Summoner: Book 1: The Novice (3 page)

4

A small crowd had gathered around the soldier, children mostly, but also a few guardsmen who had nothing to trade and no coin to spend.

‘Come round, all of you! Everything you see here is the genuine article, the real deal. Every item has a blood curdling tale that will make you thank your lucky stars you live in the north,’ he yelled with the flourish of a fruit vendor, tossing a spearhead high in the air and deftly catching it between his fingers.

‘Perhaps I could interest you in a gremlin’s loincloth or an orc nose-ring? You, sir, what do you say?’ he said to a young boy with a finger firmly inserted in his nose, who was certainly not qualified to be called ‘sir’.

‘What’s a gremlin?’ asked the boy, his eyes widening.

‘Gremlins are slaves to the orcs. One might compare them to a squire to one of the knights of old, tending to his every need. Not great fighters; it’s in their breeding to be servile. That, and the fact that they barely come up to the height of a man’s knee,’ he said, demonstrating with his hand.

Fletcher eyed the image with renewed interest. Most people had some idea of what gremlins were, even this far north. They stood on two legs, as the orcs did, but wore nothing but tattered scraps of cloth around their waists. Their large bat-like ears and long crooked noses were distinctive, as were their elongated and nimble fingers, expert at prying snails from their shells and insects from rotten logs. Gremlins had grey skin, just like an orc’s, and their eyes were large and bulbous with sizeable pupils.

‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ asked the boy, kneeling to take a closer look at what was on offer.

‘I took it from the dead, my boy. They have no use for it, not where they’re going. It’s my way of bringing a little taste of the war up here.’

‘Are you on your way to the elven front?’ asked a guardsman. Fletcher saw it was Jakov, and ducked behind his stall. If Jakov noticed him, he might extract the price of the drink Fletcher had promised. He needed all his money to purchase the jacket.

‘I am indeed, but not because I’m a useless bag of bones, no siree. I was the only survivor in my squad. Got caught in a night raid whilst on a scouting mission. We barely had a chance.’ His voice had a hint of grief in it, yet Fletcher could not be sure if it was genuine.

‘What happened?’ Jakov asked, his voice dripping with disbelief as he looked the old man up and down.

‘I’d rather not say. It’s not a memory I relish,’ the soldier murmured, avoiding Jakov’s gaze. He lowered his head with apparent sadness. The crowd jeered and began to disperse, taking him for a liar.

‘All right, all right!’ the soldier yelled, seeing his customers slipping away. This was probably his last stop before reaching the elven front, and he would likely find it difficult to sell his goods to the soldiers there, many of whom would be all too familiar with the goods he had on offer.

‘Our orders were to scout out the next forward line,’ he began, as the crowd turned back to him. ‘The lines were advancing again. You see, the wood behind us had all been cleared, and we needed to move the trenches up.’

He began to speak with more confidence now, and Fletcher could see he was a natural storyteller.

‘It was darker than a stack of black cats that night, barely a sliver of a moon to light our way. I can tell you, we made more noise than a rhino charging as we made our way through the thickets. It was a miracle we made it more than ten minutes without being noticed,’ he intoned, his eyes seeming to mist over as if he were there again.

‘Get on with it!’ yelled one of the boys from the back, but his comment was met with glares and shushing as the crowd listened eagerly.

‘Our battlemage led the way, his demon had good night vision which helped somewhat; but it was all we could do not to accidentally fire our muskets, let alone keep our footing. A suicide mission if I’ve ever seen one. A waste of good men, that’s for sure,’ the soldier continued, twirling the spearhead between his fingertips.

‘They sent a summoner with you? Now that is a waste. I thought we had only a few hundred of them?’ Jakov asked, his scepticism replaced with fascination.

‘The mission was important, even if it was misguided. I didn’t know him well, but he was a good enough fellow, although he was definitely not a very powerful summoner. He was fascinated by the orc shamans, always asking the soldiers what they knew about them and their demons. He was constantly scribbling and drawing in his book, investigating the remains of the orc villages we passed over, copying the runes they painted on the walls of their huts.’ The soldier must have noticed their faces begin to go blank as he went off topic, so he hurried on.

‘In any case, it was not long before we were lost, the few stars we had been using to navigate covered by rain clouds. Our fate was sealed when the drizzle began. Have you ever tried firing a musket with wet gunpowder? It was one disaster after another.’ He dropped the spearhead on the cloth and balled his fists together with emotion.

‘The chosen weapon of the orc is a javelin. When one hits you, it sends you flying like a cannon ball, pinning you to the ground if it doesn’t go clean through and into the man behind. They whistled through the trees and plucked us from the earth like the world had flipped sideways. We didn’t even see who was throwing them, but half the men were dead in the first volley, and I didn’t want to hang around for the second. The summoner made a break for it, and I followed him. If anyone could make it back in the midst of that god-awful mess, it was him. We ran in a panic, following the chirps of his demon.’

‘What kind of demon was it?’ asked Jakov, his hands clasped together in rapt attention.

‘I never got a good look at it in the dark. It looked like a flying beetle and it was ugly as sin, but I’m thankful to it; without it I would be a dead man. In the end, the summoner stumbled and fell, and I saw a javelin had winged his side. The bugger was bleeding like a stuck pig. There wasn’t much I could do for him, but the damned demon wouldn’t leave without him, so I picked him up and carried him away. The poor bastard must have died before we reached the trenches, but the demon led me back all the same. The little varmint wouldn’t leave his side when I brought the body back. They tried to do me for desertion, but I told them I was carrying the wounded and the rest of the troop got lost behind. They didn’t know what to do with me, with my squad dead an’ all and my age being what it is, so in the end, they chaffed me. My only consolation was the summoner’s pack, full of some of the goodies you see before you. But that wasn’t the real gem . . .’ He rummaged through the saddlebags by his feet and suddenly Fletcher realised what it had all been leading up to. Perhaps the soldier did this with every crowd, reeling them in with his story, then bringing out the most expensive piece.

Yet what the soldier removed with a flourish was not the shrunken head or preserved demon he had been expecting. It was a book, bound in heavy brown leather, with thick vellum pages. It was the summoner’s book!

5

If the soldier had expected to impress his crowd, he was mistaken. Most looked on ambivalently and there were even a few groans. In a small hunting town such as Pelt, learning to read was far down the list of priorities. Many villagers would struggle to get through the first page, let alone the entirety of a thick book. Fletcher, on the other hand, had been put in charge of Berdon’s finances, which required him to be both numerate and literate. The many long hours he had spent sweating over his numbers and letters had cost him precious time to play with the other children, but he was proud of his education and was sure he was just as learned as Didric, if not more so.

The soldier smiled as he brandished the book, holding it up in the grey winter light and flicking through the pages, giving Fletcher a tantalising glimpse of scrawled handwriting and intricate sketches.

‘What else you got?’ asked Jakov, the disappointment clear in his voice.

‘Plenty! But they don’t get much better than this, if you will allow me to explain. Let me show you, before we move on to the next item,’ the soldier implored.

The crowd, though disinterested in the book, was not going to let free entertainment go to waste. There were nods of assent and urging from them, and the soldier broke into a snaggle-toothed grin. He hopped on to an empty crate from the next stall and beckoned the crowd closer, holding the tome above his head where everyone could see.

‘This battlemage was the lowest rank a summoner can assume, a second lieutenant to a regiment that hadn’t even finished their training. But he volunteered for that fateful mission, and when I looked through his book I understood why. The man was looking for a game changer, a way of summoning something new.’ He had their attention now, and he knew it. Fletcher gazed across the street, slack jawed, earning him a warning cough from Berdon. He straightened and busied himself with the stall, though it was already impeccably arranged.

‘The orc shamans summon all manner of demons, but they are mostly base, weak creatures, no match to what our own summoners can bring forth. Yet there are only a few species of demon our summoners are able to capture from the other world, with the occasional rare exception. So, although our summoners are more powerful than orc summoners many times over, that leaves us with only a few strings to our bow, so to speak. And what this battlemage was trying to do was to find a way, using orcish techniques, to summon the
really
powerful demons.’

During his night in the barracks on the elven front, Fletcher had overheard reminisced accounts of horrifying demons that slunk in the night, slitting sleeping throats and slipping away. Beasts that came clawing out of the jungle like wildcats and fought until their bodies were ragged with musket balls. If these were the base and weak creatures that the soldier spoke of, then he would not like to meet the demon of a fully-fledged battlemage.

‘So we’re to believe that book holds a secret that will change the course of the war? Or contains instructions on how to summon our own demons? Perhaps it is worth its weight in gold,’ a familiar voice scoffed, dripping with sarcasm.

It was Didric, back from the stables. He had been standing behind the next stall along, out of Fletcher’s view.

‘Your words, not mine, my good sir,’ the soldier said, tapping his nose with a knowing wink.

‘It would be more worthwhile to invest money in the pitiful weapons across the road than in your book!’ Didric smirked as Fletcher reddened at the jibe, then Didric strolled around the crate to the front of the crowd, carelessly kicking the rhino horn over as he did so.

‘Why would the summoner volunteer for such a mission, if he had already discovered this great secret? And why would you be selling it here, if the book was worth so much? As for it containing summoning instructions, we all know only those of noble blood and a few lucky others are blessed with the ability needed to summon.’ He sneered as the soldier gaped in surprise, but then the soldier rallied with surprising alacrity.

‘Well now, sire, he probably was eager to see an orc demon up close. I don’t know my letters, and so I don’t know its worth, and it would be confiscated from me if I tried to sell it to any battlemage, since it was stolen from one of their own.’ He spread his arms, his face a picture of innocence.

‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I will likely hand it over when I get to the elven front. But if I can make a few shillings on the side, knowing that the book will reach a battlemage eventually regardless, well, who could begrudge me that, after carrying the man halfway across the jungle?’ He lowered his head in false modesty, peeking through his greasy locks. The crowd was uneasy, unsure which party to side with. Didric was certainly popular, especially when he was being free with Caspar’s money in the tavern. Yet the soldier was exciting, and Fletcher could see the crowd wanted this story to be true, even if they knew in their hearts that it was not.

Even as the crowd jeered and Fletcher began to grin at the bully losing this battle of wits to a common soldier, Didric interjected.

‘Wait. Did you not say earlier that you knew the focus of his studies by looking through the book? Surely you would need to read to know about any of this? You are a liar and a fraud, and I have a good mind to send for the Pinkertons. They might even throw a desertion charge at you too.’ He laughed as the soldier spluttered.

‘You have him dead to rights now,’ Jakov said, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘There are pictures in the book . . .’ the soldier stammered, but was immediately shouted down by the crowd, who had begun to mock him. Didric raised his voice and held up a hand for silence.

‘I’ll tell you what. I like the look of the book. It is curiosity and the need for learning that drives me, not the desire for riches,’ he declared nobly, even as the gold trimming on his clothing glinted in the sunlight.

‘I will come by later to pick it up. Shall we call it . . . four shillings? I just so happened to sell a pair of fine antlers for the same price last night,’ he said, giving Fletcher a gloating look. He did not wait for an answer, but instead strode off in triumph, followed by Jakov and most of the soldier’s customers.

The soldier looked after him in fury, but soon dejection took over. He sat down on the crate with an audible sigh, dropping the book on to the ground in defeat. Crestfallen at Didric’s victory, Fletcher watched as the wind sent the pages riffling.

He did not know how, but Didric was going to pay that night. One way or another.