Nature's Master (The Nature Mage Series Book 4)

by Duncan Pile

  “How do you get out of here?” Antoine asked.

  Madame barely heard him. Salome was dead, killed by Bryant’s last blow.

  “Madame!” Antoine pleaded.

  Madame ignored him and hurried over to Elath, but stopped short when she saw her broken body and wide, unseeing eyes. “No!” she moaned, turning away. She crossed the cellar on shaking legs and fell to her knees before the last of the girls. It was Bobbie, a vivacious redhead, popular with the rest of the women. Blood was pooling beneath her shattered skull. Madame bowed her head, stricken by grief. Somewhere inside, a survival instinct was firing, urging her to get to her feet and flee, but her body was unresponsive.

  “Madame, they’re alive,” Jacqueline said. With what felt like an enormous effort, Madame turned her head. The other two girls were rising to their feet, aided by Elath. Madame recognised them now – the sisters Kolle and Amidelu, two of her newest recruits.

  “There’s no time for this,” Antoine urged, taking her by the shoulders. He was right. The cellar door, stout as it was, was rattling from the many blows raining down on it. The wooden support had already been dislodged and a plank was starting to come loose. Madame couldn’t afford to lose herself in grief just yet – not until the remaining three girls were safe.

  A measure of strength returned to Madame’s limbs, and she allowed Antoine to help her stand. “There’s a hidden exit,” she said, stumbling towards the barrel.

  “I’ll do it,” Jacqueline said, reaching behind the barrel and scrabbling for the catch.

  A splintering crash sounded from above. A quick glance showed Madame that one of the panels had cracked.

  “Hurry,” Antoine said.

  “Got it!” Jacqueline said, as the front of the barrel swung outwards.

  Madame pulled it wide open. “Jacqueline, you first. I’ll send the sisters afterwards.”

  Jacqueline fled down the ladder. “Ready,” she called from below. Kolle went next, starting violently as another crash sounded from the doorway behind them.

  “Quickly,” Antoine urged. Kolle’s head dropped out of sight.

  “Amidelu,” Madame said, and the remaining girl rushed down the ladder.

  Antoine turned to Madame. “What’s down there?”

  “A cave. I’ve been hiding girls down here for months.”

  “They’ll know you escaped. A careful search will reveal the exit.”

  “It’s rigged to collapse after me.”

  Antoine’s eyes widened. “Then you’ve bought yourself more time than you realise. The army is already on the move. There’s no stopping it now.”

  Another heavy crash shook the door.

  Antoine handed her a short, heavy plank. “You need to knock me out or my life is forfeit. Quickly now,” he said kneeling down. He tapped a spot, high on his scalp. “Right here. Just don’t kill me, okay?”

  Madame paused. “Why are you helping us?”

  Antoine looked at her, his heavily scarred face inscrutable. “I have my reasons. Do it.”

  A heavy boot thrust through the splintered door. Madame raised the plank and brought it down hard on Antoine’s skull. He fell to the floor like a sack of flour, but she was sure he was alive. She’d brained plenty of badly behaved clients before, and knew exactly how hard to hit a man without killing him.

  With a last, haunted look at the murdered girls, she scrambled down the first few rungs of the ladder, grabbed the false front and pulled it towards her. The latch snicked shut just as the cellar door crashed open and boots rushed noisily down the stairs. Madame froze, not daring to move.

  “What the hell happened in here?” a voice growled.

  “Toby’s dead.”

  “Bryant too.”

  Madame held her breath as footsteps neared her hiding place. “I’ve found Antoine!” the first voice said. “He’s alive.”

  “What about these whores?” someone asked.

  There was a pause. “Dead as well.”

  “And the fat bitch?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Then where the hell is she? There has to be another way out.”

  Madame tensed, ready to rush down the ladder and trigger the collapse.

  “Forget that,” the first voice said. “We saw at least thirty girls running into this place. Search the tavern from top to bottom. We can’t go back to Elijah empty-handed.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!”

  Boots retreated up the stairway and Madame was left in silence.

  “Madame?” Jacqueline whispered from below.

  “Hold on,” she said, and descended the ladder.

  “What’s going on?” Jacqueline said. “Are you going to collapse the entrance?”

  “Not yet. Antoine told me the army is already on the move, which means his men can’t delay. They’ll have to find a camp following elsewhere.”

  “Maybe we should collapse it anyway,” Jacqueline said.

  Madame shook her head. “Three girls died up there,” she said, feeling the first salty sting of tears. “I want to give them a proper send-off.”

  “Okay mama,” Amidelu said. “I’m sorry.”

  Madame reached out and stroked her thick, black hair. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, my dear,” she said. “We’ve all suffered a terrible loss. Let’s hope that Antoine’s men leave and then we can decide what to do, but if they come back to the cellar and find the barrel, we’ll have no choice but to trigger the collapse.”

  Eighteen

  Madame thought long and hard about their options while waiting at the base of the ladder. If they collapsed the exit, they’d be confined to the caves indefinitely, or until they found another way out. Against all odds, their escape route hadn’t been discovered, except by Antoine, who had risked his life to protect the secret. Even if the Man in Black had a change of heart, he was leaving the city at the head of an army that would be away for months, if indeed it ever returned. No, it seemed that for now, their disappearance remained a secret, which meant they still had access to the city. She grunted, her mind made up. They would set up a watch, day and night, and if anyone started nosing around near the barrel they’d seal the entrance, but until that happened they’d leave the way open.

  “Come on,” she said to Jacqueline, Amidelu and Kolle. “Let’s get our girls.”

  …

  “What do you mean, they’re gone?” Ferast said. Now that the army was on the move, Elijah’s part in this was done. The councillor had remained in Namert, leaving Antoine to report to the magician instead.

  “They took me by surprise,” Antoine said, forcing a nonchalant shrug. If the nasty little toe-rag caught him lying, Antoine’s life was over.

  “You were overpowered by a group of women?” Ferast sneered.

  “We followed them into the Happy Drunk and they attacked me in the cellar. It was a lucky blow.”

  “And your men couldn’t subdue them either?”

  “The door was blocked behind me. I don’t know how many there were and I don’t know where they went, but when my men broke through the door they were gone. There’s nothing more to say.”

  Ferast’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment Antoine felt he was standing on the brink of an abyss, but then the magician’s eyes lost their steely edge.

  “I am displeased,” Ferast said, “but you will be given your chance to make amends.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Antoine said.

  Ferast’s eyes glittered, and a thin smile spread across his face. “This army needs a following. Thanks to you, we have missed our opportunity to find one in Namert, so we will just have to improvise.”

  Antoine experienced a thrill of dread. If he understood the magician correctly, he had saved Madame and her girls only to damn some other group of women. Ferast was watching him keenly, scrutinising his expression, but Antoine kept his feelings buried.

  “Improvise?” Antoine said.

  Ferast dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “I will let you
know when the time comes.”

  Turning on his heel, Antoine left the tent, and for the first time began to rue his decision to sign on with Elijah and this madman. There were no two ways about it – Ferast was sick in the head. The boy delighted in the suffering of others. Antoine shook his head as he walked away, hoping that by some stroke of luck he could escape taking part in whatever Ferast had planned next.

  …

  “Get them on their feet!” Antoine barked. He felt sick. The army had set off from Namert that morning, but Ferast had called a halt at the first village they came across. Antoine’s orders were to capture the women and form a camp following. With a strangely satisfied smirk, Ferast had assigned a division of Stringfellow’s men to Antoine’s command, none of whom were loyal to him. These were men who’d been freed from long sentences in the mines, and were grateful to be along for the ride. They had rushed to capture the women, wresting them from their families with rough hands and casting them to the ground in the middle of the green. Antoine had made sure the men of the village were tied up first. It was for their own safety – bloodshed may yet be avoided if they were unable to attack Ferast’s men – but they hated him nonetheless, cursing him and straining against the bonds.

  Antoine hated Ferast for this. Somehow, the nasty little upstart knew of his…vulnerability when it came to women, and had forced him to oversee the raid. He had no choice but to obey, but at the very least he could stop Ferast’s men from raping the women in front of their husbands.

  Striding across the green, he cuffed a soldier round the back of the head for groping one of the captives. “I said hands off!” The soldier whirled around and lashed out. Antoine grabbed his, pulled him off balance and knee’d him in the gut. The man fell to the ground, emptying the contents of his stomach. Antoine pulled him to his feet by the hair and dragged him away from the women. Villagers and mercenaries alike stopped what they were doing, watching him intently.

  Antoine spun the man around and placed him in a choke-hold, just about allowing the man to breathe. “What’s your name?”

  “What’s the problem?” the man said through gritted teeth. “They’re gonna be ridden like mules every day and night once we reach the army.”

  “Your name,” Antoine said. The man spat out a mouthful of bile and tried to twist free. Antoine strengthened his grip. “What’s…your…name?”

  “Welson,” the man said. “I can’t breathe…”

  Antoine drew a blade with his free hand, grabbed Welson’s hair and pulled his head back to expose his neck. He pressed the knife to the man’s skin.

  “No!” Welson cried. “Please…”

  Antoine had no intention of listening. “Welson, for striking a commanding officer, I sentence you to death,” he said, and sliced his throat wide open.

  Antoine held on to the twitching body for a moment, giving the rest of the men a good view of the blood sheeting down its chest, before casting the corpse unceremoniously to the ground.

  “No groping, no rapes. Got it?”

  The men exchanged inscrutable glances and for a moment Antoine thought they were going to attack him, but they acquiesced, offering reluctant nods of assent.

  “Good. Now get on with it,” Antoine said.

  He watched with disgust as the men gathered the rest of the women. Everything in him wanted to abandon his post and walk away, but it was impossible. Even if he escaped, which was highly unlikely, his men would pay the price for his betrayal. Besides, he had never reneged on a contract in his long career as a mercenary, and he wasn’t about to start now. True; his life had taken a turn for the worse the day Ferast had recruited him, but he and his men had no choice but to see it through.

  Nineteen

  After the wedding, Gaspi threw himself wholeheartedly into helping prepare for the battle they all believed was coming. At first glance, Helioport didn’t look like a city preparing for a siege, but to the knowledgeable observer – one who knew the nature of their foe – the signs were there. The gate to the college, shattered during the first demonic attack, had never been repaired. Only months previously, the Darkman had left great gouges in the very stone of the city, damaging its walls, streets and even the college tower, which it had scaled in order to reach its prey. The furrows had been filled-in as best as possible, but there wasn’t time to spend on proper repairs and the marks were still clearly visible.

  If the city itself was scarred, the people of Helioport were more so, rushing through the streets with hunched shoulders and talking in hushed tones. Every magician in the college had abandoned their studies and focussed their energy on strengthening Helioport’s defences. The guards went about their tasks with an air of heightened vigilance, moving from post to post with stony faces. Those on watch kept their eyes glued to the horizon, scouring the terrain for the first sign of the approaching enemy. The entire city was focused on a single purpose – to ready itself for war.

  Gaspi spent much of his time enchanting Helioport’s cache of weaponry, harnessing the demon-bane power of the altar fragments they’d retrieved from Pell. The city’s blacksmiths had already embedded the fragments into weapons – typically in the crosspiece or butt, where it wouldn’t interfere with the bearer’s grip – but it took a magician to fuse the power of the artifacts with ordinary material. Knowing he was one of the college’s most powerful enchanters, Gaspi worked hard to produce as many magically enhanced weapons as possible, but there was a whole team of able enchanters working alongside him and Professor Cartwright, who was overseeing the enchantment in Voltan’s absence, was careful not to let anyone over-extend themselves. Voltan had left the city at Hephistole’s behest, following up on rumours of an army on the move, some distance to the north.

  Gaspi’s friends were similarly embroiled in pre-battle activity: Lydia was working alongside him, enchanting weapons; Emmy was helping the infirmary prepare for the inevitable influx of casualties a siege would bring; Trask had recruited Jonn and Taurnil to help drill the guards; and Rimulth was scouting for Hephistole, making use of his connection with the air spirit, whose far-seeing gaze missed little. Busy though they were, he and his friends sought each other out as often as they could, and those stolen hours together felt like a homecoming. For the citizens of Helioport this was a worrying time, knowing that a battle might soon be upon them, but for Gaspi and his friends, this was the first time since leaving for Pell that their lives weren’t in immediate danger.

  One chilly Feastday, they had gathered in the Traveller’s Rest and were tucking into the day’s special – roast mutton, greens and potatoes in lamb and mint gravy. Emmy and Lydia were laughing in the corner, and Adela was clearly listening to the girls’ conversation, a telltale smile playing on her lips.

  Gaspi glanced at a red-faced Taurnil, who was trying and failing to ignore the giggling. Gaspi grinned. “Ever get the feeling someone’s talking about you Taurn?”

  “Uh-huh,” Taurnil grumbled. With an exasperated sigh, he shoved his plate away and coughed loudly in Lydia’s direction. She ignored him, so he cleared his throat, noisily and theatrically.

  “Are you okay Taurnil?” she asked, all innocence. “Sounds like you need a drink.”

  “I’m fine. I just wanted to, er…Lyd, there are some things best left un-discussed,” he ventured.

  Lydia kept a straight face. “What things are you referring to?”

  “You know…things!”

  “Well if you can’t tell me what they are, how am I to know what you mean?” she said, turning back to Emmy and whispering something in her ear. Emmy burst out laughing.

  “Lydia!” Taurnil pleaded. “It’s private!”

  The mischievous glint in Lydia’s eye faded, replaced by something softer and warmer. She sidled along the bench and kissed him on the cheek. “Okay, you old stick-in-the-mud,” she said, snuggling in under his arm.

  Taurnil smiled, but he looked utterly helpless. Gaspi couldn’t restrain a snigger.

  “What’s so funny Gasp?
” Taurnil said. He might be powerless when it came to his wife, but his friend never got off so lightly.

  “Er, nothing,” he said, trying not to smirk.

  Adela chuckled throatily.

  “What are you lot laughing about?” Jonn asked, after washing down the last of his mutton with a swig of ale.

  “Nothing,” a surly Taurnil responded.

  “I think the topic of the day is Taurnil,” Gaspi said.

  Everybody laughed except Taurnil, who groaned, his head in his hands. “It begins again.”

  …

  The pheasant bobbed across the ground, searching for grubs with a beady eye. Talmo shifted his weight and raised his bow, drawing it inch by creaking inch until the string was taut. He exhaled slowly and steadily, and in the moment of stillness before the next breath, let the arrow fly.

  The bird flopped lifelessly to the ground. Talmo walked over and picked up it up, frowning at the ragged hole in its carcass. Voltan had talked him into bringing one of the enchanted bows, along with a quiver of magically enhanced arrows, but he was regretting it now. The pheasant had been pulverised by the force of the shot! Then again, the bow hadn’t been enchanted with game in mind. It was meant to drop a man, or even a vaerg with a single arrow. Given the nature of their mission, Talmo grudgingly accepted that a time might come when he’d be glad of its power.

  He and Voltan had been travelling for the past couple of weeks, scouting the valleys northwest of Helioport’s great floodplain. It was Voltan’s mission, but when the warrior mage had asked him to come along Talmo had accepted immediately, seizing the opportunity to get out into the wilds. He’d adjusted to city life as well as he could, but Helioport’s walls still hemmed him in, distancing him from mountain, forest and stream. As for Voltan, the warrior mage was one of the few plainsdwellers whose company didn’t set Talmo’s teeth on edge. He didn’t chatter on as if every thought in his head was important. The man was a warrior, carrying himself with a gravity that Talmo admired.