The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4

by Brock Deskins

  “Me?” Azerick shouted incredulously. “Your driver nearly killed me driving so fast!”

  “You should have been watching where you were going and gotten out of my way!” the man shrieked, his face red with rage.

  “You old fool, the law states that coaches will yield to pedestrian traffic inside the confines of the city! Your man should not have been driving so fast, which is another law you broke!”

  The two brutes from the wagon stood with their thick arms crossed over their broad chests glaring menacingly. Azerick was sure they were there to intimidate, and he was certain it nearly always worked with most people. Unfortunately for them, Azerick was not most people.

  “Pshaw, laws are for peasants like you. I am Lord Ebenezer Crowley,” the old man declared as if that should mean something to the sorcerer. “I am above such mundane laws!”

  “You are Lord Crowley?” Azerick exclaimed excitedly. “Lord Crowley, it is truly fortuitous that we met. You are precisely what I was looking for!” Azerick fawned.

  “What do you mean? What is it you want from me? If you are begging for coin, food, or employment I have nothing for the likes of you.”

  “Oh no, milord, nothing like that,” Azerick explained. “You see, I just happened upon this poor creature here, and it seems he has taken a liking to me and is intent on following me home.”

  Lord Crowley looked down at the dog and drew back in disgust. “Egad, what has that wretched looking…thing…have to do with me?”

  “I am terrible at naming animals and as luck, or the fates, would have it I have run into you, or shall I say you nearly ran into me.” Azerick looked down at the ugly dog. “You have provided me with the perfect name for this dog. How would you like to be called Lord Ebenezer Crowley?” Azerick asked the dog.

  The dog gave a low woof that Azerick interpreted as consent.

  “How dare you!” Crowley demanded, both insulted and disgusted at the use of his name.

  “How dare I? I dare rather easily and quite frequently, you snobbish excuse for a pustule on the backside of an orc.”

  “I will teach you to disrespect your betters!” Ebenezer forced through clamped teeth, his face livid with rage. “Beat this boy to within an inch of his life,” the old man ordered his two goons.

  Lord Crowley stepped aside as his two bodyguards took a step forward, grinning with cruel delight. The two hulking men pulled the truncheons from their belts and raised them high overhead as Lord Crowley watched with a sadistic grin of pleasure on his wrinkled face. Azerick spouted the words of arcane power and clenched his fist at the end of a quick but complex gesture of his free hand.

  There were confused murmurs throughout the crowd gathering to watch the spectacle when the clubs failed to descend upon the young man about to be beaten. The residents of this area were familiar with Lord Crowley’s behavior and his frequently speeding coach. More than a few of them had faced the wrath of Lord Crowley and felt the sting of the buggy whip he liked to use on people who were in the way or just for the pure sport of it.

  Azerick calmly stepped away from the two thugs who stood as still as statues and walked up to the equally immobilized lord. The sorcerer made a quick gesture and spoke a short series of words. Almost immediately, Lord Crowley howled his fear and outrage.

  “What foul sorceries have you inflicted on me? You are a demon, a demon I say!”

  “Shut up, you blathering old windbag! I have immobilized you and your guards. For you I made an exception that allows you to see and speak. You are completely aware of what is happening, but your guards are not. In their minds, there has been no lapse in time. It will seem to them as if they had moved in perfectly normal and uninterrupted manner,” Azerick explained.

  “What are you doing to me? Unhand me, you ruffian! Call the watch, help me, you damn peasants! Your lord commands you! Why are you all staring like a bunch of slack-jawed idiots? Do something!”

  Several of the watching crowd did do something. They went and retrieved buckets and stools so they could sit and watch the show. Others simply stood with expectant smiles crossing their faces as Azerick positioned the frozen lord exactly where he had been standing just a moment before.

  “Now, Crowley, you worthless piece of excrement, you will learn what it means to be helpless as someone beats you. Come, Lord Crowley,” Azerick called to the dog.

  Azerick strolled down the street with a grin of triumph on his face as he listened to Lord Crowley, the human one, screaming and cursing. Cries of pain cut short his shrieks of outrage as the clubs descended. Azerick could hear the dull thuds the moment he cancelled his spell. The sorcerer laughed aloud when he heard another thud as the lord’s brutes struck him a second time before they realized that they were beating their own employer.

  Azerick soon made it to the public hitching post and retrieved Horse. Lord Crowley trotted beside horse and rider all the way back to the keep. Several children went racing down the lane as Azerick neared the keep, screaming and waving their arms in greeting. Azerick smiled and waved back. The children fell in behind Horse and skipped along toward the keep. Azerick could hear the children talking behind him.

  “Hey, it’s a dog!” one of them exclaimed.

  “No it’s not, it’s a—well I don’t know what it is, but I know it ain’t no dog I ever seen before,” another argued.

  “Ew, it smells worse than the midden heap,” a third complained.

  Peck came out and took Horse by the reins as Azerick dismounted.

  “Peck, this is Lord Crowley. See what you can do to get him some food, and try to scrub that smell out of him as well.”

  “Aye, Master Azerick, right away,” Peck said, giving the sorcerer a quick, two-fingered salute.

  Simon shuffled toward him as soon as he entered the reception hall. “Master Azerick, I have the, ah, initial report on the status of your treasury.” The accountant flipped open a leather bound ledger. “Here is the coin count by type. The ones that were fused are listed here by weight. They will have to be smelted down and the differing metals separated, but it is a good approximation of value as they were all predominantly of one denomination. The gems I have done an appraisal on myself and written their current fair market value here. Each is of course, indexed by type. The miscellaneous objects are listed here with a complete description, but of course, I have no real way to interpret their value.”

  “You have done excellent work, Simon, you should be proud.”

  “Oh, ah, thank you, Master Azerick. I do try to please. Here are the expenses paid out thus far, and here are the initial results from Captain Zeb on his profits from his winter excursion.” Simon once again lost his nervous stammer as soon as he began talking of figures.

  “You got a message from Zeb?” Azerick asked.

  “Oh, ah, yes, Master Azerick. Just today, a rider came and, ah, delivered this dispatch from Southport. The Captain sailed south all the way to, ah, the northernmost port in Sumara where he sold the majority of, ah, the white furs for a very respectable profit. He should be leaving, ah, Southport as we speak.”

  Azerick looked at the dispatch, saw the abbreviated inventory of the Ice Queen, and gave the numbers a low whistle. “Zeb made a killing in Sumara!”

  “Yes, Master Azerick. I took the liberty of adding his initial figures into the ledger, and here is the deduction I had to pay the courier plus the customary tip.”

  Azerick gave the accountant a sidelong glance. “Simon, you can give them a larger tip, particularly if they have done some hard work like riding from Southport to here.”

  Simon looked decidedly uncomfortable at the thought, which threw him into a stammering fit.

  “Just find me or Rusty and we will take care of it.”

  “Oh, ah, yes of course, Master Azerick.”

  One of the entries caught Azerick’s eye, and he went down to the basement and opened the thick door of the vault. He saw that Simon had gotten shelves, tables, and two desks from which he and his assistants w
orked for many long hours at a time. The additional counters were only employed part time now for Simon’s monthly audits and were not here.

  Wooden chests of various sizes were lined up upon the tables while the objects of interest were neatly displayed on the shelves. Azerick lifted the lid of a few of the chests and found that they were full of coins as he had expected along with a slip of parchment denoting the chest number, type of coin, quantity, and the date of the last audit. Azerick smiled at Simon’s efficiency and attention to detail.

  Azerick lifted the lids of a few small boxes with flat, hinged tops sitting on one shelf and found them lined in felt with gems neatly nestled into padded compartments and arranged by type and size. These also contained a slip with the value and type of each gem contained in the boxes.

  He searched the shelf for the item he had seen on the inventory and found it by locating the shelf containing weapons, which were of course, organized by type and size. He pulled the object of interest from the shelf and examined it. It was a shortsword resting in a finely tooled leather scabbard with a silver cap at the top and the bottom. Azerick pulled out the blade and nodded appreciatively. The blade was made of a black metal that Azerick was confident was shadowsteel, the hardest metal known and very expensive and difficult to forge.

  The crosspiece was a simple bar that bowed out slightly in a concave shape and made of arcanum. The handgrip was made of a hard material similar to ivory but of jet-black, perhaps the horn of some animal. The pommel was what had drawn Azerick’s interest and was the defining piece mentioned on Simon’s inventory. It too was made of solid arcanum formed in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head with two tiny pieces of amber for eyes.

  Azerick took the tooled black leather belt and its attached sword and scabbard out of the vault. He would have to tell Simon that he had taken the sword. Azerick started in surprise as he reached the top of the stairs and found Wolf, and of course Ghost, waiting for him.

  “Ghost says you may have found something for me,” Wolf said before Azerick could ask or even offer him the gift.

  Azerick’s mouth opened and closed a few times as he looked from the grubby half-elf to the black wolf, but his questions seemed to die on his lips.

  “Um, yes I did. I found this sword in the vault and thought it would be perfect for you.”

  “Hm, it sure is pretty, but what am I going to do with it? Even I would have a hard time sneaking up on a rabbit close enough to stab it, and it would be terrible for skinning most any animal. Keep trying, I’m sure you’ll get it,” Wolf said as he clasped the belt around his narrow waist and wandered off, leaving Azerick standing at the top of the stairs with his mouth hanging open incredulously.

  CHAPTER 13

  Kayne led his force of five hundred mounted mercenaries against the large town of Edmonton, southeast of Brightridge. It was the third and largest town they had raided thus far. The other two towns had been little more than oversized villages, and the plunder had been rather paltry. Kayne was unconcerned. Plunder was a secondary task. He had been paid to cause mayhem, and few did that better than Hell’s Legion.

  Several of Kayne’s men hurled clay flasks of demon fire at the wooden gates as they rode by on their swift mounts. The brittle jugs shattered, splashing the terrible liquid all over the gates. The second wave of riders rode just behind with arrows tipped with burning, pitch-coated cloth. The arrows struck the gate and set it ablaze. Valiant soldiers and town militia tried to put the flames out with buckets of water but to no avail.

  Kayne’s mercenaries harried the defenders by charging and retreating from the walls while firing arrows from short horse bows, a strategy they had learned from the Sumaran nomads. Even with the demon fire, the thick gates took nearly an hour before their structural integrity failed and collapsed in a charred ruin. Hell’s Legion riders harassed the defenders with their hit and run sorties for another half an hour before the demon fire finally burned itself out.

  On Kayne’s order, the mounted legion poured through the gates putting their swords and bows to deadly effect. Arrows fired from horseback made short work of the defenders on the wall and helped take down spearmen who were using their long weapons to try to unseat the mounted invaders or kill their horses from under them. The raiders hacked at anything that moved with their sabers in an orgy of terror and violence.

  Once the invaders made it through the gates, they cut down the poorly trained city militiamen like chaff in a wheat field. Within minutes, only small pockets of resistance remained within the city. Once the mercenaries put down the last vestige of armed resistance, Kayne ordered his troops to begin their plundering. Most of the killings stopped but not all. Although they were a disciplined force, these were mercenaries with little conscience to prevent them from taking liberties.

  Kayne was unconcerned with what his men did so long as it did not distract them from looting everything of value that could be carted away on horseback and did not kill too many of the locals as stated in his contract with Duke Ulric.

  “It appears that Kayne and his men have begun looting the city, milord,” Captain Ellsworth informed the Duke as he watched the mayhem unfold through a looking glass.

  “Excellent, we shall give them one hour to loot before we will engage them. You remember your orders, Captain?”

  “Yes, milord. Pull our strokes but make it look convincing. The archers are equipped with blunted arrows.”

  “Very good, Captain, inform the men to ready themselves. We ride to battle in one hour.”

  Kayne’s men tied sacks of coin, silver flatware, jewelry, and most anything small that held any value onto their saddles. The clarion call he had been waiting for finally sounded to the west.

  “Mount up!” Kayne shouted, his order repeated by the bugler.

  His riders made a last grab of anything in sight and raced for their horses. The men of the Legion pounded out of the town and loosely formed up to meet the approaching force. Duke Ulric fielded several hundred men on foot and a hundred cavalry. Pikemen and archers stood to the fore while the cavalry hid in the woods, waiting until they could hit Kayne’s flank.

  Hell’s Legion charged the Valerian forces with a loud battle cry, waving their curved swords over their heads. Duke Ulric’s pikemen knelt, seated the butts of their long spears into the ground, and braced them with their foot. Archers stood behind the pike formation and knocked arrows in anticipation of the mercenaries’ charge.

  As the charging invaders rode into range, the archers loosed their deadly swarms of arrows. Dozens of riders fell from their mounts or hung loose in their saddles as the dark rain of blunted shafts fell into their ranks. A second volley brought down scores more before the archers had to step back and allow the swordsmen to come forward. The remaining Hell’s Legion riders pulled up on their reins as they came into range of the pikemen and fell to the ground, many pulling their horses down with them and trying their best to lay still.

  To the people of Edmonton watching a mile away, it appeared that the pikemen and archers had slain a number of the invaders and, now the swordsmen and spearmen were engaged in a vicious battle. A bugle call announced the charge of Ulric’s smaller force of cavalry. They burst from the wood line and crashed into Kayne’s flank.

  Kayne shouted for retreat, and his bugler sounded the order on his horn. Ulric’s cavalry gave chase while his other men cleaned up the battlefield, stacking the “dead” in wagons and tying up any they captured. Duke Ulric and a small contingent of cavalry rode toward the town proudly displaying the Duke’s colors.

  Above the wailing of women and children, Duke Ulric heard the cheering of men. One man separated himself from the crowd. His clothing was of decent quality but torn and bloodstained.

  “Duke Ulric, is that you?” the man asked looking from the Duke’s standard to his face.

  “Yes, citizen, it is I who has liberated your town and driven off the godless barbarians,” Duke Ulric proclaimed loudly.

  “Your Grace, I thank the
gods you and your men arrived when they did, but what are you doing out here? We are under Lord William’s rule and far from your borders.”

  “I consider the safety of all Valerians to be my sacred duty, and when word reached me that outsiders had invaded our lands and were plundering and murdering my people, I set out to send them all to Sharrellan. I only wish I could have arrived sooner.”

  Duke Ulric basked in the praises of the people of Edmonton as they cheered him and his men even as they mourned those who had fallen. His pursuing cavalry returned to Edmonton perhaps an hour later and declared that they had slain at least half of the raiders before the rest scattered and fled beyond their grasp.

  “Fear not, citizens, my men have slain and driven off the host of vile raiders, and I shall not rest until all of our enemies are gone or dead and our borders secure,” the Duke of Southport declared and led his men out of the town amidst the cheers of the people.

  Ulric and his troops rode for an hour before the “dead” men sat up in the wagons that brought up the rear of the column. Kayne’s men remounted their horses while Ulric’s infantry fell into formation and marched along with their fellows. Not everyone was able to leave the wagons and rejoin the host. Even in a mock battle like the one they had performed there were bound to be casualties.

  Three hours after the mixed army left Edmonton, they pulled off the road and traveled up an old woodcutter’s path. After traversing two miles of the rough, narrow path, they came upon a large clearing cut in the small but densely packed trees that grew in abundance in this region. Three hundred horses were picketed at the far end of the clearing while an equal number of men sat gathered around dozens of small campfires.

  Kayne swaggered over to meet the leader of the incoming army as his men in the Duke’s company tied their horses up alongside the others and joined their comrades around their fires.

  “Congratulations on your great victory, Your Grace,” Kayne greeted the Duke. “I hope your people were properly grateful for their deliverance.”