Authors: Greg Curtis
Sam in turn studied them as they galloped towards him, saddened somewhat by the sight. Even more than the others, the stragglers confirmed all that the soldier had told him the previous night and more. The same sorry tale of battle, loss and death. They were a rag tag group. A party of soldiers – possibly a border patrol by the looks of their armour – with a group of civilians in their midst. Traders were also in the group, complete with two trade wagons. But instead of wares in the backs of their wagons, they had women and children. At least a dozen.
Too many of the soldiers were wounded for his liking, and few had had time to dress their injuries, while those bandages that had been tied were blood soaked. Meanwhile many of the civilians were wounded as well, and the fear and sorrow on their faces was enough to tell him that even those who were uninjured were carrying a heavy burden of pain and grief. They had lost people, friends and family. Their feelings added to his anger.
“To me!” Even as he called to them, Sam was drawing his spare greatsword and battle axe from Aegis' pack. They were all he really needed, while the rest of the supplies she carried – mainly food, clothing, some spare armour, medicine and of course his goat – they could use. Well, perhaps not the armour, though they could probably sell it for coin. Three full sets of blackened snake scale armour would be of little use against steel golems. Its value was in the way it allowed its wearer to creep up on his prey silently. Besides, it wouldn't fit.
When the first of them reached him, he told them to take Aegis and anything else they needed and keep going up the trail as far and as fast as they could. He would catch them up. They didn't try to talk him out of staying once they saw him with weapons drawn and fire already dancing off his blades. They could see he was both a wizard and a warrior and they understood he was planning on fighting. They would not interfere.
Two of the women from the wagons jumped on Aegis, lessening the load on the other horses a little, and in a few more heartbeats they were behind him, galloping away as fast as they could. No doubt a few looked back as they fled, staring at his armoured back and wondering who he was. But they weren't foolish enough to waste time in conversation.
A few moments later the clearing was once more silent and Sam was alone. But the enemy was closer. He could feel them, like tiny charges of lightning dancing over his skin. He could almost see them in his mind. Happily he knew they were still at least half an hour away, but to feel them this strongly from such a range meant that they were even more powerfully enchanted than he'd guessed. It was time for him to prepare his magical defences. And by then he knew he had to. This would not be a simple battle, it would be war.
His initial thought had been that there would only be a few of them. The advancing scouts chasing down the stragglers and clearing the region of enemies. That at least was a logical military action. But sensing them as they approached he realised that that was not the case. He could feel perhaps several hundred of them, maybe even more. They were hunting as a pack and were chasing the elves hard. These weren't the scouts he'd expected. They were the first wave of an army, harrying their defeated foes, and preparing the way for a larger force to follow. Hand weapons and the odd fire ball as he'd planned to use against such numbers would be useless. Instead he began preparing his most powerful magics, concentrating as he never had before.
Knowing he would need every ounce of strength he could muster to fight so many at once, and yet relishing the fight like one too long soaked in blood, he began by channelling all the fire he could find. He drew heat from the sun above, and the warmth from the ground below. He also pulled some of the life spark out of the forest. With only half an hour to prepare himself and plenty of need, Sam used every scrap of his strength that he could to draw in the fire, and quickly found himself channelling more fire than he had ever held in his entire life.
Normally he channelled no more than enough to launch a few good fireballs, plenty to take on most enemies, or to practice with. This time he was gathering enough to knock down a castle, and just hoped that it would be enough. Yet strangely it was no more difficult. The stakes were perhaps slightly higher in that if he made a mistake, there was the likelihood that he would explode like a blocked cannon, levelling the entire clearing in the process instead of just burning himself to a cinder, but the effort involved was no greater. That surprised him.
After nearly five years of daily practice with the arcane texts, struggling to master the complex exercises, and learning to hold ever more sophisticated shapes in his thoughts, he'd reached some form of plateau. A level beyond which he could not progress. In fact for the last few years he'd almost thought himself sliding backwards in some areas as his hopes had faded and his mood darkened. Particularly in terms of increasing his strength. Sure, his control might have been improving, but it had seemed he was paying a price for that control in terms of raw strength.
That had scared him for a while, because he knew that only when he had his magic at full power would he ever have a hope of rescuing Ryshal. And that was his goal. In fact it had been his only purpose in training, even though he knew in his heart that he had no real hope of doing that. Because to get to her he'd have to get to his brother first, and to get to him he would have to go through an entire keep of soldiers and wizards. And even if he did finally manage to get to him, one of Heri's guards would only hold a sword to Ryshal's throat until he let him go. Despair had set in after a while and he guessed that that was part of what had held him back. But even knowing what it was, he had not been able to fight it. Until now. Now for some reason, the power he needed was coming to him in leaps and bounds.
Perhaps he had been getting stronger as his studies progressed, something his instructors back in Fair Fields had always promised him would happen if he worked at it. Perhaps it was just the need and the imminent danger that was giving him the extra strength. Possibly it was the ever growing anger as he thought about what these things were doing to Ryshal's kin while he was still exiled here, unable to rescue her. It could even be the relief as he finally had an enemy to strike at instead of simply turning his anger inwards. Or maybe it was just that the drawing of the fire had never been the hard part. Whatever it was he didn't care. He couldn't. Not when the magic was singing so sweetly in his veins.
Sam felt a darkness in his soul, and it revelled in the power. It sang at the thought of what it was going to do with that power. It screamed of vengeance and might. Sam was scared – of it as much as the enemy – but not as much as he should have been. Because that same darkness would not allow it. The power that he'd struggled to attain for so long had finally arrived. In fact there was suddenly far more than he'd ever dreamt of. And he was going to use it to destroy his enemies.
All of them
. Instead of worrying about the danger, or even the rightness of his actions, Sam simply let the magic build and concentrated only on hanging on to it until it was time to be used.
All around him the temperature fell drastically, and soon the clearing had a frost forming all over it, as well as the nearer trees. In fact the only place not turning white was the patch of green on which he and Tyla stood. Winter was suddenly coming to the forests on a beautiful summer morning. It was something he'd seen many times before, though never on such a scale. All fire magicians had seen this from time to time. It was simply fire and ice – two sides of the same magical coin. After all, they had to draw their fire from somewhere.
In time Sam knew he had drawn enough fire to handle anything that came. He had enough fire magic to level a mountain. If what he held within him couldn't destroy them, then nothing could. It was time to start focussing it.
Draw, shape and release. Those were the three steps in using any elemental magic, and he had practised them all until he had fallen asleep on his feet on too many nights. This was no different except for its impossible scale. Now that the drawing was done it was time to shape it. To make it into the weapon he needed.
First he began by preparing his weapons to serve as spell founts. These would be able to store and release the magic in controlled bursts. Normally for a wizard, the shaping was held within the wizard himself, but as Sam also had a good grounding in Earth magic as well, he'd discovered over the years that he could impart small amounts of the magic into solid objects and use them to shape and hold it. It was what the common folk and hedge wizards called enchantment.
Few other wizards were also enchanters, something for which he could be grateful since for a wizard at war, enchantment was one of the most useful weapons he could use. With enough time he could enchant a legion of weapons and traps; enough to devastate an army before he even had to ready his own defences.
Enchantment was some of the most delicate and complicated wizardry he had ever studied, and yet he'd found over the years as he'd practised it, that it wasn't difficult for him. A sign perhaps of his increasing control of the magic. But never before had he tried imparting such huge amounts of magic into any weapon.
First he imbued his favourite greatsword with the fire scythe enchantment and enough power to slice through a mountain. He gave it all that the sword could take without exploding, which was a lot. The sword was well made and had not a single imperfection along its gleaming length. It had to be to handle the power he was channelling into it. Despite his concerns the sword held the power perfectly, and he re-sheathed the blade with extreme care. With so much magic within it, even a small dent from a fall could result in the weapon exploding.
Next came the battle-axe. He gave it the thunder fire storm enchantment. The axe itself was almost too large to use as a weapon even for him, its double-sided head weighing twice as much as even a greatsword. But that same mass made it perfect for holding a tremendous amount of fire magic, while its shape added focus to the enchantment. And this particular sorcery was his preferred magical attack as much for the spectacular fire storm it created as for its effectiveness.
Both of those were enchantments he had practised and cast many times before, and other than the unusual amount of power he was instilling in them, he knew the weapons could handle the magic. The bulk of the magic though could not be released into a weapon or other inanimate object. Instead it had to be shaped and released. Only a wizard could hold and use such power. As a spell caster he had to hold it, shape it and release it into himself. And this time it would not just be a few small fireballs that he held. This time he would hold on to an inferno.
With some trepidation Sam focussed the rest of the fire magic into his hands. Holding it apart in two equal and opposite measures he knew that the world around him would be safe – until they touched. Then, when the time came and provided he was strong enough and brave enough – and maybe desperate enough – he would release the fire ring conjuration. It was something he'd never tried before. It wasn't just the power that was dangerous about the spell, but the release of that particular shape directly from his own flesh. The spell was one of the most dangerous possible for a wizard, and with the power he was holding anything could happen. But if it did he guessed, he would never know anything about it.
That done he waited, desperately trying not to fidget as his patience was strained. Nor could he stop himself from shaking, as the magic strained to be released. And with all that power literally coursing through his flesh and his steel, who could blame him if he couldn't sit still? For once he forgave himself his poor self-control, though he made sure he didn't let his hands touch.
To keep himself from thinking about it, Sam spent the next little while simply counting the passage of time. Using it as something to concentrate on instead of the magic inside him, demanding to be released. He'd nearly reached a thousand before the first of the steel rats reached the clearing. But then when they finally did, he smiled and let out a sigh of relief. Soon he would be able to release all the fire coursing within him, and it would be glorious. But not yet.
“Alder's balls!” He swore to himself when he saw the first of the rats appear – but not out of shock. The soldier had told him what to expect. Instead for once he meant it as a promise. He was going to rain down all the fury of the twisted god of mischief upon their steel heads, and when he was done none would remain. It seemed fitting somehow to use the god's name. He was said to be twisted; part man, part beast, part male, part female, both hairy and scaled. A jumble of bits and pieces all held together by his divine presence. Soon these steel creatures would be the same. A jumble of parts.
They came from the direction of Shavarra as he'd expected, but only a few dozen at first. Behind them however, he could feel many, many more, spread out in a long column. All would soon be dead. Assuming they were ever truly alive.