Thaumaturge

by Terry Mancour

  “Are there enough of them here, yet?” the rotund wizard asked, impatiently, as he leaned over the battlement.

  “I’m waiting for a senior commander to arrive,” I informed him. “Someone who’s important enough to take charge of the battle . . . and take it away from that competent-looking scrug officer,” I proposed. “That’s the perfect time for a sudden moment of chaos.”

  Within the hour, I had my wish. While the number of gurvani who stood against us grew to three or four thousand, as new troops arrived, the latest column to appear apparently had some commander of rank with it. Mavone assured us that the siege train was still trying to get across the Wildwater, swollen with runoff from the rain, so we’d have little to fear from that, for a while. Gaja Katar seemed content to use infantry for the simple operation of capturing a modest fortification. The troops arriving were comprised of more of the maragorku, fortified by two companies of hobgoblin heavy infantry.

  Towards the rear of the force rode two figures on horseback. The shorter of the two was a white furred Black Skull priest in a black robe who looked uncomfortable on his pony. The taller was more malevolent-looking: a gaunt, pale-looking man in strange armor.

  My breath caught as I sighted him . . . but he was no Nemovort, I could see. Indeed, he was no man, but one of the odd-looking Alka Alon, transgenically enchanted into their ancient warrior form. One of the Enshadowed, then, I reasoned. Likely a lieutenant of Gaja Katar’s sent along to oversee the operation. I was no expert on reading inscrutable non-human expressions, but I was guessing that he was pissed at the stiff defenses he was facing.

  “Don’t bother with the Long Ears,” Wenek counselled. “They’re speaking some language I never heard before. Not gurvani, either,” he added.

  “I doubt we’d learn much of value, anyway,” I dismissed. “But we have the audience we were waiting for. Go ahead and give them a taste of what’s to come,” I ordered.

  Wenek grinned and nodded, before enthusiastically relaying my orders downstairs and activating some of our carefully-laid spells. By the time he returned to the observation deck, the first effects were beginning.

  The most important spell cast was the one that made it far, far harder for gurvani shamans to use their own spells. Rustallo had studied the differences between Imperial magic and what we knew of the gurvani shamans’ warmagic spells. Among the differences was a reliance on spells that protected their troops from the withering volleys our archers used against them. They weren’t perfect, but if they were strongly held, they could divert as much as a third of the arrows we shot at them.

  But to cast that kind of wide-area defensive spell, they had to produce an arcane field over the heads of the troops and then keep it there. That took a lot of power, and a lot of concentration. With irionite they had plenty of the former. Wenek had found a way to deprive them of the latter. It involved a spell that engaged the nervous systems of any arcanely-sensitive goblin and heightened its sensitivity and feedback. It wouldn’t be apparent until they started to raise power, but as soon as they did their minds would perceive it as raw, decentralized pain. The more power, the more pain.

  That’s bound to foil your concentration. And if you can’t concentrate, you can’t cast spells.

  That was just one of the nasty surprises we had prepared for the initial assault. The spellfields in front of my temporary fortress were filled with offensive and defensive enchantments, berserker fields, implosions, explosions, fear spells, the usual arsenal of mayhem a high warmage brings to the field. It was enough to discomfit the goblins attempting to get into formation; the really good stuff wouldn’t happen until they were on the move.

  “There,” Wenek said, satisfied, as he finished his work. “That should occupy them a while. Shall we send out a welcoming volley?”

  “I’ve got something special nocked,” Taren called down from above. The ballista he was operating was cocked and loaded with a wicked-looking iron-headed bolt the size of a battlestaff. “It’s for display, but now that their eyes have adjusted to the darkness . . .”

  “Do it,” I agreed. “Although they might be a bit out of range.”

  “Of this monster?” Taren scoffed. “You missed me practicing with it, yesterday. It’s enchanted in ways I can’t even understand – Salik makes good weapons,” he said, approvingly. “I can drop this right in that shaman’s chamberpot.”

  He took careful aim – engaging a few spells as he did so – and pulled the trigger mechanism. With a sharp snap the great engine hurled the javelin high into the air, soaring over the road and directly into the center of the goblin formation. It had been built with a simple whistle along its fletchings, which screamed its approach. Indeed, many of the goblins looked up toward the noise, likely fearful of giant hawks.

  “I hope it’s something sparkly,” Wenek commented, as he watched the bolt fly through the rainy night.

  “Watch your eyes,” Taren warned everyone, loudly.

  Just before it hit, the shaft emitted a sudden burst of blinding light, thrice as bright as the sun. We were prepared, and it dazzled all of our eyes . . . which was unfortunate, because we missed the mayhem the missile caused when it hit.

  “The light burst also triggered a spell that increased the apparent mass of the bolt tenfold,” Taren explained. “Then there’s a powerful implosion effect upon impact. Loud, scary, and the shaft will continue to flash lights in the vicinity for an hour. Just the thing to get someone’s attention.”

  “Raise the volley flag,” I ordered Ruderal, who was standing by the mast. In moments a yellow banner with a black arrow rose to the top of the pole. I could hear the captains relay the order to their men, and soon we were hearing the twang of bowstrings slapping in close unison. The goblins had formed up beyond what they had considered our range. Their estimate happened to be wrong by about fifty feet. The front ranks of the goblins, half of them already blinded by the bolt, didn’t hear the rain of steel and wood that peppered them into sausage. But when hundreds fell screaming, the unit was hastily withdrawn another hundred feet away from us.

  “Lower the flag,” I called. “Let’s give them a few moments to sort themselves out. We’ve shown them what we can do, let’s see how they respond, now that they’re out of range.”

  “They just think they’re out of range,” Taren promised, as he selected another great bolt from his armory, and commanded the ballista to cock itself. “This one will be a little more forceful.”

  The second bolt he sent at our foes outdistanced the farthest of the arrows, landing toward the rear of the formless formation. A powerful concussive blast split the night. I checked with magesight, as did the warmagi around me. There were concentric circles of dead and dazed goblins in that corner, now . . . and a heap of something dark suddenly at the center.

  “Just a simple construct, but very, very large. A glorified earth elemental,” he dismissed.

  “That’s going to take a lot of damage, before they destroy it,” Wenek nodded, approvingly, as the heap came to life. The dirt-filled scarecrow straightened to troll-height, at least a dozen feet tall. It didn’t hesitate, once it activated. It began stomping on every goblin in its path with its great hidebound feet.

  Then a pale figure on a Fell Hound bounded over the mass of goblins struggling to get away from the thing and took a position in front of the construct. Wenek cooed like a little kid. “Wait . . . the shaman is going to try a counterspell . . . watch, this should be good!”

  The warmage was gratified when the urgulnosti shaman began his chant, waving his short staff over the elemental from dog back . . . and then clap his hands to his head, screaming. Wenek roared with sadistic laughter, and redoubled it when the shaman tried again and fell from his mount in pain.

  “That was incredible!” he beamed. “The beauty of it is that in order to counter it, you have to do assays to determine the arcane vibration . . . and the moment you try, you’re in a world of pain!” he cackled.

  “Is he always lik
e this, Master?” Ruderal asked, quietly.

  “Wenek has a rare talent for offensive magics,” I explained. “He enjoys his work. Much as Azar does.”

  Ruderal shuddered, no doubt seeing something unseemly in Wenek’s enneagram. I didn’t ask him to explain. I honestly did not want to know. I had seen Wenek’s sadistic streak first-hand a number of times, but he had only inflicted it fully on his foes. To my knowledge.

  The volleys of arrows and magical bolts kept the goblins at bay, but it did not thin their number, as more were arriving from the column all the time. It took them an hour to subdue the earth elemental, without magic, but eventually they got enough ropes around it to wrestle it to the ground and bind it. During that hour two thousand more infantry arrived at the muddy, bloody field. The parts of the army which weren’t blind, stunned, squished or wounded were still getting into formation.

  “They’re going to attack us at least once, before dawn,” Taren predicted. “Their sense of outrage will demand it.”

  “There are five or six thousand of them now,” Ruderal guessed, nervously, as he peered into the gloom. “They outnumber us.”

  “They’re scrugs,” dismissed Wenek, with a sneer. “Even the big ones are still just scrugs. We faced far, far worse odds at Boval Castle,” he recalled.

  “And we lost Boval Castle,” I reminded him. “Those scrugs took half the Wilderlands when they were just naked tribesmen. They know their business much better, now.”

  “New unit arriving,” Rustallo called from the high observation tower. Not only did it give a fairer vantage point, but it was enchanted to provide enhanced observation. “Looks like Gaja Katar finally showed up. Or at least someone with the brass to rate a battle wagon,” he reported.

  The wagon he referred to was a long, enclosed box of sturdily-built wood on four great wheels rimmed with iron. It was pulled by eight of the most miserable horses I’d ever seen, all great brutes like the Wilderlords favored for their warhorses.

  I don’t know what occurred behind enemy lines, once the Nemovort arrived, but the change in the troops was instant and profound. A swirl of horse-mounted Enshadowed officers helped coordinate, and in a few short minutes we were facing row upon row of menacing goblin infantry.

  “Yes, I think they’re going to attack us, now,” Taren said, as he bent to load another great bolt into his engine.

  “Agreed. Volley flag!” I ordered. “Activate the defenses, and prepare to receive charge. Notify the Tower,” I told Rustallo. “Let them know we’re about to engage the enemy. Any sign the Nemovort wants to treat, before the battle?” I asked, hopefully.

  “No, they’re going to attack,” the young warmage assured me from the loft.

  “They’ll send a sortie,” Taren guessed. “They’ll only try to treat with us if they fail.”

  “Well, let’s make sure they fail,” I called back, loud enough for everyone to hear me over the rain. I could feel the enchantments in the Sudden Fortress snap into place around us. Indeed, the structure seemed to come alive as the paraclete at its arcane core came awake and aware. “I’ve been looking forward to speaking with this Nemovort. I’d hate to miss that.”

  “Of the three dark lords the Penumbra stood against us, Gaja Katar was by far the most brutal. Had he been blessed with more wit than malice, Vanador would have been dearly challenged in those early days. I can only conclude that his inferior position in the hierarchy of status within Korbal’s court infuriated him beyond the point of reason. That is perhaps the most charitable verdict of his conduct at Traveler’s Tower. Else one must conclude he was merely an idiot.”

  From the Scrolls of Lawbrother Bryte the Wiser

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Face of Gaja Katar

  Their assault was determined. I’ll give them that.

  I don’t know what kind of pep-talk Gaja Katar gave his soldiers, but there was decidedly a point where the mood of the battle shifted. It’s the sort of thing only military veterans or the keenly observant can appreciate – that moment when your foe transforms from a disheartened mob, driven by whip and penalty, into a resolute, monolithic force of destruction. You can be as cocky as you like, sitting on top of a wall with a bow or spear . . . but when you realize the fellow who is tasked to get through that wall has become motivated, it changes how you view the battle.

  There was magic at play. Not the bolts of force or bursts of arcane flame; at some point a force took control of that facility of the Alon we quietly called the consensus entrainment: the ability of the various Alon races to act in concert to a preternatural degree. It was one thing to see in a bunch of Alka Alon picking nuts, or a crew of Karshak Alon working a construction site, or a team of Alon Dradrien hitting the iron with a series of hammers with unworldly precision. . . or even a warren of Tal Alon fighting off a predator.

  It was something else again to see it within the gurvani – tribal, eunuch and maragorku – arrayed against you in battle. It had to be coming from Gaja Katar, himself. No doubt his undead brain couldn’t feel the pain his magical subordinates felt from Wenek’s spell. The field of arcane control rolled out from the rear like a wave, and every warrior it touched became part of one gigantic organism. An entity whose one desire was to destroy you, in any way possible.

  We’d witnessed such consensus entrainment before when facing the goblins. Sheruel’s urgulnosti shamans used it from the very beginning to compel their fanatical legions against us, from Boval Castle to the Battle of the Red Ice. But the way Gaja Katar employed the effect was different . . . more sophisticated. As the dully-shining iron spears of the vanguard slid into position, it wasn’t just the fact that they had done so in unison that was troubling; it was the exactness with which the blades were suddenly arrayed against us.

  A moment later, we learned that the gurvani had not only learned how to volley their fire, but that their new crossbows made the enterprise a deadly concern. A concerted wave of iron bolts rained against us, as unrelenting as our steel-tipped shafts had been an hour earlier.

  We had spells against such, of course. There are a score of ways from discouraging missile fire, and I knew all of them. But magic isn’t perfect. And we faced a determined foe, one determined enough to ignore the pain Wenek’s spell caused. Ignored or didn’t feel. It is theorized that the Nemovorti don’t feel real pain, so perhaps my comrade’s spell had no effect. Regardless, the line of goblins in front of us came to a point of precise attention that was designed to instill fear in our spines.

  There was a deep, sustained growl that seemed to underlie our very feet. It was more than a mere grunt or chant, it was a vibration that got into our bones, behind our eyes, inside the spaces between our very teeth. The goblins moved as one, pushing up the side of the road and through the iron-tipped spikes that warded the bottom of the hill. When they came to the barrier, they tore it into kindling through sheer strength of their combined arms. Using leverage and tenacity, they ripped our protective spikes from the ground and surged forward.

  “That’s . . . new . . .” Wenek observed, absently, as he watched our sturdy defenses fall. He began casting a retributive spell to keep them at bay, as did many warmagi on the battlements. Arrows rained down from the turrets overhead, and waves of arrows flew from the trenches on our flanks. Plenty of surging scrugs fell from the fire, but more pushed past the dead and dying in their relentless effort to take the hill.

  “Point blank range!” Taren called, cheerfully, as he switched ammunition. He and Carmella had prepared for such an eventuality, and the great bolts he loaded into his ballista were crafted for a close assault. The first quarrel landed among the leading elements of the charge, at the very base of the hill. When it landed, it spasmed and produced a quartet of thaumaturgical constructs that resembled a clump of baggage covered by a stout roundshield.

  In seconds, the four artificial warriors activated, extending legs the size of lances and arms comprised of greatswords and spiked maces. They went to work at once, smashing
into the advancing warriors and giving a good account of themselves, before they were overwhelmed. The gurvani were resilient, in the face of the assault. They crawled up the legs and split them apart as easily as they had the spiked fence. Once the shield-backed central hubs of the defenders were down, clubbing them or binding them with chains proved expedient enough. A second and a third such magical bolt destroyed another score of the foe, but the line was relentless in its advance.

  “This is the test,” Taren observed, as he considered the damage he’d done to the enemy. “If Gaja Katar can prevail here, he can take Spellgate.”

  “That’s not very optimistic!” Wenek snorted, after he blasted an ambitious squad of hobgoblins with the green fire he’d conjured. “We’re just warming up,” he reasoned, drawing a warwand to add to the mayhem below. “This is just us playing around. We can retreat back to the tower at any time!”

  “This is the test!” Taren insisted. “We need to be decisive, here, or he’s going to think he can walk right into Vanador!”

  “We’re a long way from that,” Rustallo said, confidently, from his perch above. He had a battlestaff in his arms, and was using it to lob great globs of plasma down on our foes. Wherever they landed, they lashed out at the gurvani like angry dogs, attacking their legs and weapons wherever they were extended. When they bit, the flesh and hair and wood in their path burst into flame in an instant, turning metal red-hot and flesh into charred ruin. “This is mere target practice, my Count! Don’t discourage it,” he pleaded.

  “They’re getting a lot closer, Master!” Ruderal said, nervously, as the first of the great goblins threw themselves up the hill. There was an undeniably anxious tone in his voice as he watched the writhing black mass surging toward us. “Not that I doubt your bravery, but the rest of us would be gratified to see you release whatever hellish spell you have in store!” he called against the rain and the sound of our enemy.