Lesson of the Fire (18 page)

A voice somewhere among the invading army
cried out over the din. Others answered it. The gobbel infantry
took a few last thrusts at their enemies before falling back. The
Mar made short work of those gobbels who had been cut off in the
fray before sending bursts of fire to lick the heels of the
retreating force.

“Hold your ground,” Sven shouted, and the
officers took up the call. “They are not yet finished
fighting.”

The Mar rotated their wounded to the back to
heal themselves, while fresh troops moved forward into defensive
positions, confident and dangerous even though only one wizard in a
hundred wielded a weapon.

Across the field of burned wild rice and
corpses, the Drakes lined up again, this time in groups of tens and
twenties. The groups were mixed, with some wielding spears and
others holding a wand in each hand. With a shout from their leader,
the gobbels charged.

The Mar held steady until their enemies were
nearly in range before erecting a new wall of Power and Elements.
The gobbels raised their wands, but no flames licked the barrier
between wizards and Drakes. Their spearmen pushed to the front,
howling.

Elements wands,
Sven thought.

“Brace for melee! Attack weards, gather
fire.”

Most of the Mar obeyed the order as it went
down the line. Those who hesitated were soon skewered on gobbel
spears. The others overcame the Elements wands and cauterized the
gobbel infantry. Sven hurled flames against one clump of gobbels
after another, shouting at the lines to hold.

The Drakes succumbed to the onslaught of
fire and power. Those that survived beat a hasty retreat as the
wand-wielders gathered in a line for another assault.

Sven smiled grimly, fully aware of what
would come next. The Drakes shouted battle cries and surged
forward.

“No walls!” Sven shouted. “Counter the wands
themselves. Back ranks, ready fire.”

The gobbels drew close, jumping over the
dead and dying in their haste, sprays of water and burned wild rice
racing ahead of them.

“Counters, now!”

The wizards looked solemn but did not stir.
The wind tugged at their cloaks. The gobbels came to a halt several
yards away from the line of Mar and raised the wands. Nothing
happened. Sven thought he noticed more than a few wizards smile in
amusement a moment before he spoke.

“And burn them.”

The gobbels recognized their predicament too
late to organize an effective retreat. Their wands now no more
valuable than sticks, the wand-wielders vanished in an ocean of
fiery waves. They tried to retreat, but walls of Power enclosed
them, drowning them in flame.

When the Mar attack ended and the wind blew
away some of the smoke, no sign of the gobbel army remained. Most
were dead, and those who had held back on the far side of the field
had no doubt fled back into the trap-infested swamps between here
and the Dead Swamps. Not all would perish, but they would never
assail Marrishland again.

This phase of the campaign was over.

Sven thanked his wizards and teleported to
Domus Palus as the cheers rose across the fields. There wasn’t much
time.

The worst is yet to come.

* * *

“How did you know?” The Dux of Skrem
shivered in rage as he and Sven stood next to the Mardux’s master
reconnaissance stone, a mammoth device supported by a half-dozen
yellows that showed Marrishland almost to Flasten Palus.

Skrem Palus, in the same day as its victory
over the Drakes, had fallen to Volund’s army. Arriving half a day
late, the Dux of Flasten’s force, led by Ragnar and Vigfus,
attacked the victorious city from three sides. Sven had ordered a
full withdrawal from the city, mostly back to Domus Palus, and
Flasten found only a token force of wizards waiting.

“Volund has abandoned the laws,” Sven said,
coughing. He spat something thick and bitter to one side. “He
arranged for the wands for the Drakes. He took his time to come to
the aid of Marrishland.”

“He has been taking slaves for years.”
Borya’s voice grated in rage.

Sven nodded.
Let the dux build his own rage. From him and his
fellow duxes, I need a vote.
He turned to
one of the yellows, a priest of Marrish.

“Go to the Domus army. Tell them to attack
Flasten Palus. Any weard and any supporter of a weard is to be
arrested if possible. Volund has forfeit his duxy.”

My army should reach Flasten Palus two spans
ahead of the Flasten army reaching Domus Palus, assuming Volund
does not order Ragnar to turn the men back. Would he realize what
was happening soon enough?

Sven dismissed Borya and shuffled up to the
Chair, taking a seat heavily. His throat filled with mucus and his
nose clogged. It was a simple cold, but it could turn to Seruvus’
Breath if he wasn’t careful. So Erika had said. He didn’t have time
for that.

She had offered to shave him. The look he
had given her could have reduced a gobbel to ash.

Why should anyone else
shave me except me?
Can I get Seruvus’
Breath from shaving?
It was a mark of his
anger that he had completely forgotten to shave. As his hand
brushed his jaw, his darkened eyes widened a little in
surprise.
This is three days worth of
growth.

A tiny force of a hundred
wizards had entered the Protectorates from the Duxy of Flasten
three days ago.
To make me split my
army?
But he had known that would happen.
He could trace in his mind the path the wizards would take through
the Protectorates. Einar was there, and that gave Sven some
time.

Pushing himself to his feet, he stooped over
to cough up some mucus. As he straightened into a slouch, the door
opened, and Eda Stormgul entered.

“Mardux,” the brown-eyed woman said with a
small salute. “A man has just arrived from the Protectorates. He
seeks an audience with you.”

The Protectorates?
Sven sat back down. It was hard to sit up
straight. “Show him in.”

The man who entered was unfamiliar to Sven.
That he was a mundane was obvious by his black cloak, his unshaven
face and his smell. His hair was thick and curly and tied back with
a leather thong. His irises looked like splotches of mud against
the whites of his eyes.

“Who are you?” Sven asked.

The man bowed awkwardly and scratched his
head vigorously, a smile playing on his lips. “I’ve no doubt you’ll
remem’er me after I’ve spoken but two words to you, Weard
Takraf.”

Voices meant more to Sven than faces, and
his eyes widened. “Bui Beglin? Of Tortz?”

“I’m that, Mardux. One of the fifty mem’ers
of the ‘vacu’tion team. Twenty of us still live.”

“You stayed in the Protectorates with the
refugees?”

Bui shook his head. “We wen’ north, crossed
into the Fens of Reur an’ waited for this.”

“What have you waited for?”

“Re’emption, Mardux.” His voice grew hot.
“An’ revenge on Volun’ for what happened in Tortz.”

“Brand Halfin taught you magic. He broke
Bera’s Laws.”

“Volun’ broke the Laws, first an’ last. He
took slaves before Bran’ came, an’ killed those who stayed with
you.”

“The wizards will still kill you if they
know you use magic.”

“We don’t use magic anymore. I swear by
th’Oathbinder that’s true. The gods told us we could take revenge
just as soon as we atoned, and we’ve done that.”

“You have given up the use of magic.”

“Yes.”

“There are only twenty of you.”

“Yes.”

“What can you hope to do against the dux? He
has an army of twenty thousand wizards approaching Domus now.”

“Tactics, Mardux.”

“What kind of tactics gives mundanes any
edge over wizards?”

“Guer tactics, Mardux.”

“You mean guerilla.”

“That’s what I said, guer. We bury ourselves
i’the mud, an’ when they get close, we strangle them. We draw some
away from the rest, an’ when they get close, we kill them.”

“If even one wizard finds you first, you are
dead.”

“We know, Mardux. We just won’t be
foun’.”

“What do you want me for?”

Here Bui seemed to get a little nervous. “We
want a wizard to come with us to heal those who’ren’t careful.”

“You know we cannot bring people back from
the dead.”

He shook his head. “Fraemauna protects us
from Dinah’s Curse, but sometimes ‘saken worms get on us. An’ we’ve
heard of reco’orzance ...”

“Reconnaissance,” Sven corrected.

“... An’ a wizard can help,” he finished
with a hopeful smile.

Revenge.
The Mar had fought battles against Drakes for as
far back as history was spoken, but Mar fighting Mar was never
spoken of. A good wizard duel was remembered for years, but Sven
had read deeply into the histories in Domus Palus and only twice
had come across pitched battles between Mar. The lessons learned
from those fights had been severe as the Drakes took advantage of
those towns’ exhaustion.

Revenge was out of character for a Mar. Like
the excesses of his enemies, revenge only led to destruction. It
blinded you, turned your power with anger. It kept you from being
focused.

And Volund is seeking
revenge on me.
Bui had reminded Sven of
that. He watched the mundane from Tortz, considered the man’s
months-long trek to get here. His sacrifice, for leaving his others
in the Protectorates. His bravery, for leading them to the Fens of
Reur in the first place.

A wizard and twenty mundanes who know how to
fight wizards. Can they be worked into the plan?

He knew they couldn’t.

“Bui, I will give you your wizard,” Sven
said, turning his head and coughing.

The man beamed.

“In fact, I will send Weard Stormgul here
and a priest of Marrish to teleport your men to us.”

“Why’d we want to come here?”

“Because in payment for a wizard, I am going
to ask you to deal with a different enemy. You see, Dux Volund
Feiglin is leading an army to attack Domus Palus. I am going to ask
your men, after a few days of rest and good food,” he watched the
man’s smile, “to sneak behind their camp’s lines and practice your
tactics there.”

“Mardux, how can we thank you?”

“You just do what you want to do. I will
take care of the rest.”

As Eda led Bui out, Sven
rubbed his nose with his sleeve.
And while
you are here in Domus, you will be kept safe and out of the way.
For the duration of this war, this band will be locked up, because
I can’t afford to have anything happening outside of the
plan.

He tried to stand up and fell back heavily
into the chair. Confused, he tried to stand again, and this time
made his feet. Light-headed, he took two steps and fell over. The
last thing he saw before he passed out was Erika, running out of
the shadows where she had been hiding, watching him, as she shouted
for help.

Chapter 15

“
Morutsen is the sap of the kalysut. It
is a very sweet, golden liquid slightly thicker than water. It is
moderately intoxicating — inhibiting reflexes and clouding thought
much like alcohol. Sufficient consumption of morutsen leads to
unconsciousness, but there is no known lethal dose. The tiniest sip
of morutsen instantly arrests the ability to use magic for the next
eight to twelve hours, although larger doses do not appear to
extend this effect. For this reason, it is the shackle of choice
when holding a wizard captive.”

— Nightfire Tradition,

Nightfire’s Herbology

“Give wands to the gobbels of the Dead
Swamps and provoke them into invasion? That was your plan?” Brack
ranted. He had just returned from a meeting with the Delegates that
clearly had not gone well. He was impatient, and worse, he was
powerless. The Delegates insisted he drink some morutsen before he
would meet them, in order to keep him from using his magic.

Katla said nothing. She hadn’t expected it
to work, which was the point, but she couldn’t exactly tell him
that. She wasn’t on Brack’s side. She wasn’t on the Delegates’
side. She wasn’t on Volund’s side. She had thrown her lot in with
Sven’s vision for the Mar so completely that she was risking
everything to achieve it. Hundreds of thousands might die.
Thousands already had.

Brack paced irritably, leaning heavily on
his cane. “This has complicated matters enormously. It is bad
enough that Dux Feiglin is clearly taking advantage of the
situation, but if the Mardux can prove Flasten’s involvement, he
might convince Wasfal and Pidel to side with him in the
conflict.”

It had taken her a year to figure out how to
do that. Convincing the Council to give her brother free rein to
violate Bera’s Unwritten Laws was an important part of her plan,
but it would take a unanimous vote to do that. If Wasfal and Pidel
sided with Sven, Flasten would be incredibly foolish to defy
him.

“Neither Weard Wenigar nor Weard Stoltz were
taken prisoner by the Mardux’s allies. Dux Feiglin’s son is safe in
Flasten Palus,” she said.

“And Weard Stoltz?”

“I am not certain, but she is
resourceful.”

“Resourceful enough to betray Weard Feiglin
if he appears to be losing?”

Katla certainly hoped so, but she let Brack
rant.

“She already switched sides once,” he said.
“She owed allegiance to Mardux Beurtlin and the Duxy of Domus
before Weard Takraf took the Chair.”

“Arnora knows what will
happen if the Duxy of Flasten does not topple the Mardux. She knows
the Mass will invade.”
She probably
doesn’t think it’s real any more than Brand did.
“Besides, implication in this invasion works both
ways. The Blosin wand is the Mardux’s invention, the application of
an auburn magocrat trying to defend too much territory. He
committed it to paper while he was at Nightfire’s
Academy.”