Wizard's Blood [Part Two] (47 page)

“
What about the boats? Have we figured out where they are being stored?”

“
No single place. They seem to have stock piled them in a variety of warehouse all along the river. Must have been busy the whole winter. We’ve identified a half dozen places, and are still looking, although that effort has been cut back now that we are looking for the planes. We don’t want to let them know we are aware of their hiding places until we are ready to strike. I want to hit all of the places the same night.”

“
That’s probably wise. We also need to find their supply lines. Are they still bringing the things in, or not? If so, we must find ways to disrupt that effort.”

“
Has your friend come up with anything we can use?” Wylan asked.

Gene had been busy and had a lot of ideas. Unfortunately, new devlopments took time, and too many at once would delay the release of all. He had chosen to concentrate on a couple of key ones, but so far nothing had been completed to the point where it was ready for the troops. He hoped to have a working version of the Claymore in a couple of weeks, but he refused to promise. Jolan could tell Gene had been frustrated by the state of the technology here.

Kavel returned while they were talking and the three men went to work trying to locate the most likely sites for the airfield. Jolan had already made a list of what supporting facilities would have to include, so the spies would know better what to look for. Jolan was certain the planes were kept inside when not being used and were most likely well away from where the Kimlelm locals might get a glimpse of them.

While they were plotting the sightings, Jolan tried to think of ways to protect the troops so they could attack against the threat of the planes. He also tried to think of a way the flying vehicles could be brought down.

Shyar’s efforts with the cage were starting to yield results. Twice the lead wizard who watched her had come in and inspected the cage. She had walked around the outside, looking at the cage and testing it with her power senses, obviously checking the flows that needed to be present within the metal bars. She never came inside to see if the power could be accessed from within. Shyar wondered if the wizard watching her was the one who had built the cage. If so, that explained her careless checking. She was a poor workman. Shyar wasn’t worried. She knew the checks were a formality rather than inspired by some suspicion she’d been up to something. After so many months they were convinced she was cowed and incapable of taking action. She was happy to help them continue to see her that way.

The truth of the matter was that she now had a region inside the cage where she could access a reasonable amount of power. That allowed her to work well away from the boundaries of her prison. Before she’d had to limit her time with the power, concerned they might notice the time she was spending near the bars. Now she could work from within, seemingly daydreaming or bemoaning her fate, while in fact she continued her efforts. Progress would also be swifter as she now had a greater draw of power available to her. It wouldn’t be too long before she would be sure whether it would be possible to escape the cage. Then she would have to plan what to do next.

Her contacts with the young girl in Angon were stronger as well. Her name was Tishe she had learned. That communication had been extremely difficult. The girl had sent a mental picture of the single word. Even that had taken several tries. They wouldn’t be exchanging much information that way. The girl was a young mage, but a very powerful one. Shyar suspected she was stronger than herself, which might explain why she could contact her and no one else. She could sense Jolan, but couldn’t actually contact him. The interaction didn’t extend to words, at least for now. She could send and receive images or feelings, but little else. Still, she’d been able to reassure the girl she was fine, and knew somehow the word would be passed on to Jolan.

The girl herself seemed changed of late. She was more introspective and sadder. Something had happened to change her. Shyar was certain it had to do with the war, but Tishe had given her no sign of what it might be.

Shyar knew the war had started again. From the telegrams she could overhear and from Cheurt’s reactions, she knew that there had been a major setback not too long ago. Cheurt had been intensely angry and frightening to his staff for the better part of a week. They had lost a sea battle, but she had been unable to learn the details. It must have been a significant setback.

More recently there had been successes for Ale’ald. Cheurt had been almost gleeful the day before when he received a telegram indicating their plan to gain a foothold in Seret was working. Seret had fought back more successfully than expected, but Ale’ald was winning. Shyar wished she understood the unstated aspects of the events. Much about the telegrams was vague, assuming the reader knew what the plan had been.

She’d put some of her idle time into thinking about the telegraph system. There had to be a way to cause failures in the system, if only locally. It would probably be best if she interrupted service on outgoing messages. Maybe she could cause a command or two to be delayed at a critical time, or even better, be missed completely. Their technique was sloppy and, because of Cheurt, they often failed to question anything coming from here. There was a chance she could remotely operate the system if she could get just a bit more power. If she could interrupt outside awareness of the system, she might be able to operate the keys from her cell, making it look like a message was coming in. With the outside world temporarily isolated from the local system, no one else would be aware of the message. If she could do that, she might be able to plant some false ideas. It would have to be handled with finesse or someone might eventually guess the source of the misleading information. First she had to get access to a bit more power. Then lots of things might become possible.

Sergeant Wult slowly closed the long collapsible telescope with which he’d been viewing the landscape ahead of them. The scope was far better than anything he’d used before, even if it wasn’t as nice as the binoculars he’d had a chance to try when one of Wylan’s elite teams had worked with them a couple of weeks back. Remarkable new inventions kept appearing, but still they continued to lose this war. It seemed that whatever Angon had delivered to the troops in Seret, the wizards from Ale’ald were always one step ahead of them. Ale’ald had managed to put troops onto Seret’s shores, something that hadn’t happened in hundreds of years, and the accomplishment had been almost effortless. Now they held a large section of the riverfront, and were busy building bridges so they could move the whole of their army across as desired.

The past couple of weeks had been one skirmish after another with his own side usually coming up on the short side. Ale’ald kept pushing them back, gradually expanding the area they controlled. The problem was their inability to bring large forces to bear on the enemy. They easily outnumbered the invaders, but it wasn’t safe to gather too many troops in one spot. That usually meant the enemy would bring out one or more of their planes and drop the killing gas that worked far too effectively against large gatherings of men. The planes also told the enemy where they were and directed the attacks their way.

Still, they were learning. They had given up the red uniforms that had been a standard for the Seret military for centuries, and now wore ugly brown and green fatigues. The new uniforms allowed them to blend into the land, making it far easier to hide when the planes passed overhead. They had learned to use the trees and shadows for protection, and especially how to find a spot and remain still while the planes passed overhead. Motion was the enemy, and gave them away more than any other factor. Today the entire battalion, almost fifteen hundred men, had managed to successfully hide from the spotting plane that had flown over earlier. That was what he had been checking. There were no signs the enemy had been alerted to their presence, even though they were now well inside the perimeter that Ale’ald claimed as its own.

Other actions were being taken to provide protection. Each company now traveled with several mages, whose job had been expanded to provide protection against the airborne weapon. They could create shields that were reasonably effective if there were not too many men. He’d also seen a mage use some kind of fire spell against the gas when it had fallen into an area that was clear of men. The fire destroyed the gas that killed. One mage had even been agile enough to catch a falling canister of poison and wrap it into a shield as it fell. The gasses remained locked inside the shield until the mage was able to toss it far out into a nearby lake where it sank and was rendered ineffective. Sometimes the winds worked in one’s favor, and they’d learned to pay attention to the strength and direction when one of the planes was spotted.

Several men were now assigned the duty of keeping watch for the planes. They moved relatively slowly and could be seen in the distance as they crossed the river. Long before a plane could approach, they went into their hiding mode, hoping the plane would pass without discovering their presence.

Still, each restriction made effective combat more difficult. Today they were taking a bit of a risk. His was one of three companies that had been deployed into this area, the northern most of the two areas Ale’ald controlled. The enemy was regular in its patrols, and the past few weeks of observation had given Seret a better picture of how they operated. Today they hoped to surprise the Ale’ald patrol. It would be three companies against the enemy’s one, which gave him favorable odds. He hoped they could attack, each of the three groups coordinated by the small radios, eliminate the invaders, and disperse before the enemy could react. Once they were involved with the enemy, the planes seldom attacked for fear of killing the Ale’ald troops, but they would be at risk during the withdrawal.

“
They are staying on their standard patrol route,” Sergeant Wult told his Lieutenant after he’d made his way down the hill from where he’d made his observations. “I don’t think we’ve been spotted.”

The Lieutenant nodded and briefly talked with his counterparts leading the other two forces. Everyone was in position, and they would execute the attack when the invader reached the turn in the small valley just below where Wult had been lying a few minutes before.

“
Deploy your wizard hunters,” the Lieutenant ordered, and pass the word. “We will attack on my signal. The others will support our lead.”

Wult nodded and headed off. They had one of the standard wizard hunter teams, a pair of men consisting of one mage who could hopefully interrupt the shields of the enemy wizard, and a sniper who would attempt to bring him down. While they didn’t have the long range specialists that Wylan had assembled, the men were equipped with the special coppered bullets, so even if the mage were unsuccessful, they still had a chance at a wizard, if one were spotted.

The Ale’ald officer that led the scouting patrol paid careful attention to the trees as his men made their way down the flat between the opposing hills. He doubted the enemy would have been able to move any kind of a force into place this far into the territory that Ale’ald controlled. The morning flights had indicated the area was clear of enemy soldiers, but this would be the kind of place they would choose. He hated these patrols, but with the new project starting back by the river, command was insistent about ensuring the area was secure.

The first shots came not from the trees the officer watched so carefully, but from the long winding gully that ran along the opposite edge of the flat on which his men moved. The small stream that wandered through the little valley had dug a furrow some five feet deep that meandered around the base of the hills. Sergeant Wult had hidden his men in the depression, and they now fired from relative safety at the enemy who stood exposed on the open land, outlined by the hill behind them.

The Ale’ald forces split, some making for the trees, but only made themselves targets as they vainly tried to make the safety of the forest before being cut down by rifle fire. Those that turned and tried to retrace their path back out of the little valley found their escape cut off by the second company, which opened fire on the fleeing troops when they came into range. Had the enemy tried to continue ahead, they would have found where the third company was hiding.

Today the battle was one-sided in Seret’s favor. The well-protected Seretian troops fired without mercy on the exposed forces of the invader, and before long the continuous crackle of rifle fire died away to the occasional shot as one of the few living enemy was spotted and dispatched. The battle over, the men slipped out of their hiding spots and checked to be sure that the men on the field were dead, and rummaged through their pockets and gear in search of intelligence. There were often maps or orders that could reveal a great deal.

The Lieutenant had no time for this. They would leave the dead and wounded and move on. The sound of gunfire would have been heard, and it wouldn’t be long before the enemy responded. He planned to be long gone by then. In addition to killing over two hundred of the enemy, they had hopefully provided a bit of a distraction so the scout teams that had been sent in to observe the enemy’s effort near the river would have less chance of being spotted.

Despite the success of the morning, Sergeant Wult wasn’t happy. They had hardly made a dent in the enemy’s forces. Someone had to do something about those planes so that they could come in here in regiment force and chase these invaders back into the river.