The Road To Sevendor - A Spellmonger Anthology (10 page)

“That’s odd,” I said to myself.

“What, the gurvani?” asked Tyndal, surprised.

“No, the gurvani seem to be perfectly normal homicidal hordes of vengeance,” I said, dryly.  “No, the odd thing . . .examine the
center.
  The area around which they’re congregating.”

Both of my apprentices did. 
Both
swore. 

“Master
, what is that?”
Rondal asked, mystified.

“I have no idea,” I said, letting my magemap fail.  “But we’re going to find out.  Captain Rogo, would you and your men mind a brief excursion?”

“If there are foes still on the field, I suppose we’re honor-bound to face them,” he admitted, reluctantly.  The man wanted to go home, and I didn’t blame him.  “Hopefully this won’t take too long, though.  I’ve a wife to return to, and you’ve one to wed.”

“I’m sure it won’t take much time at all,” I said.  “Ancient Kinsey, please have your men gather around.  And go ahead and have the horses unhitched – the wagons will be halting here for a while.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir?” the young officer asked, confused.  “We were ordered—”

“I’m commandeering your troops, yourself included,” I informed him.  “I have a piece of parchment that says I can do that.”

“But you
can’t
—”

“Actually, he
can
,” Tyndal pointed out, thumping a warwand into the palm of his hand, anxiously.  “In fact, he’s getting to quite
enjoy
throwing his authority around.”

“It’s still new,” I pointed out.  “I’m not done playing with it yet.  But this band so close to the frontier needs to be addressed.  Not just for the gurvani, but for the . . . whatever it is.  But you shouldn’t be complaining, Ancient.  You wanted to fight scrugs . . . it looks like you’re going to get your chance.”

*
                                          *                                          *

Leading what amounted to a large infantry patrol instead of an entire army was refreshingly simple.  No logistics to worry about, no mediating officers, just me and the men, on foot, prowling through the forest toward our goal.

We’d left the horses near the road under the guard of four of the less-worthy looking militia and the River Folk, and proceeded on foot because this part of the road was just south of the Pearwoods hills: a rocky and uneven terrain poorly suited for horses, but outstanding for bandits and moonshiners.  The horses wouldn’t be much use anyway in that country, and they made a lot of noise.  Only a few of us were comfortable fighting on horseback, and I’d rather have a sturdy infantryman than an untrained cavalry trooper any time.

I have to admit, I enjoyed the simple task of leading the patrol.  It helped that we had decent intelligence.

We knew approximately where the goblins were, and it was fairly simple to plot a land route on the magemap that wouldn’t bring us on our foes until we were ready.   I had Tyndal and Rondal, my two fledgling yet stalwart Knights Magi (all right, an ambitious half-trained warmage and a former spellmonger’s apprentice who was in the wrong place at the wrong time) on the ends, Tyndal in the van, Rondal in the rear, while I stayed in the center with Rogo and a dozen Nirodi archers accompanied us.  The militia troops filled in before and after, with the remainder of the Nirodi scouting our flanks . . . and I was shocked to find, a half an hour into our hike, that three of the River Folk had tagged along, too.

They stayed in the rear with Rondal – for some reason, they liked the guy – and didn’t really slow down the rearguard as much as you might think.  I espied them with magesight while we walked, very quietly, to see if they might be a hindrance.

They were three young males, one far stockier than the other two and one with
enormous
feet, but all three moved far more quietly through the autumn leaves that littered the forest floor than did the armored humans with whom they walked.  The River Folk had also brought arms, of sorts: each had a long thin knife in their belts, one had a staff, and the one with big feet had a short-handled wood axe.  The way he handled it told me he was adept with it . . . at chopping wood.

I don’t know
why
they joined us – protection, curiosity, excitement, or just plain anxiety about gurvani close by.   I didn’t know River Folk very well, but I did know they made piss-poor warriors under most circumstances.  But that doesn’t mean that some didn’t know how to fight.  I wasn’t going to try to shoo them off – if they wanted to come along, well, their graves wouldn’t be as hard to dig, I figured.  I hated being so matter-of-fact about such things, but war has that effect on you after a while.

“Shall we try to scry out their
exact
location, Sir Minalan?” Rogo asked me, as we walked up a rise in the forest.  “Or might that magically alert them to our position?”

“Why not just follow the smoke?” one of his young archers asked, and pointed to the northeastern sky.  There, over the treetops, a column of black smoke started to climb towards the heavens.  “Unless there’s a smithy or a still off in the forest, I’d guess that the goblins have started that fire.”

“Good eye,” I agreed, and sent a mental command to Tyndal to bear right.  “How nice of them to give us a landmark to follow.  How far away is that, do you think?”

“Three quarters of a mile,” Rogo said, after a bare moment’s thought. 

“They’re on a hilltop,” I agreed, after consulting the magemap.  “But . . . there isn’t anything
else
there, just trees.  Which they seem to be besieging.”

“Why would they want to attack a
tree
?” Tyndal asked, scornfully.

“It does seem odd,” I nodded.  “Maybe a sapling killed their grandfather, and it’s a long-running, bloody, sappy vendetta?  Who the hells knows how a gurvan thinks?  Or why they might attack a tree?  But if they are, I’m interested in exactly why.  So let’s find out.”

We halted less than a quarter mile away from where our spells had told us the goblin force was, at the bottom of a gulley southwest of the hill that helped conceal us from them.  While we waited for the stragglers to catch up, Tyndal, Rogo, Kinsey and Balst and I discussed the best plan of attack.  Scrying told us that a frontal assault was just plain stupid, considering we were facing a numerically superior foe – about two hundred all told – so our options were limited. 

But the goblins seemed very, very interested in that tree, and I wanted to know why.  Even with accurate scrying I wasn’t happy about advancing on a strongly held position without proper non
-magical reconnaissance.  But . . .

“There really isn’t anyone else to do it,” I sighed to myself.

“Magelord?” asked Rogo, curious.

“You take command here, and make sure you have some
very
quiet sentries posted – veterans.  The militia and the puds keep well back from the front.  But there’s too much uncertainty to proceed further.  I’m going to scout ahead and see what we’re
really
facing.”

He pursed his lips.  “You think that’s wise, milord?”

“No,” I admitted, “I think it’s
incredibly
stupid.  It’s also unavoidable, if I don’t want to get everyone killed.”

“Cannot your brave Knights Magi go in your stead?” he asked, implicitly doubting the command decision by his tone.  He just wanted me to say it. 

I explained my reasoning.  “Tyndal is better at open combat and Rondal is better at thaumaturgy, but
neither one
of them have learned the shadowmagics, the spells that keeps enemy sentries from noticing you, disguising your footsteps, that sort of thing.  That’s advanced stuff, even for warmagi. But I know the spells.”

“Then yes, you would be the logical one to go,” Rogo decided, almost reluctantly. 

I looked at him.  “You aren’t even going to
try
to talk me out of it?” I asked a little concerned and disappointed.  I thought Rogo was my friend – he shouldn’t let me do something stupid like this plan.

“I’ve been dealing with nobles commanding me and my men my entire life, Magelord,” he chuckled.  “I’ve grown used to them doing stupid things.”

“I haven’t even been a lord for a full
month
yet!” I protested. 

“And yet the stupidity is already beginning to accrue,” the auxiliary captain observed wryly.  “I
told
you that you were a natural at being a noble.  My Lord.”

I made a sour face at him as I stripped off my armor. 

No matter how good your spellwork is, barring actual invisibility the best way
not
to be noticed by the enemy is to
not
wear something that assaults their ears with every step.  Gurvani have very good hearing. I took off everything but the sleeveless black padded gambeson, over which I buckled my weapons harness, and my riding boots.  I made one last check to ensure everything was where it was supposed to be, within easy reach, and then I gave a few last-minute instructions to my apprentices before I cast the appropriately sneaky spells on myself, and went forward.

It took me a half-hour to make my way to within sight of the gurvani war party, but I needn’t have been so cautious.  They hadn’t even posted proper sentries, I observed.  Whatever their business, they weren’t expecting attack from behind, which I had to count in our favor. 

I was too far away to tell exactly what the furry little bastards were doing at first, because mostly they seemed to be waiting around in the shade, scratching their furry black asses and ruminating about the vagaries of war or other philosophies.  All of them, that is, but a few small knots of gurvani clustered at the three equilateral points making a triangle around that tree. At each one a goblin priest was engaged in some kind of spellcraft.

I counted . . . twice, because I wanted to be certain, but after that second count I could see that my merry little band of tired mercenaries, over-eager magi and under
-trained peasant militia had about four or five-to-one odds to the horde-lette.  That meant that we were pretty evenly matched, all things considered. 

More likely, it meant that most of my men would be killed for what could be an utterly pointless victory.  I mean, who cares what a company of gurvani are doing to a tree?  If they were raiding, they’d be pushing north into the Pearwoods or south into the fertile country of the Wilderlands.  A couple of hundred deserters, well, I figured we could let the Dead God deal with them for getting lost. 

Then I saw the troll stumble around the trunk of the tree, trying like hell to push against it but failing utterly . . . because, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now,
that wasn’t an ordinary tree.
  And my heart sank, because once I factored the troll into the equation, our odds fell further.  A troll has
that
kind of power.

Oh.  Troll
s
.  There was another one on the far side of the tree.  But it was difficult to see because of the tree.

Which brings me to the subject of the tree, which seemed to be doing a pretty good job of defending itself without me, unlike its often-cowardly brethren.  But as easy as attacking a tree sounds, the gurvani weren’t having an easy go of it.

Part of the reason was that you couldn’t really
see
it.  Oh, you knew there was a tree there out of the corner of your eye – and a big one at that – but if you tried
looking
at it your unaided eyes always wandered away from it as if it were unimportant.  Like my spell of un-noticeability, only at a much, much higher level. 

That explained why the goblin priests were having to triangulate to locate it.  They couldn’t focus on it, but if they could
remove
their focus from all the parts of the forest where it wasn’t, then they had a pretty good general idea where to send their forces . . . many of whose bodies were piling up around the tree.  So I looked at the tree as best I could with Magesight, already knowing what to expect.  Indeed, the tree was warded, warded up tighter than a Duke’s castle.  Indeed, it was one of the most elaborate magical defenses I’d ever seen.

This was high-order magic, higher than anything cast by humans since the Magocracy.  And it had a distinctive character.
Tree Folk
magic.

The Tree Folk, or Alka Alon, have been the acknowledged masters of magic on Callidore since before Man was spawned from the Void.  Imperial magic, the highest form of the art in human hands, is roughly based on it . . . like a child’s twig boat is
roughly based
on a fifty-foot long deep-sea caravel.  The layers of sophistication and nuance to Tree Folk magic are as elegant as they are potent, and this particular tree had a swirl of spells around it that made it light up in magesight (once I countered the unnoticability spell – not an easy thing to do) brilliantly.

There it was, in all its glory: a magnificent deciduous tree rising fifty, sixty feet in the air, a neatly-tended circle of underbrush around the base.  Up toward the middle of the tree there was a tight swirl of energy feeding the spells that were defending it, and I could suddenly see why the goblins had brought so many of their most powerful priests.  A simple infantry squad or even a common gurvani shaman would have walked right past it.