Rangers magic 2, p.6
Ranger's Magic 2, page 6
He huffed. “A pay rise of two hundred gold leaves per season, indeed. Tell old Harald that he may keep his medal of the order of whatever, and he may keep his pay rise as well, though I will take the promotion gladly if he is willing to give it without a whole lot of ceremony and fuss. And if he has money to burn, you may tell him that he should burn it on better food and clothing for the outpost garrisons. He should burn it on recruitment, on weapons, on arrowheads, on flax for ropes, wool for cloaks, on the green dyes for the leather that we use in our armor, or on any of the thousand and one other things that I lack to keep this garrison in good fighting order.”
Rayne jutted his chin out in challenge. “If Harald has finally remembered that I’m out here and has decided it’s time for me to be properly equipped, he needs to do it without all the nonsense. I need food, soldiers, and gear, not a medal. You got all that, remembrancer? Remember all that, will you?”
To Ralnor’s surprise and Lana’s evident horror, the commander had become more and more agitated and angry throughout this speech. He had risen from his seat, pushed his chair back, planted both his fists on the wood of the table in front of him, leaning over and glaring at Jearn as the volume of his voice increased with his passion.
Now he stood still, breathing slowly and heavily through his nose as his eyes blazed.
Jearn had risen as well, standing back from the table as if he was prepared to flee. Now, with a visible effort, Jearn gathered his wounded dignity around himself like a cloak and glared down his nose at the commander.
“Such a way to speak of your monarch!” he snapped, his voice dripping with disapproval.
“Did you get the message?” the commander repeated with emphasis.
“I, sir,” the messenger said haughtily, “am a member of the Order of the Palenthier. We do not forget a message we have been told. You truly wish me to deliver this message to Harald, unedited, without any interpretation by me?”
“Word for bloody word, remembrancer,” the commander snarled.
Jearn turned and walked to the tent flap, before turning and giving a stiff bow that took in the whole room. “By your leave, I shall go at once.”
When the messenger had gone, an awed silence filled the space. Ralnor stared in amazement and more than a little admiration at the commander, but he was perplexed as well. The commander sat back in his chair and gave a bitter laugh.
“Go on,” he growled, “you’ve got questions.”
“Sir,” Ralnor said carefully. “I understand and admire your decision not to go to the city at present, but do you really feel so bad toward King Harald? I met him, and he was kind to me. He seemed a most gracious old elf. I’m surprised to hear you speak with such resentment toward him, though it’s clear that the defenses have been neglected in recent years.”
Commander Rayne sighed, and Jonah chuckled. “Shall I tell them, sir?” he asked.
Commander Rayne waved his hand in permission and picked up his brandy.
“There’s some history between our commander and the king,” Jonah explained. “They don’t see eye to eye, on many things.”
“But I don’t understand,” Ralnor said. “To not agree with one’s monarch is one thing, but to send such a message…How are you confident that the king would not have you stripped of your command, or worse, for being so openly disrespectful?”
“The king could, no doubt,” Jonah said, “but he would not. Despite all their disagreements over the years, and all our commander’s hot-headedness, there’s something between them still that prevents King Harald from doing any harm to our good commander.”
“And that is?” Lana asked when Jonah stopped. He was all too clearly enjoying the build up to his point.
“Well, my friends,” Jonah said, leaning back in his chair with relish, “it’s just this. King Harald is our Commander’s elder brother.”
Chapter 4
Ralnor nearly spat out his brandy. “You?” he asked in amazement, looking at Rayne. “You’re the king’s brother? But how? Harald is one of the oldest elves in the world—he’s nearly four hundred! How old are you?”
Then he stopped himself, realizing that demanding to know the commander’s age might be a bit too forward even for this informal setting.
But Commander Rayne smiled a little sadly and sat forward in his chair. “I began my life in King Harald’s two hundred and fiftieth year,” he said, “after the days of darkness that followed the Sundering but right at the beginning of the age of restoration. Harald is not ‘nearly’ four hundred years old, he’s actually four hundred and two this year. His birthday has just passed. I am one hundred and fifty-two years old—a good age, a prime age for an elf, in fact. I’ve seen many things in my years, Ralnor, and fought many battles, and for the last sixty years I’ve been stuck on this gods-forsaken outpost, doing my best to form raw recruits and half-reformed criminals into a garrison worthy of the name.”
Lana smiled and sipped her drink. “And that’s why you feel comfortable speaking so rudely to the king!”
“But sir,” Ralnor said. “If I may ask…You said you were born when Harald was two hundred and fifty years old… what of your parents, then? Where are they? How old were they?”
“Ah,” Rayne said sadly. “I was not born then, Ralnor. I did not say born. I said that was when I began my life. I was born many years before; exactly how many, I don’t know, and so I count my days from when I was brought into the world…from a preservation chamber.”
For a second time in as many minutes, Ralnor nearly choked on his drink. “You were also in a preservation chamber? As I was?”
“Indeed. But the story of that decision, and the events that led to it, I will ask your permission to leave untold for now, for it’s a sad tale and a long one, and today has been a long day.”
Both Ralnor and Lana rose as the commander did. “One more thing, my friends,” Rayne said. “Tomorrow morning, I shall have some orders for you. Jonah will deliver them to you at dawn. But for tonight, get some sleep, and I will do the same.”
Ralnor glanced at Jonah, but the man’s face was expressionless as he nodded to the two young Rangers and bade them goodnight.
* * *
In the morning, Ralnor woke early to find, to his surprise and pleasure, that the rain had given way to a cold, clear sky. Pale dawn light was flowing into his room through the small window. All was quiet save for the early songs of birds from the woodland around the outpost.
He got up, washed, dressed, and then decided to spend some time seeing to his armor. The construction was excellent, but there were metal buckles on the straps that needed oiling and metal studs that had to be checked for rust, especially after hard use in these wet days. The elves were good at creating alloys that reduced the impact of rust on their gear, but they could not eliminate it completely.
Ralnor opened the door to his room and dragged his chair and his small table outside, then brought out his equipment. He made tea and, as the morning advanced, he sat outside the tower drinking hot tea while he worked oil into his leather armor and polished the rust and dirt from the small places where they had gathered. The morning was cold, but the respite from the rain was welcome, and hot tea and work heated him up.
After an hour, he was done with his armor, and he took his swords and knives and laid them out on the table in front of him. There were six blades in all, the main ones being the two curved, scimitar-like swords that Farlo had imbued with the essence of channelwort, a plant that grew in the woods nearby to the outpost. This plant, correctly treated, had the ability to respond to magic. Farlo had implanted the essence of the channelwort plant into the metal of the swords, and that made the blades more receptive to Ralnor’s magic.
He picked up one of the blades and began to clean it carefully, examining every inch of it for rust or impacted dirt, and scraping, wiping, and oiling the whole weapon.
As he had progressed in his magic, Ralnor had learned that casting magic had two stages; first, he would open himself up to the earth and the spirit, and allow his body to become the conduit through which their power could flow. Then, he could siphon off a portion of that power for himself, channeling it into a spell.
Initially, the spells he used were always projected into the world through his hands. He would stretch a hand forward and expel a blast of force or elemental magic outward, or he could send battle magic through his hands into the air and then into another person or an object to imbue it with that power.
But in the last three weeks, Akhen had been trying hard to get Ralnor comfortable with the concept of vectors. “You use your hands as a vector for your magic,” he would say, “but you must learn that other things can work better. A wand, a staff, or a magically enhanced weapon, for example. I know you have done this instinctively in the past, but now you must learn to do it in a systematic and reliable way, and for that you need good vectors to use.”
And so, Farlo’s knowledge of the channelwort’s properties came into its own. Farlo had already made a prototype, a small dagger that Ralnor could push his magical energy through with ease, but as Akhen continued to emphasize the use of vectors, Farlo had gone back to his forge and created two new swords, doubly imbued with channelwort essence. They were Ralnor’s favorite weapons—beautifully made and perfectly balanced, and with keen edges and hand grips custom made to the shape of his palms.
As he finished cleaning the second one, Lana came out of the tower, looking freshly washed and dressed, and blinking around at the morning.
“What a day!” she exclaimed. “You cleaning your weapons? I thought we had an appointment with Jonah this morning?”
“We do,” Ralnor said, “but I woke early and thought I’d take some time to get my armor and weapons into shape. Here, help me with the armor.”
His Ranger armor was dyed a dark forest green. It was made of many interlinking plates of hard but flexible leather, joined with studs and buckles of steel cleverly concealed within the design. After his work session on it, every plate gleamed in the early sun. It took them a few minutes to dress him in his armor, and as Lana tightened the last bucket at his waist, he picked up his twinned swords and strapped them into his sword belt.
“These two blades,” he said, counting off his weapons as he strapped them into place around his person, “then my short sword, my channeling dagger, and my two boot knives, and I’m ready to go.”
She grinned at him. “You certainly do look ready,” she said. “I’ll need to put a session in to cleaning my armor too after yesterday’s mud bath, but I don’t know when I’ll get the time.”
“Better make time,” Ralnor said, nodding his head in the direction of the main buildings at the back of the outpost. “He looks like he means business.”
“Where? Oh, yes! I see!” Lana said, looking where Ralnor indicated. They stood and waited as Jonah strode purposefully across the yard toward them.
“Well, you two,” Jonah said as he approached them, “the commander has asked me to talk to you this morning. I have something rather special for you. May I sit?”
Jonah had brought breakfast with him, and Ralnor pulled out a couple of crates from his room—he only had the one chair—for the others to sit on. Jonah laid out a simple meal of bread and cheese and a bit of cured meat, then rolled out a small map next to the food.
“See here?” he said, pointing at the map with a piece of bread. “This is a map of the region that lies to the southwest of the outpost, down the edge of the Cursed Lands, here. The edge of the Cursed Lands runs along due west in a fairly straight line until it intersects with the ridge of land where the humans have their border forts.”
Ralnor nodded. He ran his eye over the map. He had seen depictions of this region before, of course, but he’d never looked in detail at them. Now, he saw that the human border ran north to south, almost parallel with the line of the Red River. There was a rise of land there, and little squares running along the ridge representing the location of the human border forts. There was a dotted line running between the forts.
“What’s that line?” he asked, his mouth full of bread and cheese.
“That’s the wall they call Stoneheart’s Shield. Back in the days that the elves call the age of restoration—long before my time—there was a human general named Gorum Stoneheart. In those days, the wars between the humans and the elves were just getting going. Stoneheart was one of the leaders that pushed the hostilities forward. Not a pleasant fellow, so the tales say, though the humans were not good at record-keeping in those days and little is known about him for certain except the fact that he built this wall. It connects all the forts that cover the border of the human lands, making a chain of defensive fortifications that a mouse could not slip through back in the old days. As for today, I’m less sure…”
“But Jonah,” Lana cut in, “does this relate to our mission?”
“Somewhat,” Jonah replied. He sat back in his chair. “Nine days ago, your friend Lufaren, one of the best Rangers in the garrison, was sent out on a scouting mission with four others. Now, this is nothing unusual—we’ve been sending out scouting missions consistently since the battle, keeping a close eye on the activity in the Unclaimed Lands between us and the border, but Lufaren’s mission was a bit different. He was tasked to scout the edge of the Cursed Lands; not to go into the Cursed Lands, mind you, but just to scout along their border as far as the southern end of Stoneheart’s Shield, which ends where the Cursed Lands begin.”
“And he’s not come back,” Ralnor said.
Jonah’s eyes whipped up from the map to look at Ralnor. “How do you know that?” Jonah asked sharply. “I’ve said nothing about it!”
Ralnor shook his head. “No, you’ve not, but Lufaren is our friend. I know he’s not at the outpost, because if he’d returned he’d have sought me out. It’s three days’ journey at most out to the human border, and three days’ back, but you said he’s been gone for nine days. So, he’s not come back. And I also deduce,” he added, as Jonah glared and took a breath to speak, “that you want Lana and I to go and look for him?”
“Why us?” Lana asked.
Jonah glared at them both, then his face cleared a little and he laughed. “I’m not used to Rangers being able to anticipate what I’m about to say like that,” he said. “But I can’t deny that it’s true. You’re tasked with going after Lufaren and finding out what’s happened with him. And why you? Well, because you’re not only Rangers, but you’re mages as well. Akhen will go with you—or at least the commander will ask him to go with you when the old fellow finally wakes up.”
“You think there’s danger out there that will require mages to tackle it?”
“Who can tell?” Jonah said, “but at least it’s true to say that you two and Akhen together are a formidable force. You’ll be going near the Cursed Lands, and that can be a very bad place.”
“Besides,” he added, standing up briskly and giving them both a look with a gleam in his eye, “you’ve been busy training your magic these three weeks and have not been out on a ranging once yet. It’s about time you took your turn!” His face suddenly became serious again. “Go there, find Lufaren and work out what’s happened to him. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. I’ll send Akhen to you when he’s ready. Good luck.”
With that, he turned on his heel and marched away across the courtyard.
“He’s left us the map,” Lana pointed out as Jonah stalked away.
“So he has,” Ralnor replied gloomily, sitting down heavily at the table. He pulled out one of the daggers he’d not got around to cleaning and started work on it.
“What’s bitten you?” Lana asked. “I thought you’d be pleased to get away from the outpost for a while.”
“Oh,” Ralnor said, “I was just thinking. My magic has been so unwieldy and unreliable lately that I wonder if I’ll be able to make it useful to me on a mission. Also, I’m worried about Lufaren. He’s a capable ranger, and a good friend, and I hope he’s not been harmed.”
“If he has,” Lana speculated thoughtfully, “it will not be by the humans. There have been many, many patrols back and forth in the weeks since the battle, and none of them have encountered any trouble, not even the ones who went toward the border of the Cursed Lands, where you’d most expect danger. The humans are not out there targeting our patrols, that’s for sure.”
“Hmm,” Ralnor said. “That could be encouraging or not, depending on how we view it. But come on, you said your armor needed some attention. Now’s the time to do that, I’d say, before Akhen joins us and it’s time for us to go.”
Lana did as Ralnor suggested, and in a few minutes they were both engaged in carefully cleaning her armor and repairing some damage from a stone that had worked its way into a crack in one of the plates. As they were working, Farlo came up, wiping his hands on a rag.
“I thought you would be busy in the armory by now?” Lana asked distractedly as she worked oil into a shoulder plate.
“Oh, well,” Farlo said, sounding a bit shifty, “I left Burla in charge down there for a bit. You remember Burla, who came with us when we went to find Akhen that first time? He took a cut to the tendon of his left leg in the battle. It’s healed well enough, but he’s got a bad limp now and he can’t fight properly anymore. They offered him a pension and accommodation in Suntower City’s mid-level, but he didn’t want to go, so Commander Rayne put him in the armory with me. I’ve been showing him the ropes, you know. He’s good at it, though he’s not got the eye for plant enhancements that I have.”
Farlo’s stream of talk dried up and he stood looking down at them, awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot. Suddenly, he came forward and sat down. “Here, give me that,” he said, grabbing a rag and one of Lana’s gauntlets and beginning to work on it. “You two need a hand to get through all this armor. You need to get into the habit of doing this regular, a bit at a time, not saving it all up so you have to spend all morning at it.”
