The Spellmonger Series: Book 01 - Spellmonger

by Terry Mancour

  The next morning, after I thoroughly scanned the area for hidden traps, we lowered a dozen men down from the walls on ropes and they undid much of the filling. The bundles of sticks we hauled up to be dried and used for firewood. The bodies of the goblins were looted for iron and decapitated, their heads used for the traditional purpose. We also got back most of our arrows.

  It went like that for another week. At night the gurvani would try to chew through our defenses, and during the day we would undo most of the work that they had done. We were holding our own and trying to defend against the inevitable ennui.

  But their army kept growing.

  Every day another troop would arrive and camp in a line that was rapidly becoming a circle around the castle. And these new troops were better trained than their brethren, marching in columns and using man-weapons. Among the new groups was a company or so of archers, which made our defenses a little more costly. While the gurvani bows were shorter, they also seemed to be stronger in weight, so that their average bowshot was just under ours. Of course, we had a height advantage that they didn’t, but they were figuring things out a lot quicker than I expected, and that had me worried. Clearing the moat became a little more dangerous for us, but the supplies of soggy firewood continued to be gathered every morning.

  Scrying their camp was becoming more difficult, even with the model. Their shamans had started putting up shields that obstructed the view of a meadow just beyond the regular gurvani camps, so I figured the likelihood of there being something nasty brewing was high. The gurvani shields were too tough for me to remove by brute force – directly contesting a spell with a mage that has a chunk of irionite is hard, even if you have your own chunk. It seemed that the two were taking it in turns maintaining the shield. They were also taking countermeasures against Garkesku’s inspired annoyance spells, which meant that their troops were in a much better mood.

  As far as getting any more messages out, that wouldn’t happen, either. I don’t know how they did it, but I could no longer access the Otherworld. That disturbed me.

  The lack of intelligence was also bothering me. In our daily Council of War, in Koucey’s office, we kicked around ideas about how to cure it. To be honest, most of the regular military leaders were quite content just to sit back and wait for the gurvani to try to break the siege and then die gallantly defending the castle. But I wasn’t. Koucey, who was aging a year for every day that passed, agreed with me, and authorized a reconnaissance action.

  So on Day Fifteen I led a small raiding party over the walls at noon – while the goblins were able to fight under the overcast skies, they still disliked the brightness of the noon sun peaking through. I chose twenty Crinroc for my band, led by Furtak, and we conducted a raid of our own.

  The barbarians had painted themselves various mottled shades of green, blue and gray, and added some green leafy foliage to help disguise themselves. I added a Glyph of Un-noticability to each one, just in case. You often hear in old stories about how the spies of the Magocracy used invisibility spells to slip by enemy lines, but this is crap. Invisibility is a terribly complicated spell – it involves bending light, which means harnessing truly titanic forces, and doesn’t protect against any sounds you might make.

  Un-noticability, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward. After all, the key to sneakiness is not to not be seen, it is to not be noticed – a small but important distinction. The Glyph I used was a War College standard and, therefore, probably unknown to the gurvani. It works on the minds of your foes and simply causes them not to pay attention to that barbarian sneaking through the shrubbery. To that end it actually worked better than any invisibility spell. I mean, see them or not, you could still smell them.

  So my merry little band of raiders and I snuck through the outer defenses of the camp – which were lax even by gurvani standards. I was surprised how adept the Crinroc were at this type of operation; the warriors made nary a sound as they moved.

  The ground was littered with thousands of goblins sleeping with their hairy cloaks thrown over their faces. There were tents here and there, woven mountain hemp, but they seemed to be to be designed more for protecting equipment and supplies than housing troops. Several times I had to step over a goblin to keep going, and on two hair-raising occasions my boot slipped and I accidentally kicked one. Each time the gurvan in question snorted and rolled over, oblivious to our presence.

  We weren't there to start trouble. We were there to gather information.

  I had my barbarian band hide in the brush while I crept into the center of their camp, to the slightly more ornate tent that I guessed (correctly) was the headquarters of the besieging general and his staff. I found a comfortable spot behind a barrel of that nasty beer and started taking notes.

  An hour later I crept back to my barbarians. I was shaking.

  We made it back to Boval Castle without incident, and I had three glasses of wine before reporting to the War Council.

  "I had a hard time understanding them, but of this there is no doubt: there are no less than sixteen shamans, now, all armed with witchstones," I said, quietly. "There are thousands more goblins coming, and each wave seems better armed than the last. They are building a new collection of siege engines: catapults thrice as large as the Pumpkin Thrower, battering rams, and at least four siege towers. We may have as long as four days, probably three, before they make a serious advance."

  Sir Olvey, one of Koucey's pet knights, stood up and made an impassioned speech about dying valiantly in defense – very poetic, but unproductive. Ideas about how not to die valiantly were tossed around, but there didn't seem to be any clear answer. I went to bed and tried to catch some sleep before the inevitable nocturnal skirmish.

  * * *

  The attacks became more intense each night. We repelled them easily enough, but we started to lose men, men who couldn't be replaced. I did my part by illuminating the areas under attack so that our archers could see their targets, and occasionally took a turn on the battlements with my warstaff, as did the rest of the "magical corps."

  Four nights after I had made my daring foray, the siege engines started inching their way toward the walls, surrounded by a sea of black furry faces. Stones were flung at our walls at far greater velocities than the "pumpkin thrower" had been capable of. For the most part they did little against the strong walls of the keep, but occasionally they would land in the Outer Bailey and hurt some of the peasants. The civilians soon learned which areas of the bailey were dangerous and which were effectively shielded by the walls.

  The catapults and ballistae didn't worry me, much. Every now and then they would lob a pumpkin full of flaming oil into the castle, but our anti-arson spells and vigorous fire prevention program made this more of a bother than a threat. What worried me were the five siege towers that loomed like newly-made mountains in the distance – mountains that were approaching at the rate of twenty yards an hour.

  The major advantage of a castle in a siege is the fact that the defenders have this whopping big wall to throw stuff from. It gets pretty discouraging to the attackers if they get a rain of rocks on their heads every time they charge the gates. Ladders can be employed to climb the walls, but seeing as how easy it is for one or two burly infantrymen to push the top of the ladders over with the poles that were scattered across the battlements for just such a purpose, the gurvani had stopped that foolishness quickly enough.

  Siege towers are made for getting around that problem. Basically, they are large wooden towers on wheels or rollers that can be pushed up against the wall of a castle. Once in position, they drop a plank or bridge over the battlements, effectively eliminating the height advantage of the defenders.

  These were worse than normal towers though, I saw, as each one had at least one or two shamans in their peaks. I saw them by magesight, and could feel their witchstones in my bones. Once their shock troops took a section of battlement they would be free to lay about them with bolt after bolt of destructive magi
c. Those towers had to be stopped, somehow.

  We tried shooting fire arrows at them, to no avail. The goblins had been smart enough to cover the exteriors with wet hides and blankets. We tried shooting them with rocks from our ballistae, but the mass of the stones just wasn't enough to do much damage. Our archers concentrated their fire on those that pulled the towers into place. While fun, it was futile, as they had plenty of others to replace the fallen. The towers were well-protected magically, as I found out after wasting several shock bolts and fire bolts and such on them. All of our attempts to smash the menacing structures were in vain.

  They kept coming. Like a dagger being slowly drawn across our collective throats, they inched forward. We prepared as good a defense as possible, but we all knew what our chances were if even one of those towers made it. One breach would be all it would take.

  I paced the top of my tower, staring out at the glacial progress of our foes, and tried to think of a plan while the civilians prepared for the assault below me. The possibility of dropping really heavy rocks on them had occurred to me. With the two witchstones I had, I could probably lift a boulder magically for a while. The problem was that it would take most of my power and all my concentration, leaving me wide open for a counterattack. I couldn't take that chance, not when I wasn't sure of the outcome. I could also summon a nasty storm – weather magic is fairly easy, but very dangerous and harmful to Nature – but that would only delay them, and make life for our folk miserable as well. Besides, the dark clouds that hid the sun from us for so many days were clearly under their control.

  The answer came to me while I was showing Tyndal how to strap on his new sword over his shoulder, fixing each knot with a cantrip to keep it from slipping – which could prove annoying and deadly in battle. It hit me suddenly.

  Of course!

  * * *

  Things were better after we arrived in Farise, proper. After the jungle and the mountains, we would have fought with our lives just for a clean bath and a hot meal. We attacked the Doge’s storehouses, great brick fortresses full of food, set back away from the port where attack was expected, and gorged ourselves.

  After three days of rest and pillage we struck in a highly coordinated attack with the fleet. Caught between the two forces, even the Mad Mage’s witchstone wasn’t enough to keep us outside of the city walls. There were the usual lucky turns of events which contribute to a successful assault – enemy stupidity (happens in every military organization), random factors falling in our favor – helped our cause tremendously when their heavily-bribed commander led them against their former employers. The Mad Mage and his patron could only look on impotently while one half of their army attacked the other half. The battle and subsequent looting was ugly.

  Still, it was bloody. The Doge’s troops were mostly pirate marines, infantry-on-boats, and they were tough. The city watch was likewise tough, and toward the end civilians were picking up arms to defend themselves as the battle de-evolved into house-to-house fighting. I don’t like making war on civilians, but if a man has a spear in his hand, he just joined the army, and I didn’t hesitate to cut him down or blast him into bits. For three solid days we fought without rest. My little group was responsible for capturing a good third of the city before the naval forces were able to overcome, with heavy losses, the port fortifications and take another third

  By the third day of fighting we controlled the waterfront, the town, and the farms and plantations around the city. The only thing we didn’t control was the Doge’s palace, where the Mad Mage had his tower and a thousand loyal crack troops. Our surprise attack suddenly turned into a siege. While this concerned the War Marshal and his staff greatly, we grunts didn’t care. We were pillaging.

  We rested (and systematically sacked the city) while our fearless leaders argued about strategy and tactics and politics. The looting was amazing. We took everything of value, and there was plenty. Antiques from Imperial times, gold, silver, brass, silks, fine wines, tapestries, everything. Farise was a stronghold of pirates and merchant princes, and the only poor people were the slaves (many of whom turned on their masters and welcomed us as liberators). I did my share of looting myself, and even acquired a stylish residence when the previous occupant got himself killed defending it. When things settled down, about a week after the attack, three other warmagi and I moved in and caught up on our sleep while the Generals tried to figure out how to smoke the Doge out of his home.

  Every few days the Mage would unleash some new horror on us from his tower, we would defeat it, and everyone would rest for a few days. Then we would try an attack and he would beat it off with that damned witchstone of his. Then everyone would rest for a few days. One night I woke up to find the streets crawling with soldiers who had already been killed once. The Mad Mage had animated the dead and threw them at us to keep us busy. It was horrifying to fight the living dead, especially if you encountered someone you once knew and for whom you had grieved. The surprise attack took us another three days to put down, and a special meeting of the Magical Corps was called to prevent similar spells.

  Three days after that, a mysterious plague broke out among the portside infantry. That took us another week to cure, and we lost almost a thousand to it – almost as many as we had in the invasion proper. The week after, nothing wooden could come within bowshot of the Citadel without bursting into flame. We lost several siege engines that way, and not a few engineers. This went on for a month and a half. When a black mist that seemed alive crept out of the Citadel to suffocate all who came within it, the War Marshal had had enough.

  Finally, the Wenshari Warmage, Master Loiko Venaren, worked out a way to assault the tower without slaughtering a thousand of our men in the process. I won’t go into detail about the attack here – perhaps later – but the Magical Corps played a large role in the battle. That final battle was the greatest assembled collection of warmagi since the fall of the Magocracy. Some of the finest magical warriors of my generation fought the Battle of the Doge’s Tower.

  A special force from Group B had assassinated the Doge once they broke into the palace, and the combined might of close to two dozen warmagi finally contained the death-dealing Mad Mage. We got the doors of the Citadel open and a flood of infantry came through to mop up the survivors.

  The next morning, to the cheers of his troops, the War Marshal made his triumphant entrance into the castle on a white horse borrowed for the occasion. The banner of Farise was struck and the ensigns of Alshar and Castal were raised. The last vestige of the Imperial Magocracy was conquered.

  Oh, sure, we had a minor guerilla war to contend with (at least five thousand Farisian troops had escaped into the jungle) but we held the city. Only two-thirds of us survived, but at the end of the battle it was the Mad Mage’s head that was stuck on a pike, and the Doge’s keep a smoking ruin behind it.

  The Battle of the Doge’s Tower revealed what a witchstone could do up close, in the heat of battle, and it was terrifying. The Mad Mage flung power around like a child throws a new ball, converting it into a hundred deadly forces that struck our men. The spells he worked that night were potent enough to have burned out the brains of any normal mage foolish enough to try them. There was little pattern to the way he did it – they called him the Mad Mage for a reason, after all – so finding adequate defensive spells was more a matter of luck than skill. By contrast, he batted away our attacks as though we were flies.

  In the end it was a crack squad of nearly invincible veteran warmagi who penetrated his defenses and defeated him after a lengthy and deadly combat.

  The stuff of legends . . .

  * * *

  The best battle magics, my instructors at the War College used to say, are the little, subtle ones that your enemy doesn't see coming. I talked it over with my apprentice for a while, ran it passed Garkesku, and ran a simulation on the model in my quarters. Once I had come up with a fully developed plan, I presented it to the War Council and Sire Koucey. They loved it and, despit
e some misgivings about their role in it, they agreed.

  The next morning two of the towers were within bowshot of the castle, and the other three were not. The bulk of the gurvani infantry had retired to their shady hollows to rest up for the big battle the next evening, leaving only a skeleton force to guard the towers, catapults, and ballistae that were still being moved by the day shift. By skeleton force, I meant about nine thousand gurvani warriors – more than we could handle – but it also meant ten thousand or so less than we would face that night.

  I called my magical corps to the top battlement of the main gate, which looked like the most centralized position facing the foe. I had the archers keep up some harassing fire, and they were doing pretty well, considering that most of them had only been shooting seriously for the last few weeks. Garkesku, his apprentices and Tyndal gathered around me on the battlements as I explained the spell, telling out parts to each.

  To Garkesku I gave responsibility for our defense. He would do his best to deflect or absorb incoming magics, which shouldn't be too much of a problem until we were well into the spell. Once the shamans realized we were gathering a great working they would throw everything but my Aunt Bebe's butter churn at us to stop us.

  This was something else Garkesku was pretty good at; once I'd taught him a few simple defensive spells he'd become very proficient in their use. He didn't even challenge my authority on the matter. I guess he was as scared as anyone else in the castle.

  To Tyndal I gave the responsibility for masking what we were up to. He would play with the elemental chords, disguising our true spell behind a tapestry of interesting but misleading signals. Nothing elaborate – just enough "hints" of spell elements to make them think we were hiding something big behind a veil.