Mad Toffad's Keep

by Zack Finley

  “We accept,” Argon and I chimed in together. I was glad to have that resolved to allow us to focus on freeing the remaining slave camps.

  Ramda volunteered to contact Tobron with the details.

  We left with Olive and Lt. Valso to work out the logistics of our Flom operation. Olive added Argon and me to her mage communication network. We could now coordinate directly with the Augun mages without relying on Olive to relay messages.

  Argon had a large stack of new mundane com cards. She gave Lt. Valso one and a spare. During the last Augun operation, we failed to realize how quickly the mundane cards lost their magic charge and lost contact with both Lt. Valso and Lt. Brik. We were trying to learn from our mistakes.

  I was happy to see Olive in such a responsible position.

  “How is Gera doing,” I asked her.

  “He has stepped up,” Olive answered. “Like all of us he is exhausted, but his magic is building each day. He is still in Asme with Lt. Brik, helping them hold down the garrison. He has been keeping in touch with those in the old raider camps. He helped get the wounded king’s guard to a hospital.”

  When I asked about reinforcements for both Asme and Flom, the news was not as rosy.

  “The bargemen you recruited have been great. They got the first set of barges to Flom with only a few skirmishes, which the king’s guard on board the barge handled well. They aren’t very knowledgeable about the river to Asme. All travel on and along the river is still very hazardous. I wouldn’t send another barge through without a full company of king’s guards to protect it. Once we liberate the raider camps around Flom, the river will be the next priority.”

  We wished her and Lt. Valso well. We agreed to keep them posted on our plans.

  Olive warned the mage bargeman on duty at Flom that we were teleporting in.

  The Flom garrison looked much improved from our last visit. I approved. Some might think it a waste of time, but sometimes symbols mattered. The people of Flom and Sgt. Bomes men needed to believe the king's guard was in the Flom garrison to stay.

  There were more people on the street, including a few women and children. Several vendors were offering wares at the marketplace, but buyers were scarce.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 5

  We needed intel. Sgt. Bomes had done a fantastic job securing the garrison and making the residents feel safer within the city limits. But after the barge arrived with his reinforcements, the raiders avoided the city.

  We needed prisoners. We needed a drone, but I still hadn't thought about how to capture and transmit an image using magic.

  We'd have to do this the hard way.

  I was pleased to see Bomes had a physical map of the area. Looking at the map, we agreed six scouting parties could cover the area on the north side of the river. Argon and I would be one. The others would be comprised of two scouts and one of the mages. We wanted to cover the most ground possible.

  Argon took the five bargemen onto the roof to check out and fine-tune their raider detection skills.

  Bomes had recruited two grizzled veterans retired from the king's guard for the duration of the emergency. They were very knowledgeable about the Flom region. Bomes, his veterans, the five lead scouts, and I huddled over the map and debated the pros and cons of different routes to locate the raiders. Flom was on the north side of the river. Four roads or paths radiated away from Flom to the north. In good times, ferries carried travelers to and from the south bank. We decided to concentrate on the Flom side of the river for this exercise. I checked with Argon on how far she thought our young mages could sense a group of people.

  I asked Bomes for help calibrating our team of mages. He sent two guards riding basas to the edge of town about half mile away. Argon confirmed each of the mages could still read the men. She joined us to help determine the best way to cover the search area with the six teams.

  I let those familiar with the area decide on the best routes for us to follow. They came up with a plan that maximized our search area from the start. My plan would have just radiated outward, overlapping a lot in the beginning. Their plan was a more difficult challenge for the scouts to keep us all on the course but should locate any raiders within 10 miles of the town quickly. Then we would pivot to cover the area around two villages to the northwest. We would then sweep east. Bomes estimated the entire route would take us to nightfall. Everyone agreed this would allow us to locate any raiders on the north side of the river anywhere within 20 miles of Flom.

  Each of the scouts took careful notes about key landmarks and locations of pivot points. They called in their partners and the mage bargemen and explained the plans to them. I asked Argon to memorize the map, too.

  Bomes and his retirees listened to the scouts explain the plan and only interrupted a few times to clarify.

  Once everyone understood the routes, I cautioned them to let Argon and me handle any contact with the enemy. Argon handed each scout a mundane com card to allow them to talk to her. She explained the cards were for emergencies, in case their mage was knocked out or they got separated. Each team mage was to check in on the Augun mage net for anything out of the ordinary and routinely every 20 minutes. Routine checks were to include a nearby teleport site, so backup was never very far away.

  We emphasized a three-person squad was designed for reconnaissance; it wasn't equipped for taking offensive action. Argon and I were their first backup, but the other teams should be ready to teleport in to help.

  Any team detecting a raider was to take cover and contact Argon and me immediately. We emphasized they could betray the whole mission if they tried to get closer. Their first job was to avoid detection. We would teleport to their location to secure and question any threat.

  “This is an intelligence-gathering mission. Killing raiders, while satisfying, will not lead us to the main groups. We intend to interrogate any captured raiders on the spot. I doubt we will be taking any prisoners,” I said.

  Argon was peeved at the way two of the scouts expressed outward confidence in the plan while secretly doubting our ability to handle the situation. She was worried they wouldn't follow orders and could give us all away. Argon decided a little demonstration for our two main doubters could avoid misunderstanding later.

  In a heartbeat the two men were picked up, pinned to the wall and paralyzed, unable to move. The assembly was stunned and didn't know how to react.

  "We are combat mages," I said, cranking up my power aura. "Do not doubt our skills. If we detect a raider band, we will not need any help to eliminate them. By now I thought you would have realized who we were. We walked into the Augun keep, rescued the king, killed or captured a bunch of mages, released the king's guard and captured all the secret police in the keep. We are here now to kick the last raiders out of your country."

  Argon released the scouts. "You will either agree to follow our orders, or we will find others who will," she said to the two men in a heap on the floor.

  We got their attention. I felt a renewed interest in following orders echoing throughout the room.

  Sgt. Bomes glared at the two men on the floor.

  "Stand up," he shouted at them. "Scouts in formation." All 10 scouts scrambled to assemble in the crowded room.

  "Your orders are to scout and report. Do you understand these orders?"

  The scouts shouted, "Yes sergeant, scout and report."

  "You will follow any order these mages give you or I will see you executed for failure to follow orders in the face of the enemy. Is that clear?"

  This time the 'yes sergeant' was a little ragged. But the chain of command was now crystal clear in all their minds.

  "Assemble your teams and be ready to depart in five minutes, dismissed."

  Bomes tried to apologize for his men's lack of respect, but I waved him off.

  "We should have made the chain of command clear to them from the beginning. Your men know we aren't Augun King's Guard so you can understand part of the problem. I'm confident the
problem is fixed now. I want to kill all the raiders and bring all of our guys back alive. I was worried they'd do something dumb and end up wounded or worse."

  Argon recognized the two basas prepped for our use as the ones we left behind only five days before. I was still uncomfortable with the whole communication-with-animals thing.

  She took my hand and used it to stroke my basas' neck and nudged me to reach out to the basas with my mind. She handed me some kind of basas treat and urged me to feed it.

  I immediately realized the basas was male. Argon helped bridge the communication gap between the basas and me.

  “A basas who does not like his rider will make the rider miserable,” Argon sent. “Make friends or suffer the consequences.”

  She handed me more treats and nudged me toward my ride.

  My basas, who had more of a mental icon than a pronounceable name, was quite sweet. He appreciated the treats, liked it when I stroked its neck but didn't like insects hanging around his butt. Heck, I didn't like insects hanging around my butt either.

  Before I climbed into the saddle, my basas had me adjust several straps on his saddle so it would fit him better. Then I mounted up.

  "See that wasn't so hard, was it?" Argon messaged.

  I stroked and patted my basas and admitted it was nicer.

  Sgt. Bomes looked the group over and said, "Good hunting!"

  Argon and I were on the far right flank. She used our mage net to make sure everyone had a good teleport location at the garrison. She also suggested they set their emergency teleport location to it, at least for this mission. If someone was wounded, we wanted to be able to find them and heal them if they 'ported to safety.

  I had expanded my mind reading app as far as I could go. I could read the scouts to my left, so we drifted right until I could tell they were there but couldn't read what they were thinking.

  I checked the town for possible raider spies when we teleported in. The town's mood was better. Sgt. Bomes and his men restored much of the town's view of the "new" king's guard. Most were growing impatient for the new king's guard to kick the raiders out of the territory.

  With traffic on the river at a standstill and no food or supplies coming in there were a lot of people worried about the future.

  I excluded everyone scanned before from my monitoring app except our scouts so I would spot someone new entering our range. I was still trying to locate blank mind signatures the way Argon could. I could spot the mage on my left, riding with the scouts because his mind shield was a bit leaky. Argon had tried to work with him on it but after a few minutes decided he needed to save all of his mental magic for the grid search.

  As we were riding along at a comfortable pace for basas, I noticed Argon was experimenting with her own magic. She was trying a new twist on her normal mind reading app. She wasn't trying to read minds, she was just trying to locate them. This required a lot less power and had a lot greater range. I saw how she did it and immediately added it as a layer on my mind reading app.

  Once we spotted someone, it would be easy to switch back to mind reading mode. This lower power version was an all-around win. It required less power to operate while expanding the area we could cover.

  I warned Argon I was going to be distracted for a bit while I worked on my mind reading app. I still couldn't spot Argon with my app. While I didn't need to spot her, it also meant any well-shielded mage was still invisible to me.

  "Let me know if you detect any probe from me," I messaged. At its core our mind-reading app was passive. It waited for information to come to it. Active probes expended more magic and could be detected by those sensitive to them.

  I thought about submarines.

  I sent out a normal probe and heard back from Argon. While that pulse worked, it was too powerful and was detected. What if the pulse was tiny? I sent out a second pulse, but Argon didn't notice.

  Hm. Nothing on my mind reading app but there was a faint echo on Argon's new people locator. I tried the same sized pulse while watching the bigger area. Argon's ghost was visible for a brief moment and faded. I already had a way to tag readings on the app, what if I caused a hot red circle to appear around such signals so it could be located even after the original faded away.

  I told her to keep riding without me. I turned around and backtracked to see how far a pulse of this size would work. About a block away, it no longer worked. I boosted the power incrementally until it worked like a charm.

  I turned my basas back toward Argon. My basas either sensed my excitement or wanted to return to his girlfriend because he took off at a lope to rejoin Argon.

  I shared my discovery with Argon. In an incredibly short time, we both had mage finding apps. Argon couldn't wait to share this with Inoa while already thinking of ways to improve it.

  I was just hoping it would keep us from getting ambushed.

  We decided pulsing every 30 seconds was a good balance between mind magic drain and real-time intel. Argon thought the pulses might be too frequent but had to admit her reaction was more philosophical than about the tiny amount of power each pulse cost.

  Argon thought we could use our time on patrol to develop a massive layered defense shield we could throw in front of ourselves or in front of someone else if we got ambushed. This would be pre-loaded to execute with a single command and avoid the need for anyone to jump in the path of an attack in the future.

  It was a sensitive subject, but she was right. I only threw myself in front of her because I had nothing better at hand. If I had erected a thick wall of rock in front of us, it would have been a whole lot better. A thick chunk of stone was tougher than my puny chest. Especially if it was hardened with other wards.

  This shield spell needed to be ready to launch in an instant. We needed to practice triggering it until it became second nature.

  I suggested we didn't have to stick around if someone tossed something our way. We decided preconfigured force spells that instantly moved us 20 feet straight up, right or left might be smart, too. Commands of 'up,' 'right,' and 'left' seemed simple enough to set up in advance.

  I thought we should add a "heal me" spell to our emergency teleport, too.

  "Alba has some other changes she wants us to make on our healing spells after our recent experiences," said Argon.

  We had a standing early morning appointment at Alba's clinic once a week as volunteer healers. Our next arranged date was in a week. We agreed to talk with her about the changes.

  We made the scheduled turn to the left at the first planned pivot point. No raiders had been spotted.

  This was good news for the town, as it meant they were less likely to face a surprise attack. I hoped it didn't mean the raiders had disbanded, killed all their captives, and were escaping in groups of ones and twos.

  "Raiders are greedy," reminded Argon. "They might do as you fear if they ran into a tough group of fighters that hurt them badly. But this bunch has been robbing, killing, and enslaving people without taking many losses. For them, it is a type of holiday. I suspect they plan to capture Flom, they are just waiting until they are ready to leave the area."

  Argon had it right; the easiest way to transport their slaves and loot to the Augun harbor was by barge. While the slavers could do it without taking Flom, taking more slaves and more loot would appeal to them. Having a few casualties of their own just meant a bigger share for the raiders left alive.

  Everyone made the next pivot within 20 minutes of one another. We were close to being on schedule. I reminded those on the mage-net to remain vigilant. Argon had them report on their magic usage. She was a little concerned about the mage to our immediate left, but the rest were doing better than expected. They were either strengthening their skill, or the spells were more efficient, or both.

  People we encountered were afraid of the raiders returning. None had any idea where the raiders were. Lots of dire rumors, few facts.

  I was experimenting with force field butt cushions when everything changed.r />
  Contact. One of the scout teams in the middle of the sweep detected a lone raider. We told everyone to take cover and not to move.

  Argon asked our basas to wait for us. They agreed to bed down in the shade until we returned. I was not sure how many treats Argon had to promise them. I teleported us when she grabbed my hand.

  Argon had been working on her invisibility spell. We arrived undetected at the teleport site. Our own scout team was so surprised at our approach they nearly stabbed us when we slid into the cover beside them.

  Argon had already located the raider and began peeling him like a grape.

  While Argon was reading the raider's mind, I expanded our locator spell to cover the widest area. He was the only tango in range.

  The raider scout was waiting until dark before moving in toward Flom. He was pissed off he'd been chosen to scout the town while the rest of his buddies were screwing slaves. He'd been told they were planning to attack Flom tonight. There was doubt in his mind about whether there would be a raid tonight. They had already had numerous false alarms.