by Garon Whited
I’ve also given some thought to my warrior-spirit-crystal-beds. I’m not ready to risk anybody’s sanity with that just yet, but I’ve still got Torvil asking about it every day. He keeps sending me message spells to ask new questions, and to gently remind me that he wants to be at the head of the line. He also says he’s got volunteers, if I want them. It’s tempting to just crank out a prototype and let him try it.
Don’t mistake me; I like that man. But he can get on my nerves. If he weren’t one of my personal guard, I would find a way to route his message spells to some sort of voicemail. Or, at least, have him talk to one of the buffer-people Tort is slowly interposing between me and the people who want minor or unreasonable stuff.
The problem with the dream-teacher thing is that I’m having a bit of trouble deciding what to actually put in the crystal. I’m trying to cherry-pick the things that go along with, well, everything related to personal combat. Do I include the knightly virtues as presented in the mythological Knights of the Round Table? Do I want to include the Seven Virtues of the samurai—or the eleven virtues, depending on who you ask? Or should I just go with a shot of How To Kill Things, straight up, no soda, no chaser, and let them sort the rest out?
Part of the problem is that I’m not sure how this thing will be used. Will it be just for knights, which will require me to include lessons on what I expect from a knight? Will militia or other soldiers use it, and would a lesson or two on knightly virtues be a bad thing? Is it going to be for beginners, so we can lay the martial groundwork quickly? Or will it be for the experts, people who have already demonstrated the discipline and virtues I require? Or will it cover everything possible, for anybody?
I spent a lot of time, today, sitting in my mental study and reviewing things I never learned.
If you think that’s weird, you haven’t been paying attention.
I also spent some time inside the crystal. There are a number of headspace-style environments in there, now, covering most of the things that we think—okay, okay, that I think—anyone will need. Urban environments, for fighting in cities, for example. Forests. Mountains. Open fields. Castle walls, with various defensive geographies. All the way down to just a plain practice room for lessons in the finer points of personal mayhem. The works.
All I need to do is decide who to put in there. Or, more properly, who to make for the purpose.
One pleasant note is that I’ve finished a time-saving device for myself. It started life as a bed, but now it has an enchantment on it. This is a simplified version of the regrowth spell, with a couple of automation tweaks. The subject lies on the bed and the operator indicates two parts; the part to mirror and the place it goes. Then the subject lies there while the bed does it, working at high speed.
This is draining for the subject, but there’s a reason for the hurry. It doesn’t place the spell on the person; it only works on them while they’re in the bed. After a few minutes, they have to be helped out to recuperate from the treatment. This is, I think, about a week’s worth of regrowth all in one go—it redistributes about a pound of their body mass into filling in the missing part. After a week or so of more standard recuperation, they’re probably ready for another treatment.
It cuts down on the number of people bugging T’yl, Tort, and Thomen to ask me to help. Pretty much any wizard can run the thing with just a few lessons. It’s about as complicated to use as an old-fashioned, rotary-dial phone. And it might be needful, depending on how this invasion goes.
Now, though, I’m pretty much done with all that. I have my spike-bombs, I’m wrapped in a number of defensive spells, and I have nothing much to do until sunset. From the looks of the sand table, the mercenaries will begin disembarking sometime late tonight to reinforce the forward base. As far as I am concerned, I can’t even think of a way to make that more to my advantage. My plan is to get going immediately after sunset and be waiting for them.
And, since I have lots of time to sit and stew over it, I’m nervous. Excited, but nervous.
I wish Firebrand was here. This would be a cake walk. Having that heavy chunk of sharp fire by my side is confidence-building.
Tort caught me fidgeting.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just looking at one of my defensive spells. I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to interfere with the—”
“Stop.”
I stopped and looked at her. She looked at me, nodded twice, and gestured for me to follow. So I did.
Once we were upstairs, she swung the door shut, then shooed me into my bathroom. I didn’t argue, but I did wonder what was going on.
What was going on involved getting naked and getting into a hot tub for a massage. I can’t say it was a bad idea, really. It was certainly a relaxing one. And, with Tort being Tort—that is, more than moderately sexy and far more than slightly mischievous—it definitely took my mind off the future. Well, it took my mind off anything that wasn’t the immediate future. She can really grab a man’s attention. And she knows how to hold it.
Sunset started, and that put everything into motion. Time mattered again.
I rolled to my feet and started to dress, ignoring the prickling, stinging sensation running all over my skin. Tort didn’t bother to get up; she just sat up, gestured economically, and I felt the cleaning spell whisk away my dying transformation byproducts as fast as they formed.
The only thing that slowed me down was Tort’s kiss. It wasn’t a perfunctory peck; she kissed me like she meant me to stay kissed until I returned. I did my best to do the same for her.
Hmm. I suppose that’s pretty much a good way to define anything I do for Tort.
“My angel,” she said, when she let go of my lips.
“My Tort,” I replied.
“Listen and understand.”
“Okay.”
“Every time you leave my sight, I fear. I fear that you will be gone again. I do not fear that you will fail to return; I have your promise. But I fear that it will take so long that I will be old and ugly and you will not want me. It is irrational, I know, to have this fear, but there it is. Know that it is difficult for me even to watch you leave the room, much less ride to battle.”
I took her hands and kissed them.
“Ever since I woke up, I’ve been pressed for time,” I told her. “I am immortal and always in a hurry. Have you noticed?”
“Yes.”
“Because the people I care about are not immortal, I have to hurry. How else am I to give you everything I want to? I know you don’t have forever. I’ll hurry back. Okay?”
I was further delayed, but in a good way.
I met Bronze in the great hall and we made a rapid circle of the upper courtyard, cornered out the gate, circled down to the Kingsway, and really started to run. I already had a wind-deflection spell going, so we were moving at something slightly over ridiculous when we hit the canal road southward.
We could have cut across, through the rolling plains, but I really didn’t want to risk another gopher hole. I have bad memories about the first one. Instead, we blazed a blue-green trail of sparks down to Mochara, then swung hard left to head east along the clifftop.
We passed a cold camp full of knights and their squires; I was pleased to see they’d managed to get enough horses to make the trip quickly. They cheered as I went by and I waved.
When the cliff started to drop below two or three feet, we slowed to a walk and turned right, heading into the ocean.
First off, that cooled Bronze immediately and made the fire-breathing stop. At high speeds, she’s about as subtle as a freight train. On fire. Tonight, we would need just a little stealth.
Second, we were going to spend a lot of time underwater. Might as well get started.
We slugged along under the surface, slowed drastically by the water, but still moving faster than a man could run. My aerodynamics spell needed some altering to work underwater, so I worked on that while hanging on against the current. We spee
ded up by about a third, maybe half, when I finally worked it out.
We took up station just off the end of the pier and waited. Bronze and I were underwater, at night, and wrapped in highly effective anti-location spells. Is it any wonder that nobody saw us?
The first ship showed up an hour or so later, judging by the moon. As it pulled alongside the end of the pier, making itself the crossbar of a “T” with it, I took out a spike and rammed it, full length, into the keel. I tried to estimate where the lines would be to divide the keel into thirds and to hit the front one.
Distantly, I heard some shouting, questions; the usual “What was that?” followed by some debate. People thumped and thundered off the ship anyway, and there was a delay while people examined the interior of the ship. The conclusion was that there was a rock in the underwater slope of the new pier, which drew criticism from someone aboard the ship and a rude remark from someone on the shore.
As they departed I tried to hit the second line of thirds along the keel. Nobody seemed too upset about it; they were fairly sure they knew what it was.
Over the next couple of hours, I repeated the process for the rest of the ships. Each time, the ship wanted to know what the hell they hit. Each time, the guys on shore assured them it was normal. Well, they’d never had a ship dock here before; they built the pier after the ships had sailed. How were they to know it wasn’t normal?
Nobody dove in to look around. At night? What were they going to see?
So I waited until the last ship started to pull away, drove in the last spike, and dismounted. Bronze started up along the right-hand side of the pier; I started up the left side. We kept as low as possible so we could charge out of the water from as close as possible.
Bronze can crouch. I’m not sure normal horses can be trained for that. I’m not even sure they’re anatomically capable of that.
Five… four… three… ready… steady… Go.
We came out of the water like submarines breaching. Water surged around us, foaming, and we charged much faster than anyone could have thought possible. By the time anyone’s head snapped around to see what that was, I was already snapping his head around even farther.
Out of the water, Bronze wasn’t yet breathing fire; it would take a little bit before she cleared out the water and started torching things. On the other hand, she gleamed a lot more in the firelight of the encampment than I did, and was much bigger. She attracted a lot of attention, which was perfect; part of her job was to distract people.
I killed everything in my path to the rams.
The key to the rams wasn’t the wheels, although those were important. Anyone moderately clever could improvise something—sleds, perhaps—with the local bamboo-like plants. No, the key part of any ram is the actual ram, itself; a massive chunk of wood, preferably capped with a metal head. These two were actually quite fancy heads, cast or molded or carved in the shape of dragon’s heads.
I rammed a spike into the mouths of each, then bounced off a soldier to change direction.
Bronze was still making herself useful as a diversion. Her mission was to go through anyone in her way. Just run in a reasonably straight line, go through or over anyone or anything in the way, and make it out over the rampart. If they didn’t have anything primed and ready to deal with her, she could manage that without much risk. If they did have countermeasures handy, I hoped it would take longer than the twenty or so seconds she would need.
It paid off; she pounded through the camp, wrecked a couple of wheelbarrows, kicked a couple of campfires into blazing showers, and crushed anyone too slow to get out of her way.
If I’d meant “trampled,” I would have said “trampled.” I said “crushed,” and I meant “crushed.”
I, on the other hand, started to draw some attention, but everyone was already screaming and pointing at her, so I didn’t get nearly the attention I deserved.
As a result, I had time to look around the camp, spot the highest concentration of magic, and head for it. I waved my disruption fan through it before I got there; nothing exploded. A lot of someone’s magical effort went to waste, though; my magical vision saw a massive display of thaumaturgic pyrotechnics.
Having done that, I continued to the tent that used to house all that magical potential, went through one side of it, whirled for a moment to subdivide everyone in it, kicked the braziers to scatter coals over the rugs, and departed through the other side of the tent at speed.
Important note: If I go up a ramp—say, the inside of an earthen berm—when I’m in hyperdrive, I will become airborne just like a motorcycle going up a ramp. Since I wasn’t prepared for it, I tumbled a few times in midair, getting a nice view of heaven and earth as they spun around me.
I didn’t land well. It hurt, but I considered it lesson well-learned for an easy price.
Bronze and I regrouped outside the camp. I stood on her head and balanced there, carefully, to see what was happening. They were fighting fires rather effectively; someone was bellowing orders.
Good discipline and organization. I admire that.
I set off all the spikes.
Both rams’ heads disintegrated, as did a lot of the log behind each. What was left might still work as a ram, but not nearly as well.
The ships, on the other hand, suffered slightly more. With their keels shattered and hulls breached, they started taking on water at some ridiculous rate. They were visibly sinking as I watched. The launches or rowboats or whatever they are barely made it to the water before the ships foundered. Survivors were either in the boats or clinging to lines as the boats towed them to shore. All in all, the surviving sailors added another two hundred or so men to the existing force.
I hopped down and dropped into the saddle.
“What do you think?” I asked. Bronze pawed the turf and snorted. She was all for going back through again. I wasn’t totally against it, myself. On the other hand, we did it once already. Someone in there had taken firm command and was, if at all competent, preparing for another attack. With the major stockpile of magical stuff destroyed and, I hoped, the majority of their wizards in pieces, we might reasonably make it through.
We wouldn’t do enough damage to make the risk worthwhile. Sure, another dozen, two dozen casualties, but so what? My council counseled against foolish risks; they were right.
I patted Bronze on the neck.
“There will be other times,” I assured her. She tossed her head: I suppose so.
Meanwhile, if we weren’t going to attack again, I needed to send them a message. I took out my bow and the prepared arrow. The parchment was still fastened in place, still enspelled to be waterproof. It looked intact, so I climbed up on Bronze’s head again, loosed the arrow into the camp, and thunked it into the chest of someone saluting.
I figured that if he was doing the saluting, they guy being saluted would read the message. I was right. It’s a good thing Seldar has excellent penmanship. They’d never manage to read it in my handwriting. He even gave me a good signature.
I watched the guy read the note. He didn’t seem pleased by it. Well, he didn’t know I was lying about monsters from the deeps ready to eat any ships. I might have exaggerated about ten thousand people of the plains lurking in the grass, too. And I might have implied, incorrectly, that they were under constant supernatural surveillance from a city full of wizards…
He went to someone else, who took the message, read it, and took it to other people. Eventually, it disappeared with some fancy-dressed gentlemen into a larger tent. I supposed they were debating what to do.
Hmm. I have a small mirror…
I settled down into the saddle again and pulled out the polished piece of steel. Moments later, I was looking down from a spot near the peak of the tent. I guess when I went through the wizards’ pavilion, I disrupted whatever spells were blocking local scrying.
Six men were seated at a camp table and arguing. A moment of fiddling and I managed to include sound. Not a lot of sound; reprod
ucing air vibrations in a small piece of steel reduced the volume rather drastically, but I have supernaturally acute hearing. I didn’t make out the whole conversation, but I did get the gist of it.
The mercenaries wanted to call it quits; they hadn’t been hired for this. They were paid for a simple raid. They were promised it would be quick and stealthy, with bonus loot in the form of slaves, good steel, and whatever else they felt like taking.
The commanders of the city forces were divided. Two insisted this could still work. If I had the forces I claimed, I’d have smashed them completely, not just disrupted the camp a little. True, losing the ships wasn’t ideal, but ships were leaving anyway. Likewise, losing the wizards wasn’t ideal, but how much did it really matter? Everything else was just a pinprick, an annoyance.
The other city commander was more cautious. He maintained that the element of surprise was lost, as were the rams. Taking the city wasn’t going to work. Against a prepared and alert foe, the forces in question were insufficient. More than enough for a surprise attack, granted, but all that went away the moment the monsters came out of the ocean. He considered everyone lucky that I warned them. Otherwise, they would have marched their troops straight into a slaughter.
One part that got my attention was a question about the other reinforcements. As several people talked, it went something like this:
“Without the wizards, how do we coordinate with the other troops?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to swing around and link up, I suppose, unless they contact us.”
“It’ll cost us time to go up to the mountains, and we’ll be spotted.”