“It was awesome,” Hranda gushed.
“Incredible,” Kreega added, “I feared that you had fallen until I saw your sword swing around.”
“We have work to do,” Delgart cut in, “we need to send the rest of the wedaterem away, hide the bodies, and remove all traces that we were here.” He looked around and then back at the group gathered tightly around Blakstar. “Reena, Kreega, go forward and check the guard posts on this side of the bridge; we should have this mess cleaned up by then.”
The two scouts nodded once to their commander, but both touched Blakstar once before leaving. Velnar and his wife, Janelle, were watching the affair; Janelle whispered something to Velnar before calling the others who had been huddled around the kortexi to come and aid her clearing the area of any traces of their encounter.
Velnar called to Blakstar. “Sir Blakstar, I could use some help with these bodies,” he said, waving to the kortexi. Blakstar, confused, moved to where Velnar waited. Delgart and his brother followed, helping them to remove the corpses.
“I don’t really need any help with these,” Velnar indicated the fallen wethem, “but I don’t really feel like straining myself. Besides, you look slightly troubled by something,” Velnar said as he stooped to grab the legs of one of the corpses.
Blakstar grabbed the arms and followed Velnar toward the edge of the channel; he kept looking back to where the others were working with Janelle. “Their behavior is strange,” he said without explanation.
Delgart and Klaybear lifted another body, following them to the edge of the swamp; the commander exchanged a secret smile with his brother, nodding toward the kortexi.
Velnar smiled his gap-toothed grin. “Well, to them, your actions were very impressive,” he said, “and young, unattached wetham are impressed by heroic actions.”
Blakstar frowned. “Are you saying,” he began, looking back once more, “that they acted that way because they are all attracted to me?”
Delgart bit his tongue to keep from laughing, tossing the corpse into the swamp to cover it.
Velnar nodded once, then stopped next to the channel. “On three,” he said, starting to swing the corpse, “one, two, three,” and they tossed the body far out into the channel, where it splashed and sank slowly from sight, weighed down by the armor and heavy clothing. “Yes, they are all quite smitten with you, Sir Blakstar,” Velnar grinned, “so if you have a preference, I can, or I should say, we can, ease your way forward, if you like.”
Blakstar’s mouth fell open, but he closed it quickly, knowing that the girls were watching him. “I . . . , uh,” he stuttered, “I can’t,” he said finally, and he sighed. “I was captured by Xythrax and ponkolam who . . . ,” he hesitated again, and noticed he had both hands over his heart; he put his hands down and looked at Velnar.
“There was a girl,” he went on after a time, “a wetha, slave of the red kailum, who I was told was to be my ordained mate . . . , she was afraid of me . . . afraid I will kill her . . . I could never . . . her back was scarred by whips . . . ,” he added but could not go on, turning away to hide his emotions. When he had mastered them, he spoke again. “I could not consider another while she is a slave,” he said, turning to look at Velnar with hollow eyes.
Velnar, Delgart, and Klaybear watched him during this struggle to speak. Velnar nodded and gripped Blakstar’s shoulder. “I understand, son,” he said, “I will make sure that they understand, but be warned,” he added, grinning, “they will probably still worship you.” Delgart snorted, leading Klaybear to fetch another corpse.
Blakstar looked at Velnar’s mock seriousness and let out a sudden bark of laughter. “I think we are falling in their esteem,” Blakstar noted, “since we haven’t moved all the bodies out of their way.”
Velnar looked back at the others and sighed. “Well, I guess that means we will need to strain a little and increase our esteem in their eyes.”
With Delgart and Klaybear’s aid, they soon cleared the corpses away. Just as the scouts returned, Delgart gathered them into their formation, ready to leave.
“What did you find?” Delgart asked. “Have the guard posts been re-manned?”
“Partially,” Reena replied, “but they are having some trouble with their wedateri allies.”
“Trouble? What do you mean?” Delgart asked.
“They refuse to enter the guard posts,” Kreega said.
Reena nodded. “From what we could see, they are arguing right now about it, and the morgle who is in charge is having trouble controlling them, if we could attack now, while they are bickering. . . ,” she left it hanging.
“How many?” Delgart asked.
“At least fifty, maybe more,” Reena said, “since some had gone into the huts.”
Delgart’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. “Any way around them?”
Both shook their heads. “Not that we could see,” Kreega said.
“And if they saw us,” Reena went on, “their quarrel would be forgotten.”
Delgart put one hand over his mouth. “We don’t have time for this,” he noted softly.
“Commander,” Grelsor put it, “I think it’s time to bring up the last company: I’m sure Luthgart is wondering if you have forgotten him, given that all the others have gone.”
Delgart looked at him for a moment, and then he nodded. “You are right,” he said, “it is time that Luthgart and his company join the action.”
Chapter 19
It is said that the puri and gheli breeding pits are bottomless, producing a never ending supply of soldiers for the Great Lord; this rumor is absurd but contains a grain of truth. . . . There are places in Kolu where time runs both faster and slower–where a thousand years passes in the blink of an eye, or where time comes to a virtual standstill–enabling the Great Lord to refill the ranks of his army in days rather than decades. . . .
from Archives of the Red Kailum, Records of the Magsamel
Lecture #298-1430, recorded atno 1891
Night dragged on; the attacks of the sponsum increased in frequency, and the seklesem continued to die. Marilee’s life drained slowly away, for no reason that Klarissa could detect, and nothing the green kailu tried made any difference; only by constantly pouring energy into the commander’s unmoving body was Klare able to keep Marilee’s lungs working and her heart beating, even with breath-giver gripped in Klare’s ever weakening hands. Again she used breath-giver to draw energy from all around her, careful not to take anything from the company captains and the others who stood near her, to re-supply herself and pour more into Marilee, who lay with her head resting on Klare’s knees. Throughout the long night, she listened with growing horror as messenger after messenger brought the same report to Rellik, captain of the First Company, or Kella, captain of the Second, depending on who was watching over Marilee: another squad cut-off and taken before the seklesem could be rescued. Report after report, squad after squad, hour after hour, the casualties mounted, and the remaining kailum grew more and more frantic with no injuries to heal, and no idea where the missing had been taken, or if any still lived.
Rellik tried pulling the companies and squads back so that all six companies were bunched together for their mutual protection, but this move only brought the sponsum in greater numbers and made them easier prey. He tried attacking in tight wedges, to break out and give them more room to maneuver, but the sponsum simply peeled away those at the edges. He tried an organized retreat toward the fortress but found the way blocked by the sponsum, tried charging in all directions to no effect: they were trapped like fish in a barrel, and the best they could do was to keep moving around the barrel, making it slightly more difficult for their enemies to capture them.
Again, Klare drew energy from around her, excluding Kella and Rellik, who stood nearby, and it was becoming more and more difficult to find energy here: something was draining all of it away, even as it drained life from Marilee. Klare let the energy she had drawn flow into the unmoving commander, and then
supplemented her own waning reserves; breath-giver was all too willing to fulfill her commands and almost felt eager to do even more. Again, Klare probed Marilee using the staff, trying to discern the manner in which their enemy drained her life away, but it was like trying to catch darkness with her hand, moving away even as she tried to find it, never staying put. Klare bit her lip in frustration, feeling helpless and useless. She looked up and opened her eyes, feeling someone approach; it was Kella.
“Any change?” the captain of the Second Company asked, having noticed Klare’s closed eyes.
Klare shook her head once. “No,” she sighed, “and I cannot discover why: she is dying, for no reason I can detect, and I can do nothing to stop it.”
“We’re all dying,” Kella replied wryly, almost with a laugh. “We cannot hold out much longer,” she finished, looking around sadly.
Something in Klare snapped; she jumped to her feet, forgetting Marilee’s head in her lap. “Have you forgotten who you are?” she asked, and then she looked around at those nearby, raising her voice. “Have you all forgotten who you are?” She turned and looked at Rellik; all eyes turned toward her, the battle and their enemies for the moment forgotten. With the eye-shaped emerald at the head of breath-giver glowing brightly, she stabbed it toward Rellik’s right shoulder. “What is that?” her voice rent the silence. “What does it symbolize?” she asked before he could answer the first question.
Rellik flinched away from the glowing staff; his eyes darted back and forth between the staff and Klare’s face. “It is the symbol of the Seventh Legion,” he replied.
“The legendary Seventh Legion,” Klare said. “I don’t know that much about your order, but I have heard stories of the gwenakso, the legendary legion of the Feragwen.” She paused for a moment before going on. “Has the legendary gwenakso ever been defeated?”
“I, uh,” he stammered, eyes still flicking between her face and the glowing tip of breath-giver, still pointed toward him, “not that I know,” he finally said.
“That is what I have heard,” Klare went on, and then added, her tone ruthless: “do you really want to be in command for the first defeat?”
“But I’m not commander!” Rellik protested.
Klare swung the tip of her green-glowing staff so it pointed to Marilee. “And what is the procedure when the commander is incapacitated during battle, as Marilee has been?” she asked, swinging the staff back to point at the center of Rellik’s chest. “Who, then, is in charge?”
Rellik flinched again as the staff returned to point at him; his shoulders slumped and he looked at the ground. “Me, as captain of the First Company,” he replied in a quiet voice, barely above a whisper.
“Then I repeat my question,” Klare said, her voice softer. “Do you want to be the first one to suffer defeat?” Rellik shook his head but did not look up. “Then, think of a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; there has to be a way!” Klare exclaimed in a stronger voice. “There must be something we haven’t thought of, something . . . ,” she started to say but stopped, as several images flashed across her mind, formed a pattern, and in that pattern she recalled a conversation with her late master at the table in his room more than a year before, on one of the coldest nights of that winter.
“So even though it is possible to combine the healing power of as many kailum as one has available,” Klare had said, “the tool, in this case, the staff, limits the actual number who could join in a healing circle.”
“Precisely,” Avril replied, “the tool becomes the focus of the elemental forces, a conduit through which the power of all in the circle must pass. Thus, the more refined and powerful the tool, the more healing, or any energy, for that matter, that can be directed through the tool. But one must be extremely cautious.”
“Why?” Klare asked.
“Why do you think?” Avril returned.
Klare thought for a moment before replying. “Since we have been discussing the limitations of the tool, I would guess that one must know precisely the tool’s capacity.”
Avril smiled and then nodded once. “Also, wielding that much power,” Avril added, “the kailu, or maghi, can easily lose control of the forces, which could have catastrophic results.” Avril paused for a moment; the wood burning in his fireplace popped and cracked loudly. “Only the red kailum and black maghem now combine ortheks routinely, but they do not focus the forces through a single rod or staff, which diffuses the end power of the particular orthek.”
“Why don’t we combine forces as they do?” Klare asked.
Avril laughed. “We believe, in our arrogance, that we are individually more powerful than we would be by combining with others; although that is not strictly true. It is more likely that we do not practice it for two reasons: one, we train singly, and so there is little opportunity to practice combining, and two, we have lost the art of making rods and staves that can serve as the conduit for combining.”
Klare looked down at breath-giver, still glowing in her hands, and remembered how eager the staff had been to channel more energy: if there ever was a tool created that could serve as a conduit for enormous amounts of energy, the kind of energy that would save them, Shigmar’s staff had to be such a tool. She looked around at the others, who were looking at her curiously and wondering why she had stopped mid-thought and not spoken again. “I have an idea,” she said with a grin, “we’ll need someone to replace me with Marilee, and then all the kailum and maghem still with us.”
Rellik signaled his messenger; Kella did the same, and two seklesem ran off. “What did you have in mind?” Rellik asked.
“The ortheks used against the sponsum,” Klare went on, “have been too weak to be effective, even the cold-based ortheks do little damage. Therefore, we need to increase the power of our ortheks, and the only way to do that is through orthek combining.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Rellik said, “and I recall that our commander got the maghem and kailum using the practice again, but isn’t there still some kind of limitation on that?”
“And our tekson,” Kella added, “have already been combining ortheks to no avail.”
Klare shook her head. “Not in the way I mean,” she replied. “I don’t mean a kailu and maghi working together to cast a new orthek by combining their specialized teka. I mean large groups of us joining together to increase the power of ortheks we already use.”
“Isn’t that highly dangerous?” Kella hissed.
Several kailum and maghem approached. Klare nodded to Marilee. “I need some of you to take over for me,” she noted, “while the rest join me in an effort to save all of us.” She looked back at Kella and Rellik, both of whom looked concerned. “The danger is in the tool itself,” she went on, holding up her staff, “the more refined and powerful the tool, the more teka energy that it can conduct. Given that this staff was created by the founder of our order before the art was lost, I would bet that it can serve as a conduit for more power than we have tekson.”
Both of their eyes widened, since both of them had witnessed firsthand exactly what breath-giver was capable of doing, having seen the wave of destruction that destroyed all of Shigmar for ten miles around the point where Klare’s husband had enacted the staff’s most terrible power. Both looked at one another, and then at the same moment, both faces split with wide grins.
“It just might work,” Rellik said, “at worst, it will buy us more time, getting our commander closer to the source of sponsu power.”
Delgart nodded once; Luthgart returned the nod and raised his arm to signal the squad leaders of his company, and seven squad leaders signaled their readiness to act. Delgart then raised his fist, held it up for a moment and lowered it suddenly. When he did, Luthgart lowered his arm, as did all seven of his squad leaders, and the seklesem of Delgart’s command squad and his Seventh Company stepped out from their hiding places in the shadows beneath the cypress trees, took careful aim, and released. A multitude of bowstrings thrummed in unison; a hail of a
rrows thinned the ranks of wethem in the service of the morgle milling around the guard posts north of the main bridge that crossed to the only entrance to Morokolu. Delgart and his seklesem leaped forward, loosing more arrows against their enemies, who were scrambling for cover; the kailum of all the squads, again supported by the maghem, moved forward, surrounded by the swords and shields of their squads, had sleep ortheks ready to put the wedaterem out of action, green and yellow light erupting from their staves, blanketing the wedaterem with sleep. Delgart’s command squad moved toward the morgle leader of this contingent of enemies, as Delgart believed taking him out would cause the others to flee, so his plan was to drive through the center of the wethem and wedaterem toward the morgle, neutralizing him and opening the way for them to cross the bridge.
Blakstar moved at the point of the command squad’s diamond, his armor glowing more brightly in the pre-dawn light; his presence and earlier performance inspiring the other seklesem to increased effort. A few of the wethem in the service of the morgle rushed to block Delgart and his squad, but Blakstar, supported by Hrothlo to his left and Mitha to his right, along with Delgart and the shields, slew them and threw the others back. Will-giver flashed, surrounded by golden flames, as the kortexi slashed forward, right, and left, draining all desire to fight from anyone who had the misfortune of being struck by the sword; Delgart darted left and right beneath Blakstar’s arms, slashing with lightning speed. The squads of the Seventh Company mowed down the morgle’s forces, who began to flee minutes after Delgart and his seklesem attacked. Few escaped with their lives, for the bodies from the previous skirmish of Delgart’s command squad had attracted a multitude of negumflum, who abandoned fighting over the corpses for the soldiers running straight into their jaws, too frightened by their encounter with will-giver to pay attention to the dangers of the Mariskal. Screams of fright became howls of pain suddenly cut-off. The morgle, so intent on the wedaterem, did not realize that the bulk of his forces were fleeing until the swamp creatures began collapsing around him. The morgle raised one of his two-fingered, green-skinned hands to wake the wedaterem that had been put to sleep, when it noticed the kortexi, Delgart, and his command squad nearly upon it; instead, it uttered a hissing, bubbling exclamation of surprise, turned and raised its other hand, gesturing with both hands as if it were pushing something away.
The Redemption, Volume 1 Page 101