The two of them balanced carefully on the beams of the river galley. Symeon took aim and let loose, instantly killing the scout in the crow's nest. “He’s down,” reported the Umpetha, as the two warriors scurried into the vantage point.
Ervinos hung on to the mast as he took in the view. The docked galley had anchored in a makeshift harbour deep in the swamplands. Ervinos clicked his tongue in annoyance at the sign of the bandit settlement around the harbour, he estimated there were at least 2 hundred river pirates and bandits frolicking in the camp that night. It was all the fault of that decrypt Empire, they had completely abandoned law enforcement on their side of the swamplands, and over the past few years, the bandits had become more organised and systematic than ever before.
“Do you have any idea how Father plans on taking the harbour?” asked Ervinos out loud, talking more to himself than anything. Last week, a dozen Hatha spies in the bandit camp reported that the harbour had some key information that might shine a light on the bandit's mastermind pulling the strings from the shadows.
The harbour was nearly at the Imperial border, so to avoid a diplomatic incident, Alexander Mukuru had brought only a small band of a hundred and fifty Hatha. But the harbour itself was never enough when river pirates were involved, the most important rats always chose to live on their ships and would sail away immediately at the sight of trouble.
“Not my assignment, not my problem,” replied Symeon, always the good soldier. “Let Lord Mukuru worry about the battlefield, we have a large enough task as it is.”
“6 people isn’t enough for a task like this,” responded Ervinos, as the two looked down to scout the enemy's presence on the galley they were to capture. They saw 10 men walking around, a couple of them stumbled around drunk, but most of them were only now starting to open their bottles.
They watched carefully until Ervinos spotted a man with a little twinkle around him. He tapped Symeon and pointed out the bandit in question, a middle-aged man with water twirling around freely above his hands.
“Daniels,” whispered Symeon, they had found that one target they were so scared of. The former Imperial army mage had killed dozens of Hatha, but his punishment wasn’t far. He was clever, never exposing himself to open combat, instead sticking to small unit combat on the river where his water magic could decimate an entire Hatha ship.
Ervinos scanned the sides of the galley and noticed that the row boat was floating calmly on the river, tethered by an abnormally long rope - Alcides and his fighters were in position. The camp lay quiet, whether it was the battalion of Hatha surrounding the harbour or the Ikonan warriors on the galley, none had been noticed yet. The first seconds of the battle for the harbour would be the magician's last.
Symeon and Ervinos walked out to the beams and crawled till they had the closest and clearest shot possible, both readied two arrows on their bows and traced the path of the water mage. If their aim wasn’t true, Alcides’s fighters would be walking into certain death.
The two synched up their breathing and steadied their aim. “3… 2… 1… fire” counted down Ervinos.
At the mark, four arrows descended onto Daniels. One struck his back, another - his legs, a third - his left arm. The pirate gave a terrifying scream, the bandits on deck were still in shock when another array of arrows hit them from the sides of the boat.
“Ervinos, the bastard is still moving,” screamed Symeon, Daniels was crawling on the ground, but had formed 5 flying daggers out of the drinking water nearby. He shot them wildly at the two teenagers on the beams, Ervinos dodged but lost balance in the process. Symeon immediately noticed and swung his friend into the crow's nest. He let fly another arrow, but Daniels brought up a shield of water to steal all of its momentum.
“Dammit” shouted the young Umpetha, Daniels had plenty of water around him to work with, if he managed to get onto his feet and unleash a final attack before bleeding out he could easily kill all 3 Hatha warriors on deck.
The magical bandit himself could feel nothing but the rush of combat, he saw three Ikonan warriors dispatching his men not far away, he collected water from the river and began forming them into floating spears. Right as he moved to unleash them, he heard a running sound behind him. He dropped his control over the spears, turned, and instinctively raised his hands to bring up a thick shield of water.
His senses had not lied to him, the shield was immediately struck by a lance. The one thrusting it towards Daniel's neck seemed to carry himself more efficiently than the other Ikonan raiders. Daniels could feel the pain starting to cloud his mind, but he focused and completely halted the spear's progress. Before he could collect himself, the attacker had already abandoned his spear, and was rushing low towards Daniels with two daggers drawn. The bandit rolled out of the way, using the little water that was still around to block the blistering strike, but that left him exposed to a kick aimed at his chest. The water mage fell to the ground, but his attacker would give him no time to rest, with a sword drawn high the Ikonan plunged right at his chest. Daniels summoned his ever-reliable water shield and managed to form it in time, but the sword made it through the obstruction and stuck shallowly into his chest.
“You will not take me today, Ikonan scum!!” he raged, as he tried to control the flow of water to push the sword away, but the warrior upon him grunted with all his might. Daniels could feel his limit approaching, he was tired and needed just an instant to breathe, in a moment of weakness his control over the water slipped, and with it, his life was taken by the one they called “Magektonos”.
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Ervinos breathed a sigh of relief from the crow's nest as he saw Daniels breathe his last. The other bandits had been encircled by the Hatha warriors and were being picked off. Symeon scrambled to the nets and descended to help them.
The young Mukuru looked around the ship to check for any stragglers. Right before completing his sweep, he heard a clicking noise. On turning, he noticed a brief light emerging from the other end of the ship. He squinted his eyes to focus on the figure, and then jumped back when he realised what was happening.
“Alcides, dodge! Fire, Fire!” he screamed
The Magektonos was never one to drop his guard in enemy territory, he registered the boy's warning and turned to see a multiple flaming bottles arcing towards him. He dodged the bottles and ran a few paces to escape the splashing flames. One look at the extent of the damage to the ship, and he knew, they could not win this fight.
“Father?!” quivered Symeon, clearly rattled by the size of the flames. He had heard enough of his father's lessons to know that fighting a mage head-on was incomparably harder than assassinating one.
“Soldiers, follow what I say exactly.” announced Alcides Umpetha, “Merus, Krato form a shield wall with me at the centre. The rest of you hide behind the wall and follow us to the edge of the boat. Ervin, don’t come down, get to the harbour as soon as possible.”
Mustered by his steady leadership, the Ikonans began moving as a unit, they formed a shield wall just as they saw a line of flames stretch up from the boat towards a barrel in front of them. “Pivot” shouted Alcides as he reoriented the wall in time to brace for impact as the flames ignited the barrel and exploded in front of them. The impact blew them off their feet and they were sent hurtling backwards.
Right as his body hit the ground, Alcides rolled on his back and immediately sprang back onto his feet. He lunged forward to pick up a spear from the ground and launched it at the enemy fire mage. The spear hurtled with surprising speed, in the darkness it took the mage a second extra to spot it, but she was able to dive away in time.
That gave the Ikonans the reprieve they desperately needed, they ran without cover to the edge of the ship, and they started diving into the river and swimming to the harbour shore. Alcides took a second to shoot a flaming arrow into the air. He turned around to see the mage, she had now closed the distance and was trying to get close enough that the Ikonans couldn’t evade her attacks. The Magektonos checked to see that the Ikonans had nearly reached the shore, he didn’t have to cover for too long.
He saw the mage charge up a different kind of attack, summoning flames to the wood below her, gathering them in one spot and launching across the floor and towards him. Alcides was prepared, he threw a barrel filled with alcohol at the attack, causing it to prematurely detonate. The blast blew the mage off her feet, and Alcides was sent overboard.
The Umpetha used the momentum from the fall to dive gracefully into the water, he kept underwater for most of the swim back to the shore and quickly found cover on land.
“Alcides, this is the perfect place to hold her.” suggested Ervinos, “We have enough cover to avoid the fire blasts and if she tries coming down then we will have an opportunity to get her.”
“No, Lord Mukuru has given me instructions in case we fail to kill Daniels. Run to the warehouse, but make sure the mage doesn’t lose track of us.”
Ervinos could not see the reason in giving up and advantageous position, but he would not question the Magektonos in the midst of battle. As the first commoner to be appointed the Hatha commander, a warrior so respected that when the nobles in Thalassanqaba objected to his appointment the entirety of the Hatha went on strike, Alcides had Ervin's complete trust.
The soldiers backed off from the harbour front and moved inwards. They could hear the screams of battle in the air, it seemed like sometime during their assault Alexander had ordered the main units to start moving. They could see the chaos of battle had disrupted the nighttime celebrations, with campfires dancing for a crowd of empty chairs.
Ervin and Symo ran in front of Alcides, who controlled the group's pace and watched to confirm that the fire mage was indeed giving chase. She tried hurling a few fireballs at them but found that they were just a sliver out of range, so she instead chose to conserve her energy and run towards the intruders.
When the mage was close enough, Alcides took the lead and ran straight into a warehouse. It was a water storage facility, with several barrels of water inside. The mage slowly walked up to the warehouse and gathered fire in her hands. The rats had finally given up.
“Come out, little Ikonans. I promise to end it quickly.” she taunted, as she walked towards the open door of the warehouse. She could see the warrior who had killed Daniels standing in the centre, with his guard seemingly dropped completely, he had come to terms with his death.
But the whole thing didn’t make too much sense, why run so desperately to die just like this? She noticed the darkness was restricting her vision as she entered the warehouse, so just to be cautious, she summoned a ring of flames onto the wood around her and widened her eyes. It was too little too late, as the light spread to the corners of the warehouse she saw tens of Ikonan warriors letting their spears fly right at her. She watched helplessly as they drove into her, she stumbled and fell to the ground forever.
The warehouse erupted in celebration, Alcides checked the perimeter to verify their safety, while the soldiers congratulated each other on killing their first mage.
“Good one, Father,” remarked Ervinos under his breath.
-----
30 minutes later.
“That’s the last of the testimonies, sir Alex.” saluted the information officer, as he ended the report. All senior bandits who had been apprehended alive corroborated the claim that the fire mage was here on a secret inspection and directly reported to the hand behind the curtain.
“Father, I have an idea.” pitched in Ervinos, as he so often did, “According to the reports the fire mage was going to go meet the head boss at the Imperial border. They will still be expecting her to come, let us take a small crew of 10 and ride the ship right to the bandit king. With some luck, we can capture him before he realises what’s happening, and even if he runs, they’ll be forced to leave a lot of information behind.”
Alexander stayed deep in thought, the idea wasn’t half bad. It was risky due to the unknowable number of mages at the enemy site, but that was a solvable problem.
Before he could give his verdict, a messenger came into the tent with a letter. It bore the crest of the Mukuru family. Alexander opened the letter, his face visibly dropping as he read through its contents.
“Strategy council, you are responsible for protecting this harbour from enemy counterattacks for the next month. Until then, we will not make any attempts at the bandit's head.”
“But Fathe-”
“I’m not doubting your vision, boy. When I was your age I would consider myself lucky to be included in a strategy meeting, never mind being placed as the commanding officer of my own unit.” reassured Alexander Mukuru, “That letter was from your mother. I have a bad feeling about this, we are needed in the capital. Alcides, assemble 30 of your best men and get the riverboat on the pier ready to sail. We’ll sail along the shoreline to Thalassanqaba as soon as you’re ready.”
The Hatha Commander gave a proper salute and went out to carry his orders without another word.