Especially after Bramwell sent his cavalry charging into the gaps his archers had made for them. In what seemed like an instant, they were everywhere, at the rebels’ flank, at their rear. That was when the slaughter began in earnest.
Think. Remember. I have a duty. I have to do something.
The Harthian heavy infantry Wardin was now cutting his way through must have followed after that. And then the mud, the fighting, the bodies of the fallen, the tumult and confusion. There was no room to move, to regroup, to marshal.
Marshal. Move.
Five thousand men, eight, ten. These were just numbers. Discussed from a distance, by a fire with a mug of mead on the table beside the map. Armies were concepts, suppositions, impressions.
The reality, the chaos of many thousands of men fighting at once was beyond all of that. It was beyond comprehension.
“Wardin! Highness!”
Highness.
I’m their prince.
Everything seemed to slow as Wardin turned his head. Odger stood terrified, one hand in the air while the other clutched a sword that was too big for his scrawny frame, casting something—wind, perhaps—to fend off the Harth bearing down on him.
Reality and awareness crashed back into Wardin like a physical force. “Hold him off, Odger!” He leaped toward the boy, cutting down two men in his path.
The man attacking Odger turned to face Wardin, and in doing so, offered a better view of the boy—and the long gash down one of his thighs. Up close, Odger was ghastly pale and obviously struggling to keep his feet.
With a snarl, Wardin gathered what energy he had left as he dodged the soldier’s blow. The man never got a chance to strike another. In the next moment, Wardin released his spell.
The Harth’s skin sank and reddened, then collapsed inward as though nothing remained to hold it up. The axe fell from his withering hands. His cheeks caved in, then his eyes.
By the time he fell to the ground, what remained of him was breaking off, carried away by the breeze like ashes from a fire.
Wardin didn’t spare the mess another glance. He grabbed Odger by the elbow and dragged the boy away from the fray. It was already thinning anyway; they were at the edge of it.
And at the edge of a river, too.
Wardin’s heart sank as he stared ahead at the foaming, rushing water. That was the Cilmaras, the rockier and less placid of the two rivers that joined at Mindoral.
It should definitely not be in front of them.
He turned around and pushed Odger behind him with the river at their backs, then looked wildly around until the sick realization of what had happened sank in.
The Cilmaras was behind him. In front and to his left was Mindoral, and beyond that, the Doris. In front and to his right was the battle—and though it was difficult to tell with the blanket of mud and blood that had settled over everything, Wardin was fairly certain there were a great deal more blue cloaks than his own soldiers’ silver.
While he had been insensible (or perhaps unbalanced), ignoring his people and his duty and fighting only for his own survival, they’d been herded like animals, shoved into the wedge of land between the rivers.
They were trapped.
Marshal. Move.
“Eyrds! To me!”
Wardin shouted and ran, gathering as many of his own people as he could, fighting off enemies all the while. At some point, a Harthian blade pierced his hauberk at his left shoulder, but he didn’t stop to assess the damage.
Or to heal it. There could be no more conduction for him, no matter the circumstances. He could not afford to lose his balance (again). He must keep his wits about him.
He must find a way out of the noose closing around them all.
* * *
“Odger? Odger!”
Wardin fought in a knot of perhaps twenty of his own foot soldiers. Despite their best efforts to form a line and push through the ever-encroaching Harths as one, they stood exhausted and terribly outnumbered, backs to the frothing rapids of the Cilmaras, with no way past and no way out.
He and Odger were the only magicians among them. For a while, Wardin had lost track of the boy.
But he saw him well enough now. Indeed, he was impossible to miss, lit as he was by the flames rising up in front of him.
Odger had started a fire.
Whether he’d expended the last of his energy in one terrible act of desperation and panic, or his magic had simply gotten away from him, the boy had put an inexorable barrier between them and their enemy. Those unlucky Harths standing on the line as the wall of fire sprang up screamed in agony.
A few of the Eyrds were burned as well when they failed to leap back in time. Most of the rest cheered to see their enemies overcome by the flames. Apparently they’d missed the fact that being trapped between fire and riotous water was perhaps only marginally better than being trapped between enemy soldiers and the same.
Escaping into the river was a risky proposition, to say the least. They would have to strip off their armor and try to swim, giving Harthian archers an excellent opportunity to kill whoever the rapids and rocks did not.
It might soon be their only option, however. Perhaps Odger had put too much energy into his spell, or perhaps it had been too wild, too uncontrolled to start with. The flames were spreading unchecked, indifferent to direction or speed or what they burned.
Wardin stepped forward, dubious of his ability to control a sage’s fire. If he could push it outward toward the enemy, he might give his own people a chance to escape.
“Odger! Push it back!”
The boy looked wild-eyed at Wardin, then back at the fire, as if not quite sure how it had gotten there.
“Push it back!” Wardin roared.
Odger set his mouth in a line and, with one firm nod, held a hand out in front of him, palm outward.
Wardin, meanwhile, searched his mind for any battlemagic that might help. He could hardly fear or harm the flames away. He could cast a shield, but he wasn’t sure how many he could protect—likely not all of them—or for how long. And then, of course, there were still a great many Harths on the other side of that fire.
Fire is a conductor.
The thought came to him from nowhere, but it instantly made sense. Fire consumed life the same way a conductor did, stealing it away. Men killed by conduction withered, like grass and leaves withered beneath an onslaught of flame. The dolberry bush Wardin had used to heal himself that day at Pendralyn had even seemed to burn.
Yet Pate and Corbin had taught him that living and dying were parts of the same cycle, life and death a scale always kept in balance. Life was neither created nor destroyed, only transferred.
The fire was transferring it now, constantly. Feeding itself on everything around it. If Wardin could somehow connect to that process, perhaps he could direct what it consumed, and what it did not.
He’d only just sworn he would not use conduction again that day. But he would be doing no conduction himself, only assisting a natural conductor. Perhaps it would be less taxing.
Besides, the flames were burning out of control, and Odger was losing what little mastery he had over them by the second. Trees and vegetation near the bank of the river—their last escape route—were catching fire. There was no time to reason, or even consider whether this idea would work. Wardin had to do something.
There was a crackling shrub a few strides away. Let it begin with another shrub, then. Wardin pictured its life force as a visible thing, a glowing green light that was being drawn from it and pulled into the fire.
He imagined that light traveling back downward, back into the bush. When he felt his magic reach its peak, he released his spell.
The shrub, though still blackened and clearly ailing, was extinguished.
Now the other direction.
The rebel soldiers were shouting now, packed in a tight bunch behind Wardin and Odger, covering their heads with their cloaks and trying to stamp at the flames as they drew too close.
> Wardin could just see a patch of trampled, muddy grass beyond the closing ring of fire that both shielded and trapped them. Again he imagined that glowing light, the grass’s life. Again he pulled it and influenced its direction—sending it toward the fire that was only inches from it.
So slightly that it might have been its natural course anyway, and not his spell at all, the flames shifted and began to spread over that patch of grass.
It was enough. There would be no excess energy to direct into healing or harming people, but if Wardin could conduct life back and forth between the fire, that which it was consuming, and that which he wished it to consume, he might be able to govern the path it took.
He felt Odger’s energy quivering in the air, like the feeling before a thunderstorm. Chin set, the boy shoved outward with both hands, his sword forgotten in the grass beside him. He too began to shift the fire back, away from the Eyrds and toward the shouting, scrambling Harths who were now barely visible beyond the swelling flames and thick columns of smoke.
The two of them kept casting, until Wardin was dizzy with it, until the sounds fell away and his vision blurred. The pressure in his head was excruciating. The conduction was unraveling him. He was holding on by sheer force of will, but one way or another, this would have to end soon. He would lose his balance and his mind completely in a moment.
Slowly their magic pushed the fire outward and away, and the Harths along with it.
Too slowly. There were only the two of them, and they were both exhausted. The fire was too big, too strong, too untamed.
We can’t do it. We can’t hold it.
Wardin redoubled his efforts, though he had little left to give. Beside him, Odger’s energy swelled again, palpable, massive. So powerful it was as if the boy himself were the fire, or a storm.
Too powerful.
Wardin hesitated in his casting long enough to steal a sideways glance. What he saw nearly stopped his heart.
Odger’s eyes were wide, his mouth open, his face stiff. His outstretched arms were so close to the fire, the flames licked at his fingers. His nose was bleeding.
Blast me! How much magic did he already do today, before this? Why didn’t I realize? Why didn’t I think?
Whatever Odger’s own opinions on the matter, he was only a boy. And he’d had difficulties with his balance in the past. He’d pushed himself too far.
No. I pushed him too far. And I didn’t even notice.
Wardin cursed and reached out to grab Odger by the collar, shouting at the same time for the others to remove their armor and boots. He’d pull the boy into the river, and they would just have to take their chances there.
But Odger dodged out of his grasp, laughing as though they were playing a game, whirling too close to the flames. Magic was coming off him in waves, uncontrolled, confused, slamming into everything like a physical force. The air buzzed with it. Wardin’s ears rang with it.
Odger’s eyes were bleeding now.
“Odger.” Wardin’s voice cracked on the single word. The fear, in its strange way, focused and stilled his own unbalanced mind, concentrating his thoughts on nothing but the boy he’d brought to war—and the utter terror that he’d killed him.
“Stop casting.” Wardin held up his hands, palms out, and took a slow step toward Odger. “Let me help you.”
It was too late. Whatever spell Odger was trying to cast exploded around him. With a sound like a cyclone, the fire shot upward into the sky, higher than ever.
The madness in his eyes seemed to clear, just for a moment, giving way to confusion.
And then Odger was engulfed in flames.
12
Wardin
How could you?
How could you think of your own balance, and never give a thought to his?
How could you not know? How could you not see?
The self loathing seemed to fill his lungs and choke him.
Or perhaps that was water.
Wardin sputtered and coughed as what felt like many hands dragged him up onto the bank. He could barely see. His throat was hoarse from smoke and water, and for a moment, his chest hurt too much to draw breath. Speaking was entirely out of the question.
“I’m afraid there isn’t much time to rest.” Arun’s voice. “The river carried you southeast, as the river tends to do. Doesn’t help us much when we need to disappear into the west and get through the Harths to do it.”
Wardin struggled to sit up and look around. There were perhaps fifty others with Arun, including Quinn. Some had come east from Pendralyn with them. Others had been fighting by the river with him. “Is this … where are the others?” he whispered.
“You gave the order yourself,” Arun said with a shrug. “If it goes bad and you get away, get back. Don’t linger. There will be pursuit.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “These are just the fools who ignored that very good advice. Mostly to save you.”
“Most of the surviving Eyrds will have gone home, hoping the Harths are none the wiser that they were ever at Mindoral.” Quinn gestured at the foot soldiers who’d escaped the fire. “I recommend they do the same.”
“Going to be hard, without shoes.” Wardin’s bootless feet felt like blocks of ice. His whole body felt like it was sculpted from ice. He realized he was shivering.
“We’ll scavenge what we can for them. Meanwhile, we need to get you into traveling condition as soon as possible.” Arun tossed him a blanket. “There are parties of Harths everywhere. But they won’t venture too far toward Pendralyn. There’s still enough snow in the mountains to discourage trying to camp a force of any size, and they already know they can’t get into the magistery with anything less. If we can get far enough west, we’ll be safe enough to get the rest of the way.”
“Parties of Harths?” Wardin pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to concentrate despite his raging headache. “What do you mean, parties? Where’s the army? Where’s Bramwell?”
“We managed to reduce their numbers a bit,” Quinn said. “Though clearly not as much as we’d have liked to. The rest went marching down toward Narinore, as they’d always intended. Apart from the ones the king left behind at Mindoral, that is.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s safe to say that’s back under Harthian control, and don’t think the townsfolk won’t suffer for it.”
“There was a rumor Bramwell was wounded,” Arun added. “I don’t know if there’s any truth to it. We’ve been too scattered to know which of our own people are alive or dead, let alone the enemy’s.”
“Pate?” Wardin asked. “Corbin? And I don’t suppose anyone happened to see my horse?”
Arun shook his head. “I don’t have any news about anyone you don’t see here. Best thing we can do is get home and regroup.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “But while we’re asking questions, did you happen to see Odger? I lost track of him.”
Odger.
The pain in Wardin’s head intensified, and he flinched as though Arun had struck him.
Odger’s gone.
The sharp memory of the sight—the smell—of Odger burning left Wardin speechless for several moments. Finally he swallowed and managed a hoarse whisper. “We were the only magicians. It was desperate.”
“There was a fire,” one of the others who’d been at the river said. “It was either burn or get in the water.”
“But then the fire was everywhere, and I wasn’t sure we could even get to the water,” another added. “The magicians had to fight it off and clear a path for us. Else between the flames and the Harths and the river, we’d all have died.”
“We had to,” Wardin agreed. “We had to do whatever it took, and it took everything we had. And …” He swallowed again and bowed his head. “Odger is gone. Dead. My fault.”
He knew Odger. Had known him as a student. He’d even helped the boy with a balance problem once before. He knew. Or should have known.
How could you?
Odger was—had been, would alw
ays be—just fifteen. He wasn’t equipped to handle his own power, not in the thick of battle, in the face of such an overwhelming number of enemies, amidst all the terrors of war. Wardin never should have asked him to help with the fire, never mind who’d set it in the first place. He should have seen that Odger was spent. Instead, he pushed him.
For that matter, he never should have let Arun talk him into bringing the boy at all.
As if he’d read that last thought, Arun recoiled from Wardin, jaw set. Without a word, he stood and walked away.
No doubt he was heartsick and angry. No doubt he was feeling his own share of guilt, too. Arun had intended to look out for Odger himself. But the chaos had ripped through them all, until there was no looking out for anyone, really.
Quinn cleared his throat, visibly shaken himself. “There will be time to mourn our dead later. For the moment, we’ve got to worry about leading the living back to safety. There’s a thick bit of pine woods not too far off. I suggest we wait there until dark, and begin traveling by night.”
Some of the infantrymen refused this offer, preferring to take their chances on their own and set out for their various homes. Wardin made no attempt to dissuade them. He wasn’t even sure they were his soldiers anymore. How could he hope to keep the people’s support, when word of this defeat spread?
He wrapped strips of leather and wool around his feet to protect them as best he could, but he would need proper boots, sooner rather than later. And they would need other supplies. A few blue cloaks might come in handy as well. They couldn’t depend on magic to keep them all hidden or disguised every moment, all the way home.
They sent the four contrivers among them back to the battlefield to scavenge, before the Harths burned the dead. The rest of them made for the woods to hide and rest until well after nightfall, when they would start the slow journey back west along the most secret paths they knew.
A Dark Reckoning Page 14