Deuce Traveler's Story = 2,999 words. When removing title, pic references and '***'s.
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Acts of Murder
A messenger came from the village of Serentis claiming that the Vespi farm had been burned down by the Wolfrider Clan. Nine citizens of the empire left to the crows, the same ones that ignored our warnings about building an estate on Wolfrider land. But the patriarch of that House ignored us because the soil was too good to leave unclaimed. And now I, Centuro Druun of the Imperial Army, was going to be sent with two hundred men to enact the Empire’s revenge for their deaths. I had asked for reinforcements, and was instead ordered to gather the wizard Gallindor to join my small force. However, I had heard no exploits about the man. The rumors said that he was admired as a fortune teller to the old women of court, and that his patrons had begun to build a tower in the noble district of the city in exchange for his dubious work. I had requested the help of soldiers, but was being ordered to take away a great charlatan instead.
I came up to the green base of the nearly completed tower, where the wizard lined his walls with strange oddities that enhanced his eccentric reputation in my mind (pic 4); a statue of a bull with his left horn broken off, a vulgar imp staring away from me and a lead-coated cage with the rods broken open. I shrugged, knocked on the door and waited. Odd... I thought the imp was staring down the opposite street, but on second glance I saw it was looking towards my side.
The door swung open and a man half-bumped, half-rushed up to me and asked my purpose. I asked if he was Advisor Gallindor, and after he nodded stupidly at me I explained my mission and handed him the scroll that ordered him to join my unit. He unrolled it, smiled slightly and mumbled through something that might have been "pleased to meet you" before rearranging his belt pouches, which somehow became jumbled in the short distance he had walked from living quarters to the door.
I was underwhelmed. “You’re Advisor Gallindor,” I asked and received from him a blank nod. “You must be kidding me. I asked for reinforcements and I get you? Can you even keep up with a march?”
“The wizard's eyes flashed in anger and focused upon me, but then glazed over just as quickly as he waved his hand dismissively and mumbled "easy now. It's alright. Hush, hush..." My face grew red as I wondered whether I was being patronized or mocked by the old fool.
***
Despite my already low opinion of the man, Advisor Gallindor ended up being a worse travelling companion than I had anticipated. The men would form in columns for easy travel along the roads, sometimes breaking out into synchronized and familiar marching songs. The Imperial armored regulars with spear, short sword and shield were followed by Lorian auxillaries armed with short bow and javelins. The rigidness of their disciplined march filled me with pride and confidence. But then there would be Gallindor, sometimes walking with me besides the column, other times falling behind it to become a small gray blot in the distance, before running back up in a sweat-drenched job, all the while mumbling to himself. When we would settle in for the night he would often wander aimlessly around the camp until nightfall. The worst was when he would take a large tome out of his backpack and huddle over it, his incoherent mumblings becoming louder and more alien as his face became strained as if the words challenged him. The more superstitious Lorians would make the sign of their god when passing near him. I found I had to keep part of my mind on Gallindor instead of the task at hand, fouling my mood further; he was a dislikeable distraction in my orderly rythmic world.
I admit that I added to the tension by not staying overnight in Serentis, and by my short temper when we crossed over into goblin territory. Our column had seen the occasional Wolfrider scout stare at us from hilltops beyond bow range. They knew we were here; knew that our presence meant we were pushing for a confrontation. My mind kept dwelling on the fact that I had only two hundred good men against on unknown amount of tribal warriors and on territory where two scouting patrols had been wiped out years before. The remains of the Vespi farm were another testament to how the Wolfrider Clan dealt with interlopers.
The crops had been burned and the cattle butchered with scattered bones being the only reminder that they had once existed. The home itself had been razed to the ground, but the remaining timbers showed signs of being torn down by hemp ropes and stone axe. The remaining wood from the walls was splintered and strewn about, fabric found in shreds, pottery dashed to the floor. Most of the bodies of the Vespi family had been hacked up, except for the family patriarch who was tied by stakes to the ground and skinned. My men found no sign of survivors or salvageable equipment in the ruin, but they did find build up a healthy reservoir of anger. Each soldier silently promised that there would be a reckoning.
"Hmph! They didn’t even keep this beauty, which they could at the very least have melted down for the silver." The voice jolted me out of my own violent thoughts. It was Advisor Gallindor holding the bent and dented remains of a silver chalice with horse heads engraved upon it. He brushed some of the soot off of it and attempted to polish it with the hem of his sleeve. (Pic 3) "Goblins often raid for what they destroyed here. This wasn't just a raid, but an act of rage. We might be able to use that anger to draw them out."
It was sound advice freely given, but my dislike of the man and my situation did not lend a civil tongue. "If I want your advice, old crank, I'll ask for it."
His face drooped for a moment and he made another dismissing wave in my direction. "Hush, hush," he mumbled again to himself before his wandering eyes focused once more on me. "Centuro, I'll have you know this is not my first campaign. My magics will be vital to your mission."
I had enough. "You want to press this issue with me? Fine. Your little parlor tricks might impress the nobility and the superstitious, but they don't impress me. You have been nothing but a distraction to me since I met you. You worry my men and get in the way more often than not. And I can't stand your patronizing attitude and how you wave me off and tell me to hush whenever I give you a piece of my mind."
The old man's face suddenly split into a wide grin. "Oh my! You thought I was hushing you?" His eyes grew distant again and he stared off into space, mumbling to something only he could see, "Yes, yes. I agree. Heh. How funny. Yes, he's a funny one."
A chill went up my spine along with a sudden revelation. Gallindor's mutterings weren't those of someone awkward in conversation. The man was speaking to voices in his head. I wasn't marching with a senile, old codger, but a madman. I kept my voice steady, though strained, "I cannot go against orders and throw you out of this unit, but I can tell you what to do while I am in command. You will stay out of the way of my men and of me. You will refrain from giving me advice of any kind. You will not attempt magic or in any other way engage in some superstitious nonsense that will further worry my men. If you fail to obey these orders I will consider you a threat to the mission and leave you for the goblins. Do I make myself clear?"
"I will gladly obey. When you get to be my age you realize that getting paid for not working is one of the true joys in life." He handed me the dented silver chalice and walked off, whistling a tune.
***
The Wolfrider Clan had fled into the marshlands but left easily followed footprints, and so for three days we pursued through soft earth and foul weather. A hundred of their spear-carrying unmounted warriors decided to make their final standing in a foot of tepid swamp by a cliff face punctuated by a small waterfall. (Pic 1) They stood with their backs to the cliff face and spears out towards us. I called for a volley of fire by my Lorian archers, but the goblin hide shields gave them protection. I ordered the regulars cautiously forward, aware that neither of us would be able to maneuver forces well in the sucking mud beneath the swamp water. I stayed back with the Lorian archers, my eyes scanning the battlefield for threats uncaught as my men pressed their formation.
“Too easy,” Gallindor was next to me but had to shout in order to be heard clearly over the waterfall. He took care to avoid speaking with me directly, but his anxiety matched mine. “If I had permission to use my magics, I might be able to discern what they are planning.” Neither of us couldn’t understand why this small force of goblins chose to make a stand here. My nerves must have been shot for I granted him the request.
He mumbled a few words then sighed in ecstasy, his expression matching a man suffering from migraines who just had his sinuses cleared. I was about to curse him for what I thought was an ill-timed charade when his eyes fluttered open and he shouted in fear and shouted, “It’s a trap! Wolfriders behind us and charging fast!”
I cursed and looked behind my line of archers, but could not see anything past the mist of the marsh. I motioned for my archers to turn around and face the fog, as I could not be heard over the waterfall and clash of arms. Awkwardly they did turn, just in time to see the first of the wolfriders tear from the mists and close the distance to my line of panicked archers. I made a futile attempt to shout orders above the noise of the falls, to organize my panicking Lorian irregulars, to pull some of my regulars from their fight in order to protect the archers. I realized that I had not marched into a battle, but into a one-sided slaughter. All was panic and confusion, and then...
And then there was Gallindor, dark and terrible, arms raised as a wall of fire appeared between Lorians and Wolfriders. In the next instant he threw his arms down and a fireball fell from the sky, stopping short an attempted flank around the wall of fire. Time and time again Gallindor’s blissful face shouted alien words, commanding death itself. The wolfrider chief gestured to his shocked men to press onwards, but Gallindor ended his efforts. As he finished his next casting, a winged woman appeared in front of us, wearing golden armor and wielding a silver sword (Pic 2). This dark-haired valkyrie felled the goblin chief and scattered his horde, a shimmering picture of heart-aching beauty in an otherwise grotesque field.
***
The enemy had been both brave and cunning. They had counted on our aggressiveness, left us tracks through the marsh we could easily follow and ultimately led us into a trap that limited our mobility and ability to pass orders. My men understood and did not question me when I decided to honor their dead. We made two piles for burning, a small human one dwarfed by the that of goblins. I ordered the goblin chief buried in a rock cairn on a patch of earth on the top of the falls and lent my own hands in its swift construction. As I placed the final rock, Advisor Gallindor came to join me.
He studied me with clear, intense eyes. “That was a near thing, Centuro, but you held your men together well under the circumstances and earned a fine victory in the end. The border towns will be placated, the other goblin tribes eager to pounce on the weakened Wolfrider Clan and the honor of the Empire restored in this region. You will get a commendation for this.”
“You earned your own share of the glory, Advisor.”
“I’d rather you not add that in your report. I don’t desire the attention and your superiors will suspect that I aided the operation anyway and finish the building of my tower as part of my reward.”
“You seem more coherent than your usual self,” I pressed.
He laughed softly at that. “It’s easier to focus on the material world and your fellow man when you’re not utilizing most of your brainpower trying to keep the magical words of a sleep spell from getting all tangled up inside your mind with a spell that creates a killing cloud. That battle was closer than you think as I ended up using every spell in my head during it and the mopping up after.”
My blank look told him I didn’t understand, so he continued, “When you study tactics, the majority of that knowledge stays inside your head for use, analysis and reuse. When I study from my spellbooks, the words of magic writhe and bounce inside the walls of my mind where I have to continually master them until they are released.”
“That’s why you seem distant most of the time. You are fighting with your own magic.”
“Yes and no. It’s not unlike you studying your lessons on tactics. But try to recall your lessons while conversing with someone about a shopping list. It wasn’t too bad when I was a wizard of the First Circle and only had to deal with one or two spells. But the fighting analogy is more accurate as a wizard trains his mind to split its attention on more numerous spells, then on more complex spells from higher circles. Why, if I was a wizard from the Ninth Circle the battle would have been over in a blink of your eye. I could have frozen time for all but me, turned swaths of those goblins and mounts into dung beetles or mice, pulled meteors down from the stars to explode in their midst, and cast volleys of unerring magical missiles to strike them down. You would never have seen it with your eye, but to you all of it would happened in an instant.”
I shuddered despite the warmth of the late afternoon. “With such power you could rule kingdoms.”
“Bah! And how would I do that? A ruler needs to focus on tax revenues, troop disbursements, or the proper management of court administrators. How can a wizard do that while trying to keep the charm spell in his head from entangling with his summoning spell? A wizard without magic is useless, but if he is king when does he get time to memorize his spells? No, a wizard has no desire to rule. Give him a tower away from men and quiet for his studies so that he might work on his mind’s ability to retain spells of a higher circle.”
“But what are these words of magic? Something can’t be created from nothing.”
“There are some theories, but I don’t believe it is healthy to dwell on them. Some wizards believe that magic comes from a place of raw chaos, and that wizards are unwitting agents of beings seeking to destabilize our world by having us wash it in their energies.”
“I can’t believe that. I saw that woman you brought forth and she was nothing like that. She was beauty. She was grace. She was all that was good.”
Gallindor looked pained and said hesitatingly, “There is another theory. There are those that believe that magic is alive, and that when we learn the words we in effect gather the energy of life. When we cast we give birth to life in magical form.”
“She disappeared shortly after our victory. Will we see her again?” My heart skipped excitedly.
“We wizards are powerful, but we are not gods. Our creations have a limited duration, coming into existence for all too brief a life before fluttering once more into the void. By this theory, a wizard commits many acts of murder every day. Sacrifices made in order to expand our powers. But if true, how does a wizard give it all up, since to his rivals he and his spellbook are travelling treasure troves of knowledge. And what does it say about a wizard who likes the idea of sacrifices for his power? That’s why I don’t focus on such theories on where magic comes from. It would be enough to drive one mad,” Gallindor said with a sudden cackle.
“Thank you, Advisor. That will be all.” He cocked his head and looked at me with curious eyes before giving a disappointed nod and walking away. Human conversation was a rare liberty for a wizard, and for Gallindor it would soon be rarer still. I pictured him alone in his new tower, surrounded by his odd wall trinkets, with only the voices in his head keeping him company, growing ever separated from mankind in equal measures to the growth of his power.
And I stared at the finished cairn of the goblin chief. We had both struggled and scraped to become great warriors, then leaders of men, yet there were forces at play that the force of our arms would never subdue and our crafty minds would never understand. I left him the bent silver horsehead chalice found at the site of the Vespi raid, granted him a short benediction and turned to join my men for the solemn march home.
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