Chapter 23 - The Battle of Grathbridge
“The Empire is made up of diverse regions, cities and peoples, united by their love for Her Eternal Majesty. Many regions have friendly rivalries with each other, manifesting in amusing, ongoing jokes between their people and joyous competition in how they can best serve the Empire. However, no subject of Her Eternal Majesty would see another as anything other than their friend, working together for the betterment of the Empire and Her subjects.”
Two Thousand Years of Empire by Jahangir Amini
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The servants and guards stayed at the top of the hill, overlooking the battlefield. So it was only Ester, Velxe and Lars that made their way down the hill. As they started to cross the valley, Ester could feel herself getting more and more edgy. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but there was something, right at the edge of perception. Almost like a buzzing rising and falling at the back of her mind. Even opening her mind fully to try to sense any spells didn’t help. She was sure it was magical, but it was like nothing she’d felt before. There were a few places where it was said you could feel the background magic. The Academy was like a warm, comforting blanket. This was grating, chaotic. It was unpleasant and distracting.
With a shiver Ester pushed her attention back onto the rest of their group. Velxe was talking to Lars about something inane. It was probably a good thing, because it let her go back to poking at the feeling in the back of her head.
Velxe was a deeply infuriating person. He was patronising, tried to belittle her and had no proper sense of morals. She didn’t know why Lady Rutane had thought they might make a good match, but it made her more glad than ever that she was a Mage and not some noble girl who might be married off to him without her say so.
“So you are saying that the Republic’s cannons gave them a significant advantage? I understand that they did, but I do not understand why.”
Ester just about caught Velxe’s question and turned her horse to move closer to them. She had no intention of admitting it, it would just make the man all the more insufferable, but he was actually very knowledgeable. Intelligent too, if she was being completely honest. So if he was asking questions it was probably worth her listening to the answers. She knew there were gaps in her knowledge, obviously, but she was damned if she was going to accept being patronised about it. So that just left eavesdropping.
“I suppose it’s a complex question my lord. You know what cannons are of course?” Velxe nodded and Ester had to resist the urge to nod too. She didn’t want to look too interested. The first time she’d heard of the things had been when Sir Vitaly had mentioned them after the Velia ball. She’d had no idea then, but obviously she’d made sure to ask someone what they were. Honestly they didn’t sound that impressive, but she wasn’t going to make herself look a fool by saying so.
“Good good.” His voice took on the same distant tone as the night before. “Well. It’s hard to describe the destruction that cannons cause. Imagine, an iron or stone ball weighing over ten pounds, but propelled so fast that the eye can’t follow it. Not at first anyway. You hear the crash of an explosion and then moments later the man you were stood next to vanishes in a shower of blood. The fu… bloody balls bounced when they hit the ground, they’d tear a hole straight through our lines. Some people would be spared, others obliterated. Just mean chance deciding their fate.”
Ester winced at the mental image, feeling slightly sick, it sounded horrific. Velxe’s tone suggested he agreed.
“What about magic though? That sounds terrible, but it is nothing a Battle Mage could not do. Much less in fact. Great Spirits, even a combat trained Adept could do more damage. No offence intended.”
“None taken my lord. You are right of course, but there is more to it than just that.” Lars paused to think for a second. “It is obvious to us that a Mage, even one not trained for combat, is far superior to a cannon, both in terms of destructive capability and also flexibility. However, the level of Talent needed to become a Mage is rare. Vanishingly rare in fact and not all of them are martially inclined.” Ester pointedly ignored the way he glanced at her. “Compare that to a cannon, they might need several soldiers to crew them, but any fool can do it, there’s no special ability needed. You can train them up in weeks or months. Look at Mages, how long did it take for you to graduate from the Academy my lady? Eight, nine years?”
Ester jumped slightly at being spoken to directly. “Umm seven.”
Lars paused, blinking for a moment before continuing. “Well, there you go then my lord, my lady. Years compared to weeks or months.” He hesitated and looked back at Ester. “Seven years my lady, really? Begging your pardon.”
Ester felt her face heat slightly as she shrugged. “I studied hard.”
Lars glanced back at Velxe, an unreadable expression on his face. “Indeed. Anyway, you understand the difficulty?”
They both nodded, but it didn’t truly make sense. Ester wasn’t sure whether it was Lars’ reaction or just having more confidence because Velxe didn’t seem to know much about the topic either, but she decided to speak up. “Cannons have short range though do they not? A few hundred yards? Why could the Battle Mages not just destroy them from a distance?”
“Mages have limited range too.” Velxe just had to interrupt and Ester had to grit her teeth not to snap at him.
“How many Mages have you seen fight my lord?” She was fairly confident he’d never been in a real battle. He was too soft.
“None, although I did see the aftermath of the Velia ball.” Ester flushed at the reminder of that, as he’d no doubt intended. She’d show him!
“There, see that tree?” Ester pointed at a tree about a mile down the valley. One of very few that stood amidst the scrub.
Velxe peered out. “Yes, what of it?”
“My lady…” There was a warning tone in Lars’ voice, which Ester ignored.
“Tambrgh laobh’fa.” She put the full weight of her will behind the spell. At that distance it was a strain, she immediately felt the start of a headache, but her will was inviolate. As she finished the spell there was a flash of light and the tree vanished, obliterated by her spell.
Ester was glad the others weren’t looking at her as she sagged slightly in the saddle. That had taken a lot of effort. More than she’d expected, but then she hadn’t tried to do something like that before. Internally she kicked herself for her stupidity. She was letting Velxe get to her far too much, she could have just humiliated herself. A moment later a low thump echoed through the valley as the sound of the explosion reached them.
“Could a cannon have hit something from that far away Adept Lars?”If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“No my lady.” Ester nodded in satisfaction.
“Obviously not, but that is not the point Lars was making.” Of course Velxe had to weigh in.
Ester sighed. “You are missing my point Lord Velxe, it hardly matters how easy it is to build and crew these cannons if they can be destroyed with no hope of retaliation.”
Velxe opened his mouth to reply and then, to Ester’s great satisfaction, closed it again. Unfortunately Lars wasn’t quite so hesitant.
“You are quite right my lady.” Ester could practically hear the ‘but’ coming. “However, that fails to take into account the Republic’s witches.”
Bother, she should have thought of that. “They counter the Empire’s Adepts and Mages?” That didn’t make sense though. “But are Mages not just better? Adepts too?” That was certainly what they’d taught at the Academy, on the rare occasions that they touched on the Republic’s witches at all.
Lars shrugged. “No doubt my lady. Few of the Republic’s Arcanists can match a Chartered Mage in terms of skill. However, they seemed to have no shortage of them at the Battle of Grathbridge and quantity can make up for quality.” He shrugged, clearly having nothing more to say on the matter.
As they rode on in silence Ester chewed over what Lars had said. It didn’t really make much sense. She didn’t think the Republic had a larger population than the Empire. If the Empire had stronger, more skilled Mages and Adepts then shouldn’t it also have more of them? She huffed quietly in irritation at all the things that the Academy had clearly left out of her lessons. She needed to consider the facts.
The Republic had had more magic users at the Battle of Grathbridge, so how was that the case? Maybe they had more Talent there, but at lower levels. Lots of people who could be strong Adepts but few Mages? Or perhaps she was wrong about their population? She’d have sworn that the Empire was the largest known nation, but she might have misremembered. Or worse, might have been taught something untrue.
Could the Republic just be better at finding people with the Talent? That made no sense though, the Empire had found her and commonborn were hardly fertile ground for the Talent. It was known that the Republic had killed or exiled many of their nobles, so if they were like the Empire they must have lost a lot of Talent because of that.
Maybe the Republic just forced all its witches, Arcanists, to fight. That could explain their numbers. After all most Mages didn’t fight and she knew the Republic had mad ideas about the way their society should be organised. A few months ago she’d have been sure that was the right answer, but now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she could look into it more when they returned to Vass Karan.
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The centre of the battlefield was fascinating. Ester could feel the buzz of wild magic around her as she picked her way across it. Huge amounts of magic must have been used for her to be able to feel it so many years later. It set her teeth on edge, but she couldn’t help but poke at it with her senses as she listened to Lars describe his own experience in the battle and the way the two forces had moved.
The visible signs of the battle were mostly gone until they got close. There were occasional blackened areas where nothing grew, although none even close to as big as the great scar that they were heading towards. Beyond that, the soil and grass seemed to have swallowed most of what was there. However, there were definitely remnants amidst the waist-high grass. She could feel flickers of magic. In places bits of metal stuck up, or even the odd bone that hadn’t been taken by wildlife.
“Why has no one taken the armour and weapons from here?” Velxe reached out towards a breastplate lying on a bare patch of ground. Nothing else was around it, leaving its rune-covered, gleaming metal as the only thing visible on the blackened soil. “This must have cost a fortune!”
There was something about the breastplate, the runes on it. They made a Schema. Protection, deflection, something like that. As Ester watched they seemed to twist around themselves. Moving impossibly into nonsense combinations. Velxe was bending down towards it, she opened her mouth to…
“Stop!” Lars shouted before she could and Velxe jerked his hand back. “My lord, please remember not to touch anything.”
“Oh…” Velxe shook his head and gathered himself. “My apologies, I do not know what came over me.”
“Of course my lord, but magic will behave strangely here. It’s twisted by what’s been done and that can make things dangerous. That there breastplate might have been worth hundreds or thousands of crowns, but there’s a reason why it’s been left untouched.”
Velxe gave him a shaky nod and they continued onwards.
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Ester hadn’t expected their exploration of the battlefield to feel quite so much like a lecture. However, she had to admit that she did find Lars’ account of the battle quite fascinating. Especially with a chastened Velxe keeping quiet.
They’d left the horses hobbled at the foot of the hill and it took them a couple of hours of carefully picking their way across the land, with various pauses for Lars to explain things, to reach the great scar that had been torn through the land. There’d been more little pockets of strange, twisted, intriguing magic around as they’d made their way over. None had been too close to them and Velxe had been more careful so Ester hadn’t said anything. Her curiosity was burning in her to go and investigate them, but she wasn’t going to do anything that foolish. Not around the others anyway.
The edge of the scar was still perfectly delineated, even after a decade. Grass grew as normal on one side, nothing at all grew on the other. As they got closer the feeling of twisted magic grew stronger and stronger. Ester had to grit her teeth against it. She could feed it moving around them in ripples and eddies of power, even without trying.
It was thoroughly unpleasant, but also fascinating. Curiosity quickly won over common sense and she opened her mind properly, focusing on the magic. Colours sprang to life across the grass and the blackened ground. Runes flickered around them. Twisted ones though. Some she could recognise, others were close, but subtly wrong and still more were just alien.
The eddies of magic were far stronger over the scarred earth. At ground level she couldn’t see all of it, but she could see and feel the magic flowing over it. In places there was none, in others it was deep and dark, but everywhere it was moving. Swirling and rippling, seeming to react to undetectable stimuli. Mostly undetectable. There was something about the way it moved… Ester was fairly sure every movement they made triggered something in the magic. It wasn’t obvious, not an equal and opposite reaction, but she could have sworn she wasn’t imagining it.
“Lars, how often do people come here? I mean since the battle?”
“Huh?” He looked round to her in surprise. “Oh, rarely I suppose. Very rarely in fact. Grathbridge was the nearest village, but that was destroyed in the war. Otherwise, well it’s an isolated area, a bit too close to the frontier and there are the obvious dangers lingering around.”
Ester nodded. “So it has not been thoroughly studied, not in recent times?” Could the wild magic have fed on itself somehow? It was far outside her own expertise. She’d been relying on Lars knowing what he was doing, but the sinking feeling in her stomach told her that perhaps he’d been over confident.
“It was examined after the war of course. Why I came here myself twice in the first two years, but as I said, there has been little reason since. I’m sure Mages have visited it, but it wouldn’t be for me to question what they do.” He grinned wryly. “Anyway we’ve got a Mage with us, so nothing to worry about my lady.”
With a chuckle at his joke he took another step forward, almost onto the scar. “Shall we continue?”
Ester bit her lip, hesitated. Velxe was going to be insufferable if she stopped them. He’d call her a coward or just make patronising remarks about women or something. Magic swirled, gathering at the edges of the scar, colours flashed and flickered, but green dominated. The green of the Weiryd. Twisted runes danced in the middle of it, nonsensical and broken. No, sod him, she knew she was right. “Wait!”
Lars froze mid-step, his foot held above the ground, just past the line of the scar. Magic building up just below it in perverse patterns.
“Adept Lars, I do not think this is a good idea.”
“What do you mean?” Velxe said.
“Adept Lars, back away. Slowly.” To Ester’s relief Lars did as he was told and Velxe didn’t even protest at being ignored. “There’s something wrong here. Badly wrong. I think we should get away from the scar. Let’s all start backing away slowly. Please.” She tried not to make the last word sound too plaintive.
As if in response to her words the magic flared, gathering more densely ahead of them, building up along the edge of the scar. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t good at all. It was definitely reacting to them.
Ester glanced around her working to keep the urge to run under control. Magic was gathering everywhere, not as much as over the scar, but it was closing in. All of it wrong, alien. Perhaps a slow retreat wasn’t the best idea.
“Maybe a little faster.” She bit out the words as she frantically searched her memory for anything that could help her work out what was going on.
Magic flared around them, the wrongness doubling, tripling. A matching pain erupted in her head, bad enough to force her down onto one knee clutching her head. With her eyes screwed tightly shut from the pain Ester couldn’t see anything around her, but she heard Lars gasp.
“Great Spirits, no!”