That was even more exhilarating than the charge. I had already cast more spells today than I would have in a week as a spellmonger – or as a warmage, for that matter. The screening spell alone would have made me tired, before, not to mention the wind spell, the scryings, and the illusions. But with the little irionite sphere in the bag around my neck it was as if I had access to an endless well of magical energy, and I used it lavishly. Bolts of death flew from my hands as I struck down each gurvan who crossed my path. Slasher flew from its sheath and hacked at triple speed, as if it had a mind of its own. I fought using my magesight, which allowed me to see through the thick smoke as if it were a light mist, and I slew several gurvani who never even saw me.
We had maybe four minutes of pure mayhem before the goblins got themselves organized enough to put up any resistance. Most, I noticed, were using little round wooden shields bossed with iron, and many had iron swords instead of their usual maces and clubs. Spears and a few arrows flew at us and one or two of Iric’s troopers went down, but at that close range I think the goblins did more damage to each other than to us. Archers can turn the tide in a battle, of course, but only when their fire is massed and well disciplined, and this was neither.
The greatest advantage to a cavalry charge, on the other hand, is momentum and after our four minutes, that was spent. Individual troopers were attacking knots of gurvani, but the gurvani were starting to come together in larger masses, groups big enough to pull a man from his horse – and once on the ground the advantage was definitely theirs.
Iric knew his craft. When he saw a rough defensive line start to form through the fog, he blew a horn that signaled a strategic withdrawal – which is different from a retreat, as they told us in War College. When you are winning it is a withdrawal; when you are losing, it is a retreat. His horsemen finished off the opponents in front of them and then started back the way they came.
I stayed, which sounds like suicide or bravery, depending on your point of view, but I could do more damage here than I could regrouping for another charge. Koucey and his men would be hitting them shortly, and while our little charge got their attention and hurt them some, there was still plenty of fight left in the goblin troops. I could at least do my best to distract them.
Besides, it gave me a chance to try out a few of the more exotic war spells that we were taught, but I never had a chance to use. With this newfound power at my call I couldn’t resist playing around a little any more than a brewer can resist a pint of new ale.
My personal shields kept the arrows off me, and they were becoming more numerous as the goblins gathered strength and organized. A few brave souls tried to rally their mates by coming at me, swinging and growling, but as I burned them down as soon as they approached more than twenty yards, the number of volunteers diminished as the pile of bodies grew. For a while I just stared at them menacingly as I decided upon which hoary old spell to throw at them.
They screamed at me and threw rocks and occasionally feces, but they were pretty spooked by first the fire and then the attack. They huddled together on one edge of the pasture, trying to put their shields together in some kind of rough formation. I had just decided upon which spell to try out (a nasty one that turned blood into a kind of congealed jelly; it usually took at least four magi to do it) when the shaman finally stepped out.
I could tell who he was instantly by the sudden glow in my magesight, but his costume would have given him away. He wore a shaggy mountain goat cloak and a headdress made of feathers and bone and leather, and in his hand he held a staff. That staff almost stopped me.
It was a four foot long section of very straight wood about an inch and a half in diameter. The heel of the staff was shod with a sharp iron spike, which made it a dangerous mundane weapon, as well as a magical one. The head of the staff was a cage of iron enclosing . . .
Another chunk of irionite. Shit.
I should have suspected – and, in fact, I did, but being faced with another witchstone was daunting. At least this time I had some parity. I abandoned my previous spell and concentrated on dumping power into a hastily-created kabas. After my last encounter with a gurvani shaman, I wasn’t willing to pull any punches. Whatever he was going to try, I wanted to be ready to counter.
I didn’t expect him to try to argue with me.
The shaman lumbered forward, his staff held in one hand, unthreatening but undoubtedly at the ready. He came to the line of bodies I’d piled up, looked down at them, and then back up at me, his lip curled in a snarl.
“Mage-man!” he said in Narasi, the language of the men of the Five Duchies. I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been. I knew that the gurvani were capable of learning human speech, and I’d even seen one or two who had been taught it.
“Mage-man!” he repeated. “Leave this Valley now! The hakugurvani come to eat your brains if you don’t! Many, many gurvani! Many kanga stones! If you love life, run away, run away!” During this charming soliloquy the shaman had begun a kind of dance, hopping from one foot to the other. “Mage-man, run! Your bones will be gnawed by our young! Run, run, the Great Ghost comes for your soul, little man! He comes for revenge! He comes to take back what is ours!”
He ended his speech with a scream, which was echoed by the several hundred goblins at his back. Many were coughing in the choking smoke, but many more were dancing on their own, brandishing their swords and axes or thumping them on their shields in an effort to be intimidating.
I’m not ashamed to say that it almost worked. Here I was, alone (for the moment) against at least a couple of hundred screaming gurvani warriors. An impulse to kick Traveler into a gallop in the other direction seemed awfully tempting. I’d be a liar if I said otherwise.
But I stood fast, pride or honor or just plain cockiness kept me from flight. I stood fast and raised my own warstaff. With magesight I could see the symbols of the shaman’s magic awhirl around him, and across his troops – which explained why more of them weren’t choking to death in the smoke. The spells he had up were very basic defenses, from what I could tell – simple, but extremely strong. Any arrow or rock aimed for him would miss, any sword or mace would never land on his body. Nor was he vulnerable to regular warmagic. A casually tossed bolt would dissipate harmlessly around him, or, possibly, be reflected back on the caster. Which really was a shame, as the spell I had been planning on using would have been very impressive.
“Gurvani!” I screamed back. “You will die if you stay here. There are armies coming, armies that will drive you back into your dens in the high mountains! This Valley will be filled with gurvani skulls, and there will be no more young to gnaw my bones. You have attacked us, and we will strike back hard. Lay down your arms and return to your homes! Remember the great war, gurvani! Remember the fates of Grogror, gurvani, and the mighty shaman Sheruel!”
They started laughing. That wasn’t quite the effect I was hoping for.
I was even more confused now, but I was buying time, both for Koucey and Forondo to get set up for the charge and for a brilliant idea to come to me if they failed to do so. I was getting nervous, and the sight of a small army of hairy little bastards laughing at my most vicious threats wasn’t helping my nerves. The shaman stepped forward again and grinned unpleasantly.
“I am Ri-ken, Mage-man. I am shaman of the Yinka tribe, the Red Hand tribe. My ancestors fought yours in the Great War, and they died. They fought for their homes. Now many years have passed. It is time for you to fight for yours. It is the will of the gods.” He seemed pretty sure of himself.
By that time I thought Koucey was never going to come riding over the hill, and my brain was all out of subtle magics that would take down his defenses. So I improvised.
I gestured with my finger and the ground beneath Ri-ken was suddenly as soft as cotton. He sank calf deep into it, shrieking with surprise. In an instant he was about a foot shorter, and too surprised to do anything about it.
His defenses were still up, but his attention had wavered
. Just to be certain I sent a few bolts in his direction – they missed him completely, but zapped a few of the goblins behind him, much to the dismay of his troops. Frantically he began waving his arms in an effort to counter my spell, which allowed me a moment to knee Traveler forward.
In seconds we were in a quick trot, and the look on Ri-ken’s face was priceless as he realized that I was about to run over his hairy little ass. To tell the truth, I wasn’t certain that his protections protected him against that, but I wasn’t willing to risk a perfectly good horse to find out. The situation was just not that grim.
As I bore down on him he did about the only sensible thing that he could: he reversed the staff so that the sharp pointy thing was aimed at me. It was bravely done – had I really been trying to run him down, I would have probably impaled my horse on it just before my horse would have collapsed on top of Ri-ken. But that wasn’t what I was after.
As I neared the struggling little bastard, Slasher was in my hand and, with a war-cry I perfected in the jungles of Farise, I brought it up sharply against the body of the staff in an underhanded motion. The weapon leapt from the surprised gurvan’s hands and flew through the air, where my free hand caught it neatly. Traveler executed a neat turn around the flabbergasted witchdoctor and trotted safely back to where we started. The whole episode took about sixty seconds.
Ri-ken was irate, screaming for my blood in his own language. He didn’t have to translate – I knew what he was saying by the way his troopers suddenly grabbed their swords and started toward me. I held up the staff triumphantly and pointed at them, ready to blast the first one that crossed an imaginary line about thirty feet in front of me.
“Tell them that I’ll bake the first six that come any closer, and after that I’ll get nasty! Do it, Ri-ken! Do it!” I yelled. The shaman tried, but the troops didn’t respond, and like a black hairy tide they swept forward. I would need a more potent demonstration than a few bolts could generate, so I pointed my new warstaff and fired off an impressive ball of fire. That made them pause -- at least those who weren’t hit by the blast. I raised my staff at them again, and they watched it like a conductor’s baton.
“You who have wrecked Hymas, I call vengeance down on you!” I said, or something like that. I could already feel the rumbling. “You have all died for nothing! Here come the horse demons!”
Koucey had finally arrived.
Barreling down the hill like a shiny spear, the hundred or so horsemen I had been anticipating had finally arrived. The goblins noticed them, too, and halted their advance to turn and gawk at them. I had to admit, it was almost as impressive to witness a cavalry charge as it was to take part in one.
The slaughter took about ten minutes. Though the gurvani outnumbered the horsemen about three or four to one, they were demoralized and confused after being hit from behind twice in one day. They went down under the spears, swords, and hooves of the Black Flag like ripe grain under a scythe. I didn’t participate, although I helped Ancient Iric’s force keep any survivors from escaping. This was more massacre than war, and there were men better equipped to deal with it than I.
I watched Ri-ken, still buried up to his knees, get wounded with a spear. He looked at me with a terrible anger and shouted.
“He comes, Mage-Man! The Great Ghost comes to damn you all! He is coming!” Before he could utter another word some trooper lopped off his head.
When no more hairy bodies moved on the pasture, I rode through the carnage to meet a widely grinning Koucey and a Forondo who was having a hard time finding anything to be depressed about. We had three casualties, and only one fatality, it seems; a remarkable result of what could have been a nasty encounter.
“Have you espied any more, Spellmonger?” Koucey asked, not wasting any words. I shook my head, but looked up at the mountains.
“These were easy to spot, my lord. But the day is failing, and come nightfall I have no doubt that Hymas will crawl with their kin. We have struck a blow here today, but we will not save the town, I’m afraid. This band was over twice as big as the one that hit Minden Hall, and I’m afraid the next lot will be thrice this size. I would recommend that we police the area and return to the castle.”
“Very well,” nodded the Lord of Boval. “There is little left in town that cannot be replaced, though the cost will be dear. I must say that these mercenaries of yours performed admirably! My own men did a poorer job of attack than the Black Flag. You have a good eye for fighting men.”
Forondo blushed and stared at his saddle, and I have to admit that I felt the weight of Sire Koucey’s praise, myself. You have to understand that the professional mercenary is not often commended for his work. His employers hope that he will be killed before he is paid, and the civilians he comes into contact with are usually annoyed that their hard-earned taxes have gone to support him.
“Well, Lord, I can only hope that the barbarians will fare as well.”
Forondo nodded towards the rod I held in my hand.
“I see you have picked up a souvenir.”
“I thought it would look good in my new quarters. I was damned lucky the thing didn’t blow us all away. These goblins play with powerful toys, Sire. Mayhap next time we will not be so lucky.”
With a nod and a sigh Koucey oversaw the policing of the battlefield while I did my best to suppress the fire I’d started in the first place. Most of the “loot” we left there to burn, but the troopers took every iron mace, sword and axe they found. They could be reformed in the smithies of Boval for things we needed – like arming the peasant militia. Ancient Iric’s troops were detailed to collect heads, and when we set off for the castle there were over two hundred and fifty of the stinking things in sacks. By dusk they were all impaled on posts at the crossroads near Hymas. I doubt that they did any good as warnings, but I know that the sight of a victory, however small, heartened the peasants who saw them.
Dusk was fast approaching when we rode through the gatehouse and into the outer bailey, and as the last horse came through the iron portcullis and huge wooden doors were swung shut and bolted. The faces we passed were anxious, but relieved to see us. Koucey made a point of calling out by name to those of his folk that he recognized and engaging in spirited banter. My new liege was well-liked.
After handing Traveler over to the grooms I made my way back to my quarters, more tired than I thought I’d be. I shouldn’t have been surprised. While the magical power at my disposal was orders of magnitude above what I was used to, and came as easily as breathing, my brain was still the same old brain. The intellectual exhaustion that comes form indulging in too many spells in too short of time can have devastating effects, so I vowed to myself to watch it after I stumbled twice on the stairs.
Garkesku, I noticed was enjoying a roast chicken dinner that made a waterfall out of my mouth. It wasn’t standard castle rations, but I suppose he had a right to trade for extra food. He even offered me some, but I could feel his apprentices glaring at the back of my neck, so I politely declined, knowing that they would split the leftovers from their Master’s table. I briefed him on the little cavalry raid and relayed Ri-ken’s speech, and then excused myself, pleading exhaustion. I had taken the precaution of wrapping the gurvani warstaff in my saddle blanket before I came up to avoid his questions about it.
When I finally got my tired feet to drag me up yet another flight of stairs, I dropped the staff on my workbench, grabbed a loaf of hard bread and a sausage from the larder, and washed it down with well-watered wine. I needed my wits about me for this next bit, and while the thought of a big cup of sweet reward was tempting, I didn’t want to fall asleep while working with such powerful magics.
I cleaned myself up a little, took off my weapons harness, and generally puttered around the lab avoiding the thing on the workbench. When I couldn’t think of anything else that needed doing, I finally sat down, removed the blanket, and began my examination of the first gurvani magical weapon I’d ever seen.
For the reco
rd, the thing was exactly four feet, five and a half inches long from sharp pointy spike to elaborate head. The wood appeared to be some type of hardwood (Foke, probably – pretty common in the mountains) and had been carefully polished and sanded. The spike was just an ordinary hunk of iron. The staff head was made of bone and leather, and bound the stone tightly. The stone itself was around three quarters of an inch in diameter, although only a portion protruded from its housing.
The spells on the thing were powerful, of course, and almost completely unfamiliar to me.
That didn’t stop me. I was trained in Imperial style magic, which is a fairly well organized and systematic approach to the subject that has been refined constantly since the first Archmage began writing it down. My own ancestors had used a more individualistic, shamanic approach, not unlike what Zagor used. There were other schools, too, either derivative of the Imperial schools or crafted by individual traditions.
The Order of Avital, for instance, which is a Vorean clerical order devoted to the God of Magic (whom no one pays any attention to anymore, except the Avitalines), has a wacky but effective system that bears only a passing relation to the Imperial school. Then there are the Seamagi, the home-grown magi of the coasts who have taken a cultic interest in the Sea Folk and use a derivative of their magics as their own.
Of course, there are also the thousands of self-trained or apprenticed hedgewizards and village witches who have improvised a “system” that is loaded with superstition and mixed with folk religion. My teachers at the Academy used to sneer at them, good naturedly, condemning their beliefs while mining them for useful information. The Royal Censors hunted them like dogs.
The gurvani system of shamanic magic was, I assumed, a lot like my ancestors’. The symbols are different, of course, but one thing we learned in Thaumaturgy was that all magical systems are inherently similar. As I scanned the thing with magesight I could see at least four major spells whirling around the length of the stick, unfamiliar but not unknowable.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 01 - Spellmonger Page 21