The Sword of Retribution

Fort Battleaxe - Part 3

     Thomas Gown ducked as another fireball exploded off to his left, showering him with fragments of burning wood and shattered, half melted glass. He hurried into the shelter of a half ruined brick house in case any more fireballs followed. Sometimes the enemy cast two or three in quick succession, but this time there was just the one, and after waiting a moment to make sure it was safe to go out again, he gathered up his handful of arrows and headed back to the wall, treading carefully where the streets were covered with smouldering rubble.

     The young wizard had used up his small store of magic within half an hour of waking that morning, as he had every morning since the siege had begun, and since it would take him most of the day to regain it and any wizard, even one as young and inexperienced as he, was much too valuable to risk in physical combat, he’d been given a number of menial jobs to do to help support the soldiers on the walls. At the moment, he was gathering up enemy arrows and taking them to the archers, something normally done by those women and children who had chosen to remain with the men rather than be evacuated further west to safety. It earned him a good deal of good natured teasing from the archers, who would greet his arrival with the words “Thank you, my lady” and other things in a similar vein, but Thomas didn’t mind. The next day, when he’d regained his magic, he would once again be one of the city’s elite, a warrior wizard, for about half an hour.

     It was a dangerous business, being a warrior wizard. To cast his spells at the enemy, he had to stand right on top of the city walls, in full view of them, and he always attracted a hail of arrows. The soldiers protected him as best they could with their shields and covering fire, but that hadn’t prevented a sholog’s arrow from hitting him squarely in the chest a couple of days before, missing his heart by half an inch. He'd been back on his feet within minutes, though, healed by a cleric of Caroli who'd come hurrying past equally seriously injured soldiers to pull out the arrow and pray over him. Wizards always got priority when they were injured, a fact that caused a lot of resentment and bad feeling among the troops. Angry that he should be able to jump the queue when there were hundreds of much more badly injured soldiers crowding the temples with not enough clerics to go around.

     It also earned him a good deal of respect, though, as those who take the most dangerous jobs in battle are always respected. Every time he stood on the wall to cast his spells, he was exposing himself to danger, and it could only be a matter of time before his luck ran out. Thomas was determined to rectify this situation, though, by learning to cast the shield spell, which created a barrier of magic force in front of him, impervious to arrows and other flying weapons. One of the other wizards, a Lexandrian graduate some ten years senior to him, had taught it to him a few days before, along with a proper, University approved version of the web spell, but he still hadn’t quite got the hang of it.

     Thomas hummed to himself as he hurried along the rubble strewn streets, past the ruins of what had been a large, three storey building in which a pair of middle aged women were searching for what remained of their belongings. It was the melody of a fighting song he’d heard some of the soldiers singing during a brief lull in the fighting the day before and that had stuck in his head. He’d also learned some of the words, about a line or two from each of the twenty or so verses, which he knew would be considered quite a feat of memory by many ordinary people, but wizards have to have a good memory to be able to re-learn their spells every time they changed. He’d only need to hear it sung once more to learn it off by heart.

     “Into the fray rode Aramay,” he sang,
     “Sword in the moonlight gleaming,
     Tum tum te tum ‘till light of day,
     and something something cleaving.”

     Suddenly, a group of twenty Beltharan soldiers popped into existence about a hundred yards ahead of him, and he stopped to stare in amazement. They must have been teleported in by a wizard, he thought excitedly. Maybe they’ve been on a scouting mission behind enemy lines, or something. Several civilians had also stopped whatever they were doing to stare curiously at the soldiers, and some excited, speculative gossip broke out among them, but then there was a scream from a woman who was closer to them then he was, and soon people were running for their lives as the soldiers drew their swords and began to attack.