Battles are never easy business.
But they were my business.
“Report!” I commanded as I reached the main source of fighting, Danai nearby doing likewise.
“Sir, glad to see you here.” The officer in charge snapped me a quick salute as he indicated ahead, where several rows of men were taking turns rotating between frontward fighting, repelling the main assault of the crown forces. “They caught us unaware, how I have no damn idea. We only had the slightest warning. One of our men was taking a piss when he heard that all the birds had gone quiet.”
Others would have taken quiet birds as a frivolous warning. Still, I’d seen battles before, small-scale conflicts where only a few dozen or hundreds of men or women would die. They were always brushed under the rug; unrest couldn’t be allowed to spread, but I’d seen how they often started.
With silent birds.
“We managed to get in position just in time, but you can see we aren’t holding well.”
I very much could see that. Our forces were spread thin without proper defenses to fall back or hold from.
I’d reprimand the commanding officer if it weren’t for the fact that we are minutes from breaking.
It didn’t take a military genius to realize six extra soldiers wouldn’t be enough.
But that was why I had cleared the rest for prejudiced use of magic, a show of force that typically was frowned upon if not outright avoided during military conflict. With magic’s expansive and chaotic nature, battlegrounds would quickly devolve into slaughterhouses of fruitless death and violence if magic flew freely. I’d seen it myself during the suppression of the southern uprising, culminating in Carrion Gulch.
It had been years since then, but I still saw the images of the bloodbath as vividly as the day it happened.
But this battle wouldn’t be survived if we played by the rules. If this battle was lost, it could very well mean the end of our struggles against the crown before they could blossom into something greater.
Which means any second now-
As if on command, I heard chaos breaking out farther away. A sudden spike of earth had slammed out from the ground, spearing enemies and disrupting their forward movement.
Ilya.
“Sir?” The young officer nearby turned back toward me, unsure what had happened.
“We aren’t playing things by the books,” I announced as I raised my hand, my mana core stirring as I drew pure mana from it, the spell forming automatically.
“Aulorz!” I huffed. The result was… not dramatic. Several enemy combatants glanced downward, noticing the grass beneath their feet stained black as the dark liquid oozed underfoot, some slipping in it.
“Sir?” The young officer questioned again.
“Not done,” I muttered, already preparing the next spell, ignoring the reality of what I was about to unleash.
War is war.
“Kinorz.” I all but whispered. Once more, the effect was far from instant. At most, they may have noticed the temperature rising.
Until, generating a single spark, the field before me erupted into flames, dozens of men burning alive in a field of hellish flames that clung at them, their screams piercing the heavens above.
War is war.
“Oil and heat,” I announced to the young man, acting as if I was unphased by the horror I’d brought upon the men.
For several minutes, I watched the flames consuming the lives of men and women alike, their flesh melting away from their bones or simply charring away.
War is war.
I’d seen violence worse than this, but I didn’t enjoy enacting it myself.
But we had a duty and could not afford to fail here, not when that failure would bleed out through the rest of the war.
More screams erupted around the encampment as we rained down magic and fury, but it would only stem the tide for now. The other issue with magic in warfare was it was inefficient. I could kill dozens of men with the magic I’d just used, but as both were composite forms of wild magic, they’d drained my core to a shocking degree. It was why most accomplished mages, even those capable of high-level magic, still preferred to rely on the far more straightforward and less taxing primal forms of wild magic.
And then there are monsters like the Third Star who can even fling out deviant magic.
I continued holding the spells for several more minutes until, nearly out of mana, I released the magic.
After the first few dozen men and women had been consumed by the fire, it had been nothing more than an impassable wall.
It should be enough, though.
The momentary break in the fighting gave our forces chances to regroup, preparing to continue to hold back the assault, precious minutes bought.
Minutes that I bought not for them but for someone else.
If I’m right…
Technically, we hadn’t been the first to use magic during this battle. Our enemies had used it to gain the upper hand, and the mage responsible was nearby. Without knowing exactly their capabilities, any attempts at pushing outward could always result in a crucial opportunity for the mage to crumble our line and allow them to break us from both sides.
Stolen story; please report.
C’mon. Tell me that Greyheart was right about you.
With the wall of flames gone, the enemy forces were cautiously approaching once more. When no more flames appeared, they began to advance steadily, the final push to crush our forces as spread out as they were.
C’mon.
Behind enemy lines, a figure appeared like a phantom gliding out from the trees. In one hand, he held a spear; in the other, he had his gladius, his shield strapped to his back.
What’s he going to do?
I half expected the young Baster to drop a meteor from the sky, given how highly he’d been spoken of in hushed terms or perhaps to conjure forward a phantom army. The Basters were known for their illusions, after all.
Except he did no such thing. He glided forward like a specter of death, appearing to vanish from sight with such abruptness I had to rub at my eyes to make sure they weren’t playing tricks on me.
They weren’t, for the young man had suddenly appeared amid our enemy forces, as foolish of an action as one could conceive.
It wasn’t he who was cut down, though. Like scarlet ribbons trailing a gracefully prancing dancer, blood was spilled in his wake, his spear and sword sweeping through the enemy and cutting them down like stalks of wheat. The crown forces attempted to turn on the man, to crush him between their combined weight of steel, but he was fast as light and more elusive than a ghost.
He dropped a handful of men and women alike in seconds, but he wasn’t done. Flashing out of existence, he appeared in the middle of another cluster, his spear catching a woman straight through the eye. With a savage backward yank of his arm, he ripped the weapon free, gore and brain matter following in its wake. Her shield partner attempted to catch the woman, evidently too shocked to understand there was no surviving. Still, all he received for the effort was a gladius sweeping through his neck as his head tumbled to the ground next to her unmoving corpse.
Dear gods and lords above.
The man seemed to only accelerate further. Scything through the steel-clad soldiers like a hot knife through butter, soon the handful of soldiers had turned into dozens dead by his hand, and still, he kept marching forward. Sending the spear snapping forward, it stabbed through the unprotected armpit of a man, striking through his chest before erupting out the other end of his opposite armpit. Trying to pull the spear back, it gave, snapping. I saw the annoyance flash through his gaze before it was returned once more to a mask of stone as he slipped free his shield. A soldier attempted to catch him off guard, snaking forward a stabbing lunge of their sword. His shield snapped forward with inhuman speed, deflecting it out of the way. Continuing his forward momentum, the shield continued on, slamming so hard into the man’s helmet that his entire skull was crumpled inward, shards of skull and bone splintering out the sides of the now crushed head.
It was horrific to watch the man rip through ordinary men and women, many probably nothing more than conscripted soldiers, but it was also a chance.
“Forward!” I pointed forward with my sword, a calvary blade to match my regular position as a mounted commanding officer. “Assist Baster!”
As deadly as the man was, I wasn’t about to risk losing him to a wayward spear or arrow, not when this entire mission hinged upon him.
If my flames had given our troops a chance to catch their breath, Baster had given them renewed vigor to charge forward with a roar of defiance, spilling out from the opening in the surrounding razor wire and wooden spikes.
Our enemies’ plan to cage us in before breaking through our defensive line and assaulting us from either direction became our method of attack as we broke through the front, given the opportunity by the young Baster. Spilling out, our soldiers began to crash upon the undefended backs of enemies still engaged with our remaining troops. The nearly lost battle swung in our favor with such speed that the crown forces never could galvanize or prepare. One minute, they were all but ensured victory. The next, they were like lambs to a slaughter as the unthinkable happened.
Sighing, I sheathed my blade. There was blood on my hands but none upon my sword.
As is often the case with those tasked with commanding others.
I watched in silence as the remainder of the battle played out. Our troops continued to circle around, a crushing pincer. As more and more of our soldiers were freed from being pinned to their position defending their nebulously held ‘wall,’ more of our forces were allowed to cut down our foes.
Only minutes later, it was over.
The death toll later reported was shocking, if for the odds that were overcome. Of our two thousand, we’d lost three hundred and seven. Our enemies, an estimated four thousand, had lost over two thousand before those that remained threw aside their weapons, surrendering.
With such a victory, any commanding officer would have just gained a rather nice feather for their cap, but I could only feel hollow.
In a civil world, it would have been our total loss. It had only been won through violence that the common man could never hope to match.
Violence that I had been part of.
War is war.
I repeated the mantra in my mind as the young Baster approached.
“Sorry I took so long.” He huffed. There was a hard edge to his gaze like sincerity or even the act of being apologetic was a struggle, a side of the man I’d failed to see during our voyage.
“No, you did well.” I tried to give what I thought was a reassuring look. “Was there a mage like we suspected?”
“Yes, a user of a type of illusion or mental magic. If not from the same family, I’ve seen kin magic like theirs before. For them to have encompassed so many speaks volumes of their skill.”
“Was it a difficult battle?” I questioned, part of me hoping that something had given him pause.
“There was no battle.” He snorted. “I sent an ice arrow through his neck before he noticed me. No reason to risk death when I can help it.”
A chill crept through me. Of course, I’d heard that the Baster kid, for being only in his twenties, he was barely more than a kid, was deadly competent. I’d received the intel of the ‘exam’ he’d had against the Third Star, a genuine monster. How he’d fought him as a near equal.
The Third Star, a magical beast of over a thousand years old. Put into a near deadlock against a man of no more than two and a half decades.
I hid the unease as I gave the young man a nod.
“Well, I’m pleased it worked out as well as it did. The crown can’t have that many capable agents, and to send one here meant they fully intended to crush this force before making it north.”
“Not surprising.” The Baster shrugged. “Up north, farther away from the heart of the country, you’re more likely to find capable mages since magic is less likely to be taboo. The crown may have outwardly been against magic, but that’s not to say that they don’t use useful tools where they can.”
“I’m glad you understand that as well.” I crossed my arms.
“Yes, well, if you’ll be excusing me.”
Without another word, the young man jogged off to do what I had no idea, but I had no desire to ask, filled with a sudden urge to avoid him entirely.
Hah. Greyheart, maybe you miscalculated.
Initially, this plan had been presented with the Third Star leading us to the North. There had been discussion that his inhuman nature might spur the North to galvanize further in the face of an imagined existential threat, an enemy of mankind aiding their enemies. Rook Baster had presented another method of that same plan that didn’t involve an inhuman beast.
Except, seeing what I’d just witnessed…
I’m not sure I could call that human.
Humans didn’t move like that; they didn’t flourish in blood and death. Not like that, at least. I’d heard that the very pinnacle of humans could have matched the Third Star, but I’d never fully believed it.
But that display of power changed everything.
I shivered again, a shiver that had nothing to do with the colder northern climate.
War is war.
We had to win. For that, I’d put aside my newly-earned apprehension of the man. Fear was the destroyer of dreams. For the dream of a world where the likes of Carrion Gulch would never happen again, I would do whatever it took.
Even if I must recreate scenes like it in the process.