The Spellmonger Series: Book 01 - Spellmonger

by Terry Mancour

  I nodded. “But have you seen them volley their fire?” I asked. He looked up, startled.

  “Why, no, milord, they’ve been a-sniping, but no volleys,” he agreed, after a moment’s thought. “Not much for ‘em to shoot at, yet . . .”

  “No, that’s not it. At Boval, they didn’t do it, either. Or only by accident. They’ve only used the bow for a few centuries, and mostly for hunting, at that.”

  “Aye, firing a bow in war is a whole different matter,” he agreed, sagely.

  “Let’s give them a lesson, then,” I decided. “Have your men and the archers from the Orphans take formation here, behind this line. From this angle, with the sun behind us, they’ll have a hard time seeing them in flight, so they’ll have a hard time keeping their shields up. I want you to prepare to instruct our foes in the art of volleying.”

  He saluted sharply, “Yes, milord! I suppose they should learn from the very best,” and hurried off, shouting orders, all business. His men responded quickly. In only moments the field began filling up with archers. I was impressed – I hadn’t gotten used to commanding like that yet. Well, I hadn’t gotten used to having people actually listen, yet. It was refreshing.

  I nudged Traveler over to the Orphan’s field camp and had Ancient Raric order a company of light infantry to screen the archers while they prepared. Then I sent a messenger to Captain Kaddel, the grizzled old veteran who led our mercenary medium horse, the Hellriders, and gave him orders. Then I settled a dispute between two companies of infantry over who should take which duty, and by the time I was done with that little squabble, there were nearly a thousand bored-looking archers standing around and waiting for orders

  Redshaft was waiting a little more patiently than his men, so I rode with him to the front of the formation and addressed them.

  “Good morning, ladies!” I began, sarcastically. There was a low chorus of chuckling from the old joke. “You see that knot of black-furred goblins between that rock, and that hill?” There was a sea of nods and mutters of agreement. “If you ladies would be so kind, I’d like to see that entire area covered with arrows. I mean covered: I don’t want to see the grass. Or anything moving on it. At least six or seven volleys. Is that understood?”

  There were some lusty cries of agreement, and I grinned. Usually archers are excess baggage on a campaign until they’re really needed, then they’re indispensable – but poorly used. More often, the thick-headed gentry reserve all the fun jobs for themselves and the cavalry, to win themselves greater fame and honor and glory and whatever else it is that knights like to eat. First blood was an unexpected treat for the Nirodi. And the first test of my abilities as a field commander.

  Because I wasn’t a knight. I was a spellmonger and a warmage, and neither of those jobs usually led to military command. I’d overseen troops before, at Boval Castle, but those were scared peasants fighting for their lives. This was my first time commanding a battle with professional troops in this big in open country. I was willing to part with the opportunity to die gloriously in a cavalry charge to keep from spoiling it.

  As the men got into formation under the shouts of the ancients and the corporals, I was about to relax in the saddle and watch . . . when my bladder once again reminded me of more pressing business.

  This time I didn’t hesitate – this was the first spare moment I’d had in hours. I slid ungracefully from Traveler’s back with a noisy thud, and took two steps forward while I frantically un-fastened my pretty new borrowed armor. Three straps, five buckles, then the gambeson and underclothes – it was a trial, and I’m sure it was amusing to watch. I just barely made it, coating a nearby rock with a powerful stream and issuing a sigh of relief as the first volley went off, five hundred bowstrings singing in near-unison, and the resulting whoosh of flight. Then the other half of the troop let fly.

  By the time I was done pissing and fastening up my armor, they were on their third volley, and I was strolling back to my horse, able to think clearly again. Getting back on a horse while in armor – unassisted – was no easy task, and I sheepishly used my witchstone to help me, hoping no one saw me do it.

  When I was able to survey the carnage from horseback, I was even more impressed with the archers. Under magesight the make-shift gurvani redoubt was a mess. The little hollow they’d hidden in was only a hundred yards wide, and the whole area was covered in arrows, blood, and snarling, dying, little black bodies. It was a lot worse than a similar attack on human warriors. The goblins wore little armor, and their shields had been nearly useless.

  They sometimes carried small leather bucklers, used in hand-to-hand duels or melee combat, strong enough to deflect one of those little iron-headed clubs they traditionally use. But there were only a few of them among them and they were ineffective against a three-foot long composite arrow with a five inch long steel head, propelled by a seventy-pound bow operated by a man who got paid to do nothing but practice archery every day.

  As I watched the fourth volley sing into the air I could hear the moans of despair from the surviving gurvani even at this distance. Some were wise enough to seek cover, up against the boulder or under the corpses of their comrades, but most of them just stood there, their arms over their heads, peering blindly into the sunlight and awaiting death.

  Four volleys meant two thousand arrows peppered that little hollow. At least a quarter of them had hit their mark, they were so densely packed, and by my rough estimate there were only maybe two hundred goblins who had escaped injury. I counted them silently as they scurried between volleys to rally the troops. The archers were preparing for a fifth volley when I felt the wind pick up from the west . . . and a tingle in the back of my mind that suggested that someone else was casting a spell.

  There are only a few magical things you can do when you’re receiving fire with no way to shoot back. The gurvani shaman had hit upon one he could actually use. Witching the weather is no great feat, once you know what you’re doing, and even weak magi can manage to tug on the elemental forces of nature to raise a breeze.

  A really good one could manage to raise a real air elemental (think of it as a big piece of angry air that feels really good about itself). There were Seamagi who specialized in weather magic, although the official rule-of-thumb among us classically-trained magi was to leave the weather alone – affecting it is one thing, controlling it is quite another.

  But a hefty breeze running across your field of fire is going to mess up your accuracy a bit. The fifth volley saw some arrows go astray while high in the air, but enough of them landed where they were aimed to continue the decimation. Had he been fending off only a few archers, that would have been far more effective – but when you’re facing massed fire, it’s like trying to divert the rain. The wind might move it around, but you’re still going to get wet.

  But I couldn’t let the shaman stop us. “Cease fire,” I called to Captain Rogo, and he nodded. He gave the command and the men all went at ease as one. No use wasting arrows.

  With magesight I could see the addition of another thousand arrows hadn’t improved the gurvani’s situation. But there were still some stirrings of life, as the surviving war leaders tried once again to rally the decimated raiders with screams and shouts and singing – and gurvani singing is rough.

  When they didn’t hear another volley right away, they saw it as a sign of progress and began cheering. It took them a little while – about five minutes, but they finally got a little less than a hundred relatively-hardy goblins together, where they screamed at us and waved their weapons around defiantly amidst the stacked corpses of their comrades.

  They surrounded one leader in particular, a tall (that is, almost five feet) muscular gurvan chieftain who bore a wooden round shield, a thick-hafted axe, and an over-large steel cap all looted from some human stronghold. He had decorated them all with gurvani glyphs to obscure the human markings, so he looked more than a little odd. As I watched he started chanting something in his folk’s guttural language
that got them all singing loudly. Before long, those who weren’t screaming, moaning or dying were chanting defiantly in unison. It was horrible.

  Apparently they thought that their shaman’s magic had prevented any more deadly arrows from falling from the sky. Their chanting grew more regular and rhythmic, and a few had recovered enough from the attack to pick up bows or javelins or slings and ineffectively launch a few back toward our lines.

  Then a fresh group appeared from the south, out of the forest – that had to be the shaman and his guards. At his appearance the goblin chanting turned into a savage cheering – help had arrived!

  I searched him vigorously with magesight to confirm my suspicions: he was indeed a country bumpkin shaman, not one of the elite acolytes of the Dead God. I could see the idiot, wearing a dirty white sash and elaborate wicker headdress, strutting around the field with his bodyguard stirring up the few survivors’ morale.

  He was quite the showman, doing a mad little dance that elicited howls from his fellows. Then the chieftain gave an impassioned speech that got them roused up again, too. They were all congregating in the center of the valley preparing, no doubt, to receive our charge. After all, they knew enough about human warfare to know that after the archers are done volleying, that meant that the big nasty horses would come down on them next. But I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Not when the Nirodi hadn’t finished with their fun.

  “Captain Rogo, please inform the men that I will pay five ounces of gold to the owner of the arrow that ends the life of that cocky little fellow in the colorful hat, out there. And a couple of bottles of wine, too. Prepare the next volley.”

  “Oh, yes, Marshal!” he grinned wickedly. “You heard the Spellmonger! Five big and two bottles to the man whose mark takes that hat! Archers ready!” he shouted, as the Orphans suddenly had a reason to compete with their Nirodi comrades. I felt extravagant and lordly – five ounces of gold is the equivalent of five years of taxes for most peasant families. I had a war chest full of it.

  While I waited and watched the goblins continued to work themselves into a frenzy of defiance, their shaman at the center/ Then all one-thousand bowstrings of my men twanged at once. For a brief moment there was a storm cloud of wood and steel that obscured the sky. Nor did my men wait for their arrows to land before they had launched again – everyone wanted that money. And the wine. I’d barely let them have a beer ration in the last three weeks as we’d made fast time across country – those boys were thirsty.

  When I finally ordered them to stop, and ordered the light infantry in front of them to slowly advance, there wasn’t much left of the gurvani band at all. ,A deadly thicket of arrows grew thick as weeds on the field watered by blood. We’d be able to glean most of those back up, too. The few survivors left among the bodies tried to put up a fight, but my men swept through and slaughtered the lot of them. There was no quarter in this war. Not if we ever wanted to win.

  One of the Hellriders’ messengers rode back to me ten minutes later, informing me that of all the enemy that remained, only nine had not been killed or injured permanently, and those nine were being bound to be sent to me later for disposition. The shaman, of course, was dead, he reported, and presented me with the arrow he’d determined killed him, so I could note the archer by his chop for his reward. Then the messenger looked around and cautiously opened a grimy rag, revealing a dazzling green gem.

  I’d cautioned them all about even touching any witchstones they came across on this campaign on the very first night of my command. Unless they were properly cleansed of the Dead God’s influence, they were dangerous even to seasoned magi. If a regular human without Talent touched one, it could produce a strong psychic shock that would make them unconscious, in shock, or even kill them outright.

  The scouts had wisely recovered the shard without touching it. With trembling hands, the young man handed me the treasure. If five ounces of gold could buy his family five times over, then this stone could buy his barony five times over – if anyone would consider selling such a thing. I absently tossed him an ounce of gold as a reward, and sighed as I stared at the pretty thing.

  This one was like most I’d seen, a rough-shaped stone with a flattish surface on one side where it had been cleanly hewn from a larger piece. A year ago, I would have said that it wouldn’t be possible to have a witchstone big enough to cut, but a year ago I thought I’d have more love spells in my future than war spells. Each of these witchstones had been pared away from the massive sphere that contained the Dead God’s mysterious head – which explained their tightly-bound connection to him.

  I took out my own stone from the worn silk bag around my neck and stared at it a moment. It had started out life like this one, uneven and rough, but a king of the Tree Folk had smoothed it and removed the taint of the Dead God. And any other stone that remained in contact with the sphere for a day would likewise be severed from the Dead God’s influence. Indeed, that was the only known way known to free one.

  I slid the new stone into the bag with the others surrounding my sphere and felt them all pulsing in ways that only I could feel. There was always a bit of a rush when I did that – having access to power from all of those stones was an intoxicating experience, until you learned how to handle it. But it was necessary, if we’re going to win this war. Only by arming warmagi with witchstones could we hope to match the shamans in the field.

  How we were to match Sheruel face to face . . . well, I was still working on that.

  “What shall we do with the bodies, milord?” the messenger asked. I’d forgotten he was there in my reverie over the stones.

  “Strip them, behead them, and burn them. Distribute any loot among the men, and destroy any weapons you can. Then put half of the heads on spikes in a circle around the ashes of the pyre. The rest will be sent back east, to the Duke, as proof of our mission.” The prisoners, too, would be sent back under guard as token of our success. I would have to write a dispatch along with the heads – if Bold Asgus, captain of the Orphan’s Band, hadn’t already written one for me. He was an experienced old commander who took such things as dispatches and mercenary contracts and prisoners of war in stride.

  We couldn’t stay in Grimly Wood long, though. This was just our warm-up before the real fight. The countryside was filled with bands like this from here on out, according to my scrying. We were pushing forward to the next large castle in the district. That was the Barony of Green Hill, where we were supposed to be picking up another thousand cavalry and whatever additional infantry we could.

  But in the meantime, Archers were one area where we would be superior to the gurvani for some time, if not forever. Those stubby little arms just can’t draw the massive bows our people used in war, and if they couldn’t manage to fire in volley, they were almost useless.

  While the men were policing the battlefield and dispatching the wounded, I rode back to my tent, handed Traveler’s reigns to a stableboy, and let my manservant, Hamlan, strip off my armor for me. I felt foolish for donning all of that armor and then not using it. I hadn’t charged. I hadn’t thrown a single blow. I hadn’t been in danger from javelins or spears. I hadn’t even cast any meaningful spells – I’d just suckered an ignorant foe enough to kill him.. Now the late summer heat on the hot metal and leather, not to mention the sheer weight of it all, had me soaked in sweat.

  “How went the battle, Captain?” Ham asked me, cheerfully.

  “I’m here. I’m alive,” I pointed out.

  “Which would suggest a positive outcome. Congratulations. Lift your arm, please . . .”

  “Thank you,” I acknowledged. “An utter rout. Although it’s hardly one for the annals.”

  “There seemed to be enough of them, Master. Hundreds. And you say there are thousands?” he asked. His jovial expression was there, but his voice was nervous.

  “Hundreds of thousands, from here to the Mindens. We’ll see far more action after Green Hill, mark my words,” I promised.

  “And it so
unded like such a pleasant place,” he sighed as he pulled off my breastplate. It was “light”, meaning it was only about fifteen pounds instead of the thirty-pound plate monstrosities most jousting knights used. In an instant I felt like I shed a dozen pounds in sweat, on top of the weight of the armor, and felt instantly cooler. Almost without thinking, I summoned a bit of breeze to encourage that. I was doing more and more of that, lately, I noticed. Using magic for little things, almost unconsciously.

  “Dispatches came while you were at battle, Master,” he reported when he’d stowed the armor away. “Rider came in while you were directing the battle. They’re in your tent on your desk.”

  I had resented having a desk in the field – but I was a commander now, not just a flunky in the magical corps. His Grace had insisted and I had complied. I wish I had resisted more strongly. For the last three weeks as we crossed Alshar, I swear I spent more time with my traveling desk and a mountain of paperwork than scrying the route ahead or planning our strategy.

  “Who is it now?” I asked. “Another plea from Duke Lenguin to stop my foolishness and come protect him and his crappy little town from the big bad goblins?” The Duke of Alshar had responded to the invasion by insisting he’d defend the northern capital of Vorone to the last man. Only he was short on men, and he wanted mine. I’d politely refused his request twice already but Dukes are not used to being told “no.” And I was, technically, under his command, for all the Castali were paying for the mercenaries. I was using that bit of legal ambiguity to keep him at bay, but he was getting impatient.