Battle Mage Visions (A Tale of Alus Book 12) (67 page)

              A scream from an injured savage brought a smile to Lyallan’s face. Let them fear the weapons of the Ummair. The star based race had technology far superior to what these creatures had brought and well beyond what they could hope to even conceive of with their little minds. Unfortunately technology only went so far and the beasties still had far greater numbers than the Ummair. It also might just take a single bowman to get lucky by finding a piece of exposed flesh with an arrow to reduce the defenders by more if they weren’t careful.

              The whistling arrows stopped in the face of the glowing rounds of alien weaponry. Lyallan wanted to let a smile come again. It was easy to think the creatures must realize that they were out gunned; but after hours of fighting between such lulls, Lyallan knew better.

              When a loud battle cry erupted, a contingent of hundreds of light blue and brown skinned creatures charged towards the earthen walls that protected Lyallan and his soldiers. He was not surprised. The riflemen rose over their cover and began firing into the oncoming horde. The five under Lyallan’s control seemed to bravely stand their ground before the onslaught of blue, brown and green skinned creatures. Jutting jaws with protruding teeth snarled from beneath leather skull caps above and heavy hide armor below. They were probably feeling invincible as an army, but the five charge rifles lashed out proving to several that their hides were nothing to the glowing rounds of the Ummair rifles.

              Lyallan’s slight smile faded as the determined foes over ran the defender’s position. The reinforced ceramic-like plates of the undead riflemen took several blows even as Lyallan continued to try and get them to take more of a toll on the savages. Clubs, short swords and axes hacked away fueled by the creatures’ greater strength. Their armor held for a time, but the riflemen were merely soulless husks animated by the technology of the Force Master. His will alone held the puppets in front of the savages. When their blades cut through a spine severing the nerves needed to control his Ummair puppets, the dead men fell from his control. Lyallan hated using his former shipmates in such a way anyway, but there had been little choice and better the dead hacked apart than his living crew mates.

              Touching the bands of his left arm triggered a compartment to open. A high pitched twitter mimicking the sound of arrows in flight sounded as five darts, lit blue, fired out of the bands. With seeming minds of their own, the darts veered towards the fallen savages. Lyallan’s mind controlled these darts much as he had his puppets. When they found freshly killed, mostly intact bodies, the darts plunged into their dead chests. With a surge like the dead being brought back to life with electricity on an emergency table, five new puppets arose. Unnoticed by all but a few of the savages, the five creatures took up weapons with glazed, staring eyes.

              Several of the savages were cut down from behind by the crude weapons at hand before they even knew it. New chaos as their own kind turned against them began to send a panic through the rear of the enemy ranks. One of his puppets found a fallen charge rifle and picked it up at Lyallan’s command. Firing as expertly as any Ummair marine, the creatures continued to broil in confusion. Their own kind now fought against them with alien gear. How could this be? They had to be wondering, Lyallan thought to himself.

              New noise coming to his own ears from closer to the technomancer drew his attention back to his own part of the world. Three of the savages had spied him hidden behind his wall of earth and snarled at the dark elf of a man as they charged the alien. Turning his left wrist bands towards the intruders, Lyallan fired two more darts directly into a pair of the living locals. The darts fired their energy into the beasts snuffing the life out of them in an instant. Even as their intelligence faded with their life energy, the pair shook with tremors uncontrollably where they had pulled up short. Startling the third orc like creature into stalling his steps to stare incredulously at his fellow warriors, Lyallan seized control of the two and their weapons slashed swiftly into him from both sides.

              The blue skinned warrior fell with his mouth open in complete surprise. He had not expected them to turn on him. The enemy was nearly in their grasp, and yet they had turned on him in a strange twist of events.

              Lyallan suddenly felt a wave of pain through his head. Controlling seven puppets was pushing his abilities to their limits. It was said that there were masters who could control many more puppets, but he had found his limit while training to become a technomancer. More of the savages, these mostly brown skinned, were coming over his defensive wall even as the Ummair fought to hold onto his control. His newest puppets guarded their master from either side. After the initial surprise of their own warriors guarding the alien, where three more of the savages fell to his bodyguards; no quarter was given the traitors defending the smaller, blue skinned man.

              Lyallan held out his hands. Two five inch rods released from the inner arm of the metal bands and sprouted tendril wires that blazed red like an older sun. The thin filaments, superheated with energy, cut through armor and bone both, driving the savages back as six more of their number lost limbs and lives to Lyallan and his new bodyguards.

              Two of his other puppets were slashed to death in the outer melee, but it mattered little to the Force Master at the moment. If anything, their loss was a blessing in its own way. Back to five puppets, the Ummair began drawing his weapons back to guard him. It wasn’t needed as a strategy, however, since dozens of charged weapons lashed out from the enemy flank. The newest deaths took the enemy’s will with them and spurred the savages into panicked flight in spite of their greater numbers.

              Looking through his puppets’ eyes from their various positions, Lyallan watched as they all ran from the Ummair onslaught. Their superior technology had proven itself once more. Perhaps this time the savages would give them more time and a wide berth to set up better defenses around the ship. He could only hope.

              “Force Master Lyallan!” a male voice shouted worriedly from where several cobalt armored Ummair were cautiously making their way through a corpse strewn field. “Are you all right, sir?”

              “Yes, Eloan, although the timing of the trap was much appreciated. There’s no sense adding undue risk to a battle, even if we have the technological advantage. The numbers of these savages already brings enough worry to our lives.”

              Nearly as blue as his armor, the marine squad leader’s skin virtually blended with it to the point that his light grey eyes and white teeth leaped out at the force master in stark contrast.

              Inspecting one of his puppets, Lyallan frowned at the creature. Slightly taller than an Ummair, nearly twice as broad in the chest, jutting jaws and lower foreheads all meant the beasts looked quite different from the smaller aliens. As puppets, however, the force master noted the value in their powerfully muscled frames. Most importantly, their worth as cannon fodder would save the lives of his troops. It was much safer to send these undead monsters in with advanced weaponry and maybe even some armor, if they had the time to make it, than to send in his Ummair, living or otherwise.

              “They are quite ugly, aren’t they?” Ryella, one of the females that crewed the Dark Sparron noted perusing one of his undead savages. The creature didn’t even blink as she poked at the flesh of its face. “The skin’s almost like bark, probably thick like it too.”

              “We’ll have to store these along with a few more of the beasts for my future puppets. They could prove very useful since their fingers can use our weapons. We need to conserve our ship's resources and they seem like ideal tools.”

              “Perhaps we should see about enslaving these things as well while we’re stuck here?” Eloan ventured as he surveyed the battlefield.

              The force master nodded. “All in good time, Eloan, we Ummair may not have meant to come here, but this world will know our presence soon enough. Subduing these beasts will most likely be worth our while. Not only would their forces working for us be much safer, we can assume that at least some of our allies and enemies have survived as we have. With an army of these savages under our control, few of our enemies could hope to mount a force significant to resist us with just one ship.”

              “True enough, but we have the same problem,” Ryella commented taking her attention from the creature she had been inspecting. “These creatures may not have our technology, but it’s finite as are our forces. We need to build up our own numbers slowly, I think. Maybe we should find a small village here and there while taking who and what we need to better our position.”

              Frowning slightly at the cautious negativity, Lyallan and the other men could not reject the wisdom of her words. Ryella had been a strategist in the elite core known as the Inquisitors. They were good at rooting out truths and sedition as well as knowing how to deal with the same. Inquisitors were both respected and feared by the general populace. They were the ones that held onto order at all costs. How many possible threats had been eliminated by their sect without anyone knowing of them? Lyallan could only guess at such a thing. Secret, discrete action was the whole point of their order.

              “We’ll need to see about survivors,” he added looking at the sloping field in front of him. “I also note that there seems to be three different main colorings to these creatures. The blue ones look a little different in the face and even their build, perhaps we are dealing with more than one faction that have come together thinking us demons or something.

              “If we found a village or two of the same type, we might be able to incite distrust between them and cause these savages to fight amongst each other lessening their strength. Or perhaps we simply need to conscript some from each race and have them attack their allies’ villages to bring out more animosity?”

              The woman nodded, “You sound a bit like an inquisitor, Force Master Lyallan. Perhaps you have more than just a talent for puppeteering the dead. You know you could do a lot more damage by mind controlling an entire population rather than just a few here and there with your little darts.” Her eyes seemed to appraise him in a new manner. He wondered at the odd look, but it was something to be wary of another time. Right now they had other things to worry over.

              “Controlling populations and crowds is all well and good, but if you need a blunt hammer to beat the metal, I'd rather use the hammer.” His puppets beat their chests with a thump that made the others jump in surprise. Force masters were feared for a reason, he wanted to remind Ryella in particular of that fact.

              With matters settled between them, the Ummair began to search among the fallen. Survivors with minor wounds were still found amongst the dead apparently playing possum. Controller bands went over the cowards’ heads with little resistance. The Sparron had dozens of these circlets in storage for a reason. Even their enemies could be cleansed of their resistance and new thoughts of service could be placed inside their minds over time with the circlets. Ryella would be in charge of the indoctrination, of course. She was the only surviving inquisitor aboard the Dark Sparron and as such was the only master of the gear. With time and proper use of the controller bands, the woman could control many more of these beasts at once than a force master could hope to at one time with just his limited powers. There was also no limit to the possible numbers once they were properly enslaved.

              Their new army was begun.

Battle Mage: A Tale of Alus

Chapter 1- The Difference

             
The sun shone down upon the courtyard through a thin haze of fog still stubbornly sticking to the mid-morning air. Finches and sparrows chirped and sang from the nearby gardens or as they soared over the ten foot walls separating the Court of War from the neighboring gardens. White Hall and its accompanying towers loomed to the south of the long courtyard throwing shadows over much of the grounds below. The Tower of War was dark against the morning light and its shadow nearly touched the base of forty foot protective walls.

              Above the sounds of the birds, multiple clangings could be heard as sword met shield or sword on sword. In the Court of War more than a dozen men worked at perfecting their art. Four pairs of grey shirted men exercised their skills against one another as four older men in black coached or quietly watched their students at play. A thirteenth young man, also of the grey, performed a dance with his blade.

              Wind flowing up Hill moved to the Bear stands Alone. Iron Jacket met Thrush from the Thicket. Maneuver after maneuver followed as he pictured his invisible opponent moving to counter his own. Back and forth he fended and struck. Press an advantage then retreat as the momentum shifts. Protect and attack. Force and defend.

              Dark blond hair began to drip with sweat. The grey shirt darkened. Tanned arms glistened and his palms tried to moisten and make his grip tenuous. A shift of the leather coated handle scraped away most of the moisture and stiffened the grip as he shifted back to the better hold once again. Tirelessly the young man fought his invincible foe. His breathing came through parted lips as lungs called for more air.

              Two of the pairs picked up towels to dab at damp brows as the men in black gave comment on their performance. Chuckling heralded some comments. Frowns followed others. The men walked back in White Hall through the small door at the base of the Tower of War. The other men continued work as a new trio, one black and two greys followed much the same as those before.