High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series (2 page)

Among the dozens of dog-borne scouts were a cluster of real horsemen.  I noted the black banner one of them bore before I saw their figures through the twilight gloom.  It was on a long and viciously barbed war lance with a head of sharpened iron.  The knight who carried it was a man, dressed in well-forged blackened armor, a mantle of sable on his shoulders.  Even through the gloom and the armor I did not need to see his heraldry to tell who it was: Sire Koucey.  Former lord of Boval Vale, now tormented lieutenant of the Dead God.

Despite his dreadful armor he looked ghastly.  The horrific burn scars he had gotten at Timberwatch had hardened into a slab of chaos that was only vaguely recognizable as human.  But he bore himself as proudly as a Duke on his big mount.

Next to him on a painted destrier was a taller figure in light horseman’s armor.  A shield was strapped to his arm that told him out as the mercenary we knew as Buckler.  As far as I knew, this was the first time anyone had seen his face and survived.  He had decidedly Imperial features, under his helmet, and the nastiest sneer I’ve ever seen on a human being.  This was a man who held the world in contempt.  I could see why he was working with the bad guys.  I’m not certain if the good guys would ever have taken him.

A third human lord stood in attendance of Koucey, bearing their truce banner, and there were a few more cavalry troopers milling around behind them.  The rest were hound-mounted goblins.  A few were clearly important, like the priest who accompanied them.  He, more than Koucey, seemed to be in charge of their expedition.

The gurvan had eschewed armor of any sort in favor of a long black robe with a pointed hood, almost like a monk’s robe.  He bore a twisted wooden staff in one lye-bleached paw.  It pulsed with magic, and I was on my guard.  Two more priests and a vicious-looking cavalry gurvan stood nearby, their mounts sprawled on the cool flags, panting while they waited.  They looked impatient.

“Hail, to the invaders to our land!” called Sire Cei, our herald.

“Hail, defenders of Gilmora,” Sire Koucey answered, his voice deeper and more sonorous than I recalled.  “Is that you, Sir Cei?”

“
Sire
Cei, now, my lord,” my castellan informed his former employer, stiffly.  “You look . . .” he said, trailing off as he searched for a diplomatic adjective.

“Like the meat the cook burned for dinner?” laughed Sire Koucey, bitterly, as we came within a few yards of their party.  “Thanks to the Spellmonger, aye.  Yet I am the fortunate one.  Thousands were burned far worse than I.”

“Casualties of war,” I shrugged.  “It was a well-fought battle.”  Was he really trying to make me feel guilty for conjuring a fire elemental?

“As will today’s,” the mercenary I knew as Buckler said, sharply.  “You hold that town?” he asked, gesturing and spitting.

“Tenaciously.  And the castle beyond,” I agreed, evenly.  “Nor am I likely to yield either one lightly.”

“I would hope not,” agreed the man.  “Far more sporting that way.”

“Your name, Sir?” Sire Cei asked, sharply.

“Sire Ralun, knight of the Penumbra,” he said, haughtily.  “In service to His Majesty, King Ashakarl, direct descendent of Shereul the Old God.”

“Traitor to your kind, you mean,” growled Sire Cei.  “You serve an inhuman beast who consumes human flesh.  A puppet king of an evil tyrant, ruling over a conquered land with slaves for subjects.”

“One might say the same of your own monarch,” Sir Ralun sneered.  “I am as good a knight as you, Sir, though I serve a different master,” the dark warrior said insistently.  “Perhaps we shall cross swords this day.”

“Then it will be your last time doing so,” warned my castellan.

“You know not whom you taunt, my dear Ralun,” the goblin priest said in perfect Narasi.  “This is clearly Sire Cei, the Dragonslayer.  He who struck the fatal blow to the beast at Cambrian Castle.”

“I have that honor,” acknowledged Cei, stiffly.  Despite being an ideal knight in many ways, Sire Cei was not comfortable with his new fame.  Particularly hearing of it from the mouths of his foes.

“Then I doubly anticipate the fray,” Sire Ralun laughed.  “Once we cross the river, look to your sword, my friend.”

“As to making that crossing, you may find yourself delayed,” I suggested. 

“By that rabble?” snorted Ralun, nodding toward the Kasari rangers skulking about behind us.

“They are more formidable than they seem,” the goblin priest assured him.  “Those are Kasari, the ones who trouble us so in the north.  Nor are they the only defense, Ralun.  The place reeks with magic.”

“And warriors,” I added.  “Warriors fighting to defend their homelands.”

“I care not why they fight,” grunted Sire Ralun.  “They can die for whatever cause they wish.But die they will!”

“I have been placed in charge of the forces of the vanguard,” Sire Koucey said, patiently.  “And it is, indeed, our intention to cross this river, Spellmonger.”

“And it is our intention to resist that action,” I countered.   “If you are wise, you will turn around and head back into shadow.”

“We prefer to bring the shadow here,” the priest said.  “I am Kagathag.  Priest to His Majesty Ashakarl, devoted to the Old God.  Your ways are well known to us, mage.  We know about your stolen shards of our lord’s grace.  We care not.  Cast your puny spells.  The power of the Old God shall prevail!”

Sire Koucey’s eyes twinkled.  This sort of volley of threats was a standard part of battle, and he enjoyed the ritual.  I suppose he had to take his pleasures where he could find them these days.  “It would be best if it was you, my lord Minalan, were the ones to lay down your arms.  You could spare yourselves a great deal of bloodshed today.”

“We’ve been preparing for this for over a year,” I countered.  “We’d be disappointed if we didn’t at least try.”

“Then let us not disappoint you,” Sire Koucey said in his rattling voice.  “That is all we came to demand.  If you wish to defend, we will be obliged to attack.  And destroy you utterly.”

“Not tonight.  You do not have the forces here yet to assault the bridge,” Tyndal pointed out, unhelpfully.

“You have no idea what forces we have at our disposal,” Ralun the Buckler said, mockingly.  “Go back behind your river, cowards.  The gurvani have shown me true warfare, and by the Old God’s grace I shall give you a lesson in it!”  He added something in gurvani, to which the scouts responded by screaming warcries quickly echoed by their mounts.

“If the formalities are dispensed with, then,” I said, in a bored tone of voice, “then I ask only that you allow us to return behind our lines before you begin your assault.”

“But of course,” agreed Koucey.  “We are not uncivilized.  The truce was fairly observed and fairly discharged.  You may return to your lines, across your plank, and we will refrain from firing for an additional ten minutes.  We would not want it said we attacked you before you were ready to receive us.”

“Stupid humani preening,” snorted the gurvan in cavalry armor.  “Get gone, and prepare to meet our blades!”  He showed his fangs in an effort to look fearsome.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the raging Poros.  “Not unless you brought a barrel to ride across on.  But good luck with your assault, nonetheless.  It is our honor to slaughter you.”

That brought an amused (if ghastly) chuckle form Koucey and Ralun and the unnamed knight, but only scowls from the gurvani.  I guess you had to be human to appreciate it.

“That . . . went . . . surprisingly well,” Arborn admitted as he led us back across the plank.  It was starting to get dark, now, which didn’t make the churning waters any less sinister below my feet.  I cast a magelight, even though it might attract sniper fire.  I wasn’t about to accidently fall in the river in the moments before a major battle.  My pride couldn’t take that.

“I really didn’t expect it to be much more than that,” I agreed.  “Just a formality.”

“Why warn your foe, though?” Tyndal asked, shaking his head.

“We weren’t just warning them we’re here,” I pointed out, “we were able to make some determinations about their strategy from how they presented themselves.  Whether they’re weak or strong—”

“Definitely strong,” murmured Rondal, glancing back over his shoulder at the pacing hounds and pawing horses.

“Whether they will be attacking magically or mundanely—”

“Looked like both, actually,” Tyndal muttered, to an assenting nod from Lorcus.

“And whether they might be able to be bought off,” I finished, weakly.

“No, I did not receive that impression, Sire,” Sire Cei informed me, after a moment’s reflection.

“No, me neither,” Lorcus agreed.  “In fact, they seemed quite resolute.”

“Determined, even,” agreed Arborn, as he crossed the last bit of distance.

“Impassioned, perhaps?” offered Terleman.

“I think we’ve made quite enough observations,” I decided, quietly, as we passed by the crossbowmen reclined behind barricades.  “Yes, they’re going to attack.  Yes, we’re going to defend.  No, they’re not going to cross this bridge,” I added, a little more loudly, so that every man in earshot would hear it clearly. 

We made our way back to the much-larger side of town to a tavern we’d pressed into service as a field headquarters.  Luckily, not all of the provisions had been carted away before the transition, and mulled wine was waiting for us when we arrived.

“How many?” Wenek asked, huddling by the fire with a blanket over his shoulders.  The warmage specialized in offensive magics.  He was pretty offensive in his own right.  Wenek lived for causing pain and suffering, death and dismemberment through artful expressions of magic.  One of the many High Magi I’d called into service for this battle.

“Just a few hundred, for now,” I answered, doffing my mantle.  “But thousands more coming.  I don’t see much point in them attacking us in force until they do, so we’re probably just looking at skirmishes and sniper fire this evening.  But tomorrow, and the next day . . . that’s when that column will arrive in earnest.  If they don’t take this place before then, then that army is going to start backing up.  Once it’s stopped, we can summon reinforcements to attack them.”

There were fifty or sixty thousand troops or more downriver from here, feudal levies from Wenshar and Remere under the ostensible command of the Prince Heir, Tavard.  They could be summoned at any time, and move swiftly up the river to any of the three bridges that might have need of them.

I didn’t know much about the future king of Castalshar as a commander in the field, but Tavard was only a few years older than Tyndal, and I barely trusted him to empty my chamberpot.  The reserves were there, if we needed them.  A big, long, relatively undefended column of goblins standing around patiently waiting for the bridge to open up sounded like a good place for them to go.

The tavern was warm against the chill, with a fire and food in a kettle, and I honestly didn’t expect there to be a major skirmish that night.  While Koucey and the other commanders were here, they wouldn’t do anything decisive until they got reinforcements, too.

Or so we thought.  About an hour after I had settled into a chair by the fire with a pipe and a cup, I got a message from Dranus, mind-to-mind.  I’d left my Court Wizard back in the more comfortable and secure quarters at the castle, overseeing the scouting reports for me and scrying for details while I was in the field – just the sort of useful work a court wizard does for his employer.  Some of those reports had come back with interesting results.

There’s some activity from the advanced scouts I thought you’d be interested in.  They aren’t advancing in force yet, but they are sending out scouting parties.  The interesting thing is, they aren’t focusing on the bridge.  They’re heading for the river, away from our defenses,
he reported, dutifully. 
A party of a hundred, mounted on hounds.  Mostly priests,
he added. 

Priests?
I asked. 
That was interesting.  What are they doing?  Trying to build a magical bridge?  Raising nightsails?
That was an unsettling thought.  Nightsails would not have any trouble crossing the river.  They would just float across, and then the gaseous-looking things – we still weren’t certain if they were spells or creatures, though I favored the latter theory – would play havoc among our defenseless troops.  That was a worrisome thought.

Let’s hope not . . . but that might be it.  It takes a while to summon those things, though. 
I remembered my first encounter with them in the Penumbra last year, where it had taken both me and Azar to defeat just one of the insidious things. 
If that’s what they’re doing, we should have plenty of time to disrupt them, I think.
Where did they set up?
That could be telling. We had some warmagi hidden on the north side of the river for just that sort of thing.

They found a spot along the river near a hillock on the north side.  They’re doing . . . something.  A ritual.  So far the closest we can get is about a quarter mile.

What kind of something?

We don’t know.  But they’ve set up a camp and built a fire, and our scrying shows an increase in magical energy in the area. 

Dranus, just how many priests?

Uh . . . sixty? Seventy?  Plus guards?