by Damien Lake
Tents fell when lines entangled around retreating men. Wagons burned from torches lit against the coming darkness, knocked over in the frantic chaos. Shouts and screams rent the evening. Marik heard none of it while he sweated under an effort he had never hence known.
In his most strenuous practices with Caresse, he had never worked like this! His shields were being destroyed in rapid succession. Marik strained to recreate them while drawing additional energy into himself. He felt like a taut bowstring where any further pull would snap the length.
The feathers were mostly gone, and the magician smiled no longer. Instead, he snarled inaudible curses. If the shields could survive the last three feathers, Marik might come out on top. He guessed that the spell the magician had cast before the feathers had enhanced his vision somehow, allowing him to see the shields surrounding him and the one who put them there. Once he ascertained his dilemma, he had chosen the feathers as being the best spell to break the shields while not killing himself in the process.
Down to the last feather. Marik was desperate. The man lifted the last one, and Marik could draw too little energy to create the needed shields. Frantically, he molded the energies, drawing on his own life force, feeling his heart skip a beat when he urgently delved deep into his reserves.
The spell ended. Two shields remained intact with a third torn, yet still there.
Marik relaxed for a moment while the magician took stock. He allowed his body to adjust to the sudden energy depletion, energy his body used to maintain its vital functions. After a moment he reached further with his mental hands. Large portions in the nearby mass diffusion had been consumed by him to create so many shields. The camp looked unnaturally dark to his magesight, the glowing illumination from the etheric mists vanished. Men’s auras floated through a void blacker than pitch with green from the Reaches framing the edges.
He gathered in the mass diffusion, feeling his strength return. Below, men fought around the magician, running past as they retreated to who knows where.
The magician crumbled another fragment of the earlier component, invoking his sight to reassess his situation. When he found the shields still surrounding him, he snarled like a caged animal, which, in a way, described his present situation. He scrutinized his prison thoroughly this time, oblivious to the war waging around him. Marik used the precious moments to continue filling his reserves.
Suddenly grinning with triumph, the magician opened different pouches and withdrew two handfuls of separate components. He did not immediately cast a spell. Instead he spent time sifting his components, letting bits in one hand fall back into the pouch while pulling extra of the second from its.
The sight disturbed Marik. He rebuilt shields upon shields, layering all he could while the magician worked out his mix. He drew continually from the mass diffusion, having to reach farther and farther in all directions. The closest line he could sense ran on the ridge’s opposite side. Marik could never tap into it from this distance.
The magician finished his preparations. Before he cast his spell, he looked directly at his foe. Marik watched his lips moving, and in the glow from the man’s aura, he thought the man shouted, “Try this, you goat-son!”
I have a bad feeling…
He did not clap his hands together with the components this time. Instead, he brought his hands together as a man offering up a prayer. Clasped firmly, he squeezed them together with all his strength. The hands began shaking while the magician uttered a long sentence rather than a single word…except he bore no resemblance to a man preparing to toss the dice. No, this looked like he was fighting to contain the world’s strongest moth in his cupped palms, a moth determined to fly away and take him with it.
The magician took one step and thrust his hands forward. As he did, he released whatever power had built in his palms.
Marik expected the shields to catch the spell and probably shatter under the power of this advanced casting. Instead, the spell caught up his shields as leaves on the wind, and Marik felt the power racing toward him, following the channel that connected the shields to their creator. Straight at him!
“Colbey!” was all the warning he could give the scout. It would have to be enough. The massive ball of power raced straight for them. Marik frantically erected his own shields. In less than a moment he surrounded himself with every shield Caresse and Tollaf had taught him, layered around his body. His astral shield alone obviously would not stop this spell. He could only pray the others would.
The spell hit. One of the other shields must have been effective after all. With unbelievable concussive force, the spell exploded into a fiery cloud. Marik felt his shields eroding. Only one thought had room in his mind. He must keep replacing the shields from inside until the spell ended! Energy from the mass diffusion rushed forth through his channels faster than he had ever felt before.
This spell possessed an unworldly life. It refused to end anytime soon. The initial explosion set the tree ablaze around Marik, then the power in the spell pulled back to reform, taking on a different shape. It swarmed forward anew to strike a second time.
Several men in the rear of Trask’s southern forces stopped to point and shout. Across the sky, forty feet above them and a hundred feet long, a vast wall of purest orange-red fire burst into being. Shot through with blue lightning, it cried out to all who witnessed of its raw, tremendous power. It advanced on Marik’s tree, growing taller as it went, curling forward at the top like the giant ocean wave it imitated.
The curl tumbled to crash over the top of the trees on the hill where the picket line had been. It broke with a deafening roar, ringing every man’s ears in the clearing. Branches and flaming leaves exploded in every direction across the upper hill while the horrendous howling of hungry flames filled the air.
Marik felt his shields rip away. Raw sound battered him. He had spent nearly all his energy, and he groped for more from the mass diffusion. Except he could find nothing available. The spell still raged but he had nothing left to defend with.
One last feeble hope. With luck, the spell, aimed at this spot, would continue to target it once his shields finally collapsed. Marik moaned a cry of shock and despair. He hurled himself backward with his last strength. The spell might well continue its torrential frenzy up at the level where he had perched, but the fall to the ground would surely kill him.
An arm wrapped around his chest. It stopped his plummet by gripping his neck. Marik summoned enough strength to see Colbey clutching him with a firm grip. He saw the scout with his normal eyes, having spent so much of his personal energy he could not call upon any aspect of his talent, including the passive magesight that used hardly more energy than drawing a breath.
Colbey’s strength amazed him. It was the only thought his mind seemed capable of at the moment. The scout flipped to his feet before jumping from branch to burning branch. His burden might have been light as a pillow. Soon they were on the ground.
But not safe. “Colbey!” he croaked. “The magician…he’s free!”
“Then we move.”
Colbey lifted him in his arms. He carried Marik away to join with Trask and his men. After an eternity of the disorienting view over Colbey’s arm, the rearguard nearly killed them for their effort.
After their identities were straightened out, they were hustled to the fore where Trask oversaw the Noliers’ surrender.
“The magician? One of my boys caught sight of him right before the whole damned sky caught fire. He’s still alive, except his arms are broken and his head’s been cracked. He won’t be waking up anytime soon.”
Marik slumped in relief. Trask left them to continue his duties. He looked at Colbey.
“Thanks.”
The scout nodded, accepting the gratitude as his due.
“How’d you survive that?”
“I jumped behind you.”
This simple answer surprised Marik. He laughed weakly. “You should have jumped down, idiot! My shields could have gone at any t
ime and fried us both!”
“Most of the tree was on fire. Besides, my assignment was your protection. I take my duty seriously.”
“Glad you do.”
Marik fingered his sword hilt. “Damn, I have the worst luck with fire.” He looked north to their former perch, blazing in a festival bonfire. “And now half the Reaches is in flames! I hate this!”
“Hate what?” The scout sounded strangely curious.
“Magic.”
“You’re a mage.”
“Who ever said…I was a…mage…” The weariness hit him with a brick’s force and his eyes fell shut against his will. His last sight before he descended into a heavy slumber against a wagon wheel revealed Colbey standing before a background of orange firelight, gazing at him with a strange, calculating look.
Chapter 26
“Ha, ha, ha! You look like you’ve been out in the desert for a month!”
“Drop dead, Dietrik.”
Now that the adrenaline from last night had worn off, his skin had decided to make plain its thoughts regarding infernos, and its displeasure at how close its master had taken it to one. At least his hair had not burned off this time.
“Think how much worse you’d feel if you hadn’t traded your hide in for a new leather covering last summer!”
“If you have the time to joke around, go hunt up a Healer and see if he has any of that salve I was using half the winter! Ow, damn it! I didn’t bring any with me.”
Dietrik reach inside his tunic and withdrew a small bottle. “See there? How about a little gratitude?”
Marik grabbed it. The heavy, familiar herbal smell greeted his nose when he pulled the stopper out. “Thanks, I guess. I must look pretty bad.”
“You have looked better,” Dietrik agreed. “But I think you’ll be over the worst in a day or so.”
“That’d be nice, but don’t expect me to start swinging mattocks!”
Trask had ordered the forest clearing fortified. A supplementary earthwork was under way. So far the surviving Nolier soldiers performed the work, which solved the problem of what to do with them for the moment. After a morning spent cleaning away the fragments of their former shieldmates that littered the encampment, they were noticeably subdued. Marik hoped they would be stationed here for only a short while since the blood soaking the dirt and other biological refuse already grew pungent in the forest humidity.
“What’s news?”
Dietrik hauled around a wooden crate left lying on the ground when the debris from the raid had been kicked aside to make room for the field tents. “Trask has the scouts ranging as far as they can, though the Noliers claim the next supply caravan isn’t due for several days.”
“If the other supply areas were hit as hard, I don’t think we need to expect anyone.”
“The Noliers don’t know about that part, but I agree. We hit this place hard and fast. They spent the first moments running. The chaps never organized a good defensive stance to meet us. We hardly lost anyone.”
“Anyone I know?” He hated this part worst of all the post battle moments.
“Not a one.”
Marik sighed with relief. “Good. Then we can rest for awhile.”
“You mean you can rest for awhile. I have to go haul a shovel for the next day or two.”
“I’d say a day. The perimeter must be a lot smaller since we don’t have any buildings to defend.”
Dietrik nodded. “True, but I don’t fancy the thousand roots we will need to dig through. Kerwin’s got wagers going on time of day and numbers of men.”
Marik laughed. “At least he’s happy.”
The company spent the next several days digging in, waiting for orders from the knight-marshal. A steady messenger stream arrived and departed between the other Nolier supply areas. Word through the cook grapevine claimed that neither of the other two assaults had progressed as smoothly, though the Noliers had collapsed eventually.
Trask interrogated the captured Nolier officers. He intended to question the magician as well once he regained consciousness. Marik found the captain in a free moment, which were few and far between, and received permission to participate.
“There’s only one or two things I want to know.”
“Fine. Ask the rest of my questions for me, then. I was going to send for you anyway. Teach the men what they need to know about handling him.”
And so Marik did several days later when the man began showing signs of awakening.
“You don’t need to worry too much,” he told the men, all of whom shuffled nervously. He prayed the guesses he passed off as fact were indeed correct. Marik wondered if their nervousness stemmed from being near an enemy mage or being near himself, who they regarded as the Crimson Kings’ pet witch. “His magic works through components, and he doesn’t have them. And both of his arms are broken and in splints. But make sure he can’t get hold of anything. Anything! Not his tunic or so much as a pinch of dirt.”
They nodded. Marik had examined the pouches taken from the magician. The feather bag was empty, and a good thing. One more of those would have spelled the battle’s end. Another held the ashes he knew must base the fire spell. He recognized the pouch used for the vision spell. Inside it he found crumbly sand lumps, which made no sense as far as Marik could see. Ashes for a fire spell and feathers to summon the wind obeyed a certain logic he could follow, yet how in the world could sand help a person to see his shields? Perhaps his assumptions during the battle were off the mark after all.
“Don’t tell him I’m the magic user he was fighting. I only want to be a soldier rolling him for answers, like you.” Marik wore his sword and pulled on his mail, retrieved after the battle from Dietrik.
They went inside where an army chirurgeon examined the magician. His arms were bound with splints on both sides and a tight gag prevented speech.
Soldiers hauled him off the cot into a wooden chair with stiff arms. His own splintered limbs were tied securely to the chair’s, no one listening overmuch to his pained moans. The chirurgeons had kept him drugged. They had timed this interview for when the last of the drugs finally wore off.
Marik did not enjoy the interrogation. Though never tortured outright, the man’s arms caused him severe agony. They removed the gag only after explaining that the man standing behind would club him across the head with a wooden cudgel at the first sound of an alien word.
Other than the interrogation, Marik had little to occupy him during the next several eightdays in the Reaches. The army scouts, led by Colbey, kept a much better eye on the surrounding lands than the Noliers had. Patrol duty in the forest became a matter of candlemarks rather than days. Few Noliers were to be found in the woods until the northern forces at last gained the upper hand at the gold strike.
With their supply lines severed, the forces holding the mine began losing ground. The Galemarans finally broke them after a hard battle. Following that, groups of Nolier soldiers fled south. Colbey’s scouts snared the smaller ones but with the prisoners from the initial raid, space was at a premium. Also, Trask wanted only small numbers of prisoners together lest they start getting ideas.
Galemar’s northern forces rode south after establishing a secure hold on the gold strike. The main body traveled along Galemar’s depot line in the open land, except for a sizable detachment the knight-marshal sent to sweep the Reaches and collect the men stationed within. A detachment that happened to include elements of the Crimson Kings.
* * * * *
“I heard about your antics, boy,” Tollaf gruffly greeted when he tracked Marik down after the officers’ meeting. “Captain Trask says you near burned down half the damned forest!” He looked at the black, skeletal remains that had burned until a fortuitous rain shower had finally extinguished the inferno. “I can see he wasn’t exaggerating! And what, by Lor’Velath, happened here? There isn’t a trace of etheric energy for miles!”
“It’s a reflection on your qualities as a teacher, old man,” Marik opined. Hi
s friends pretended not to be listening from inside their tent, even as he knew they strained to catch every word. As before, he refused to bend his back to this decrepit fossil, especially now since he could guess at the relentless ribbing his shieldmates would inflict on him if he cowered like a whimpering puppy.
Marik, stiff backed, relayed the battle between himself and the magician as best he could remember, rewarded for his success with the sour reply, “Well that’s certainly not what I would have done!”
“It was all I could do! And don’t tell me I need more training!”
“You do.”
Marik glared at him.
“Trask said you talked to the magician.”
“The chirurgeons are keeping him drugged so he stays unconscious. They’re not sure what to do about him.”
“What did he say when you talked?”
“I was playing the silent guard, so I tried not to ask too many specific questions.”
Tollaf nodded impatiently for him to go on. “At first he only tried breaking through my shields. He didn’t think he’d have too much trouble, since he could tell I wasn’t very strong. I asked about the last spell he cast and he said the reason he didn’t use it first was because he never gets the chance to, and he’d forgotten about it.”
“Did he say why?”
“It has to follow an existing link back to the mage, and most mages don’t give you the opportunity.”
Tollaf nodded. “Combat spells are hurled at your enemy, and either strike their target or are deflected. They are formed and thrown; separate from their creators once they are fully created. Since you need to maintain shields after crafting them, you needed to keep the channel to them open.”
“Well, nobody ever told me about that!”
“I had no intention of sending you into battle with as little training as you have.”
“It turned out to be important!”
“If you ever bothered to listen to what I have to say, maybe I’ll bother telling you of these matters! Finish with the spell!”
