Hellion Mage

by James Green

  “The ones that went through the breach, you say it was a smaller force?” I asked.

  He turned to me. “Smaller, aye, but I’d say it was the core of the force. They were well armored and equipped, unlike this rabble. Plus, they had at least a few branded with them.”

  “We’ve got to get in after them,” I said. “Sergeant, take care of our horses, would you?”

  “Of course, sir,” Ajax said. “I’d send some men with you but I don’t have anyone left that wouldn’t just slow you down. Good hunting.”

  “I’ll stay here with these chaps,” Fred said. “I’ll be no good inside all that stone and I can help with their wounds.”

  Fred began to hand out salves and potions to the wounded soldiers and we left him to it.

  The breach in the wall was ten feet across, the crumbled stone of the wall piled up in and around it. The Spears defending the garrison had done their best to hold it but had ultimately failed.

  On the outside of the wall were mostly dead Saprophytes, full of arrows and javelins. On the inside the tables had turned—the bodies of the defenders littered around the courtyard. Some were badly burnt hunks of meat, barely recognizable as Queen’s Spears. Others had been literally torn apart, their limbs often nowhere near their fallen bodies.

  We rushed through the gap in the wall and immediately in front of us were the garrison keep’s main gates. They were smashed in, the thick slabs of steel-reinforced wood hanging limply from broken hinges. I could hear fighting from deeper inside.

  I saw a bright orange flash in the corner of my eye and spun, raising my shield instinctively. Intense heat washed over me as the bolt of fire slammed into the face exploded. I hissed in pain as the heat cooked the skin on my legs.

  The man in bright yellow robes standing on top of the wall to our left looked annoyed that I hadn’t just fallen over dead and raised the short brass rod in his hand once again. I could see the power gathering there and it was time to move.

  “Branded! Get him!” I bellowed.

  Chapter 12

  I pushed the power of Rime into Mithra as I dove out of the way of the second fire bolt. It flashed over my head and I could feel the heat of the near miss.

  Ulmar bellowed and dashed for the nearest set of stairs up the wall and was met by a group of men in scale armor with axes and shields. The eight of them spread out to defend the stairs. Ulmar barreled into the middle of them, his mighty blade glowing with power. I knew he would be fine and didn’t have time to worry about him.

  Anastasia pointed one of her swords and a lightning bolt struck the man in yellow. He snarled but otherwise didn’t seem injured. The glowing power was building in his rod once again.

  I pushed the power of Gale into Snatcher, his camouflaged form already halfway up the wall beside me. He began to grow.

  “Snatcher—get that rod and kill him if you can,” I ordered.

  I ran toward the eight men Ulmar was fighting. Their heavy axes were skipping off his plate mail and his two-handed sword was being expertly deflected by their shields.

  Mithra was to my right, his brilliant white form leaving a trail of frost behind as he pelted across the courtyard toward the doomed men.

  With a crack of thunder Anastasia flashed in from my left, her crackling blades lashing out and rending armor. One man spasmed as the electricity on her blade arced through his metal armor, roasting him inside it. Her second blade licked out and punched through his gorget, the point slamming hard against the back of his helmet. He fell to the ground, still twitching.

  The eight men had been a unit, well trained, disciplined, and unified. They knew they could handle one dwarven knight, and they worked together to accomplish that. All of that dissolved when Anastasia, Mithra, and I hit them on three different sides.

  I deflected an axe, hooking the blade with the rim of my axe and pushing it up. Rime shot forward and its sharp, leaf-bladed point parted the strong steel scale mail and dug deep into the man’s guts. A look of utter surprise crossed his face and then changed to agony as I wrenched the spear to my right, the blade ripping free with a splash of blood and viscera. The soldier sagged, and I kicked him out of the way.

  Above me, the man in yellow was struggling with a barely visible Snatcher. A column of fire erupted as he tried to catch the Tempest Lizard but was too slow. Snatcher’s tale slapped out and hit the man in the temple, staggering him. Another bolt of fire flew, but Snatcher wasn’t there to be hit any longer. The lizard seemed to have it well in hand.

  Ulmar roared in rage and triumph as his shining blade chopped off one of the soldier’s arms at the shoulder. The screaming soldier backpedaled and Ulmar’s follow-up swing took his head.

  Mithra seized a soldier’s leg in his jaws, thick ice racing up the man’s body. The soldier hacked at Mithra with his axe, the blade stopping dead after hitting the white fur like it had hit a wall of ice. With a flick of Mithra’s massive head, the armored man went flying out of the formation, bones snapping as he landed.

  I deflected another axe and the rim of my shield shot forward to crack into the soldier’s helmet. The impact stunned him for the moment I needed to part the flesh on his lightly-armored thigh and open the artery there. Blood gushed and the soldier’s leg collapsed underneath him. The four remaining soldiers backed away in a defensive formation, shields high.

  The ground underneath us rumbled ominously, dust rising into the air. I looked over my shoulder to see ten more soldiers flooding out of the keep toward us, racing to relieve their friends.

  “More incoming!” I yelled, and Mithra turned to face them with me.

  With a crack of crumbling stone, the very courtyard itself rose up in front of me, a humanoid figure seeming to pull itself up out of a mire. It towered above the charging soldiers, easily twice their height and as wide as the keep’s gates. Its skin was the cobbles of the courtyard, its flesh the earth. The beast’s massive arms ended in two fists of solid stone as large as my head.

  The squat head perched on its shoulders rotated and the dark caves there that served it as eyes seemed to focus on me. With a mighty sound it smashed those fists together and then charged toward me, as fast and deadly as a rockslide.

  I pulled Rime’s power from Mithra at the same time as I pushed Mortis’s in, his larger form rapidly shifting from white to purest black. With a snarl the Spectral Wolf leapt into the group of charging soldiers, devouring their life force and rending their flesh.

  I rolled to the left as the charging rock monster attempted to flatten me. I lashed out with Rime, instinctively trying to hamstring my opponent. With a shower of sparks and a horrible sound the blade scraped across the rocky flesh. The monster pivoted with more speed than it should have had, massive right fist whistling for my head. I ducked low and thrust powerfully into its armpit. Rime’s point sunk deep into the earth and failed to find the heart that would have been there if this pile of rock and earth had been flesh and blood.

  The monster’s left fist rocketed in and I just managed to get Rime’s haft in the way to block. The strength of the blow tore Rime free with a spray of dirt and flung me away. I landed painfully and rolled to my feet, bruised but still intact. If that blow had caught me in the side, it would have broken every rib and likely killed me.

  The battlefield around me was utter bedlam. Mithra was rampaging through the reinforcements with Ulmar’s help while Snatcher and Anastasia were both up on the wall trying to kill the fire mage. I caught a hint of movement in the shadows behind the broken keep doors and then had to turn my attention back to the threat in front of me.

  With a scream of effort, I pushed Mortis’s power into my spear and ran back at the monster. It crouched low in a wrestler’s stance, arms wide and ready for me.

  Its right arm jabbed out and I leapt up onto the broad, rocky forearm. The thing reacted fast, its left fist immediately arcing in to smash me to paste. I leapt again, over the blow and onto the thing’s shoulders. The squat head looked up at me just as I hamme
red the glowing black point of Rime down deep into one of its eyes.

  Life flooded into me, filling me, nearly overwhelming in its power. The bruises I’d acquired from my flight across the courtyard and sudden stop healed, my many small cuts closed instantly. The beast under me spasmed but despite the telling blow I hadn’t killed it. I invoked Ice Wave.

  The monster shook like an earthquake, flailing its fists at me. I pulled Rime free but didn’t manage to jump away in time. My shield took the hammer blow—ringing with the impact—and once again I was flying. I hit the outer wall hard and heard something break, but the life I had stolen from the rock monster nearly instantly healed the damage.

  I stood and turned to face the rock monster. I had been hoping to see it in its death throes. Instead it was running at me like a large, angry mountain. Ice coated its broad chest and head, the only evidence of my Ice Wave. It meant to smash me between it and the wall like a hammer hitting an egg. That wasn’t going to happen.

  The man pulling this puppet’s strings had either gotten arrogant or impatient. He wasn’t a shadow in the keep’s doorway any longer, hiding and controlling his monster at a safe distance, sheltered from harm. Instead he stood in the open, watching with a grim smile. The man was average height with a long brown bear tucked into his belt and simple clothing the color of grey stone. I could almost see the power connecting him and the rock monster. I’d never reach him before the monster ran me down.

  I pivoted, shifting my grip on Rime. The ancient spear really hadn’t been made for this, but the years of practice with different spears paid off. I threw my entire body behind that spear and it flew in a whistling arc. The man had time enough for his expression to change as he saw his death coming, but not enough to prevent it. Rime took him exactly where I had aimed it, high in his chest. The glowing black point pierced his heart and he fell backward. A heartbeat later his monster slammed into me.

  I hit the wall again, hard, as a suffocating wave of dirt and earth rolled over me. I spat out dirt and pushed my way to my feet. The rock monster had returned to earth and stone when Rime took its master’s life.

  My spear was waiting for me, protruding from the dead earth mage’s chest where I had left it. I sprinted over and pulled it free, turning back to the battle. The bloody corpse of the fire mage was just visible on the parapet, Anastasia standing over him. Mithra and Ulmar were chasing down a few fleeing soldiers.

  There was a flash of movement at my feet and then Snatcher was there, his Tempest form swirling the dust. Gripped in his jaws was a short, brass rod. I accepted it from him with thanks and then pulled the power of Gale from him. He laid down at my feet as he began to shrink.

  Brass Rod, Rank: E

  Orb Socketed: Ignis, Rank E

  The battle in the courtyard was over. I pulled the power of Mortis from my spear and Mithra, the pain I had been ignoring finally receding.

  Ulmar was covered in blood, most of it not his own. His eyes glowed with the post-battle high I was also experiencing.

  “A good fight!” Ulmar enthused. “Let’s go see if there are any more of these scum in the keep itself, shall we?”

  “Yes, this can not be all of them,” Anastasia said as she joined us. “Sergeant Ajax mentioned there was a woman leading them. It must be Myca.”

  “Come on, then,” I said, rolling my shoulders. “Be on the watch for an ambush.”

  The inside of the keep was dusty and dim, the arrow slits in the walls letting in only a limited amount of light. When our eyes adjusted, we saw the blood, and the corpses that had been pushed into the corners. It was mostly Queen’s Spears but there were some dead invaders as well. Nothing broke the tomb-like silence in the keep.

  The halls were a maze, but Anastasia had been here before. In truth we could have just followed the trail of corpses and blood. Every door we passed had been smashed open with incredible force and in some places the stone was scorched black and sometimes even still warm.

  We walked through the deserted hallways, finding nothing but death and destruction.

  Snatcher had been following along, his hide changing color as he passed over the rough walls of the keep above our heads. Occasionally he’d pass over a tapestry and his camouflage would match that as well, nearly perfectly. When we approached a particularly garish and complex tapestry, I watched him, curious to see how well he’d blend in. I was surprised when instead of skittering over the tapestry he pushed his nose underneath it and then wriggled forward and disappeared, not leaving even a lump.

  “Hold on, guys,” I said.

  The tapestry hanging on the wall had been obscuring a narrow hallway. I pushed it aside and stepped through, my friends following.

  Twenty feet in front of us a wall of four round shields—two on the bottom, two on the top—filled the hall. Through the gaps glittering spear points faced us, unwavering.

  “Who goes there?” a gruff voice called from the other side of the shield wall. “Identify yourselves.”

  “I am William, formerly of the Queen’s Seventh Gar,” I called out. “With me Lady Anastasia the Seventeenth Valkyrie and Ulmar of the Ignoble Bastards.”

  “Lady Anastasia?” the voice asked. “Can it be? Please, milady, step forward so I may see you.”

  Anastasia pushed past me in the dim, narrow hall. Crackling power filled her drawn blades and lit the hall, showing her face to the hidden eyes.

  “Aye, it is me,” Anastasia said. “Is that you, Lord Commander Malek?”

  “Stand down, soldiers,” the voice commanded.

  The shields moved aside, exposing the four Queen’s Spears holding them. A middle-aged man in bright steel armor pushed through, squeezing by the spearmen. He had closely-trimmed black hair and a neat beard with hints of grey framing a square-jawed face, blue eyes piercing and bright.

  He smiled brightly and extended an arm. Anastasia sheathed her blades and grasped his forearm in respectful greeting.

  “It’s good to see you, milady,” he said. “Is the keep secure?”

  “I can’t guarantee that,” Anastasia said. “We’ve defeated a large part of the attacking force and two Branded, one Fire and one Earth. However, sergeant Ajax reported that he’d seen a woman leading the force and we’ve not found her yet. She may still be in the keep with more of her forces.”

  “Yes, I caught a glimpse of her,” Malek said. “A terrible beauty. She was responsible for most of our casualties, I’d wager. Whatever power she has, it makes men mad. We could have held the keep if half my men hadn’t begun attacking the other half.”

  “Lord Commander, the relief force from Mianya is likely here by now,” Anastasia said. “We saw them forming up as we rode by the gates. Let’s get you out to the courtyard to take command, shall we?”

  Malek agreed and we hustled out of the keep, still aware that at any moment we might be ambushed my Myca and her surviving minions. We encountered nothing but silence and death.

  The courtyard was full of Mianya guardsmen, poking the fallen bodies and standing around. These weren’t elite troops by any means. Their duties were normally just keeping the peace and securing city gates, but it was good to see them here. Lord Commander Malek began bellowing commands and the guards jumped to obey.

  They formed into squads to sweep the keep. I was worried what would happen if they managed to find Myca, but we were ready to rush back in and fight if—when—we were needed.

  I turned to Malek, standing nearby inside a loose cluster of Queen’s Spears and guardsmen looking in all directions. Everyone was still on edge, especially the four surviving Queen’s Spears.

  I noticed that Lord Commander Malek himself hadn’t escaped unscathed. His fine chain armor was rent in a few places and his sword arm was covered in tacky blood. I wondered if he had been forced to kill his own men when the madness took them.

  “Sir, do you know what she wanted here?” I asked him. “We think she was Myca, leader of the Saprophyte cult.”

  “I have no earthly idea,
” Malek replied. “She seemed content to slaughter my men. At the end these men pushed me into this bolthole, and we had to hope she couldn’t find us. I am ashamed to admit I am not the fighter I was in my youth.”

  “There is nothing that time cannot destroy,” Ulmar said. As a dwarf he would live longer than us humans, but even dwarves—and their works—would eventually crumble and die.

  “Perhaps I should start drinking that muck that Jancier is always drinking,” Malek mused. “The man’s never been much of a fighter, but he swears that he feels like a teenager again after taking it.”

  “What muck is that?” I asked.

  “You don’t need it, William,” Malek said. He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “You have plenty of years left before you start slowing down. Leave the tonic for us old men.”

  “Lord Jancier drinks Fred’s Tonic?” I asked. “A little brown bottle?”

  “I don’t know who Fred is, but yes, Jancier often drinks what he calls tonic out of a stubby brown bottle.”

  Anastasia frowned as she heard this but made no comment. It seemed clear that we couldn’t just accuse Duchess Amber’s right hand of anything without more proof. Even talking about it where others could hear was a bad idea.

  One by one the Guard squads reported back. The keep was clear, every inch had been searched.

  “Where could she have gone?” I asked. “She must still be in there.”

  “There are other portals besides the main gate,” Malek replied. “She could have exited after she got whatever she came for and climbed the wall. If my men say the keep is clear, I believe them.”

  “There’s another option, Lord Commander,” Anastasia said. “The Catacombs. She could have used the keep’s entrance to them.”

  Malek frowned, and then turned to speak briefly with one of the Guard lieutenants. When he turned back his expression was darker. The lieutenant hurried away, waving two squads of Guard to follow him back into the keep.