War mage crystals of mem.., p.17
War Mage (Crystals of Memory Book 4), page 17
“We have enough space here. Jeld, Daren, can you stand on the flanks? Ready to fight, but also to prevent anyone from going around the edges. Prince Erold, Princess Salina, if you’d stand with the forces halfway through the middle, on each side? Stay out of the front rows and keep a shield prepared.” He turned then, still in the saddle, as they rode into the battlefield. “Hoatha, if you and Depak would stand in the back? Ready what spells you think we need. I don’t want either of you in the battle, if at all possible.”
He grinned then, not feeling his face move, being too deep for that kind of thing, still reading what the enemy was doing.
“Unless we start to lose. Then, of course, save us!”
Depak was grim, but managed a dry sounding cough.
“We’ll do that, I’m certain. Use caution. We’ll be back by the General.”
Everyone moved to their assigned locations. Anders readied communications spells for each of them, reviewing the special names he had for them. It would be hard to do, in the heat of battle, but was worth trying to have ready.
Anders placed himself in the middle of the massed soldiers, just behind the lines of regular soldiers, all holding pikes. He walked up on foot, but stopped to string his bow, right next to the man with a red patch on his shoulder, marking him as a sergeant. The man blinked at him, then nodded.
“You’re in the wrong place, aren’t you? The bow line is to the right.” He pointed, but wasn’t smirking or even being mean about it. Just letting Anders know where he figured he needed to be.
So, he smiled.
“I’m on magic for this. I’m in the right place.”
The man made a considering face and called out, softly.
“Hey, we have a wizard here. That’s new, isn’t it?”
The men around him laughed, at his expense, but Anders was so deep into a trance state that he didn’t bother to feel the derision. It was clear that, for some insane reason, they thought he was playing. It was a poor place to do that, but he looked youthful. He was young, honestly. Part of him, anyway.
He just stood there, waiting, the men not bothering him in particular. They chattered a bit, but were professional soldiers, so mainly kept it to what they thought the enemy was going to do. Anders simply started to call things off, before the other side moved their troops around. By the third time people were listening to him.
On the eighth accurately called troop movement of the other side, the man with the red patch next to him started to ask questions.
“When are they going to press the attack?”
“They... don’t know yet. Their General is currently scrambling. They’re planning to use illusion against us, in a few moments. That will... Look like a five headed beast? It isn’t real, but will be followed by the first horn. I don’t know what that means.” He hadn’t gotten that information, for some reason.
The other fellow patted him on the shoulder, his heavy glove studs clanking against his shining mail shirt.
“Prepare for battle. There’s magic about to be used on us? How certain are you of that?”
“Very. It’s harmless illusion... Honestly, I have something for that, in answer. At least I can, since I picked up that it’s coming like this. Can you let people know it’s about to happen? A bit of a show?”
Illian Darca was much better at illusion than he was, but Anders knew what he had planned, in the moment. That meant, by rushing a bit, he came up with a monster of their own.
The man next to him bellowed, nearly in his ear.
“Stand ready for illusion! Stand ready for harmless illusion!”
In the space between the forces, the five headed serpent came from the ground, growling and hissing, seeming as if it were truly alive. It even breathed and huffed steam from its mouth, as if fire were coming next.
Instead of a chant, Anders brought up his own illusion, then. A giant wolf, with white and gray wings, covered with detailed feathers, wearing a tabard over his back which showed him to be working directly for King Mathias. The great beast pelted in from the side, standing just as large as the other creature there. The men on both sides stilled, to look at what was being presented to them, in some awe. Then the wolf, slowing to a walk, started to speak. In Yansian, looking directly at their lines. As if hungry.
“Good soldiers of Yanse. This is the only warning we can give you this day. Run. It is your only hope. Flee! Death is about to rain down upon you. You cannot win this battle!” The wolf moved toward their lines, his voice growling and deep. Like thunder that spoke.
“Run now, and live!”
Then, it vanished. Slowly, Anders got a single arrow out, counted out a full minute and sighed.
“They had a chance.”
He was a bit shocked when the arrow, a normal one simply taken from the stores of such things, before magic had been placed on it, flew over the heads of the front line, hitting four full sections back. Then he felt a cold thrill when the explosion he had planned made a strange whistling noise. A high-pitched thing that didn’t seem to do much at all. Until the front line on the other side simply fell down. There was a circle of bodies going down, leaving a hole in the battle line of the enemy which was impressive to behold. He couldn’t tell why, at all, but when he loaded the next arrow, and aimed to the side, it happened again.
The center of their line was laying on the ground, not moving, in no more than a half minute. The entire Yansian army reeled then. A single blast came from their side, on a horn. Readying them for battle.
When two sounds of the horn came, telling them to fire arrows, each side of the other army was hit with decently loud explosions. Jeld and Daren made very real dents in the other line, on both sides, if not perfectly at the same time. In the middle a group of knights, no doubt brave men, tried to fill the gap that Anders had made. It meant riding over the bodies of the dead, to struggle into place, in a single thin expanse, which stretched for a good way. It was at least a hundred horses wide.
Anders tried another arrow. Again, it made a whistling sound. This time it was more dramatic, since the horses screamed and fell, dropping armored men to the ground. The circle of death was vast, but he wasn’t even breathing hard yet. Still, he paced himself, waiting for the knights who could, to stand up and try to run at them on foot.
Most of them didn’t make it to the pike line, since Prince Erold cast a line of energy, like lightning, from the side. It ran through the metal clad men and women, in lines of pure light. From his right, there was a sudden line of black that flew outward, toward the enemy line there. Where it touched, armored men went down. Screaming. Why that was, Anders didn’t understand. Only that the powerful move had been Princess Salina’s work.
To their credit, the Yansians didn’t just give up and flee. They fought, or at least moved forward, with only one in ten men making it to the lines, in places. There was a real battle going on, but at the same time, the other side simply kept dying. Then, rather cleverly, a group of fallen men rose from the ground, after a young fellow ran out onto the field and touched each of them. They didn’t go down to his next arrow at all.
“The returned dead. Let me...”
He thought for a moment, then cast his mind out, and instead of killing the necromancer, he attempted to work out how to stop the man’s spell. This wasn’t blood magic, and didn’t have a charm. Instead, the boy was willing them to live, using his own personal energy, chanting constantly.
Anders, gasping this time, started a spell of his own.
“Hom fla ere ot ere, fen ot...” He pointed using his mind, to lift the man into the air, floating him over the heads of the Istlan forces, setting him down next to himself, breathing hard.
“Sergeant, can you render him insensible?”
That was done, suddenly, with a heavy leather gloved hand. The man, who had golden hair and a short, well-trimmed beard, fell to the Earth with a thud. When that took place, the shambling dead fell as well.
“Can he be taken to... the General? Without touching the dead, he can’t raise them.” Anders was gasping, since causing a man to fly at that distance was incredibly hard work.
There was a bellow from the man next to him.
“Two to take the necromancer to the General! Don’t let him touch the dead!”
They had real fighting going on, so, barely catching his breath, Anders started to cause people to explode. Just for entertainment, he killed in other ways, using actual spells. Then, since the line to the right was being pressed harder than his position, which had gone nearly silent, he started to take the enemy from that side.
After four hours of battle, as dark fell, the sun came out. For their side. The enemy, even those standing directly next to them, fumbled and seemed to be almost blind. They tried to run, half their force heading up the hill, lacking discipline. Feeling horrible, Anders started to send arrows out again, killing and then, giving chase, to take even more lives. So many he didn’t even want to count them.
He had to scramble over bodies to do that. He wasn’t alone, since the entire battle line moved with him, nearly enough that they were giving chase.
“No quarter! No prisoners! Let none escape!”
That came from the back of the line, but was repeated, many times.
Anders simply moved ahead, and kept killing, until he was out of arrows. He didn’t feel good about himself, but he understood the idea. They were in a war, and they’d just taken out most of the opposing army. They might field another of the same size, in the summer, but each one who couldn’t regroup later, made their odds of winning quickly go up fantastically.
So, he kept going. Wishing he could stop to be sick. Not because he felt that way. He didn’t. No, because he should feel that way, and couldn’t. No one else did that sort of thing, and the men in yellow were cut down, unable to hide, because even off the field of battle, he saw everything as if the sun were up and it was noon.
While the desperate enemy couldn’t even see the Istlan forces coming for them, as they tried to hide.
Chapter twelve
Anders had to push himself to get back to the main body of the army. He’d fallen in with a group of foot soldiers who had kept hunting the enemy, well into the night. Even miles away from the battlefield the world stayed bright, looking as if there was a sun in the sky, even if it didn’t move at all. When they found the enemy, they killed them. Anders did a lot of that himself. Ending the matter quickly, as Farad Ibn Istel shook and moaned inside at the inhumanity of the actions.
They were the work of a true monster. Or could be, if Anders had felt hungry at all.
A few of the others tried to loot the dead, but they held to taking only coin and jewelry. They had to carry it all back, after all, and walking with six sets of full armor wasn’t going to work. For his part, Anders didn’t take anything from the dead, even if it was offered to him, many times.
They weren’t making camp at the battlefield, but rather in the clearing they’d been expected to stay over in. It had a small river near it, and was far enough from the enemy that none of them were going to double around and kill him in his sleep.
His whole body ached, after hours of fighting and running, chasing desperate soldiers, who only wanted to go home to their families. To the girl they’d married and what little ones they had on the way. Maybe to their parents, if they were young enough.
Instead, they were food for crows. Nothing came out to eat the dead yet, but he didn’t doubt that it would, as soon as daylight honestly fell.
When true dawn broke, Ganges’ spell faded. It was such a miraculous thing that his mind almost couldn’t make sense of it. The man had, apparently, given a specific source of light, that worked properly, to over twenty thousand people.
Anders knew he would have failed to do that with even a single person. Not that he didn’t get the idea. Ganges was so practiced at magic that things such as that, a complex spell that would be nearly impossible, was the kind of thing that he did standing at the back of an army.
Apparently without even breathing hard. At least that was the feeling, when he saw the man, after everything was suddenly dropped, the sun blinking once, and then showing again on the horizon. His old friend, looking as Farad recalled him as a young man, when he’d first left the hermitage, seemed to not even be tired. Even after a full night awake, doing incredible magics.
For his part, Anders could barely walk, by the time he was back at the temporary base. What he found there was, of course, very different than he’d bothered to think about.
Daren and Salina had set to healing people, along with Depak Sona. There were signs of hundreds having been aided, with remains of drying blood and people limping around still, milling in circles in some places. The number of dead on their side was small, however. He counted, going over it twice. Thirty-seven lie on the ground, unmoving.
Ten more were being aided still. The rest of their people were, for the most portion, simply tired from the battle. Not having anything else to do, he went to find General Coelder, being joined by Hoatha, who put a gentle hand on his shoulder, as if to sooth his soul.
A thing that wasn’t needed at all.
Much to Farad’s shame. To Anders’ as well. It was over the wrong thing, of course, as it always was, with the boy. He was upset, but not over the incredible numbers he’d slaughtered. No, he was ashamed that he didn’t feel like everyone else there did. Many of them, at least. It showed on his face as weariness, instead of tears of grief or rage. He was fine, more or less, with the fact that they’d won. Not elated by it, either. It was just another event to him.
The old man, his short hair white in the morning light, stood at a large rock, which was being used for the moment as a table. His gaze stretched out, over the men in the field, a soft smile on his lips as he looked into and then past, the tree line. Seeming shaken from thought, he focused on Anders, suddenly.
“Ah, Master Brolly. That went... Rather differently than I’d expected. Do you need anything?”
He nodded, even if he truly didn’t have anything he desired, except to drink some water and sit for a while. Possibly sleep.
“I can send a message to the King?”
The man lit up then, as if having been given a prize for all his hard work.
“Right! I’d forgotten you could do that. I’ll have something ready to go, in a few moments. Let me... I need to pen the message, so there’s no confusion.”
The man’s aide de camp arranged for pens and paper, as Anders simply settled by the large stone, his back to it, dozing for a moment, until a voice called to him. It was Ganges, which confused him, on waking. For a moment he was back in his cave, a place where he’d lived for over eighty years. What informed him of that not being true was that there was far too much light, meaning he was outdoors.
“Anders? It’s time for you to send a message?” The man had, wisely, not shaken him by the shoulder. Doing that would have had him fighting on waking, he didn’t doubt. A thing that, he realized, might well not have any effect on the ancient mage at all.
So he grinned, instead of acting too tired to move, even if he still felt that way.
“Very well. Let me...” Standing, attempting to, left him feeling ancient, but his young body did it, with an act of will. There was no pain, only a great weight. A thing slowing him more than he would have thought possible.
The message to the King was, of course, to go through Master Tolan, who wasn’t awake for the day, yet. Instead of waiting, Anders sent an annoying message first.
“Awaken, Master Tolan. Incoming report.” He spoke the words out loud, so that the General would understand why his spell had seemed so short. “It will repeat ten times. Then we need to wait a few moments, so that he can get to some paper and produce a light.” A thing the older man had learned to provide for himself, with no more than a short bit of muttering.
That portion of things had been interesting, since the man had thrown himself into learning the new skills being practiced with a will, once they were made available to him. It took him twice the effort that it did some, yet the man never complained and had kept up and even surpassed all but the best students, doing much of it on his own, from books and scraps of paper.
The need for extra effort was already fading, since that had mainly been about being set in his ways. As he released that, his ability to memorize new things sped back up again. As if he were much younger than his years.
Then, Anders was fairly certain that Old Tolan had already worked out how to reverse the flow of time for himself, and was, if at a measured pace, growing more youthful.
There was no definitive return message, the man understanding that Anders was waiting for him. He needed to use the chamber pot, but as soon as that was finished, Anders had the prepared message set into action.
“Fen.”
After a moment, the General spoke, sharing what was going out with his men.
“We’ve reported our victory to the King and await orders. For now, rest the men. We have extra food rations to spare?”
One of the men, a Major, nodded. He seemed tired as well, but his job had been leading, not directly fighting, through the night. It showed in how he was able to carry himself. He was upright, and not sitting, for instance.
“We have some treats even, sent by Count Verit. Wagons full of things, as a gift to the men. We could pass those out, and then use the wagons to share out the spoils? How are we splitting that?”
The older man shrugged.
“Any man with a confirmed kill gets the armor and weapons, any coins or other riches on the body. Any unknown or uncertain kill gets split, with the command section getting fifty percent, and the regulars a share of the remainder. Any idea how that’s going to fall out?”
A bloodshot eyed Captain, the hotheaded one, grunted.
“Ninety percent of that is going to the war mages, then. That wasn’t half as cowardly as I’d figured. Sorry there, Brolly.” He was a bit begrudging, but didn’t seem afraid or anything. Just as if he realized he’d been in the wrong, the day before.
