Battle Mage: Winter's Edge

by Donald Wigboldy

  Following direction to the rear of the building by the inn’s keeper, they found a large stable walled in behind the inn and another smaller building attached to the main building where the sounds were coming from as someone hammered away. Passing his reins to a stable man and assisting Yara and Katya down from their mounts, Sebastian asked, “You have a smithy here?”

  The older man nodded with a smile. “The master’s family has owned the inn for multiple generations, but he fell in love with smithing. After he was trained by an old master smith, Master Ivol built the smithy behind the inn and changed the name of the place when he took it over for his father.”

  Taking his staff and travel bag in hand, Sebastian thanked the man and led his party into the inn through the back door. A large hall appeared able to hold at least a hundred people with more than a dozen tables ready for meals. A desk with a lovely middle aged woman with dark hair standing behind it was across the room from the front door, but the stable yard door came in from the right. The woman looked up summoning a bright smile, while a pair of younger women either swept or wiped down the tables.

  “Hello, wizards and falcons, welcome to the Blacksmith’s Inn. I am Hilda. My husband Ivol owns this inn, but I run it. How can I help you?”

  While Sebastian stepping forward as leader surprised the woman who had looked to Brenner or at least one of the older falcons originally, she recovered with little hint of the mistake. “The ravens of Windmeer should have sent word to arrange for rooms for me and my party.”

  Opening the book on her desk to a different page, the woman looked up and asked, “I assume you are Falcon Trillon. Windmeer only sent word of one falcon’s group to us at least, but the message we received said there would be twelve, not thirteen,” she finished with a little frown as the woman took in the problem.

  With a warm smile, Sebastian kept his voice a little low as he answered, “My sister decided to join us for the trip, so we need an extra bed I suppose. Can one of the rooms for the women hold three?”

  “All your rooms consist of two single beds, but I can have a cot brought in,” Hilda responded with an equally warm smile.

  “She can room with me and Nara,” Yara stated quickly breaking the woman’s eye contact with the young man. “Serrena and Frell can take the other.”

  A pair of young men came into the room and looked to Hilda questioningly. They looked similar enough to her to assume that they were her sons. Hilda asked quickly after losing her smile briefly to the interruption, “Do you need help with your bags? The twins can help.”

  Smiling with more than just businesslike looks at the women, the twins who appeared a little younger than Sebastian eagerly moved towards the wizards.

  Hilda ignored her sons’ eagerness and said, “Though we are very busy and will be filled to capacity with the king’s tournament, since we received word so early from Windmeer we managed to put all six rooms on the second floor. You will have it almost completely to yourselves, though the other two rooms will have other wizards from Taltan taking the others.”

  Leaning closer to Sebastian, the woman lowered her voice and added, “They have elves among them. Can you believe it? Real elves!”

  “Interesting to know,” the mage replied with a friendly smile and leaned in as if securing the secret between them. So the games had brought wizards from Taltan and elves besides no less. Such a draw promised to make the tournament more interesting than he would have thought.

  With the inn keeper’s sons carrying the bulk of the women’s baggage, the wizards and mages followed them up the stairs with keys in hand. The boys tried attempting to make small talk with the women as they pointed out each room. Only Frell carried her own bag, and the boys began to ignore her in her dark, falcon colors. She had a pretty face, but the strength of a soldier in her look seemed to turn the boys off when the wizards and Katya seemed more interesting and receptive.

  Katya in particular seemed to want to flirt back. Sebastian worried more about the girl’s magical power accidentally affecting the young men, than her physical, though at only thirteen, his brotherly instincts made their way to the fore as he told the two after the girls were placed in their rooms, “My little sister is thirteen, boys, and a wizard. While there are a lot of penalties for commoners…,” he rested an arm on each of there shoulders leveling a dark look to each in turn, “they are nothing compared to what I would do to you if something were to happen to her.”

  He could see that his threat working as both swallowed hard and nodded with nervous eyes. “Now run along, boys. I am sure your mother has work for you to do. We can settle ourselves from here,” the mage said for he and Collin, who were the last in the line. Their rooms were the first three on either side of the hall. He counted ten doors and assumed two were for the Taltan wizards, while the remaining two must be for family or other staff.

  As the twins hurried quickly back down the hall towards the front stairs, Collin began to chuckle, “That was evil of you, Bas. I’m not sure that they won’t run straight out the front door and hide somewhere until we’re gone after that.”

  The door swung open after putting the key into it and Sebastian laughed quietly in response. “Well, better to warn them now than have one of the girls teach them a lesson. Katya might be too young and naïve to realize how being a novice is going to affect her, but the others don’t. Plus I assume Nara and Yara will be pretty protective of her as well. Nara seems to be spoken for also and might take offense more than might be wise.”

  “Spoken for?” Collin averted his gaze as he pulled some of his clothes from the bag to air out before putting them in the small wardrobe on his side of the room.

  Sebastian didn’t answer. If the two of them wanted to try and keep their relationship platonic, it was up to them, but everyone could see that there was more to it than just friendship.

  Looking at the silent mage, who was also beginning to unpack for the week long stay, Collin added, “Should I say the same for Yara? I don’t think you two are really trying to hide it from us anymore.”

  “Hiding what?” Sebastian half smiled knowing that the closeness of their group for so many days meant that they were all getting to know each other too well. Even Brenner, who often tried to seem aloof from the idea of the tournament and training at times, had fallen into more chatty ways ways with them as he warmed to the group. After almost three weeks together, the mage felt fairly close to them all.

  “Oh, now you’re just going to toy with me, huh?” Collin asked with a sardonic laugh. “So you know that Nara and I like either other… a lot, but you think that we hadn’t figured that you and Yara are pretty much a couple by now? She’s like your shadow when we ride. I know part of that is that she hates riding, but even with you trying to spread your attention to all of us it’s pretty obvious that you two like each other.”

  Shrugging, Sebastian closed the wardrobe on his side of the room. “At least now that Yara is a full wizard, there is less of a taboo about her having a relationship.”

  “To a point!” the earth wizard cautioned waving off the assumption with his finger. “You know how wizards are about their women. They’d prefer none married or were ever with a man. If they’re seen with one before they’re thirty, I’ve heard that the elders tend to put pressure on them to stay pure. Why do you think Nara and I haven’t…,” the wizard’s voice trailed off in disappointment. “At least, we are both wizards, but she’s a nature wizard and I’m earth, so even our schools would frown upon any union there.”

  “I wonder if there have ever been any real studies on whether a wizard loses any power after sex?” Sebastian asked bluntly making Collin redden with embarrassment. Among the wizard and mage schools, such talk was like blaspheming the gods themselves. The word was almost taboo, and yet the mage knew of falcons that had families and certainly most of the men seemed to have women they visited in each city they found themselves in for their duty.

  Coughing nervously, the wizard brushed back some str
ay brown locks of hair from his forehead before giving a somewhat evasive answer, “I would assume that the healers’ school has examined the problem.”

  “But men can go sleeping around and even battle mages of either sex wind up with families before they hit their thirties quite often. The only thing that truly stops them is if they have children.

  “My guess is that having sex for wizards, whether male or female, won’t affect their powers in the least,” the mage summarized. While it had never been his biggest worry as he had read and trained, Sebastian had never seen any word in the books that would say that there was research that proved otherwise.

  Looking beet red, Collin responded by moving towards the door quickly, “Well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? For right now, we’re here to compete in the tournament. Whether… sex messes with our magic or not, we really don’t have time to investigate it now, so why don’t we stop talking about it and get some dinner. I’m starved after all that travelling.”

  Sebastian let the wizard retreat with dignity and, though Collin was right about the timing, he was pretty sure that one day he would find out. It made his mind consider the other warning from the healer’s guild. Was being a healer going to cause problems with the rest of his magic? They had said destruction magic was the opposite of healing and that given time the two could cause harm to his system.

  Once again, it was the wizards’ theories, since almost no wizard in two centuries was known to have been a master of either. If no one had run into the problem, how would they know?

  “What are you pondering, Mister Trillon?” Yara asked with a smile. Katya was directly behind him, so he chose to be more tactful.

  “Oh, I was just contemplating some of the wizards’ theories and rules concerning them. I was trying to make sense of them is all,” the mage waved off the question dismissing its credibility beyond his basic musings.

  Yara seemed to see through his answer to at least one of the points he had been thinking of and shook her head while rolling her eyes. “Ok, come with us downstairs for dinner. You can stop being an owl and dispensing your wisdom for a meal at least.”

  Katya caught the rebuke and asked, “Owl? I’ve heard a couple of the wizards and mages call Bas an owl. Is that a position in the battle mages ranks?”

  Looking annoyed, Sebastian complained, “Really? Now they’re calling me an owl?”

  “It’s better than mizard,” the pretty blond replied with a smile. “Maybe they should come up with a different colored uniform like a white owl or something for mages that are like you?”

  With a big sigh, the young man shook his head. “I am just a falcon and I’d be the only one anyway. That’s all I wanted to be when they took me to White Hall five years ago. Just let me train and go out and do my job while serving my time.”

  “Pffft,” Yara scoffed before shaking her head and grabbing his arm to start dragging the mage towards the stairs. Katya looked confused as the healer explained to her partner, “You lost that dream a long time ago, Bas. When you started learning wizard magic and saving people with unique tactics, you became a leader if nothing else was special about you.

  “You might want to continue unknown, but then you went and started being a bridge between wizards and mages leading us both. That made you an even more important leader to anyone you’ve lead in battle or worked with solving magic. I hate to tell you, Bas, but you are anything but ordinary.”

  Looking up at his face with a big grin, her eyes holding pride for him whether he wanted to know it or not, Yara confessed, “And truthfully, I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

  Katya turned and pointed with a big satisfied smile, “I knew you two were a couple! Only a girlfriend would talk to you like that, Bas.”

  “Be quiet,” her big brother requested with a sigh.

  The girl half danced down the stairs even as she kept giving childish knowing looks. Yara looked up at him a little more concerned and Sebastian shrugged, “It sounds like everyone assumed the same thing she is, just like everyone knows Collin and Nara are fighting being a formal couple.”

  “Hmm, yeah, those two really need to figure it out. It’s kind of annoying. It’s almost as annoying as hiding our relationship, so at least we don’t have to worry about that. At least with the others anyway,” Yara replied pointing upward as she offered a bright side to being outed by pretty much their entire team.

  By the time they were finishing dinner, it had turned dark outside and the dining room had begun to fill with both guests of the inn and residents that came for the good food and community. Sebastian ate between Yara and Serrena who seemed to be the only wizard that didn’t see the healer as an obstacle. The redhead still acted more like an apprentice to the mage and had asked for extra training to try and learn more. She wanted to know more of the battle mage spells and tactics, while picking his brain to see how he personally viewed magic and combat.

  For someone that had been just a cadet less than a year before and been nearly anonymous within the school, as well as being glad to be that way, being a teacher and trainer was still new to him. It was also a bit awkward feeling for the young man, but he tried to teach patiently as he remembered his favorite mentors had trained him. After all, he had screwed up as often as any cadet, especially when he was young.

  Thinking of his trips to the hospital in Windmeer twice in less than a year, perhaps he had yet to outgrow his screwing up phase.

  “Who do you think that is?” Liam asked Collin directly, but loud enough that most of the table could hear him. He gestured to a table in the corner and Sebastian understood why. The power radiating from one wizard at the table in particular was perhaps one of the strongest auras that the mage had ever felt. If he was a competitor, Sebastian feared any of their chances.

  “He must be from Taltan, like Hilda said,” Nara replied for the earth wizard. “He’s strong.”

  Liam nodded. “It’s hard to tell how old he is. I swear his face looks young, but his hair looks grey. Do you think he’s in the competition too?”

  “I wonder what branch of magic he studies,” Mecklin questioned looking at the man with a mage’s eyes.

  Sebastian shook his head, “A wizard as strong as that may know more than one school, if his people even follow schools of magic like we do in Southwall.”

  Trying to feel for the magic of the others in his group, the mage thought that the other four young men were on a par with his own wizards’ strength. Just that one wizard worried him.

  As he studied the men and the other wizards in the room at the other tables, Sebastian wondered again at how these men would differ in their use of magic. He doubted that all wizards would use the same style and words for their spells. The odds of all magic studies being the same was unlikely since even between Kardor, the Southwall wizards and their mages there were great differences.

  Another table held six wizards wearing robes like any other Southwall wizard might. He had heard that they were from a smaller city along the coast called Knaria. It was supposed to have a proud history according to one of their wizard’s toasts, but Sebastian knew little of the southern cities of Southwall. What was so historic about their city wasn’t something he had ever studied.

  Dinner was nearly over when another odd group entered the hall from the front door. That meant they probably hadn’t ridden any horses and once he saw them, Sebastian understood why.

  With skin that ranged from brown to black as night, the six men in furs in a strange cut were unlike any that the mage had seen in his life. The other creatures that had skin remotely the same were the orcs and goblins though those tended towards green and brown. These were men though with none of the warping of features that made the Emperor’s minions obviously inhuman.

  The men had strange headdresses and their clothing had feathers and other adornments that made them different from any clothes of a north man. When they spoke with Hilda, the leader spoke with a thick accent, but he knew the common tongue well enough. The
ir auras of power weren’t unusual, but he had a feeling there would be a strangeness to their magic that separated them from north magic just as much.

  Already Sebastian could see that this tournament was going to have a lot of mysteries to reveal.

  Chapter 28- Going to New Heights

  The road had narrowed to little more than a trail for the army of Windmeer. With trees hemming in their formation on either side, the troops were all nervous. Even riding with as few as four abreast, the riders were only several strides from the brush at the base of the trees.

  Mages took turns using their sense heightening spells. The two air wizards tried their best to spot troop movements to give them early warning of danger, but for all their efforts they could find no sign of the beasts that had hit them during the night.

  While the snow was still deep and travel slow going, Falconi Ralto and Wizard Delfar had decided that they could wait no longer. The enemy must have known they were coming and sent the beasts to thin their ranks. Despite tripling the sentries and many others unable to sleep casting warning spells, the creatures had tested the men twice more during the night even after the winds had died down and the snow had ended.

  Twelve were already dead with others wounded, but quickly healed by their four healers. Those wore winter camouflage like the others hoping to conceal their roles. If an enemy could take out their healers, the surety of casualties would increase many fold. Like Rilena’s own wound that would have festered without magical aid, many soldiers died within a week of disease out in the field and trapped in the deep snow of the mountains blood loss could lead to hypothermia as well.