Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  The end of the battle was so fast, it was almost over before he could blink, and he watched the entire formation of wyverns simply streak straight at them through the dust filled air, directly into the wall of whirling wind and then just vanish, swallowed up by it. A heartbeat later, perhaps even less and surely many hundreds of paces above the top of his shield he saw the outcome as the storm ejected them, a stream of bloody body parts flung out in all directions with the force of a titan, and he knew that the battle was over even before their remains went flying off in a blood red shower, sprayed in all directions before they began their final journey to the ground.

  As quickly as it had begun the battle was over, Marjan knew it even as he felt an immense outpouring of relief wash over him, and the druids clearly knew it too and they immediately let their tornado dissipate. Its work was done.

  A dozen heartbeats later and it was gone, an enormous funnel of raging wind, dust and debris missing without trace, the black clouds that had ruled the sky gone with it, and all that remained were clouds of dark dust, that were quickly dissipating into the once more peaceful distance. Marjan though, held his shields for a while, just in case something had survived. But he knew nothing had. Nothing could have, and the enemy still wasn’t smart enough to hold forces back for a second strike. They knew nothing of strategy.

  His nose confirmed that simple truth as once the angry winds had gone and the gentle breeze had returned, he could start to smell blood, a lot of blood, and then when the last of the dust clouds finally settled, he could see it too, everywhere. So too could the rangers as they stood there staring, eyes unblinking and mouths open wide in mute shock, a mirror of his own face.

  They were standing in the centre of a wasteland. What had only a few minutes before been a dirt road leading through the heart of a once magnificent forest, was now a scene of total devastation. For hundreds and hundreds of paces all around him Marjan could see huge piles of broken trees, torn out of the ground and shredded by the fury of the wind, covered with dust and boulders, and then coated with gigantic body parts. The remains of the wyverns were everywhere, and so was the blood seeping from them as it ran down over the remnants of the shattered trees, washing away the dust and replacing it with small red streams and lakes.

  In all his life Marjan had never seen so much blood, and for some reason the smell of it mingled with the fresh tang of tree sap was almost overpowering, sickly sweet and tangy while at the same time cloying and metallic, and above all, terrible. Despite having been through many battles in the past year, having killed many thousands of these creatures’ comrades, nothing of that seemed to compare with the carnage all around him.

  Yet even as he let the full horror of the bloodbath all around wash over him, he discovered that he felt no guilt or shame for it. A part of him, the part of him that had lived in the Allyssian forest for so many years and then among the elves and their pristine lands for another, was truly horrified by what he saw, but another part, the soldier and battle blade that Master Argus had spent so much effort trying to bring out in him, knew that even this terrible sacrifice was necessary and could accept it. Maybe the sylph had done better work training him than he’d realised. Besides, he told himself, in time the bodies of the enemy would become one once again with the land, providing the shattered forest with new nutrients to begin growing strong once more.

  Still that didn’t stop him staring like an idiot for the longest time.

  “We should leave. This will bring scavengers before the night has fallen.” The captain was right of course as he broke the silence some time later, except that Marjan doubted there were many scavengers anywhere nearby, those that hadn’t been eaten by the enemy had fled long before or been destroyed by the druid’s tornado, and so along with the rest of the troop he found his horse and dragged himself up into the saddle. For some reason he was simply too tired to vault lightly onto it as he normally would, and looking around he suspected he wasn’t alone. The long faces, the lack of chatter, and even the silence of the companions and the horses all told the same sad story. It wasn’t the battle or the magic that had truly drained him, it was the bloodbath all around them, the loss of so much beauty, and the certain knowledge that there were many more to come.

  Even Bearabus, normally the happiest and most playful of cubs seemed subdued, though she was a little bigger than a cub now, and he gave her a comforting pat before they moved off, a column of silent riders, picking their way through a battlefield of death and destruction.

  They were half an hour further down the road before he realised one more surprising fact. They had survived probably the most powerful attack of the enemy yet known, without a single casualty, not even an injury, and yet no one had celebrated, no one had so much as even broken out into a smile.

  What sort of war is so bad that victory and even survival tastes like defeat?

  ****************

  Chapter Sixteen.

  Marjan couldn’t help but break into a huge smile as the town of Evensong finally came into view in the distance, and he wasn’t alone. All around him he could hear his fellow rangers start cracking jokes and laughing quietly, others were already starting in on the songs, and despite his still pitiful command of the language and a complete lack of musical ability he joined in for a while. Finally, they had something to celebrate, and he wanted to.

  It had been a long patrol. Two tendays had turned into two long months, as they had finally ridden all the way to the bridge over the chasm, and in time been joined by many other patrols, all with the same goal in mind. They had to reclaim as much of the land that had been lost to the enemy, as quickly as possible, before what little remained in the wyrmlings clutches became a permanent wasteland. So said the elders, so said the priests and the dryads, and so too said the wizards, probably the first time they’d ever agreed on anything. He’d said the same, not that anyone listened to him, even though he’d guessed the cost even then.

  So it was that even as they’d finally reached the chasm along the main road through Gunderland and set up their first base camp, they had received word that other patrols were being sent to support them. From at least a dozen other elven towns, patrols of rangers had been sent out, ranging through the forests as they too started laying out vast numbers of wards and killing the enemy wherever they could find them, before finally reaching the chasm. It had not been an easy journey for any of the patrols, and some had suffered losses, sometimes terrible losses, but the enemy had suffered many more. Untold thousands of them were now gone, and secretly Marjan had some hope that the enemy was finally running out of soldiers. But as they seemed to have fewer of the enemy to face, those they fought also seemed to have become more powerful.

  Once their numbers had swollen sufficiently along the south face of the chasm, they’d set about protecting the land, laying down an impenetrable barrier of wards along the southern side of the chasm at least three leagues deep, to keep the enemy at a distance, unable to cross from the north, not even by air. Others they knew were carrying on the same duty along the south side of the chasm in Tonfordia and Ellington, effectively traversing the entire continent in what had to be the largest organised military campaign in recorded history.

  And so barely two tendays after they had set off, and just when the patrol should have been returning to Evensong, each of a dozen patrols, had started the long ride along the southern edge of the Gunderland section of the chasm, placing the wards he and the other mages had created every few hundred paces. Along the way they had encountered ever more of the enemy, and the Wild Sage Rangers had survived more than a dozen battles, though none were as terrible as the first. It seemed that the hoard of wyverns had been a solitary threat as had been the gigantic drake. Yet that was little comfort when they still saw the ruination of the land across the other side of the chasm, and also what a year of a wyrmling’s essence could do to even a lesser beast.

  There were deer the size of bison, but far fleeter of foot and with horns and spi
kes stacking out from every part of their flesh, while their antlers were small trees of wickedly sharp spears. Their hooves had also been reformed into great spiked affairs and one of the rangers had quickly named them spear deer, probably while ducking for cover. The cursed beasts could leap higher and further than any creature he’d ever seen, and seemingly turn in mid air. With that ability and their shocking speed as well as their impossible ability to remain hidden in the depths of the forest, more than a few of the troop had taken injuries.

  The wolves, dire wolves in truth had grown still larger as they should have expected, but many of them had also grown three and four heads while their tails had developed poisoned spines. Most horrifying of all however, was they way that they could seemingly open their entire heads to reveal teeth and fangs that surely belonged to much larger creatures. Though they didn’t pose the same threat to them as the spear deer, the sight was enough to make a grown man weak at the knees.

  The only bear they’d encountered, at least Marjan thought it had started out as one, it was hard to be certain what it was, had been the size of a wagon train, and despite its size, fast and hungry. Happily it had fallen to a fireball quite quickly, long before it’d reached them, as even in death they could see the noxious green gas it gave off, from a hundred or more paces away. They could also see the way its remains seemed to simply eat into the grass all around it and the soil underneath.

  They were far from alone in their battles of course, several dozen patrols of rangers and as many patrols of the surviving humans and gnomes had ridden the same journey with them, and thanks to practically all the masters of the magic guilds that could be found, along with most of the druids and of course quite a few sylph and gnomish mages, the battles had been won. But winning was such an overused word.

  As they had set about fortifying the southern side of the great chasm, laying an all but impenetrable barrier of wards across four or five hundred leagues, not one of them could have called what they were doing, winning. At best they were creating a bastion, laying down a line in the sand beyond which the enemy could not cross, while eradicating the enemy on their own side. A magical fortification that would allow those on this side to survive, lick their wounds, and even rebuild some of the destroyed villages and towns, and return life to the lands that had been so badly devastated. But that left the entire northern side of the land in the enemy’s clutches, and the damage he was continuing to unleash upon it was a nightmare.

  Forests were being levelled, great grass plains transformed into dust bowls, lakes and rivers turned to lifeless mud, and that was only what little they could see from the southern side of the chasm. The full extent of the damage done to the lands was unknown, as was even how many lands were affected if it wasn’t all of them.

  Northern Tonfordia and Northern Gunderland, were known to be overrun by the enemy, as were Whitney and the Varden Regency beyond them both, but no one knew if the Dead Men’s Wastes or the barbarian realms beyond them to the east were yet affected, and Marjan had constant nightmares of the Waste’s being overrun. There was so much life in those swamps, even if it was poisonous, and the creator alone knew what the enemy might transform some of the nightmares that normally called the wastes home into, especially after a year.

  Still it wasn’t his job to worry about that. Not any more.

  Three outposts of the Guild houses had been set up along the new front in the war and were now keeping the peace, watching the enemy, one each in Ellington, southern Gunderland and southern Tonfordia. All had been established not too far back from the chasm itself, to maintain the wards, and give early warning should the enemy try an assault. It was an important role and Marjan felt a little guilty at leaving the guild wizards alone to carry it out. However, the last thing any of the wizards wanted among them, was a maverick and he knew he had had no choice in the matter. They had made that quite clear. He could not help.

  Besides, they didn’t even really want rangers, druids, mages or gnomish sages with them either, which was why they too had finally been sent home after the wards had been raised, though politely it had to be said, so he didn’t feel too hurt by their rejection. They were even polite to him, all of the masters and students he’d met, which had come as a surprise, though they also addressed him as mage. Perhaps a sign that they now regarded him no longer so much as a maverick wizard, but rather an elven spellcaster.

  Yet that suited him even as it surprised him. Once he would have wanted with all his heart to return to the Guild, even though he knew it was impossible and that he was unworthy, but somewhere in the past year, that dream had faded away to be replaced by another, better one, and though he still didn’t quite know quite when it had happened, he was glad of it. Though it had taken him over a year to realise it, he had finally found a new home and a new life.

  Being away from Evensong for so long had been the key to unlocking that understanding. Normally he didn’t mind travelling, he even enjoyed it for a bit, especially being once more so close to the Allyssian Forest, a land he knew so well, but as the days had kept passing, and the nights grown colder, he’d found himself yearning for his cottage, and unexpectedly for the town as well. There was something about the town that grew in a man’s heart, even if he still didn’t quite know what it was. But whether it was the natural beauty of the town, the living splendour of the land, or even the feeling of being accepted by so many people for what he was even if they were elves, he missed it.

  He missed Essaline too, more than he could admit. The way the sun sparkled in her hair, the warmth of her smile and the musical laughter of her voice, and though they had spoken most evenings by the fire, he still ached to see her with his own eyes and to feel her in his arms again. He wanted to see what she’d done with his cottage, or what would be one day soon he hoped and dreamed, their home.

  He was glad to finally be returning. Until he wasn’t.

  The smell of burning was the first thing that told him all was not as it should be. Not the smell of clean wood-smoke, or even aroma of cooking, it was the smell of something noxious burning, poisoning the very air, and it wasn’t new. This was old, cold, stale and heavy burnt smoke, and it spoke of death. The rangers noticed it too as did their companions and soon the songs and the laughter were gone while smiles left to be replaced with clenched jaws, nostrils flaring and eyes wide open, all looking for trouble.

  Then they came around the final bend, approaching the town from the northern side, from the side where his old cottage had once stood, before it had been crushed by a kraken, and more of the village could be made out.

  “Goddess be praised!” The captain was only speaking for all of them as he whispered the worried blessing under his breath, and his wasn’t the only prayer given voice.

  Even from half a league away they could see the devastation. They could see the glorious trees that were the heart of the town, smashed like toothpicks. Trees that had stood hundreds of feet tall, trees that were thicker around their waist than a dozen men holding hands, broken, knocked over and crushed flat. And here and there, scattered among the remains of them he could see fires burning, not camp fires, not cooking fires, just the remains of what had once been all consuming conflagrations.

  “What happened?” Harvas was of course asking the right question, but of the wrong people. As Marjan surveyed the scene in front of them, he could find no answer. Not within him.

  “The drakes.” Someone spoke up from behind them, a woman, Elifis, but Marjan knew even as she suggested it that she was wrong.

  “No. They’re just not big enough. Not to cause this sort of damage.” It was the truth, and yet he almost wished it wasn’t, because it meant something still larger and more deadly again was out there. Something that had come calling while they’d been away. And no one had said anything. No one had mentioned it over the fireside conversations. Not even Essaline. Which surely meant it must be recent, too recent for them to have heard from their kith and kin. Sudden fear clutched at Marjan’s heart a
s he thought on that. The same fear that grabbed at everyone else’s.

  “Double time.” The captain was only doing what was right, what was militarily correct, but he was already too late as he gave the command, as Marjan pressed his heels into Willow’s flanks and they started galloping madly for the town. He was far from alone and all around him others were riding as if their lives depended on it. But it wasn’t their lives that they were worried about.

  As they raced for the town, the horses’ hooves thundering on the ground, the howls and roars of their companions splitting the air, Marjan began calling his magic to him, all he could find. If there was an enemy ahead, he wanted to be sure it paid for its crime. Paid with its life. He was far from alone in that and he could hear the winds all around them beginning to howl as the druids had the same idea.