Chapter 62 - A Proper Test Run

Mages often limit themselves by thinking in terms of casting only a number of spells corresponding to their own repertoire. In games of skill and chance, cards played in concert are often more powerful. Such is also true of the Arcane.

-Pluthard’s Introduction to Evocation - required reading at the Seekers Academy

“You and you,” barked Jeedle, sliding down the ladder after me. The scar-snouted drakkyn and one of what looked to be twin kickboxers stepped forward, looking at each other.

“Have we done something wrong, Master Jeedle?” asked the woman.

“Nay,” said Jeedle. “But pay heed.”

I stepped forward. I knew I wasn’t much to look at. A scrawny, malnourished boy doesn’t grow into the ideal physical specimen. I was on the short side of average with wrists you could wrap your thumb and forefinger around, and biceps not much better. I’d put on a little in the recent months, but nothing like the hardened bodies of a career fighter.

The Drakkyn had broad shoulders and thick, leathery scales across the sides of his throat and over his belly. His arms were long, and his forearms thick. Jeedle tossed him a spear that he caught readily.

The woman needed no weapon. She was light on her feet, with well-developed arms and wraps over her knuckles and the balls of her feet. Her nose had been broken at least once.

“You all know who I am, yes?” I asked.

I saw uncertain nods across the pits. The more experienced fighters had come forward, leaning on weapons to watch. I saw a few coppers and silvers change hands.

“So you know I’m a mage that hides behind a devilborn bodyguard to do my fighting for me.”

The fighters looked uncertain, at this. Especially the ones that noticed their more seasoned contemporaries had paused their own training to watch.

“It’s alright,” I said. I gestured up to Annalisa. “She’s a hell of a fighter. Better than me, in fact. No shame admitting it. And I’m proud to be protected by her. But she had to earn it.”

Not exactly true. She’d ‘earned’ it by being so annoying I promised her the moon to shut her up and then bet against her. But these guys didn’t need to know that part. I fanned my deck out, letting the midnight cards spin around me at waist height. The carvings blazed like fire in the light of the setting sun. “What are your names?”

“Lyle of Sweetthorn,” said the Drakkyn. I didn’t know where that was, but he spoke with a native Paeldrakkyn accent, so I assumed somewhere to the west.

“Essie of Duke’s Warf Road,” said the woman. Home grown, then. Duke’s Warf Road was in Oildown, and it was a spot where ornery sailors got themselves in a lot of trouble after long voyages. Gambling, cat houses, and shrum dens. Essie here had probably tossed more than a few of them out of a pub.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

“Well, Lyle, Essie. Do you think you have what it takes to stand beside the Barrow Knave in battle?”

Essie rolled her shoulders and sized me up. “Reckon I do.”

I looked to Lyle, who seemed a touch more reserved. He planted his spear. “I’ll not disappoint.”

I waved them toward me. “Show me, then.”

Essie stiffened. “What, together?”

They glanced up at Annalisa, who leaned down and cupped her hands around her mouth to woooo at me.

“Don’t worry about her,” I said, and pulled the five of knaves to my hand. “Worry about what’s in front of you.”

Essie charged first, feet kicking up ash as she pounded across the intervening ash. I charged my will into the five of knaves, stealing her alacrity for myself and making her run falter. At the same time, I sent my deck snaking out and swept her feet out from under her.

As ash billowed up around Essie, Lyle came in, blunted spear thrusting for my face. I charged the two of towers, next, and batted the spear-head aside. It wasn’t sharpened, but it was still a solid piece of metal on a hard, wooden haft. He brought the spear around for a sideways slice at my eyes and ricocheted off a small disc in the air made from the suit of towers.

While he was off balance, I pulled both the three and four of knaves to my hand and wove them together. Lyle stumbled back, assailed with visions of shadows that I whispered directly into his mind. He swung his spear wildly, trying to fend them off.

Essie spared him a glance before coming at me with a flying knee. I dipped out of the way, thanks to my enhanced speed. But she wasn’t done, and she wasn’t bad. She landed into a sweeping kick that would have taken my own feet out from under me. I stepped over it, and she pushed forward to wrap me up in a wrestling technique that I’d seen Storm-laden use.

I charged the three of dragons along with the two of towers, and when Essie got her hands and legs around me, she found my skin blazing hot to the touch. She cried out and pushed me away, instead. She scrambled to her feet while I reclined in the ash as though I hadn’t a care in the world.

A ruse, of course. Improvising a completely new pair of card combos had actually taken quite a bit out of me. I let the mental illusions slip, and Lyle recovered. But appearance and posturing are everything. Power without the appearance of exercising power is the most subtle form of manipulation. I brought the cards overhead and spread them in a disc to shade me from the setting sun as I propped myself up on an elbow.

“Care to try again?” I asked, not bothering to stand.

Essie rubbed at her palms where I’d scalded her. She shook her head. “Gods, no.”

Lyle just looked shaken.

“Pity,” I said, and held up my hand. The two cards I’d slipped into Essie’s trouser pockets during the grapple pulled toward me. She flinched, jumping as the two of knaves and four of dragons freed themselves and returned to my hand. I hoped that in concert they would overdrive the threat sense of the four of dragons and make her too paranoid to function with a partner, but it didn’t come to that.

I got to my feet and spun my cards like a fan to blow my trousers clean of ash. Then, I had them neatly stack themselves in my hand and rebound them. The new deck had exceeded my expectations. The dark-aspected cards worked especially well with both the knaves and the dragons, who were both creatures of the night.

Satisfying as it was to see how far I’d come from that night Salamaz, the drakkyn wrestler, had attacked me in my room my first week in Barrowdown, the goal of this exercise wasn’t simply to assert my superior fighting prowess (or at least methods of convincing them I had fighting prowess).

I couldn’t just tear these fighters down if I wanted them to be useful to me. I had to build them back up.

“Not bad,” I said to Jeedle, loud enough for the newbies to hear. “But it takes more than individual skill to tackle a mage. Next time, I expect them to have practiced with that in-mind.”

“Right you are, Master Darcent,” said Jeedle, tapping his brow. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Nicely done, that.”

After that it was a simple matter to pass him the spare card and convince him of its usefulness.