by Damien Lake
Heads of the men around him blocked his line of sight, yet he hardly needed to crane his neck when a building-sized fireball erupted, consuming the upper tree boughs. It rose in a black and orange mushroom, capped atop a smoky stem that elongated as the crown rose higher into the sky.
Must be Henodd. And these damned bastards brought their own magic user!
Not his problem this time. Henodd would deal with it. That was his job, not the job of a piddling apprentice who would as soon never talk to any full mage ever again.
Arrows whistled overhead. At a guess there must be close to two-hundred archers firing volleys into the Galemarans’ deeper ranks. Too close to the front would endanger their own soldiers as well.
The shrill arrow screams filled his ears in a familiar song, a counter melody to a thousand swords ringing off each other, battle cries of defiance and alarm, orders flying over the din, and weaving throughout it all, the dying. Their chorus possessed endless variety. Each dying man’s final vocals were unique. No two men ever died the same way.
It made every battle different.
It made every battle the same.
Except this battle had an accompanying chorus. The surviving beasts had finally been brought to the fight. Thirty monsters collected by whatever white-robes had escaped were led into the rear Galemaran flanks. Their throaty roars provided a new, eerie contribution to the music of war.
Marik stepped back into the fray after reinstating both workings. He set to a continuous pattern, endlessly swinging his sword whether an enemy stood in its path or no. At such times, he swiveled and found new foes to throw into his meat grinder.
He swung upward at a diagonal, curved the sword around, then slashed upward in a matching opposite. His sword described a figure eight, one lain on its side, the space before him slashed twice a second by his ceaselessly moving blade.
Every blow that connected brought damage ranging from broken bones to bodies hurled several feet away. Other Galemarans sweated and worked to find openings in their enemies’ defenses. He advanced relentlessly, staving in ribcages and shattering spinal bones.
In his mind, he pictured using a cudgel to knock away a line of sticks stuck only inches into the ground by children. One by one, as he walked down the line, he struck them aside with casual ease, breaking a handful, hurling others.
None could stand against him. No force on this battlefield could match him. He had already killed twenty or so soldiers, crippled at least as many to match. His raw strength wrought massive casualties among their ranks, and he had not yet needed to bring his superior sword skills into play. With him at the head, as the strongest warrior should be, he would lead Galemar into driving these foreigners back where they came from!
And the Arm could stand among the twisted corpses littering the snow and watch as he proved that noble blood alone had never been what the Arm of Galemar was about.
Marik gritted his teeth while grinning at the same time, and set to pounding as many of these black-armored soldiers as he could reach.
* * * * *
“That isn’t working at all, captain! We need bowmen, not swords!”
“Damn it! Where in the hells is Errolye?”
“Over there, I think,” the man gestured to the west.
“You tell him to get every cat-string he has over here, and men who can use them properly!”
The Galemaran soldier saluted before dashing away into the swirling ranks. A second soldier with blood slowly oozing from a gash across the eyebrow ran to him from the rearline.
“Captain, we can’t hold! Two minutes and we’ll break apart!”
“I’ve got Errolye hustling.”
“Is he going to arrive in the next minute? If he isn’t, then those demons are going to shred my unit!”
The captain continued gnashing his teeth and darted a glance over his subordinate’s shoulder. Those gods bedamned monsters were too much to deal with.
He could see his man was right. They’d only killed four of the beasts since they had sprung out of nowhere from behind. Two minutes might be optimistic.
“Piss on it all! Pull back the men! We’ll have the center force’s archers redirect until Errolye finds us!”
The subordinate saluted shakily and leapt back toward his men before an arrow skewered his neck. He collapsed in a spray of blood bursting from his lips.
With a mighty oath, the captain dashed to give the retreat order personally when he realized that shot could not have come from the south. Not from the weirdling beasts and the black-souled men who ran with them. That shot had flown from the east.
He spun quickly, in time to see the next shot, but far too late to avoid the arrow. It buried in his chest. Icy fire enveloped his heart.
As he fell, he clearly saw the archer. A white-haired man in strange clothing, mostly looking like scrap remnants sewn together in dangling trails…
Colbey glanced about, searching for any others who might have heard the traitorous man order a retreat from the Taurs. A coward concerned only for his precious life rather than in defending his land, his home.
“No one flees,” he whispered, though the words would never find the officer’s dying ears over the battle. “No one runs,” he husked. “They have driven the timid before them long enough. Now the sheep grow fangs and the crook is broken. The sleepers wake, and shake off the dreamer’s dust. They stir from the decaying rooms in the forgotten palaces of the dead.”
He smiled as he whispered, lips pulled wide, showing his gums in their entirety. The Taurs were roaring. :Let them. It will be their death knell.:
Yes. Running is done. The murderers and betrayers will kill each other, and both will meet the debt owed.
Starting with this quivering man who had turned coward. His death had been merciful. He’d escaped the protracted agony he deserved at Colbey’s hands for wishing to sacrifice ground to the thieving, dishonorable, degenerate murderers.
It will be done.
Colbey shrugged the bundle on his back into position before disappearing into the chaos.
* * * * *
A long morning stretched into noon. The fighting continued with black soldiers falling faster than Galemarans. Marik credited this to himself. The frontline had bent into a spearhead with him at the point. His unstoppable advance had broken the enemy ranks. Crimson Kings and kingdom fighters flowed into the opening he forced, expanding it, pushing it wider as a steel wedge splits a log when struck with a hammer.
Marik felt weariness throughout his arms and back. For all that his sword weighed next to nothing, the constant effort and long morning had taken its price. He could slip back in the line to eliminate most of the aches with the stamina technique, yet he feared that without him, the offensive formation would collapse.
Perhaps half the black soldiers had fallen, he estimated. He had lost track of how many he’d killed. No number would surprise him unless a cosmic quartermaster in charge of battlefield tallies claimed it at fewer than fifty.
The enemy feared him. They had made three major assaults directed at him personally. Two had been with soldiers crowding from all sides, seeking to hamper his blade, while the last came as an arrow storm. He had seen that one being prepared with his magesight when he ducked back in the line to replenish. Archers being escorted closer to the fighting, near where he stood.
Marik had returned, ready for them, crushing a soldier’s neck then using his corpse as a shield to catch the flying shafts. Kineta had ordered every allied archer to seek out the enemy bowmen. She did not appreciate arrows flying about near her.
The fighting continued and they pushed forward. A quarter-mark before they had come into view of the enemy core, made up of twenty horses surrounded by soldiers. From the etheric, the silhouettes cast by their armor were slightly different. They must be elite soldiers or the equivalent.
He had targeted the core since he’d first spied it from the higher plane. The officers would be there, as was the magic user. Henodd had done li
ttle, and Marik hoped Celerity would strip his hide for it. Spells continually lashed out from the core’s center. Marik had yet to see a single one returned whenever he spared the moments to observe. If Henodd’s supposed skill could only keep the enemy mage occupied, then Marik would have to break the magic user’s neck along with the enemy’s command.
Would those elite soldiers prove a tougher challenge than these useless rank fighters? Might they be as much trouble as the Nolier knights had been?
Except those knights would hardly trouble him any longer. Not when his weapon’s condition was no longer a factor.
Marik pushed, eager to take apart the enemy commanders, until he realized the black soldiers were making a fourth attempt on him. Nine men larger than average pushed through the ranks to battle him. None were armed with the standard issue swords. Five bore massive claymore blades, three held long-handled battle axes the likes of which Marik had never seen, and the last a massive club that might have been from the hell-beasts’ arsenal, except as big as it was, it was still smaller than the ones the monsters carried.
Might be my first real challenge of the day. Let’s see what you boys have.
* * * * *
Colonel Harbon swore, sweat pouring down his face despite the cold air freezing his lungs. This…this…jumped up peasant mage! Challenging him! A master in his own right, a specialist in shielding techniques, and this peasant had defied him for hours!
Harbon allowed the peasant no opportunity to counterattack, yet it wounded his pride the amount of trouble he had encountered in breaching the insect’s shields. They were blended shields, which was the only salve to his ego.
A simple shield could be disassembled once the structure had been deciphered. Shields blending multiple talents increased the difficulty, not simply doubling the complexity, but usually by a factor of five…if not ten.
And this peasant was a clever one. He had created multiple blended shields, each mixing his talents in different proportions, before weaving them together with a tapestry maker’s skill. It had been difficult to determine where one shield ended and the next began, every different piece showing through in a patchwork quilt.
But he finally understood it. Harbon, hovering in the etheric, held a mass of fiery energy ready to be unleashed. With separate channels, he formed two other attacks. One, a needle lance, adroitly slid beneath and pierced a hidden bubble shielded behind two outer layers. At the same moment, the second, an ice razor, sliced through the etheric ring the peasant had used to ground his constructs.
The shields folded, then collapsed in on themselves. Harbon could see the presumptuous man struggling to reform them, frantically groping to re-center them on a foundation that was no longer stabilized.
With the last shield melting away, he released the fire. It engulfed the mage and the twenty men guarding him in a rising column of flames. The pillar rose fifty feet, yellow and orange and red curls writhing furiously within a perfect cylinder.
“A pity,” he murmured as he reentered his body. “A clever mind as yours would have found rich rewards in the cardinal’s service.”
Harbon glanced around. The annoying peasant mage had consumed all his attention. Startled, he saw that half the soldiers had fallen, that these lost, ignorant souls had nearly pressed forward to his very feet while he was occupied.
He snarled, and almost demanded of the guardsmen why they had not taken action. Except that question needed no mindless muscle-bound oaf to answer it. They were bound to Adrian, and would never move until danger threatened him personally or until he ordered them to. With the general sitting his horse like a hollow lump, they had maintained position until new developments forced their hands.
Which would have happened in three or four minutes. Harbon could see the fighters, could probably hit them if he threw his belt buckle in their direction.
Curse the officers under the lord’s name! How could they have let the situation spin so far beyond control? Every officer present would be remembered, and after the Day of Glory, they would be the first on the altars! He felt a moment of regret that he had sent Mendell back north to take control over the sub-majors securing the taken lands, confident that he could quash the petty forces aligned against them without Mendell’s aid.
Which he would have easily, if not for the cursed peasant delaying him. With the only magic wielder taken care of, he would direct his talents against these rabble and teach them to fear god’s power.
A faint tickling along his spine halted his attack before he released it. Fluctuations in the local power networks. Energy was being redirected and expended. The only magic wielder?
He quickly searched about, finding the disturbance’s source very near at hand. Close enough to throw a belt buckle at, in fact.
The man disturbing the etheric energies stood still while others fought. To judge by the massive Heavy Squadsmen littering the ground surrounding him amid broken weapons and a shattered club, he must be catching his breath.
Peculiar, and a mystery. That man was no one of the power. Not an oaf as muscle-bound as those standing by his stirrup. And a sword that size only testified to the fact. The larger the sword, the smaller the brain.
Except…the disturbance clearly originated from him. Stranger yet, under magesight that sword glowed with power, shining as no nonliving object should in the etheric plane. And the aura on the man…another bizarre mystery. Shaped to his body, as if the dissolving energies were being consumed before they could form the nimbus.
That sword…a Tool? No. Magician-made Tools could not draw on power outside that which they had already been imbued with, and he believed that sword drew its power by consuming the wielder’s life force.
An Artifact then? Harbon licked his lips, uncertain. Artifacts were rare enough, their uses as varied as their shapes, and always dangerous unless they were completely understood.
Whatever it might be, it possessed power to make it, and the man wielding it, a significant threat. Dangerous enough to slaughter his way through an army. This must be dealt with.
* * * * *
Dietrik had returned, pushing through the ranks to rejoin him in the combat thicket, Marik noticed. He smiled at his friend, only to receive a bitter look in return. Odd.
Others were about. Not everyone, and Marik hoped they were either resting for the moment or having minor wounds looked after. Cork flailed away in a fight with a soldier, not half-bad, but only about half-good. Would he have been re-classed if the band had marched at its usual spring departure time?
Wyman fought well, requiring no aid from Churt’s crossbow, which claimed a kill with roughly sixty percent accuracy. Chiksan used his spear as if it were part of his body, and Talbot gave as good as he got. It kept him alive, though the other Kings mostly gave better than they got from these black soldiers.
His reserves were at half-strength. Those giants had provided a tougher fight, tough enough to seriously drain his reserves. He better replenish before pushing onward to the enemy officers.
Marik opened his magesight…and felt it a single instant before he meant to drop his workings. The same as those spells being sent against Henodd. Except not at Henodd. At him. Straight at him!
Less than an instant, but instinct took over. He dropped his strength working to free his channels. Every shield, Errant Energies, Spear Point, every shield, Whiplash, Astral Protection, every shield, Physical, Hammer Blow, Cutting Blade, Ocean Wave, every shield…
He had mastered four new shields during the winter under Tollaf’s tyrannical rule. The chief mage had also drilled him on his speed, so even with the new additions it still took less time to erect every one than it once had, layered together, the feeder channel pulsing through each to maintain the sandwich.
Marik felt it hit, stronger than any attack he’d ever taken before. Fire burst around him. It blossomed in a flaming rose. The explosion released a concussive blast that flattened the surrounding men, Galemaran and invader alike.
He kept his
feet. The physical shield deflected the concussion force. Half his shields had been demolished. Marik set to rebuilding them furiously while adding new layers, realizing as he did so that the shield around his sword still held. Not only that, but his blade had become as enmeshed in layered shields as he.
All morning he had concentrated on maintaining the dual channels, holding them far longer than ever before. Fierce focus had kept him maintaining them, and his frantic mental state had sent the workings down both channels at once. The second channel caused no problems for the moment so he let it be. If he allowed it to snap into the other feeder channel, it might disrupt the careful layering. Any attempt to carefully let only that single channel collapse might cause them both to give way.
His reserves were thin. He could only keep this up for so long. Yet without the strength working he could gather from the mass diffusion while he held the shields.
Behind the guarding soldiers, he spotted the magic user sitting on a horse. He glowed with etheric power. So he is an actual mage then. Small help knowing the specifics when his repertoire was so limited. Damn Henodd to the lowest hell for this, putting him into a mage duel! Celerity better strip off more than his skin!
Oh, hells! He’s a mage! If he starts drawing on those lines I saw earlier…
The thought chilled him to the bone. With that much power at hand, the invader mage could burn Marik away without trouble. His shields would be worth less notice than if they were made from parchment. He could draw from the lines as well, but his skill at such had never been tested to this extreme. Better to end this as fast as he could. If he could end it at all.
Marik readied to send a barrage of etheric spheres against the man, intending to press him without quarter. Giving a mage a chance to find his balance was never a good idea. He started forming the first orb when he felt the shields around him vanish. Not sheered away by an attack. Just bloody vanish!