The General's Legacy - Part One: Inheritance Read online

  Garon and Zeivite watched the enemy mage working his next magic and saw the black rider’s mace wind up ready to swing. Silence enveloped the mage, cutting off his words, then the mace crushed his skull propelling the body forward into the mud.

  ‘Too bad Magnar didn’t take this position,’ Garon grumbled.

  ***

  Commander Jaygee lowered Zeivite’s telescope, half turning to his sergeant. ‘One mage dead. Now let’s see what the beasts do when they can make up their own minds.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that beast be stuffing pig down its neck about now?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Looks to me like it’s going after the dying. It’s not eating anything, just sucking on them. Doesn’t appear the pigs are going to work. Judging by Quain’s fight, they don’t have a heart to hit!’ Jaygee shouted, gesturing up the field. ‘Operators, use crossbows. Take out enemy soldiers behind the beast and see if we can send it that way.’

  The operators spread out. Crossbow bolts started zipping through the air around the Ripper that showed no awareness they were there. A Nearhon soldier took a bolt in the face and another in the neck. The ungainly beast turned, grabbed the dying man and stuck him headfirst in its mouth, sucked on the body before casting it away and hunting for the next. The operators kept a rhythm going, laying a trail of the dying back into the Nearhon ranks. Jaygee yelled, ‘Get a supply of crossbow bolts coming up here, and make it fast! You — run!’ He pointed at the first soldier he laid eyes on, who sprinted off.

  ***

  Garon and Zeivite marched at a brisk pace across the back of the battlefield, moving away from the river. Archers were no longer a threat, but the rear soldier formation turned to face them. Painted eyes of a hundred white wolves decorating the Nearhon soldiers’ black shields glared at them. If so many men could have one mind, it was as if they were trying to find the courage to advance on the general and the mage. Herd mentality appeared to take over, and with little speed and less conviction they moved forward.

  ‘They were not meant to notice us or be brave enough to rush us,’ said Garon grimly.

  ‘Optimistic notion,’ Zeivite replied. ‘I wanted to avoid the alternative. It’s a lot of ground to cover.’

  They halted and Garon shielded his battle mage while he worked his magic. Heartbeats thumped in Zeivite’s chest. Angry sounds came from his mouth. As the clank of shields and short swords crept closer, the mage whipped his hands skyward. Flames erupted from the ground and spread faster than a galloping Nearhon Plain horse to the left and right, blocking the soldiers’ advance. Zeivite gasped, wiping his hands down his face, taking a layer of sweat with them. In the centre of his chest, a knot of tension bloomed and an ache settled over his head like an unwanted helmet. He tried to keep away worries of how soon in the battle the use of magic was taking its toll, as dwelling on it would only make it worse.

  Marching — think about marching. One foot, then the next. Feel the surface of the ground under my feet. Feel the breath in my lungs, the warmth of the fires on my face.

  Zeivite took a breath, an uncertain look playing across his face as he marched on to the end of his line of mage fire. They needed more cover. He spoke again — angry, unintelligible words — and, with a gesture, the burning ground extended right under the feet of another enemy mage ahead of them. More pain rushed into his head and the tension in his chest gave a cruel twist. He struggled to accept the pain, embrace it, but failed. His only thought was to cast it out, but that made it worse and he stifled a gasp.

  Ahead of them, a purple-robed mage with bulging eyes and a bald head stood in a transparent sphere with flames licking around it. Zeivite had faced him before. And failed before.

  His plans interrupted, the bald mage looked agitated. Agitation switched to indecisiveness; should he maintain control over his Rippers, pressing them on to the back of Valendo’s army, or deal with the general and his mage? He stepped back out of the flames, faced them, and then raised his hands palms down and started to speak.

  ‘We’ve got to stop him,’ barked Zeivite.

  ‘Run!’ shouted Garon.

  ‘Too slow.’ With a strange word and a flick of his hand, Zeivite was gone in a fading silhouette pricked with blue stars.

  The purple-robed mage dropped his hands and directed his magic at the general. Garon didn’t know what to expect, least of all nothing. The mage cursed. The magic intended to tear down Zeivite’s shield came too slowly. He started to speak again, then felt a push from behind and found himself on hands and knees, his next invocation dying on his lips. Zeivite was there with dagger drawn; he hated fighting like this. Stabbing down, he found the ground as his opponent rolled sideways and stood, dagger in hand. Zeivite stood and stepped in close taking a dagger slash. The iron-like protection around Zeivite’s skin, the mage’s last line of defence against natural weapons, collapsed. He let go of his dagger and reached out with his mind to start the flow of magic, shaping it with his voice and hands into energy bolts. Before he could finish, the enemy mage grimaced and thrust his dagger towards him.

  A year ago, Garon had helped Zeivite off another battlefield after his last encounter with the bald mage. ‘Can’t you just double up that iron skin magic of yours?’

  ‘No, not really, it works by… Well, it’s not like putting on more clothes. The layer only works at a specific distance from the skin…’ Zeivite stopped at the confused glare from the general.

  Garon had been silent for a while. ‘Shame another magic skin can’t start when the first ends, kind of like a second movement in a concerto.’

  Zeivite had then limped along staring at the ground trying to make sense of what he had just heard. ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it for a while, maybe…’

  ‘By tomorrow?’

  ‘…a few months.’ In fact, it had taken nearly ten months and an elaborate piece of jewellery that the finest jeweller on Green Island needed five attempts to get right.

  Now, less than a heartbeat before the dagger struck, the collapse of one magic skin triggered the formation of another from the centrepiece of a necklace Zeivite wore under his robe. He was aware of the dagger point stopping short of his chest and the collapse of the second skin, but his concentration remained. He launched energy bolts from inside his target’s shield that pounded and burnt a fist-sized hole through his chest. Charred, bloody gore splattered over Zeivite’s front while far more sprayed out of the purple-robed mage’s back.

  ***

  Quain pushed his way through ranks of men, making his way towards two Rippers near the river. Eyes widened in terror and some men lost control of their bladders as a Ripper appeared to turn in their direction. In desperation, they got creative, crouched into a dome formation with spears and swords jutting out through shields. They held their position like a strange, spiked beetle as Valendo soldiers before them were cast aside with the beast’s relentless progress. The Ripper took only heartbeats longer to tear through the beetle formation. Quain began to believe the men might actually break and run unless he did something soon.

  Through the cacophony of screams, clank of metal and the crunch of bone in the path of the Ripper’s claws, he yelled, ‘Make way!’

  Abruptly, the carnage ceased.

  The Ripper stood tall and turned its head towards the back of the battlefield. It paused. Blood dribbled from the end of its sharp metal claws. Its body turning, it began an awkward run, swatting soldiers out of its path as it went.

  A second Ripper followed.

  Meanwhile, the special operators followed their freed Ripper, still coaxing it towards the Nearhon soldiers, with pairs of men alternating between firing and reloading crossbows. Foot soldiers covered their flanks. Some Nearhons fell under crossbow fire, while others faced the onslaught of the clawed beast, cleverly drawn in their direction by their craving to bite on the dying. The enemy soldiers fell back and the Ripper started to cast around, looking for new targets.

  ‘We nee
d to keep this thing busy!’ yelled Jaygee. He looked around, his group was starting to overextend itself in the field. ‘Better take it across the field, to cover our rear,’ he commanded. Suddenly, his eyes went wide as he saw the two Rippers running towards them. Valendo soldiers made the beetle-like formation. Crossbow bolts tried to find a mark. Jaygee had his long sword in hand, waiting, timing a swing. The first Ripper shifted course and passed by, the second heading the same way moments later. With no time to think about what the running Rippers were doing, he turned back to the other Ripper and yelled a command: ‘Get back to keeping this one busy before we lose control of it.’

  ***

  Magnar looked on from the edge of the battlefield. Whatever faults he had as a general, underestimating his enemies was never one of them. Yet he had seen his two most capable battle mages brought down. Hot with anger at their failure and with himself, he forced his will on the two Rippers he controlled that had been fighting Quain’s group, drawing them onwards to the old general and his mage. They were coming, huge clawed hands flapping as they ran awkwardly on short legs. Soldiers scurried out of their path. Magnar smiled; the beasts would soon be upon them.

  ***

  The Great Hall of Dendra Castle was built at the highest level of the main keep. Queen Amari of Valendo stood in the central northern window with a view over the valley. Her husband, Garon, always a better general than a king-consort, was out there on the battlefield. Her expression was unreadable, much the same as her only son, Prince Ceoric, who stood beside her. Prince Ceoric’s wife quietly noticed a twitching muscle in her husband’s cheek — the only sign of his inner tension. She also observed the others in the room. The ambassador from the neighbouring Kingdom of Emiria was there, along with the elected representatives of the three city states in southern Valendo. Prince Ceoric had insisted the representatives came up here to view the battle and watch their kingdom teeter on the brink. War was expensive, in lives and money, and had gone on for years with young adults never knowing a time without it. No representative had ever been elected a second term in the thirty years since their inception. It was time to make them see the war was real and on their doorstep, to see where the lives and the money went.

  ‘We should have voted for a bigger military budget,’ one whispered to another.

  If the queen heard, she didn’t respond. Her eyes flicked across the battle scene, her attention drawn to the only Rippers on the field moving with purpose. They were heading towards the back of the battlefield.

  ***

  Mounting head and chest pain forced Zeivite’s brow to knit in concentration. He drew deep breaths, trying to relieve the constrictive burning feeling. Catastrophic thoughts rushed into his mind.

  The battle’s not nearly over. What if I can’t do this anymore? Zeivite thought. What if Garon is killed? These beasts would wipe out our army and march south. They’ll make it to Green Island — the castle would never withstand Magnar’s assault if I’m dead on this field.

  He shook his head. Get a grip! he thought fiercely.

  Garon caught up and stood inside the protection of Zeivite’s shield. ‘Well, that got him. Not bad at all.’ Garon watched smoke rising from the hole in the dead mage’s chest for a moment. Then they both looked around. Zeivite reached out with his now fading battle sense. There was no sense of Magnar, but he had to be out there and he wouldn’t be found this way.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Zeivite forced calm into his voice. ‘Released beasts are attacking everyone… Two of them are favouring Nearhon men — they’re breaking their formations. There is another beast… no, two… coming this way.’

  ‘Any ideas?’ asked Garon.

  Zeivite fought through a treacle fog of head pain and tried to make complex calculations and patterns in his mind. He no longer trusted his judgement and snarled like a cornered predator.

  ‘Only this.’

  He made angry sounds and flame burst under the enemy soldiers and spread on the path of the approaching Rippers. Pain exploded at the flow of magic like hot knives stabbing into his brain, his twisted chest barely allowing breath for the scream. His consciousness swam. Time slowed. Through watering eyes, he watched the ungainly run of a Ripper in flames. It raised its claws, bared its teeth and leapt from the battlefield into his mind — a burning nightmare he took with him into his new world of blackness and silence.

  Garon measured the blazing Ripper’s approach, then lunged forward, plunging his sword into its chest. He pulled back, hair and beard burning, expecting the monster to fall and die. A flaming claw slashed into his right side and armour plating was ripped off his arm; claw blades cut into flesh and his sword spun out of his grasp.

  Garon dove after the sword with his left hand. The burning Ripper tried to follow its first strike but the fire had consumed too much of its body and it crumpled to the ground.

  Before Garon had a chance to rise, energy bolts pounded into his back, quickly burning through his armour. Praying the unconscious mage still had his invisible shield around him, Garon rolled and crawled for cover. More bolts came, but they melted into the shield. He sighed in relief.

  One Ripper remained.

  Garon stood, sword in his left hand, with half his hair and beard burnt away and his right hand tucked into his belt. The Ripper bore down on him with both claws as he leapt aside with an awkward back-swing that earnt him no more than a minor cut on the unfeeling beast.

  Garon pushed back against his own pain, then side-stepped and danced around the lumbering beast, attempting to strike it. Exhaustion was mounting fast as he struggled to carry his injured right arm in the heat. Predictable though it was becoming, the beast succeeded in stripping leg plates from Garon’s armour.

  Garon found the rhythm he desperately needed. With several turns and counter-strikes, he cut off a claw, unbalancing the beast, before he roared out and hacked through the beast’s back in three strokes. He quickly moved to stand over the heap of blue-green robes on the ground that was Zeivite.

  Magnar glared at him, dark eyes overflowing with hatred. Staring back, Garon tried to steady his breathing and not react to what he had just seen in his peripheral vision. He cried out, ‘Why do you send summoned beasts to stand against me?’

  The black-armoured rider, now on foot, was approaching Magnar and bringing his cloud of silence with him. The scout commander followed, just as silently.

  Magnar, filled with a human need to vent his frustration, hissed back at Garon, ‘Because mere men cannot —’

  His next words were cut off as he turned in alarm and fled from the rider, who was almost upon him. Weighed down with armour, the rider was quickly outpaced; not so the scout commander, who leapt from the rocks and gave chase. A stream of energy bolts raced at the nimble man, who caught one on the shoulder before taking cover behind a rock. Many more blasts created a spray of molten rock and shrapnel.

  Heartbeats passed in silence.

  Indecision.

  The scout commander took a chance and popped his head up and down for a quick look over the rock.

  Nothing.

  He stood.

  Still nothing.

  Magnar was gone.

  Garon stood guard over Zeivite, sword ready in his left hand, the fires casting an orange glow on the undamaged side of his sweating body. He remained there for hours unchallenged before the cavalry carried them both out of Beldon Valley.

  ***

  The Nearhon army lost purpose and courage with the remaining Rippers breaking their formations under the influence of the special operator’s tactics. Directionless, they fought only for their own survival.

  As the fires created by Zeivite’s magic died out the enemy steadily quit the field. One remaining Nearhon commander who had evaded the special operators all day long led them. A final crunch of sword onto the backbone of the last Ripper pinned down by lance and spear brought a strange quiet to the battlefield.

  Quain ra
ised his helmet visor and stared down at a Nearhon soldier’s body lying at his feet on the broken muddy ground. The soldier had many bloody slashes and puncture wounds across his chest. One of the victims of a Ripper. Quain frowned as he looked at the man’s face, sunken and creased like a dark grape dried in the sun, the mouth frozen open in a soundless scream. ‘Poor soul,’ he whispered to himself.

  ‘Heck of a day’s work, sir,’ Jaygee declared.

  ‘Yeah, heck of a mess too,’ Quain answered, looking up. He sheathed his sword and offered Jaygee the warriors’ handshake.

  ‘Shame I never managed to pin down that last commander. Ugly brute. He had the strangest beard braids I’ve ever seen,’ said Jaygee.

  ‘Look on the bright side: sooner or later, there’ll be another battle and another chance to get him.’ Quain grinned.

  Burning the Valendo dead took the few men assigned to the task many days. In line with ancient Nearhon Whitelander and Plainlander tribal customs, their fallen were left covered over with earth where they lay.

  ***

  Jaygee walked the corridors of Dendra Castle, dress boots knocking out a rhythm on the stone floor. He heard Garon growling before he entered the washroom.