Into The Ruins (2 page)

Fen was more than a little tired when he finally arrived back at his family’s home, a modest dwelling constructed from sawn timber, something that everyone could afford now that the sawmill at the south end of the village was in full production.  The addition of the crystal still partially embedded in the dense black rock had added significantly to the weight of his pack, and it had been a long walk from the hills where he had conducted his experiment.  The family only owned a pair of horses, one his father’s war horse, and the other that his mother usually rode to her place of business.  That meant the rest of them had to walk.

He checked the clock hanging on the far wall of the main room as he stepped into the coolness of the front hallway.  He was a little later getting back than he hoped, but still early enough to be able to clean up and finish his assigned chores before his parents returned.  Almost two glass remained before dinner would be served.  That was assuming it was prepared on time.  His brother Ginold had the cooking chores for the day.  It would be Fen’s turn tomorrow.  The two brothers alternated preparing the family meals, his father far too busy these days to handle the additional task.  Besides, he’d told them they needed to learn the skill for the time when they were married and had their own families to think of.  Fen’s sister Nora was lucky to never need to worry about the time consuming chore.  Women were lucky that way.  As the hunters and gatherers in the past, men had always been the ones to bring food to the table, which included both the stalking as well as the preparation of game and grain.

As he walked deeper into the room he looked for the perfect place to display his treasure.  He wanted a spot where his mother would be certain to see the valuable find as soon as she walked into the room.  Finally he decided on the stone step in front of the hearth.  It was too warm for a fire this time of year, but the spot was central to the room, and even better a shaft of sunlight shone through the side window onto the step.  The light would be picked up by the crystal and cause the crystal to glow with multicolored light.

“Gin, I’m back,” he shouted toward the kitchen where he expected to find his brother after carefully placing the stone with the valuable piece of crystal.

“Stanner was looking for you,” Ginold hollered back.  “You will need to go see him in the morning.”

Stanner?
  “Did he say what he wanted?” Fen asked as he headed toward the kitchen.  Stanner was the village Mayor and it was unusual for him to personally come calling.  Usually he sent one of his staff and requested whomever he wished to see to come to him.

As Fen stepped into the kitchen, Ginold was covering a large metal pot with a lid. 

Stew again
, Fen noted.  His brother favored the dish because it was easy, and he, unlike the rest of the family, genuinely liked it.  As Fen watched, Ginold set the pot on a stone counter in the corner, and laid his hand on the glyph that was crudely cast into the side of the large pot.  Awkwardly, he invoked the triggering spell that would cause the pot to heat and cook the contents.  Ginold was only ten, and considerably shorter than Fen had been at the same age.  His hair was a light brown and worn much shorter than Fen’s.  He also had shown none of the ability that Fen demonstrated at an early age, and would not be following in his older brother’s footsteps as far as career choice.

Fen had tried to explain to his brother that it wasn’t necessary to actually be in contact with the glyph to trigger it, but like most who were inept with magic they followed a routine they had learned by watching others all their life and couldn’t be broken of the habit.  One needed only to focus on the symbols to be activated.  The heating glyph was one of hundreds of single symbol spells that could be triggered by the same forgiving spoken word, which was fortunate or the common magic everyone used for daily chores would have been denied to most of the villagers.  Fen was always amazed that the simple words could be mangled so much and still cause the spell to function essentially as designed.   His brother was one of those who would never be able to activate any but single symbol spells, and should consider himself lucky he could do that much.

“I think they are moving up the date that you will be expected to depart for the capital and the Caster’s Guild,” Ginold said with a barely concealed touch of envy.  Neither of the brothers had ever been anywhere near the capital.  Even their father Olar had never been there.  Their mother, Mara, had made the journey once with her family as a youth, but not in recent years.  Fen was the envy of both his siblings, not to mention a number of their friends in the village.

As he pulled down the pot for tea, Fen sorted through his emotions about a possible change in schedule.  He was anxious to get to the famed university that the Guild had created for the study of magic, but while he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he was uneasy about leaving his family.  The capital was more than a month’s ride away. That was a long way from everyone he knew.  The trip could be reduced to nothing by the use of one of the special
Doorways
, but those required complex magic and could only be initiated by Casters of the highest level.  He doubted anyone that important would be tasked with seeing novice magicians arrived in an expeditious manner.

Fen filled the pot with water from the pump, then set it on another of the stones and initiated the boiling of the contents by properly speaking the initiator his brother had mangled a few moments before.  The Glyph on the teapot was minutely different than that on the stew pot, and the amount of heat generated appropriately greater.  Within moments, the contents were bubbling nicely, and Fen released the spell without conscious thought as he added the tea leaves to the water.

“Did he say what time I should appear?” Fen asked as he poured the cup of tea.

“First thing in the morning was my impression,” Ginold replied.  “It is best not to make the Mayor wait for you.  If he is busy, you can wait until he can see you.”

Fen sighed.  There was little he could do about it.  He fully expected to waste most of the morning waiting until the Mayor could see him, but if he arrived late he knew that Mayor Stanner would have set aside a time the first thing to speak with him and would note his tardiness.  Were that to happen, word would reach his mother’s ears.

Fen finished the tea, finding the bitter taste satisfying in addition to renewing his energy.  He headed for the back of the house to change out of the soiled garments he was wearing, knowing if he didn’t he would hear about his appearance from his mother at dinner.  He was just entering the room in back he shared with Ginold when the village alert horn sounded. 
Chulls!  Or perhaps a Durvin!
  The horn could be used for other forms of danger, but that’s what it always was.  Someone had spotted a number of the dangerous creatures coming in off the Wastelands.  Fen listened for the follow-up blasts that would indicate how large a group.  The follow-up blasts told him that it was a small group, on the order of a couple of dozen or so.  The village guard would already be deploying whoever was on watch to deal with them.  Today, that meant his father among others.  Despite the many years his father had fought the creatures successfully, Fen momentarily linked his little fingers for luck.  Something could always go wrong.  He’d feel better when his father returned for dinner and Fen could see him safe.

The Chulls had been spotted well south of the village, requiring a hurried ride by the members of the Imperial Army if they were to intercept them before the creatures crossed the transition region and made it onto the untainted soil of Sedfair.  It didn’t matter really so long as they were stopped and dispatched, but it was a matter of pride to Olar Kalner and his men that none of the beasts from the Wastelands had ever successfully breached the transition lands before being stopped.  It would be a sad matter if they were to do so today.

The transition region was a strip of unoccupied land roughly a glass’s casual ride wide that bordered the western edge of the country from the most northern mountains to the jungles to the south.  The narrow strip of land was exactly what its name implied, a region where normal, healthy land transitioned into the harsh, infertile and dangerous desert-like sands of the Wastelands.  Slipi was one of hundreds of villages that had been deliberately located just inside this region along the full extent of the border to provide manpower to patrol the country against these creatures.  In Slipi’s case, they were fortunate that the land where the village had been located was lush, and the foothills to the east were rich in metal ores and coal. The mines provided the village with a standard of living well above that of many of the defensive colonies, some of which relied on the stipends from the Queen as their sole means of support.

Immediately to the west of the village and midway between the occupied land and the Wastelands a tall tower had been erected many years before.  The tower afforded a view well into the Wastelands as well as to the north and south.  Similar towers were erected near the limit of a man’s eyesight along a north-south line, the three structures providing a watch that ensured any creatures headed toward the village were spotted in a timely manner.  Communication between the towers was maintained by a series of colored flags and telescopes for monitoring.  Adjacent to the middle tower was the powerful air powered signaling horn used to alert the troops in the village.  It was activated by magic runes carved into the side, with signals that could be controlled by the mechanical lever that allowed the compressed air to be vented to the horn itself.  

It was beyond the limits of visibility provided by these towers that the patrolling became more difficult.  Patrols of men on horseback were sent twice daily to ride down the center of the transition region from the most southern landmark that defined Slipi’s region of responsibility, to the most northern boundary.  Adjacent villages accepted accountability for the regions beyond those landmarks.  The patrols watched for any sign of advancing herds, or footprints to indicate the creatures had already passed.  In the latter case, scouts were dispatched inland to locate the invaders while others were sent back to the barracks to alert the commander of the problem and assemble a sufficiently large force to deal with the breach.

The duty was boring, frightening, and dangerous all at the same time.  It was also non-ending and a terrible draw of man-power.  The sightings these days were frequent, and over the years had grown increasingly more common.  Olar had not grown up here along the border, and his father had told him that he could recall a time when no one had seen a Chull, and most hadn’t even heard the name.  His grandfather, also a military man, had spent his entire career without having to battle the fearsome beasts.  In fact, at one time not so long ago, there were legends that nearly everyone believed to be simply fables about creatures that had once threatened the land. 

There had been those who suspected otherwise, however.  In the libraries of the Imperial Army were documented accounts and drawings of the creatures.  There were also detailed accounts of how they could be fought, with armor covered with special runes and weapons unlike those normally deployed to the fighting men.  For centuries these items had collected dust and the interest of only a few military scholars, until the fateful day nearly seventy seasons ago when the first of the creatures had unexpectedly wandered out of the Wastelands and destroyed a small village to the north.  That had been the awakening.  It had taken many seasons and a significant loss of life before the network of villages were put into place and a sufficient force of men trained and armed with appropriate weapons before the threat had been contained.

Olar had been born and raised along the coast of the Eastern Sea more than a month’s ride from here.  He had never seen a Chull or its more fearsome companion, the Durvin, at the time he enlisted in the Army.  He’d had visions of becoming a
Master of Blades
, the highest and most respected level a fighter could attain as he defended Sedfair from southern raiders or sought out the ever present bandits who plagued the provincial regions of the country.  Instead, he had found his abilities were less skilled than he’d believed, and like many others had been sent where the need was greatest, here along the border.  Even so, he had risen to the rank of Major, and was in charge of the garrison here at Slipi.  The rank didn’t excuse him from the dangerous task of fighting the Chulls, and on days like this when the patrol was well to the north when the beasts were spotted to the south, he rode with the rest of the garrison’s reserves to deal with the encroachment.

“There,” shouted Ket, Olar’s second in command who rode just off to his left.

Olar looked where he was pointing.  Ahead, slightly to the left he spotted the plume of dust that marked the location of the creatures as they moved across the dry and cracked ground.  Olar reached down and loosened his sword in its scabbard.  The blade was unlike anything he’d encountered before coming here.  Not made of metal as one would expect, the shimmering blue-white material was sharp as the finest metal blade, but more durable than anything else he’d encountered.  More importantly, it passed through the hide of the Chulls easily reaching into the creatures to do mortal damage, whereas no metal blade seemed able to penetrate the hide at all. 
White Blades
they were commonly called by the soldiers.  Over his back he carried a bow and a quiver filled with arrows tipped with the same material.  In scabbards under his legs he carried a pair of spears with long wicked blades of the same lustrous material.

The spears were their primary weapon.  The arrows were too small and many would be required to bring down one of the creatures unless the perfect shot could be made striking the tiny killing spot alongside the ear where they were particularly vulnerable.  Trying to hit that spot while the creatures were angry while sitting upon a moving horse was beyond the skill of anyone he knew.  Still, the bow and its deadly arrows had saved his hide once before so he continued to carry it.

As the herd of Chulls resolved itself into distinct creatures, Olar made a count.  Someone had underestimated once again.  He counted more than forty of the creatures, not a major group which had been known to number in the hundreds sometimes, but the poor intelligence could have been important if Olar hadn’t brought more men than he’d expected to need.

“Circle left,” Olar commanded Ket, who would take half of the men and come at the creatures from the far side.  Olar would take his half of the force and come at them from the right.  Charging head on at the beasts exposed one to the blasts of magic from the pair of horns on their heads, as well as the multiple rows of sharp teeth the creatures carried.

Olar pulled one of the spears from under his left leg, feeling the pulse of power as his hand gripped the shaft with its row upon row of runes.  Much like his armor, also heavily festooned with runes and glyphs designed to deflect and absorb the energies the beast might release at him, the weapon was tuned specifically to him.  To anyone else the blade would still be a weapon, and the armor would provide some protection, but once he made physical contact it became enhanced and far more dangerous.  The magical runes had been activated long before by the garrison’s military sorcerer, a mid-level Caster named Ferkle who was permanently assigned to the force.  Once activated, the full force of the spells only became apparent when the designated person used the associated gear.  His mount was similarly protected, the harness and saddle decorated with symbols to provide a more modest level of protection against the Chull’s magical energies.

Ferkle, their Caster, rode with them.  Despite the functions he performed that might make him invaluable behind the lines, his unique abilities made him important at the scene of a battle.  The village had a total of only three Casters.  That was all the Queen could spare.  There were many villages and not nearly enough adequately trained Casters to go around.  Fully half of the Casters in the kingdom were employed in one way or another in the villages along the border as it was.

The Chulls were close now, and seemingly oblivious to their approach.  That was often the case as the creatures single-mindedly headed out of the Wastelands.  Once they became aware of Olar and his men, the situation would change.  His horse was steady.  It had encountered the beasts before and knew what to expect.  It was the same with most of the rest of the mounts. 

Olar heard a defiant yell on the far side of the herd and knew that Ket was commencing the attack.  He leveled his own spear, slipping the base into the special socket built into his saddle, and charged at the herd, burying the blade into the side of the closest Chull, letting the power of his horse drag the special tip deep.  As he directed the horse to move toward the back of the herd, the blade traveled the length of the creature, ripping through the internal organs, causing it to stumble and scream in anger and protest.  This time the blade did its work without being damaged, something that happened far too frequently.

The scream of the creature as he killed it was mirrored by others as two of his men performed similar attacks.  Almost instantly the rest of the herd became aware of the threat, and many turned to deal with the human attackers.  Purplish magic blasted from the creatures, mostly ineffective, but Olar noted as blasts struck two of his men, the energies forming a ball around the men targeted, then fading away as the magical protection provided by their armor dissipated the energies and absorbed them into the pair of crystals sewn into the straps of the armor along their backs.

Quickly it became every man fighting independently.  It was all but impossible to organize a careful front against the creatures that lasted beyond the first strike.  The creatures acted independently and forced the men attacking them to do likewise.  Olar watched as one of his men rode past in front of him, his spear slicing into the flank of another of the beasts causing it to drop to its knees.  Dust was being churned up in vast quantities as the riders and beasts turned and circled trying to gain advantage.  The yells of the men as they attacked merged with the snorts and screams of the angered animals.  He heard the scream of a mortally wounded horse and wondered if the rider had been spared.  Olar dispatched another of the creatures, and then rode to aide of one of his men who was trying to deal with three of the beasts at once.  Two managed to unload bursts of energy at him almost simultaneously and for a moment Olar thought the man would fall, but then he happily recovered as the magic and the storage crystal performed as promised.

Coming from behind, Olar buried his spear deep into one of the creatures harassing the man and felt it tugged from his hand as the creature fell.  The blade would almost certainly be damaged and have to be replaced.  Olar turned away, reaching for the second spear in its holder.  As he did so, he felt the burning pain as one of the creatures came at him from his blind spot, the incredibly sharp and durable teeth raking his thigh as the bite that could have severed his leg missed only because his horse had shied away. 

Olar switched to his sword, pulling the long-bladed weapon from his scabbard, raising the shimmering white blade aloft and then quickly striking downward, slicing deep into the shoulder of the Chull.  It screamed and turned its snout towards him as it prepared for another attack, only to charge into the blade.  Olar’s second swing neatly severed the head from the beast.

The confusion lasted another quarter glass, but soon the number of beasts was reduced to the point they were so badly outnumbered the men could quickly finish them off.  As the dust settled and the noise abated, Olar circled the battleground to complete his count.  Forty-seven of the nasty things!  As he finished his count he saw Ket riding over.

“Status?” Olar asked.

“Two wounded,” Ket replied.  “One lost part of a hand.  I suspect he will need to be mustered out or given non-combat duties from now on.  Another hit with too many magical discharges.  His protection was overburdened.  He is badly burned.  Ferkle is seeing to him now.”

Ket looked appraisingly at Olar’s bloody leg.  “Perhaps Ferkle should look at that?” he asked.

“Not much he can do,” Olar replied.  “It hasn’t had time to get infected, and even Ferkle can’t heal a wound.  He could stop the bleeding, but I can burn it myself with my knife.  That’ll seal it.  The rest will be a matter of time.  Put the men to work on the Chulls.  I’ll take care of the bleeding,” Olar insisted.

As Ket rode off to direct the men, Olar slid painfully off his horse.  He walked over to one of the dry bushes that were common in the transition region, and used the sword to chop up the wood.  He did the same with several more to ensure a sufficiently large fire to heat his blade.  The knurly wood of the brush burned with more energy than one would expect.  Then he knelt with his water skin and wetting his finger quickly drew the simple glyph that would create fire on one of the larger branches, voicing the activation phrase before the water writing could evaporate.  The wood burst immediately into flame, and he took his small belt knife, this one of metal, and placed it in the flame to heat.  While he waited, he slipped out of his pants to expose the nasty gash.  With the knife heated to a dull red, he steeled himself and pressed the blade along the wound where the blood was flowing.  A curse escaped his lips as his flesh burned, but he managed not to embarrass himself, and once his pants were back in place he slowly climbed aboard his mount and rode over to see how the men were doing.