliers unless an emergency erupted. The soldier nocked an arrow and held it ready in case the target bolted. It would not be needed, Colbey knew, except one never took chances when the stakes were large. Not even one as skilled at their job as himself.
The first lookout sat in a valley oak, one of its major branches having grown sideways, low to the ground. Nearly hidden among the hand-shaped leaves, he rested four feet off the ground, leaning against the trunk with one leg dangling over the side.
Colbey eased around the slanting trunk as silent as a passing cloud. The archer drew a tighter line on the target. Soon, Colbey stood beside the oak, only inches from the back of the man he intended to kill. His knife rested in his hand; eight inches of silvered steel that had served him well thus far.
He whistled low as he swung upward in an arc. Surprised, the lookout turned to see what the noise had been, exposing his throat to the lethal point. Before he could register Colbey’s presence, the blade pierced his neck, digging into the tree bark behind. Colbey stepped back to avoid the spurting blood. The man writhed, trying desperately to speak, to call for help. His windpipe and vocal cords were severed. All he managed were a few wheezes scarcely louder than the summer breeze rustling the leaves on his death tree.
One down, two to go.
When the man’s body stilled, Colbey retrieved his knife, causing the corpse to tumble from its perch. A quick search revealed no intelligence material on the body, though he had never expected such a prize from a lookout. Still, one must always be thorough, even when one already knew the answers. Thomas had taught him that.
He wiped his knife on the man’s tunic before sheathing it, then stealthily moved to the second lookout.
The second proved no more trouble than the first. Nor the third, though this one forced Colbey to react quickly. A sense of danger tickled the third’s instincts. He turned sharply while Colbey inched up on him. With instant reflexes Colbey hurled his knife through the air.
His knife had never been designed for throwing. It wounded the man across his forearm, which he’d raised to shield his face and throat. Before he could cry out, Colbey leapt atop him, his second knife finishing the job.
It impressed the archer. Colbey thought it sloppy and gave himself low marks for the performance. After a hasty check of the body, Colbey whispered, “Time for the others.”
With a nod, the archer sifted through his quiver until he found his screamer. Its hollow arrowhead had been carved from wood and pierced with several holes. The archer located a spot across the pass covered with light vegetation and dirt rather than hard stone. He wanted to keep the head unbroken and retrievable if possible.
The arrow’s screech would fade before reaching the main camp, yet the stationed archers would have to be deaf to miss it. Of course, the Nolier lookouts would hear it as well. By then it should be too late, even if they figured out what the sound portended in the seconds they had left.
Colbey heard bowstrings thrumming in the distance. He waited near the easternmost end of the pass to see if any lookouts would run his way to report interlopers. Five minutes. Ten. A full quarter mark passed with no survivors. None attempted to return across the ridge’s crest either, hoping to circle around his ambush.
“Good. We got them all. Let’s get back.”
He crawled down the side with the archer following. As he walked west he signaled for the other eight to join him.
“You three run back and tell your captain the pass is clear. The rest of you search the bodies you shot for anything relevant.”
If the soldiers disliked taking orders from a scout, and a mercenary one at that, they concealed their ire. Trask had made it clear before sending them out that Colbey ruled the pack, and the dogs better not challenge his appointed alpha.
The four dead men revealed no secrets either. By the time Trask’s company reached the pass, Colbey had stationed the remaining six men to watch for activity from the Noliers, though in different locations.
“Good job. None escaped?”
Colbey nodded, skipping the tedious effort a reply would require. Hadn’t the men he sent back reported as much?
“I hope you aren’t tired. It’s time you take Marik and pick a spot to watch the show from.”
“Dusk?”
“Yes. Be ready.”
Colbey slept in a state of readiness. “Fine. Where’s the mage?”
“Coming up with the rear. Go find him.”
Trask turned to other business. Colbey decided to wait for the mage to appear instead. He loitered long beside the moving mass before finally spotting the mage leading his mount over the irregular ground.
“Mage!”
The man glanced up in search of the voice. “Oh. You.”
“Ready to run?”
“We don’t have a ridge to scale in the dark today.”
“We have to be in place on time. Let’s go.”
He lowered his head to curse. The man beside him laughed and said, “Think of it this way, old boy! You’re finally getting back into shape after a winter of ease and leisure!”
“Shut up.”
“Now, now. Be nice. Go on, I’ll look after your boy here.” The second man took the reins from the mage.
“Thanks, Dietrik. See you tonight.”
“I hope so, mate.”
Colbey led the way, neither walking nor running. Soon they were at the ravine’s opening. The ravine mouth was shielded by trees extending from the main forest. The advantage this particular pass bore over others was the covering foliage that made it possible to move a large company through without being seen from the Nolier camp.
“Why are you taking that with you?” he asked the mage with a gesture to the sword belted around his waist. “You won’t need it.”
The mage dropped a hand to the hilt in a familiar manner. “You say. I’m not going anywhere near the enemy unarmed.”
“Why is a mage carrying a sword? It’s dead weight. It will slow us down.”
“Who ever said I was a mage?” Before Colbey could respond, the mage took a breath and dashed past into the trees.
Colbey swore while he ran after. The damned fool doesn’t know where he’s going!
He quickly passed the mage, whose breaths already exploded from him in ragged gasps. Behind them, Trask led his company into the eastern Reaches.
From this position there were no clean or easy routes to cover the few miles to the Noliers, so Colbey saw no point in boosting himself. He had no need to anyway, had only done so lately to keep in practice. No challenge he’d met in the outlands to date had required anything beyond his own strengths and skills. Besides, the focusing technique remained most efficient for flat out runs.
They made good time, if less so than the day before. Every few steps they needed to change course, navigating around trees or briar patches. Twice they stopped so the mage could regain his wind. Once they stopped so Colbey could dispatch a wandering Nolier scout.
After a candlemark they reached the picket line. They came at it from the south this time, and the men here were as lax as ever
ywhere else. Colbey guided them through with ease.
“Where am I taking you?”
“As close as we can get,” Marik huffed back. “I need to be able to see the whole camp. That hill from yesterday would be good.”
Colbey nodded. No point in mentioning that the picket line crossed that very hill every time they changed shifts. Instead, he brought them farther east until he found what he wanted.
The gnarled old forest oak was larger than most other trees. Its branches were big. Any child could have climbed to the crown with ease. Colbey brought the mage to the trunk and pointed. “Up.”
“What?”
Colbey looked skyward, a plea for patience. “Climb up! No one will find us.”
The mage was unhappy with this development. He glanced upward a long time before he finally he obeyed. Colbey watched him climb the first few branches, his swinging sword knocking against the trunk. “Farther,” he hissed when the mage stopped only ten feet from the ground.
After several additional angry hisses, the mage sat two-thirds to the top. The perch was well concealed from sight. Colbey spurned his climbing spikes for such an easy task. He ascended with squirrel-like grace, reaching the mage in moments.
“Move over,” he told the mage, who rested on the branch above with one arm around the trunk.
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“Go find your own seat. I like where I am just fine.”
Colbey glared, then moved further out on his own branch. He reached up to grasp the mage’s. It grew thick as his torso and he pulled himself upward, feeling the bark begin to tear away when he swung his feet over. The bark tumbled from his hands to the ground, which he watched before sidling closer to his charge.
“Do you have a problem with me, mage?”
