“You tried, that’s all anyone can do.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“I have to ask,” Bjorn looked up but Koren avoid his eyes. “When that wizard held a knife at your throat, you begged him not to kill you. Last night, you wanted me to kill you. I do not understand that.”
“I’m sorry,” Koren sobbed, and Bjorn let him be until he was ready to talk. Sniffling, the boy sat with the bowl cradled in his hands, silently sobbing. Finally, he used a grubby sleeve to wipe his face. “I was wrong, so wrong. I’ve killed everyone. I ruined everything.”
Normally, Bjorn would have responded with some useless platitude that people said in such situations, but something in Koren’s tone gave him a chill. Koren was an incredibly powerful wizard. Bjorn had followed Koren’s lead at the rope bridge and Captain Raddick had disobeyed his orders because Koren implied he had a plan, a plan he had not revealed to Bjorn. “What do you mean, you ruined everything?” Bjorn said in a hollow voice, fearing the answer he would receive.
“I, I thought I could destroy the demon,” Koren looked up at Bjorn, and his eyes welled with tears again. “After I used that power, that destroyed an entire army, I thought I knew how to kill the demon. I was sure of it! Before, I didn’t know how to make magic work, then after I did it- I still don’t know how it works. But I know what to do now. I could feel it, the connection to the spirit world, that’s where I got so much power. I thought I could do it again.”
“When the orcs came at us in that ravine, you told me you couldn’t use your power.”
“I couldn’t! It was there, I, it was like I couldn’t reach it, and all I needed to do was, stretch a bit more to reach it. I thought using so much power damaged me or something, and I needed time to recover.”
“When you recovered, you could destroy a demon, that’s what you thought?” Bjorn asked harshly.
“Paedris said I could! He told Captain Raddick-”
Bjorn interrupted, disgusted. “Lord Salva told Captain Raddick you would be able to destroy the demon someday, after you have been properly trained and can control your power.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That was your plan when you asked me to cut the rope bridge with you?” Bjorn was completely exasperated with the young wizard he had pledged to help. “You told me you knew what you had to do! I thought your plan was to allow Raddick and those dwarves to get away, then you would use magic to kill the orcs who took us captive.”
“No, that wasn’t what I was thinking.”
“You weren’t thinking at all. Why the hell did you think you could kill a demon, all by yourself?”
“Because Paedris thought I could do it. He told Raddick-”
“I know what Lord Salva told Raddick, I was there when Raddick told you. Paedris thought you might act against the demon, if your power grows strong enough, and after you have been properly trained! You were not supposed to go confront a demon on your own.”
“I thought, I thought I could. I used so much power-”
“Once. You used that power once, you didn’t know what you were doing, and it nearly killed you. You could have killed all of us. You were almost more of a danger to-” He stopped, mouth open, then his eyes narrowed with horror. “Paedris told Raddick he is worried the demon could take control of you and use your power to tear a hole in the barrier between this world and the shadow world. If that happens, demons could pour through the hole and consume this world, everything, forever. If I had known your plan was for you to try destroying a demon, I would have told Raddick to shoot. I would have killed you myself!”
“Bjorn, I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry? You have ruined everything, you stupid little child. You arrogant-” Bjorn could not find the words. Then, “You were right to ask me to kill you. You should have killed yourself when you had that knife in your hands. You coward. You have doomed us all! At this moment, there are soldiers fighting for Tarador, giving their lives for others, and their sacrifices are all for nothing because of you.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Sorry? I am the one who is sorry. I’m an adult, and I followed, I trusted, a stupid boy who thought he could destroy a demon all by himself, because he thinks he is special.”
“Bjorn, I-”
“No,” the former King’s Guard painfully scooted himself away. “Do not talk to me, traitor. If Paedris is right, the demon will take your power and destroy the world. If Paedris is wrong, then all I have done is allow myself to be captured for nothing. I will have time to regret my gullible foolishness when these orcs are cutting out my heart to eat it.”
Koren knew there was nothing to say, nothing he could say. He sat in silence, tears falling freely from his cheeks into the cold bowl of stew, more miserable that he had ever been in his life.
After Koren’s revelation that Bjorn may have helped the boy send the entire world to its doom, Bjorn fell into a deep depression, barely speaking to any of the orcs and not at all to Koren. When their horses were side by side and Koren wanted to uselessly apologize again, Bjorn squeezed his horse with his knees to make the animal walk faster. After a full day, Koren took the hint. For the first time since that fateful night be met Koren Bladewell in a riverside warehouse, Bjorn Jihnsson wanted a drink. No, he did not want a drink, he wanted a whole bottle. He wanted to drink enough to forget what a stupid, idiotic, gullible fool he had been to trust and follow a boy who had no idea what he was doing. Koren may be a powerful wizard but Lord Salva was right; Koren was too young and foolish to be trusted with any important responsibility.
The next morning, after a sleepless night, Bjorn was no longer depressed.
He was angry.
And determined.
Koren Bladewell was an immensely powerful weapon, and partly because of Bjorn, that weapon was being delivered to Tarador’s ancient enemy. Bjorn needed to do something about that, even as every step of his horse’s hooves brought them closer to the demon. All that day and the next, he observed the orcs, wracking his brain for a way to get a sword, a knife, even an arrow he could use to stab Koren, kill the boy and end the threat. If he could get close enough, he considered simply biting the boy’s throat, so desperate was Bjorn to stop the impending destruction of the world.
All Bjorn’s skill, his experience, his inventiveness could not find any way to stop Koren from being delivered to the demon. The orcs would not let him near the boy wizard, with two orcs holding the reins of each horse. They could not even speak with each other, for Bjorn’s horse was kept near the rear of the marching column, while Koren rode ahead near the orc wizard. It was as if the orc wizard could read Bjorn’s mind and knew the former King’s Guard sought to kill Koren Bladewell. When they crossed a long, narrow bridge, Bjorn tried sending a mental image of the boy throwing himself over the side into the rushing river, with Bjorn hoping somehow a young wizard could read his thoughts. Koren did not attempt to leap off his horse over the side of the bridge, and anyway the orc wizard must have feared the boy would do something rash, as three orcs held firmly onto Koren until they were on the other end of the bridge. Thinking furiously that Koren should use his magical powers to kill himself also came to nothing, the boy could near hear any of Bjorn’s fervent unspoken thoughts.
One time, when Bjorn was thinking as hard as he could about Koren somehow making himself disappear in a ball of fire, he opened his eyes to see the orc wizard riding beside him. At first, that wizard said nothing and did not need to, the smirk on his face ruined any last hope Bjorn had. “Enjoying the ride?” The orc asked mockingly, its hideous face twisting in a grotesque grin. “Do not worry, soon I will bring your little friend to my master, and I will be rewarded.”
“He is not my friend,” Bjorn replied through clenched teeth.
The orc cackled with laughter and spurred his horse onward, riding alongside the road until he was again riding near Koren. The wizard was personally taking charge of watching the boy, even checking the food Koren ate to assure
there was nothing the boy could choke on. Bjorn knew the wizard was taking no chances of spoiling his prize as they neared the demon’s stronghold.
As they had marched along the road, they picked up small bands of orcs, until Bjorn estimated five hundred of the creatures surrounded him. In mid-morning the day after the wizard had taunted him, Bjorn began to lose hope. A cloud of dust in the west came nearer, and the orcs began to murmur among themselves in nervous excitement. Bjorn saw orcs fingering their weapons and talking quietly in small groups, he did not understand their native language and could understand only a few words. One orcish word he did understand was used frequently and with vehement hatred: men.
As the dust clouds came closer, Bjorn could see tall mounted figures on horseback and behind them carriages. The column halted and the orcs dispersed off the road, being yelled at by their leaders but many of the orcs still had hands on the hilts of their axes, or unslung their short bows and shifted quivers to make arrows ready. The orc wizard shouted orders for Bjorn to be brought forward, and the wizard rode on ahead with Koren, holding the reins of the boy’s horse. Koren had his head hung low, resigned to his fate.
The very last glimmer of hope inside Bjorn died when Koren was picked up off the horse and carefully placed in a carriage. Bjorn was dismayed to see a hideously shriveled human wizard sticking his head out of that carriage, gesturing for the men to bring Koren quickly. Then Bjorn was roughly pulled off his horse and ungently slung into the back of a wagon, where iron bars ringed him in and an iron gate was closed and locked. The clanging sound of his prison door slamming shut might as well be the death knell of the world to Bjorn. His only solace was seeing the orc wizard, after a loud argument with the wizard in the carriage, forced to ride his horse near the rear of the column near Bjorn’s wagon. Bjorn got a small measure of satisfaction from seeing the fuming rage on the orc wizard’s face. That tiny bit of satisfaction was fleeting and Bjorn tried to get comfortable on the rough floor of the wagon. Dark stains he recognized as layers of blood soaked into the wood made him shudder, when he thought of the fate that surely had befallen previous occupants of the wagon, then the wagon lurched into motion.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“How did this happen?” Grand General Magrane demanded of the most skilled wizard with the Royal Army.
Madame Chu bit back a sarcastic reply. She could have explained that she was tired, all the wizards with the Royal Army were exhausted from the monumental task of breaching a dam, not to mention the ongoing effort to conceal the movements of the raiding force. She wanted to protest that she and her fellow wizards had done their best in very difficult circumstances, that the entire raid had been for the purpose of fooling the enemy about the expedition’s true purpose of collapsing a dam, that the Royal Army’s presence west of the River Fasse had mostly been to provide security for the wizards who had been vulnerable during the time-consuming operation of burning cracks through the dam. Madame Chu had not required or suggested the crown princess accompany the raid, indeed Wing had argued the girl who was both current Regent and future queen of Tarador should remain in relative security on the east side of the river.
Wing did not say any of those things she very much wished to say, especially she did not protest that the wizards were all desperately tired. Being tired to the point of exhaustion was no excuse for any person failing to perform their duty in the Royal Army, nor were such excuses accepted by the Wizards Council. Weariness, even great deep weariness what seeped down into your bones, was a given in wizardry, and to complain was a sign of moral rather than physical weakness.
“They fooled us, General,” is what she did say in response.
“Master wizard,” Magrane added with a slight bow from his saddle, “I meant no accusation, nor do I seek to place blame. What I wish is to understand how this happened, so I can plan a proper response and avoid such a surprise in the future.”
Wing nodded, grateful for the old soldier’s professionalism. “The short answer is the enemy can use wizardry just as we can. We have concealed the true strength, movements and purpose of the raiding force.”
“Yes, I understand that, and I commend your efforts, we would not otherwise even have reached the dam site. My question is, how did we not detect the enemy cavalry?” Immediately after seeing the almost complete collapse of the dam, while the lake was surging through the newly-created gap to send a crushing all of water down onto the heaped supplies of the enemy, Magrane had ordered the raiding force back to the River Fasse. The march back was planned to be faster than the journey westward had been; any equipment not immediately useful was discarded as needless weight, and with the river now draining to the south, the course of the river they had used to march west was now wider and easier for travel. The wizards had sent messages through the spirit world to their counterparts east of the Fasse, reporting success in breaching the dam and requesting boats to bring the raiding force back to Tarador. Boats had been readied for people, barges readied to bring horses back, and another part of the Royal Army landed on the west bank to cover the retreat. All appeared to be going well for Magrane, the enemy had reacted and was marching north at a furious pace to intercept him, yet the enemy would not arrive in time. Wizards supporting the Royal Army reported the retreat route was clear and the weather favorable.
Then, scouts riding on the southeast flank of the raiding force ran into an ambush by a large group of cavalry, an enemy formation that did not even exist before it slaughtered many of the scouts, according to Madame Chu and her fellow wizards. “You are now certain your view through the spirit world reveals the true situation?” His tone reflected an anxiety that his triumph was about to be turned into disaster, and that he could do little to prevent doom from falling upon them all.
“We are certain. General, I do not wish to bore you with details about the inner workings of magic-”
“Please do bore me,” Magrane insisted. “What I do not know about magic apparently can be dangerous.”
“On our march north along the east bank of the Fasse, during our crossing and all the way up to the dam, we shrouded the raiding force with spells to conceal the area from prying eyes. We not only created a sort of magical fog through the spirit world, we projected false images showing the vanguard of our force was farther north and west of us, closer to cutting the roads of the enemy’s main supply line. Our efforts were successful, for the enemy rushed troops north along the road, and diverted a clan of orcs southward to intercept us, or where they thought we were going.”
“Yes, you told me,” Magrane almost snapped, irritated the master wizard was not getting to the point. The daily briefings he had received from the wizards had been boastful of their successes, and Magrane could not abide boastfulness. “That does not explain why you did not see this sizeable and dangerous cavalry force coming north along the west bank of the river.”
“Because we cast a spell to envelop ourselves, we could not extend our senses outside the area covered by the spell. It is like being under a blanket, if you lift a corner of the blanket, flies can get in. We had to rely on our wizards still in Tarador to search the area for us, and because of the distance from which they searched, we had to tell them where to concentrate their efforts. It made sense to concentrate the search to the west of us. They also searched in other directions, but not intensively, such a search drains a wizard’s power, and we have too few wizards capable of performing that type of advanced magic. The simple truth, General, is that the enemy did to us what we did to them. They concealed the cavalry force under a spell, and allowed us to see the decoy forces advancing along the supply roads west of us. We were looking in the wrong place. Now that we are aware of the danger and the enemy knows where we are, we have dropped out spells of concealment and extended our senses. We are in grave danger; the enemy cavalry will soon be in position to block our path back to the river. The cavalry does not have the numbers to stop us-”
“No, and they don’t have to,” Magrane said while
grinding his teeth in frustration. “They need only slow our advance until their reinforcements can each us, and those are only a day behind.”
“What are your intentions?” Madame Chu would need to prepare her wizards to support whatever action Magrane planned.
“I will do the only thing I can at this point; send ahead my own cavalry force with the princess, to get her safely across the river and link up with our own people on the west bank. They will need to hold the river crossing until our main force can get there by marching.”
“That will be,” Wing recalled the enemy host she had seen marching rapidly north behind the cavalry, “difficult.” The enemy in the area would soon outnumber the raiders, and could bring in more troops while the raiding force was slowly whittled away.
“That is not my greatest concern,” Magrane hinted darkly.
“It is not?” Wing expressed surprise.
“No. For a cavalry force that size to be upon us already, they must have set out before we crossed the river. They must have received advanced notice.”
“I assure you, General, our concealment spells were flawless.”
“I believe you, master wizard. That leaves me with only one conclusion: we have a traitor in our midst.”
“Your orders, General?” The cavalry lieutenant asked the commander of the Royal Army only two days later.
“Sound the retreat,” Magrane sat tall in the saddle as he spoke words he feared could mean the doom of Tarador. The attempt to rush to the river ahead of the enemy, taking only the princess and wizards with mounted troops who could travel fast through open country, had failed. Scouts reported the enemy cavalry was already ahead in force, blocking the Royal Army’s line of advance. Magrane felt his best choice to avoid complete disaster was to fall back, rejoin the main raiding force, then try to push their way through the enemy by sheer weight of numbers. That, too, would be a calculated gamble, a race for foot soldiers on each side to reach the spot on the west bank of the river where boats would be waiting to ferry the raiders to comparative safety. Magrane feared to acknowledge the truth even to himself; even if his backup plans succeeded, most of the raiding force would be lost, trapped in Acedor on the west bank of the River Fasse. His only hope was to get the princess and the wizards safely across, to fight a desperate delaying action while they fought through to the river, boarded the boats and reached Tarador. Those Royal Army troops holding a tiny foothold on the river’s west bank were too few for any attempt to sortie out from behind the trenches they had dug as defense.
Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3) Page 37