The Battlemage

by Taran Matharu

  “Where’s that noise coming from?” Logan shouted, returning from his precarious journey up to the watchtower.

  “Death whistles,” Mason answered. He was crouched to Fletcher’s left, still shirtless but now armed with his cleaver-like falchion. “You’ll see some orcs blowin’ ’em. Bloody ’orrible things, made to scare the enemy. Ignore ’em, lads.”

  And indeed, orcs were emerging from the foliage behind the first wave, carrying great macana club-swords strapped to their backs. They held baying hyenas on rope leashes and lashed rawhide whips across the backs of the goblins nearby, driving them like cattle before them. As Athena’s gaze focused on them, Fletcher could see skull-shaped clay pipes clutched between their tusks, the source of the terrifying noise.

  “Well, it’s bloody working.” Logan shuddered, taking his place at the wall.

  Even from his vantage behind the wall, Fletcher knew the goblins were just out of rifle range. Rotherham had embedded two lines of stakes along the grasslands, so the men knew when to fire; one for the riflemen, another for the musketeers. Now the enemy army waited, just beyond the first scattered palisade, called to a halt by guttural barks from the orc commanders.

  “Come on, let’s be havin’ ye,” Fletcher heard Rotherham growl from his perch above.

  But the goblins walked no farther, and the noise began to die down. Soon silence reigned across the grassy canyon. They had seen what Fletcher had left for them, just beyond their lines.

  The corpses of the goblin riders had been strewn across the grass, their bodies arranged in a macabre display of splayed limbs and open wounds. The cassowaries lay beside them in forlorn humps of black feathers. Fletcher knew that the stench of rotting flesh would be thick and cloying in their nostrils, but not, in fact, because of their allies’ corpses—they were too fresh for that.

  No, Fletcher had devised a use for the barrels of durian fruit from their wagon of supplies—slicing each open and strategically concealing them beneath the corpses, giving off their telltale stench of death. The enemy had tried to use fear on him. He would return the favor tenfold.

  Their vanguard was dead to the last fighter, with no sign of their killers. There could be a thousand men on the other side of the Cleft as far as they knew.

  “Rotherham, give them a rifle volley,” Fletcher called, his voice echoing unnaturally loud in the ravine. “Aim for the orcs. Take out their leaders.”

  “Aye,” Rotherham replied. “All right, lads, make these shots count.”

  “They’re out of range, sir,” came a nervous reply.

  “Well, then you’d better aim at their chests,” Rotherham said cheerily. “Easy now. Pick your targets. Slow squeeze of the trigger as you breathe out. On my mark … Fire!”

  The crackle of rifles hit Fletcher’s ears, and a half second later the volley whipped into the massed ranks. A missed shot threw a goblin to the ground, and another splintered one of Rotherham’s stakes, but the remaining shots struck home. One orc’s head snapped back, the others jerked as if stung; two falling to their knees, another clutching its arm. Not a single bullet struck the same target, a testament to Rotherham’s training.

  Screeches began, spreading through the massed goblins as they retreated a dozen feet, scrambling over one another in their sudden fear. To them, the gunfire had come from the heavens themselves.

  “Stop your gawping and reload,” Rotherham’s voice echoed above. “This is war, not target practice.”

  The rattle of ramrods followed soon after, but the noise was drowned out by a sudden roar from the scores of remaining orcs, primal and deep with rage. A baying hyena took a retreating goblin by the neck in a sudden leap, shaking it back and forth like a rag doll. Whips cracked overhead, and the tide was turned more swiftly than it had begun, the goblins falling over themselves as they returned to their positions, some even stumbling beyond, over the corpses of their rider comrades.

  “Like bleedin’ sheep herdin’,” Mason whispered.

  “But those ain’t no sheepdogs,” Logan replied. “More like wolves.”

  “Silence in the ranks,” Sir Caulder barked, quieting the pair.

  But Fletcher’s attention was elsewhere, his eyes focused on a movement in his scrying crystal. A disturbance within the jungle, so great that the trees shook in a slow-moving beeline that headed straight for them. A thud, thud of steps that seemed to shake the very ground reverberated through the canyon, quelling the panicked screeches of the goblins.

  Then a gray-skinned giant burst from the forest, scattering goblins left and right as it stampeded into the light. Its great ears flapped in the wind, the enormous bulk of its body clearly visible as it lumbered through the clearing.

  “What the bleedin’ hell is that!” Logan moaned.

  It was a Phantaur. The rarest of all orc demons, a bipedal elephant that towered above the orcs as a mother did a child. It had a leathery hide so thick that bullets couldn’t penetrate it, and its great fists were as formidable as the long, sweeping trunk and serrated tusks that swung back and forth above the ground.

  The demon halted as its shaman emerged from the jungle edge. In his crystal, Fletcher saw it was a decrepit, hunched specimen with a toothless mouth and a tattered cloak of woven fibers. A gnarled staff was clutched in its hands, and the old orc leaned on it with every faltering step. For a moment Fletcher felt a flash of pity for it.

  Then it raised a long, hoary finger, and even without Athena’s overlay, Fletcher could see the orange glow of a fireball at the jungle edge, larger than any he had seen before.

  “Take cover,” Fletcher yelled.

  He and the men hurled themselves to the ground, hugging the earth for dear life. Suddenly their stone wall felt as solid as a paper sheet.

  In the scrying stone, Fletcher saw the fireball swell and swell again, so enormous that it blotted out the shaman behind it. Then it was aloft, blazing through the air in a great, curving arc, trailing smoke and shimmering air. No shield of Fletcher’s could hope to withstand such an attack—not with the scant mana left in his reserves. Still it rose, so bright and blinding that it was as if Athena were staring into the sun.

  As the ball began its slow descent, the Phantaur unleashed a trumpeting squeal that put Fletcher’s teeth on edge. Two heartbeats of stunned silence passed.

  And then, like an unstoppable wave, the goblins charged across the grass, screeching with bloodlust. The battle for Raleighshire had begun.

  CHAPTER

  53

  “IGNATIUS, HURRY!” FLETCHER YELLED.

  Far above, the Drake was already plummeting toward the fireball, his wings pinned back in a raptor’s dive. He tore through it like an arrow through an apple, the burst of light blinding in Athena’s vision.

  Fletcher sensed no pain from Ignatius, the fire passing harmlessly over the demon’s skin as the fireball split into scores of smaller spells, spraying across the mountainside in a shower of glowing streaks.

  Half a dozen made it through the Cleft, alighting in pools of fire on the wall and ground ahead of them. Rocks exploded from their makeshift barricade, sending soldiers tumbling. A single dwarf screamed frantically as his sleeve caught fire, beating at it with his jacket. It was extinguished by a gust of air as Ignatius swooped through the pass, returning to the heavens to battle the orcish demons above once again.

  “Make ready,” Sir Caulder yelled, emptying his canteen over the smoldering clothing on the dwarf’s arm.

  The rumble of hundreds of goblin feet could be heard as the Foxes scrambled up, leveling their muskets over the barricade. Pools of molten rock bubbled in front of the walls, already fusing into crystals as they cooled. Fletcher lifted Blaze, and thanked the heavens that the fire had missed the surprise his men had prepared.

  Between the gap, he could see a shifting maelstrom of gray bodies charging toward them. Already the rifles were firing, orcs jerking and stumbling from the spiraling bullets, even as their berserk rage carried their injured bodies onward. The first
goblins trampled through the second line of stakes.

  “Fire!” Sir Caulder barked.

  A single clap of noise and billowing smoke tore at Fletcher’s senses, then he pulled the trigger. Goblins were thrown back as a hail of musket balls tore through the first ranks, tripping those behind with their corpses. Forsyth muskets were snatched up and pointed with trembling hands.

  “Fire!” Fletcher yelled.

  A second volley whipped into the masses, more ragged than the first but no less deadly. Blood misted the air as more goblins fell, but still the baying crowd surged on, driven by the whips of their orc masters. Rifles cracked above, and another orc’s head snapped back. It was not enough. Only one thing could stop this now.

  “Load,” Sir Caulder ordered, his voice loud but calm as he stomped behind the men. “Steady now, lads, easy does it.”

  A Vesp thumped to the ground, near severed in two by Ignatius’s beak far above. Ramrods rattled in their barrels, and a man cursed as he dropped his to the ground. Fifty paces. Forty.

  “Fire at will, boys!” Sir Caulder growled. “Give ’em hell.”

  Musket balls whipped sporadically over the wall, the closer shots bowling goblins head over heels, their bodies disappearing into the masses as they were trampled underfoot.

  “Take out their front-runners,” Fletcher yelled, tugging Gale from his holster and aiming it at the smattering of goblins that had outpaced the horde.

  He fired and felt the kick up his arm as the ball took the closest goblin through the neck, plucking it from its feet a dozen yards from the gap. His second shot went wide, disappearing into the mob in a spurt of smoke and blood, but a slug from Mason left his target crumpled over the body of the first.

  The space ahead of the wall was filled with smoke, a brimstone haze that blended with the gray of goblins as the first of them hurtled through the Cleft, spears raised, shields held aloft. A smattering of gunfire took these eager runners out. In Fletcher’s mind, he could feel Athena’s fear, and fragments of pain from Ignatius as he battled the dozens of lesser demons in the sky.

  The main body was twenty paces from the Cleft. Just a little closer …

  Ten paces. Now.

  Fletcher leaped the wall.

  “Hold your fire,” Sir Caulder bellowed. “Load your spares.”

  “Rifles, cover him,” Rotherham shouted.

  And then Fletcher was running, a twist of flame flaring on the end of his finger. Still the goblins came, a dozen of them breaching the gap in a mad dash toward him. He could smell the unwashed stench of their bodies as he sprinted forward, his blood pounding in his ears, feet drumming on the ground. Rifle shots snatched the closest goblins away, and a javelin fluttered past, splintering on the wall behind him.

  A hundred of the enemy were through the Cleft now, slowing as they saw the lone man running toward them, but pushed inexorably on by the momentum of the screaming masses behind.

  Fletcher skidded in a slide-tackle along the ground, a stone’s throw away from them. The fire spun from his finger in a strand of orange, heading for Fletcher’s target. Their surprise.

  It was a row of a hundred, half-buried bamboo segments, each with a rudimentary fuse of gunpowder-coated cordage shoved in its back end. And in the center of them all sat the squat, rust-covered hulk of the Thorsager cannon, propped up by a hillock of shoveled dirt. All were filled to the brim with gunpowder and a charge of pebbles.

  A spear buried itself beside him, slicing the edge of his jacket. The fuses sparked, Fletcher’s spell threading along the line. They burned down to their explosive charges with sizzling speed. Too fast.

  “Run!” Rory yelled, seeing what was about to happen.

  Fletcher ran.

  It was a mad dash, and Fletcher beamed a shield over his shoulder in the nick of time, feeling the crackle of impacts as javelins and spears whistled overhead. A rattle of rifle fire echoed above, and then Genevieve screamed: “Get down!”

  Fletcher dove—and the world flipped sideways.

  Dust and smoke howled over him as the explosion roared through the ravine. In his crystal, Fletcher saw blood mist the air as a thousand projectiles ripped through the mass of goblins, hurling them back as if a giant invisible fist had punched through their ranks. The center received the brunt of the damage, the cannon concentrating the blast in a tight cone of spraying death that extended beyond the Cleft and into the crowds that still pressed in behind. For a moment, all that could be heard was the whistling of the wind, and the groans of the dying.

  “Fire!” Fletcher yelled.

  A pause, and then a flurry of musket balls whipped through the gap and into the stunned survivors.

  “Again,” Sir Caulder barked, snatching a proffered musket from Blue’s hands.

  The second volley smacked into the ranks, downing goblins left and right. The rifles fired a moment later, and this time the closest of the few dozen orcs that remained were killed—unmissable at such close range.

  Far above, Ignatius roared in triumph, and an Ahool plummeted out of the sky, its leathery-winged body thudding among the goblin corpses.

  And then, as one, the goblins turned and fled.

  CHAPTER

  54

  THE TIDE HAD TURNED; the gray forms of the goblins rushing back to the jungle’s edge, leaving hundreds of dead in their wake. The remaining orcs bellowed orders, but even they had moved to a safe distance and could not prevent the goblins from hurrying back into the safety of the rain forest. Far above, Ignatius roared again, the enemy demons beating a hasty retreat. Clearly the Ahool had been the most powerful among them.

  Despite it all, what horrified Fletcher most was that yet more goblins seemed to be appearing, shouldering their way past their fleeing companions as they left the trees and rallying around the immovable form of the Phantaur. Who knew how many more lurked within the foliage, just out of sight.

  As he sat up, Fletcher realized his shield had protected him from the back draft of the explosion, though thankfully most of the bamboo tubes had held together, directing their contents out of their open ends. But some of the wooden tubes had shattered from the explosion, flinging projectiles in every direction, including at him. This damage combined with that of the javelins and spears meant the shredded shield was barely worth resorbing when he eased his battered body from the ground. He did so anyway—his reserves were nearly empty.

  By the time he made it back to the Foxes, Blue and his gremlins had vaulted over the walls and were already hunting through the goblins for survivors, their shark-tooth daggers rising and falling. Fletcher tried to ignore the grisly gurgling noises and swung himself over the barricade, knocking a chunk away in his haste to return to safety.

  He was shaking, though whether it was from adrenaline or fear he could not be sure.

  “Craven bastards,” Logan shouted, his pockmarked face split wide in a grin. Through his crystal, Fletcher saw the orcs whipping the retreating goblins mercilessly, their hyenas unleashed to roam along the edges, snapping at those who ran by. It would not be long before the masters took control of them once again, or led a new assault with the fresh troops emerging from the jungles.

  Even so, they would be more wary now. A good third of the orcs had been killed, and it was unlikely their leaders would venture into range again. But at some point, the goblins would make another charge for the Cleft, and there was no more gunpowder for another blast. He only had one more trick up his sleeve.

  “Fletcher, a word,” Rory called.

  He beckoned Fletcher away from the line of celebrating men. Fletcher saw the young boy’s cheek was stained with soot from firing his musket, and his blond hair was stained red from a cut at his hairline.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Rory muttered as soon as Fletcher was out of the Foxes’ earshot. “I haven’t told anyone, not that there was time when the goblins appeared. But … it’s Didric. He’s not coming.”

  If Fletcher had felt even a shred of relief earlier, now it was was
hed away by a cold rush of fear.

  “He has to come,” Fletcher hissed, struggling to keep himself from shouting. “The future of the empire depends on it. Are you sure your note explained it all?”

  Rory shook his head in disgust.

  “It explained everything. He’s hightailing it to the north as we speak, back to his castle. His exact words were, ‘Why throw good men after bad?’ if you can believe that. He thinks the war is lost already.”

  “The coward,” Fletcher spat.

  “There’s something else,” Rory said, avoiding Fletcher’s eyes. “It’s the townsfolk. When Malachi left his message, they started arguing about whether they should leave. Berdon’s doing his best, but Malachi didn’t see any sign of them while waiting for Didric’s decision on the bridge. I don’t think they’ve left yet.”

  “The fools,” Fletcher snapped, looking back down the canyon into the grasslands. In the distance, he could see the shapes of the town’s buildings. So close. Could they not hear the gunfire, the explosions?

  “We can’t worry about that now. What about the rest of your messages?” Fletcher asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice.

  “Still flying,” he said. “And I sent Malachi on to help with the search for the king, a general, anyone who might help us. Most should get to the front lines within the hour, Genevieve’s included. But … my Mites can hear booming, see smoke and bright flashes over the horizon. Whatever battle we’re fighting, it’s nothing compared to what’s going on out there. Finding someone important to give a message to might be difficult.”

  Fletcher gripped Rory by the shoulders.

  “If we don’t get help soon, we’ll all be dead and thousands of goblins will attack the Hominum army from behind. That is, if they don’t sack Corcillum on their way first.”

  Rory’s eyes widened with fear, and Fletcher released him with a sigh.