Shield was following this explanation closely. “So wouldn’t that mean that someone in that group is the focal point?”
“That’s how it worked in my day.” Shad was looking at Chatta for confirmation. “Do you see anyone that looks more powerful than the others?”
“That red aura is blurring everything,” she sighed in exasperation, “I’m having a hard time making out details.”
“If we could just figure out who the focal point is, then we can take him down, and the rest will be easy pickings.” Xiaolang caught my eyes and held them. “Can you discern who it is?”
“It might take me a while to shift through everyone, but I should be able to,” I answered slowly.
“Xiaolang?” Chatta was studying her scrying pool as we talked. She had the strangest look on her face, as if she had run smack into a wall she hadn’t realized existed. “I think…I think the soldiers have a sort of personal shield on them.”
Xiaolang spun on his heels, surprise and wariness playing across his face. “I’m assuming that you don’t mean the conventional metal shields?”
“Right. Magical shields. Granted, those shields are attached to the metal shields, but still…these people are not going to be easy to fight.”
Xiaolang started muttering darkly under his breath. It was in Q’atalish, so I didn’t understand what he was saying. I was just as glad that was the case.
“Can you give us some sort of protective spell too?” Aletha inquired hopefully.
Chatta blinked. “Now there’s a thought. Hmmm. I can think of a spell or two that will work, with some modification. Give me a few minutes to work it out.”
Xiaolang stopped muttering. “Well, that evens the odds. Some.”
“Why are we even worrying about this?” Shad objected. “Garth, can’t you deal with these soldiers the same way you dealt with the ones in Tobadorage?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Normally, I’d say of course I can. But there are forty Star Order Priests over there, Shad. Even a Mage’s power is going to find that many attackers challenging. And those shields…they probably protect against any kind of magical attack as well. Chatta, am I right?”
She spread her hands helplessly. “I think so, yes. Their magic looks strange, of course, but…I can’t guarantee that you’re wrong.”
Shad let loose an irritated growl.
“I’m perfectly willing to try, though,” I assured everyone. “Chatta and I might be wrong—we’re only guessing, after all.”
“Do try, just don’t overextend yourself,” Xiaolang ordered. “Chatta, how fast are they moving?”
“I expect them to be here about noon,” she admitted.
“Alright.” Our captain blew out a breath, turning to look at the Pool. “I think that they are going to head straight there, despite the barrier. We need to start fortifying that area. Garth, I know that barrier of yours is supposed to keep everyone out, but I don’t like all of these uncertainties of yours. Worst case scenario, let’s assume they can somehow get through the barrier and prepare some contingency plans.” Xiaolang looked around the group, meeting each person’s eyes for a moment. “I know we’re outnumbered, but we’re not beaten. Let’s start working on things to even the odds.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: Desperate Ground
Xiaolang’s predictions were right on target. The Star Order went straight for the Pool as if they were a homing pigeon.
We’d spent most of the morning doing everything we could to prepare for the battle ahead. The team had put their heads together and worked out the best defenses for the area. Chatta and I had taken their ideas and put in ground fortifications and traps all around the area of the Pool. I’d actually raised the Pool a little, making it higher ground. In a loose circle, I’d made the ground rocky, difficult to scale so that people could only approach from one side. Outside of this edged ring of rocks were various pits, spots of quicksand, and entrapping spells. No one was going to sneak up from behind us.
I’d done most of the fortifications and ground defenses, leaving Chatta free to study how Night’s Breaker ability works. She’d come away after an hour or so and started testing theories out. It’d taken three solid hours of hard work and muttering on her part before she devised a spell that worked like a Breaker’s power. Whether it would work against a Star Order Priests’ shields…well, we could only pray that it did.
Now, we were all standing inside the barrier, watching them come. The air was cool, and there was a slight layer of frost that crunched underneath our boots, but I didn’t feel the cold. Adrenaline was pulsing through my system.
We had perhaps five minutes before contact with the enemy. As much as I’ve sparred with people, and did weapons training, this was the first time I’ve gone all out against enemy soldiers. In the fight to come, I might have to kill these people to protect myself. That wasn’t a thought I enjoyed.
Chatta was standing at my side, her wand out and ready. There was a hard, distant look in her eyes, and she was a little paler than usual.
I wanted to be right next to her, protecting her in the battle to come, but…there was no guarantee that I’d be able to do that.
Xiaolang glanced back at me, smile twisted but still reassuring.
“Xiaolang says to tell you not to worry about her,” Night said quietly in the back of my head. “He’ll watch out for her, when you have to go for the priest.”
That let me breathe a little better. Xiaolang was like a force of nature when he fought. I couldn’t envision anything getting past his defense.
Especially not with Chatta’s protective spells enhancing his abilities.
Chatta had taken a rain-repellant spell and a strengthening spell (meant for broken bones or something of that nature) and blended them. Now, everyone on the team had reinforced bones and skin. Arrows and blades wouldn’t exactly bounce off of them, but they’d leave only minor scratches. It was the same idea as wearing metal armor, only without the bulky weight.
Reminded, I called her attention to me. “Chatta?”
She looked up, head slanting to one side in silent question.
“You did write that spell down somewhere, didn’t you?”
“No, why?”
“It’s brilliant,” I said honestly. “I think you need to share it with other people when we get home.”
For a brief moment a genuine smile flashed over her face. “I’ll remember it, don’t worry.”
“Good.” I didn’t have time to talk about anything else. I had another task given to me after this morning’s strategy session, something that I had to do quickly if it were to be effective.
The enemy was well within my range now. It was time to test just how much those shields of theirs protected them from. I turned the ground underneath their feet into a softer, looser soil and tried to suck them into the ground. Unlike the time I had tried this on the Tobadorage City Guard all of those months ago, this time it didn’t work. The soil couldn’t get a good grasp on anyone. It slithered right off the shields. I growled when I realized why – the magic in the dirt was being repulsed, so the ground in turn was repulsed. Frustrated, I let the earth become solid again.
“Sorry,” I apologized to everyone.
Shield clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You tried. We had a feeling it might not work.”
I grimaced a smile in acknowledgement but didn’t let myself dwell on it. There were other things that I needed to worry about now.
I was anxiously watching the other group of soldiers as they approached the pool’s barrier. Even at this close distance—they were only a mile away now—I couldn’t tell if the Star Order magic would allow them to penetrate or somehow get around that barrier. Until I was sure one way or another, I had to keep at least one eye on them.
I hoped they couldn’t. I needed to find that one priest who was sustaining the linked magic, after all.
Over flat grassland like this, a person can see a long distance away. We could watch the main force as
it moved toward the pool pretty clearly. For several moments, what I was seeing just confused me. There were these long, wooden machines being hauled along, with swarms of soldiers all over them. What were those?
Shad hissed beside me in recognition. “Catapults!”
Uh-oh.
Xiaolang’s brows furrowed as he studied the catapults. “Garth, that barrier of yours—will it protect against catapults?”
“No,” I groaned in realization. “It will only think of a boulder as a rock—no matter how fast it’s moving.”
“Can you do something about that?”
I thought about it for a moment. Then the obvious answer occurred to me. Even long distance—if I could think of only a mile as long distance—earth and stone was my domain. I could manipulate it however I wished. “Yes.”
“Then do it.”
When the first boulder was launched into the air, I caught it with my magic, halting it in its tracks and just letting it suspend in mid-air. I couldn’t hear actual words, of course, but even a mile away I could hear the shouts of dismay. That just warmed my heart.
In fact…chuckling to myself evilly, I molded the boulder into a large heart-shaped piece of stone.
Then I dropped it on their catapult, smashing it to smithereens.
“I think you enjoyed that too much,” Shad noted with a smile.
I couldn’t quite wipe the evil smile off my face. “Shad, you have no room to talk.”
The troops heading for us were only a quarter of a mile away now, too close to safely ignore. Their catapult was gone, destroyed. But I had acted to stop it, which would suggest a weakness to their minds—would they figure out how to exploit that weakness?
Although I wasn’t sure how they could. There was just this tightness in the pit of my stomach, an uneasy feeling that something was going to go wrong very soon. I found it impossible to ignore.
If I had somehow missed it with my magical sense, then the bright flair against the barrier would have told me. Angry, red sparks flew up from the barrier as it was penetrated.
“Dark magic!” I swore. It was those thrice-cursed shields that were allowing them inside the barrier. As I watched, several of them put the shields smack against the barrier, then they levered them up over their heads, walking underneath and clearing the barrier easily.
I made a mental promise to myself to figure out how they did that later.
Right now, I had to get them out of here.
There was a column of soldiers and priests stacked about a dozen people deep, three people wide, with shields overlapping in some sort of attack formation—or so it looked like.
My bon’a’lon snapped out in my free hand, extending to full length with a soft click and chime of metal. Night danced impatiently at my side, his hooves sounding a staccato against the hard packed earth. He and Shad struck out at the same time, hitting the first wave of soldiers that came near.
In the next moment chaos descended.
Every person on the team engaged with the soldiers, their movements quick and lethally efficient. Chatta was firing off her spell left and right, undoing the magical shields attached to the soldiers, giving us that needed edge to get past that impenetrable defense and defeat the enemy.
I desperately wanted to join in the fray but didn’t. I had a different task. I had to trust Shad and Night to watch my back while I searched for that one person that was maintaining the link.
The noise within the barrier was deafening, full of the clash of metal on metal, screams of pain, the softer thumps of people crashing to the ground. It took several moments for me to block it all out. Focus, I told myself over and over, focus on the feel of the magic. Ignore everything else. After several moments of intense concentration, I managed to block out everything around me.
The link the Star Order Priests was maintaining was incredibly intricate. I couldn’t follow the pattern. It weaved in and out, feeding off the owner like some sort of twisted parasite, drawing power off the people around it. Just touching it with my senses was making my stomach do queasy twists.
Wait, what was that? That wasn’t linked to any person nearby. I latched onto a thread of power and started following it. It twisted and meandered, tapping into at least three people’s shields, but finally dead ended into one person.
No…that wasn’t quite right. It was attached to one person and they were drawing it from some other outside source that was hovering just outside of my senses. I mentally took a step back and looked at the bigger picture and realized that person was holding dozens of lines just like the one I found, all of them coming in from that outside source.
The realization of what I was sensing smacked me in the middle of the eyes. He had a whole group of people he was drawing power from long distance. And he, in turn, was feeding that power to everyone around him.
My eyes snapped open. “Shad, Night, I found him!”
“Good.” Shad executed a harsh swing of his sword, hitting his opponent with the flat of the blade on the chin, effectively knocking him unconscious. “Go!”
I didn’t aim for anyone in particular—I didn’t need to. They were so clustered together that even if I had just struck out blindly, I would have hit someone. I spun the bon’a’lon in my hands and started carving a path forward.
Those shields were fancy and formidable, but they didn’t do much good now that Chatta had robbed them of their magical barriers. I injured perhaps ten or fifteen men before the front ranks realized what was going on and turned to face me.
Shad shot ahead of me, engaging the men who were heading in my direction. “Garth, forget them and go!”
I saw sense in that order as soon as he said it. I was the only one that knew where the key priest was. As soon as he was defeated, this would end very quickly. Still, I couldn’t just cut a straight path as Shad wanted me to. I was pressed in on all sides by soldiers, priests, and spells being shot around my head. Shad was just as boxed in as I was. In fact, the only person who had breathing room was Night, who was breaking people’s shields left and right. In desperation, I shoved my way to his side and threw myself onto his back.
“Night, go!” I had to yell to be heard over the din of voices, clashes of metal, and the shouting orders.
Night reared slightly, lashing out and hitting two shields at once—I wasn’t too surprised to see them instantly shatter. Nothing can withstand a Breaker’s power. The men behind the shields flew backwards, nursing—I’m sure—broken arms.
Night reared again, letting out a noise that reminded me eerily of a battle cry. Using teeth and hooves, he fought his way through the Star Order soldiers.
On his back, I sent the bon’a’lon whistling through the air, striking at anyone trying to harm us.
For a moment, an insanely clear moment, I felt like I was in harmony with all of those Mages two centuries ago. Night might be terribly young for his position, but he was fighting like the trained war horse and magician’s mount he was born to be—he was protecting me, as he was destined to do.
And I was fighting just as zealously to protect him.
With an equine scream of rage, he burst through the last of the resistance, and into the first rank of priests.
The Star Order Priests weren’t difficult to pick out. They were in the silver robes of their Order, looking faintly sinister to my eye. When they registered I was nearby, they turned to face me.
I threw up every shield I had, protecting us—or so I hoped. Their magic had already defeated mine once. I wasn’t confident of anything anymore. I was grateful when the attacks from the pool ceased firing in my area, focusing more on just the priests in front. At least I wouldn’t have to dodge their attacks and the priests’.
Now that I was close enough, and without any sort of distractions—enemy soldiers breaking through my impenetrable barrier were very distracting—I had to refocus to find the priest I needed to take down.
“Garth, where?” Night demanded of me impatiently as he lashed out with his bac
k hooves.
I didn’t want to speak and risk biting my tongue because of his wild bucking, so I sent a mental picture of the one that we needed to reach.
“Got it. Hold on.” Night was barely able to take two steps when the nearest Star Order Priest took the staff in his hands and gave an expert swing at my barrier.
I hissed in pain as the power on my shields overloaded, sending a backlash powerful enough to singe my nerves. Shrieking hinges, but that hurt! He swung at me again, and this time I dodged backwards, not letting my shields just take the brunt of the blow like I usually did. I didn’t want that staff to touch my shields at all.
“Garth, why are you dodging?”
“Back up!” I ordered with a hint of panic. “That staff is covered with blood magic; it can actually penetrate my shields!”
Night didn’t back up like I expected him to. He reared instead, his front hooves flashing and striking the staff whistling near us. The priest yelped in panic when his staff broke, and then his eyes rolled up in his head as he simply dropped to the ground.
I stared in amazement. Fortunately, some part of my mind was still thinking logically and came up with an explanation. In order for blood magic to work, it had to be linked to a human being—in other words, for the staff to have any power, it had to be connected to the blood of the user. When Night struck out at them, he not only broke the shield but also whatever linked magic they were using in connection with those shields.
A hungry smile took over my face. “Night, break their weapons!”
“Working on it.” He twisted so sharply that I was wrenched sideways in a squeak of leather.
Shad appeared out of thin air next to us, commandeering a stirrup from me and hanging on to the pommel with a white knuckled grip.
“Chatta’s put a charm on my weapon that has Night’s breaking ability!” he shouted over the din. “If you can get me to the priest, I can get through his shields!”
Now when had she figured out how to do that? I shook my head to clear away the thought. Later, I’d ask later. I twisted in the saddle again, taking an absent swing with the bon’a’lon at a priest that dared to get closer, searching for the priest…ah, there! I pointed to him.
Magus (Advent Mage Cycle) Page 35