I slept most of the day away, meaning that when night time came around, I was pretty much wide awake. Most evenings I had practised lying to Mina’s magic. Sure I had gotten it right one time when we practised the first night out here, but I could not rely on that one success. Subsequent tests showed that I did not succeed every time, which was why we had practised so much.
The fight with Bakra showed me that I had gotten complacent in my practice of other applications of my magic. Because of his weapon, which had too many points of references with nine skulls for flail heads, I had not connected with any of them. For the simple reason that I was afraid to get confused by so many inputs at once.
Because of how quickly I lost my weapons during the fight, I had not managed to create links between my weapons and what little clothes he was wearing, meaning that when he headbutted me, I was shit out of luck. If I had not stabbed him so close to his manhood, he would not have offered a draw, of that I was certain.
I had to get serious about getting better at using my magic, or I would die. So from the time I awoke till the sun set, I was busy bending trajectories. Arrows, knives, and axes, thunked when they hit the tree that had become my target. We would have to cut it down when I was done, simply because I had wounded it so much that it would likely die anyway.
A thing Barka had said worried me, the whole shebang about a Farseer, so I had asked Linus about it, “Linus, what is a Farseer?”
“Ah, the orc mentioned them?” he had asked.
“Yup, what are they?”
“They’re the orc who can connect with animals. They usually use birds to observe others before approaching,” he had said.
Feeling a bit relieved that it was not more intrusive than that. However, that did not mean that there was not some form of magic that allowed, for example, the church to spy on me. So I asked another question, “Is there a magic that makes it possible to see what has happened or is happening in another location?”
His answer brought me a little peace from worry at least: “No.”
When darkness fell, I helped with the night watch but made sure that I was in a place that none of the other watchmen would be able to see my eyes if I succeeded in changing them. If I had access to Emma’s shapeshifting magic, I would need to practise that. I had originally held off on practising, because I was afraid of fucking up and damaging my sight, and I was afraid to practise that form of magic around Ethan.
The only downside to practising it out in the wilds was that Emma was not here with me to guide me. I had left her and Yathanae back at the Hall with Lily, mainly so Emma could keep an eye on Ethan. Speaking of Lily she was a little put out that I had taken all of the lapomancers with me since she was in the middle of constructing new housing. I had apologized, however, military matters took precedent with the upcoming deployment.
Instead, I directed her towards another project: Rebuilding the dock and some more fishing boats for the lake. We might not have a shipwright at hand, but the wood mages and the carpenters should be able to successfully copy from the couple of functioning boats that we did have.
Shapeshifting my eyes turned out to be damn freaking hard, despite having already done it while sleeping once, and having Emma’s guidance to change them back. Following what I had done with her help, I would try and reverse the process. The first step to take was pulling some of her mana to me.
I had done that before, but then she had been right next to me, meaning that the link between our mana pools had been short and strong. Now it stretched almost a day’s travel on foot, and it felt fragile. I was afraid that I would break the link if I tried to pull any magic from it. Well, I would first need to send some magic before pulling it out, or at least that was what I had done the last time.
‘I wonder if I can take the mana and magic without providing any mana in return?’ The thought intrigued me, but I felt it best not to do it without her consent. I knew too little about magic to make a safe educated guess to what the consequences could be.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I took hold of the link between Emma and myself. With care I started pouring mana into it, not to send it to her, but to see if I could strengthen the link itself. At what felt like a snail’s pace the link started to thicken where I concentrated on it, so carefully I started to reinforce the link further away.
As time went by, it became harder and harder and required more mana to grow the link between us. Suddenly, I was at her mana pool and I could feel her contentment and warmth, as she was sleeping. The impression of her mood was even stronger than the time at the lake, where I felt her alarm. Or even when we had just been around each other.
I sent a trickle of mana through the link into her mana pool, something I was well versed in by now, having aided Nathalie so many times lately in her healing of my broken body. The hard part was to take out a bit of the mana, and knowing how much I should take out.
It took me some time, how much, I did not know, because I had lost track of time, but in the end, I finally managed to coax mana out of her pool. I opened my eyes, which made it harder to maintain the focus on manipulating the mana. However, I needed to look at the campfire to know if I succeeded or not.
Still holding on to the mana that was trickling back through the link, I tried to focus it on my eyes. I was surprised by how easy it was, but it turned out that her mana wanted to change, it was almost eager to do it. The hard part was not changing, but controlling the change, because once I let the mana go, it tried to break free and transform the rest of me.
With great difficulty, I managed to rein in the rambunctious mana and contain it to only my eyes. More slowly than when Emma had transformed my eyes, the red hue started to fade away and everything became much clearer. Looking around in wonder I marvelled at how many details I was able to see, even with the slight haziness and lack of one of the primary colours.
Sure, the farther away things were, the hazier they got, but it still allowed me to clearly see the men patrolling out in the dark. Looking towards the mountain I actually saw two harpies flying close by.
Over the last few days we had seen them flying around, but from far away, and with no indication of where they camped. However, it seemed that they were flying closer during the night, probably to better observe us. In fact, they were within the range of a musket.
Giving a grim smile, I silently grabbed my own musket, as well as those of three of my bodyguards. They were sleeping, and would not need them. I made my way to one of the walls that the stone mages had erected. I loaded each of the muskets, one by one.
I linked two of the balls to each of the harpies that were by now sitting in the top of some trees almost a hundred and fifty metres away, where I barely could make out the clothes they were wearing. Normally they would be well outside of the accurate range, and it being night should have made them safe. Not from me though.
Keeping up eight links at that length was pretty darn hard. Each ball had two links. One was the aim link, the one that helped me know when the musket was pointing at the optimum target. It was also the link that required the least mana, though I strengthened it with more mana than normal anyway.
The other link, which required a lot more mana, and which I strengthened a lot more than normal as well, was the link that would allow me to bend the projectile towards the endpoint of the link.
Despite all the mana I had poured into reinforcing the link between me and Emma, the mana that had been used was barely more than my regeneration, so I still had almost seventy percent of my maximum mana available. And I used almost all of the rest available to me to strengthen the eight links. Those harpies were going down.
I had two muskets to my left and two to my right, corresponding to which of the two harpies that they were linked to. I considered warning my people before I started shooting, but if there were too much activity, they would notice. Elves had slightly better vision than humans, being able to see better at night, and we had several campfires lit to keep us warm during the night. It was still early spring after all and in the mountains, even at this low elevation, it meant that it was still below freezing during the night.
I grabbed a musket from my right side first. Aiming the musket in the general direction of my target, I turned my attention to the aim link, waiting for it to be right. I pulled the trigger and waited for a second for the musket to go off.
As soon as the recoil sent the butt of the musket against my shoulder, I started switching muskets. Going for one from the left side. Behind me, I heard shouts of surprise. Through my link to the harpy I had aimed for, I felt more than saw it fall to the ground. The other must have been surprised because as I brought the second musket to bear, it was still sitting in the tree.
However, before I could get a good aim at it, it started moving. I managed to get a beat on it and pulled the trigger. The slight delay in the ignition of the gunpowder meant that my shot would most likely be a little off.
I was already reaching for the next musket, when I felt a slight dip in the link, as the harpy fell for a moment. With my enhanced vision, I could see that it struggled for a moment, before flying on. The links I had created getting stretched. I fired the third musket as the harpy started diving down behind the treetops. Whether I hit it or not, I could not say. My links to it were severed.
“Who’s shooting?” I heard one of the senior squad leaders demand.
“I am,” I called back, pulling a bit of magic into my eyes, to turn them back to normal. Turning around, I saw the red hues in the campfires, so hopefully, my eyes would look normal.
“Milord, what’s going on?” someone asked nearby.
“Shot a couple of harpies, at least one of them is down and not moving. Don’t know if it’s dead or not, but we should at least check,” I said as I looked at the soldiers who had come up to me. From their lack of screaming, I would guess my eyes were back to normal. At least they probably did not look like cat eyes.
The patrolling soldiers had also retreated, and one of them said, “Milord, I saw nothing.”
“I cheated, my magic helped a bit,” I said. “It’s roughly one hundred and fifty metres that way.”
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After forming up, we moved out to locate the fallen harpies, hopefully, both of them. One of them I knew exactly where was, but the other I only had a good guess about where it should be. Some of the men were carrying torches, meaning it was not as bad as it could have been.
We found the first one, a female harpy who had been very pretty. The musket ball had been right on target and taken her in the left side of her chest, right through the heart. I ordered one of the four squads that were following me, to take the body and its possessions back to camp.
As we moved on, I heard a few whispers from the back of the formations, “...in the dark?”
“...far away…”
“...magic…”
I suppressed a smile. It was always good to impress the soldiers beneath you. I just hoped that Ainsley’s latest job would be a success. Ainsley was the only aesomancer, or more crudely put metal mage, I had bought in the first batch of serfs. She had a low rating of three, but that would hopefully be enough to do what I needed her to do. She had been given the muskets we had looted from the bandits, and I had told her about a rifled barrel, and I wanted her to do that to all of our muskets if it was possible.
A rifled barrel would be much more accurate than a smoothbore and increase the range and deadliness of those of my soldiers with muskets. It would not increase my accuracy if I used my links, but it should make it cost less mana to make the shots hit. It was not often I could take five minutes to strengthen a link beforehand and have all the mana supplied to it before I had to shoot.
The way I had done it, taking down the two harpies were a waste of mana really. I had probably used up to ten times more than was needed on the first shot, compared to if I had just created the link the second before shooting. Nevertheless, if I had the time, and was sure not to continue the fight afterwards, it was a pretty darn good way to ensure I got the kill.
A thought struck me, ‘Would the other summoned also implement rifling? It would certainly increase the deadliness.’
After searching for nearly half an hour, we found the damn bugger. Seems he had been alive when he crashed. The first shot had taken him in the right side of the chest, while the second had taken him in the back. If I had to take a guess, I would say the second hit had torn up the muscle used to flap his wings, which had brought him down.
We found the place where he had crashed through the trees, and then followed the blood trail from there for another five minutes before we found the body. He had bled out it would seem. Lost most of the blood by not staying put, or so it would seem to me.
Back in camp, we placed the two bodies side by side. I noticed that the dagger from the first corpse was missing. Though I was pretty darn certain that it had been there when we picked up the corpse.
“Attention everyone,” I called loudly. It took a bit over a minute for all hundred people in the camp to gather to where they could hear me, without me yelling myself hoarse.
I turned to Hrothgar. “What’s the normal procedure for pillaging and looting while in the field?”
“Finder’s keeper, Milord,” he replied in a normal voice.
“A bit louder so everyone can hear you,” I demanded. I had already known the answer, and it was one of the things I had thought about for a while how to handle. I had just never gotten around to implementing the change.
“Finder’s keeper, Milord!” he repeated loudly.
“Better. Unfortunately, we’ll not be doing that,” I proclaimed. “Most of our soldiers are serfs, forbidden from owning anything. So there’ll be no finder’s keeper. We’ll not pillage and all looting will be organized and with as little damage and violence as possible.”
I looked at the soldiers, mostly the ones that were senior squad leaders and were freemen. “I know that sucks to hear, but that’s the way it’s going to be. All loot will be gathered in one pile, and depending on your rank you’ll get different shares. A serf’s share will go into a pool that goes to Hold, to be used for improvements of facilities and houses assigned to serfs.”
Pointing at the female harpy, I said loudly, “I know that at least a dagger is missing from this corpse. Everyone will be questioned by my truth mage in the coming days. If you took something from the corpse, you’ll be punished. Serf or freeman, it matters not. If you step forward now and hand over what you took, no punitive measures will be taken.”
It would seem that they thought I was bluffing. So I gave the command, “Mina, start with the squad that brought the corpse back.”
“Wait, wait,” the squad leader of the squad I had sent back said. He stepped forward holding a dagger out, hilt first of course. Being a squad leader meant that he was a serf since only the senior squad leaders or higher were freemen. “I’m sorry, Milord. The dagger was much sharper than mine, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” I said and took the proffered dagger. It was a utilitarian design, but even I could see that the craftsmanship was much better in the elven dagger. “Mina, go through the rest of them.”
A senior squad leader stepped forward, pulling out a small pouch. With a frown, he said, “My apologies, Milord. Contains a few coins from the elven kingdom.”
No one else came forward, but Mina only managed to clear a little over a platoon, before she ran out of mana and needed to rest. Which was fine, because it was pretty late in the day by that time.
I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before dawn, but I figured that there would be payback for their two killed scouts. In one form or another.
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I was right, they did come to avenge the loss of their two scouts. It happened a few hours after dawn, at a time when we were good and well spread out. I was climbing the mountain with the third group.
Suddenly I heard a sound that no climber want to hear, the sound of rocks tumbling down the mountainside. I reacted instantly, shouting, “Rockslide!”
Thankfully Gudrun who was next to me reacted immediately, starting to spread out an overhang, just like we had trained. I felt tugs at the rope around my waist as people hurriedly reacted and got under the slanted overhang Gudrun had created.
With mighty booms the rocks above crashed into the overhang and were deflected off the side of the mountain, passing us by. There were a lot of rocks, and some of them were quite big. Though we had trained it many times, this was the first time it had happened. I did not know if it was a natural or manufactured rockslide, so I took no chances and barked more orders, “Combat platforms now! Linus message camp, and create a windshield.”
He complied immediately, shouted a message that would be picked up by a gust of wind and carried to our camp. My bodyguards were already in the process of loading their muskets, while the soldiers were securing themselves, turning around and drawing their shortswords. If we were attacked, we were in trouble, but at least they could defend themselves.
“Incoming, north,” I heard Kiril shout right below me. Looking to my left, I saw that a handful of harpies were flying in our direction.
“South as well!” someone else shouted. Looking over I saw there were five coming from there as well.
“Status on combat platforms?” I demanded while I was busy loading my own musket. I removed the link that I had already created from my own shirt to that of the front flier to the north. It was not easy loading a musket while hanging off the side of a mountain, held up only by whatever foothold you could find and the rope harnesses I had shown them to make.
The wind was picking up around us, making it hard to hear the replies that were shouted, “Platform one, halfway done.”
“Platform two, third of the way there.”
“Command platform, almost done,” Gudrun said from beside me. Looking at her, I saw that the platform she was creating was almost done. The one she was creating was just for the two of us. The ledge she was growing was already large enough for me to step onto, so I did that and finished loading my musket.
As I finished, I saw the northern harpies were close enough to release their bows, I grimaced as I saw they were all in my direction. I tried to make myself a smaller target as the arrows flew towards me. They flew too fast for me to get a log on them, so I could not repel them. Luckily the buffeting winds that were created by Linus and the other aeromancers sent them off course, and they struck the mountain in front of me or flew past me by a large margin.
“Running out of mana,” Linus informed me.
“Ready muskets. North, I got the lead. Steady the shooters,” I commanded. When I got a ready from all of my bodyguards, and the people next to them, who were securing them with extra rope, I shouted, “Linus, drop the wall. Fire in three, two, one!”
Almost simultaneous, all six of our muskets fired, I saw and felt my ball hit home, and the lead flier fell from the sky. Another fell as well, with two more getting hit, but not dropped. Unnecessary probably, but I did it anyway, I called out, “Reload!”
I heard a scream from below just as arrows started hitting us from the south, followed by a female voice calling out, “I’m hit.”
One of the mancers had been hit, which was not good. Meanwhile, the ledge had grown large enough, and Gudrun was working on adding a crenellated parapet to our platform. My next order was, “Concentrate fire south.”
I was going to concentrate on the north side. I heard musket fire from farther away, towards the camp. Which meant that it was not a single attack, but a coordinated multi-pronged attack and the camp was also under attack. I was worried that those of my men that were out foraging would also come under attack.
Another set of arrows rained down on us, eliciting more grunts of pains from below me. I had linked with the harpy that had not been hit so far and pulled the trigger as soon as I had brought my musket to bear on the harpies that were closing in on us.
“Platform one is done,” someone called out, the information almost drowned out by the roar of my musket. The harpy fell from the sky. They were getting closer and seemed to have dropped their bows.
I heard another two shots go off, when Kiril shouted, “Prepare for melee!”
Looking south I saw that the harpies there had moved into attacking in melee as well. I dropped my musket and drew the sabre and the dagger from my back. I was already linking the dagger to one of the harpies. They were both armed with spears, but they also had a longsword on the hip.
From below I heard steel clashing against steel and another scream of pain. However, I could not turn to look, because the harpies were within striking distance. They coordinated their attacks, which would have scored a hit against me if I had not flung my dagger at one of them, while I deflected the spear of the other. Instead of playing fair, my hand shot out and grabbed a hold of the spear, yanking it towards me.
The harpy did not release her grip on the spear, so she was tugged forward, and straight into my sabre. Only managed to stab her in the leg, because she flapped her wings forcefully in the last second, sending her into the air.
The other harpy had released a scream of pain when dagger went point first into his solar plexus, and he started to drop, feebly flapping his wings, trying to build height. The harpy I had stabbed in the leg tried to move away, but fuck if I would let her.
Knowing that the rope was secure and should theoretically hold me, I dropped my sabre and jumped out and up after her. I managed to grab hold of her waist, with my head against her stomach. The sudden extra weight was too much for her to hold airborne, and we dropped like a sack of potatoes, with her screaming in panic. I just gritted my teeth against the yank and pain there was about to hit me, and created a link between our clothes where they touched, so she would have a harder time squirming out of my embrace. Especially if I loosened it when we hit the mountain.
The rope caught us, and it hurt worse than I had imagined, the rope harness digging into my ribs, probably bending a couple of those that broke the day before. Next, we slammed into the rock as the rope swung us back towards the mountain. I had fortunately managed to turn us around so she went into the mountainside first.
Did not mean that it did not hurt. I felt hands grab my harness, and I grunted, “Grab her!”
I was left to dangle as the men secured her and brought her onto one of the combat platforms. Slowly I climbed back up to the platform above me. When I rolled onto the platform, I heard that there was no more sound of fighting. At least not here. I heard another few shots fired from the direction of our camp.
When I had gathered myself, I called out with a wince, “Report!”
“Platoon five, minor injuries in both squads, two enemies killed,” one of the senior squad leaders reported.
The other followed, “Platoon six, one dead, two injured. One enemy killed.”
“Bodyguards, one injured, three killed,” Kiril chimed in.
Linus called out, “Lena is badly injured, and Amoria’s rope broke, she fell.”
‘Fuck,’ was my first thought. Lena was one of the air mages, while Amoria was one of the less talented stone mages.
Then someone called out, “Wait, I see her down below, on a ledge that was not there before.”
“Get down to her at once, secure the prisoner. I got questions for her,” I barked. What a shit show. Could have been much, much worse if they had hit us before we had time to train. It really showed that the bodyguards and stone mages had been practising almost every day, all day.