The Road To Sevendor - A Spellmonger Anthology (14 page)

Several more of them slung their shields on their backs and used their long ash-hafted spears to brace the line by holding them parallel to it, at their shoulders.
 Petty captain Ganz drew his sword and stood resolutely behind his men as the goblins slowed, came to some semblance of order, and then charged.  They screamed and brayed and growled as they came, swords and maces swinging wildly, shields swung like thick bronze weapons, they came with bared teeth and white eyes and the fury of their new god -- hunger -- on top of the hatred of the Dead God.
They came, but they came in an irregular mass, and they bounced off of the shield wall like a kid’s cloth ball against the side of a shed.  Several gurvani fell at once,, or fell back clutching wounds the swordsmen gave them, but some stood and fought ferociously, empowered by hunger.  Two militiamen fell back, wounded, but I was pleased to see that the rest held the line.
The spearmen behind the wall took longer than I would have liked to return their weapons to the pointy-end-toward-the-enemy position, but before a second, half-hearted charge came against the wall there were three or four of them lancing out between the shoulders and shields of the swordsmen, using them for cover while they methodically punctured whatever unarmored parts of the hunger-crazed goblins they could reach.  

They weren’t always successful -- one enterprising gurvan side-stepped a sharp thrust, grabbed the spear behind the head, and wrenched it out of the surprised militiaman’s hands.
 He fell dead with an arrow in the back of his skull before he could reverse it and use it on our people.  
The gurvani had a few archers themselves, but their short, stubby arms didn’t give them much of a draw, and despite us teaching them all summer long they still couldn’t manage to volley.  Nor did their aching, empty bellies give them the patience to fire more than once or twice before they charged piecemeal toward the aroma of roasting flesh.  They fell, and they kept falling quite obligingly.
I was just starting to feel a little optimistic about the battle when the trolls showed up.
Few humans have seen a troll in person, and fewer still have lived to tell the tale.  I’ve seen over a hundred, in armor and arrayed against us in the service of the Dead God.  Even naked and sleepy, they’re pretty terrifying.  They stand anywhere from nine to fifteen feet tall, and look vaguely like overgrown goblins . . . but then they resembled the River Folk, too.  

They were all Alon, related however-distantly to the Alka Alon, the Tree Folk we were rescuing.
 Back before the Void spawned humanity on Callidore that the trolls were used as brute strength in construction and maintenance of the elaborate Alka Alon cities before they more-or-less destroyed each other.  The trolls who were left usually hugged the same rugged terrain we’d left for the gurvani -- deserts, mountains, arid plains, thickly grown forests -- and they weren’t naturally belligerent -- they just aren’t that smart.
But once the Dead God got ahold of them, and began breeding them like goats as heavy -- and I mean
heavy
-- infantry, the simple, stupid mountain troll of peasant fables became a ruthless killing machine.  I’d say they were unstoppable, but in truth we’d learned how to stop them.  It just wasn’t very easy, and I preferred having a full army around to help.  I’d seen Bold Asgus, the mercenary general of the Orphans, slay one single-handedly with just a couple of axes, but I wasn’t feeling that talented . . . or bold.

The sloping forehead of one, then two of the beasts appeared over the rise.
 When I focused on them with magesight, I saw that their eyes were just as hunger-crazed as the gurvani warriors . . . but that the gurvani priest behind them had put some powerful binding enchantments on them to keep them under control.
“Uh, oh,” I heard Rondal whisper from the bushes.  
“I see them,” I sighed.  One of the Nirodi narrowly missed pegging one of the troll’s left foot. That could be very bad.  “Pass the word to the archers: don’t shoot them.  It will just enrage them and piss them off, and at this distance up a hill, they’d go through our lines like a dose of salts.  They’re docile, now.  Let’s focus on the damn shamans and soldiers.”
My apprentice nodded and did a credible job of sneaking through the foliage to the nearest archer two dozen yards away.  A few seconds later a bird call went out, and the sniping concentrated on the little warriors, not the behemoths.
Unfortunately, there were suddenly a lot more warriors, too.  The shamans hadn’t just brought the trolls with them, but almost all of their reserves to bear on us.    The shamans didn’t look like they were gloating, however, they just look irked.  I suppose losing more than half of your force to sniping and soup was kind of irritating.  Thirty or forty gurvani made their way halfway down the slope and took up defensive positions. 

There were at least fifty goblins in formation, once the stragglers and walking wounded were browbeat into line.
 Their formation dwarfed our little shield wall, and even if I added in the hidden Nirodi, the gurvani warriors still outnumbered us decisively.  And they were maintaining their formation in some semblance of order, I noted.  They didn’t look happy about it -- particularly when the smell of food was so powerful -- but the Dead God has ways of keeping his soldiers in line.  
That presented an ugly problem.  In dribs and drabs we could strike the gurvani with impunity.  Massed as they were, they could give us more fight than we wanted.  The warriors were bad enough, but add in those trolls and then the
urgulnosti
priests . . . well, at least the odds were slightly better now.   But this gave me the opening I needed.  And if I didn’t exactly have a real plan, I at least had a vague hint of a notion that I could pass off as a plan at need.
Get ready, Tyndal,
I sent to my other apprentice.  
When I give the word...
I’m in position now, Master,
he assured me.  
There’s only one shaman and a half-dozen warriors guarding the trunk,
he added, scornfully.
Telling him to be careful would be futile.  
Rondal,
I continued, summoning my mental link with him though he was within speaking distance,
you’ve scryed the foe?
Not officially,
he admitted,
but I’m watching them with magesight.    
See that cord of enchantment that links the priests to the trolls?
I asked, and got a mental grunt in the affirmative,
that’s a binding enchantment, obviously.  Those scrugs are going to be warded against a lot of offensive magic . . . but they probably will be thinking of their own arses, not their utility spells, when the battle starts.  So your job is simple: when things start to go foul, you attack the enchantment.  
How?
he asked, and I could feel the self-doubt wash  over him  through our link.  
Try the Sheerguards,
I suggested.
Uh, Master, I’ve never . . .
Of course.  Garkesku the Mediocre, Rondal’s former master, had been stingy with the good spells, lest his apprentices learn too much.  Idiot.  
Then do a loosening rune and augment it with a directional component and a common negator . . . and if that doesn’t work, use a Drandlesieve spell.
A . . . drandle--
Oh, just make something up!
I said, testily.  
Use your judgment, use your imagination, throw a rock at it, I don’t care -- just sever that link because--
I was interrupted mid-thought by the magically augmented voice of one of the urgulnosti priests., who stepped forward in front of his trolls, but well behind his line.  He even stood on a rock about the size of a wheelbarrow, which put him well over the heads of his troops.  And well within arrow range, if he wasn’t protected.  A few archers tested the theory, and saw their shafts veer off in crazy directions as the gurvani shaman leered and growled out his demands.
“Surrender at once, and your deaths will be swift!” he promised in passable, if guttural, human speech.  “The Dead God is merciful, for those he favors.  He may even grant you the opportunity to spare your life in his service.  He has accepted the allegiance of thousands of
humani
who serve him now.  They have been richly rewarded for their loyalty!”  His command of the language was admirable – I’d have to learn gurvani someday, I realized for the fifth or sixth time.
But I couldn’t stand it anymore.   I knew all about how these
humani
had come to serve the undead lord of the goblins, and it was a fate worse than death, be it quick or slow.  I couldn’t let that go unanswered, and I really wanted to keep him talking as long as possible. 

So I stood from my hiding place and walked
 boldly and purposefully to the front of the shield line, where our stout militiamen had bravely avoided peeing themselves at the sight of the trolls.  They were visibly shaking, and I really hoped the shamans weren’t noticing that.  For that matter, I really hoped the personal protections against arrows and sling stones and such were adequate.  
“I’ve seen the rewards the Dead God has for his servants . . . to serve, you must slay five fellow men in cold blood on his altar,” I explained loudly, mostly for the benefit of the militia.  “He prefers that you slay your own kin, but any cold-blooded murder will do to assure him of your loyalty.  We call those men the ‘soulless,’ because they aren’t really humani any more.  They’re cloaked in the guilt of murder, stained with the sin of sacrifice and survival under a brutal lord.  I’d prefer a clean death to that.”

“And what are you called, who pretends to know so much of our lord’s business?” the shaman asked, contemptuously. 

“I’m called a lot of things by a lot of people, and not all of them are very nice,” I admitted.  “But mostly I’m called Minalan the Spellmonger.  Well,
Sir
Minalan the Spellmonger, now, if you want to be technical.  My reward for slaughtering thousands and thousands of gurvani in the Wilderlands.“  If I could just get them mad enough, I was hoping that in their hunger they would make some tragic mistake.  That, really, was all the plan I had going.  I was hoping my infamy would give them pause, and I was right.

“The Spellmonger!” the shaman said, suddenly interested, even as his troops looked nervously to one another.
 “Our Lord has a
great
interest in you, Spellmonger.  You have taken from him what is rightfully his, and he resents it.”
“If he’s still upset I busted up his army and ruined his pet dragon, “ I sighed nonchalantly as I paced in front of the shield wall, “we’ll just have to call that even for
him
messing up
my
village.”
“You joke, Spellmonger, but the more mirth you make now, the more you will lament before your painful death.”
“That’s a long way away from here and now,” I pointed out.  “And right now, I’m calling on
you
to surrender.  We have you outnumbered.  The forest is full of my archers, the least of whom is could best your champion.   Walk away now, and you can have safe passage as far as the Timberwatch.  Beyond that . . . you’re on your own.”
“A bold demand, for a captain of
less than fifty
,” the lime-furred gurvan sneered spitefully.  “Even with the stolen shard you bear,
you
are on the weak end of this negotiation.  It is
you
who should surrender.  Or die.”
I shrugged.  “Look, I can do this all day,” I said, casually taking a piece of jerky out of my belt pouch and gnawing on it rudely.  Their entire defensive line began to drool afresh at the sight.  “But the truth is, I have other priorities.  I’ve
already
defeated a couple of goblin armies and I have a wedding to get to, among other errands.  Shouldn’t we come to some resolution?”

“The resolution will be the blood of your men staining the soil!” he yelled, drawing a wickedly curved, jagged dagger.  Gurvani manufacture, I note, not pillaged human loot.  “You will tremble at the sound of my voice, when I am done with you Spellmonger!  You will whimper when you see my face, after I have taken my pleasure in your pain!”

“I’m already kind of whimpering at your face,” I chuckled – and was gratified to hear a snicker or three from behind me.  “But I stood face to face with the Dead God himself, and slew plenty of trolls and countless gurvani.  Do you really think this moth-eaten band of raiders and a couple of second-rate shamans can take me?  Personally, I doubt you could take a juicy shank of mutton from a peasant’s fire without getting burned,” I shrugged, continuing to chew.  The imagery was a little much, perhaps, but it had the desired effect.  The gurvani soldiery became even more restless.  
“We are more than a match for you!” the priest boasted.  “We are the
elite
, the dark arm of the Lord Sharuel stretching out across the land to strangle all who oppose him--”
“You’re a misfit band of outlaws who got separated from the rest of your horde,” I dismissed.  “You’re the dark
armpit
of the Dead God.  I’ve had more dangerous
lunch dates
,” which was true, but not germane.  “If you’re so damn certain of your strength,
why don’t you attack then?
” I asked.  

I paused, and when he didn’t answer immediately, I pounced.
 “Oh! So you’re starting to wonder why the fearsome Spellmonger would be standing here so calmly, when he’s
clearly
outnumbered?  Perhaps you’re remembering what happened to your comrades in the clutches of the fire elemental on the fields of Timberwatch?” I reminded him.  “Or the poor saps who got caught outside of --”
“Enough!” the shaman shouted, and added something in gurvani I could only interpret as a curse.  “We fear no
humani,
mage or not!  You are all mortal, as we’ve shown.  And you are all . . .
tasty
. . . “ he said, drifting a bit.  I realized that he wasn’t quite in control of himself.  He had the same urgent expression as his soldiers.
So!  The shaman had wandered into a glyph as well!  This could get interesting!  I’d figured they’d be on the watch for such tricks, but apparently not.    “I’m a lot tougher than I look,” I demurred.   “But I’m not above sitting down and negotiating peacefully.  How about you and the other
urgulnosti
come down  here and we’ll discuss what will happen . . . say, over a  lightly toasted piece of salt pork, or a couple of rashers of bacon.  Only enough for
one
, I’m afraid, but--”
“ENOUGH!” the shaman wailed as his troops became even more agitated.  “You have food?  Then save it, and we’ll take it from your dead corpses and serve it beside them!”
Something, somewhere started happening, I could vaguely “feel.”  It wasn’t Rondal -- I could tell where he was, to the south and a little behind me -- but  somewhere else--
Master!
Tyndal excitedly “shouted” into my mind,
I’m attacking their rear-guard now!
By yourself?
I asked, but he wasn’t answering.  Shit.  The best I could do would be to distract these fellows and hope he didn’t get himself killed.
“That’s
hardly
a civilized way to conduct a war, don’t you think?” I asked flamboyantly flipping my cloak around.  “If you have the balls, you’ll charge me.  If you’re a cowardly little
rat
, then you’ll cower up there and hurl insults at me.”  I took another healthy bite of dried beef.  “Or you can come down here and surrender, and we’ll see about getting you fed.  There’s a whole baggage train of food down on the road.  Potatoes, onions, berethrea, pork, beef, mutton, eggs, even some wine or beer, I’d have to check the kegs to be sure. “