Darkness Rising: Disciples of the Horned One Volume One (Soul Force Saga Book 1) (13 page)

J
ohn bustled
around the healers’ tent, a chest filled with healing potions clutched in his arms. Cots filled the bulk of the tent. Empty for the moment, and everyone hoped they’d stay that way, but even John knew better. Four nurses sat in a circle bundling bandages and chatting about husbands or lovers, offering prayers that everyone would make it through the battle safely. John sighed. You’d have thought there’d be at least one single nurse.

He’d arrived the day before with his father, the other healers, and the general’s support staff. The bulk of the army had arrived and set up camp ten days earlier, but Duke Iceborn wanted to discuss every fine point of strategy with the general and, despite his disdain for the duke Dad was enough of a politician to keep his opinion to himself on the cusp of a war.

And they were on the cusp. John had read the scouts’ reports and it sounded like the Ice Queen planned to send the largest army in several generations against them. If Dad had suffered from boredom in years past he certainly wasn’t now.

“John!” Master Kane, the army’s chief healer and John’s mentor for the past year and a half, shouted at him from the tent flap.

John set his burden down on a cot and jogged over to the gray-bearded sorcerer. “Master?”

“We’ve got wounded just over the border, let’s go.”

“Yes, Master.” John conjured a shield and stepped out into the cold.

Despite the protection he shivered. Wind and snow blew out of the north, a bitter chill that wore on the men and sapped their strength. John spent an hour every day tending frostbitten soldiers. The couple hundred warlords handled the cold easily enough, but the ordinary men suffered.

John narrowed his gaze and spotted the familiar wisps of blue soul force threaded through the wind and snow, remnants of the Ice Queen’s power driving the storm on. Maybe when the main force of sorcerers arrived they could shield the camp from the worst of the weather.

Master Kane conjured a chariot and John stepped up beside him. The master’s shield blocked the storm and they shot into the air. “What happened, Master?”

“Scouts on their way back ran into an ambush. One man made it through uninjured and ran for help: that’s us. The others were alive when he left, but in no condition to move. The cold will work for us today. Remember, just get them stabilized enough to move. We’ll handle the rest in camp.”

“Yes, Master.” John shivered, but not from the cold. He seldom left the relative safety of camp. His soul force wasn’t dense like Damien’s. If something went wrong and he had to fight, his power wouldn’t hold out very long.

Below them white spread out as far as he could see, broken by the occasional spot of green where a spruce hadn’t been covered up. He scanned ahead, looking for some sign of the wounded soldiers. First, he looked for red, as the blood from a large battle would show up well in the snow, but he soon gave that up for a fool’s errand. The way it was storming any sign of battle would vanish in minutes.

The chariot veered right and descended. John saw nothing remarkable, but Master Kane must. Halfway to the ground a huge ice boulder came flying out of nowhere. Master Kane veered and John blasted, and between the two of them they avoided the missile. Below them a twenty-foot-tall, blue-skinned frost giant shimmered into view. It wore armor made of ice and between its raised hands another boulder of ice took shape.

“Did you know they could turn invisible?” John readied another blast, but held it in reserve. He doubted he had enough power to kill the giant and he wanted to be able to help turn aside any missiles that came their way.

Master Kane sent a blast at the giant that blew his half-formed boulder to bits. “Yes, but I figured I could still spot its soul force. Join your power with mine and we’ll attack together.”

John sent half his soul force to a point just in front of the chariot, and the master’s power appeared an instant later and entwined with his. Master Kane formed the attack while John provided power. A golden lightning bolt lanced down at the giant.

The bolt struck its icy armor and shattered it. The armor served its purpose, slowing their blast enough that the giant had time to dive to the side and avoid the worst of the attack. The only damage they inflicted was a deep crease along its ribs.

The giant staggered to its feet and raised both hands. Shards of ice shot up at them, shattering against the chariot’s underside.

Master Kane grimaced and sent more power to reinforce his construct. John hated to leave the wounded, but he was about to suggest retreating before they ended up needing rescuing as well.

Man, he wished Damien was here.

“We need to hit it again,” Master Kane said.

“I’m only good for one more, Master.”

“It’ll have to be enough.”

John joined most of his remaining power to Master Kane’s. This time the master conjured a golden dragon and sent it swooping down at the giant. When the giant tried to dodge, Master Kane adjusted his construct’s path and drove its claws into the giant’s wounded side.

The construct got a secure grip and the master sent a pulse of energy through the dragon and detonated it. When the snow settled all that remained were a pair of blue-skinned legs.

Panting, John bent over and urged his soul force to recover faster. That had been too close. The chariot descended and he straightened up. Below them, leaning on a spruce, a soldier with a bandaged leg waved. Master Kane landed the chariot and allowed it to vanish after they climbed down.

“Lucky you came when you did,” the injured soldier said. “I thought that giant was going to squish us.”

John bent down to examine the man’s leg, but was waved off. “Check the others first. They’re all hurt worse than me.”

He left the wounded man where he stood and went deeper into the small stand of evergreens. The coppery tang of blood and moans from the wounded reached him at about the same time. Soldiers lay on cloaks thrown over the snow. Five men and two women clutched wounds and in one unfortunate fellow’s case, the stump of his right arm.

John had studied and thought himself prepared for the aftermath of a battle, but this was worse than he imagined. None of the wounded were warlords so they wouldn’t heal quickly on their own.

Forcing himself to work through the nausea, John went to the man with the stump first, leaving a nasty stomach wound for his mentor. “So what happened?” John asked the grimacing man. He insinuated his soul force into the man’s body and blocked the flow of pain. A sigh of relief passed the man’s lips.

“Ice trolls happened. They dug themselves in under the snow. We didn’t have a clue until ten of them burst out of the ground all around us. Just damn lucky we had numbers on our side or they would have killed us all. As it was we lost over half the patrol and the rest of us are hardly in any shape to fight.”

While he talked John sealed veins and accelerated regeneration of muscle and skin over the stump to prevent infection. He frowned and burned away a nasty spot of bacteria, probably left over from the troll’s spit. A quick scan of the rest of the man’s body showed no other injuries or infections. He squeezed the soldier’s remaining hand. “You’re going to make it.”

John and Master Kane spent an hour tending the wounded before loading everyone on a soul force wagon and flying back to camp. If this was what they had to look forward to it would be an especially ugly war.

T
wo weeks
of hard riding found Damien and the others at the edge of the northern army’s war camp. Hundreds of tents sprawled along the length of a river valley. A cloud of wood smoke rising from the camp made a dark gray day even darker, so many fires burned to keep the regular warriors warm. The scent of burning pine reached them even from a mile away. He felt bad for them, huddled around their fires, trying to keep warm while they waited for an eight-foot-tall monster to try to take their heads off. The only good thing about a winter camp was it kept the stink to a minimum.

Damien and his companions only bothered with a fire when they set up camp to enjoy a hot meal. Both warlords and sorcerers could keep themselves warm through the use of soul force. The warlords sped up their metabolism to generate heat, and Damien simply heated the surrounding air to a temperature he found comfortable. It took such a tiny portion of his power he didn’t think twice about the effort.

The other squads had fallen a day behind as they didn’t have Damien to create a road above the snow for them to ride on. They had to resort to forcing their horses to plow through ever-deeper drifts of snow the farther north they went. If the other members of Jen’s squad hadn’t already gotten to like him, the fact that he could keep them out of the snow would have made him their best friend.

The squad reined in at a checkpoint half a mile out from the camp. “Halt and name yourself.” What Damien had initially thought was a snowman spoke and raised a snow-covered spear.

Jen urged her mount a little closer, forcing Damien to extend his platform so her horse wouldn’t sink in up to its knees like the unfortunate soldier. “I’m Jennifer St. Cloud and this is my squad, reporting as ordered.”

The guard lowered his spear. “Where are the rest of the squads and how is your horse standing on top of the snow?”

“The others are about a day behind us and my brother’s a sorcerer.”

Damien waved at the guard. The poor snow-covered guy just stared at him. Perhaps he’d never seen a sorcerer before.

“Can we go?” Jen asked. “I imagine General Kord is anxious for us to report in.”

The guard scrambled out of their way and waved them through. They rode past the still-staring guard. Damien smiled at him as he rode his conjured horse past, but got no reaction. On closer inspection Damien guessed the guard was about his age and someone had probably assigned him to guard their rear line to keep him away from the fighting. He always knew John’s father was a good guy and this was more proof of it.

They reached the first of the tents and Damien let his portable road vanish. Some unfortunate had shoveled the area down to the dirt allowing them to move around without trudging through snow. Jen led them toward the center of camp where a tent twice the size of Damien’s quarters back at the tower waited, a flag with a snow-covered mountain crossed with a claymore flapping in the breeze above it. Was the duke in camp or was he leaving it to General Kord?

When they arrived, two young men standing outside the command tent rushed over to collect their horses. Damien waved them off and reabsorbed the energy from his mount. The pages were younger than Damien, but they didn’t give the squad a second look. Stationed outside the command tent they probably saw all sorts of unusual people come and go. The boys led the horses off to the temporary stable.

Jen brushed the tent flap to one side and led the way in. A huge table covered with a map of the Northlands dominated the central chamber of the tent. General Kord stood beside it, talking with a soldier who dripped on the floor as the snow melted off his uniform, and adjusting the positions of models representing the Ice Queen’s troops. Jen, Damien, and the rest of the squad stood with their hands clasped behind their backs, waiting for the general to finish with what Damien assumed was a scout.

Finally the scout bowed to the general and brushed past them back out into the cold. General Kord noticed them standing by the tent flap and smiled. “Jennifer, and Damien too, this is a pleasant surprise. Come in, come in, no need to be so formal.”

They approached the map and bowed. John’s father was a big, broad-shouldered man, with a thick beard, dark hair and hard green eyes. He looked nothing like his son, who very much favored his mother. The general came around to their side and hugged Jen when she straightened. He shook hands with Damien and nodded to the rest of the squad.

“Reporting for duty, sir,” Jen said.

“I wasn’t sure your father would send you. Well, I guess everyone’s got to fight their first war sometime.” The general turned to Damien. “Where’s your mentor? You were a year behind John so you can’t be acting alone yet.”

“I was visiting Jen and tagged along. I can’t seem to find a mentor and we did good work together this summer, so I thought I could lend a hand.”

“I heard. Killed a demon, impressive. Still, you’d best report to the sorcerers’ commander after we finish here. I wouldn’t want to step on her toes.”

Damien nodded. He’d check in, but whatever the woman said, he had no intention of letting his sister face whatever was waiting out there without him.

“What’s the situation, sir?” Jen asked.

General Kord returned to the map and the rest of them gathered around. He pointed out two model ogres a few miles north of the kingdom’s border. “They’ve divided their army. Half will attack through Frozen Hell pass and the other half are climbing up and over an ice ridge here. We have to defend the pass, but we need to keep enough men in reserve to handle the force climbing the ridge.”

Jen pointed at another gap in the mountains. “What about this one?”

“We’ve seen no activity in the middle gap. My guess is they’re trying to spread us out. That’s a new trick. Maybe the dragon isn’t as stupid as we hoped. This is the first time she’s divided her army, usually they try to overwhelm us with numbers at one of the passes.”

“What’s our assignment going to be?” Jen asked.

General Kord pointed at six white circles ten miles behind the enemy’s line. “Our sorcerers spotted these supply depots while long range scouting. Food and weapons are gathered there before going on to the monsters on the front line. I want your squad to destroy them. I don’t know if it’ll slow them down much, the ice trolls fight with their claws anyway, but if we can eliminate their food supply it might make them desperate enough to make a mistake.”

“Understood. When do we leave?”

“It’s too late in the day to go now,” the general said. “Why don’t you find a tent, get a hot meal and a good night’s sleep, and head out first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” Jen said. “Where might we find an empty tent?”

“I have no idea. Ask the pages out front, one of them can help you.”

“Where are the sorcerers camped?” Damien asked. He wanted to get the meeting over with so he could focus on the task at hand.

“When you go out take a right and go until you see the big blue tents. That’s them.”