The Sorcerer's Scourge (49 page)

The two disparate groups began separating themselves, creating a kind of demarcation line less than a hundred yards wide. Both sides looked ready, but not desiring to return to the fight.

Bishop Caalendor trudged to the halfway point of the demarcation line and Jarvin walked out to meet him.

“This night has been exhausting and horrible for both our peoples. I propose a forty-eight hour truce to deal with our dead and recover. Then we shall finish what was started. I suppose you can flee, but know I will hunt you down no matter where you hide,” the Bishop promised the deposed king.

Jarvin looked across the blood-painted landscape, took note of the obscene number of fallen men, and could only imagine what had happened this night all across the kingdom. His kingdom.

“I have an alternate proposition.”

Caalendor smiled, thinking Jarvin was about to beg for exile. He even considered granting it. Then Jarvin smashed his face with a gauntleted fist. Fresh blood sprayed across the already crimson snow as the Bishop crumpled into a heap. Hands flew to weapon hilts on both sides, spears were leveled, and bows drawn back. Jarvin turned and easily picked Rusty out of the front ranks of men and gave him a piercing look. Rusty nodded and, with the last of his strength, cast a simple cantrip upon his King.

Jarvin drew his sword and took several angry steps towards the opposing army. His countenance was so furious, so intimidating, that several of the nearest men took a step back as if the King might actually slay them all single-handedly.

Jarvin came to a stop, thrust his sword into the snow, and shouted, “Enough!”

His voice echoed across the open field and reverberated through the pass, amplified by Rusty’s spell. The King stalked back and forth like an angry, predatory hunting cat, glowing with a faint light.

“Enough! Enough fighting and enough dying for the petty desires and twisted ideals of men who care only for themselves!” Jarvin reached down lifted the severed head of one of the undead by its hair. “Look in my eyes, look at my face and look upon this thing and tell me who the enemy is. Back home your wives, children, and family may have been fighting and dying while you were up here killing your own kind instead of being at home protecting them! Who is the real enemy?” The King waved his hand in a circle over his head. “This is what happens when we lose sight of what is important. This has likely been years in the making while those who are supposed to protect us from this kind of evil were too distracted by petty politics to notice! My father was your uncontested king. I am his son and rightful heir. I. AM. YOUR. KING!”

Heads turned as the men looked left and right into the faces of their fellow soldiers. Everything balanced on a knife’s edge. It would take only the act of a single man to irrevocably disrupt the precarious situation. That man stepped forward and drew his sword. The King did not bother stepping towards his own sword sticking out of the snow several paces away as a captain in Caalendor’s army stepped towards him. The man spun the sword around, thrust it point-first into the snow, took a knee, and bowed his head.

“My King!” he declared loudly.

Jarvin looked down and gave him a single nod then looked at intently at the rest of the soldiers watching nearby. Almost as a unit, the assembled army thrust or braced their weapons into the snowy ground, knelt, and declared, “My King!”

Only then, did Jarvin retrieve his blade and slam it home in its sheath. “Rise, my people. We have faced a great threat this night, possibly the greatest of our lives, but we prevailed! We prevailed because we fought together! When evil raised its ugly head, we stopped our petty bickering, we stopped worrying about the inconsequential, and we fought together! Now let us continue to work, and if needs be fight, together so that such vileness can never again gather the power to strike at us as it did this night. Let us tend to our wounded, recover our strength, and then go home and see to our families.” Jarvin spotted General Brague, battered, weary, missing his helm, and nodded towards Caalendor’s unconscious form. “Take that
man
into custody for treason against the crown.”

Brague smiled and saluted his King. He turned to his nearest men and ordered them to recover the Bishop and put him in shackles.

It took two days to burn all of the dead, undead, and ragmen bodies. Jarvin was unsure what he would face when he returned to Brelland, but with seven thousand men behind him, he was certain it was nothing he could not handle. It would not be a fast trip since they burned most of the troop wagons during the fight. The few that remained had to be used to carry food, supplies, and wounded men.

Jarvin, his mages, and senior officers were sitting around a table in the command tent discussing the march south to Brelland when a guard showed Donnigan into the tent.

“I truly wish you would reconsider and come with me to Brelland,” Jarvin was saying to Azerick.

“My people and I must return to the school and our own families. I have no idea what has happened, but I have a feeling we are needed.”

“I need you,” Jarvin insisted. “I could command you as your King, you know.”

“You gave a nice speech, Jarvin, but do not let it go to your head,” the sorcerer warned, his face devoid of any humor.

Jarvin merely smiled. “Impertinent as ever. Don’t get your smallclothes in a twist. I would not dream of forcing you. Ah, Mr. Donnigan, you are just the man I wanted to see.”

“Hm, don’t hear that much unless I owe someone money.”

“How fares End’s Run?” the King asked.

“You mean what’s left it. We burned half of it to the ground fighting those things. Would’a lost everybody maybe if the wolves hadn’t showed up.”

“Wolves?” Allister asked.

Donnigan grunted. “Yeah. Damndest thing you ever saw. The whole town was pressed near the center, half the building in town on fire, and the wolves found an open gate and started tearing into them things. Hundreds of them if I were to guess their numbers. Fog lifted and the wolves disappeared with it. I reckon they didn’t like the way those dead things smelled and took them as a greater threat than us humans.”

Jarvin took a deep breath and asked the question that had been plaguing his mind since the fog appeared. “And my family, Mr. Donnigan?”

“They’re fine. First thing I looked in on after the fog cleared. The men I had watching em said them things seemed to avoid the manor. Guess Landrin hexed it or something.”

“That is good news. And how is Lord Bailey?”

The chief enforcer shrugged his broad shoulders. “Not a clue. He left right after you all. Told me he had something to attend to. I didn’t ask what.”

“I am sure he had good reason to leave.”

Jarvin motioned to a guard who poked his head out of the tent and said something to someone outside. A minute later, another guard ushered Bishop Caalendor into the tent and forced him to sit in a chair. Donnigan’s face showed no reaction to the fact that the clergyman looked like horses had stampeded him.

“This was Bishop Caalendor,” Jarvin explained. “He is now branded a traitor and stripped of all titles and rights. He has information I need. Unfortunately, I do not have a proper inquisitor on hand and refuse to bring him anywhere near Brelland or any other civilized town within my kingdom.”

“You gave me your word of a truce when those monsters struck!” Caalendor protested through spilt and puffy lips.

Jarvin bent down and pressed his face within inches of the cleric’s. “Much as you have done to me for the past ten years—I lied.” He turned back to Donnigan. “I need the names of every one of his conspirators. Can you do that?”

Donnigan smiled a very unfriendly smile. “Hell, tell me your favorite song and I’ll have him singing them to its tune.”

“Excellent. I will give him into your capable hands and notify my quartermaster to send some pigeons with you to message me when you have it.”

“What do you want me to do with him after?”

Jarvin stared balefully at the priest for a moment. “Hang him for a traitor.”

Donnigan broke character and laughed heartily.

“You find something amusing, Mr. Donnigan?”

The man wiped a tear from his eye and replied, “Sorry, it’s just that the gallows Lord Bailey had built were one of the few things that didn’t burn.” He nudged Caalendor’s chair leg with his boot. “Lucky for you, eh? Sorry, folks always told me I had a gallows humor. Guess they were right.”

Donnigan had come to see how the King and his army fared and to deliver news of End’s Run and his family. Now that he had, he took control of the former bishop and started back on the two-day ride to End’s Run.

Jarvin and the remainder of the army marched south to Brelland while Azerick and everyone that accompanied him from the school rode for North Haven. He could not put his finger on it, but an urge to be home pulled him. Azerick prayed something had not happened to Miranda or the school.

He had so many people to care about now, and for a moment, wondered if the potential for so much pain was worth it. Yes, it was. His doubts were the old him talking. The him that shielded himself in loneliness and solitude. The him that was willing to sacrifice true happiness for emotional security. He had love now and soon he would have a child to raise and spoil. He would not trade a single second of that for his own selfish desire of emotional security.

CHAPTER
20

It was a cold, boring ride back to the school. Fortunately, the mages’ magical tent survived that hellish night, and without dragging along three thousand soldiers behind them, they made better time. There was little fresh snow so the trail they had blazed in coming was still traversable, but it was still ten days of dreary, unpleasant riding before they spotted North Haven in its secluded seaside valley.

Azerick and his friends were nearly to the gates of the Orphans’ Academy before anyone ran out to greet the kingdom’s wayward defenders. Rusty had coined that term, to which Azerick promptly told him to shut his big yap before it caught on and the King called on them to solve every problem he faced.

He was as delighted to see Miranda rushing out of the gates as he was sure Rusty was at seeing Colleen and his two toddlers. He was also surprised that Wolf had not burst from the tree line demanding gifts and disheartened not to see Ellyssa. Azerick immediately assumed she was still angry. Concern washed away all three amalgamating emotions when he saw the distress plainly written on Miranda’s face.

“Azerick,” Miranda said in a panicked rush, “something is wrong—something terrible!”

Azerick slid off Horse’s back and held Miranda in a tight embrace. “What is it?”

Miranda slung her head from side to side, trying to force her thoughts into an orderly procession. “The school and the city were attacked by dreadful creatures. Several people here at the school died and over a thousand in the city. Mother has received reports from the other major cities and outlying hamlets and they are reporting the same.”

Azerick nodded slowly as he took in Miranda’s report. He and Allister had suspected much of what she was saying, but the numbers were still staggering. It had been the major topic of conversation on their ride back.

“It happened to us at End’s Run as well. We are not certain, but it seems someone was able to put a stop to it. Permanently, we hope.”

“There is more.” Miranda took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ellyssa is gone, and Wolf and Sandy as well.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

Azerick’s first instinct was that they had fallen victim to the undead. His heart pounded in his chest knowing that such mindless creatures would never take a live prisoner unless their master had given them very clear instructions to do so.

“Ellyssa snuck out of the school to see Alonzo Janovin, the bard. I spotted her in the crowd and sent guards to bring her to me. I thought she might take it more seriously than if I went to her myself. She ran. We think she ran into the city and was taken.”