“What’s going to happen to me and our kids now?” she asked. Her voice shook. She looked at David directly.
“You’ll still need to work somewhere and do something useful, but you’ll have help when you need it. You’ll get food stipends and medical care from the militia. You can get help watching your kids, education for yourself and them. The militia units assigned to this area will help protect you. The work crews will also help you get your home upgraded for the summer, and especially for the coming winter. If you need something, we’ll try to help.”
She nodded again. “I appreciate all that. But it won’t bring Sean back. It’s not going to bring back their father.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Nothing can do that. But the militia fought hard and many gave their lives so that you and your kids could stay alive and free. That’s better than the alternative. I saw that firsthand and so did your husband. That’s why we all fought so hard. I’m sorry he didn’t make it back.”
“I know. I know why he joined the militia to fight. I know why he had to go. I just wish he...” She sobbed. “I wish he...”
They left several minutes later. The sergeant and the chaplain had orders to make the survivor services check on her regularly and help her and the kids.
But nothing anyone could do or say would ever make up for the loss of even one husband, one father, or one brother. The death of a son or daughter–of any one person–affected so many other people.
And this was just one casualty.
In the sobering days that followed, David matured rapidly, took on his duties as a leader and a commander much more seriously and with a growing sense of pride and purpose.
Michiana found itself cut off from the rest of the world, surrounded by monsters. Perhaps they were doomed to fail and be swept away. But they also rose up to meet the challenge. The sense of urgency and loss crushed down on David like heavy weights. It was his and everyone’s duty to learn what they could to survive and give humanity its best, fighting chance to keep living. To at least stay part of what they still were, and what they once had been.
Although a stranger among them, Jerriel busied herself working with the linguists and a crowd of curious experts, studying the magic pools and new plants people discovered, testing Urth people for magical abilities, and tinkering with her own enchantments.
As soon as she had her wizard labs set up at the university and at home, she went to David first thing.
“I want to enchant yoor weapons and armor, Daeved. I can make them moore powerful–stroonger.”
“Sure, that sounds great to me.”
“Sokay.”
Although they were both kept busy to the point of exhaustion each day, their friendship and respect for each other continued to grow and deepen.
David often caught himself looking at Jerriel for long moments at a time. And when she noticed him doing so, she always looked back at him and smiled. But there was always so much else that needed to be done. So many dire needs and problems to face. Real life-and-death issues and so many unknowns literally surrounded them each day.
If he wasn’t doing something constructive, he felt guilty. But one glance at Jerriel’s pretty oval face, and her alluring form. Even just the way she moved, the way she walked, drove him crazy with desire.
At night, David dreamed of kissing Jerriel and making love to her.
Neither of them ever said anything or directly raised the subject of romance, but both of them seemed to sense that the crisis they were in really wasn’t the right time for either of them to pursue anything more.
Especially in the area of romance.
So they both let it ride. They did their best to ignore the growing attraction between them and buried themselves in their various labors. They lived under the same roof as friends, roommates, and coworkers. Many difficult decisions remained right in front of them and the town each day.
And all of that really sucked, because David couldn’t help falling hard for his pretty wizard girl.
36
Mason and Blondie sat across from the two enemy mages in the jail’s interrogation room. It was just the four of them.
They ignored Mason entirely and stared intently at Blondie, who betrayed no emotion and simply stared back at them.
Both of the enemy mages were Blondie’s age or not more than a year or two older–somewhere in their early twenties, no more than twenty-five.
The first one they had captured still had his head bandaged and several burns dressed. He was as tall as Blondie, but with a slightly skinnier build, and dark brown hair and eyes.
The second mage was shorter, but stockier, and had thick, hairy forearms. He wheezed a little and had his chest wrapped from his lung shot. He had longer black hair, similar to Blondie’s in style, and gray eyes. That same hairstyle must be a trend among their people, the Sylurrians.
The prisoner’s feet were shackled, their hands secured behind them with handcuffs. Since no one knew how their magic worked exactly, they had been kept gagged and with dark hoods over their head until now.
The two mages said nothing. They only continued to blink and stare at Blondie, intense looks on their faces, and sweat dripping down from their foreheads.
Mason tried to talk to them.
No response.
Blondie tried to talk to them.
No response.
Mason and Blondie left the room for a time.
“What do you think?” Mason asked.
“Let me go in with them alone,” Blondie said. “If they do know me, maybe they’ll talk to me. But I keep hearing this buzzing sound in my head when I’m in there. I wish I knew what that was.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said. “I’ll be listening from out here.”
So were Captain Avery and several guards and recorders.
Blondie went back in.
At first they kept staring at him.
Then he got up and went to each of them and whispered something to them. No one could hear what it was.
When Blondie sat back down in front of them, they stopped staring at him so hard.
Then one of them glanced up at the lantern.
Blondie reached up and turned the lamp way down. The room darkened. It was difficult to see.
The two mages leaned forward to whisper, and Blondie leaned in to listen.
Soon all three of them were whispering back and forth very rapidly, but no one outside the room could understand what was being said.
After about twenty minutes of such whispering, Captain Avery grew suspicious, and sent Mason back into the room.
As soon as the door opened, the two mages leaned back in their chairs and stopped whispering.
So did Blondie, as Mason turned up the lamp again.
The mages were just as impassive and as indifferent as before.
On a whim, Mason drew one of his pistols and motioned to Blondie as he spoke. “Outside.”
Blondie smirked and got up, going out in front of Mason, who kept his Spiller at his hip, aimed at the small of Blondie’s back.
Once they were out of the room and the door was closed, Blondie leaned against the wall and softly laughed.
“This is going to be fun,” he finally said. “Nice touch, taking me out at gunpoint, Mace. I couldn’t have asked you to do anything better. Sheer genius.”
Mason pursed his lips tight. “I’m not laughing, Blondie, and I’m not sure I was pretending. How about we have a little chat with Captain Avery and the militia intel folks?”
“Of course,” Blondie said. “I know what you all must be thinking by now.”
Mason holstered his pistol. “Seriously, Blondie. What are we supposed to think? You could be saying anything to them, and they to you. They could be your best buds from back in the day for all we know.”
They went into another room at the police station and Blondie received a good grilling.
“Look,” Blondie said. “Let me explain. They weren’t going to talk with the lights on where someon
e might be able to read their lips. Mages are super intelligent. I had to do things their way or they wouldn’t have said anything to me.”
Avery posed it flat out: “How do we know you weren’t just linking up with your allies and plotting our downfall?”
Blondie slyly grinned back at him. “That’s just it. You don’t.”
“How do we know this whole amnesia act of yours just isn’t some ploy to infiltrate us and–”
Mason grunted. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Don’t you even want to hear what they told me?” Blondie asked.
“Most certainly,” Avery told him. “And we want to hear what you told them. Start again, from the beginning.”
“Very well. I asked them if either of them knew me. They looked at me strangely and cautiously said that they did. I asked them to tell me my name. Both of them confirmed my original identity. Shaeddor Holleth, sorcerer prince of Sylurria.”
“What happened next?” Mason asked.
“They grew suspicious and I think they were about to clam up on me again. Then I told them that I had suffered a major head injury during the Merge, and that I had lost my memory. Until Gellonar had told me my name, I told them that I didn’t know who I had been before, and that I still hadn’t been able to remember very much. I warned them that I might not ever fully recover all of my memories of the past.”
“How did they react to that?” Avery asked.
“They seemed somewhat relieved. They couldn’t understand why I hadn’t returned to the Dark Khabal if I survived, and even worse–why I would be working with and helping the Urthers, as they call all of you from the other side.”
“Is that why they were staring at you so intently at first?” Mason said.
“No. Not at all. Sylurria is a nation of mages. Almost everyone uses magic to some degree. But some mages are much more powerful than others. Telepathy is also quite common among Sylurrians. They were trying to mindspeak with me.”
Avery folded his arms. “And are you able to do so with them?” he asked.
Blondie frowned. “As a matter of fact, no. One of the things we discovered is that my brain injury that caused my amnesia also cut off my telepathic abilities. The two of them could not read my thoughts at all, even when I tried to open my mind completely to them. Nor could I read their strongest attempts to mindspeak with me. All I heard were a few jumbled words and a confusing buzzing in my skull.”
Mason pointed at him with one finger. “You complained about something like that at the start.”
“Right. That was them trying to contact me. This is another boon to us. Since they can’t read my thoughts and emotions, they can’t tell if I’m lying to them.”
Avery kept frowning. “And neither can we.”
“Must we go through all of this again?” Blondie asked wearily. “Yes, yes…I’m in the role of the classic double–even triple–agent. The possibility for a double or triple cross is always a possibility. Live with the uncertainty and let’s move on.”
“Who are they?” Mason asked.
“I knew them, but just barely. Of course they knew who I was. But they’re low-level battle mages attached to the mercenaries for combat, Mace. Powerful and formidable in their own right, but still just underlings. I’m afraid they’re not going to know very much. The first mage we captured is named Gellonar, and he’s a wizard. The second one is a sorcerer, similar to us, and his name is Zanjan.”
“Now I’m interested in what you told them about yourself and us,” Avery said.
Blondie nodded. “I was getting to that. They accepted my explanation regarding my amnesia. But they still reminded me that my primary duty was to the Dark Khabal, and that I had better recall that and the initial oath of obedience that I had sworn to my master, as his apprentice. They warned me that if I continued to work with and help the enemy, that very quickly I would be treated as one of the Urthers and destroyed, right along with them.”
“What did you say to that?” Mason asked.
“I hedged. I grew angry and said that I didn’t remember any of that, not my past, nor any such Khabal, and that until my memories returned, I didn’t owe them or their so-called masters a handful of shit.”
Mason chuckled. “How did they react?”
“Gellonar started to tell me things in order to attempt to stimulate my memory. Zanjan was of the mind that I couldn’t be trusted any longer. Not until I had my head on straight and clearly swore my allegiance to the Dark Khabal and their masters.”
“What did they want to know about us?” Captain Avery demanded.
“Surprisingly enough, they didn’t seem that interested. They asked a few things. They wanted to know what kind of people Urthers were in general, and how I was being treated while living among you. I told them that the Urthers I worked with understood my situation, and tried to accept me, but that me talking with them was going to definitely raise some suspicions concerning my loyalties.”
“And then?”
“They didn’t care much about that. Next, they started demanding that I help them plot their escape and go back with them, memory or no memory. They insisted that it was my duty. I tried to say that I didn’t see a way that I could free them. I myself was constantly being watched. They accepted that fact, and said that they were actually surprised I wasn’t locked up and being tortured somewhere.”
“Since that is what they would do?” Mason said.
Blondie nodded. “I suppose so. I tried to hedge again, and say that maybe I could spy on you Urthers from within and find a way to transmit valuable intelligence to the Khabal. First they said that wasn’t possible–or even necessary. According to them, most mage telepathy only extends about twenty or thirty feet. Then, listen to this: they said that spying on the Urthers wasn’t important…because all of you were going to be either dead or enslaved within about a month at most anyway, by their reckoning.”
Avery raised both eyebrows for a second. “So, that’s their master plan for us all, is it?”
Blondie nodded again. “It appears so. And neither of them seemed to have a very high opinion of Urthers, overall. They see you as fat, lazy, and stupid without your kind of magic to defend yourselves with. Both of them seemed supremely overconfident about the Khabal’s inevitable victory. The enemy expects to roll over all of your kind.”
“Nice,” Avery said. “Anything else?”
“They were real curious about Mace, the enemy sorcerer with the strange looking, but devastating metal wands to focus his powers through. We just started to talk about that when Mace himself came back in. Oh, and they aren’t going to talk to any of you, so you can just forget it. That’s standard practice among captured mages. Even torture won’t get them to say much, and none of it will be useful.”
“I still think we need to try to interrogate them,” Avery said.
Blondie held up his hands. “You can waste your time, but it’s not going to do any good. Oh, and don’t tell them anything I told you.”
“What?” Avery objected.
“Of course not. Then they’ll know I told you what they said, and they’ll stop talking to me. Right now, I am the only one they will talk to, and you want to keep them talking. We want them to hope that they can bring me back around to their side and help them. That’s the angle we need to play.”
Avery sighed. “I will consider and advise that, but everything isn’t up to me. So, what am I supposed to do, put you in with them as a fellow prisoner?”
“No, but don’t send me back in with them for a few days. Let them sweat it out a little. Then they’ll be eager to talk, and I can tell them I’m doing the double agent thing, and just telling you guys crap.”
Mason chuckled. “How do we know you’re not just telling us crap anyway?”
Blondie gave him the same grin, with a twinkle in his eye. “Like I said, you don’t. That’s what makes all of this so fun for everyone.”
#
That night, the enemy tried out a new stra
tegy. They backed up the monster hordes with flights of mercenary archers.
It worked this way. First the merc archers would soften up the defensive lines with volleys of arrows.
Then the monsters would charge in quickly to try to break the lines.
This obviously reduced the numbers of mercenary casualties. Mason wondered if the monsters were smart enough to realize that they were being used as shock troops. Effectively, they were nothing more than cannon fodder.
But they appeared not to care. The monsters wanted only to attack and kill, and always seemed bloodthirsty and eager to charge forward and fight. The enemy was probably bribing the creatures with all the meat they could ever want. That was a pretty big incentive for a bunch of dumb, gluttonous monsters. From the monster standpoint, they probably saw the war as a godsend. They had never had it so good, and they could stop fighting and eating each other. And, from Mason’s experience, humans had to taste much better.
But overall, the enemy tactics seemed to work only part of the time. They were too transparent. The defenders quickly learned to predict when the merc archers would fire their volleys, and buttoned up under protective, portable mantlets. The defenders even had teams to gather up and recycle all of the enemy arrows that could be reused.
The monsters always pulled back first. Then they charged forward again after the arrows struck.
For the first half of that night, the battle lines stagnated.
For an entire hour, the attacks halted, and the enemy appeared to be regrouping or reorganizing their lines.
Then they returned to their original strategy from before–relentless, grinding attrition.
The mercs renewed their coordinated assaults from the south. The monsters took up their relentless attacks along the west. Apparently, from what the scouts and observers reported, the two sides hadn’t worked well enough together. They were too different and hostile to each other.
So the enemy leaders did a reverse. Their little experiment that night had failed in its application. They returned to what had been effective for them all along–pressing the defenders, and slowly but surely wearing them down, and pushing them back.
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