The Making of a Mage King: White Star (7 page)

“Prince! Here!” yelled Sean across the suddenly much quieter square.

Prince charged across the square toward them causing most of the guards around him to dive from his path. The massive mountain of horseflesh skidded to a halt in front of Sean and shoved his face into his chest. He was blowing and sweating from what must have been a very frightening run through a strange city.

The constable, Dreux, backpedaled when the big horse came thundering over, and he continued to retreat when he saw Sean climb up on him. Sean could see in his face that he had just become something akin to a demon.

The rest of Sean’s men, coming in hot on Prince’s heels, were the last straw for the man. He signaled for his men and they vanished down another street.

“He’ll warn the garrison,” said Andelys.

“I’m sure he will,” said Sean. He wasn’t the slightest bit worried about what Dreux would tell the garrison commander, they had already received several messengers with news of trouble by now.

Sean was pleased to see that a little time had been spared to round up some of their horses from the stables where they had been left. Now, only about a quarter of his men were afoot.

He turned to Cordan. “Take Leo, about twenty mounted and half of the foot and go around to the dock side of the garrison. Have Andelys, and as many of his men who are willing, go with you and show you the best way to get there. He moved over to Leo. “You’re their most dangerous asset, stay alert, and stay alive.”

“Yes, my lord,” said the man.

Sean turned to face the rest of them. “
Ruihano
Rotomas, are you ready for this?” he asked, as he put his helmet on.

The name started as a whispered echo, which surged into a chant that came close to being a war cry as they started to move.

In a city this size, Sean knew that they would be horribly outnumbered, and that translated down to: he couldn’t afford to be gentle or lenient. If they raised a sword against them, they had to die quickly and finally. There would be no prisoners, not until the odds became a lot more even.

They moved slower than they had at Caen, but that was because they had men on foot. It was probably a good thing, though; it gave them time to watch the roofs. They wouldn’t be charging into an ambush quite so fast this time.

Having grown up in a very tall city, Sean knew how easy it was to take the buildings for granted; they are a perimeter to your perception and nothing more. As such a perimeter, they can be forgotten or tuned out, that is until they reach out and slap you. After Caen, Sean didn’t think he would ever take buildings for granted again.

The garrison commander didn’t take them for granted either. The first attack came from a rooftop vantage point in the distance and it was magic. Fortunately, it was directed at what appeared to be the most dangerous component of their force: Manuel and Sean and their known direction of entry. Manuel’s horse reared and screamed, as did Manuel himself, though he choked his scream back and quickly pulled his horse back under control. Prince did a kind of duck-and-dive, which almost unseated his rider, but Sean was still able to find the mage and stop him before he could launch a second attack.

Sean glanced at Manuel; he had a bloody nose, but other than that, he looked all right and the snarl on his face said that he still had more fight left in him. They kept moving.

A few hundred yards later, two demons came at them from around a corner. A couple months ago, Sean would have sent them to the palace and his uncle without much thought, but that was out of the question now. He also couldn’t just drop them back inside the garrison walls because he didn’t know exactly where that was yet and he didn’t want to put them in someone’s house, though the chances of him missing walls was pretty slim. Instead, they just died; one second they were charging and the next second they were tumbling onto the street like ragdolls thrown by a child’s hand. Manuel and Sean trotted on over them, the horses missing the bodies only in the interest of secure footing. The smaller horses had only a little more trouble and some of that might have been the smell; they had not been trained for something like this. The men just muttered and went around them.

When they rounded the corner, Sean saw the next stage of their defenses. Clustered at the end of the street was a company of footmen with archers. Sean strongly suspected that their appearance was a bit of a surprise; since they couldn’t see around the corner, they didn’t know how close their opponents were. They had been listening for the sounds of battle to tell them where they were as if the sound of their horses’ hooves on the cobbles wasn’t enough. Or maybe they weren’t expected to appear with so little fuss.

They had another mage among their ranks and that man launched a massive fireball at the Sean. A volley of arrows followed the fireball as if riding its contrail. Sean rolled a ball of water back at them and the resulting explosion of steam caused the arrows to careen off course. He pushed that water that was still intact on into the men who were still clustered in the mouth of the street, and their hasty barricade was broken apart as if it had been hit by a bowling ball.

Sean and his men were upon them before many of them could secure their footing on the wet cobbles; many of them didn’t move at all. Most of those who could, scattered. Some of them threw down their swords and held up their hands in surrender. That was fine with Sean; he glued them to the nearest walls. He would catch up with those who had fled sooner or later; at least they weren’t behind him.

As Sean cleared the street, he came out into what looked like a large, paved parade field before the walls of the compound itself. Around the square, other street-heads had been fortified as well.
Surely they didn’t have to guess which direction I was coming from
.
Did they release demons down every street?
It was one thing to send those insane creatures after a threatening armed force; it’s quite another to turn them loose in a city to find whatever they could find. What if they saw some child playing in the street? What if they found some old man smoking a pipe? Even a man in his prime and armed as Sean had seen many men in the city were, would have little chance against a crazed demon and his equally crazed horse.

“Cordan, have you come across any demons yet?”

“No, my lord, but then we’re not all that close yet.”

Through the link, Sean could tell that he had a vague impression of being several blocks away still, and he was sure that Cordan could tell the same way that he was within sight of the walls. “Watch for them. If they have more than two of them, they may be running loose in the streets. And be careful; they have mages too.”

Cordan’s response was a grim growl, then Sean had something else to worry about. A mage, now behind him, because he had either slipped in the water and had been knocked senseless, or because he had been pretending, was gathering up another fireball. Sean felt the gathering magic, picked him up out of the water and he burst into flames all in the span of a heartbeat. He had been powerful enough to mount a strong attack, but he lacked the skill to call the fire back. Sean should have killed him the instant he detected him, but instead he had picked him up, which meant that he used a hard shell of air to lift him from the ground. Instead of making the fire where his enemy was, he had sought to throw it like a ball. The fire couldn’t go anywhere. Watching someone burst into flame and burn to death is not very pleasant. Sean couldn’t drop him back into the water fast enough to save him from that demise.

He turned away from the sight and struggled to contain the contents of his stomach, then they were fighting again. Issuing from the garrison gate and coming at them from the other street heads that he could see, were what added up to be several hundred men with their archers and their mages. At least Sean’s appearance attracted the mages away from his other troops.

Those coming from the compound were mounted and they could cover the distance fastest. Sean knew that the archers would stop and begin firing volleys as soon as they were in range. Since the mages were advancing too, they would likely start their mayhem at the same time as the archers, though they didn’t need to close the distance.

With a long sweep of his hand, every living thing in Sean’s range of view, died.
God, I’m beginning to really hate black magic
.

In the face of all that death, Sean led them forward in grim silence. By the time they reached the front gate, several men on the walls had thrown their swords from the wall and knelt in plain sight with their hands on their heads. He could hear the commander inside yelling orders and it sounded like he was getting frantic.

Sean exploded the gate open and the flying shards of wood lay out another swath of death and destruction. Sean regretted that many of the men appeared to have already surrendered, but he couldn’t help that now. His men flooded into the compound and took the fight to a more personal level. He could no longer deal out swaths of death. He drew his swords and waded in along with the rest of them; this was a much more satisfactory way to wage war.



Cordan reached the back gate about twenty minutes later to find them thrown open and men scattering away as fast as they could run. He let them go; none of them were armed. Those who couldn’t clear the gates before he reached them threw themselves to their knees and laced their fingers on top of their heads.

When the fighting stopped, Sean dismounted, took about three steps away from Prince and threw up. He gagged and heaved until he thought he was going to turn himself inside out. Larry was at his side and Sean hung his weight from his shoulder and threw up again. When he thought he could stand and not puke for a while, he turned to find Tomas waiting for him.

“Is this your first battle?” he asked, sympathetically.

“Not really,” he said, and he washed his mouth out with some water another man offered him. “Using black magic turns my stomach.” Sean glanced toward the gate. “I used a lot of it out there. It’s all yours now,
Ruihano
, make of it what you can; I need some air.”

He was just turning away when another man came up with a prisoner who looked like he might faint if he got any closer. “
Ruihano
,
Dioruihano
,” he looked at Sean when he said the last honorific. “This man says that they had ten demons stabled here. He says that they were all sent into the city without handlers.”

Sean sighed.
I guess I’m not done yet.
“I’ll find them. What do you want me to do with the bodies?”

“What
can
you do with the bodies?” asked the new
ruihano
, surprised that he had asked that question. Sean looked at him while he tried to assemble a list of the possible things he could do, but he didn’t have to give it. “I don’t care what you do with them,” he added. “Just make them go away.

Sean went from street to street, searching until long after midnight, but finding only six of the eight remaining demons and their mad horses. The chaos and destruction they had left in their wake was heartbreaking. Too bad the commander who had ordered their release hadn’t survived the battle.

When he finally came upon the last two, he saw something that chilled his heart. Standing in the middle of the dark market square was a demon sitting quietly on his horse facing an indistinct form that could only be a person on foot.

The demon and his horse were quiet, so Sean approached him in kind. He left his men in the shadows of the street with orders to be silent. As he got closer, he could pick out that, what he had thought was a single form, was in fact a young couple, standing frozen in each other’s arms. Too terrified to move, they stood trembling only a few feet beyond the demon’s reach. As Sean entered the square, the demon turned his head to look at him. His horse tossed his head and snorted, but under the rider’s firm hand, he remained stationary.

As Sean wove through the deserted stalls and scattered produce, he saw that the last unaccounted-for demon and his horse were lying a few yards away, already dead. The broken and bloody condition of the bodies said that they had been killed by someone who was also mounted and that certainly wasn’t the young man standing in the middle of the square holding what might be his fiancé. As far as Sean knew, they were the only men riding through the city and he certainly hadn’t fought this or any of the other demons he had found; he hadn’t bothered to get close enough.

As Sean drew closer to the demon, he swiveled his helmeted head from Sean to the young couple and back again. His movements were slow, as if he moved under water. The fact that Sean moved should have been enough to trigger him to attack. Hell, the fact that the young couple
breathed
should have been enough.

Prince snorted and Sean whispered, “Be good.” He sidled Prince closer, and when the other horse reached for Prince’s flank with his jagged teeth, Sean muzzled him so that all he could do was butt his head at them. Still the demon sat still and just watched.

Sean sidled Prince even closer; now they were knee to knee and the destrier was hunching and blowing. Sean gripped the man’s arm and sent a healing through him. Like he had done for Manuel, he used all of his healing power on him, and he was stronger now than he had been then.