Cinders of Magic

Chapter 9-1

Chapter 9

The guns thundered away from the top of the hillside that surrounded the south end of the lake below. Each of the guns was easily three men tall and required specialized vehicles to transport across the rocky terrain of northern Fioriel. Horses were unable to pull the massive instruments of death. The kirn used to drag the big guns, made the artillery battalions the slowest to mobilize of any of the Fiorian forces.

Their deadly effect was worth any delay in Elias’s eyes. By the time that the infantry train of the 4th army had fully arrived and taken position, the assault of the lake was well underway. Any structure that had existed below had long been devastated by the constant bombardment, and Elias knew that when they ventured down to claim the lake proper, the artillery would have claimed the king’s share of the death tally.

The stench of burning metal hung heavy in the air, and the rising sun cast a foreboding orange across the battlefield where far below men were already engaging at close quarters. Stalking through the battle were the Sloanish ogres, monstrosities several times the size of the men they vaguely resembled; artificial creatures made of stone and the entrapped souls of the vanquished dead. The sight of the abominations marching through the battle to bring their limbs of stone down on mortal men was enough to fill any soldier with the righteousness this war was being fought upon.

Elias had expected there to be far more than he could see. The scout reports had said that the Sloanish necromancers had amassed hundreds of the creatures to create an impenetrable foothold, but all that remained dully moving about the rain of bullets and fire were maybe a dozen.

To the north side of the lake, the clouds had begun to gather in a dark swirling mass, and climbing their way up the rise was the majority of the ogres. Lightning cracked and boomed from the sky in brilliant flashes as it collided with the stone abominations, splintering them into lifeless pieces that rolled lazily down the hillside to rest at the bottom. Still, the ogres climbed towards the top and were met with explosions of power as the amassed Fiorian channelers met them head-on.

“Not difficult to gauge where the Stormcaller is,” Biddy said loudly, straining to not be drowned out by the gunfire around them. He also looked to the battle of titans taking place across the lake.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Elias replied. “I wish they had spared us more than a handful of channelers to deal with the remaining ogres here.”

Biddy nodded. “Where is the Captain?”

Elias pointed down the slope to where the other three squadrons under Captain Eladrine pushed at the back of the line towards the front of the fighting. Soldiers were hurrying back and forth, checking the fallen for those still clinging to life, doing their best to evacuate them to the medical units near the top of the slope. Now and again, a man or woman with the 800th seal on their shoulder would pull their sidearm from its holster and plug a round into the head of a Sloanish fighter that still lay alive on the already conquered ground. Most of the time, it was a mercy.

Far down the slope towards the front of the two companies was Captain Eladrine. The pristine white of his uniform easily gave him away in a sea of gray, even in the dull light of the morning. “The man likes to lead from the front,” Biddy said with a smirk.

“Someone must have told him that it inspires men,” Elias replied.

“Dead officers aren’t much of an inspiration. Been a while since we had a good one.”

“It has…” The words caught in Elias’s throat as a spray of brilliant red smoke shot into the air the far right of the ridge side. The streak of smoke into the air was followed by two more. No more followed the three. “Get to the Captain,” Elias yelled as he forced Biddy forwards.

The man did not ask questions and sprinted his way down the slope towards the other two companies. His still healing foot gave him a loping gait as he struggled to keep his feet under him, but Elias did not have time to pay it much mind.

“Roan, get shovels in everyone’s hand!” he ordered as he turned back to where the remainder of the squadron rested. Elias found that the man was already at one of the several carts that had been brought, yelling at the recruits that did not understand the situation to hand out the arm-length tools.

Elias turned once more to where the flares had fired into the air. “Highlord bless us, give me a yellow flare.”

A minute passed. Then two. After three minutes, Elias had little hope that the yellow flare would fire into the air from where the next over artillery company was sieging from. Their guns had fallen silent since before the first flare.

“What do you want us to do?” Roan gruffed next to Elias after he hurried over. Behind him, nearly the full squadron had equipped themselves with shovels, though a good half still didn’t understand why.

“We have to move on them,” Elias answered. “If they have the mind to turn those guns on our men, then our siege could break.”

“Our channelers are across the lake,” Roan growled.

“I know.” Elias looked down the slope and saw Biddy still lumbering down towards the Captain, arms waving in a vain bid to get Eladrine’s attention. Most of the army was pushing ahead down the hillside towards the center of the lake without any indication that they had noticed the long burned-out flares.

“Keep the new recruits to the back if you can. I don’t know how many left we have that have seen what we are about to, but see what you can do about bracing the others for what is about to come over that hill at us.” Elias gestured to the short knoll that was the only separation between the two abutting artillery encampments.

“Are you leaving us?” Roan asked.

“Hlia!” Elias called over the din. The artillery gunners had slowed their firing at the sudden stirring of movement from their supporting squadron. Two men on horseback were riding to where Elias stood at the edge of the slope, but Hlia was far closer.

“Yes!” she called back.

“Get your team together and tell them that we have a trip to make.” Reading his meaning, Hlia gave a simple nod and set about finding her disparate squadmates.

The two men on horseback were not slow to reach Elias and rode through the scrambling group of infantrymen without hardly slowing. “What is going on, Sergeant?” the first one asked, a captain with short cut red hair extending from the top of his head down his chin line.

“Red flares,” Elias said as he gestured over the rise. Faint trickles of smoke still lingered nearby. “They got around us somehow.”

The captain’s face paled, sensing his unease, his horse backed a few paces. “What are you going to do about it, Sergeant? We don’t have the weapons to fight a necromancer.”

Elias nodded. “Behind your men, you will have two hundred of the kingdom’s finest to guard your back. I’m confident that by the time they make it over the rise we will have enough support returned to us to overwhelm them.”

The captain looked to the man beside him for council. He was a squat man that wore no uniform, but his face was burned and scarred enough to give no impression of a soft life lived. “Alright,” he said simply before turning his horseback to where the guns were still firing. The captain took a few seconds to get his horse around and head back.

Hlia made it over to Elias the moment that the two men were out of earshot, leading a troupe of ten infantrymen behind her. “You think that?” she asked.

“It could be true,” Elias said with a shrug. “I’m not inclined to wait and find out.”

“Didn’t you just try a suicidal run at the Sloanish a few days ago, Rook?” Roan asked.

“Didn’t I give you some orders?”

With a shake of his head, the older man growled and turned back to where the company was attempting to form into some semblance of a defensive position. There were not enough experienced fighters amongst them to get it working, and Roan moved as fast as he could manage to get them moving right.

“Where’s Biddy?” Hlia asked as she shouldered her weapon.

“Sent him to fetch the Captain,” Elias replied. He glued his eyes to the top of the rise before him, but still, there was no indication that anything terrible was taking place on the other side of it.

“You sent the gimp to be the messenger?”

“It’s downhill,” Elias said with a smile, “shouldn’t be too hard for him.” He pointed to the far edge of the rise, quite a distance away. “I hope you are up for a run.”

Without waiting for a reply, Elias took off towards the far end of the knoll at a sprint. No reply came from the men and women behind him that also tore their way across the trampled and torn up grass to where they knew Elias planned to sneak around the rise.

The run was short and thankfully uneventful. The slope of the hill leveled softly into a ditch that Elias lead his eleven men and women into. One of the men in the back had lugged a large pack along with them, and when everyone had stopped to hide in the ditch, he began to hand out spades. Elias was more astonished at the silence in which the soldier ran than his foresight, but he happily took the improvised weapon all the same.

“Hlia with me,” he whispered before starting up the slope of the ditch in a low crawl. Hlia made a gesture he could not follow and proceeded after him.

Cresting the rise washed all uncertainty away. The large guns, forty in all, had fallen silent as their crews had abandoned them. They were not gone, however, and continued to linger. Their twitchy and spastic movements were mockeries of the lives that their bodies once held. They worked at opening the crates which surrounded the gun placements under the close supervision of a man in long robes like blue fire. The burning blue of his eyes inside his shadowed hood was visible even from the great distance away that Elias was.

The company of infantrymen had fallen to his power as well. More than a hundred of the undead creatures he had made of them walked aimlessly about the small valley this artillery placement had been erected in. There was no indication of how they had been overwhelmed, of how their lives had been snuffed out by the robed figure, but the horrid blue glow of their eyes marked them clearly as no longer being human.

“We need to…” Elias began, but the sound of a gunshot next to his head carried his words away. The sudden blast dizzied him, and by the time he shook it off, Hlia had already leaped over him and pinned one of the undead to the ground, brackish blood pouring from the gunshot wound in its head. It thrashed and screamed horribly for only a moment before Hlia planted the spade in its neck and took its head clean off.