Welcome To The Age of Magic

by C M Raymond et al.

  Dustin then resumed the tale and told about how he, Syd, and Abbey had gone on the run, and about how they’d defended the mountain village from the Barskall’s attack. Captain Roy gave the details of their capture by Thunderclap.

  “How the hell did you escape?” the Magistrate asked.

  Captain Roy, Syd, and Dustin turned to Abbey.

  “I, uh, sort of set Thunderclap on fire,” she said.

  When they’d finished telling their story up through the sinking of Summer Wind and their return to Holdgate, the room fell silent.

  Dustin considered the last time he’d been in this room. It had been after his Testing, when he was given his staff and his cloak, along with the disappointing assignment of working on The Foggy Day. He remembered how they’d been interrupted by the clap of thunder that signaled the return of Tor and his crew.

  Dustin had been so in awe of Thunderclap then. How quickly things had changed.

  After a few moments of silence, the Magistrate slammed his hand on the table. Everyone turned to him in surprise.

  “Son of a bitch!” the Magistrate shouted. He took a deep breath, and his voice was quieter when he spoke again, though it sounded no less angry. “I was really hoping you’d say something that would contradict our suspicions. But unfortunately, I believe you’re telling the truth.”

  Heads nodded around the table.

  Dustin probably should have felt relief that they believed him, but instead he just felt anger. Tor had let these people down in the worst way possible.

  Harald, Dustin’s old mentor, spoke next. “Tor’s gathering a Barskall army? He wants to conquer nations? How crazy is he? Doesn’t he know it was shit like that that brought down the old world?”

  “The real question,” the Magistrate said, “is what we’re going to do about it. If I know Tor, he won’t let this affront stand. Burning his mainsail was smart, but it’s not going to delay him for long.”

  Dustin raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think he’ll come back here?”

  The Magistrate nodded. “I do. And it won’t be for a friendly chat. Now that the cat’s out of the bag as to his Storm Raiding, he has no reason to play nice. He’ll come to Holdgate to conquer it. And we need to be ready.”

  29

  Dustin made his way down a familiar street. As a kid, he’d played there nearly every day, but as he’d gotten older and his Storm Calling apprenticeship became more important to him, he’d avoided it. Those days were over now.

  As he reached the blacksmith shop, he paused in front of the door. It had been a long while since he’d been in there, too. But Benjamin had invited him, and he wasn’t about to turn the man down.

  He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  Benjamin greeted him with a nod. “Not wearing your Storm Caller cloak today?”

  Dustin looked down at his plain clothes and smiled. “You know, when I was an apprentice, I thought I’d never take the cloak off once I earned it. Now… I guess things are a little more complicated than I thought.”

  Benjamin nodded. “Believe me, I understand. There was a time I wanted to be part of a magical organization, too. It didn’t turn out so great for me. The good news is, the Storm Callers are redeemable. A lot of them truly want to do good. We just have to weed out Tor and his friends.”

  “Easier said than done. The last time I faced Dahlia, I didn’t do so hot. I’m lucky we made it out of there.”

  “That’s sort of what I want to talk to you about. Come with me.” Benjamin led him to the back of the shop, past the forge and the anvil, to the storeroom. The shelves were lined with swords, helmets, horseshoes, and iron tools, all neatly arranged by type. He turned to Dustin, a serious look on his face. “You told us about the battle in the mountain village. How you stood on a tower and used your storm magic while Abbey fended off the Barskall Warriors.”

  Dustin nodded. “She saved my life that day. It wasn’t the only time, either.”

  “From the way she tells it, you repaid the favor once or twice.”

  “I guess we make a pretty good team,” Dustin said.

  Benjamin smiled. “Always have. Ever since you were kids. You two have been outsmarting bullies twice your size from the time you could walk. Now, with Tor… Well, I’m glad to see you’re still fighting bullies.”

  Dustin hadn’t thought of it that way, but the blacksmith was right.

  Benjamin held up a finger. “I want to show you something. I made it a long time ago, when I first came to Holdgate, and I think it might be useful.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a weapon of sorts.” Benjamin turned toward a shelf covered with a variety of items, the only one in the room that wasn’t carefully organized. “When I first got to the city, I was fascinated with Storm Callers. The way you do magic is so much different than the way I’d learned it. Storm magic is powerful, but it has a fatal flaw.”

  Dustin cocked his head. “What’s that?”

  “Controlling the weather is great if you’re on a ship fighting another ship from a distance. But Storm Calling is crap for up close combat. That’s why Abbey had to defend you in that tower, right?”

  “I suppose so,” Dustin allowed.

  “I know it’s here somewhere.” Benjamin continued rummaging around on the shelf. “Anyway, I got to thinking, what if you don’t have people protecting you while you’re Storm Calling? Shouldn’t you have a way to protect yourself up close? So, I built this.”

  He pulled something off the shelf and held it out to Dustin. At first glance, it looked like a normal, wooden Storm Caller’s staff. But then he noticed the blue stone at the top and its iron setting.

  “What is it?” Dustin asked.

  “It’s magitech. It’s an Arcadian method of building magical devices. You can use it as a Storm Calling staff. But if anyone gets too close, check this out.” He pointed to a line of iron running down the back of the staff. It ended in a tiny hook. “Simply point the staff at them and pull this hook. It’ll knock them back so hard they’ll think twice about getting back up again.”

  Dustin ran his hand along the length of the staff. He loved the idea of being able to defend himself from attackers on the battlefield.

  Benjamin gazed at the staff and shook his head. “When I made this thing, I intended to give it as a gift to Dahlia in hopes the city would accept me and Abbey. Thankfully, I came to my senses.”

  Dustin winced at the thought. “Why’d you change your mind?”

  “I started dealing with the Storm Captains. Honestly, they were such assholes that I didn’t feel much like giving them anything. Plus, I decided it might not be wise to advertise my magical abilities.”

  Dustin smiled. “You certainly never hid them from me.”

  “That wasn’t on purpose. You were around so much, I’d often forget you were here.”

  The young Storm Caller laughed. He hefted the staff, and it felt right. “Thank you for this.”

  Benjamin nodded. “The power in that crystal won’t last forever. Use it sparingly.” He paused for a moment. “Just promise me one thing. When the battle comes, do everything you can to protect Abbey.”

  Dustin almost laughed at that. “Sir, if there’s one thing I learned on our voyage north, it’s that Abbey doesn’t need any protecting. It might be Thunderclap who needs protecting from her.”

  Abbey and Syd walked through the center of town, where a ragtag group of fifty men and women was gathered.

  Abbey spoke quietly as they walked. “This is what we’ve got, huh?”

  Syd cast a glance at the group. “They showed up. I’ll give them that.” With most of the stormships at sea, Holdgate’s defenses were currently pretty slim. There were the city guards, and there were a handful of smaller stormships in port. It wouldn’t be enough, not against Tor.

  The Magistrate had put out the call for a volunteer militia, and these were the people who’d answered. Benjamin had done his best to outfit them with weapons from his storeroom,
but there hadn’t been enough for all of them. Some carried daggers, rusty old swords, and—in one case—a pitchfork. The lucky few who wore armor looked uncomfortable—it didn’t fit them well, having been left behind by some relative who’d died or retired from a life at sea.

  The Magistrate had placed Syd in charge of preparing the volunteers, and she’d somehow roped Abbey into helping her.

  Looking at the group, Abbey put their average age at about forty-five, but that didn’t tell the whole story. Most were either under eighteen—therefore too young to work on the stormships—or they were so old the Storm Captains no longer wanted them aboard. There wasn’t much in between.

  Still, as Syd had said, they’d showed up.

  The Magistrate had put out a proclamation declaring Captain Tor, Dahlia, and the crew of Thunderclap enemies of Holdgate. The people of the city were understandably shocked. Many refused to believe Captain Tor could be a Storm Raider, and even those who believed it weren’t eager to volunteer to fight him and his crew.

  These were the exceptions. They didn’t look like much, but Abbey reminded herself these people had courage, and that was a damn good start.

  “Abbey!”

  She turned toward the voice and was surprised to see Olaf, the boy she’d fought the day of the festival, standing in the front of the line, a goofy smile on his face. He was proudly clutching the sword Benjamin had made for him.

  Olaf leaned over to the boy next to him. “She kicked my ass in her father’s shop last week. It was awesome.”

  Abbey paused, a confused smile on her face. Hadn’t this guy refused to shake her hand the last time they’d met? But if he was here to fight on their side, she wasn’t about to turn him away.

  “Oh, hey, Olaf,” she said. “Ready to fight some Storm Raiders?”

  Olaf rolled his eyes. “Please. Thunderclap is overrated. I’ve always been more of a fan of The Foggy Day.”

  Abbey laughed. “Whatever you say, man. Glad you’re here.”

  She went back to walking along the line with Syd.

  Syd spoke too softly for the militia members to hear. “If all goes well, we won’t even need to use them. They’re our last resort in case things go badly.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  They’d spent the last two days planning for Thunderclap’s attack on Holdgate. They had no idea how much damage Abbey’s fires had caused the ship. She’d set fire to a sail and to a bulkhead below deck. The results could have been catastrophic. Or, with a well-disciplined crew that moved quickly to put out the fires, it may have been something they could fix in a matter of days. The leaders of Holdgate didn’t know, but they had to assume Tor and his crew would get Thunderclap operational quickly.

  Opinions of when Tor would attack wildly varied, even among those who knew him well. Many of the Storm Captains thought he’d treat it like a normal Storm Raid and attack by night, using storms and heavy fog to obscure his approach. It made a certain type of sense, especially since Holdgate had a wall around it manned by Storm Callers. The less they could see you coming, the better.

  Others believed Tor would want to demonstrate his power in a more brazen daylight attack, perhaps involving an invading Barskall army as well as Thunderclap’s assault by sea.

  Round and round it went. Some believed Tor would attack as soon as he could, while others felt he would wait a few months and try to catch them off guard. Some believed he would travel to the Storm Wall and try to recruit some allies, while others thought he would want all the glory for Thunderclap.

  In the end, no one knew for sure, and that uncertainty was putting everyone on edge.

  Syd drew a deep breath. “Well, should we get started?”

  Abbey nodded, then turned toward the gathered militia.

  Syd addressed the crowd in a loud voice developed by years of shouting orders over the clamor of crashing waves. She greeted the volunteers and congratulated them on their courage.

  “I don’t expect all of you to be expert warriors,” she told them. “The one thing I do expect is that you’ll listen to my orders and that you’ll carry them out quickly and to the best of your ability. Over the next few hours, I’ll give you all your assignments. If the alarm bells ring, I don’t care if you’re in bed or off hunting in the woods; you get to your assignment in no more than five minutes. Lives could depend on it.”

  She stood straight and proud as she spoke, somehow managing to look even taller than she really was. “I’ll also assign you a partner. You stick with this person no matter what happens. When the fighting starts, look for two-on-one opportunities where you and your partner can corner one enemy. Fighting two people at once is difficult, I don’t care how tough you are. And speaking of tough, I want to introduce you to someone.”

  She turned and gestured toward Abbey. “You’ve probably seen Abbey around town over the years. Maybe you thought of her as nothing more than the blacksmith’s daughter or the Arcadian girl. But I’ve seen this woman do things over the past few days that I never would have thought possible. She fought Barskall Warriors. She battled hardened sailors. She snuck aboard Thunderclap and set the damn thing on fire.”

  Abbey forced herself to remain still as all these people looked at her.

  Syd continued. “The point is, a week ago, she’d never been in a battle in her life. But the opportunity arose, and she stepped up. Now, I’m not saying you will do the amazing things she’s done. But some of you might. This battle won’t be easy, but it will be a chance to test yourself against some of the best and see what you’re made of.”

  She took a step forward, hands on her hips as she surveyed the militia. “I can show you how to fight. I can show you how to form up to give yourself the best opportunity for victory. But what you do when the fighting starts? That’s up to you.”

  30

  The alarm bells rang an hour before sunrise the following morning. No one had seen Thunderclap, but the sudden emergence of a thick fog was enough of a tip-off that the watcher on the wall began ringing his bell, and the others throughout the city quickly picked up his refrain, echoing him with their own chimes.

  Everyone got to their places with impressive speed, mostly because the key people were sleeping near their stations. Every Storm Caller in the city—all seven of them—were sleeping in homes next to the wall, and five minutes after the first bell rang, they were standing at their places, their staffs resting in seawater.

  The volunteer militia responded almost as quickly, getting to their designated places in well under the five minutes Syd had allotted them.

  Abbey and Benjamin were sleeping in a boathouse near the docks along with the crews of The Foggy Day and a few of the other stormships. They quickly ran to their small boats when the bells rang.

  As they waited to release their lines and begin rowing, Benjamin touched Abbey’s arm. “Hey, I know this isn’t a normal father-daughter activity, and it might sound strange to hear me say this, but I’ve dreamed of fighting by your side since the first time I saw you hold a sword.”

  Abbey smiled at her father, genuinely touched. “That is strange. Awesome, but strange.”

  There were twenty small boats, each with ten sailors. The idea was to row out to Thunderclap as it approached Holdgate and overwhelm it, attacking with hooks and boarding as quickly as possible. The boats were just one small part of the plan, but the idea was that Dahlia would be so distracted by the larger threats that she wouldn’t pay attention to the small boats rowing toward her.

  The three-quarters moon gave a surprising amount of light to see by, or at least it would have if not for the unnatural fog.

  They waited for ten long minutes, then the nose of a massive ship appeared through the fog.

  “Go!” Captain Roy shouted from one of the other boats. A massive wave, created by one of the Storm Callers on the wall, swept them up, surging them toward Thunderclap.

  Now, two other stormships came into sight, one on either side of Thunderclap.
It was Undertow and Wave Break, the two biggest ships currently in port. Their Storm Callers would keep Dahlia busy while the sailors on those ships as well as those on the small boats attempted to board.

  Abbey held tight to the edge of the boat as it sped toward Thunderclap. She couldn’t wait to board the ship and pay those Storm Raiding assholes back for what they’d done to Bode and who knew how many other cities.

  A few moments later, they were at Thunderclap. The fog was so thick, it was impossible to see what was going on up on the deck, but the big ship was still moving toward Holdgate.

  All around Abbey, sailors were throwing their hooks, trying to catch the rail. She looked at Benjamin. “Ready to do this?”

  Benjamin just smiled and hurled his hook into the air. It immediately caught, and he started climbing.

  Abbey quickly followed. There was no way she was letting her father beat her to the deck.

  Halfway up, she glanced toward Holdgate. Though she couldn’t see them, she knew the Storm Callers were standing on the wall, waiting to make their move.

  Abbey felt a twinge of pride as she reached the top of the rope. Despite all Holdgate’s problems, they had come together to face this threat, and they were doing a mighty fine job. Soon, there would be more than two hundred fighters aboard Thunderclap, and there would be even more once the sailors from Undertow and Wave Break boarded. Tor and his Storm Raiders might be tough, but the combined might of Holdgate would be enough to take them down.

  They might have been able to repair their ship from Abbey’s fires, but they wouldn’t be able to recover from what was about to happen to them.

  She hauled herself up and threw her leg over the rail. Swinging her weight forward, she slid onto the deck, then hopped to her feet and drew her sword.

  Then she stopped, confused.

  Her father and the rest of The Foggy Day sailors looked just as perplexed.