Battle Mage: Forging New Steel (Tales of Alus Book 9) (58 page)

“Vision,” Xander intoned creating the night vision spell easily. While his vision wasn’t enhanced to see across great distances, he could make out the enemy well enough to see two of the enemy weapons had been destroyed by the strange sound. It had to be a spell, he thought turning his head to look behind him.

Using a blue shield held between him and the enemy archers just in case a shaft should clear the wall with his attention on the south, Xander quickly crossed to the southern side of the great wall and gasped. He expected to see reinforcements, after all someone was destroying the enemy cannon somehow. Surely they couldn’t be far since the wizards on the wall couldn’t reach with enough force for their spells to be useful so far.

Instead of wizards, mages or the soldiers of Southwall in their armor closing on the wall; Xander spotted monsters.

“The enemy is behind us!” he cried out in shock.

His mentor Gareth appeared at his side along with several other soldiers. The falcon called on a spell no mage enjoyed using, “Battle cry.”

Turning to face the tower, the man’s voice boomed over every other sound reaching the other side of the Twins and beyond as he warned, “Enemy south of the wall! Prepare to defend north and south!”

Cries of alarm and disbelief echoed along the line. They were already struggling to hold out against the army to the north. How could they possibly hold the wall against a force from the south? Doors at the base of the towers were a vulnerability and arrows flying from the north could reach soldiers on the opposite side of the parapets with only a modest bit of luck. It would be dangerous for anyone volunteering to operate on that side even without a new force to deal with besides.

More sounds of invisible air projectiles flew further to the east. Xander took another quick look to see all of the enemy cannon destroyed. Where had these spells originated? Even from the monster’s proximity to the wall, such a feat would have been impressive. Were reinforcements coming from somewhere even further south of the enemy as well?

Xander could only hope.

Palose watched as the viles and crag trolls met light resistance. He was impressed that the defenders of the wall had even noticed the attack before the first creatures had begun breaking down the wall and doors of the towers. Black furred kiriaks dropped down running on all four appendages. Their arms were longer in proportion to a man’s and didn’t need to slow as they propelled their bodies at the wall with great speed. Unlike the massive creatures hefting giant hammers or claws that could cut through stone, the kiriaks weren’t meant to deal with the wall itself.

Like dark furred spiders, dozens of the creatures seemed to scale the wall almost as quickly as they had run to meet it.

Arrows and magic tried to cast them down, but the kiriaks were so swift and nimble that most reached the top of the wall to batter at the men of Southwall unscathed. Maces and clubs were the beasts’ preferred weapons. They weren’t particularly intelligent creatures, but they held enough intelligence to know that swinging the weapons in their hands was an advantage over fists and claws. Palose had barely seen these monsters, but his short time near them made their intellectual deficiencies easily noticed.

Of course, kiriaks weren’t bred for their intelligence but their innate ability to climb almost any stone face, even the smooth, mortared bricks of the Northwall.

Palose moved to a good vantage point to watch the battle commence. The hill was lower than the height of the wall; but flashes of fire and the occasional body falling back over the southern parapets could still be seen as well as the weak resistance of the defenders on the wall to protect the south face.

The door of the eastern tower was struck a splintering blow from a crag trolls’ hammer. To the monster’s surprise, stone was revealed behind the wooden barrier. The wizards had already barricaded the Twins.

Palose had been trained on the safeguards of the wall while a cadet at White Hall. If an enemy managed to get behind the wall, a tower would shift stone to remove the weakness of the door at the base of the fortification. They wouldn’t be able to escape from below, but the defenders had the wall to use as a road from one tower to the next for a thousand miles or more.

That the wizards had been able to shift the stone in time impressed the dark mage. It was an emergency contingency that wizard and mage alike were trained to perform, but no one ever actually did it. An earth or stone moving spell would be trained on a block or two of stone as a student, but once the battle came he was surprised that they would think to enact it with so little time.

He had heard the amplified voice like the next tower or two to the east. A battle cry was as much an emergency spell as the closing of the tower doors. It would tear up the man’s larynx making him hoarse for awhile, but it had managed to scrape together some defense at least. Palose was somewhat impressed with the speed of adjustment, though he had been through the training; the dark mage often felt that was a lifetime ago and easily forgotten.

Even so, as he watched the kiriaks distracting the men and women on the wall; Palose thought that such actions from the defenders of Southwall would be useless. They were trapped between two significant forces brought together by design to destroy the Twins. As unprepared for the attack as they were, he couldn’t see how they could resist two armies attacking from both sides. The south side of the wall in particular was more vulnerable, since wizard magic had only been concentrated on the north face to make that impregnable.

The dark mage could see armored viles and crag trolls tearing into the structure virtually unmolested by any defenders. Left unchecked, the armored viles would be able to dig through the stone in minutes. That was the problem with the wall. It was simply an obstruction. While it helped defend the men and women on the wall, the wall in turn was defended by them. When one of the two faltered, the empire’s forces would win and open a hole into Southwall that didn’t require portal magic.

As the dark mage watched nearly gloating at the ease of the operation, even though someone had found his original lodestones to move them; other feelings threatened his good mood. He was born in this land and had even promised his resurrected wizards, Dorgred and Wendle, that they wouldn’t have to harm Southwall. Palose wasn’t restricted by that rule of his personal actions and followed Kolban’s orders; but his mind was his own now and his heart warred with the direction of the empire’s master.

Sighing at the sight of the dying men and women struggling on the wall, Palose looked away from the wall. His eyes cast over the creatures starting to become congested beneath their goal, but the western forces were also acting strangely. He noted those to the rear had faltered in their approach and even backed away from the front few lines attacking the barrier.

In fact, a line of orcs and trolls backed by several viles had turned to the south looking ready for a battle behind them instead.

Palose had not heard the sound of air over head. He was too far away to hear the efforts of Sebastian, who had attacked from the west side of the river; but his eyes worked well enough to spy the problem quickly enough. Moving towards the south army of his forces, a smaller amount of men and women raced towards them scaling hills or dodging through the valleys between them equally swift.

His vision scanned the eastern side of the Cadhalla and spied another force echoing the movements of those to the west. They moved too quickly to be mere soldiers. Palose knew these were battle mages, his former kind and much more formidable than normal human men and women. These troops could take down armored viles and trolls with their magic. Normally they were stuck protecting both those with magic and those without; but this force looked unleashed from the restrictions of magical body guards to the other forces in Southwall’s army.

Palose actually smiled thinking that battle mages had become one of the most fearsome warriors on the battle field for either side. It was almost pride that he felt even if he was no longer truly one of them.

“Fireballs,” the dark mage uttered the spell varying it from his old battle mage spell using greater strength as he cast dozens of massive balls of flame behind the monsters of the dark army.

Striking with force enough to alert his allies to the danger from behind, the east side of the river turned at first in surprise before sighting the mages beginning to close on them. Shields whipped around in troll, orc and even vile hands to face the attackers. The fire burned the grass between them slowing the approach of the mages, but they hardly seemed to mind as a volley of air spears flew towards the shields of their enemy.

Some shields held. Some of the soldiers were lucky enough to be wearing the black armor originally designed for wizard hunters, which absorbed the air without doing the wearer any harm; but not every soldier was so lucky and several troops fell as the mages readied a second attack.

The west side had no fire burning between the two factions and the mages bore down on those meant to take the wall from behind. While fire on the east side served as an obstacle, there were holes between the flame and the two sides met between the fires in a clash of magic and steel.

Xander’s sword swung catching the heavy metal hammer in the hand of the large furred beast before him. The sound of breaking steel signaled vibrations rushing into his hand making the cadet wince with pain. For a soldier, his sword was his life. Once broken, it was likely only a moment before that man would find his life taken, though some could survive long enough to find a second weapon.

A battle mage didn’t need to look for another weapon, he was a weapon.

“Air lance!” the cadet cried tossing his broken weapon into the creature’s face as he jumped back. Manifesting in his hand as the hilt of the sword left him, the air spear hardened in his grip as his blue shield met another strike of the hammer.

He could feel the magic shield weakening with each blow, but it held and Xander was able to counter with the air lance surprising his opponent. It wasn’t a good enough recovery to hurt the monster, however. The spear merely found air as the kiriak dodged to the side.

The young mage was getting frustrated. It wasn’t like the monster was an intelligent swordsman using technique to defeat him. Sheer power and surprising speed were used by the black furred fighter making up for technique along with its instincts and reflexes.

His foot bumped into something behind him and the cadet knew that it was the body of a fallen soldier. With the unknown behind him, Xander changed direction letting his blue shield shift to cover his head while the battle mage drove forward leading with the air lance aimed at the monster’s heart. It was a desperate attack, but the kiriak dodged to his left away from the confining stone parapet to the mage’s right.

Spinning to face the kiriak as his eyes took in the scene behind the attacker; Xander looked not only at the monster fighting him, but at what was behind it. He saw the defenders struggling to protect the north side with half the men and women looking north and half guarding their backs against the intruders from the south. Closer to the tower, Xander saw a few black furred creatures fighting the defenders and more dead or wounded lying on the stone of the wall. Behind his current opponent, too few Southwall defenders remained fighting the beasts.

A glow came from the tower reflecting in the monster’s eyes and served to distract it just enough to drive the air weapon upward into its neck. Surprise reflected in its eyes as black blood sprayed onto the blue shield and cadet. The hammer slipped free of numbed fingers to clatter onto the stone as it slid towards the defenders on the north side as the kiriak’s hands moved instinctively to try and stop the bleeding.

Sidestepping the injured monster, Xander swept his hand towards the beast calling out, “Gust!”

A strong blast of wind struck the kiriak against the wall finding the low spot between the protective stones of the crenellations. Taller than a man, the black beast stumbled and slid through the opening releasing its throat too slowly to catch itself from tumbling over and down the wall.

Gasps for air were drowned out by the thunder of blood pumping through his skull. His ears could only hear the roar and missed the shouts behind him. Noticing the sight of orange flame reflecting on the stone, Xander turned to see several wizards rushing from the western Twin Tower. They weren’t anyone he knew, but they were dressed in the robes of Southwall wizards. How these wizards had arrived escaped his mind for a moment until he recalled the strange light which had distracted the beast.

Questions of their origin faded quickly to just being thankful for the reinforcements as the power of their magic singled out each enemy creature destroying the closest with fire and wind. Seeing their position dire, the kiriaks broke from their attacks appearing to leap off of the wall. Xander looked through the gap in the stones watching the strange black beasts virtually running down the wall to return to the throng of monsters below.

Gasping for air as the cadet worked to get his breathing back under control; he couldn’t summon a spell to knock them free. A few wizards took their shots, but the kiriaks appeared almost faster climbing down than they were moving on land. They could even change direction quickly so nearly all of them made it back to the ground unscathed.

More magic rained down trying to drive back those breaking the wall. The new wizards were fresh and their array of spells brightened the darkness of twilight. Xander wanted to watch, but knew there was more to be done to the north as well. The larger army was still there and even with the loss of their cannons they were determined to force their way through the Twins leaving it in ruins.