Remedial Magic: Step by Aching Step, page 25
“What do we do, boy?” Daelus asked from Aldric’s side. Aldric did his best not to startle in surprise as he remembered he wasn’t alone. His inner circle, as always, hadn’t left his side.
“You look like you’re trying to shit out a brick,” Ida commented dryly. “That bad?”
“You have eyes, don’t you?” Talus answered for Aldric. “This is bad. Terrible, even. Like, as bad as our last assignment years ago when Boss first showed up.”
The rest of the penal squad all loitered behind them, easily able to see the impossible task that had been set before them. All of them, man and woman alike, wore grim faces. They also had expectant looks in their eyes as they all stared at Aldric, waiting for orders.
Their unwavering faith was quite intimidating, but it reminded Aldric that he wasn’t responsible for just himself. He wouldn’t let these people die just because Caffaret had a vendetta against him personally. His conversation with Kedrin bounced around in his skull again, unprompted. Here he was, pitting himself against the unfairness of the world again, only two days after saying he didn’t want to anymore. Seriously, what was his life?
“Daelus, get everybody up and ready to move,” Aldric said, using Bredig’s sturdy body to leverage himself up into a standing position. “We’re approaching the canyon from the south. Quickly and quietly.”
Aldric’s inner circle all stood and waited for more info before Daelus finally asked, “And then what, boy?”
“And then,” Aldric sighed, “we hope I packed enough spell paper. Apparently, it’s time to field test my blood bond enchantments.”
MINERVA COULD ONLY stand and watch as their pursuers came closer and closer. She could easily make out their front lines now, a long row of soldiers all mounted on large lizard-like beasts. The grizziks stood a foot taller than a man and as wide as a bull, with pointed snouts that housed their long and deceptively deadly tongues. As they got closer, Minerva saw their vicious claws that tore into the ground as easily as shears through cheap cloth, allowing the massive creatures to move with surprising grace and speed. It was unnervingly easy to imagine those claws tearing into her own people with little resistance.
Her soldiers all began shouting orders, trying to set up a defensive line to meet their attackers. It all seemed hopeless to Minerva, but she couldn’t show that. She stood on top of a boulder overlooking the canyon floor, still in her bedraggled but sturdy armor and making a show of fearlessness. Miraea was at her side, kitted out in the finest armor the empire’s smiths could make. In her hand was a long white staff, an enchanted item for enhancing mana flow and spell potency. Minerva couldn’t see the young woman’s face under her helmet visor, but she could imagine that it was as stoic and passive as usual, even with death knocking on their door. For the umpteenth time, Minerva wondered if allowing this brilliant girl to go against her father’s wishes and join her retinue was doing a disservice to the world. Now she would likely die here.
But then a bizarre thing happened. All the grizzik riders, who moments before had been charging forward with the clear intent of wiping them out, all suddenly halted. They were arrayed in a formation that blocked the entrance to the canyon, but they simply stood there as if waiting for something. An uncanny silence filled the dead canyon, with not even the sound of the wind making it this far down.
A single grizzik rider emerged from the column. His fellow soldiers all split to either side to allow him passage in a clearly rehearsed maneuver. His armor was a faint golden color that twinkled even in the fading daylight. It covered every inch of his body and was clearly made by a skilled hand. As the man continued riding forward, he came close enough for Minerva to see rune script decorating almost every inch of the metal. This man was no common soldier. He was likely a knight, if not a general, from a prestigious veronian house.
The gold-plated man’s mount came to a halt a mere fifty meters away from the frontline of Minerva’s soldiers, all of whom were watching on with trepidation but didn’t immediately attack. This man had clearly approached them to parley, for some reason. The knight dismounted and promptly bowed with the grace expected of a noble.
“Lady Minerva Juno Rhagia, Empress of Rhagia,” he shouted in a clear, but surprisingly youthful, voice. “I apologize we must meet like this, but I wish to parlay with you before anything further occurs.” He reached down to his waist and slowly unbuckled his sword belt, allowing it to fall to the muddy canyon floor. “May I approach in good faith?”
Minerva was so surprised by the out-of-place civility from those that had hunted them down that she didn’t immediately respond. Her eyes flicked back to the formation of grizzik riders, but they all seemed content to sit and wait for their leader. This didn’t appear on the surface to be a trap, and it wasn’t like the enemy force needed guile and cunning to defeat the pitiful rhagian forces. But she’d already been tricked once today. She’d need to prod this man and find out what she could first.
“Apologies,” she shouted back. “But I find my faith in others severely lacking as of late, particularly in those that call themselves the enemies of my empire. One assassination attempt was enough for a lifetime.” The soldier paused for a moment, digesting her answer, before he stood straight again and removed his golden helmet. Minerva expected him to look furious at her refusal, or at least annoyed, but he looked... regretful? He was young and very handsome, with short blonde hair and eyes blue enough that Minerva could see them shining all the way from her boulder. He couldn’t have been any older than his early twenties. If someone so young was leading an elite force such as this, he was either very talented or just of very good breeding. Minerva hoped for the latter.
“I suppose I can understand that,” the knight said, sounding genuinely conciliatory. “And I cannot imagine that our ambush of you paints any of us in a favorable light in your esteemed eyes.”
“Enough pleasantries,” Minerva interrupted, trying to take control of the conversation. “State your demands. What do you want?”
Again, in place of the anger Minerva expected at being interrupted, the young knight expressed reluctance. “Your Majesty, I beseech you. Please surrender. Your soldiers will be released unharmed, and you will be taken into my personal custody. I swear on my life and my house that you will not come to harm while you are with me.”
How easy that would be. Minerva was almost tempted. If it meant that her people could live in place of her, she would gladly have accepted. But she wasn’t that naïve. Any offer made by the veronians was a lie. Thagrius was still the spineless coward he’d always been. It wouldn’t be beneath him to try to destabilize her empire a second time, just so he could rush in to fill the power vacuum.
“That is quite the bold claim, knight,” Minerva finally answered after several moments of tense silence. “And yet, you have me at a disadvantage. You have yet to introduce yourself, or why your family’s house would matter to me at all.” She was talking more to stall than anything else. Perhaps her people could take advantage of this calm before the storm and take out the enemy leader?
Even after questioning the honor of himself and his house, the man acted with social grace, blinking in surprise before he smiled in embarrassment. Minerva was beginning to doubt if this man was actually a noble. It seemed impossible to anger him with insults.
“Ah, my apologies, your majesty, that was most rude of me. This is my first time speaking to one of your station, so I might not do so properly. Please forgive my blunder.” After that odd bout of honesty was over, the knight bowed formally once again.
“Allow me to introduce myself, your majesty. My name is Sir Balrus Atticus, a knight in service to King Thagrius of Verona.”
Chapter 11
“NEVER HEARD OF YOU,” Minera answered in one last effort to rile up this Sir Balrus. It didn’t. Instead, he merely nodded in acknowledgment before repeating his politely worded demands.
“Regardless, I give you my word that no harm shall befall you while you are in my custody. If it was not already obvious, your majesty, you are the reason we have chased you so far. We have no interest in your soldiers, so long as they do not stop us. I hope that all of this can be ended without a single drop of blood being shed.”
Minerva let the silence stretch out as she considered her options. Her people had no hope of winning, she knew. Every one of them would proudly fight and die in her name, but it still tore at her that she was so powerless here. If she wasn’t so exhausted, if she hadn’t already performed mass summonings during the main battle hours ago, she would have been able to stop this on her own. Now she was forced to rely on the children of her country to fight in her stead. It was humiliating and heartbreaking, but it was reality.
“My soldiers!” Minerva cried out, her voice filling the entire canyon with royal authority. “Answer this man! Shall I surrender myself into the hands of the enemy so that you may all go free? Is this an acceptable offer to you?”
There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation. Despite their exhaustion and their fear, their empress had challenged their honor and sense of duty. There was only one proper answer to such a question.
A thunderous roar of defiance and war rose from the throats of every rhagian soldier, man and woman, knight and footman, healthy and wounded. Despite their small number, the volume caused bits of rock to come crumbling down off the canyon walls and vibrated the muddy water around their ankles. Their answer was clear. They would fight, or they would die. Just as warriors of the glorious Empire should live.
Minerva adored all of them for it. And hated herself for asking it of them.
As the rhagian forces continued to shout, Sir Balrus’ hopeful face melted into stony resolve. The time for talking was long past. He calmly climbed back on his mount and reseated his helmet, and with a single wave of his hand, his horde of grizzik riders raised their own war cries as their mounts charged forward.
ALDRIC’S PEOPLE HAD finished their long crawl through the brush to perch themselves on the lip of the canyon. They just in time to catch both sides slamming together in a tangle of weapons and limbs. The sound of steel striking steel rang out over the valley and set Aldric’s ears to ringing. Despite the chaos, however, he was lost in a storm of thoughts. This situation was far further beyond him than he’d first thought.
He’d heard the parley that had taken place before the fighting had started in earnest. The gods damn empress of Rhagia was here. And the veronians were led by a noble knight of clearly high birth, making several of his people likely mages. Several things made more sense now, and yet many more didn’t. Did the gods really hate him this much?
“It’s now or never, boy!” Daelus called out over the tumult from Aldric’s right. He and the rest of the penal squad had just finished spreading out along the length of the canyon’s wall, crouched down low and out of sight. Aldric looked to Daelus blankly for only a moment before his battle senses reasserted themselves.
Whatever. All three monarchs could be down there for all Aldric cared right now. He needed a clear head on his shoulders if he wanted this to work.
Aldric wished they all had bows they could fire from up here, but Ida and Talus were the only ones who were any good with one. Besides, they’d never had enough bows available to them to matter. Each penal squad member only possessed what they could scrounge from the battlefield, and even that was limited to cheap equipment that was usually in poor condition. Aldric would have to improvise with a weapon of his own.
“Wait for the signal!” Aldric answered Daelus, his eyes on the battlefield and, more importantly, the division between the enemy’s front and rear ranks.
A cavalry force’s advantage lied in speed and hit-and-run tactics. If this Sir Balrus character had any sense, he wouldn’t commit all their forces at one time into a tight space with foliage that only had one real exit. They would instead charge in waves. The front line would charge in and wreak havoc, then quickly fall back as the second line charged between the gaps of the retreating front line and did the same. Rinse and repeat.
The rhagians put up a valiant defense as they did their best to form a shield wall, but the front column of cavalry slammed into them and sent most scattering. Within moments, the grizziks were flicking out their long tongues and snapping up the ones that had already collapsed, finishing them between their powerful jaws that could tear through steel.
Despite the devastation, however, the grizzik riders couldn’t afford to stay still for long, or they risked being ganged up on. The brave rhagian soldiers were already grouping up around individual riders and trying to separate them from their mounts. As Aldric had expected, the cavalry immediately retreated as soon as one or two of the mounted warriors were taken down.
“Boss, we need to do it now!” Ida screamed at Aldric from her place several squad members down the line of the canyon’s lip.
“Hold on!” Aldric called back. He had to focus on the fight to find the right moment, but he also had to keep a tight grip on his mana pool for what came next. He still hadn’t mastered this after several years of practice, but now he was trying it on more targets that he’d thought himself capable of. It was their only chance to make any kind of difference, however.
Whoever was commanding the rhagian forces knew their stuff, because the soldiers didn’t pursue the retreating cavalry. They instead formed their shield wall again, just in time to intercept the second charge from the veronian rear line. Again, the mounted warriors slammed into the rhagians and tore into them with tooth, claw and spear. Worse, a handful of mages from the safely withdrawn first line were lobbing spells over the heads of their allies. That might put a wrinkle in Aldric’s plan later, but he’d just have to adapt.
Then the first line began its second charge while the second line pulled back. Both cavalry lines had been bloodied, if only slightly, and there was still a gap between the two before they would trade places again. Aldric wouldn’t get a better opportunity than this.
“Aldric!” Daelus roared, the worry in his voice coming through clearly.
“Igni petre kishir!” Aldric cried out, then yanked hard on his mana pool.
The sudden, long range magical working made Aldric nearly pass out. All along the line of penal squad members, small spell scrolls lit up with fire as Aldric’s enchantments responded to his will. Aldric’s theory had proven correct; as long as his blood was infused in the runes, he could activate simple spells at long range without touching them. Some of them clearly lit more than others, but all of them were on fire. Aldric considered that a better field test than he’d had any right to hope for.
The penal squad didn’t waste any time. Seeing their allotted scrolls burning, they immediately tossed them into the canyon below, taking care to clear the rhagians and land their shots between the two veronian cavalry lines. The ground was still muddy and flooded, so any fireballs that fell there simply went out. But the drowned trees and brush, all dried out and dead, almost immediately caught fire. The blaze quickly spread to the rest of the dead forest and drew a wall of fire between the two lines of enemy grizzik riders. One line couldn’t escape, while the other couldn’t assist their trapped allies.
Aldric was glad to have learned how much grizziks hated fire. The mounts immediately began panicking as they were quickly surrounded by flames, some throwing their riders and making to scamper up the side of the canyon to safety. The abrupt chaos broke any semblance of formation the cavalry line had and being trapped by the wall of fire rendered their speed advantage useless.
The rhagian soldiers seemed collectively bewildered at this sudden turn of events. Some of them were also hurt by the flames or trampled by panicking grizziks, but there was little Aldric could do about that. He could only keep moving forward, and this next step was even crazier.
“Jump now! Aim for a veronian!”
Gods bless his people. Even though he’d just said something insane, even though they’d stared at him in stupefied shock when he’d explained his plan on the way here, they did exactly as he asked without hesitation. With shouts of fear mixed with war cries of determination, every member of the penal squad, Aldric included, leaped from the canyon wall and into the fray thirty feet below.
Aldric took his own advice, aiming his jump to land squarely on the back of a veronian soldier that had just been thrown from his mount. The impact knocked all the air out of Aldric’s lungs, but it broke his fall instead of the fall breaking him. It also broke the back of the poor soldier he’d just landed on as the man was driven like a nail into the muddy ground. Aldric’s head briefly submerged in half a foot of muddy water before he broke the surface again, gasping both for air and from the pain.
Holy hell. He wasn’t dead. His moment of elation at being alive didn’t last long, however. He could only watch as other penal squad members fell from the canyon lip above, some not as lucky as Aldric. Most had made it with limited injury, but some had missed their marks entirely and slammed into the earth at full speed, clearly dead. Aldric shoved his regrets to the back of his mind before they could take hold of him. He didn’t have the luxury of mourning right now. Instead, he struggled to his feet to take stock of the situation.
It was probably the worst place he’d ever found himself in. His first mission with the penal squad included.
Aldric almost immediately realized the first flaw in his improvised plan; none of the rhagian soldiers knew who the hell Aldric and his people were. The penal squad wasn’t given uniforms, only wearing tattered cloaks that they’d sewn together from dark cloth, so from the rhagians’ perspective, a group of armed and insane individuals with no obvious allegiance had suddenly rained fire from the sky before dropping like stones onto their enemies. The rhagians seemed hesitant to break their formation and immediately engage this new threat, but they still watched both sides warily. It was unlikely they all could work together to mount a counteroffensive like Aldric had planned.
