Steel And Flame (Book 1) (72 page)

“You need me?”  Dietrik began to rise, then sank back
down when Marik shook his head.

“No.  It’s too bad there’re no pells or any of our
straw dummies.  I suppose this will do.”

‘This’ was a smaller tree at the clearing’s edge.  A
young ash, it looked to be only a few years old.  Marik took the sword he had
spent half the night sharpening and held it level with the trunk.

“Are you sure about that?  A sword isn’t exactly the
right tool for cutting down the forest.”

“I’m not going to,” Marik said before he reared back
and struck the tree as hard as he could in a slashing chop.

“You could have fooled me,” Dietrik replied after
Marik left the blade protruding from the trunk and stepped closer to examine
it.  Bark had chipped away when the steel struck.  The blade only bit a third
its own width, half an inch, into the trunk.  Marik yanked it free and readied
a second strike.

For this blow, Marik focused.  His stamina rose when
his aura reshaped.  With a repeat swing, Marik buried the blade anew in the trunk,
with the same result.

“If that tree’s offended you, mate, then I can run and
fetch you an axe.”

“I wanted to make sure.  See?  I swung once as myself
and once using Colbey’s trick.  The blade bit no deeper the second time.”

“Very well.  I believed you the first time.  What are
you going to do next?”

“Quiet.  I need to concentrate.”

Marik brought everything he learned from Tollaf and
Caresse to the fore while he began.  First he opened a channel to the mass
diffusion.  Before he did anything else he also put a surge protection shield
on it, having learned the lesson twice over.  No siphoning off his own life
energy today, thank you.

During the last three days he had experimented with
variations on the methods he used to draw and use etheric energies.  Now, with
Colbey’s technique as the base and his own abilities as a mage, he would
attempt an original working.  Hopefully, this time he could avoid nearly
killing himself in the process.

When he’d first realized what Colbey had done during
their forest run, he’d thought the scout had increased his raw strength with a
spell.  The facts had proven different, but Marik thought he knew a way to make
it so.

Whenever he gathered etheric energy, its nature
changed to match his own, blending with his personal energies.  As he crafted
shields, he drew the energy back out to use as needed.  Exactly how he did this
remained unclear to Marik.  The express details were instinctive and handled by
his mage talent.

Marik did not want to draw the energy out this time. 
He wanted to redirect it through his body, to increase the energy flows and
boost the natural channels inside his muscles.

He took a firm grip on his power as if he were
building a shield.  Rather than directing it to a working, he sank back into
the mental imagery of Colbey’s boosting technique.  Imagining every inch of his
body, this time he overlaid it with the intricate network formed from a
thousand veins and minute channels.  At the matrix’s center beat his heart, the
storehouse for his life energy and the well of his power.  If the etheric
energies he took inside could be said to rest within a physical part of his
body, it would be his heart.

Marik visualized the energies spreading from his core
and met failure on this first attempt.  His aura merely reshaped, which had not
been what he wanted.  Twice more he attempted, ending at the same result.

The key, as Marik finally realized, was that the
etheric energy he incorporated did not immediately escape from him the way his
aura energies did.  It sat patiently, ready to be used and needing instructions
to do anything.  Frustrated, Marik reexamined his conclusions, looking for the
mistake.

His visualizing the natural pathways in his body
should be instruction enough, so why did his energy reserve refuse to flow forth
and fill them as the water had rushed forth to fill the dry riverbed once
they’d destroyed the dam?

Marik hit himself when the answer, the obvious answer,
arose.  The energy could not flow for exactly the same reason the water had
been unable.  A barrier contained it, and the energy would remain blocked until
he removed that barrier.  What was the barrier?

Himself, of course.  His training in magecraft had
been all about teaching his talent how to naturally restrain his power,
otherwise every time he lost his temper it would burst forth to destroy
anything and anyone around him.  Once again he had overlooked the obvious.

Performing a working required two elements.  First he
pictured what he wanted the raw energy to do, then his mental hands followed
the blueprint to mold the energy in that same fashion.  Colbey’s technique had
never been a mage working.  It only required gaining tighter control over his
personal energies, and so the visualizations were all that were needed.

While the energy reserves he had gathered were also
his, they remained separate from the energies his body created.  The reserves
were dormant, held in stasis, and until he molded it with his mental hands,
they would stay so.  His now-trained talent would make certain of that as a safety
measure under normal circumstances.

Marik visualized his entire inner channel network.  He
pictured power flowing from his heart’s reserves, filling them, swelling them
in size, boosting them with energy and increasing his raw, physical strength as
well.  When the images were firmly in place, he reached with his mental hands
as he would have done had he been creating a shield.

Instead of pulling the energy from himself, he merely
tapped on the walls of his own internal dam.  Contact with his talent unleashed
the blocks, and Marik felt as though he might explode.

It was far from the terrifying failure when he had
first attempted to duplicate Colbey’s actions.  Pure exhilaration raced through
him, a sudden sense of invincibility.  His muscle channels were strong, open
wider than ever before in his life!  The hilt in his hand seemed to disappear. 
This sudden rush of strength made it feel light as a feather.  He felt as if
his body grew, as though his head would burst through the tree canopy above and
he would become a titan out of legends!

The rush overwhelmed him in an ecstasy of raw power. 
Marik raised the sword that no longer seemed to be there.  He swung hard at the
ash.  When the blade bit deep, bark flew through the air like arrows.  His
excitement overcame his control and the working faded.  The strength left him. 
For a moment he felt terribly empty, like a night sky devoid of all stars.

Dietrik gaped at the blade.  “
Damn
, Marik! 
What did you do?”

Marik shook himself back to awareness and studied the
new strike into the tree.  It had indeed bitten deeper.  An inch; twice the
previous depth.

Dietrik took the hilt and tried to pull it out, to no
avail.  He yanked it back and forth until it wiggled slightly.  Finally, with a
mighty tug, he managed to free it from the tree.

“I’d hate to see what you could do with an axe,
friend.  You about near ruined the edge on this side,” he observed, fingering
the blade.  “Tell me what happened!”

While Marik explained in detail, his mind
reestablished diplomatic ties with his wits, refraining from comment on the
latter’s unseemly behavior.  The heady exhilaration had muddled his brain.

“I felt like I was towering over the forest,” he
concluded with no little awe.

“You weren’t.  You didn’t look any different to me. 
In fact, one moment you were standing there staring at nothing, then suddenly
you were swinging hard.”

“You know the most amazing part?  I didn’t use all my
energy for the trial.  I could have drawn deeper from the diffusion and flooded
myself with power.  The channels in my muscles weren’t close to full!”

“If I were you, I’d start practicing then.  If you
want to use it in a fight, you need to make it second nature.  Isn’t that what
you were saying?”

“This is different.  Colbey’s trick is mostly
concentration and good imagination.  I think anybody could do it, even you!”

“Indeed?”

“Yeah!  You know, Colbey never said I couldn’t teach
anybody else what he taught me.  I should get you working on it.”

“Let’s wait until we get back to Kingshome.  We still
have a war to survive.”

“Right.  Anyway, this isn’t the same as that.  I need
to use raw energy and my talent, which means this is an actual working.”

“You mean a spell?”

“Yeah, but ‘working’ is the mage’s word for it.”

“Is this good news or not?  I don’t know much about
the workings of magic.”

“Once I set it up, I can run the working with a
minimum of concentration as long as there’s a steady source of power.  I do
need to keep practicing it though, you were right about that.  Let’s see if I
can do a better job of it this time.”

Marik started the working anew, prepared for the
intense sensations this time.  They rushed forth again, though slightly less
overpowering than before, he noticed with relief.  That awesome sense of
godhood still threatened to overwhelm his senses if he allowed his
concentration to slip.  He could do without the distraction.

The first new fact he learned troubled him.  As long
as he boosted his strength, he could not seem to do anything else that required
his talent, except for magesight.  He had thought to create channels that would
continually gather from the mass diffusion and feed his reserves except they
disintegrated as soon as he began flooding his inner pathways.

The second was a lesson in moderation.  He gathered
far more energy this time, then opened the floodgates to saturate his body with
as much raw power as he could.  When he stepped toward the ash, he dropped
writhing to the ground in burning agony.

“Marik!  What’s wrong?”

He cut off the working as quickly as he could.  A moan
escaped him, and he continued rolling across the dirt for several moments. 
After a short eternity he sat up to gingerly probe his leg.

“Ahh.  Damn, that hurts!”

“What happened?”

“I thought I broke my leg for a moment.  I think I
almost did.”

“How?  I didn’t see anything.”

Marik examined his leg under magesight.  “I boosted
the muscles too much.  I made them too strong.  They contracted so hard when I
stepped forward they almost snapped the bone!”

“Will you be all right?  I can run to get help.”

“I’ll be fine, if you give me a moment.”

Marik rested for half a candlemark before attempting
to stand.

“You’ll have to be more careful!” barked Dietrik
harshly.  “Do that in a fight and you’ll be cutting your own throat!”

“I know.  And I was thinking I was so clever, too. 
Looks like I need to practice it the trial and error way.  I boosted the
muscles and ignored everything else in my body.  Guess I got off lucky this
time.  Seems there’s still a lot to learn and consider.”

“Here, lean on my shoulder.”

“Thanks, Dietrik.”  He winced when he placed weight on
his bad leg.  “I won’t be sparring with you anytime soon.”

Dietrik glanced at the wounded ash tree.  “I don’t
think I’ll spar against you like that, if you don’t mind.  At the least, you’d
bend my rapier.”

“I still need to work out normally, Dietrik.  I think
the better your normal strength, the more the muscles can handle under the
strength working.”

“Then you’d better hope Beld never learns how to do
it.  Let’s get back.  I’m sure Kerwin’s dying to gloat to everybody about how
much richer he became today.”

At the beginning of the fourth eightday, the Noliers
decided enough was enough.

*        *        *        *        *

A mark before dawn, the cacophony of battle jolted
Marik awake.  Confusion addled his mind.  He fought to separate the lingering
wisps of fanciful dreams twining around the surreal moment’s unreality.  His
head cleared with the high shriek from a dying man.  The slaughterhouse din
sounded far closer than it should be.  Marik fumbled before snatching up his sword,
mail and helm, then struggled from the tent with the others while shrugging it
all on.

Outside, they heard a chaotic turmoil.  The Kings were
bivouacked on the crescent’s southern curve.  So far the fighting still raged
to the south.  From the guttering light of torches spread across the camp and
the sparse moonlight, Marik could see little.  His instincts raced to analyze
the situation.

“The catapults!” he roared as others echoed the cry. 
He ran to the northeast where the siege engines had ceased their nighttime
assault in the face of open combat.

The catapults might be the primary target of the
Nolier sneak-attack, but Marik quickly learned they nursed larger ambitions
this night.

Several Nolier bands charged from the south, slashing
at everything they saw, destroying anything within easy reach.  One group of
four crashed through the tent line to challenge Marik.  Others ran around him
in the dark, continuing their way northward.  Additional groups followed, their
goal to create as much chaos and confusion as possible.

Two of Marik’s opponents advanced, swinging their
swords.  Rather than meet their attack and leave himself open to the second
pair, he retreated while casting around for aid.  His companions were close
behind.  He shouted to attract their attention.

“Hey!  Dietrik!”  Then they were on him.  His complete
skill went into defending himself while the second pair tried flanking him.  A
figure charged from behind and he hoped to the gods he was friendly.

It turned out to be Kerwin, who leapt into the fight
with both feet.  He took the right flank while Marik swiveled to take the
left.  Together they met the four assailants without giving ground, causing two
to pull back while they reconsidered their foes.  When they did, an arrow sped
through the dark and struck one in the chest.  A bloody flower blossomed in the
air as the dead Nolier toppled.  The second of Kerwin’s adversaries glanced
around sharply, handing the gambler the opportunity to finish him.

Marik found no opening in the defenses of the two
remaining but the death of their fellow soldiers forced them to retreat into
the darkness.  An arrow followed after them.  If it found its target, Marik
never knew about it.

“Now what?” he shouted over swords clashing in
metallic riffs.  The night sounded like a festival celebration of the damned,
as though Vernilock had thrown open the gates to his hells and allowed the
world’s sinners to glimpse their eventual fate.

Landon shook his head.  “Fight!  We can’t let them run
loose through the camp.  If we can’t drive them off, it won’t matter if we’ve
saved all of our equipment!”

Kerwin patted his tunic.  Marik assumed he checked to
ensure his purse remained securely fastened around his neck.  He had converted
his winnings to larger coins every day with the army payroll clerks.  It marked
the first time Marik had ever seen a ten-gold coin.  The fact Kerwin could move
at all with so much heavy gold weighing him down was impressive.

Dietrik shouted, “Over there!  Shake your tail!”

He ran north between two tents.  Marik saw one of the
groups that had dashed past him.  A five man element, they were busy killing
two men who had emerged from their tents directly in their path.

Landon shot one in the back, which made three Noliers
turn while the fourth finished his butchery.

In a fast charge, the mercenaries descended in a
stampede that killed two outright.  The other pair tried to retreat, except the
Kings would have none of it.  Kerwin bought a shallow cut across the leg when
he plunged his blade through the last Nolier’s chest.

“Damn!”

“How bad?” Landon asked while he searched for new
threats.

Kerwin probed the cut.  “Nothing.  Barely broke my
skin.  I just can’t see anything in this damned dark!”

“Then let’s go.  Look there!”  Landon pointed
northward.

Dietrik said, “That’s one of the supply sectors.  Yes,
see?  I’m sure those are supply wagons!”

They raced further north to where a mass of men boiled
in the darkness.  When they drew closer, they were forced to retreat since most
in the mob were Noliers laying a siege of their own.  Several defenders fought
to protect the wagon row while others beat out flames from torches the Noliers
had hurled inside.

The Galemaran men were losing ground, slowly being
tilled under by the Noliers, so the four Kings found themselves under assault
again.  Landon fired arrows from behind and usually found a mark even though
the need to watch his own back drastically cut short his effectiveness.

Marik switched to magesight, which aided his vision to
a degree.  The men were clearer in their aura glow, as were their silhouetted
weapons, yet everyone appeared identical.  He fought hard to defend and
counterattack, jumping between his normal and mage’s vision with a speed that
promised him the mother of all headaches if he escaped from this battle.

Others flocked to protect the supply wagons, and soon
a major battle raged.  An enemy before Marik swung high, which Marik caught on
his sword’s guard.  He slid his sword down the Nolier blade, the same type as
the confiscated blades he had picked through days earlier.  It consisted of a
simple T hilt, without rings protruding to protect the hand from what he meant
to do.

He tilted his blade, gathering speed before striking
the Nolier’s hilt.  The back edge clanged off the T’s corner but slowed little
as Marik reversed the tilt, slicing the sharp edge across the back of his
opponent’s wrists.  With a screeching howl the Nolier dropped his sword.  He
brought his wrists to his chest, trying to dam the cascading blood washing over
his arms.  Marik thrust his sword through the man’s throat.

He nearly lost his own arms to another Nolier as he
yanked his blade free from the corpse.  Motion flickered at the corner of his
eye, making him instinctively jump to the left when the blade swished through
the spot his outstretched arms had been.  Marik wrenched fiercely and retrieved
his sword at the same time Dietrik stabbed the Nolier in the side.

The fighting around the supply wagons escalated
fiercely.  Dead and dying quickly littered the ground.  Footing became treacherous
in the organic refuse after the number of Noliers diminished.  They changed
from an assault action to a defensive measure when more Galemarans arrived to
fight them off.

Twenty Noliers finally overran a wagon.  It contained
nothing they could easily destroy so they leapt over the far edge to run
between it and the next.  They slipped through the opposite side to scatter
into the darkness.

The remaining Noliers fell rapidly after that.  A
quick search of the bodies uncovered several wounded friends and enemies. 
Soldiers dragged the Galemarans to an empty flatbed wagon.  Noliers were dealt
with differently.

Marik found Dietrik and Kerwin.  They collected Landon
from his station between tents where he had fired from.  “I need more shafts,”
he told them.  “I’m almost out.”

They returned to the supply wagons, where soldiers had
taken charge.

“Any of these wagons have arrows?” Marik shouted at
one.  The man worked fast to cinch a tourniquet around another soldier’s upper
leg, attempting to stem the flow from a severed foot.  He pointed with his chin
toward a different man, shouting over the hyperventilating sobs.

“He’s stationed here.  He’ll know.”  He returned to
his tending, his hands slipping on the sodden cord.

The man in question pointed to a long wooden crate. 
Inside, bundled in thirties and nestled in straw, were masses of arrows.

Landon grabbed a second quiver from the wagon and
loaded both when a bonfire erupted into the night sky to the east.

“Gods above!” shouted Dietrik.  He shielded his eyes
against the scorching tower of flames.  “What in the hells was that?”

Kerwin looked over.  “That was one of the catapults. 
You can bet your sword and dagger on it!”

Men streamed into their supply sector.  Landon
shouted, gathering a dozen hale men to them as they left to rejoin the
fighting.

This time they made their way east toward the fire
lighting up the sky.  The Noliers had spread across the whole camp and the
defenders found enemies everywhere.  A mounted force intercepted them,
scattering their small group.

Marik dove behind an empty tent.  Two Galemaran
soldiers followed him and a Nolier rider thundering past decapitated a third. 
After a short distance, the rider reined his mount to turn for a renewed
charge.  A quick glance told Marik neither of his two new companions were armed
with bows.

While the rider turned his horse, Marik hacked
savagely at the line securing the tent to a stake four feet away.  Two chops
ripped it loose from the canvas.  A desperate tug freed the stake as the rider
stormed back.

Marik stepped into his path.  He swung the heavy stake
on the end of its rope, hoping the Nolier could not see it well in the dim
light.  When the horse neared, Marik swung faster and released the stake on its
line like a bolo.  The stake missed the horse’s forelegs, yet the rope tangled
around one to make it stumble, which Marik had hoped would happen.

Thrown off balance by his mount’s sudden veering, the
horseman clutched the saddle.  Marik dashed forward to bury cold steel in his
side and pulled him from the horse.

The rider fell heavily to the ground.  Marik paused,
considering the benefits of claiming the mount.  When he reached for the reins,
the horse snapped, trying to take his hand off.  Maybe it felt no political
opinions about him hailing from Galemar, but it clearly had no intention of
allowing Marik to mount it.

He ran to the spot where he had separated from his
fellow Kings.  They were gone.  Their corpses were absent, so he assumed the
battle tide had swept them away to other pockets in the bloody conflict.  He
ran east toward the fire, avoiding Nolier groups while he searched for his
friends.

*        *        *        *        *

Colbey sensed the subtle change before he heard
anything.  His eyes opened from sleep filled with dreams of blasted walkways
and smoking ruins, instantly awake and aware of danger.

At first he remained motionless while he gathered
facts.  Morning neared and the night fell strangely quiet.  A shift in the air
set off his warning alerts.  He rose to make sure danger had yet to approach so
closely.  Colbey shunned the outlanders’ tents, instead sleeping under the
stars by the edge of the Reaches.

His sword flashed to his hand when the first battle
sounds erupted to the south.  The Noliers launched no corresponding attack in
the north so a force must have traveled far south, following the river to where
the gorge flattened to open land.  There were two fording points down there
where crossing could be achieved.

Colbey made his way south, keeping to a steady
measured walk.  When he passed the other scout tents, he saw men pulling on
breeches and strapping on sword belts while the women with them disappeared
into the dark, bare skin glistening in the flickering torchlight.  The men ran
toward the conflict at top speed.

He moved as he always moved in the Euvea; at his own
pace, taking in every detail around him.  His sword swung back and forth before
him as he walked, describing a slow arc that bespoke his threat greater than if
he had brandished it firmly while bellowing a war cry.

The chaos spread toward him.  Flames bloomed into the
sky from the east, a fiery nighttime rose born of conflict and death.  Colbey
considered it, finally deciding it was non-magical in nature.  Surely the
Noliers possessed their own war oil supply and had finally decided to bring it
into play.

A pair of Noliers ran northward, knocking over torches
and slashing bodies as they passed.  They angled for him.  One swung in an
overhead blow with all his force.  The crudity disgusted Colbey.  So many of
these fools struck without thought, placing strength behind their strikes
rather than skill, if they had any skill at all.  Now another simpleton would
learn a lesson in true swordsmanship, far too late to benefit from it.

Colbey’s sword flicked up and deflected the Nolier’s
blade.  With a follow-up flick, he ripped open the man’s throat.

While his friend absorbed what he had just witnessed,
Colbey ended his life as quickly.

All too easy.  These soldiers who swarmed the various
outland forces would have been no match for Colbey during his first year in
training as a scout.  He could cut a swath through them before they realized
their guts had been let out onto their boots.