Steel And Flame (Book 1) (68 page)

Trask’s men had cut off the Nolier escape routes.  The
fighting swelled thicker when Noliers were pushed back toward the center of
their camp.  With twice the number of men as their enemy, Trask would claim the
victory.

As long as Marik prevented the magician from turning
the tables.

The magician reached into one pouch.  He withdrew a
small handful of its contents.  It slipped through his fingers, probably dust
or sand.  With a portion in each fist, the magician clapped his hands together
and shouted.

A stream of white and blue fire shot forth, no doubt
intended to splash across Trask’s western detachment.  Instead, the intense
flames struck the underside of Marik’s shields and spread across the interior
like liquid.  In less than a heartbeat a swirling fire sphere surrounded the
magician.

To outside eyes, the magician became engulfed in his
own flames.  Marik hoped the man had killed himself…but the spell ended and the
flames dispersed.  The magician had fallen into a crouch on the ground.  His
arms were across his face to shield his eyes.  He parted his arms enough to
peer through at the world.  His clothes smoked, yet he had survived unharmed.

That’s the same spell.  Edwin described it to a tee
and I’ll remember those flames for the rest of my life.  All right then!  Come
on, bastard!

Marik spun shields to replace those that had
collapsed.  The magician rose shakily to his feet and reached out a hand.  He
swept it back and forth through the insubstantial shields, feeling nothing. 
Rage quickly replaced the astonishment on his face.

He tugged open a different pouch to withdraw a new
component.  Marik strained to see what, bracing himself for the next
onslaught.  The magician held it between his thumb and forefinger.  It crumbled
while he spoke his words.  Nothing happened.  Did the spell misfire?

Instead, the man stood still, searching the region
before abruptly turning his head to stare straight at Marik despite the
distance.  The last spell must not have been offensive.  Now the magician knew
the game.  He also looked to be in a towering fury.

From a different pouch, the man selected a handful of
feathers, their dark shape clear in the localized light from his aura. 
Wielding one in his right hand, the magician smiled wickedly.  He swept the
feather violently downward, as though he executed an overhead strike with a
blade to crush an opponent’s skull.  With a shout while he did so, the feather
blew apart into fragments.  A hurricane torrent erupted from nowhere within the
shielding sphere.  Wind whipped the man’s hair and clothing inside the tornado
created through his magician’s power.

Marik could not see the exact form this spell had
taken.  He only witnessed the effects when it sheered away the layered shields
with awesome speed.  The spell endured only eye blinks yet half the shields
were either gone or in tatters.  Quickly drawing fresh energy from the
diffusion, Marik restored them as fast as he could weave replacements.

The magician plucked a larger feather from the bunch
in his left hand.  He repeated the motions, recalling the spell for a second
round as the new feather blew itself apart to join the first.

Trask’s company forced back the Noliers further
still.  Harried as the defenders were, they avoided stepping too close to the
magician.  They knew nothing of what he did except one glance kept them all at
their distance.  Faced with swords or magic, the soldiers chose Trask’s swords.

Tents fell when lines entangled around retreating
men.  Wagons burned from torches lit against the coming darkness, knocked over
in the frantic chaos.  Shouts and screams rent the evening.  Marik heard none
of it while he sweated under an effort he had never hence known.

In his most strenuous practices with Caresse, he had
never worked like this!  His shields were being destroyed in rapid succession. 
Marik strained to recreate them while drawing additional energy into himself. 
He felt like a taut bowstring where any further pull would snap the length.

The feathers were mostly gone, and the magician smiled
no longer.  Instead, he snarled inaudible curses.  If the shields could survive
the last three feathers, Marik might come out on top.  He guessed that the
spell the magician had cast before the feathers had enhanced his vision
somehow, allowing him to see the shields surrounding him and the one who put
them there.  Once he ascertained his dilemma, he had chosen the feathers as
being the best spell to break the shields while not killing himself in the
process.

Down to the last feather.  Marik was desperate.  The
man lifted the last one, and Marik could draw too little energy to create the
needed shields.  Frantically, he molded the energies, drawing on his own life
force, feeling his heart skip a beat when he urgently delved deep into his
reserves.

The spell ended.  Two shields remained intact with a
third torn, yet still there.

Marik relaxed for a moment while the magician took
stock.  He allowed his body to adjust to the sudden energy depletion, energy
his body used to maintain its vital functions.  After a moment he reached
further with his mental hands.  Large portions in the nearby mass diffusion had
been consumed by him to create so many shields.  The camp looked unnaturally
dark to his magesight, the glowing illumination from the etheric mists
vanished.  Men’s auras floated through a void blacker than pitch with green
from the Reaches framing the edges.

He gathered in the mass diffusion, feeling his
strength return.  Below, men fought around the magician, running past as they
retreated to who knows where.

The magician crumbled another fragment of the earlier
component, invoking his sight to reassess his situation.  When he found the
shields still surrounding him, he snarled like a caged animal, which, in a way,
described his present situation.  He scrutinized his prison thoroughly this
time, oblivious to the war waging around him.  Marik used the precious moments
to continue filling his reserves.

Suddenly grinning with triumph, the magician opened
different pouches and withdrew two handfuls of separate components.  He did not
immediately cast a spell.  Instead he spent time sifting his components,
letting bits in one hand fall back into the pouch while pulling extra of the
second from its.

The sight disturbed Marik.  He rebuilt shields upon
shields, layering all he could while the magician worked out his mix.  He drew
continually from the mass diffusion, having to reach farther and farther in all
directions.  The closest line he could sense ran on the ridge’s opposite side. 
Marik could never tap into it from this distance.

The magician finished his preparations.  Before he
cast his spell, he looked directly at his foe.  Marik watched his lips moving,
and in the glow from the man’s aura, he thought the man shouted, “Try this, you
goat-son!”

I have a bad feeling…

He did not clap his hands together with the components
this time.  Instead, he brought his hands together as a man offering up a
prayer.  Clasped firmly, he squeezed them together with all his strength.  The
hands began shaking while the magician uttered a long sentence rather than a
single word…except he bore no resemblance to a man preparing to toss the dice. 
No, this looked like he was fighting to contain the world’s strongest moth in
his cupped palms, a moth determined to fly away and take him with it.

The magician took one step and thrust his hands forward. 
As he did, he released whatever power had built in his palms.

Marik expected the shields to catch the spell and
probably shatter under the power of this advanced casting.  Instead, the spell
caught up his shields as leaves on the wind, and Marik felt the power racing
toward him, following the channel that connected the shields to their creator. 
Straight at him!

“Colbey!” was all the warning he could give the
scout.  It would have to be enough.  The massive ball of power raced straight
for them.  Marik frantically erected his own shields.  In less than a moment he
surrounded himself with every shield Caresse and Tollaf had taught him, layered
around his body.  His astral shield alone obviously would not stop
this
spell.  He could only pray the others would.

The spell hit.  One of the other shields must have
been effective after all.  With unbelievable concussive force, the spell
exploded into a fiery cloud.  Marik felt his shields eroding.  Only one thought
had room in his mind.  He must keep replacing the shields from inside until the
spell ended!  Energy from the mass diffusion rushed forth through his channels
faster than he had ever felt before.

This spell possessed an unworldly life.  It refused to
end anytime soon.  The initial explosion set the tree ablaze around Marik, then
the power in the spell pulled back to reform, taking on a different shape.  It
swarmed forward anew to strike a second time.

Several men in the rear of Trask’s southern forces
stopped to point and shout.  Across the sky, forty feet above them and a
hundred feet long, a vast wall of purest orange-red fire burst into being. 
Shot through with blue lightning, it cried out to all who witnessed of its raw,
tremendous power.  It advanced on Marik’s tree, growing taller as it went, curling
forward at the top like the giant ocean wave it imitated.

The curl tumbled to crash over the top of the trees on
the hill where the picket line had been.  It broke with a deafening roar,
ringing every man’s ears in the clearing.  Branches and flaming leaves exploded
in every direction across the upper hill while the horrendous howling of hungry
flames filled the air.

Marik felt his shields rip away.  Raw sound battered
him.  He had spent nearly all his energy, and he groped for more from the mass
diffusion.  Except he could find nothing available.  The spell still raged but
he had nothing left to defend with.

One last feeble hope.  With luck, the spell, aimed at
this spot, would continue to target it once his shields finally collapsed. 
Marik moaned a cry of shock and despair.  He hurled himself backward with his
last strength.  The spell might well continue its torrential frenzy up at the
level where he had perched, but the fall to the ground would surely kill him.

An arm wrapped around his chest.  It stopped his
plummet by gripping his neck.  Marik summoned enough strength to see Colbey
clutching him with a firm grip.  He saw the scout with his normal eyes, having
spent so much of his personal energy he could not call upon any aspect of his
talent, including the passive magesight that used hardly more energy than
drawing a breath.

Colbey’s strength amazed him.  It was the only thought
his mind seemed capable of at the moment.  The scout flipped to his feet before
jumping from branch to burning branch.  His burden might have been light as a
pillow.  Soon they were on the ground.

But not safe.  “Colbey!” he croaked.  “The
magician…he’s free!”

“Then we move.”

Colbey lifted him in his arms.  He carried Marik away
to join with Trask and his men.  After an eternity of the disorienting view
over Colbey’s arm, the rearguard nearly killed them for their effort.

After their identities were straightened out, they
were hustled to the fore where Trask oversaw the Noliers’ surrender.

“The magician?  One of my boys caught sight of him
right before the whole damned sky caught fire.  He’s still alive, except his
arms are broken and his head’s been cracked.  He won’t be waking up anytime
soon.”

Marik slumped in relief.  Trask left them to continue
his duties.  He looked at Colbey.

“Thanks.”

The scout nodded, accepting the gratitude as his due.

“How’d you survive that?”

“I jumped behind you.”

This simple answer surprised Marik.  He laughed
weakly.  “You should have jumped down, idiot!  My shields could have gone at
any time and fried us both!”

“Most of the tree was on fire.  Besides, my assignment
was your protection.  I take my duty seriously.”

“Glad you do.”

Marik fingered his sword hilt.  “Damn, I have the
worst luck with fire.”  He looked north to their former perch, blazing in a
festival bonfire.  “And now half the Reaches is in flames!  I hate this!”

“Hate what?”  The scout sounded strangely curious.

“Magic.”

“You’re a mage.”

“Who ever said…I was a…mage…”  The weariness hit him
with a brick’s force and his eyes fell shut against his will.  His last sight
before he descended into a heavy slumber against a wagon wheel revealed Colbey
standing before a background of orange firelight, gazing at him with a strange,
calculating look.

“Ha, ha, ha!  You look like you’ve been out in the
desert for a month!”

“Drop dead, Dietrik.”

Now that the adrenaline from last night had worn off,
his skin had decided to make plain its thoughts regarding infernos, and its
displeasure at how close its master had taken it to one.  At least his hair had
not burned off this time.

“Think how much worse you’d feel if you hadn’t traded
your hide in for a new leather covering last summer!”

“If you have the time to joke around, go hunt up a
Healer and see if he has any of that salve I was using half the winter!  Ow,
damn it!  I didn’t bring any with me.”

Dietrik reach inside his tunic and withdrew a small
bottle.  “See there?  How about a little gratitude?”

Marik grabbed it.  The heavy, familiar herbal smell
greeted his nose when he pulled the stopper out.  “Thanks, I guess.  I must
look pretty bad.”

“You have looked better,” Dietrik agreed.  “But I
think you’ll be over the worst in a day or so.”

“That’d be nice, but don’t expect me to start swinging
mattocks!”

Trask had ordered the forest clearing fortified.  A
supplementary earthwork was under way.  So far the surviving Nolier soldiers
performed the work, which solved the problem of what to do with them for the
moment.  After a morning spent cleaning away the fragments of their former
shieldmates that littered the encampment, they were noticeably subdued.  Marik
hoped they would be stationed here for only a short while since the blood
soaking the dirt and other biological refuse already grew pungent in the forest
humidity.

“What’s news?”

Dietrik hauled around a wooden crate left lying on the
ground when the debris from the raid had been kicked aside to make room for the
field tents.  “Trask has the scouts ranging as far as they can, though the
Noliers claim the next supply caravan isn’t due for several days.”

“If the other supply areas were hit as hard, I don’t
think we need to expect anyone.”

“The Noliers don’t know about that part, but I agree. 
We hit this place hard and fast.  They spent the first moments running.  The
chaps never organized a good defensive stance to meet us.  We hardly lost
anyone.”

“Anyone I know?”  He hated this part worst of all the
post battle moments.

“Not a one.”

Marik sighed with relief.  “Good.  Then we can rest
for awhile.”

“You mean you can rest for awhile.  I have to go haul
a shovel for the next day or two.”

“I’d say a day.  The perimeter must be a lot smaller
since we don’t have any buildings to defend.”

Dietrik nodded.  “True, but I don’t fancy the thousand
roots we will need to dig through.  Kerwin’s got wagers going on time of day
and numbers of men.”

Marik laughed.  “At least he’s happy.”

The company spent the next several days digging in,
waiting for orders from the knight-marshal.  A steady messenger stream arrived
and departed between the other Nolier supply areas.  Word through the cook
grapevine claimed that neither of the other two assaults had progressed as
smoothly, though the Noliers had collapsed eventually.

Trask interrogated the captured Nolier officers.  He
intended to question the magician as well once he regained consciousness. 
Marik found the captain in a free moment, which were few and far between, and
received permission to participate.

“There’s only one or two things I want to know.”

“Fine.  Ask the rest of my questions for me, then.  I
was going to send for you anyway.  Teach the men what they need to know about
handling him.”

And so Marik did several days later when the man began
showing signs of awakening.

“You don’t need to worry too much,” he told the men,
all of whom shuffled nervously.  He prayed the guesses he passed off as fact
were indeed correct.  Marik wondered if their nervousness stemmed from being
near an enemy mage or being near himself, who they regarded as the Crimson
Kings’ pet witch.  “His magic works through components, and he doesn’t have
them.  And both of his arms are broken and in splints.  But make sure he can’t
get hold of anything. 
Anything
!  Not his tunic or so much as a pinch of
dirt.”

They nodded.  Marik had examined the pouches taken
from the magician.  The feather bag was empty, and a good thing.  One more of
those would have spelled the battle’s end.  Another held the ashes he knew must
base the fire spell.  He recognized the pouch used for the vision spell. 
Inside it he found crumbly sand lumps, which made no sense as far as Marik
could see.  Ashes for a fire spell and feathers to summon the wind obeyed a
certain logic he could follow, yet how in the world could
sand
help a
person to see his shields?  Perhaps his assumptions during the battle were off
the mark after all.

“Don’t tell him I’m the magic user he was fighting.  I
only want to be a soldier rolling him for answers, like you.”  Marik wore his
sword and pulled on his mail, retrieved after the battle from Dietrik.

They went inside where an army chirurgeon examined the
magician.  His arms were bound with splints on both sides and a tight gag
prevented speech.

Soldiers hauled him off the cot into a wooden chair
with stiff arms.  His own splintered limbs were tied securely to the chair’s,
no one listening overmuch to his pained moans.  The chirurgeons had kept him
drugged.  They had timed this interview for when the last of the drugs finally
wore off.

Marik did not enjoy the interrogation.  Though never
tortured outright, the man’s arms caused him severe agony.  They removed the
gag only after explaining that the man standing behind would club him across
the head with a wooden cudgel at the first sound of an alien word.

Other than the interrogation, Marik had little to
occupy him during the next several eightdays in the Reaches.  The army scouts,
led by Colbey, kept a much better eye on the surrounding lands than the Noliers
had.  Patrol duty in the forest became a matter of candlemarks rather than
days.  Few Noliers were to be found in the woods until the northern forces at
last gained the upper hand at the gold strike.

With their supply lines severed, the forces holding
the mine began losing ground.  The Galemarans finally broke them after a hard
battle.  Following that, groups of Nolier soldiers fled south.  Colbey’s scouts
snared the smaller ones but with the prisoners from the initial raid, space was
at a premium.  Also, Trask wanted only small numbers of prisoners together lest
they start getting ideas.

Galemar’s northern forces rode south after
establishing a secure hold on the gold strike.  The main body traveled along
Galemar’s depot line in the open land, except for a sizable detachment the
knight-marshal sent to sweep the Reaches and collect the men stationed within. 
A detachment that happened to include elements of the Crimson Kings.

*        *        *        *        *

“I heard about your antics, boy,” Tollaf gruffly
greeted when he tracked Marik down after the officers’ meeting.  “Captain Trask
says you near burned down half the damned forest!”  He looked at the black,
skeletal remains that had burned until a fortuitous rain shower had finally
extinguished the inferno.  “I can see he wasn’t exaggerating!  And what, by
Lor’Velath, happened here?  There isn’t a trace of etheric energy for miles!”

“It’s a reflection on your qualities as a teacher, old
man,” Marik opined.  His friends pretended not to be listening from inside
their tent, even as he knew they strained to catch every word.  As before, he
refused to bend his back to this decrepit fossil, especially now since he could
guess at the relentless ribbing his shieldmates would inflict on him if he
cowered like a whimpering puppy.

Marik, stiff backed, relayed the battle between
himself and the magician as best he could remember, rewarded for his success
with the sour reply, “Well that’s certainly
not
what
I
would have
done!”

“It was all I could do!  And don’t tell me I need more
training!”

“You do.”

Marik glared at him.

“Trask said you talked to the magician.”

“The chirurgeons are keeping him drugged so he stays
unconscious.  They’re not sure what to do about him.”

“What did he say when you talked?”

“I was playing the silent guard, so I tried not to ask
too many specific questions.”

Tollaf nodded impatiently for him to go on.  “At first
he only tried breaking through my shields.  He didn’t think he’d have too much
trouble, since he could tell I wasn’t very strong.  I asked about the last
spell he cast and he said the reason he didn’t use it first was because he
never gets the chance to, and he’d forgotten about it.”

“Did he say why?”

“It has to follow an existing link back to the mage,
and most mages don’t give you the opportunity.”

Tollaf nodded.  “Combat spells are hurled at your
enemy, and either strike their target or are deflected.  They are formed and
thrown; separate from their creators once they are fully created.  Since you
need to maintain shields after crafting them, you needed to keep the channel to
them open.”

“Well, nobody ever told me about that!”

“I had no intention of sending you into battle with as
little training as you have.”

“It turned out to be important!”

“If you ever bothered to listen to what I have to say,
maybe I’ll bother telling you of these matters!  Finish with the spell!”

Marik smoldered but, with effort, kept most of it from
his tongue.  “It came in two stages.”

“It was one of the more advanced spells of the
magician’s art then.”

“The first part came along the link between me and my
shields.  The second activated once it rebounded off one of my shields and
failed to kill me.  He said it feeds on the target’s energy through his
existing channels before taking form to attack.  That’s why it was so strong
when it took the new shape.”

Tollaf raised an eyebrow.  “Taking on airs, are we?”

“I had a channel open to gather in energy from the
diffusion!”

Tollaf exploded.  “You flaming idiot!  You
always
erect a shield on your draw channels to prevent backwashes and surges!  I
know
I’ve taught you that much!  No wonder there’s not a drop of energy for miles
around!”

“I was busy building so many damned shields around that
damned magician—“

“That’s no excuse!” Tollaf overrode.  “Putting a surge
shield on a inward channel the second you open one has to be second nature!  It
works both ways and would have prevented the spell from sucking up all the
energy within your reach.  You’re lucky you weren’t drawing from a line then or
everything south of here for miles would be a smoking crater!”

“I won in the end, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t, you stupid ass!” the old man shouted,
angrier than Marik could ever remember.  “One of the soldiers knocked down your
foe!  If that soldier hadn’t, your enemy’s next move would have been to
splatter your guts across all the Reaches!”  Tollaf glared harder than ever
before, which would have been impressive if Marik were not the target of the old
man’s scorn.  “I guess the gods
do
smile on fools and halfwits.”

“The spell was aimed at my location once the second
part activated, not at me personally,” Marik continued, wanting to move Tollaf
past the moment.  “That’s why I hurled myself downward when the last of my
shields went.  The wave might have been thirty feet tall, but the bottom of it
was level with me.  It worked since the spell kept crashing overhead after I
jumped.  It’s a good thing I wasn’t on level ground during the fight.”

Tollaf shook his head in wonder.  “I hope you know why
you’re still alive, because I sure don’t.”

“I’m not cut out for this.  I’ve told you that a
hundred times.  Are you ready to believe me?”

“On the contrary,” Tollaf countered, forcing his
temper down, “I think you are very well ‘cut out for it’, as you put it.  You
still should be dead, but you managed to use your extremely limited library of
workings to accomplish your goal.”

Marik gaped, astounded.  “You just sat there and told
me I did everything wrong!”

“I pointed out your stupid screw ups!  You should have
known better about the surge shield, but your original concept worked out.  I
told you that surrounding the magician in your own shields wasn’t what I would
have done.  It’s unheard of!  Nobody I know would have done that.  That’s why
it worked!”

“What are you talking about?”

“He didn’t sense them, did he?”

“He said he didn’t.  When we talked to him, he said he
has warning spells he casts every morning that alert him to incoming attacks. 
Except he never sensed me at all.”

“That’s because you didn’t attack him.  The shields
were a passive working, not threatening or aggressive, and so didn’t trigger
his warning spells.  In fact, if you had built the original shielding sphere
tighter and smaller, that first spell of his might have finished the job there
and then.”