We looked at them, each of us brimming over with despair. “We are beyond fucked,” I said. “The Arcanum army will not be coming to save us. They will be lucky to save themselves.”
I told them everything he had relayed, and all that I knew of the Scarrabus.
We slumped there, threatening to cry for some time. “Then we fight,” Eva said, finally.
We looked up in surprise. “What else can we do? If we fight, we die; if we flee, we die. At least if we fight we have a chance. The Free Towns Alliance is three days away. We can hold for three days, and then their numbers will turn the tide.”
“What of the elder magus and the two ravak?” Vincent cried. “How can we hope to prevail against that?”
She shrugged, steel scraping. “Maybe we can’t. Maybe all we can do is buy Setharis and the Arcanum some extra time, and pray that will be enough for our legions in the Thousand Kingdoms to cross stormy winter seas and arrive in time to reinforce the city’s defences. What I do know is that if we stand back and let them wander right on through, then our world falls here and now.”
“A maybe is better than nothing,” I said. “We have jumped into worse with less hope.”
“And look at the price that was paid,” Vincent cried, nodding to Eva.
She stiffened. “What was paid is not regretted. I would suffer it all over again to save thousands of innocents.”
Her honour and iron will stiffened my own spine. “We fight.” “This is suicide,” Vincent said, shaking his head and edging towards the door of the tent. “Granville is already dead and I will have no further part in this madness. I am heading home.”
“Sit down, lad,” Cormac said. “You are better than this.” “Die if you want,” he spat. “Fools.” He moved to leave, then gasped as I speared into his mind. It was a morass of panic, his defences pitiful and disorganised. I felt sad doing it because I agreed with him, it was suicide, and half a year ago I would already be several hills over fleeing as fast as I could. “Stay,” I said.
He choked and turned back to us. “Walker,” Eva snarled. “Don’t you–”
Bryden cut her off. “Walker is right. If he won’t fight then he must be forced. We have all sacrificed enough over the last few months and we will again. This is what it means to be a magus. We protect the weak and ignorant against the perils of blood sorcery. Is… is that not right?” He faltered and looked to Cormac.
The red-bearded magus stroked his chin and grimaced. “Needs must.”
“This is not right,” Secca protested. “You cannot simply enslave him and force him to do your bidding.”
I sighed. “Would you sacrifice everything in exchange for one coward’s free will, Secca?”
Her mouth opened and closed, then her head drooped to look at the ground.
“When he wakes, say nothing of this to him.” I twisted his thoughts and memory around and constructed a new course of action. He was a weak man who envied the brave and the strong and bitterly wished he was built of stronger stuff. Well now was his chance. I set that urge in place and heightened it to a burning desire. He would become the hero he always wished to be.
Vincent blinked and then turned to me, eyes full of deep sincerity. “You have indeed jumped into certain death on less before. That was a truly heroic deed and I aspire to nothing less than that. We fight to the last.”
His brows fell as the rest stared at him. “Let’s fuck these bastards up,” I said. “We need only hold for three days,” Cormac reminded Vincent. “Then we will be reinforced by more Gifted and thousands of warriors.”
Secca laid a queasy, disturbed look on me. “We fight.” “We are agreed,” Eva said.
CHAPTER 27
I stepped back and let Eva lead the interrogation of the prisoner. She winnowed all the necessary military details from him and it was apparent that even with all my recently stolen knowledge I still boasted only a pale shade of her skills. She gathered information on the types of forces we would face, their morale, and details on the halrúna and daemons that came with them before formulating a plan. She was not happy that among the halrúna opposing us was a noted geomancer.
“This complicates things,” she mused. “We collapsed what rock we could while fleeing the elder tyrant, and with any other army this would bottle them up for days, weeks even. With a geomancer of such skill they will be able to clear the paths ahead and reach us before the Free Towns Alliance army do. With their advantage in numbers they will overwhelm us and then destroy our allies piecemeal.”
“We could hole up and fortify Kil Noth?” Cormac suggested. “They cracked Dun Bhailiol open like a rotten egg, using elder magic and what I can only assume are alchemic bombs,” Eva replied, nodding to me. “I see no reason to think that Kil Noth would not suffer the same fate.”
“It is to be a pitched battle then?” Vincent asked. “That would be the last resort,” she advised. “If the spirits are able to keep the elder tyrant at bay then I want to hit the enemy hard and fast and fade into the mist before their magic and bows can turn on us. They must be made to fear every step and cringe at every shadow. We can only slow them, not defeat them.”
Vincent pursed his lips. “What about wards? I am, dare I say, quite the prodigy in that field. Given a day or two I could create quite a number of crude wardings containing flame that will explode if trod upon with any force.”
I smiled at Eva. “You did say you wanted them to fear every step. I have some experience there too.”
“Do it,” Eva commanded. “Both of you see to that while we figure out how best to use our other skills.” She was the most skilled and knowledgeable among us so she took the lead, as it should always have been – the best thing I could do as a leader was to take a step back.
“What of the prisoner?” Secca asked. “He fights for us now,” I advised, reaching in to influence him. “He will be on the front lines when we face them. See that he’s armed.”
Secca looked sick and the others were none too happy about it, but said nothing – we needed all the numbers we could get.
Vincent and I left them to it, retreating to the rocky northern edge of the camp to find suitable material for creating wards. I sighed in relief as we left that tightly packed morass of humanity behind us. Even a little distance between us reduced the pressure inside my head to a dull roar. I’d been trying to mute them but my Gift was cracked and I couldn’t keep them out for long. So many churning emotions and nervous thought that sometimes I feared it would wash me away entirely.
The wind picked up, its chill nipping at my nose and ears until I pulled up my fur hood. Distant thunder rumbled across the valley. Not so far to the north, the mountains were obscured by a heavy blizzard, black clouds boiled and lightning flashed. The spirits of the Clanholds were angry and venting it on Abrax-Masud. I hoped that his metal crown called all the lightning down on his head, but suspected that would not be enough to destroy an elder magus, never mind whatever else he was now as the host of the Scarrabus queen.
We made our way to a scree slope and examined the material we had to work with. “What do you think?” I asked Vincent.
The pyromancer scowled and picked up a wedge of sandstone. Flames licked around it and it crumbled. “Not terribly impressive. We need harder rock, something that can withstand the heat and magic I pour into it.”
We continued along the bottom of the cliff, eyes scouring stone and patches of ice until Vincent crouched next to a large deposit of granite that had tiny quartz crystals sparkling in the light. He picked up a flat sliver of stone the size of his palm and examined it carefully, flames licking his fingers. “Now this I can work with.
A perfect size and density with a face ideal for carving, but thin enough to break if stepped on.” He looked around the boulder and sighed. “If only we had more like it.”
Dissever’s hilt crawled into my hand, leaving little pinpricks of blood behind. It wanted to be used.
I examined an edge that could slice through steel l
ike rank cheese. Then I cut off a thin slice of granite and held it out to Vincent.
He stared at me for a moment and then took it to examine the smooth flat face. “It would seem that we have more than enough material. May I use your weapon to carve the wardings?”
Dissever liked that idea.
I drew it back. “Er, that would not be wise, not if you want to keep your hands.” The weapon grumbled its disappointment into the back of my mind. “I’ll do it. Wards were the one thing in the Collegiate that I was fairly decent at.”
It was stupidly quick and easy for me to cut basic capture-and-release warding glyphs into the granite, but back as an initiate many had failed to even grasp this much of the art of warding. They were physical frameworks built to contain simple single weaves of magic until the ward was broken and it released its contents. In our case that meant Vincent’s pyromancy would explode beneath the unfortunate bastards that stepped on it.
Something I would have spent hours on as an initiate with hammer and chisel took me no time at all with Dissever, if I was being careful. I think perhaps I should have gone into stonemasonry instead of dabbling in magery. I did two dozen of the things in quick succession before Vincent put a hand on my shoulder. “Just how quickly do you think I can construct and embed the weaves into the glyphs?”
I grinned. “Who says these are all for you? Just imagine the fun I’m going to have with those bastards.”
He flinched, contemplated wiping his hand on his cloak, but thought better of offending me. I let him get on with his warding while I pondered preparing my own. Hmm, choices choices: I knew enough aeromancy now to cause some serious slashes to exposed legs, but that was weak compared to what Vincent could achieve. I could instil fear, but that would wear off and they would be back. Much more effective to go for blind rage and panic. But what to anchor the emotion to…?
I started with my own pain. I had plenty of that to go around. I found those old feelings of being a half-starved street rat cornered by a much older boy, his fists cracking into my belly and face, again and again until I was soaked in blood and realised he was not going to stop. The boyish panic and fear that I might die… the need to escape, the moment of rage as I lashed out with whatever I had to hand… I bound it all up within the glyph. Every one of those warriors would have their own moments where they feared they were about to die. Then I topped up the fear with something fresh and raw – my rage at my grandmother. They would lash out in a fear-frenzy
It was slow-going cold work without moving our bodies, so Vincent maintained a magical fire nearby. My crafting was a far more harrowing and personal experience than Vincent’s wards, all he had to do was place a crude dump of magic into it with nothing more complex than turning his magic into flame. I managed four to his ten and thought that perhaps there was a more effective way to be useful.
“I know a little aeromancy,” I ventured.
He paused in his work. “You wish to try combining our magics?” Air magic would feed his fire and heighten it into a blazing inferno – if we were successful. Every warder did things in their own particular way, whatever worked for their own unique Gift. Not all were compatible, and some proved to be explosive opposites. Weaving separate strands of magic from two magi into a ward glyph was an order of magnitude greater in difficulty than a single magus doing it all themselves, and I hadn’t tried it since my last dismal failure during my Collegiate years. But back then I had been only a mere initiate…
I nodded. “Doesn’t feel like we have much choice at the moment but to push the boat out and hope for the best.”
We moved our completed wards to a safe distance, careful not to drop one and then we began. We held an incised sliver of stone between us and Vincent traced the glyph with a finger, leaving a path for his magic to follow. He concentrated and began to summon his fire, then he stopped and held the magic half-formed inside his Gift, resisting the instinctive urge to follow it through to completion. It was unnatural, like half-swallowing a whole rasher of bacon and leaving it dangling down your throat while you fought the urge to swallow.
I quickly traced the glyph myself, finding it oddly warm despite being icy cold when I handed it over to him, and forced my Gift to twist my magic into awkward aeromantic forms atop his. The foreign magics writhed around each other slippery as eels. I had to hammer mine down atop Vincent’s like I was pounding steel on an anvil to weld the aeromantic magic to his pyromantic base, and difficult though it was our Gifts proved not entirely incompatible. Then I had to grit my teeth and hold it there while he resumed his own weavings, laying down yet more pyromancy around my magic to encase it within his own, trapped, only to be released when his magic was.
By the time he sealed off the wardings inside the carved glyph I was panting and sweating from the unaccustomed effort. He was fine, given he was using his Gift-given elemental affinity and I was forcing mine into forms that did not come naturally.
He smiled at the warded sliver of stone in his hand. “This will make quite the bang when it goes off. We should make more.” I groaned but we got to work on it.
I only managed five in two hours before my Gift started to suffer under the stress. Vincent was disappointed, no doubt wanting to show off as much of his flamework as possible when the time came. He went back to creating his lesser wards while I rested and watched parties of three leaving our burgeoning camp heading east and west up treacherous hidden paths, each composed of two wardens armed with long war bows being led by a Clansfolk guide. Eva’s eyes and ears on the ground would skewer any Skallgrim scouts they came across.
In the distance Bryden rose on wings of air, robe swirling around him as he flew straight up until he was a black dot against grey cloud. He drifted north to get an overview of enemy movements. Eva must have been envious of his Gift on some level – she loved watching birds flitting across the sky. What she wouldn’t give to be among them swooping and diving on the air currents, free from this dreary earth-bound existence.
Perhaps many of us magi envied the Gifts of others. What I wouldn’t have given to be a naturally skilled healer like Old Gerthan! He had tried to teach me some of his techniques during my time in the hospital but my talent with body magics still only extended to the crude basics. My aeromancy was coming along only a little better. As yet all other forms of magic eluded me. Any great improvement would take years I didn’t have.
Vincent sat back and wiped his brow. “I think perhaps we are done for now. We must keep ourselves fresh for facing the enemy in hand to hand combat. My power will devastate the ignorant savages.”
Pfft. He was still as arrogant and clueless as ever. The only hand to hand he would be seeing would be from Nareene before any battle. That was what wardens were for. They fought and shielded and died for us so we could focus on using magic.
We carefully wrapped each warded sliver of stone in cloth and nestled them into Vincent’s pack before heading back to camp – I was not stupid enough to carry those things and walked a safe distance from him.
Between us we had managed to produce five air and flame wards, five of my own special breed of bastardry, and fifteen of his basic flame traps. All were crude and leaked minute traces of magic, likely only to last five days or so before decaying to uselessness. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, we didn’t have to wait that long.
Bryden dropped from the sky to join me and I noted that his robe bore a few singes. “It’s a little wild out there,” he explained, sighing at blackened cloth. “This was bloody expensive too. Wards held off the worst of the lightning though.”
“How does it look?” I asked. “Not good. They have already cleared narrow paths through all but the last rock fall.” He swallowed nervously. “No sign of their leader though, thank the gods. He’s keeping his head down in the back somewhere trying to fight off all those spirits.”
“Couldn’t happen to a shittier man,” I replied. “We have a few crude wards, so there is that.”
He nodded a
head to Eva’s wardens forming up in ranks and Clansfolk gathering in their separate warbands, checking weapons and shouldering packs. “Looks like we are moving out.” Both then looked to me.
Bryden and Vincent were younger, not long out of the Collegiate, and were looking to their supposed leader of this expedition for some kind of reassurance. I knew this was the moment I should step up and deliver a stirring speech. I had none to give. I knew more than them and I was shitting myself
CHAPTER 28
With Abrax-Masud temporarily indisposed, our hopes lay with Cormac, whose skills as a geomancer were our only real way of slowing down so large an army – ambushes and arrows could only do so much, and against the numbers we faced they were no more than insect bites to an angry giant’s ball sack.
While Eva, Secca and Vincent prepared for the inevitable running battle, Bryden and I went north with Cormac, taking along an escorting force of warden archers and sneaky locals who would try and keep the enemy as off-balance as possible. Some of our best shots would wait to strike at night, hidden by darkness from the eyes of their archers and halrúna. A warrior warming his hands around a campfire was a tempting target indeed. If we could gift a large number of them sleepless nights fearing an arrow in the back then we would be doing well.
Cormac got to work sending massive boulders tumbling down to block the path. He grinned and made me watch the valley floor as he forced shards of rock, narrow and sharp as a knife, to stab through the half-frozen earth into the snowfall. The stone caltrops were barely visible beneath a thin layer of snow except for when the sun was directly overhead and the path out of the cliff’s shadow.
“Think that will slow them down?” Cormac asked while taking a piss, his robes bunched up around his waist to expose extraordinarily hairy legs.
“Some,” I answered, imagining my own trepidation if faced with such a thing. “I suspect they find that which drives them on far more terrifying.”
He grunted, waggled his cock northwards and pulled down his robes. “Well let’s make this even more fun then.” Much larger jagged spikes erupted all around where the enemy would have to pass, a forest of razor edges rising to eye-height that would tear anybody trying to squeeze through to bloody tatters.
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