Battle Mage: Forging New Steel (Tales of Alus Book 9) (53 page)

The emperor’s warlocks were different from Southwall where a wizard’s power helped to set a hierarchy within the guilds. In Ensolus, deception was more important than showing off one’s power. If an enemy underestimated you, the surprise could take that enemy by surprise turning a challenge to your favor or keep the enemy from attacking for fear of the truth.

“Are you ready to lead an invasion?” the girl cooed in his ear as she stood on tiptoe. Her fingers touched his shoulder lightly to let him know she was there without settling any weight on him.

“It isn’t exactly an invasion,” Palose replied. “The main army marched south over a week ago and sent word that they were ready to attack and destroy the Twin Towers. Kolban doesn’t even seem to care if they are actually breeched so long as the wall between them is taken down with the fortifications.”

The girl looked at the array of soldiers in the chamber. Trolls, armored viles, goblins, orcs and men dominated the type of troops gathered here. A number of black furred creatures called kiriaks were held in check by trolls also. They were too chaotic in nature to ever become numerous, but Kolban had kept some alive in the mountain cities. Kiriaks were quick climbers and could climb even the forty foot high walls in short order.

“You don’t think that if his army can breech the great Northwall that they will stop without pushing into the country farther?”

Palose didn’t flinch. It was his old home and he had once promised the two wizards he had resurrected from Southwall and Kardor that they wouldn’t have to be a part of harming their old lands. He had hoped to never have to perform another act against Southwall also, but Kolban had needed his portals and the dark mage to enact several plans to weaken the country.

“I am just the one to bring the army there. What happens after isn’t up to me.”

Her dark, blue eyes told him that she didn’t completely believe him, but it no longer mattered. It was time to open the gate south of the Twin Towers and begin the assault on the wall.

Four warlocks stood beside the stone gate through which they would hold the gate open. Palose was merely the one who would open the portal and send them through. He gestured with his hand centering the stones in his mind to open the correct gate. As he did so, the mage noticed more of his lodestones close to the wall fortresses had been destroyed making this portal easier to find now.

The glowing doorway opened and three orcs in the black armor being churned out to absorb most elemental magic jumped through the portal. They would check the site to make sure there was no danger. Once there was confirmation, the rest would begin to charge through and gather beside the river before the march to the Towers.

A minute passed and the orcs didn’t return to verify the safe passage. Palose had been to the gate several times to look on the Twin Towers and the Cadhalla River, so it should have been safe.

Still there was no sign of the orcs.

“You,” Acheri pointed to a heavily armored troll. The large creature responded to the girl as she said, “Put on your helmet and use the shield before you to check the other side of the gate.”

Trolls weren’t the most cooperative creatures and not as smart as orcs or goblins, but they were an intelligent creature even so. With Palose’s nod to the monster, the troll complied and raised its shield before going through the glowing doorway.

When the creature reappeared moments later, it was reeling and fell back onto the ground at their feet. The shield was on fire and more than a dozen arrows studded the large surface. It wasn’t coated with the darkness magic to absorb the elements like his armor so it continued to burn with wizards’ fire.

“What happened?” the mage questioned kneeling over the troll.

“Door by wall. Wizards and archers attacked,” his guttural voice breathed raspily. The troll hadn’t expected to come under fire, but the shield had prevented all but two arrows from burying themselves in the creature’s armor.

Acheri looked at Palose questioningly.

“Someone must have moved them close to the wall and set a guard to attack anyone coming through the gate.”

“Kolban’s plan hinged on you bringing in a second force behind the Twin Towers to give them a second front to fight against,” the dark haired princess stated looking slightly worried. It was more like a game to Acheri and only the disappointment the emperor would have truly bothered the girl in truth.

“It can still work,” Palose stated thinking quickly. “I need those two armored viles and three more soldiers to go through and move the stones out of range of the wall.”

Acheri nodded to a commander, who knew enough to know that the girl was the voice of the emperor. Two orcs and the troll they had sent through before were drafted after pulling two arrows from the creature’s armor. The wood shafts hadn’t gone deep, but they had startled it. The commander didn’t care about its feelings and, after handing him one of the treated shields, the troll stood behind two large armored viles holding even larger shields.

With claws designed to cut through stone, viles weren’t the best with their hands; but they were intelligent enough to follow commands and could figure out the straps of the massive shields.

“Get the two stones at the corners of the doorway and move them out of range of the wall,” Palose ordered the five in the new vanguard. “If you move behind the gate, it should provide some cover as you retreat.”

The two armored viles raised their shields and squeezed through the glowing doorway together. After them the troll was followed by the two orcs.

As they stood to the side of the gate, a moment passed as he waited for the orcs to find the stones. The doorway was already open, so he didn’t need the stones to maintain the doorway any longer.

“How long will you leave this doorway opened?”

Before Palose could answer, the dark shafts of arrows suddenly flew through the gate. Cries of pain as an orc was stabbed through his lightly armored leg surprised them all.

“Close it. They’re on their own until they move the gate back from the wall,” Palose ordered the warlocks holding the door.

It was too late as a massive fireball appeared crashing into the orcs in the first line. Screams, as exposed flesh burned, announced that they were too slow. Palose watched as the black armor pulled in the flames, but the orcs hadn’t placed their helmets on their heads and two of them rolled on the ground in pain as they burned.

Life as a guard at the Twin Towers was typically a boring affair for Xander. He wished that White Hall had sent him somewhere more interesting for his first trip to the wall. Every cadet went through a series of tests on their way to becoming a falcon. For the young mage in training, the Twins was the first of typically three or four missions assigned by the teachers of the school. Guard duty was rarely a quick way to rise, but he was still sixteen and few became falcons before eighteen, or so he was told by his friends who thought that they were authorities on the subject.

Ever since the evening the falcon had arrived creating a portal before their very eyes, the Twins had been a little more on edge however. Now the mage stood looking through the crenellated protection on the wall west of the western tower with a few soldiers and the only truly interesting thing at the Twins besides the new task, the attractive young apprentice wizard, Shaylene. Though it was rare for wizards and battle mages to mingle in the school, at the wall there was a limited amount of people to speak to and you were literally living on top of one another. She had come with him for her first trip to the wall at the same time as well.

“You look bored,” the girl dressed in white stated with a small smile for the cadet.

He looked at a girl with light brown hair and warm hazel eyes who was short enough for the young mage to look down half a foot though he wasn’t that tall himself. Shaylene always brought a smile to his face when she talked to him, even if her mentor, Wizard Haylee seemed to frown at their fraternizing ways. The petite fire wizard looked fairly young to be a mentor, Xander thought, but she was certainly a stickler for limiting contact with boys.

“All we do is look out at the prairie to the north or concentrate where they put those stones after they warned us that it could bring other portals from the emperor. I can’t imagine why I would be bored.” He glanced to Haylee in her red wizard robe and said in a hushed tone, “And it’s not like she’d let us have any fun.”

Shaylene managed not to turn and look at the blonde haired, little, fire wizard. Her mentor’s brown eyes appeared to try and bore a hole into her apprentice’s shoulders while she spoke to her friend a battle mage.

“Oh, she just doesn’t want all your maginess to rub off on me,” the girl giggled. It was a joke, but in certain circles of wizards it often seemed to be the real feeling about working with battle mages.

“Probably true,” the boy replied with a nod before looking out at the stones he couldn’t even see without using a spell. It wasn’t like the stones would move on their own, so Xander didn’t waste the magic.

Voices began to rise from the tower above them and they all looked to see what was going on with the wizards there. An air wizard and his apprentice had been in the tower practicing their wind riding for awhile, which made Xander look past the mark in front of the wall to try and see anything that might make them sound so worried.

“What has them all in a twist?” the soldier standing beside him questioned sounding almost as bored as the mage.

“I am thinking that they will tell us once they are down from the tower, Evan,” a second soldier stated as he leaned over looking at the area of the portal markers.

Haylee looked up and declared, “The signal lights have been lit!”

Xander and Shaylene looked up in surprise. The fires were only lit when an enemy approached the wall.

“Is it nomads?” the mage asked aloud knowing that only the air wizards would know the answer to that.

A teenage boy wearing the white of an apprentice with light blue bands on his sleeve and collar to indicate his dedication to air magic ran out onto the wall and shouted, “There is a large army approaching from two miles to the north. They have trolls, armored viles and creatures that I am not even sure what to call them!”

“Naran calm down,” Wizard Haylee commanded putting her hand up to slow the apprentice. “Jelanne has already decided to send the alarm to the other towers?”

The boy nodded. “He said that he is sure that an army that big isn’t just walking for the fun of it. They are on both sides of the river following it south towards the Twins. If we don’t get help, I’m not sure even the wall will stop them this time!”

Haylee frowned at the apprentice. He was getting too excited for the wizard who pushed for control. Xander thought the attitude a bit surprising for a fire wizard, since they were often hot heads and impetuous. The wizard’s brown eyes stared down the apprentice before she hurried to walk inside the tower to speak with the air wizard in charge of the boy.

Brennan, a soldier in his late twenties, appeared calm but rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If the lights pass along the wall quickly, Blackwall should know of it in a few minutes. Windmeer will be just a few minutes longer.”

The soldier still looking at the portal markers asked, “So what? If the enemy is only two miles from us, we will be under attack for days before help comes. How long can we hold out if they’ve brought warlocks along? We have what, twenty wizards between the two towers and some of them are just apprentices?”

Xander spoke up, “There are thirty battle mages and more of both in the next towers. Maybe some of them will come back us up.”

Looking at the tower behind her a moment, Shaylene mused, “That other wizard brought something similar to those stones less than a month ago and placed them behind the wall near the tower. Wasn’t that supposed to be an anchor for portal magic?”

Only Naran and Xander appeared to have a clue what the girl was talking about. The soldier Evan replied sarcastically, “What are you going on about now?”

Xander frowned at the man’s tone. While the soldiers were all veterans and older than he; the cadet felt like he should stand up for the pretty girl. He was younger than they were, but he knew battle magic if he needed it.

Ignoring the tone, however, Naran asked a question to answer hers, “You don’t think that they would send help through one of those do you?”

Shaylene shrugged replying, “Isn’t that the point of figuring out the portal magic and putting that there?”

Thinking the girl was right; Xander just hoped that the signal fires would send the message before any fighting began. Between the two towers they had a force of a little over two hundred, but he had heard stories of the monsters that the empire used. They were frightening and powerful. The wall may have stood for well over a hundred years, but the Twins had been a site for battle in the past and barely survived the trial.

“The gate!” Evan cried out pointing at the glowing doorway. Looking quickly, there was a rush to the north side of the wall as soldiers, and the apprentices all moved to see what the soldier had spied.

From the glowing rectangle appeared three black armored orcs. Xander moved to pick up the bow lying against the wall. While battle mages were typically known for their swordsmanship, the cadet was a practiced shot dating back to his childhood living beside the wilds east of the Dimple Mountains. Many winters drove the animals from the mountains and forest looking for an easy meal. Sheep and cattle were tempting targets. With his father and brothers, Xander had hunted down wild cats and wolves which would otherwise kill their livestock.