Steel And Flame (Book 1) (69 page)

It’s a good thing I didn’t give into temptation and
attack him anyway when he was running for his components.
  “I was worried he might sense them if they came too
close to him.”

“Perhaps.  But magicians usually can’t sense etheric
energy unless they cast specific spells for it.”

“Unless they have multiple talents.  What’s a magician
plus a mage?  An enchanter?”

“Keep what you did in mind.  On the battlefield,
people expect you to attack them and shield yourself.  Surprise is always a
valuable asset in a fight.”

“Yeah.”  Marik segued into his primary concern. 
“Since everyone’s moving south and regrouping, you won’t need me to play mage
anymore.”

“You can’t add much,” the old man agreed.  “There’s
enough of us to handle whatever comes up, and I haven’t taught you how to work
in a group yet.”

“Then I’ll go rejoin my squad.”  He turned to leave.

“Wait!  I have new exercises I want you to work on
during the trip!”

“Save it!  If we survive the battle at the Hollister,
I might reconsider.  I already have enough to think about!”

Marik ducked through the tent flap and kicked his
friends out of his way.  “Don’t you people have anything else to do?”

“Spanked again!” Dietrik laughed.  “How can a master
and his apprentice dislike each other so?”

“Because they never chose each other.  What are you
doing?”

Kerwin looked up from several paper bits he sorted
through.  “Just checking to see who guessed right about what you two would
fight over this time.”  Marik lashed a foot out from his seat and sent the
scraps flying.  “Hey!”

“Earn your coin like an honest man.  Anybody know when
we’re riding out?”

Dietrik answered.  “Day after tomorrow.  We get to
ride south through the Reaches to the first of the Nolier supply bases, collect
everyone and keep heading south.”

Landon spoke up.  “Word around the camp is the Noliers
are pulling back to the bridge to face us off there.  They still hold the
bridge’s facilities.  Pushing them back across to their side might prove
difficult.”

“The entire Galemaran army will be there for the last
battle.”

“That doesn’t matter.  You saw what a difference the
simple earthworks make.  A fortified curtain wall with barbicans will be a
hundred times worse.  Especially when backed by the entire
Nolier
army.”

“It’ll be siege warfare, won’t it,” asked Marik.

“If the king or the knight-marshal decide they want
this over before winter, they might try taking it in a charge.  Having the
kingdom army situated on one border for seasons might make the other borders feel
playful.”

“Aren’t the other borders neutral with us, if not
friendly?  The east has been the hot border for the last few years.”

“Situations change, especially if the kingdom you’re
neutral with suddenly seems weaker.”

Marik shrugged it off.  “I’m not overly worried about
it.”

The next day, Marik reconsidered that.  Messengers
from the west rode in to deliver dispatches to the officers and trade gossip
with the cooks once they finished with their official duties.  He heard the
rumors later as he snatched as much lunch as the cooks would permit.

Refugees had suddenly started swarming across the
western border from Tullainia.  Apparently the fighting over there had
escalated beyond a conflict between high-lords, and people were running before
an all-out war.  Nobody knew any solid details of exactly what was going on
over there.  The sudden influx of terrified peasants meant governmental
nightmares.

Trouble to the east.  Trouble to the west.  Maybe the
fact that fighting was now his livelihood gave him new perspectives but there
seemed to be a significant increase in conflict lately.

He managed to avoid Tollaf until they decamped and
took pride in the accomplishment.  Marik planned to enjoy the ride south, which
promised to be relatively ambush-free.  Especially with so much of the
underbrush converted to ash.  The Noliers wanted to flee, not engage in hostile
contact.

Kerwin ran new bets on the likeliest course of action
the officers would order once they reached the Hollister, Edwin and Hayden
discussed the differences in their shooting styles, and Dietrik hummed while he
worked the whetstone over his dagger during the ride.  It gladdened Marik to be
with them…yet his thoughts kept drifting to that arrogant scout Colbey, and
especially to that strange talent of his.

He believed the man had tried to explain what he did
in his own manner, though the words made little sense at first.  Marik
suspected Colbey might not know himself just what he did.  The method of
visualizing and the manipulated aura together must be the key.

If he could figure out how to duplicate the trick, it
would come in very handy.  In battle, the biggest problem had always been the
rapid weariness that built when facing multiple opponents.  Colbey had shown no
signs at all of growing tired during their run, and if Marik could do that too,
he could take his fighting skills to the next level.

The key
had
to be the reshaping of the aura. 
He needed to start with that.  Auras were the natural bleed off of life energy
into the etheric.  If he could manipulate the mass diffusion, which is what
that energy eventually became, shouldn’t he also be able to manipulate his
aura?

Marik rode through the charred trees, letting his
horse follow the others, lost in picking apart this particular mystery.  This
particular onion.

*        *        *        *        *

Questions of what the knight-marshal might do
disappeared when messengers from the king caught up with him.  The combined
forest forces in the Green Reaches left the trees and rejoined the main force
two days ride from their destination.

A day from the Hollister Bridge, while the kingdom
forces took over an empty valley to set camp for the evening, couriers pounded
in on exhausted horses.  They reported directly to the knight-marshal’s tent
and stayed inside all night.  When morning dawned, the Galemaran army’s leader
emerged to announce his second-in-command would be taking over operations until
his return.

He rode away with the couriers on fresh horses. 
Everyone soon knew that the king had urgently recalled the knight-marshal to
help handle a new crisis.

“Told you,” Landon said after they learned about it.

“Told me what?” Marik responded.

“Hey, Kerwin!  I’ll bet the knight-marshal was called
back to Thoenar to handle the situation on the western border.”

“Odds?” Kerwin asked as he came over.

“Say, two to one?”

Kerwin thought it over for a moment.  “I’ll pass. 
What else could it be after all?”

Marik interrupted.  “Why the sudden urgency?  The
refugees might be annoying, but the fighting is in Tullainia!”

Dietrik replied while the other two argued odds.  “The
situation might be worse than that, if it escalated without control.  There
might be a serious danger of it spilling across the border and into Galemar.”

“And the knight-marshal is going to hold them back
with his bare hands, is he?  What men does he have if he needs them?”

“I think the king probably wants to have the man
around to analyze the reports coming in and help make sense of things.”

“Maybe,” Marik allowed.

“And after all, we’ve pushed the Noliers back to the
bridge.  A siege isn’t that complicated a business to run.  The knight-marshal
can afford to leave it to his subordinates.”

“I have a bad feeling I can’t seem to shake.”

At noon, they came within sight of the bridge.  The
gorge it spanned formed the border between Galemar and Nolier.  Marik wondered
if he agreed with Landon’s assessment on the difficulties of taking this
place.  He had envisioned a sprawling fortification as large as a village with
massive walls that would require a hundred-thousand men to storm.

The Nolier side matched his vision, but the Galemarans
had built their side less grandiose, if still impressive.  A massive stone
tower formed the majority of the construction.  The tower was rectangular with
the wide end facing across the gorge.  It rose six floors tall and eighty feet
wide if an inch.  Built right on the edge, a pair of ten-foot wide tunnels
allowed access to the bridge through the structure’s center.

A twenty-foot stone curtain wall surrounded the tower
and nearby buildings on three sides, built right to the cliff face.  Though
still a significant distance away, Marik could hear the sounds from the
Tenpencia churning sixty feet below.  Lining the tower top and the wall, and
running back and forth along the bridge, were Noliers.

The Galemarans spread out.  They set their camp at
three times the range of the longest bow.

Marik, studying the tower, said to Landon, “I’m not so
sure we need a long siege after all.  With the number of men we have, it
wouldn’t take that long to storm this side of the bridge.”

“You’re starting to think like those officers,” Landon
replied.  “You charge that wall and in the first candlemark you’ll have
two-thousand dead men at the base.”

“I wasn’t thinking of an all out charge.  The
specialists we have can pull off surprising feats, I’m sure.  At the least, all
these mages could confuse things for them.”

“Which their own mages would counter.  Really, I
thought you of all people would know that.”

“It depends on exactly what they do.  Still, I think
this end might be takeable, and with the other border heating up, the officers
might not want to wait through a drawn-out siege.  The other side though…”

Marik looked across the bridge to the Nolier border
garrison, which closely resembled the stronghold he had pictured in his mind.

“We could have the entire fortress surrounded, and I
think they would still hold us off.  Attacking straight across the bridge…not a
chance!”

Whatever the new Galemaran commander decided to do, he
held off on doing it the first day.  Once the men were camped in a broad
crescent arcing around the Hollister Tower, he established watches and
lookouts.  The provision wagons began arriving, being slower than the men. 
They started organizing meals.

Edwin came over to find Hayden and Landon.  “The officers
are putting together hunting parties.  Either of you interested?”

Landon said he would stay behind.  Hayden followed
Edwin away.  Marik asked, “How long will it take to hunt the woods around us
bare?”

“Not long, unless they’re careful,” Landon answered. 
“It’s mostly to supplement the food we already have.  Don’t expect any fresh
meat yourself though.”

“Oh?”

“I expect the nobles will be taking their share
first.  I doubt they’ll leave much for us commoners.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, knowing Balfourth.”

“The new commander is probably only organizing this to
keep them happy and quiet while we camp here.”

That night, Marik sat in his tent while the others
diced or traded rumors.  He ignored their distractions as he studied himself
with his magesight.  During the ride he’d thought of one or two possibilities
that might allow him to manipulate his aura the way Colbey had.

He had grown convinced the scout must be unconsciously
manipulating his own energies through visualization techniques.  Careful visualizing
differed very little from manipulating etheric energies, once a person mastered
the trick to it.  Now he groped for the energies in his aura around his arm the
way he did with the mass diffusion.

Marik sensed it beneath his mental hands yet could
secure no firm grip.  It felt like holding a live fish, scaly, slimy, slipping
through fingers unless held a different way.

Thoughts of fish in his mind, Marik decided this
problem should be approached in the same manner.  He needed to find a different
way to grasp his aura’s energy.  After experimenting for a further mark, he
finally seemed to have found one that might work.  Gathering etheric energy was
mostly a matter of visualizing himself doing so and letting his talent
duplicate the act.  To discover a new way to manipulate energy, therefore,
meant thinking in a different manner.

He decided to try.  Marik opened his channels as when
gathering energy from the mass diffusion.  The moment he touched his physical
hand with his mental one, he knew something had gone disastrously wrong. 
Rather than grasping the energies in his aura, his channel drained the energy
away!  His aura’s glow around his hand dimmed quickly.  Ice flowed through his
veins as precious life drained away.

I’m dying!
 
The thought abruptly burst forth through the intense fear threatening to drown
him.

At the same time, the drained energy passing through
his shield re-incorporated itself with his personal stores.  The feeling of
strength in his reserves grew while the weakness in his limb intensified. 
Marik desperately tried to close the channel, to stop siphoning his own life
energy, but it defied him!  It had taken on its own will.  His control
deteriorated further as he panicked, eroding under the relentless beating of
his terror.