The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord

by Terry Mancour

  They were preceded by their small cavalry contingent, which included Sir Gimbal and his “gentlemen” on horse, led (and carefully watched) by his former vassal, Sire Festarlan of Hosly. I had met briefly with the man myself, an uncomfortable and humiliating event for both of us.

  There had been several long and intense discussions about his role in the battle. As he had been “contributed” by his brother to the King’s summons, he was under Royal command henceforth. Anything less than faithful service would be considered insubordinate and treasonous.

  Gimbal and his kin grumbled about it, but privately I had heard that he preferred honorable death in battle to skulking at his brother’s heels, a constant reminder of his own failures. If revenge for his lost lands was on his mind, he did little to express it.

  He appeared to take me at face value when I told him I bore him no grudge that would affect my role as his military commander. He in turn stiffly swore that he would render service to the Kingdom as faithfully as any honorable knight of the realm . . . and I had to take that at face value, too.

  He was a ‘loyal’ knight. He knew his duty to his overlord, he assured me. Any future conflict between us, or anyone else, would be put aside for the duration of his honorable service. He swore to it in front of Lawbrother Haramas, and a few dozen witnesses. That was about as much assurance as I would get about the ex-West Flerians. And I wondered if the future of this battle might weigh on the strength of the man’s honor as he rode into place.

  The magic circle seemed roomier this time, with only a hundred and thirty horses on the periphery surrounding fifteen-hundred assorted infantry troops and four hundred archers. They wouldn’t be fast, but they were strong. With them went Sir Rondal, my bookish apprentice, with the twenty other sparks who were to act as the troop’s Magical Corps.

  The men crowded toward the center as they were directed, and when the last of them had stopped vomiting nervously, the Alka re-activated the spell. This time the men, under the leadership of Sir Taren the Sage (as the brilliant young warmage was being called behind his back) would appear only three miles from the castle to the southwest, the site of some ancient Alkan outpost.

  With the few cavalry troopers included screening them and scouting ahead, the second troop would do a quick-march to pre-agreed-upon position to wait for the other two troops to appear. That was the plan, at least.

  Again, all the High Magi summoned power, great heaping amounts of power, myself more than anyone, and directed to the Covenstone. Lady Varen again strained unsteadily to tame the flood of energy, to shape it and mold it and make it dance to her will. And then the circle was empty again.

  “I may be able to manage a third,” she said, “if I am refreshed.” I wasn’t certain what that meant, but I nodded solemnly and turned my attention to ordering my troops into the circle.

  My troops. I was commanding them. More, they were my troops: mostly Bovali volunteers. While the cavalry had been anxious, and the infantry had been unaware, the Bovali I was leading were enthusiastic about their role in the battle.

  Two years ago, most had been smallholders, cheesemakers, cowhands, goatherds, shopkeepers and artisans far away in the Mindens. Now they were war-hardened and exiled, come at last to a homeland they could defend. This was their opportunity to strike back at the hated foe who had sent them into exile, who had killed their families and ravaged their homes.

  The men who marched proudly into the circle looked far more like the Wilderland warriors who’d fought by my side last year than the more-civilized Riverland soldiers next to them, despite their access to superior armor and weaponry. All bore the snowflake badge of my house.

  Amongst the Wilderland men were a strong smattering of native Sevendori. Men had volunteered from Brestal, from Gurisham, from Sevendor Village and even a few from disgraced Genly. Not everyone there had favored Railan the Steady’s approach or policies, and some were deeply offended by his treason. Seeing a few stalwart Genlymen in Sevendor’s ranks did my heart good.

  Pentandra would stay with me to advise me, and even Planus had donned armor and taken up a sword, although he swore he knew little enough about its use. Other civilian magi had joined us too, which gave my troop the largest magical corps.

  Leading my small cavalry force was Sire Roncil, who grumbled good-naturedly about the duty, and among his men was Sir Festaran. The young knight had taken to his small but burgeoning Talent eagerly, and while he was far from a Knight Mage, he was at least capable of a few dozen simple cantrips. I was hoping I could keep an eye on him.

  But perhaps the most important Sevendori to ride with us was less than five feet tall and fourteen years old. Dara of Westwood rode alongside her father on a small but sure-footed mare I’d had Tyndal select from the stables. She was wearing light archer armor that was too big for her and a leather helmet. Her bird clung to a perch she’d built onto her saddle, and in a bag around her back she bore the box that contained the Thoughtful Knife.

  She had practiced with it constantly until she could sail circles around the castle. She thought it was great fun to chase and tease her own bird with it. I’m not sure I would have chanced it, but she had the recklessness of youth. And she heals quickly.

  Her father, two of her brothers and two of her uncles were accompanying her, along with a dozen other Westwoodmen. I’d ordered them to personally protect young Dara, Pentandra, and the other ‘soft’ magi when we were in combat. The leather-clad woodsmen grinned wolfishly, almost as enthusiastic about battle as the Bovali. Most of them had never ventured beyond Sevendor Village their entire lives.

  Then there were those who had ventured thousands of leagues. Lady Ithalia had arrived with her own bow and quiver and satchel full of magic, her weapons and bark-like armor re-fashioned to fit her larger humanish-form.

  “Why—?” I began.

  “You came to my rescue once,” she offered. “And I felt it was important that the Alka Alon be represented in this battle, however slightly.”

  “It was against my advice,” the leader of the Alka Alon delegation said quietly. “But she was insistent. Are you ready, Magelord?” asked Lady Varen patiently. She wasn’t looking too well. But we were ready. The rest of the troop was more-or-less in place, and any stragglers who didn’t want to be left behind had to hurry.

  I took just a moment to look out over the castle wall and down the beautiful valley I had rescued from penury and oblivion.

  With magic’s aid I’d helped her heal, improved her bounty, and brought prosperity to her folk. With magic’s aid I’d defended her, and expanded her borders. From the gleaming white walls of Sevendor Castle, through the brown fields and the green groves, from the sun-drenched Southridge to the perpetually-shady north road, I had learned to love this little vale as if I’d been born here.

  As a magelord, I desired no other lands. No finer palaces. No more civilized people. I had taken a wasted domain and with magic’s aid I had turned it into the kind of place where I felt like living. Like ruling.

  Even if I died in the next few moments, I realized that I had left a great legacy to Minalyan . . . and his siblings. Perhaps even to their descendants, if they had time to have any.

  That was really up to me, I realized, and how I fought against the gurvani. If I failed, then the magic born in Sevendor would fade before it could take root. If I failed, then Minalyan might not see his second winter, or his third.

  “I’m ready,” I told Lady Varen, and waited for the universe to move around me.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The Relief Of Castle Cambrian

  One second we were in Sevendor, blue skies above, white sands below. The next second we weren’t . . . anywhere. There was no color, no sun, no earth, no horizon, no gravity. It was the sharpest moment of sheer existential terror unhindered by actual danger that I’ve ever endured.

  And then the next second, we were all falling down about three quarters of an inch (none of the other troops had that experience, I was told) i
nto the soft black mud of Gilmora.

  It was raining, the clouds overhead raging a foreboding gray that mocked the sun they hid. We had appeared in some farmer’s field where once an Alka Alon transfer point had lay. Now the farmer and his family had fled, their crops abandoned to be trampled by my little army.

  “Form up!” I bellowed from Traveler’s back, desperately trying to regain my composure. I heard the call echoed across the field as my ancients tried to bring the Sevendori to order. The transit had produced a severe vertigo that made me nauseated. From the smattering of retching around me I wasn’t the only one.

  Even my horse was disconcerted. To suddenly go from the heat of the noonday mountain summer sun to the dreary morning of a lowland rainstorm was as depressing as it was disconcerting. Best to focus on our mission before our minds could catch up with our misery. I took a deep breath.

  “Sir Roncil! Cavalry on our flanks, deploy scouts to the north, everyone else form into ranks, keep your eyes open, and be ready to kill anything hairier than you are!” That brought a hearty chuckle from the Bovali, who had heard me say it often enough during the siege.

  The cavalry began forming up around me, the Westwoodmen deciding they would be most useful as my personal guard. Dara looked anxious and afraid. I wanted to soothe her, but being anxious and afraid would probably do her more good right now. To be a thirteen year old girl going into battle for the first time had to be challenging to her ideas of maidenhood.

  It was just as hot or hotter in Gilmora as it was in Sevendor, but it was a lot wetter. The humidity was oppressive, especially in armor. Not quite as bad as the jungles of Farise, but not pleasant. I reined Traveler around until I was certain everyone was decently recovered from the transport spell, and then I contacted my apprentices.

  Tyndal was riding with the rest of Arathanial’s troop like demons were chasing them, speeding southward from their origin point in good order. They had encountered two small patrols of gurvani they had swept through on the way with little or no casualties. A year into the war, and the goblins still had a hard time dealing with cavalry.

  Rondal’s troop of infantry had found a defensible rise a half-mile away from the castle’s gate – with ten or twelve thousand goblins in front of them.

  They had yet to be spotted, thanks to a prodigious amount of spellcasting to keep them from being spotted (Taren can do that in his sleep), but they were close enough that my anxious apprentice told me he could smell goblin. They were beginning to dig in and form a redoubt from hastily-cut fruit trees and debris, and lacing the area with defensive spells.

  As for us, we were almost two miles to the west of Taren’s troop, and both of us were south of the castle. Taren’s troop’s job was to stay put and act like an anvil, a job well-suited to the heavily armored infantry. Arathanial’s job was to act like a hammer, crushing anything in front of it.

  My troop? We were the tongs. We would help maneuver units of goblins from the siege and entice them into the space between hammer and anvil. Then we would hold them there until they were pounded flat. That was the plan.

  We carefully but quickly marched a mile and a half across broken and deserted country until we found a large peasant’s cot that had been abandoned weeks ago. The low stone wall around the structure looked vaguely defensible, so I established it as our field hospital, had the infantry secure it, and then prepared a smaller force to start goading the gurvani. We weren’t supposed to be as static as Taren’s troop, but we did need a defensible place to retreat to, and a post to guard the baggage and the inevitable wounded.

  The strategy was to keep tapping against the solid wall of goblins surrounding Terleman and get them to break out against us in numbers. Not to break the siege directly, but to give the Knight Commander long enough for him to send a heavy sortie from the castle to hit them in the rear as they turned to face us. Until then, the cavalry from my unit and Taren’s harassed the outer edges of the siege mercilessly, but didn’t engage directly.

  Leaving a tithe of our men to fortify the cottage, my troop scattered out a bit and began the dangerous trek toward the castle. There was an oppressive feeling in the air, and the stench of rain, mud, death and wood smoke made it that much worse as we rode and marched.

  The giddy enthusiasm of the Bovali had turned to serious business. Our scouts (Westwoodmen, mostly) returned to tell us of a nearby band we could harass, a small camp of twenty or thirty picket troops. We whetted our blades with them in a frantic three-minute melee.

  I was impressed with my Bovali. These mountain peasants had had but a year to rest and prepare themselves, but most were handling themselves like experienced soldiers. Their facility with the Wilderlands great bow was telling in those encounters, and their hours and hours of practice at the butts paid a deadly dividend.

  But the feeling of satisfaction the Bovali had as they stood amidst the wreck and ruin of that first goblin camp was tangible. They had returned to the battle stronger than they had retired from it, and they desired bloody vengeance.

  “We have to get their attention in a moment,” I explained to my officers, as we rode. “We’ll have to attract a large enough band from the besiegers to weaken the line and allow Terleman to break loose. Once he gets a couple of hundred cavalry past his dike, that should be enough to screen the rest.”

  “So how do we distract them, Magelord?” Sir Roncil asked. He had little head for war outside of the glorious charge, but he knew how to take orders, and he trusted mine. I wished I did.

  “We get them to think there’s a richer prize just out of sight,” I decided. “What would entice the gurvani to break and give chase? The prospect of an easy victory over a far-weaker force.”

  They all chuckled. “Who doesn’t enjoy that?” agreed Sir Roncil. “So who gets to be this far weaker force?”

  “We do. We ride our cavalry as close as we can, pretend we’re a patrol that’s accidently stumbled upon the siege, and turn tail and run . . . slowly enough for them to catch us. Almost.

  “Then we lead them just north of Taren’s troop, where Baron Arathanial’s troop can push it between the three. The infantry in our troop can act as skirmishers to protect Taren’s flanks.” Roncil and the rest all nodded. It seemed a perfectly reasonable plan.

  We halted about a half-mile from the gurvani lines, my Sevendori taking positions behind every rock and tree, every wain and cot, readying their great bows and loosening their swords. I nodded to Dara, who took a moment to realize that she was being given orders. She nodded, un-hooded her magnificent bird, and gave it a word before flinging it into the air. Then she closed her eyes.

  The gurvani shaman had done a good job of hiding the number and nature of the besieging army from standard scrying, even the more thorough sorts of spells. Someone had been advising them on our combat magic. That left us guessing from various reports just what forces we faced and where they were deployed. Dara’s hawk Frightful was my way around that; the gurvani weren’t expecting surveillance from a bird.

  We had to coax Dara to describe what she ‘saw’ in her mind, through the eyes of her familiar, as it soared peacefully over the fray. The goblins were quiescent as they often were in daylight, but the gloomy skies had encouraged them to be more daring in their raiding and sniping against the castle.

  While Dara had a hard time estimating numbers, she could report on where the most of the gurvani were massed (around the south gate, near to hand) and where they were thinnest (the doorless and well-defended northeastern side of the manor). She could also ease my mind about something else: they had no trolls with them.

  Trolls can be devastating during a siege. They’re walking siege engines themselves, able to lob large rocks with great force, if not with great accuracy. Their tremendous strength was invaluable in breaking walls or gates, wading through moats or climbing over dikes. I’d seen what a mass of trolls could do, at Timberwatch and elsewhere, and I was just as happy not seeing them. It certainly gave Terleman and his men more of a
chance.

  But everything else Dara told me was depressing. From what I could glean from her reports there were probably twelve thousand goblins ringed around the castle, with maybe a thousand more beyond, on the perimeter. They weren’t trying to make a serious entry into the fort, they were just harassing them, pinning them down, and waiting. For the dragons.

  Time to go be a hero.

  “Sir Roncil, prepare the cavalry for a skirmish. Infantry wait here. With our intelligence and analysis sections,” I added, nodding toward Dara and Pentandra, and the knot of other civilian magi. None of them was ready for combat.

  I called to Rondal, mind-to-mind, and instructed Taren to send his small cavalry force to meet us half-way. It took us nearly an hour to maneuver without being readily seen by the gurvani, but eventually we came to a track between fields where Sire Cei and his men – including Sir Gimbal’s cronies – were waiting patiently.

  “How much damage can we practically do?” asked Sire Cei, after greeting and debriefing. He looked in his element, garbed in new armor bearing the snowflake of Sevendor snowstone pendant proudly on his breast. “Two hundred and fifty against ten thousands?”

  “Twelve thousand,” I corrected. “And not much. But we can elicit their interest in chasing us. How far away is your redoubt?”

  “The Magelord gives the position more credit than it deserves,” he chuckled grimly. “But it is three-quarters of a mile down this track, around that curve to the east. It overlooks the road by about four feet.”

  “And Taren has the place warded up,” I nodded. “Sounds like a good place for an ambush.”

  “So how does the Magelord plan to . . . elicit their interest?”

  It was my turn for a grim smile. “Why, with an old-fashioned Narasi cavalry charge, of course! No magic, as of yet – they’re expecting mundane resistance, and a bunch of flat-headed, chivalry-blinded knights diving chin-first into the fray is just what they’re looking for. A quick raid on their perimeter, do a lot of damage, and then sprint toward Taren. Or just past Taren, hopefully.”