Lesson of the Fire (34 page)

The cyan’s eyes went wide at that.

“The Mardux is a clever opponent. He
deliberately defies expectations just to keep us off-balance,
wondering what he will do. He murdered my brother in cold blood
without hesitation or remorse. He spared Einar, swatted Horik like
a mosquito and dismembered Solvi in full view of all of us. I put
nothing past him.”

“Even so, Nightfire would bring the full
weight of the Law against the Mardux for assassinating a dux.”

“Not until after he had done the deed. Even
then, Nightfire has already spared Weard Takraf once. The sage is
every bit as unpredictable as his student, where the Mardux is
concerned.” Ragnar saluted Vigfus. “Go to Flasten. I can handle the
siege of Domus Palus.”

“Yes, Weard Groth.” Vigfus called the myst
and vanished into the Tempest.

“Shall I return, as well, Weard Groth?”
Odveig Spitz asked softly.

Ragnar looked at the cyan as though he had
forgotten he was there. He considered for a moment. “No, stay here.
I will find a use for you.”

Two days later, a scout dressed in blue
reported to Ragnar’s command tent. He saluted with one raised hand.
“Weard Groth, the Domus army has turned around.”

“They will never reach us before we take
Domus,” Odveig murmured, slapping a mosquito.

Ragnar took a good look at the scout. Odveig
was clearly not used to being out of Flasten Palus. He was a
history scholar, a teacher at the Flasten Palus Academy. He was
enduring this march poorly in spite of his magic, but the mosquitos
seemed glad to have him. Some of the other wizards joked that Odvig
kept the mosquitos away from them by presenting such an
irresistible alternative. His face and hands were a mass of bite
marks.

“How far away are they?” Ragnar asked
carefully.

“Three hundred miles or more. We had to
relay scouts.”

It would take them more
than a month to move that distance,
Ragnar
thought.
It took them two months to get
out there. They would all have to be able to teleport to reach
us.

So Ragnar put it out of his
mind until the next afternoon, when the report said the Domus army
was less than two hundred miles away. The same blue delivered it.
Ragnar thought his name was Rolf Entsen.
Or is it Odulf Entsen?

“A hundred miles a day?” the dux’s son
mused. “They will be exhausted when they catch up. If they catch
up.”

Odvig Spitz scratched his face. “We could
move our men with Mobility, too.”

Ragnar shook his head. “We would be sitting
ducks to anyone who came upon us. The only reason the Domus army is
not being annihilated by Drakes is because they killed all of them
on the way out. They collapse into the mud every night.”

But Ragnar ordered the Flasten army to stop
and make camp a day ahead of the Domus army. Unless Domus had
enough control over its twenty thousand wizards to call a halt with
very little notice, they would arrive and be surrounded on three
sides by his carefully deployed troops.

Chapter 28

“
Early Marduxes supported scholars
researching spells with military applications by granting them
charters to claim any village with a population of less than five
hundred as a research domain. These charters provided the first
magocrats with a place to live and work where their basic needs
could be met by the mundane population, but many wizards became
petty tyrants over communities that lacked the authority to expel
them.”

— Weard Gilda Kronas,

The Rise of Magocracy

Ragnar wished for one of the reconnaissance
stones the Mardux’s army was rumored to have.

He wandered the north side of his army
relaying messages and listening to reports from his amber and cyan
commanders. A quarter-mile south, another line paralleled this one,
and to the west, the bulk of his army waited. North and south would
envelope the Domus army. A retinue of twelve blues trailed him,
eyes peeled for anyone aiming a stick in their direction.

He was thus employed when the message
arrived from the far south edge: “The Domus army is turning.”

“How in Marrish’s name?” he cried, calling
upon his retinue to help him in a reconnaissance spell.

The Domus army was indeed turning, slowly,
inexorably bending to the north. But the southern side had clipped
his southern flank and spun, like a log in a whirlpool. It would
slam into the northern arm.

To his runners, “West side collapse on the
north flank. South side march north. Attack Domus wizards on
sight.” Then he used Mobility to run east, to beat the Domus army
to his flank.

He arrived as the armies clashed.

Domus greens appeared on the edge of his
vision out of nowhere. Then they vanished, and before he could
blink were behind his carefully structured line, its wizards still
drawing on Energy for a blast.

The Flasten wizards’ spells hit empty air
ahead of them as they themselves were slammed face-first into the
mud from behind. Then the Domus wizards were gone again.

Ragnar drew his marsord and joined the army,
shouting at the top of his lungs.

They were moving way too fast. Standing in a
line is not going to work.

The generals of a thousand years of wars in
his nation and others screamed tactics at him. But this kind of
battle was beyond their experience; he would have to adapt.

Walls of Power met the next wave of greens.
As they fell into the mud, Energy ignited their cloaks.

Now Domus will come more cautiously.

* * *

Horsa hovered out of sight with a hundred
wizards.

It is my own fault. I should have stopped us
an hour earlier, figured out exactly what Flasten’s position
was.

In any case, his order to turn the army had
come too late, and now smaller groups — never more than a hundred,
usually much smaller — were scattered amid Flasten’s crescent
defense.

He used Knowledge to ascertain where any gap
was in Flasten’s defenses. The north flank of his army had been
able to move, but the south flank’s momentum had been too great to
steer it out of the way of the crescent.

Finally, it appeared a gap would open for
them.

I must get these people through alive.

“Go in thirty,” he whispered, and the words
swept out from him like ripples in water. “Spare your magic to save
your companions and to move faster.”

Three … two … one.

The force moved as one, a school of fish
appearing and disappearing every hundred yards. It paused a hundred
feet before the straggling line of Flasten’s army and leapt two
hundred feet beyond it.

They made it.

Horsa hopped back to the line, looking for
more wizards. He chanced a recon spell. Another large group of
Domus wizards was ahead. He found them quickly.

“Follow me,” he ordered and turned to take
them to safety.

Explosions sent mud flying from the rear.
Trees sailed up into the air.

Flasten’s south flank has
arrived,
Horsa thought.
“Quickly!”

An arm landed in the mud in front of him. He
ran over it and prepared to teleport away. He let a few people pass
him, shouting orders, as an invisible wall of Power swept up
everything in the swamp — trees, shrubs and Mar alike. Ahead,
another wall filled his vision from horizon to horizon.

Cannot go through
it.
“To the east! Move! Get
out!”

They raced as the two walls
came crushing down on them. Horsa jumped onto a tree limb, his
cloak catching on a bramble bush. Then he was on top of a pile of
trees. He could see the edge of the walls, where the motes were
sparser.
It will hurt, but
...

He slammed through the edge of the wall and
tumbled through the mud. Rising as fast as he could, Power stripped
the mud off him.

About a dozen had survived with him. He
gathered them to himself and summoned every bit of the myst he
could. Grabbing the weards, he whispered, “Marrish, help me,” and
teleported them all to the rendezvous point.

They appeared four miles to the north, in
what was rapidly becoming a clearing. As Horsa ordered his twelve
to find their division, a lavender ran up to him.

“Weard Verifien, we have a preliminary
count,” she said.

“Of what?” he asked, staring at another
group of weards who had just arrived.

“Casualties.”

Horsa received the casualty count with
dulled ears. Today at least a thousand had died, those caught in
Flasten’s flank and reactions.

Marrish, grant me
strength. Lord of Wind and Fire, keep my soul steady.
He sat in a clearing designated for him while the
four lavenders waited on him to give orders.

But we saved hundreds today. Thousands. More
than nineteen thousand remain to fight. What do I do with them?

Take them and retreat to a town? There was
no town big enough to hold them. They must meet any army on the
field.

Attack Flasten? The Flasten army was at
nearly full strength, and it was well-rested. They had been caught
by surprise today and still killed a thousand of the Domus army.
What kind of casualties had they suffered?

Horsa put his head in his
hands, prayed.
I am no general. How do I
direct these men?

“Flasten’s army is regrouping,” the report
came from the weard guarding the recon stone. “They look to be
building defenses.”

He raised his head.
That general knows what he is doing. But we have
the advantage in leadership. I can split our army four ways, and
each of those divisions can be split again, down to the very groups
of eight the Mardux instructed me to make them into.

He paused in his thoughts, looking at the
lavenders.

“We could attack him in a fortified
position,” Horsa said.

They nodded, giving him advice on doing it.
But he decided there would be too many casualties.

“When the Mardux attacked the advancing
gobbels … ” someone said, and Horsa raised his hand to stop the
lavender as the answer appeared in his head.

A moving army is more difficult to defend.
We must find a way to get his army moving.

He nodded to himself, gave thanks to the
gods. Then he summoned the lavenders before him and began issuing
orders.

* * *

“How are the defenses coming?”

Ragnar had ordered traps built, trenches dug
and the camp raised out of the swamp several feet so most types of
teleportation would not work. He had learned enough from his first
encounter with the Domus army to understand how quickly it had
crossed the vast distance between them.

I will not be caught unaware again.

Shouts rose from the northeast, and Ragnar
grabbed his marsord and ran there.

Domus weards clashed freely with the Flasten
weards. The Domus weards appeared to flicker in and out.

“Walls of Power!” Ragnar shouted, heeding
his own advice and throwing up the blue wall that hundreds of Domus
wizards had slammed into during the first battle.

But those did not stop the Domus wizards
this time. They dodged them. Suddenly, Ragnar realized what was
really happening here, even as shouts rose from the northwest.

“Regroup! Don’t follow them!” The defenses
were destroyed. Many weards were singed and being healed by a
comrade. And many more touched Mobility and followed the token
Domus assault out into the swamp.

Ragnar swore, summoned
Mobility and chased down a group of Domus weards.
Nine of them,
he noted as
four of them struck his shield with bolts of fire. He targeted the
ground below them with Power and Energy, which exploded, drenching
himself with mud and leaving four boots behind. He moved on, trying
to gather his men.

But the Domus commander had done his job
well. Eight groups of a thousand had sliced through the Flasten
camp, shaving chunks of a hundred or more off each time to chase
and — Ragnar had to assume — die before the army they followed.

But if I did my math right
...
Ragnar reappeared in the center of his
camp.

“Order the army to march north,” he told his
commanders. He pointed at a cyan. “Take a thousand north as quickly
as possible and strike through the center of the Domus army.”

The cyan nodded and left.

“We divide the rest of the army into seven
groups, chase down those others who came in. And when I say chase,
good weards, I mean hunt them as though they were gobbels who had
just kidnapped your daughter.”

* * *

Horsa sat in his clearing, three of the
lavenders in attendance.

What can I do?
he thought, staring at the reconnaissance stone.
The plan had worked. The Flasten army was obviously dividing, even
more than his groups had taken it. They were engaged with the
slices they had drawn away from the enemy army, each a mile or more
from the Flasten camp.

The divisions will attack those weards. We
must get them to return here as soon as they are through.

But his gut said they should move
sooner.

Then a blob of Flasten’s army flickered dead
toward them. It flickered again, much closer.

“A thousand approach from the south,” Horsa
told one of his commanders. “Make sure we don’t splinter.”

The lavender nodded and strode away.

Then shouts came from the east. Horsa’s head
snapped back to the stone. The Flasten thousand had shifted, come
in from the east. He almost moved, but then, as quickly as it had
come, there was silence. Then shouts of victory.

“A thousand attacked in the east,” the
report came. “They killed three, injured more than a hundred, who
are now healed. Then they retreated.”