War Wizard

by King, DB

  Even so, Logan did not need to know how the magic worked to give into its power, to allow the ferocity of Fenrir to fill him with strength and fury. He could already imagine ripping the head of an orc from his body, a howl blasting from his lungs as he tossed it aside.

  The other rangers were equally well-prepared. Each had twin Skofnung daggers tucked into small, leather sheaths at their hips, their shape of the dagger hilts like interweaved branches, runes inscribed up and down the lengths of the blades. Hung over their backs were Arne bows, their bodies carved from Hindmal wood and their strings of the finest elven silk. And parallel to the bows were the pride of each Elderwood Ranger—their Me’nayr blades.

  Each Me’nayr blade was precisely forty inches long, the blade gently curved, the edge honed to razor sharpness. The handle was segmented, made for gripping with two hands. The enchanted Magnus steel was hard as a diamond, folded sixteen times by master smiths. Each had been imbued with the magic of their War Wizards, the power allowing them to focus their animal runes and wield their blades with the precision and savagery for which the Elderwood Rangers were renowned.

  Logan had no such blade. Me’nayr blades were given to rangers upon achieving Rank Three. As a mere Rank One, he wasn’t yet trusted with the power a Me’nayr allowed. He would have to go on many more hunts, kill many orcs, before his battle prowess was proven and he was allowed to rise through the ranks.

  He couldn’t wait for the chance. But at that moment, he wore only the Skofnung daggers given to each Elderwood Ranger upon passing their induction trials. The Hindmal bow was slung over his back, along with a quiver of Elderwood arrows. The single-handed axe that hung off his belt by his right hand was made of simple steel and unblessed with any magic. But he’d trained hard with it, and he knew it would be more than enough to cleave the head of any orc clean from his body.

  “Logan!” Aiden hissed. “Where are they?”

  The smirk faded from Logan’s lips as he flicked his steel-colored eyes over to his friend.

  “What are you thinking, talking during a hunt?” he asked, moving as closely to Aiden as he could and keeping his voice little higher than a breath’s volume. A large portion of Elderwood Ranger training involved how to move and speak and breathe and kill in near-total silence. But speaking during a hunt was still forbidden, especially by the neophytes.

  “I don’t know,” Aiden said. “Have to pass the time somehow, right?”

  Aiden was a skilled neophyte, having passed through the Sylvan induction trials along with Logan. But at times, Logan wondered if his childhood friend had the seriousness required to rise through the ranks—let alone to match the prowess of Frode One-Eye, his legendary father.

  “We pass the time by staying focused on the hunt,” Logan said. “You want to make a name for yourself, right? Sensing an orc raiding party on the wind before the veterans would be a good way to do it.”

  Aiden nodded, as if accepting his friend was right but not truly grasping the sense of it.

  “Of course. But I have serious doubts that we’d be able to do such a thing. There’s a chance we might not even find any orcs, even. The last three hunting parties have come home empty-handed, remember?”

  Logan gritted his teeth at his friend’s words. Aiden was right, of course—the three last hunting parties hadn’t made a single encounter, let alone a kill. And the half-dozen prior hunting parties had only encountered stragglers, orcs exiled from their clans and banished to wander the Elderwoods until put out of their misery by whatever rangers chanced upon them.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Logan replied. “You can’t lose focus.”

  “I’m not losing focus,” Aiden retorted. “But surely, you couldn’t fault me if a small part of my mind was focused on the evening ahead, back at the town. Gods, I can already taste the ale on my lips—not to mention feel Frida’s mouth on my—”

  “That’s enough,” Logan snarled. Aiden’s words had caused him to let his mind drift to the post-hunt party, where wine and beer and women and song would carry them into the night. As much as he loved women and grog and music, Logan wanted to stay focused.

  But the volume of his words had risen above a whisper, catching the attention of Erik Grimblade, another nearby veteran. His green eyes blazed among his fire-red hair, his long mane pulled into a tight braid away from his face.

  “I’ve been hearing you two cluck like hens for the last few minutes,” he said, closing the distance between him and Aiden and Logan. His powerful body, covered in runes and scars, loomed over the young men. “Consider this your first and final warning before we send you scampering home like a couple of whipped pups.”

  Furious with himself for not obeying such a simple rule, Logan nodded.

  Aiden, on the other hand, pushed his luck. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Just planning for t—“

  However much Erik’s eyes had blazed with anger before, Aiden’s words took it to another level. His hand shot out and gripped Aiden’s throat, cutting him off in mid-sentence.

  “Not another blasted word.” He held his hand there for long enough to make his point. Aiden raised his palms in submission, Erik letting go once he got what he wanted.

  “Now,” Erik said. “Keep your damn mouths shut or I’ll have the War Wizards seal them for you.”

  It wasn’t an empty threat. Temporary magical removal of a ranger’s mouth was a common punishment for speaking on a hunt. Not only did it serve the purpose of silencing a talkative hunter, it was a badge of shame that let the others know the punished ranger couldn’t even manage the simple task of keeping his mouth shut. Logan had no intention of being embarrassed in such a way.

  But once Erik was back in position up ahead, Aiden didn’t waste any time letting Logan know what he thought of the man’s chiding.

  “I swear,” Aiden said, exasperated. “He thinks just because he’s slain over a hundred orcs he can do whatever the hells he wants.”

  “Big words,” Logan said. “Considering you seem to think you can get away with anything by dint of your father’s name.”

  Aiden’s blue eyes flashed with surprise, and he opened his mouth to retort. But Logan’s palm shot out, his hand covering the lower part of his friend’s face. Logan made a ‘lock it up and throw away the key’ gesture, followed by dragging the back of his thumbnail across his throat to really hammer the point home. Aiden nodded, his expression conveying his compliance. Satisfied, Logan took his hand from Aiden’s mouth and turned his attention forward.

  But he didn’t have even a moment to focus back on the hunt before Aze Bloodhand, the Rank Five ranger and leader of the hunt, stopped mid-stride. He raised his right hand, his face forward and his back to the rest of the party. Even Aiden, fool he could be, knew this meant it was time to shut the hells up and focus.

  Logan’s eyes stayed locked on Aze’s hand, and he didn’t need to look at the rest of the part to know they were doing the same. Elderwood Rangers communicated with silent gestures, entire battle plans able to be conveyed with only a few crooks of a finger.

  Aze’s hand clenched into a fist—a fight was on the horizon. Logan’s heart beat faster and the corner of his mouth once again curled into a slight smile at the prospect of battle.

  But what he saw next confused him. Instead of pointing his fingers forward, indicating that orcs were coming from up ahead as they typically did, Aze folded his middle three fingers down, leaving his thumb and pinky finger extended.

  This meant an attack from the flanks. Already Logan knew something was different about this fight—something wrong. Orcs rarely attacked from the flanks, their honor-bound societies considering such tactics cowardly. But Logan stayed focused on Aze’s hand. The next bit of information would be about numbers. Aze, the highest-ranking ranger in the party, had skills refined enough to be able to detect enemy numbers with nothing more than a scent on the wind.

  Aze clenched his fist once more, clearing the message letting the party know numbers were next. He extend
ed all five fingers, then again, and again. Logan’s eyes went wide as he watched Aze open his palm over and over and over.

  This wasn’t a chance encounter in the woods, Logan realized.

  This was an army.

  In that moment, Logan understood just why the orcs had been so sparse in their usual attacks. They’d been conserving their numbers, preparing for an assault like this. His stomach tightened as he considered the implications. If the orcs managed to take out the hunting party, there’d be no one to give warning for the army’s movement through the forest.

  It meant their town would be laid bare for an assault.

  No one could stand in the way of the orcs.

  Logan pushed all that out of his mind, tensing his body and preparing for battle. The rangers in front of him did the same, crouching their bodies as they moved toward the trees for cover, their hands near their bows and the hilts of their blades.

  “This… this is insane,” Aiden said as the two of them moved against the trunk of the nearest Elderwood tree. “How are they managing an attack in such numbers?”

  He spoke loudly enough to catch the attention of Erik, who was behind the truck of a tree a handful of paces away. He flashed his eyes at them as he’d done before, and opened his mouth to speak.

  “I swear, shut your damn fool mouth no—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. An arrow whistled through the air, then struck flesh with a meaty thwack. A spurt of blood jetted from Erik’s neck, followed by another and another, the arrow having pierced the life-giving artery within. Another arrow struck his arm, a final one plunging into his cheek, the barbed head sticking out the other side of the hapless ranger’s face.

  “Gods,” Aiden said, he and Logan watching as Erik slumped against the tree and fell into a bloody heap.

  But Logan wasn’t about to dawdle.

  “Get down, now!” Without waiting for a reply from his friend, Logan slammed his hand onto Aiden’s leather-clad shoulder and shoved him to the ground just as the air darkened with dozens and dozens of arrows.

  One ranger dropped after the other, mostly the lower ranks who didn’t possess the reflexes to dive under the onslaught of arrows, or the ones lucky enough to have the arrows aimed at them hit only the enchanted Glade Leather that covered their bodies, the material strong enough to deflect the crude, barbed heads of orc arrows.

  Aiden cried out as arrows poured down, but he only managed to wail long enough for Logan to clamp his hand down on his friend’s mouth, silencing him. Logan watched as the arrows stopped all at the same time. This—just like the flanking attack—was a sign something was different. Something was wrong. Orcs usually shot arrows until they ran out or their targets were dead—whichever came first.

  Logan’s hand hovered near the handle of his axe once the rain of arrows stopped.

  “Make yourself ready!” he hissed at Aiden. His friend, clearly still stunned by the suddenness of the brutality, nodded quickly. His own hand went to the simple scimitar he’d chosen as his weapon—the same blade his father had wielded during his training before being given his Me’nayr.

  Aze, still at the head of the hunting party, raised his palm into the air. He was far away, crouched next to one of the trees, but was close enough to make out the stony expression on his face, calm and placid and a sign of expert training and experience.

  Logan and the remaining members of the pack watched Aze intently, awaiting their command, awaiting word that they could fight back. Despite the animal fear that threatened to creep up from deep inside, Logan was ready. Ready to kill orcs. And this was his chance.

  But before Aze could move even a single finger, a deep blue column of supercharged energy rushed in from the trees to the right. The energy blast slammed into the base of the tree where Aze was crouched, exploding into a cracking ball of magical energy that lasted only a moment. When it faded, nothing remained of Aze, the leader of the party, but a red smear of gore on the side of the tree.

  “Was that… magic?” Aiden cried. “They have magic?”

  It was bad, and Logan knew it. Typical orc raiding parties were made up of blade-warriors and archers and that was all. Magic-wielding orcs were few and far between, and the rare orc with the intelligence to wield magic knew better than to fight rangers. It was the reason why so few orcs ever ventured this far into the Elderwood Forest, and why the vast majority of vile creatures such as orcs stayed beyond the Shadespear Pass. Without magic, they posed little threat to magic-wielders such as War Wizards and those they marked with runes.

  Logan didn’t have time to consider the matter. More blasts of energy screamed through the air, each finding the next-highest-ranking members of the hunting party. One after another, the Rank Four, then the Rank Three rangers were vaporized. A blast struck Rollar Fairhair, a Rank Four ranger. He exploded into a red shower, the blast close enough to one of the Rank One rangers to cover him in hot gore and shards of skeleton, the ranger crying out in pain or fear or both.

  “Hells.” Logan gritted his teeth and jerked his axe free from his hip.

  Another volley of arrows followed the energy blasts. They’re trying to take us out from a distance, Logan realized. Before they move in closer to finish us off. These orcs were nothing like the ones he’d known. The surviving rangers needed to take cover and get the hells out of there.

  “Take cover, rangers!” Logan shouted, his voice loud enough over the hiss of arrows to snap the rest of the men into attention and take cover as best they could.

  The dozen or so rangers still alive after the arrows and the magic attack were all Rank One and Rank Two—no one experienced enough to lead a counterattack. Logan’s eyes fell on Gorm Auber, a Rank Two and now the default leader of the party. Gorm held his scimitar with shaking hands, fear in his eyes.

  The inexperienced Gorm was in no position to lead.

  “Rangers!” Logan called out. “Form around me!”

  It pained him to make such a noise, but he understood this was no time for silent communication—the enemy already knew their position. His deep, bellowing voice caught the attention of the rest of the rangers. And while they were inexperienced, they were well trained enough to gather their senses to follow the order.

  All stayed low to the ground as they hurried over to Logan, their eyes on him as they awaited their order.

  “Form in a circle,” he called out. “We cover every inch of this forest, using our bows to take them down from afar. Move only when I give the order. We stay together, and we can make it back home!”

  “What if they swarm?” Gorm asked, clearly having no problem abdicating leadership. “What then?”

  Logan gritted his teeth, knowing they likely had no more than a minute before the next attack happened.

  “Then we fight in close quarters. We carve a bloody swath through them, then head north. Once we’ve thrown them off the path of the town, we double back and make it home in time to warn the rest.”

  “And if there are too many of them?” Blake asked, another Rank One.

  Logan grinned. “Then we die in battle and meet in the Hall of Heroes.” He spoke with confidence, knowing it was what the men needed to hear. “Either way, we drink our weight in ale and feast on meat and women tonight.”

  The men grinned back, and Logan was pleased to see that his words had calmed their fears—at least for the time being. The men formed in a wide circle, and he made sure there was enough distance between them so that if another magical onslaught began, the rangers wouldn’t be close enough to make easy double-targets.

  Once the men were in formation, Logan raised his palm and gestured north, opposite the direction they’d come.

  But right at the moment he signaled, the attack came. Orcs, their skin a sickly green, rose among the trees in the distance, raising their weapons and screaming war cries.

  This is it, Logan thought. Here we make our stand.

  “Form up for a charge!” he shouted, his voice carrying over the gru
nts exploding from the orcs.

  He directed the rangers into a line formation then swept his axe forward, giving the direction. The men began to move, not giving the mages and archers stationary targets to pick off. He pointed his axe at the nearest orcs.

  Logan’s gaze flitted from one to the other, losing count at twenty. There were easily a hundred orcs, tall and green skinned and dressed in dyed-red animal skins and random pieces of armor they’d seized from human parties they’d ambushed. Their teeth were yellow and jutting—more like tusks. Their eyes were beady and small, their muscles powerful and bulging, their hands gripping massive swords and crude axes and huge hammers.

  Logan had wanted a fight, and he was about to get it.

  But the orcs didn’t attack. They didn’t rush in, using the horde tactics typical with their species. They stayed still—calm, even.

  They were waiting for an order.

  They got one. An orc, as huge and powerful as all the others, moved with precision, even grace. He stood straight and proud, not hunched over like a typical orc. His body was adorned with furs and jewels and other symbols of power and status. His eyes fell onto Logan, a small sneer forming on the lips of the beast. Logan saw intelligence in his eyes, and he knew right away that this was the orc in charge.

  And there were flashes of color along his form, like those that would appear whenever a rune’s power was activated. Somehow, this orc wielded the sacred marks of the Archspirits. How it was possible, Logan couldn’t know. He had thought that only War Wizards could inscribe magical tattoos. But it seemed that he had thought wrong. Was this one of the fabled orc shamans, those mythical creatures who could wield magic?

  It had to be. Which meant that this would be Logan’s last day in the realm of the living.

  The orc shaman flicked his hand forward, and the charge began.

  There would be no escape, no close call. Logan and his friends would die in those woods.

  He was ready to make it a death to remember.