A Scholar Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  “You don’t have to kill me!” Renatee said. “I’ll confess. Let me live! Let me live!”

  Emmy began to bark and soon after that, the door rattled.

  “I locked the door that you should have,” Mito said to Renatee.

  Sam sighed. “Leaving the door unlocked after playing at locking it back up is admission enough. There are phony Zogazin soldiers at the door.” He ran to the entrance and warded the doorframe.

  “Get back,” Sam said to Mito. “Emmy, come here.”

  She barked and joined Sam and Mito behind the machinery just as the front of the building blew out. Boards and splinters were thrown in all directions. Renatee slumped in the chair, bloody from the blast.

  Zogazin soldiers burst in. There weren’t many, but enough. Sam began picking up scraps of the building, pasting wards on them and tossing them at the soldiers.

  The female colonel stomped in, now wearing armor, and tossed a ward at Sam. He deflected it with a pollen shield. That gave time for Mito to generate his own armor, as Sam did the same for Emmy and himself. He threw a ward of pollen of his own making at the woman. The blast pushed her back.

  Mito and Sam stood next to each other as the Vaarekians in torn Zogazin uniforms stood in a row, weapons drawn.

  “Renatee will be given a medal in Tolloy for what he has done,” the woman said. “We hope to join him.” The Vaarekians in Zogazin uniforms attacked.

  Sam struggled to keep his footing, as did the Vaarekian spies. He used the pirate fighting technique where he could, but there were obstructions enough on the floor.

  Mito ran the Colonel through. She was better at making pollen than swinging swords. He fought two more as the building began to groan. Sam looked up as the roof began to shift. His opponents did as well, so Sam quickly thrust at one and kicked the other to the ground.

  “We have to get out of here!” he said to Mito. They fought off the remaining soldiers, who kept them from escaping as the roof collapsed on everyone inside.

  ~

  Sam woke up, looking into the sky. He sat up. “The Zogazin are Vaarekian spies!”

  “They know,” Mito said, sitting in a pollen chair, his head and arm bandaged. His leg was in a splint.

  Emmy was sleeping next to Sam, her right foreleg wrapped in a pollen bandage, and a row of stitches decorated her back.

  Of the Vaarekians, Sam could see none of them. His head hurt, but he still wore the pollen helmet that Mito must have lacked. His body ached all over, but he didn’t feel any stitches.

  “Renatee?” Sam looked up at the soldiers guarding them. A few ran off to report that Sam was awake.

  “Dead,” Mito said. “The building killed him.” He chuckled. “That is a Zogazin joke.”

  Sam chuckled all the same. He looked at the pile of sticks. “The machines are damaged?”

  “Beyond repair. I wouldn’t trust them, anyway. Renatee was a scoundrel. How did you know they were spies? I was ready to pounce on Renatee as soon as he showed up,” Mito said through his teeth.

  “Stew confirmed it.”

  “Stew?”

  “Spice in the stew. Zogazin would never cook with spices. That is how I knew they were Vaarekian. The woman in charge was the pollen artist who made the green pollen that forced Glory to plant the wards. I would guess they wanted to expose Glory as a Vaarekian spy. I suppose they couldn’t wait for Banna and Plantian to arrive from Ristaria,” Sam said. “They would have made more mischief if we hadn’t caught them.”

  “Maybe they noticed you sniffing around and had to move up their plans,” Mito said with a grim smile on his face.

  “That was much better,” Sam said, chuckling.

  Emmy stirred and limped to Sam, licking his face.

  “Good girl.”

  Glory showed up. “They said you woke up.”

  “I did. Mito killed the pollen artist who made you plant the wards. Renatee—”

  “I know. He is dead with a block of invisible pollen locking his arms together. He must have been a traitor, too?”

  Sam nodded.

  “He didn’t need Okanna to betray his old friend, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t. Okanna was his superior, I’m sure, after listening to Tummy, the Order’s traitor,” Sam said.

  Banna and Plantian walked into view. Sam got to his feet. The pollen pad someone had put him on was beginning to touch the ground. He had to walk around a bit to work out some stiffness.

  “Renatee is dead?” Plantian asked.

  Sam nodded. “He was a traitor to the end,” he said.

  “I knew there was something wrong with Okanna. She just wasn’t Renatee’s type,” Plantian said.

  “Did he have a type?” Banna asked.

  Plantian shrugged.

  Sam gave them his report, including Glory’s role with the wards.

  “I don’t know what their original intent was, but when you weren’t here when they arrived, they must have improvised,” Sam said.

  “Reworking the ward-throwing machine wasn’t an improvisation,” Mito said.

  “We might never know. The two soldiers who survived the building’s collapse just tried to escape and were killed in the attempt,” Banna said.

  “This isn’t the end of anything,” Sam said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Banna said.

  Chapter Thirty

  ~

  S am rummaged around through Renatee’s tent. He found the crossbow that Renatee had made for him. Was this what Renatee wanted to show him? He looked it over and set it aside while he continued his search, finding nothing incriminating.

  When he reached the phony Zogazin camp, Sam found a pile of burned papers and packs filled with supplies. It looked like they were going to kill Mito and him and then flee. Renatee would have probably been left alive to do more damage.

  Sam sighed again. It hurt to have a man he regarded as a friend do such a thorough job of betrayal. He shuffled his foot through the cold ashes, not finding a single unburned page.

  He returned to the remains of Renatee’s building and saw the hilt of a sword poking out of a pile of the rubble, probably cast aside when rescuers pulled the survivors out.

  It was his Lashak sword. The leather grip to the hilt was torn. Sam picked it up by the blade and rummaged around until he found the scabbard. He returned to his tent. Mito’s sword was already in its sheath.

  Sam walked to the armorer’s tents and secured a roll of thin leather to make another grip to protect his hand from the deadly wires on the sword. He wrapped the hilt and inspected his work. He needed a bit of glue and returned to the armorer to ask for some.

  “You fought the Zogazin, didn’t you?” the armorer asked.

  Sam nodded.

  “None of their swords were made in Zogaz,” the armorer said. “Not a one. All came from Vaarek, for your information.”

  “It helps confirm my suspicions,” Sam said.

  After returning to his tent, Mito reclined on Desmon’s cot, holding the crossbow.

  “That little mouse,” Mito said. “He even had this set up to shoot backward.”

  “A trap, eh? I guess he wanted to take care of us one way or another.” Sam was deeply disappointed he hadn’t discovered Renatee’s betrayal sooner.

  “Don’t kick yourself. I can see it in your face. He fooled me, as well, until I took a good look at his latest machine. He modified the parts, weakened the springs, and thought I wouldn’t notice.”

  Sam took the crossbow. “It looks like he reversed this part,” He showed it to Mito. “That is all it would take.”

  “So let’s fix it.”

  Mito smiled. “I think that is something I can do. We can scavenge the tools we need from the site.”

  “I’ll do that. What do you need?”

  Mito and Sam discussed what he would require. Sam found the tools after moving around the wood with the help of a few soldiers. Mito didn’t take long to fix the crossbow, but they damaged the loader while they worked.


  “It is beyond repair,” Mito said.

  Sam looked at the mechanism. “What if we removed the loader?”

  Mito raised his eyebrows. “That might be what needs to be done.” The removal didn’t take long, and Mito presented the repaired crossbow to Sam.

  “Now let’s see if it works,” Sam said. “A single shot crossbow is better than a bow and arrow, for me”

  He made a very soft projectile out of pollen and poked it in the chamber. After cocking the mechanism, he pulled the trigger to see the plug, invisible to all but him, land on the side of a tent about twenty paces away.

  “It works, and I have the closed chamber that I wanted,” Sam said, poking his head in the tent.

  “Then test it out for real. I’m sorry I won’t be able to witness. I’m not very ambulatory right now; in fact, Desmon said I could just stay in your tent for a few days.”

  Sam left the Lashakan and walked to the edge of the camp. He spied a tree stump fifty paces away. He created a pollen plug with the little feathery guides, slapped a ward on it, and loaded it in the chamber.

  Glory walked up to him, wearing a different colored hat. “What are you doing?”

  “I am going to use Renatee’s crossbow.”

  She shrugged. “Like you did in his laboratory in Hizor?”

  Sam nodded. She stood close to him as he aimed high at the stump, remembering the effect on gravity, and fired. The missile flew a foot over the target and exploded softly on the other side.

  “And another,” Sam said.

  He tried a few more and finally found out where to aim for a direct hit on the stump.

  “Now for something a little more powerful.”

  Sam hit the stump again, and the wood chips flew.

  “You don’t want to be carrying around a sack of those in battle,” Glory said.

  “I agree.”

  “Can I try to make a bolt or whatever you call them?”

  Sam made a blank out of pollen and showed Glory. It took her a few tries, but she finally created a dense enough blank that shot cleanly out of the tube.

  “Now for a ward,” she said. “A modest one, to start.”

  Sam shot it at another stump, and he was happy to see an explosion of chips. “Perhaps we can work together. You make the projectiles, and I’ll do the shooting.”

  “Let me try to shoot.”

  Glory struggled to get the bow pulled back. She succeeded but handed the crossbow back to Sam. “If Renatee were here and willing, he’d have to make one that wasn’t so hard.”

  “You can do the same thing with a bow and arrow,” Sam said.

  “And we have the same problem. I have to pull the string back.”

  Sam laughed. “We don’t have time to experiment. Once Kreb finds out his pack of spies was killed, he may be more likely to invade.”

  Glory nodded. “I agree.”

  ~

  A few days later, everyone was told to break camp. Kreb’s army was on the move. Sam had no idea what was going on, other than Banna would tell him where to fight.

  An officer came to assign Glory to a warder detachment, but Sam had her refuse. “She is with me,” Sam said. “We are a team, and she will be more effective with me than with other warders.”

  The officer complained, but Banna intervened. She told Sam what group to follow. They were Vaarekian, and Banna would be among them. They had a specific target, Viktar Kreb, if he showed up on the field. Banna would not be leading the unit but fighting along with everyone else.

  Sam had seen Banna fight before, and she fought hard until fatigue set in. With Glory making the wards, he wondered how much strength she had if they needed many bolts, however, Sam could take up where she left off.

  “I’m staying here,” Mito said. He pointed to his leg. “Consider me wounded in advance.”

  “A Zogazin saying, I suppose?” Sam asked.

  “It would work well enough there,” Mito said. “There will be a detachment protecting the buildings while you are gone. I may move into one of those. Good luck.”

  Banna had accompanied Sam to his tent. “I will return, Mito.”

  The Lashakan nodded and took Banna’s hand and squeezed it.

  Sam looked at the exchange, surprised by what was unsaid. The pair had become much closer than he had realized. He stepped outside the tent, not wanting to intrude.

  He found Glory packing her few belongings, with Emmy by her side.

  “I think your dog likes me,” she said.

  “She is coming with us. Emmy has been in battle before, and Banna agreed. You have everything you need?”

  She nodded. “Do you?”

  “If the battle is decisive in Banna’s favor, we leave for Bliksa.”

  “Unless we die.” Glory said.

  Sam shrugged. “Then we won’t need to go to Bliksa, will we?”

  “Spoken like a Zogazin.”

  “I trust not. Other people have senses of humor, you know,” Sam said.

  “I would have liked Tera to have been able to come with us.”

  Sam cringed. He doubted he could handle the pair of them on a long voyage without Ziggy Smallbug’s son pulling them away at opportune times. It was bad enough at the University of Tolloy, but he had to admit, he would rather have Tera alive and in tow than the wretched reality of her gone.

  Bugles sounded, and everyone rushed to complete their final preparations before marching to battle.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ~

  S am didn’t like not saying goodbye to Mito or Plantian. He hadn’t seen Desmon around since Renatee’s death. Perhaps he marched with another group.

  Sam felt right about going when the battle was over. He would leave some friends behind, but Polistia didn’t seem to be the place to stay. Sam had fond memories, but they led to not-so-fond memories. If the food was better and the sense of humor not so extreme in Zogaz, he could have considered that. Ristaria and Trakata had their own problems. In his mind, Sam thought they were all pretty much the same culture linked with Vaarek.

  He hadn’t wasted his time, though. Sam considered he had a full education if he combined his University of Tolloy experience, his Hizor Academy studies, and his time spent at the Order of Ren. He was an accomplished swordsman, and most surprising of all, a real pollen magician.

  Emmy was looking more chipper by the day, and Banna had made sure a healer in their detachment looked at Emmy’s wounds. Her limp was gone, and that was what had worried Sam the most.

  Glory and Sam rode to the side of the Army of Restoration, which was comprised solely of Vaarekians. Sam looked at the dust of tens of thousands of feet and hooves as they traveled cross-country. The Ristarians had two armies just as big. The Zogazin were able to assemble twelve thousand soldiers, but most of them were protecting the Zogazin border with Vaarek to their east.

  A rider approached them.

  “You will ride closer in after you pass this river,” he said, pointing to a map. “Kreb is likely to be anywhere north of it. We will engage the enemy in this valley.”

  Sam looked at a long wide valley on the other side of the river. “We are the lead?” Sam asked.

  The man nodded. “Kreb is changing formations every day or two as they march south. This will likely be the battle for Polistia, and whoever wins will dictate what our continent will look like. We have our own tricks, but even I don’t know what they are. Fight hard!”

  “Fight hard,” Glory said.

  Sam just nodded.

  The man saluted and rode away.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Glory asked him. “You look so detached.”

  “I am afraid, and I am trying to think of other things to give my horse a break from my knocking knees.”

  She snorted a quite unladylike snort. “I am a quivering bowl of jelly,” she said. “Don’t forget to put that invisible armor on me.”

  Sam nodded. “The kind with the scales? My armor isn’t any better than anyone else’s.”


  “Everyone else’s is visible.”

  “So you want to be a target?”

  “No. I want to be stylish.”

  Sam laughed. “No one cares in a battle.”

  Glory lifted her chin. “I think you are wrong. Vaarekians make different colored armor pieces, depending on how permissive the commander is. They wear different kinds of scarves on their head beneath their pollen helmets.

  Sam looked at her head. “Does that include knit caps?”

  “Of course it does,” Glory said.

  Sam thought for a bit. “Do any of them have steel armor?”

  “Only the higher-ups. Viktar Kreb visited our training center once. He wore shiny steel plate. Some underling probably spent a full day buffing it into a brilliant shine.”

  Sam thought of pollen blocks. Steel armor might withstand steel weapons, but it could fall prey to pollen applied in the right places.

  “If you get caught by a warrior wearing any kind of armor, if you can’t manage a ward, cast manacles around his feet.”

  Glory laughed. “That doesn’t work. A sharp sword can cut through pollen manacles.” She shook her head. “If I can’t cast a ward, I’ll have to run. That was what we were taught, and I think that is the best defense.”

  “A rapid retreat,” Sam said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then do what I do. Cast a block confining their arms to their chest.”

  Glory frowned. “I’ve never tried that, and I am afraid it is too late to learn.”

  Sam sighed. He wondered if Glory should have been left behind with Mito, and not for the first time.

  They traveled for a few more hours, getting closer to the river until Sam spotted dust clouds to his right. Kreb’s army had already crossed the river.

  “Come with me,” Sam said as he raced to the main body and began spreading the alarm, leaving Emmy and Glory to follow.

  Sam reached the vanguard of officers, including Banna, first.

  “What is going on?” the Army of Restoration’s general asked.

  “You can’t see it from here yet, but Kreb has nearly flanked us. He is either passing us by or will wheel his army to confront us from the east,” Sam said.