Book 2 Ch 38: Demonstration

One mage can be worth ten men in battle, but it still only takes one lucky bullet to take one out.

• General Thrugood

The Orcs and Elves came into view shortly after. When Solomon had heard the call that they were mounted he’d expected to see horses or ichthyn, but now they were riding massive creatures with spotted hides that started to let out a mad cackle as they closed in. Wargs, Solomon guessed. There were a dozen varieties of them, but all were noted to be vicious mounts. They weren’t as fast as horses, but they were more maneuverable.

Before they could close in too far, one of the mages raised a staff and held it in the air. He began chanting and slowly a sphere of flame formed at the tip of the staff. He aimed it, and the ball of fire shot like a bullet toward the center of the approaching raiders, rapidly expanding into a massive fireball.

Most of the raiders managed to quickly dodge around it with their mounts, but one orc wasn’t so fortunate and went up in flames.

An orc barked out a loud order to scatter and spread and the raiding party responded quickly, their cackling mounts dancing their way into a wide approach.

The mages continued to fire off spells. Solomon saw fireballs, bolts of lightning, and even blasts of pure force. He carefully tried to focus and memorize their hand movements, chants, and the movement of their mana as they did so. He couldn’t use his perfect recall spell, but his memory was well trained even without it and he knew he could retain at least a few of them, especially as the defending mages seemed to have favorites they liked to repeat.

As the mages were working to slow down the charge, the soldiers began to fire their rifles. The humans fired with strict discipline, focusing on the largest targets. The Untoss waited for targets to be called by the sergeant before firing, but their four arms gave them enhanced stability that seemed to make them crack shots even though they each held a sword along with their rifle.

Several of the attackers were dropped before they could reach them, but more were closing in rapidly allowing Solomon to get a better look at them. The orcs were wearing some kind of thick rust-colored hides that provided some protection against even bullets. The elves on the other hand wore loose fitting robes, much like the local untoss. It was as he was observing the elves that he saw one of them pull a long rifle forward and aim it.

The Elves all broke off from the orcs at once and aimed their rifles, but as they closed they seemed to hesitate, and when they did fire most of the shots went wide, only one of them winging a defending untoss.

Solomon frowned at that. Everything he’d ever read had indicated that elves were excellent marksmen. That had typically referred to their skills with a bow, but he imagined a good number of the same skills would translate to firearms, and if they didn’t why would they choose to use them?

Before he could ponder that any further he heard a roar as the orcs closed in, and that roar was answered by the laughing of the wargs. The orc in the lead seemed massive now that he had gotten closer.

Jakul had placed himself in front of the charge, and Solomon could see his perfectly balanced mana begin to shift more quickly and build up all throughout his body.

The front orc stood on the back of his warg in a tremendous feat of balance and leapt off of it, raising his war axe above his head as he flew toward Jakul like a comet.

As the orc landed it attempted to slam the axe down with all the force it could muster, but it missed.

Jakul was a blur as he sidestepped the downward slash and sent out a perfect jab at the orc’s jaw. There was a sickening crack as its jaw dislocated and he collapsed onto the ground. Jakul lifted its massive axe with one hand and caught the mouth of the orc’s warg on it, tearing through it.

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Another two orcs approached, these staying on their mounts as they attempted to swipe down at Jaku.

He leapt up, dodging both attacks, and landing behind one of the orcs, driving his elbow into the back of his neck. As the orc went down he grabbed the reins of the warg and forced it to turn, then he leapt off of it and toward one of the robes elves who he snatched from his mount to drag across the ground for a few moments before tossing forward.

The attack broke, and the raiders broke away with the wargs heading back across the grass from wherever they’d come from.

Jakul looped the reins he was holding around the wargs neck and strangled it until it stopped moving, carefully removing himself from it. His light blue robe was spotted with blood as he walked back to the rest of them. It seemed they’d killed eleven of the attackers and a good number of their mounts.

Solomon and Edmure waited until they got the all clear from Sergeant Zane before fully moving from within the cart.

He approached Jakul.

“That was quite the demonstration,” he said, still observing the man’s mana. He also noted that he still had a number of spectral eyes arrayed around him. A method for watching his own back in the heat of combat, Solomon presumed.

Jakul smiled.

“All that he did there could’ve been accomplished by well placed evocations from a distance that don’t require tattoos and years of training,” commented Baru as he approached them.

“It’s not as if I am trying to supplant the tried and true battlemage standards, I just feel we all need to broaden our options. There are more practical uses for this as well. How many of our teachers need canes to walk? Think of how much their lives could be improved through my research.”

“I’d rather they suffer to be honest. The amount of welts I got on my arms and legs from their rods for ‘improper casting form’ I think I’d rather they have to hobble to get me.”

That drew snickers and laughs from the other mages.

Jakul frowned for a few moments before it broke into a smile as well.

“You ever think they might’ve hit us less if they weren’t in pain themselves?”

“Not even once have I thought that.”

Solomon watched the exchange with a smile while internally he was reviewing everything he’d seen. He mentally repeated the magical phrases he’d heard over and over again in his mind as well as the gestures each of them had made. He wouldn’t be able to actually test to make sure what he’d copied was valid for some time, but hopefully he’d have more chances to observe.

After their few wounded were tended to they got back onto the trail. Everyone’s blood was up a bit too much for more Strange Fate, so Solomon passed the time eavesdropping on everyone’s conversations as he watched the grass and hills go by.

“-would’ve gone very differently if the elves had fired properly,” said one of the soldiers on horseback.

“We still would’ve driven ‘em off with the mages,” replied another.

“Yeah, but not without some of us taking a bullet or an axe. We’re lucky they only hit an unt.”

“Surprised they even got raiders this far East. Must have a camp hidden out in the plains.”

“I’m sure Clyturn’s on top of it… if he’s not being held back by a couple pairs of arms.”

There was some snickering until the sergeant very pointedly cleared his throat, silencing them.

Solomon had wondered why the raiders would’ve tried to attack a larger force that included mages. He’d presumed they thought that their mounts would make the difference, but it was true that if the elves had managed to correctly fire that first salvo things would’ve gone very differently. He presumed that he was the reason for it.

All of his interactions with elves had been strange since he’d absorbed the mana of the elven god. The elf at the explorer’s guild had insisted on helping him, the elfwood of the Arabella had responded strongly to him when he tried to comfort it, and now these presumably hostile elves had hesitated at a critical moment during a raid. His mana seemed to have an inherent influence on elvenkind. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that, but it had certainly proven useful so far, and he wouldn’t mind the additional security it provided him in Manacht.

The next several days passed without incident. Solomon spent his time reviewing the spellwork he’d seen in his head, playing Strange Fate and subtly probing for more information about mages and magic from them. Most of what he learned was about their specialties and their time learning magic in Arcthiss. Baru was a barrier specialist who talked at length about them, revealing that all barrier spells began with the same basic piece of magic before being refined and specialized from there, a tidbit which he stored away for later.

After just under a week they arrived at a large waystation just outside a sprawling red forest. The trees were tall, spindly, and white with vines that hung down like thick syrupy blood flowing off a limb, and the brush was all shades of orange and yellow coating everything but the well curated road that seemed to cut through the center of it. The rest of their journey would take them through it.