I took my place with the main force and waited. As the last of the gurvani passed the edge of the barn, all three axe men launched themselves at their backs, Arstol in the lead with his rusty old broadsword. It was enough of a distraction to break the spell, but by that time the goblins were whirling confusedly, trying to figure out just why they were there in the first place – which gave my belligerent shopkeepers and artisans an opportunity to lay into them.
We managed to slaughter all of them with only two minor injuries. The townsfolk were elated at the minor victory, and I had to keep them from cheering loudly. I would have felt better about it if we taken care of more than a drop in the bucket.
Our melee attracted attention from both the gurvani and a few other straggling townsfolk. We picked off another three goblins as they tried to figure out what was happening, and we collected three more men, another one with a bow. That heartened me – with our smaller numbers, more missile weapons would be welcome.
Which got me thinking . . .
“Arstol, good work! Now, take your axemen and as many volunteers as you can find and make your way around to the other side of the belltower. Kill anything that has more hair than you do!”
That brought a round of laughs and catcalls – Arstol was a hairy, hairy man.
“Once you get to the far side take up defensive positions – behind buildings, through windows, whatever – just make sure your backs are covered. Collect whoever else you can along the way. You, archer – Goodman Henir? Stay here with Tyndal; I’ll need you two to cover me. When your men are in position, Arstol, give a holler. I’m going to get these bastards riled up, and then I’m going to scare the shit out of them! Be ready to slay as many as possible.”
Arstol nodded like he knew what I was talking about and started picking volunteers. Nearly everyone wanted to go. That was fine. The whole point of sending off the erstwhile “taskforce” was to get them out of the way and keep as many of them as possible from getting hurt.
A few stayed with me, and we kept ourselves busy by ambushing whatever gurvani nosed around the side of that barn. The archers and I took turns sniping, they with bows and me with my warwand, while we waited. Eventually I heard the shout from Arstol, and I prepared my spell.
It was sheer bluff. My warwand was running out of power and my staff only had a few useless enchantments left on it. But the rank and file gurvani aren’t too bright, and I was counting on this. I had the archer, Henir – a lad of sixteen, the son of the town weaver – tie an oil-soaked cloth to an arrow and send it sailing to the near edge of the invader’s siege. It stuck there, unnoticed except for a few curious goblins, and burned pitifully.
But long enough. I summoned as much power as I could, draining every reserve in my staff, and fed oxygen to that little flame until it was consuming the entire arrow. Then I started altering the flow of power to craft an illusion. Before three deep breaths had passed, a “fire giant” nine feet high had sprung into life behind the gurvani troops, lighting their hairy backs with a bright yellow flame. It was a crude illusion -- I was expending control of detail for size – but it was effective. Fire is the easiest element to sculpt, after all.
One moment the tribesmen were wailing against a few miserable peasants in a rickety stone tower, the next they were being attacked by a flame demon from some forgotten hell. The light from my illusion illuminated the village square, and for the first time I saw the true numbers of the invaders, somewhere around a hundred and fifty, I guessed.
It was a fairly simple cantrip to add a loud voice to the giant. I knew only a few phrases in gurvani, none of which was appropriate to the occasion, but I also knew that many of the little buggers also spoke a dialect of the speech of the Tree Folk, with whom they were known to trade.
“Sala vadu nestu kala!” I shouted through the spell. I come as Death to defilers of my people! It was a line from the Tree Folk epic Kaladarbu, which I doubt any of the gurvani had read. Hell, few humans outside of my profession had read it. It doesn’t translate well, as the Tree Folk only use writing to humor us.
The effect, however, was beautiful. One gurvan with more courage than sense ran at the “demon” with his little axe, swinging mightily. He overextended himself and landed in a heap, his fur smoldering from the encounter. A few javelins passed through the figure, leaving it undamaged. I willed my creation to take another step forward, knowing that it wouldn’t last much longer. The mass of black furry faces looked up at it in terror, and a few openly broke and ran away.
“Send a few shots at the front of the group,” I whispered to Henir. He nodded and launched four arrows in rapid succession against them. Three hits, one probably fatal. It was enough to convince a few more to run. I’d hoped for more. I could almost feel their fear preying on their minds, encouraging them to run away, back to the holes that spawned them.
But there always has to be a hero in the crowd. A large gurvani, clothed in black leather armor (which was unusual) and wearing some befanged animal’s skull for a helmet, leapt in front of the crowd and yelled something in their gibbering tongue. I didn’t know exactly what, but I guessed it was something along the line of “Don’t run away you cowards! It’s only a fire demon!”
Tyndal took the opportunity to put an arrow into his thigh just as I made the flame man reach down and “grab” the leader. To his credit he did not bolt from either the arrow or the fire. He swung his war club bravely at the thing’s “head,” ignoring the pain from his thigh.
For a moment, it might have worked. He had the attention of the gurvani and was proving that a little illusion was nothing to be afraid of. They started growling and chanting and waving around their weapons, even as their war leader’s pelt started to burn. I was expending every last ounce of energy I had to keep the illusion going, and was about to run out.
Then the cavalry rode over the hill . . .
Literally. The knights of Sire Koucey had arrived in the proverbial nick of time, some two-dozen strong, lances and swords flashing in the light of my fading illusion. Just as my fire-beast dispelled, the first horseman, Sir Cei the Castellan by his device, rode bravely into the midst of them, skewering the leader on his lance with deadly efficiency. I watched with professional respect as he dropped it with the still-writhing gurvan on its tip and drew his sword while his warhorse reared and began stomping on screeching bodies. I’m not a knight and never wanted to be one, but it was undeniably impressive to watch a man work his trade like that.
The rest of the troops, each bearing the white bull on a green field on their shields and banners, followed closely behind in a wedge formation. Seeing their salvation at hand, my stupid villagers, eager to participate in the coming victory, decided to wade into the rear of the invaders’ chaotic formation swinging their farm-implements as effectually as possible. I considered drawing my own sword and wading in, but I had seen enough blood today.
Besides, I felt something . . . there. At the far end of the mass of fur, blood, and bodies was a single gurvan, who seemed undisturbed by the rout that was taking place. Instead he was waving his arms like he was swatting flies. I reactivated my magesight and he lit up like a beacon.
A shaman. And by the amount of magical “glow” he gave off, I could see he was a potent one, perhaps the most powerful one I’d ever seen. That at least explained how the gurvani managed to sneak through the wards that surrounded the village without detection. I’d placed the wards myself, and they would have been sufficient against your average bandit, but I had not thought we needed a more rigorous defense against magical attack.
A good shaman, or even halfway decent hedgemage, for that matter, could cut through the ordinary wards like strings. This shaman was at least that good, and I could tell by the obscene amount of power he was drawing that he was preparing a nasty surprise for Sire Koucey and his iron-clad boys.
“Henir, Tyndal, quickly, loose every shaft you have against that one . . . there. The tallest one. Do it, boys!” I shouted. Their arrows w
ere probably going to be ineffectual, but it was possible that they could distract the shaman long enough for me to do something useful.
I had just a few tricks left up my sleeve. My warwand was effective against nonmagi, but magically defending against such a straightforward attack was pretty easy if you knew it was coming. Anything more potent would require power, and lots of it, and I had blown most of my reserves on that fire-giant. The only thing left was . . .
Shit. I’d thought I’d never have to do this again.
When most people think of a warmage (those who actually do think of such things that is) they think of a regular wizard throwing spells in combat. That much is true, of course, but our training at the War College was a lot more extensive than that.
We were also taught how to be effective combat soldiers in our own right, to keep from needing infantry bodyguards while we were in battle, and to give us more of an offensive punch. They taught us certain spells that we could use on our own bodies to make us more efficient for the kind of hand-to-hand fighting that could break out at any time in a combat situation. The techniques are exhaustive to learn, and physically painful – not everyone’s body could take the stress – but once you learn them they become second nature. They are also physically draining. Most warmagi who aren’t masochists only use them if absolutely necessary.
Now seemed like a good time to indulge.
I said the appropriate trigger words, drawing on every last spark of power at my command, and suddenly everything around me was in slow motion. My head hurt from the effect, and my stomach wanted me desperately to throw up what was left of last night’s cider, but I didn’t take notice of my body any more. I was more than mere flesh, for a few glorious seconds.
I dropped my staff and sprinted towards the shaman, moving three times faster than I could possibly have hoped to un-augmented by the spell. Slasher came to my hand unbidden, and a wordless battle-cry erupted from my lips of its own accord. I noticed in passing that I was catching up with one of Henir’s arrows in flight. A gurvan warrior tried to interpose himself between me and my prey, but I left him behind me clutching the stump of his hand in shocked amazement.
The shaman saw me coming, of course. No doubt his magesight was up, as well, in this chaos. He shifted his gaze toward me even as he prepared to release the spell, a defiant grimace on his lips. I guess he thought I was either a knight with some spark of Talent, or a hedgemage with a sword, but he definitely did not expect a fully-trained warmage, or else he would have shifted his spell to a defensive one. They taught us in War College that the all-out offensive attack has a better chance of succeeding than a more cautious approach, and I was testing that theory.
I sliced at his left knee, right shoulder, left side, and his neck in rapid succession while my other hand worked a distracting little flash cantrip. He blocked the first blow, and part of the second. He was still trying to block the third when my thin blade passed between his shoulders and his head, severing the neck neatly. He died before he was aware of the fact, and suddenly I was faced with a dilemma.
Magical power that is summoned and not used can either dissipate slowly, or it can release explosively, depending upon the vessel and a host of other factors. That was what had killed the Mad Mage of Farise during the final assault during the war. He had built up power and then had been deprived of his release mechanism at an inopportune moment. All of that power must be expressed somehow, and in the absence of a powerful mind to control it, magical energy can be pretty volatile. When he blew apart he had taken a good portion of the Citadel with them.
When I realized just how much power the gurvan had summoned I knew that I was in a similar position. It was also likely to take out me, most of the surviving goblins, all of Sire Koucey’s cavalry, and probably half the village unless I could channel it away somehow. It was happening too quickly for me to form an apis, or other thaumaturgical construct to absorb the power. I had to channel it. I still had the remnants of the fire illusion hanging around, and that seemed to be the most convenient thing to do, so I sent it all into one big fire-illusion spell and directed it straight up.
The result was spectacular. A fountain of fire nearly a mile high, and twelve feet across, bursting at its apex in the biggest firework I had ever seen. It lit up the entire village like it was daylight, and it could be seen for miles around. It was so terrifying to the normally nocturnal gurvani that those who were not already retreating bolted and ran as fast as their hairy little legs could carry them.
Me, I collapsed in a heap next to the recently living body of the shaman. I stayed there, catching my breath and waiting for the spell to diminish, until Sire Koucey himself, jingling with every step in his armor and spurs, shook me back to consciousness.
“Excellent job, Spellmonger,” he said, a grin dividing that gray-white mustache and beard, when I regained my senses. “We’ve got them on the run. My knights are chasing them back to their damn holes, but that would have been difficult going without . . . whatever it was you did. Well done!”
I stared up at him for a moment while I tried to make sense of what he said. This seemed to be an occasion that called for a grand and noble gesture. I had just been honored by the lord of the domain, after all. It seemed a good place for ceremony, a gesture, or at least a few thankful words.
When speech was available to me again, I managed to mumble, “Thank you, my lord,” before I bowed . . . and vomited used cider and bile on his boots.
Chapter Two
My History . . . And A Frightening Discovery
Once upon a time, in a tiny village called Talry on the bank of the great river Burine, in the Riverlands Barony of Varune, the Duchy of Castal, a Great and Powerful Mage was born unto a common man and his wife.
I’ll spare you the suspense. It was me.
The place I grew up was a nice, quiet little river-village, where most of the people farmed or fished, a few sold goods and services to those who farmed or fished, and even fewer lived off the taxes paid by those who sold goods and services to those who farmed or fished. It was a pretty little village on the west side of the river, only six miles from the looming Castle Talry, where Baron Lithar made his home.
My father had the baking license for the river village of Talry-on-Burine, and was viewed as a master of his craft by his colleagues as far away as Dresel. His bread was always smoother and tastier than any the farmwomen made, his pies were counted as having no equal, and the fruit-and-honey-cakes he made for holidays were the stuff of legend.
He supplied bread not only to most of the village and the barges that traveled the river, but the Baron’s castellan also sent to him for special dainties that the castle bakery couldn’t produce as well as he could. He was particular good at berry pies, and as a kid I made a small fortune selling “reject” pies out of the back of the shop to my peers.
In any case, due to my father’s incredible ability to take flour, eggs, yeast, milk, and such and transform them into the best breads in the Five Duchies, he thrived. He married my mother, daughter of the miller in Poom Hamlet, upriver fifty miles or more, got his master’s license, secured a grant from Baron Lithar, and began a long lifetime of raising bread and kids in relative prosperity.
As his fame and recognition as a baker increased, so did his fortune, until he had the third largest house in town, a small stable of his own, and the exclusive right to make sweet pies and pastries for a five-mile radius of his shop. He was blessed with a beautiful, hard-working wife and many children.
All girls.
When my eldest sister was born, my mother says he was as excited as any new father. When my sister Litha was born two winters later, he feasted his neighbors on her name-day and spoke expectantly of the son his wife was sure to birth next. Six years and three more daughters later, he had become something of a town joke. With each new pink healthy daughter my mother presented to him, it added to his despair.
Don’t misunderstand – he was a doting father to all of his chil
dren, loved each of my sisters dearly, and never once griped about their dowries. But he wanted a boy to pass his craft to. He envisioned a dynasty of great bakers.
He tried everything, to hear my mother tell it. He consulted the Baron’s wizard, the local hedgemage, itinerant witches, birthsisters, and every granny within twenty miles seeking a sure-fire way to ensure male conception. He went so far as to sponsor a festival in the village to Trygg, the Mother Goddess, ostensibly to celebrate my eldest sister’s coming of age, but in reality as a means of begging her priestesses for a boy.
After a decade of nonstop procreation I finally arrived. My father was so happy he could have burst. My mother was just relieved. Six healthy children is a lot to expect from a woman. Not that she minded the attempts – I get my lusty nature from her – but by the time I came along, she was ready to lapse into the role of grandmother.
They named me Minalan, after my maternal great-grandfather, and proceeded to spoil me only as a boy with five older sisters could be spoiled. My childhood was cushy, comparatively speaking. My sisters took turns babying me and torturing me, depending on the sister, her mood, and the position of the stars. Mama was strict but benevolent (she had raised five spirited daughters, so I didn’t get away with much), and Dad tried to be stern but usually ended up being as indulgent to his only son as he was to his daughters.
He did make me work hard, though; running a bakery is hard work in the best of times, and no hands ever went idle. Father worried initially that the over-dose of female attention would soften me, but by the time I was five it was clear that I was as sturdy as hardtack and had the spirit of a spicy pepper roll. Dad relaxed. He had his heir. Until that fateful day.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 01 - Spellmonger Page 3