The Sorcerer's Ascension (5 page)

“You and your men fought well, agent. It is unfortunate that we find ourselves on opposing sides and I had to witness the truth of the rumors surrounding the fabled blackguard as a foe.”

“To the abyss with you, you vile, treasonous, scum!” the blackguard captain spat in anger, pain, and disgust.

“It is not I who commits treason. I am simply a soldier following the orders of the one I have pledged my loyalty to,” the general replied. “Where is the artifact?”

The blackguard laughed despite his pain. “I’ll never tell the likes of you. The only way you will get the gauntlets is off my corpse!”

General Baneford shook his head with unfeigned remorse. “Unfortunately, such had always been the only option available to us.”

General Baneford stretched out his hand, took a loaded crossbow from one of his men, and put a quarrel into the kneeling man’s heart. He found the artifact packed away in the dead man’s small haversack still strapped to his back. He examined the inky black gauntlets with their gold trim in amazement. Not a single scratch marred their surface and they seemed to reflect no light despite their perfect ebony gloss.

General Baneford stood up and put the gauntlets into his own saddlebags. “Drag these men deep into the woods and strap our own fallen onto horses. We will leave no evidence of whom we are. We will bury them far from here later.”

He looked about at the number of his men that had fallen and shook his head. Out of nearly three dozen men, only fifteen would be riding back under their own power. With any luck, two or three more may survive their wounds, but it would be a close thing. This was only the first battle in Ulric’s fight for the throne, and already his general lost nearly two dozen men to less than a quarter their original number. He wondered how much blood would be spent to purchase the Duke’s throne.

CHAPTER 3

As was usual, Azerick had his nose pressed into a book of mathematics. He had grown bored with his history and engineering studies earlier in the day and sought a greater challenge for his mind.

He was a handsome lad with brownish hair that shown like polished bronze when the light struck it. He was slender but not weak or sickly-looking. His hazel eyes were almost constantly buried in one book or another.

The boy was pressed for time though. He looked at the expensive water clock on top of the polished ironwood bookcase in the study. It was time for his private weapons training. He wondered what weapons it would be today; or perhaps it would be hand to hand fighting.

Azerick did not care much for the barehanded fighting. Being only thirteen years old, he hated the size and strength disadvantages he had against his instructor even though Ewen would let him use the moves he taught him without putting up much more resistance than the lad could handle. The boy figured a primarily all theory lesson had its uses, but he looked forward to the day he could make old Ewen submit due to his own skill and power. However, that would be years, off he knew.

Azerick was the son of a successful merchant and of a caste that should have been beyond such a crude thing as actually engaging in any kind of melee outside of fencing. Those of his class hired muscle for that sort of thing, but his father had gotten his start as a sailor then captain of his own ship and considered self-defense important for any man.

From there he had built a successful trading company that now consisted of six ships: five, two-masted schooners and his three-masted flagship, a large boat that made long journey’s across the sea to exotic lands and brought back rare and sometimes never before seen curiosities and treasures.

Azerick often heard the tales of his father and crew having to fight off pirates and hostile natives of some of the unsettled lands across the sea. Lands full of savages, rare spices, and strange, valuable trade goods that the local elite paid handsomely for. In fact, his father was due back in a few days from another such lucrative journey.

Azerick loved his father and wanted to make him proud of him, so he did not mind the martial training. His father said that a good man exercised his brain and his muscles and any man who let either one go soft could not be truly successful.

Azerick actually enjoyed the training and change of pace but not as much as his books. He would always be a scholar before a warrior, but it never hurt to have a fallback. He had a sharp mind and remembered almost everything he read at a glance. More importantly, he was able to visualize what he read and understand the material at such a level that he could apply it in a practical manner.

Azerick closed his book with a sigh and left his beloved study. He walked down the wood-paneled hall and out into the marbled foyer. His martial training took place in the courtyard. The courtyard was a large, flagstone enclosure surrounded by stone walls topped with mostly decorative wrought iron spikes about eighteen inches long. The entrance to the courtyard was barred by a large wooden gate made of two halves that swung open on well-balanced hinges to allow passage of carriages and delivery carts as well as a smaller postern door to allow the usual foot traffic built into the wall just a few feet to one side of the larger gate.

As usual, Azerick was a little late and his instructor was waiting for him with a look of impatience on his face. He was a grizzled old man well past his middle years. What age had diminished in his reflexes and strength, Ewen made up for in experience and expertise.

Ewen had served with Azerick’s father for over twenty years teaching not only him, but also most every sailor that served on his ships, how to handle a weapon and fight with their bare hands. These were dangerous times and any ship not prepared to defend itself likely would not be plying the seas for long. Azerick’s father had been fortunate that he had yet to lose a ship to pirates and only one to a nasty northern storm after it had begun its return trip from one of the northern towns.

But Ewen was mostly retired now, teaching a few private weapons classes to the more affluent families. Duels were not entirely unheard of and a man of breeding should be ready to defend his honor when hired muscle would be unseemly or cause the family to lose face. Anything less than honorable combat was done in secret, ‘from behind the curtains’ was the popular saying.

“Well, well, the young scholar finally pulled his nose outta his books long enough to grant me the pleasure of his pasty lordship’s company” came Ewen’s usual sarcastic remark. “So what was the topic today, eh,” snarled Ewen, “how to comfort oneself when a sissy bookworm gets beat up by a girl?”

“Actually it was an alchemic treatise on plants that, when mixed with certain earth elements, will cover and prevent certain offending body odors,” came Azerick’s verbal riposte. “In fact, when applied in sufficient quantity and concentration may do something to mask even your pugnacious odor of fish, cheap gin, and five-silver prostitutes, though I imagine it would take a truly adept alchemist to create something of that potency.”

Anyone observing this exchange might have seen a cantankerous old man and a precocious, spoiled, rich brat verbally assaulting each other. However, the reality of it was that both were equally fond of each other and almost always started their sparring with words before drawing their practice weapons.

Ewen had drilled into his training early on that if you can get into your opponents head you can get into his arm. Meaning that if you can psych out your opponent or get him angry to the point of distraction, you can get him to make a mistake he might not normally make, and you need to be prepared to strike when he does. The reverse held true as well. Ewen would say repeatedly to never let emotion fuel your fight. Anger burns hot and fast and will burn out of control if you let it. Control is everything.

Smiling, Azerick asked, “So, what is it going to be today, Master Ewen, swords, knives, staff, or bow?” Azerick left out the brawling option, not wanting to give Master Ewen any ideas if he had not already thought about it.

Ewen taught a myriad of weapons and fighting styles. His motto was to be prepared to use whatever you can get your hands on and use it effectively whether it was a weapon, chair, crockery or even if it was your opponent or an innocent bystander.

“I think a bit of staff work again today, young sir. You seem to have a real knack for it and I think I’d like ya to get proficient in one weapon before we try to get more than a passing familiarity with others.”

Azerick was glad to hear it. Given his youth and size, he felt much more comfortable with the staff than many of the other weapons. He also enjoyed it more than any other weapon he had trained with thus far. Swords were heavy and his young body tired quickly swinging them around. Knife training was all right, but Ewen was able to use his greater reach and strength to do whatever he wanted, and the bow left his fingers and hand aching to the point that it made writing difficult and that was totally unacceptable.

“Do ya want to warm up first, or are ya ready to begin?” Ewen asked.

“I’m ready, the benefits of youth you know. I do not have to work the dust and rust out of my old bones first like some salty old sailors. How about you?”

“I knew you were gonna be late, so I took advantage of your usual tardiness to warm up before ya got here. Wisdom of experience ya know. Now let’s see how smart that mouth of yours works when I swell your lips to thrice their size.”

They took up their weapons and slowly started circling each other, each one throwing out a few sensing blows and traded off parrying each other’s strikes and counter strikes. Ewen swung his staff down in a standard ten o’clock direction strike that was aimed for side of the youngster’s head. Just as Ewen had taught him, Azerick brought up the end of his staff, blocking his blow.

However, instead of returning to the guard position as he had been taught, Azerick continued to push his opponent’s staff nearly to the ground. He then took a step forward, continued to push Ewen’s staff down and back, then snapped the same end of his staff behind his opponent’s right knee. Azerick braced the other end of his staff between his body and left arm while pulling the far end towards himself with his right hand and pivoted on the balls of his feet. Using his hips to maximize leverage, he flipped the old weapons master onto his back.

Ewen let out a whoosh of expelled air as he hit the flagstones.

“Bah! Where’d ya learn that, boy? That ain’t nothing I taught ya!”

“I read a book written by a monk of
Thelmos
on martial exercises. It had a really well-illustrated section on staff techniques. I have been practicing some of them on my own. There’s a lot more in books than just being a sissy,” Azerick replied smiling.

Azerick grinned down at his instructor, offering him a hand up. Ewen grasped the boy’s proffered hand and allowed himself to be helped to his feet.

“That’s a clever move. Nice to see you’re studying something other than egghead books and not
leavin
’ everything to me,” Ewen said and he returned to the guard position. “I think maybe I’ve been
takin
’ it a bit too easy on ya. Let’s step it up a bit.”

Ewen came at him again, this time with considerably more speed, feints, and blows. The clacking of wood striking wood reverberated through the courtyard. Once again, Ewen struck at the boy with an over-hand blow aimed for the top of his head, and once again, instead of ducking or blocking, Azerick caught and forced Ewen’s staff towards the ground and stepped forward, setting his instructor up for another trip to the hard courtyard floor.

However, as Azerick swept his staff towards the back of Ewen’s knee, the crafty old fighter lifted his right leg up high then swiftly brought it down with perfect timing to crush Azerick’s staff to the ground, trapping it between the stones and his foot.

Had Azerick been stronger it may well have snapped off the last two feet of Azerick’s staff. However, since Azerick lacked the strength to maintain his grip, the staff was stripped from his hands and clapped loudly onto the flagstones. Another instructor, perhaps a more genteel one, may have let the disarmament serve as the lesson. However, Ewen knew Azerick was headstrong and often needed a firmer hand to drive a point home. Besides, Ewen did not coddle his students like some fancy upper class tutors. Azerick had just enough time to see the triumphant grin on Ewen’s face before the weapons master finished his disarmament with a swift clout to the back of Azerick’s head.

Azerick went sprawling with a curse, face first onto the flagstones. It was a good, hard strike and Azerick knew he would be walking away from this sparring match with a nice goose egg, but that was not unusual. The stars cleared from his eyes in just a second and he rolled over onto his back and glared up at his instructor’s grinning face.