Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series (30 page)

They chose the busiest time of the Brotherhood’s busiest night to strike, to ensure the most carnage possible.  Eliminating as many of the villains as possible was the goal, as quickly and quietly as possible, without arousing the suspicions of the authorities.

Thankfully, the lack of complexity of their plan kept the chances of something going horribly awry to a minimum.  After surveying and scrying the guildhall for a few days and understanding how it was being used, Lorcus’ battle plan for the raid was apt:

“We’re going to turn the whole thing into a big sack o’ rats,” he drawled, as he presented his plan to the boys.  “Then we’re going to stab it.  Beat it with a stick.  And squash it under a rock.  Before we throw it into the fire.”

To that end the plan was to secure with magic as many of the possible means of escape available to the crew inside and then ‘project force’, as Lorcus euphemistically called it, until the last Rat was dead.

As they had discovered, the guildhall was a hive of criminal business and a hub for goods, coin, and agents of the organization going upriver, downriver, east into Rhemes or west into Falas.  As such it was a convenient place for meetings between different divisions, and regular conferences to conduct business were common.

Through their use of the construct they’d learned that one such meeting – comprising the leaders of four different crews – was scheduled for a few nights after they’d arrived, and the three of them decided that would be a most opportune time to conduct their raid.

“If we just wanted to prick them with the point, we’d wait until the place was almost deserted,” Lorcus reasoned.  “This way, it’s clear from the outset that their preparation and strength meant little to us.  That they were, in fact, inconsequential.”

“That’s still going to put almost two dozen rats in that bag,” Rondal reminded the Remeran warmage.  “That’s a lot of killing.”

“It would be a lot of killing regardless,” Tyndal said, shaking his head.  “This just makes it more worthwhile.  Removing officers is a great way to send the foe into disarray.”

Before the fateful meeting, Lorcus took another stroll around the guildhall in the guise of a monk . . . and when he was certain he wasn’t being observed, he secured the infrequently used trap door in the back of the place with a spellbinding, and then did the same with the side door. 

Most of the thugs used the front entrance, which thanks to its orientation faced the river, where there was little chance of being seen.  While that was convenient for evading the notice of the civic authorities, it also concealed the entrance from any trouble that might erupt from those same authorities.  When Lorcus signaled that all of the principals had arrived for the meeting, the two young knights began their assault.

They changed their somber monks’ habits for their personal arms and armor.  For each of them that was a suit of enchanted leather with light steel plates covering their most vulnerable parts.  Though as light as an archer’s armor, the enchantments binding them together made the gear significantly more protective.  While Rondal included a tight-fitting steel helm, Tyndal simply tied back his hair with a thong.  He disliked having his vision and hearing impaired in a fight like this.

Rondal bore his shortish mageblade, the rod Bulwark, and a round shield.  Tyndal got by with his collection of wands and his own mageblade.  He could call Grapple to his hand at need . . . but the task ahead looked far more like a job for a war staff than a thaumaturgical baculus to his eye. 

I’m in position
, Rondal told him, mind-to-mind, an hour after the sun set and darkness covered the town. 
As soon as you give the word, I’ll go.

Tyndal checked with Lorcus, who was acting as a reserve for the operation, still in monk’s garb, at the grog shop across the street where he was quietly scrying the place from afar. 

Oh, I’m ready,
he assured Tyndal. 
Just going to sit here and flirt with this widow until you lads need me.

Tyndal took a deep breath.  Both of his comrades were waiting on his signal, his leadership. 

He looked at the door ahead, where two Rats were lounging, smoking pipes and acting casually, and pulled his mantle over his armor before he approached them. The key, he reminded himself, is sudden, unexpected surprise.  He pulled out his own pipe, and palmed a short wand as he did so.

“Gentlemen!” he said, cheerfully, as he approached.  “Could I trouble either of you for a taper?”

The two thugs – dressed in rough workmen’s clothing – looked at him in surprise.  One began fumbling at his belt for the requested taper automatically, while the other stood and began to approach Tyndal menacingly.

Tyndal tried to fake surprise on his face, but before he could tell if the Rat bought it, his arm was already in motion.  While his right hand, with the pipe and palmed wand, went wide, his left hand held a very long, very plain dagger about six inches long, which he then buried in the thug’s gut with augmented speed.

The man just stood there, eyes wide, looking helplessly at Tyndal while his friend quickly rose . . . only to sit back down again, hard, when Tyndal activated the wand, blowing off half of his face.  The man with the dagger in his navel sank to his knees and fell over, succumbing to shock almost immediately at the surprise attack. 

That was far too easy, Tyndal noted to himself.  The door behind them was unlocked, and there wasn’t anyone immediately on the other side.

I’m in
, he reported to Rondal. 
Go ahead and start your ruckus
.

For Estasia
, Rondal replied . . . and Tyndal heard a loud bang from within the building. 
Now I’m in.  Meet you on the top floor.

Tyndal drew his mageblade and summoned a half-dozen spells – nothing fancy, he decided, just good basic protections.  The sort of thing that might make the difference between a blade sliding off of his armor or finding its way home.

Two around the corner from you, lad
, cautioned Lorcus, who was following their path on the magemap. 

Tyndal nodded – though the warmage couldn’t see him – and decided to face these two without his warmagic augmentations.  He pictured where they were in his mind, prepared his warwand, and spun into the room. 

He caught one of the men on his way toward the privy, hands on his belt and unprepared for a fight.  Tyndal didn’t bother wasting a spell on him – he just shoved the point of his blade quickly through his throat, creating a fountain of blood that sprayed across the chest of his fellow.  While the poor thug was looking at his soaked tunic in horror, Tyndal pivoted and sliced through his windpipe before he could scream.

But the alarm was already raised.  Rondal’s dramatic entrance at the rear had stirred the guildhall’s defenders like a kick to a beehive.  He could hear shouts and yells as the ruffians sprang into action against the loud intruder . . . and presented their backs to the quiet one.

When Tyndal entered the main hall, where once the weavers of the town met and debated whatever it was weavers felt passionate about, there was already a knot of men facing the rear of the building, where he could hear Rondal’s assault continuing.

It seemed like a good place for a wide-area spell, and Tyndal loved those.  He pulled a particular warwand from his belt, pointed it in the general vicinity of the center of the defense, and activated it.  It took a moment for the spell to take effect, but when it did, it was decisive.

The wand he’d selected for this attack was a Purkus wand, a reproduction of an old Imperial sample he’d seen at the collection at Relan Cor.  It was a simple concussive blast augmented with a blinding flash, which wasn’t unusual for a warwand.

The Purkus had the additional effect of creating a line of small incredibly sharp planes of magical force, like a hundred tiny panes of razor sharp glass.  Though each pane only lasted for a moment, that was sufficient time for them to be propelled by the blast in a wide field of destruction.  Wherever the invisible planes flew, they cut ruthlessly, even as the blast spun them and their victims into a whirlwind of blood and pain.

Tyndal did not wait for the cloud of dust to dissipate as he flew into the fray.  He drove his blade through one man’s shoulder while he kicked another, who was desperately trying to hold his intestines in, to the floor.  He quickly reversed his step, the hours spent on the practice field informing his every move, and slashed through the neck of a third man before the ringing in his ears began to fade.

He spared a quick glance at the far end of the hall.  Rondal was standing behind his shield, using it to fend off the Rats who dared defend against his advance, while he plied his mageblade against them with both edge and spell. 

His friend’s expression was fearsome, as if he was finally allowing a deep rage to propel him.  Guiltily Tyndal knew that it was the memory of a girl he hadn’t even kissed that motivated him to shove the Rats so aggressively with his shield and hack at them so viciously.

The foe was lightly armed, mostly with knives, cudgels, chains, and a few swords and scimitars among them.  They were not expecting an attack, they were quietly escorting their superiors to a business meeting.

But they were not cowards.  The Brotherhood’s recruitment and training methods, what was known of them, selected for ruthlessness, strength, and cunning, but it did not reward those who shied from a fight. 

As the dust from his first spell began to settle, Tyndal found himself face-to-face with a brute of a Rat, a full head taller than Tyndal.  His face was half-covered in tattoos and scars of duels past, who was bellowing angrily, clutching one shoulder with his left hand while his right seemed perfectly capable of wielding the short, wicked-looking scimitar he’d drawn.

Now it’s time for some warmagic
, he decided, and activated the spell.

He loved this part of the battle, when everything in the room but his own body slowed.  In truth, he was the one moving more quickly, but it was so fast as to have an effect.

He didn’t linger on his enemies, as there were too many, and the limits of the augmentation were finite.  He addressed the big thug with the short blade who faced him, first, and decided that his foe’s balance and his injury was his largest weakness.  He used the tip of his blade to shove the man’s slowly extending wrist up, high over his head.  He didn’t even bother to disarm him – from the look of that shoulder, the sudden move was going to be excruciatingly painful enough to do that for him.

Behind him, however, was an evil-looking man, crouched behind his fellow’s bulk, his plain brown cloak concealing a long-bladed, short-hafted axe.  It was the kind one might use to hack a door to bits, Tyndal reflected as he strode to his side, or perhaps remove an appendage.  Tyndal drew the man’s own dagger and plunged it deeply into his heart before he moved on.

The third opponent within reach was rushing at Rondal with a staff – no, a spear, Tyndal realized, as the long pole produced a hidden blade at its point.  As the man was facing away from him, Tyndal spared the time to carefully slice through his slowly-moving kneecaps with sharp, efficient blows of his sword.

He could feel the limits of the speed augmentation approaching, sadly, and he knew better to push those boundaries.  There was no need.  Around him the guildhall was chaos, bodies and limbs and smoke hanging in the air.  Figuring the best position to return to normal velocity to be was within the range of one of the more fearsome fighters, he braced the point of his sword against the largest swordsman’s chest, carefully avoiding his thick sternum, as he shifted back to normal.

The man’s eyes flew open as his chest was transfixed suddenly and unexpectedly by steel.  Tyndal had locked his knees well enough to bear the blow without collision, and by pivoting his hips the point of his blade was lined up nicely with the head of another Rat, still reeling from the blast.

“Spreadheadth!”
he whispered, an ancient word in a dialect of Old Narasi, as he mentally activated his selected enchantment.  The spell within the sword manifested, and the face of the man it was pointing toward erupted in a mass of green fire that quickly consumed his screaming head.

Indeed, the ringing in his ears was nearly gone, and he was not even breathing hard.  There were only a few of the Rats left in fighting shape, he noted with satisfaction as he unsheathed his blade from the dead man’s chest.