“Drake,” Skan whispered carefully, “we’re being paced. I don’t know by what, but there’s something out there. I can taste it in the fog, and I’ve seen a couple of shadows moving.”
“You’re sure?” That was Regin, who had signaled for a halt and dropped back when he heard Skan whispering. “Bern thought he might be seeing something, too—”
“Then count me as three, because I saw large shadows moving out there and behind us,” Drake said firmly. “Could it be whatever tore up the ground back there?”
“If it is, I don’t want to goad it into attacking us in this fog,” Regin replied. “Though I doubt it will as long as we look confident.”
“Most big hunters won’t mess with a group,” Bern confirmed, nodding. “They like single prey, not a pack.”
Drake must have looked skeptical, because Regin thumped him on the back in what was probably supposed to be an expression of hearty reassurance. It drove the breath out of him and staggered him a pace.
“There’s too many of us for it to want to contend with—” Regin pointed out with confidence, “And we aren’t hurt. I don’t care if it paces us, as long as it doesn’t come after us, and it won’t. I’m sure of it.”
Amberdrake got his breath again, and shrugged. “You’re the leader,” he said, keeping his uncertainty to himself.
Regin grinned, as if to say, “That’s right, I am,” but wisely kept his response to a grin and waved them on again.
Drake continued to feel the eyes on his back, and kept thinking about beings the size of a horse with talons to match—the kinds of claws that had torn up the earth to the depth of his hand. Would a party of seven humans and one gryphon look all that formidable to something like that? And what if there was more than one of those things out there? The way the ground had been dug up certainly suggested that there were several.
“You won’t like this,” Skan gryphon-whispered, which was as subtle and quiet as a human’s normal speaking voice. The gryphon glanced from side to side apprehensively. “Drake, I think we’ve been surrounded.”
All the muscles in Amberdrake’s neck went tight, and he shivered reflexively. He no longer trusted Regin’s self-confidence in the least.
At just that moment, Regin signaled another halt, and Bern took him aside to whisper something into his ear.
The leader looked straight at Skan. “Bern says we’re surrounded. Are we?”
“I think so,” Skan said flatly. “And I don’t think whatever it is out there is just curious. I also don’t think it’s going to let us get much farther without a fight.”
Regin’s face darkened, as if Skan had challenged him, but he turned his eyes to the shrouding fog before replying. “The General always says the best defense is a good offense,” he replied in a growl. “But there’s no point in lobbing arrows against things we can’t see. We’ll lose ammunition without impressing them.”
“The rains are going to begin as soon as the fog lifts, sir,” Bern pointed out. “We still won’t be able to see what’s out there, and you can’t shoot with a wet bowstring.”
Regin leveled his gaze on Filix next. “Is there something you can do to find out what’s following us? Maybe scare it away? I don’t want to waste time better spent looking for Silverblade and Tadrith.”
The mage shrugged. “Maybe. I can try. The best thing would be to try to stun one so that we can see what it looks like. I don’t have to see something to stun it, I just have to know in general where it is.”
The leader spread his hands, indicating his full permission. “You’re the mage. Try it, see what happens.”
Amberdrake opened his mouth to object, but closed it again; after all, what did he know? Nothing about hunting, predators, or being stalked. If their stalkers were only curious after all, stunning one wouldn’t hurt them; if they were thinking about making a meal of the rescuers, well, having one of their lot fall over without a mark on him should make them back off for a while. At least, it certainly seemed to him that it should work out that way. And by the time the hunters regained their courage, the rescue party would probably be long gone.
Skan opened his beak, and Amberdrake thought he was going to object as well, but it was too late. Filix had already spotted something, or thought he had, and had unleashed the spell.
The result was not what any of them had expected.
A dark shadow in the fog glowed suddenly—Amberdrake got an odd, unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach—and Filix and Skan cursed together with heartfelt fluency.
“What?” Regin snapped, looking from one to the other: “What!”
“It ate my spell—” Filix began, but Skan interrupted him waving the teleson he’d been carrying around his neck.
“It ate the teleson!” the gryphon roared. “Damn! Whatever’s out there is what pulled Blade and Tad down, and you just fed it everything it wanted!”
* * *
Skan was just glad that they had alerted the other parties that they had finally found signs of the missing children before the teleson became a pretty piece of junk. By the time they camped that night, it was evident that, not only had the creatures out there “eaten” the teleson—or rather, drained away all of its mage-energy—but they’d “eaten” the energy from every other magical device the party had.
Why they’d waited so long to do so was a matter of conjecture at this point. Maybe they’d been screwing up their courage to do so; maybe they just been biding their time until they had a certain number of their lot in place. Maybe the things were staying in hiding until something was thrown at them, as a form of cover.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Filix kept protesting. “How was I going to know?”
He couldn’t have known that some bizarre animals were the cause of the trouble, of course, but since they had known there was something out here that ate magic, it seemed to Skan that lobbing spells around indiscriminately was obviously a bad idea. He had been about to say just that when Filix had lobbed the first one.
Well, what the search party had to deal with now were the results. In the short term, that meant the tents had to be put up by hand, and using freshly-cut poles and ropes; fires had to be started with the old-fashioned firestriker, and any number of other problems, both inconvenient and possibly hazardous, suddenly arose to confront them.
In the long term—having gotten a taste, the strange and possibly hostile creatures that had stalked them through the fog and rain might now be looking for a meal.
The tents were keeping the rain out, but were not precisely dry anymore. They weren’t keeping bugs out, either. Skan wondered how long it would take until it occurred to Regin that the waterproofing and bug-protections on their rations might also have been magical. Serve him right if he had to eat soggy, weevil-ridden ration-bread!
The two tents shared a canvas “porch;” it lacked a canvas floor and one wall, but gave protection to their fire. They gathered in the two tents on either side of the fire, with the flaps tied back. Regin called them for a conference as the light began to dim in the forest outside. Rain drummed down on the canvas, but Regin had pitched his voice to carry over it.
“We’re doing fine,” Regin decreed, as they sat, crowded into the two tents meant for a total of four, not eight; at least this way they all had space to get in out of the wet, even if it was not completely dry beneath the canvas. “We have nothing to worry about. Canvas still keeps out rain, wood still burns, and we still have the north-needle, which is, thank the gods, not magical. We’ve found the river, and it’s only a matter of time before we either run into the missing Silvers or one of the other parties does. If they do, they’ll try and notify us, realize what happened when they don’t get our teleson, and come fetch us. If we find them first, we’ll just backtrack along the river until we meet one of the other parties, then get back to the base camp. Not a problem.”
Skan was hardly in agreement with that sentiment, but Regin was the leader, and it was poor form to undermine confidence
in your leader when it was most needed by others.
This is not a wartime situation. And now we know that the magic stealers are just some kind of strange wild animal, not an enemy force. If we’re just careful, we should get out of this intact and with the children. At least, that was what he was trying to tell himself.
“For tonight, I want a double watch set; four and four, split the night, a mage in each of the two watches.” Regin looked around for volunteers for the first watch, and got his four without Skan or Drake needing to put up a hand.
Skan did not intend to volunteer, but Filix seemed so eager to make up for the mistake that cost them all their magic, that it looked as if the younger mage had beaten the gryphon to volunteering. Skan wondered what the young man thought he was volunteering for; he was hardly a fighter, and the idea of throwing magic at something that ate magic did not appeal to the gryphon.
I am not lobbing a single spell around until we lose these menaces, he resolved. If these things eat magic, it stands to reason that magic makes them stronger. And the stronger they are, the more likely they are to attack us physically.
Well, Filix could use a bow, at least, even if he didn’t possess a gryphon’s natural weaponry.
He might do all right at that—provided he thinks before he acts. He wanted to take Filix aside and caution him, but an earlier attempt had not been very successful. Filix clearly thought that Skan was overreacting to the situation. One of the biggest problems with the younger mages—youngsters who had come along after the Cataclysm—was that they thought magic could fix everything. They had yet to learn that magic was nothing more than another tool, and one that you could do without if you had to. Maybe things wouldn’t be as convenient without it, but so what? Snowstar ought to force them to spend a year not using magic.
Regin nodded with satisfaction at his volunteers. “Right. Close up the watch right around the camp; there’s no point in guarding a big perimeter tonight. If you get a clear shot, take it; maybe if we make things unpleasant enough for whatever is out there, it’ll get discouraged and leave us alone.”
And maybe you’ll provoke them into an attack! Skan reminded himself that he was not the leader and kept his beak clamped tightly shut on his own objections. But he resolved to sleep with himself between Drake and the tent wall, and to do so lightly.
Somehow he managed to invoke most of the old battle reflexes, get himself charged up to the point where nerves would do instead of sleep, and laid himself warily down to rest with one eye and ear open. In his opinion, Regin was taking this all far too casually, and was far too certain that they were “only” dealing with a peculiar form of wild animal. And he was so smug about the fact that he had brought nonmagical backups to virtually every magical piece of equipment except the teleson that Skan wanted to smack him into good sense again.
Bringing backups isn’t the point! he seethed, as he positioned himself to best protect Drake in an attack. The fact that there is something out here that can eat magic and is clearly hostile—that’s the point! What good are our backups going to do if these things decide that they want more than just a taste of us from a distance?
The rains slowed, then stopped. The fire died, leaving them with nothing but glowing coals for a source of light. Just as the camp quieted down for the night, the “wild animals” proved that they were not intimidated by a party of eight.
Skan came awake all at once with the sound of someone falling to the ground, followed by cursing and a bowstring snapping practically in his ear. But it wasn’t Filix taking the shot—the mage was lying on the ground, just outside the canvas wall nearest Skan, gasping for breath.
The other three humans not on watch scrambled up, but Skan was already on his feet, ready for trouble. A moment later, Regin hauled the half-conscious mage into the tent. “What happened?” Skan asked harshly, as the other two fighters scrambled outside, leaving himself, Regin, and Drake alone with the disabled mage. Amberdrake went to the young mage’s side immediately and began examining him.
The leader shook his head. “I don’t know,” the young man admitted, looking pale and confused in the light from the single lamp that Drake had lit. “He saw something out there, and I think he was going to work some magic on it—he muttered something about his shields—and then he just fell over. I took a shot at something moving, but I don’t think I hit it.”
“He’s been drained,” Amberdrake said flatly, looking up, with his hand still on Filix’s forehead. “I saw this once or twice in the war, when mages overextended themselves.”
I remember that; it was on the orders of an incompetent commander.
“The only difference is that this time, Filix didn’t over-extend himself, he was drained to nothing by means of the spell he cast,” Drake continued. “My guess is that those creatures out there were able to use his previous magic to get into his shield-castings, and then just pulled everything he had out of him, the way they pulled the mage-energy out of the teleson. And probably Tadrith and Silverblade’s basket as well.”
“Stupid son of—” Regin bit off what he was going to say. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Maybe. Probably. As long as he doesn’t give whatever is out there another chance to drain him.” Drake looked angry and a little disgusted, and Skan didn’t blame him. “I’ll do what I can for him, but you should be aware that it isn’t much. Lady Cinnabar herself couldn’t do much for something like this. What he needs is rest, rest, and more rest. We’re going to have to carry him for the next few days. He probably won’t even regain consciousness until tomorrow, and his head will hurt worse than it ever has in his life for several days.”
“Well, we’ll go short one this shift.” Regin shook his head again. “Stupid—” He glanced at Skan, who drew himself up with dignity.
“I know better than to try anything magical,” he retorted to the unspoken rebuke. “I’ll use a more direct method of defending this camp, if I have to use anything.”
Stupid fool thought that if he cast shields, he’d he safe against this, Skan fumed. Never bothered to remember that magical shields are themselves magical, did he! And since shields are spun out from your own power, they are traceable directly back into your own mage-energies. He probably didn’t think it was necessary to cast anything more complicated, and figured his shields would block anything coming in…
The result had clearly been immediate, and had certainly been predictable.
He pulled Drake back into the tent they had been trying to sleep in. “We’ll stay here,” he told Amberdrake. “Leave him in the other tent with Regin.”
“With just one man to watch him?” Amberdrake asked. Skan shook his head.
“Does it matter?” he replied. “There’s nothing you can do for him, and if something comes charging in here, we’re going to have more important things to think about than defending an unconscious mage.”
There it was; hard, cruel, war-truths. This was a war, whether or not Regin realized it yet.
Evidently Drake did; he grimaced, but didn’t protest any further. He remembered. He knew that the two of them must make their priority that of finding the children. And he knew all about cutting losses.
Which was just as well, because a few moments later, the second attack came.
* * *
There was no warning. They hadn’t even blown out the lantern or tried to lie down again. The rain must have covered any sounds of approach, for there certainly was nothing outside the tent walls to indicate anything was wrong. All that Skan knew was that Bern shouted, then screamed, and something dark came ripping through the canvas of the tent, knocking over the lantern in the process, plunging them into darkness until the spilled oil flared up. He knocked Drake to the ground and stood over him, slashing at whatever came near in the darkness.
He ignored anything outside the tent to the point where it simply didn’t exist for him, concentrating fiercely on tiny currents of air, sounds, movement, and what little he could see reflecting fro
m the burning spilled oil. His talons connected several times with something that felt like snakeskin, tearing through it to the flesh beneath, and he clenched any, time he was able to, so that he might rend away a chunk of meat. But his opponents uttered nothing more than a hiss, and they dashed away through the double rents in the tent canvas as if his fierce opposition surprised them. The fight couldn’t have lasted for very long, for not only was he not tired, he hadn’t even warmed up to full fighting speed when the attacks ceased, and the attackers vanished, silent shadows sliding between the raindrops.
He stood over Drake a while longer; the kestra’chern had the good sense to stay put and not move the entire time. When Amberdrake finally moved, it was to pat the flame out with the edge of a bedroll and then right the lantern.
“Are they gone?” came the voice from between his feet.
“I think so,” Skan replied, shaking his head to refocus himself. Only then did he hear the moans of wounded, and the sound of Bern calling his name.
“We’re here!” Drake answered for him as he relit the lantern with a smoldering corner of the bedroll. “We’re all right, I think.”
“That’s more than the rest of us can say,” the scout replied grimly, wheezing and coughing. “Can you get out here and help me? If I let go of this rag around my leg, I’m going to bleed myself out.”
Drake swore, scrambled for the medical kit in the darkness, and pushed through the ruined tent wall. Skan followed slowly.
When the lantern had been relit so that Drake could see to treat wounds, and everyone had been accounted for, they discovered that Regin and Filix had been killed by more of the things. They had probably died instantly, or nearly so. Amberdrake reached for the bodies, and could only locate so many pieces. At the very least, they got the mercy of a quick death. There wasn’t much left of them. Blood was spattered everywhere, and it was difficult to tell what part belonged to whom.
The Mage Wars Page 100