Spellscribed: Resurgence (6 page)

He thought about the spell he was working on in the back of his mind. Since he had stopped dwelling on all those extra things weighing him down, his spell had progressed more steadily.

At present, he lay face down on the bed in the room he had made for Anna. Their clothes had evaporated at some point; once they were no longer important, they had disappeared. Anna lay next to him, her warm body curled up against his. She trailed a finger across his back, an action that felt very familiar.

"You have gotten… strong since I was alive." Anna observed, her fingertips trailing up and down the slopes of skin drawn taut over developed muscle. "You must have worked hard."

Endrance chuckled. "Spent almost every day for three years running around with Jalyin openly chasing me. I had to eventually improve with that much work."

"Jalyin is the one… the one who killed me?" she asked. Endrance almost hit himself in the head, realizing his blunder.

"Yeah. She was." Endrance said. "Things have changed since then."

"Still, I can't help but feel a little resentful towards her." Anna replied.

Endrance hung his head, burying his face into the bedding. "I know." Endrance replied. "I'd had the chance to kill her, too. Get revenge. But it just… didn't seem like you."

"That's right." she said, stroking the back of his neck and shoulders. "While I'm mad she killed my body, I wouldn't want you to risk yourself further trying to get revenge."

A short silence passed. Endrance brooded, staring at the far wall. Elsewhere, his mind registered that he was really sitting in a cold impersonal chamber, but he was almost entirely convinced he was laying upon soft cotton sheets next to his Draugnoa reborn.

"The first night I slept with you." Endrance said aloud. "You did the very same thing. Stroked my back while I laid here."

Anna smirked. "Sleep was all we did at that time." She said teasingly. "But yes, I remember."

Endrance tensed. "But do you remember what happened the last time we met?" He asked.

Anna shrugged as best she could lying against his side. "It's fuzzy, for some reason." She answered. "Your mind… it was very badly fractured, and I only had the faintest bit of your free will. I think that was when you learned you had control of your impressions."

"I also learned that impressions fade." Endrance whispered. "They can disappear entirely. You shouldn't be here at all."

Anna shook her head, kissing him on the neck. "I couldn't ever completely disappear, dear husband. With a memory like yours, forgetting someone like me would be a monumental feat of its own. Think about this, what is an impression, after all?"

Endrance rolled onto his side to face her. "It's just a pattern of memories pressed into the auras of the deceased as they pass on. My bracers would capture that aura and my natural half-Mercanian body would be able to somehow comprehend those patterns as real as memories of my own."

Anna continued kissing the side of his neck and head. "But that was based on what you thought you knew about lineage. Does that make sense now?"

Endrance was getting pleasantly distracted, but he thought while his hands started wandering. "Well, no, I guess there's a few things that wouldn't be quite right. It seems that Mercanians possess no life energy, or even a connection to life magic at all."

Anna rested her head on his shoulder. "And?" She asked.

Endrance's hand stopped at her hip, "It would mean they only couldn't gain from the deaths of purely life-driven creatures."

"So… what does that mean for you?" she asked.

Endrance twisted in bed, sitting up. "It means… I can get things my father can't!" he exclaimed. "Things like emotions, feelings. Not just the pure data or arcane knowledge!"

"So if an impression of yours has so much more, everything that your father does not have, then wouldn't it stand to reason that your ability is more complete than his?" Anna asked. "Wouldn’t that mean that you alone have the ability to capture a near perfect copy of the person, just short of taking their very soul?"

Endrance pondered it. "If I wanted to, with what I have learned now, I could probably do that, too." he said. "However, I wouldn't want to have more than one soul housed in my body, no matter how much I wanted to keep them around."

"So instead you keep me in memory, and as long as you allow me to, I will be able to think, and feel like the original Anna would." She replied. "But more importantly, you would be able to gain more from others. So your impression of Kaelob-"

"If he still had affection for me, then he would be feeling it now, too." Endrance concluded. "Or the opposite, I suppose."

"Yes." Anna agreed.

Endrance hopped off the bed, clothing himself with the briefest of thoughts. "Which means he probably wasn't just toying with me." he reasoned. "And there really is a way to access the subconscious."

He turned to look at Anna, who was also suddenly dressed and standing at the side of the bed. "We may have to wait on that spell matrix for a little while." he stated. "It looks like I've got to go rooting around in my head first."

Anna grinned. "I have just the place to start looking." she declared.

Bridget stared out over the Balatoran encampment surrounding the Iron Kingdom's castle and sighed. It had been almost a week since they started the siege of the castle and they had hardly made any headway. The Iron King had been forewarned; the soldier Tanya missed had managed to pass the word along. And instead of riding out to meet them, they did exactly as Balen had predicted. Now the Iron King had buttoned up the city and consolidated his forces.

The city was surrounded by a stone wall ten feet tall and five thick, mostly a solid barricade that was good at dissuading bandits and other small military groups, but it was hardly a deterrent to the Balatoran warriors that had approached. Now they occupied several larger buildings within the city walls. It seemed that most of the citizens of the Iron King's city had evacuated. They saw very few people as they searched the buildings near where they had breached the city walls.

They had some parties scouting the areas around their encampment, but since the citizenry were just noncombatants, not much effort was being made to find any. They were, for the most part, ignored unless they were stupid enough to try to interfere with the invasion or attack one of the warriors.

The insides of the city leading up to the castle were laid out in a square grid, even easier to navigate than the circular shape of Ironsoul proper. Their men had filtered through the city unhindered, and only came up to resistance when they were within bowshot of the castle walls. The castle's position on the hill gave the archers on the walls enough of a range advantage that Balen's men couldn’t set up their own archers, or move through the small streets in large enough numbers to attack the walls properly.

Balen said he didn't want to wait long enough for the defenders to crumble, and left Bridget in charge. Well, he didn't technically leave her in charge directly, but rather gave control of ten thousand warriors to Wrach and requested that Bridget remain behind as an advisor. Balen then took the remaining thirty five thousand troops and continued south along the eastern coast. The next kingdom would likely fall faster than Iron; the bulk of Ironsoul's military arms and strength came from the Iron satrapy.

However, Wrach and Bridget noticed a strange lack of anything more than defensive military might. There were just enough soldiers on the walls to repel most conventional attempts to breach it, and while these men were significantly better drilled and trained than the patrol camps they'd torn through, there weren't as many troops as Bridget was expecting to find. Their tactics were extremely efficient for the number of men they were using.

Wrach stepped up beside her, wearing a bronze and black iron wolf motif breastplate, shin guards, and bracers that would have looked tacky on someone who wasn't a wolfman. He had traded in his old short swords for a pair of newer ones, which had been made from black steel. The blades had a broad side etched in intricate detail and a small, tight guard of bronze. The handles were wrapped in hide and the pommels were a simple bronze loop that laid parallel to the blades. The rest of his equipment had been similarly replaced in the years since she'd last seen him.

"Is that Thorpe Bronzesmith's gear?" Bridget asked. "He always had a thing for wolves, even before we got along."

Wrach glanced at her and shrugged, a very human gesture. "He was excited to make equipment to match our needs." Wrach replied. His voice had lost even the slightest burr of a growl in the past few years. Alongside Gnaeus and a couple of the wolfmen diplomats, his voice now sounded perfectly human.

"I like him." Bridget said. "Though I wonder what he's going to do for us furless folk, now that we don't use wolf hides."

"He may have to become an exclusive smith, since Gnaeus approved four of our pups to apprentice under him." Wrach replied, "Our crafting techniques are woefully behind when it comes to smithing."

"I would think that living in roving packs would make it hard to set up any large smithing stations." Bridget replied. "I guess we can spare the guy and his workshop."

"The sacrifice is appreciated." Wrach said diplomatically.

Bridget shrugged. "Sounds fair to me." she replied. "How's your daughter doing?"

Wrach's ear flicked, and he swished his tail before answering. Bridget had listened to Endrance enough to know that it was a sign of his irritation.

"She's… how do you put it? A handful." Wrach expressed. "My mate is hard pressed keeping her in line, but it has been good for the pack that she is there."

"Oh?" Bridget intoned. "How so?"

Wrach rolled his shoulders, grunting. "She was very quick to pick up pack structure and positioning, and has been seen abusing it by using that knowledge on other pups faster than the rest of the wolves in her litter could learn how the rules work."

"I think this is the point where Endrance would get it and say something clever." Bridget said, scratching the back of her head. "But I'm not him."

Wrach glanced at her. "She has learned how to use the rules to her advantage, but has not learned the reasons why she should not do so. She hasn't learned how her actions affect the pack."

"Oh. So it's a morals thing?"

"Yes… a morals thing."

Bridget turned to look back over the siege. As they watched, their warriors lobbed another volley of boulders from their recently constructed catapults. The rock sailed through the air, but only one of them collided with the castle wall. The other two sailed over, landing out of sight with a crash. The arc they had to fire from was bad, and if they missed the walls, the shot would likely continue on over the whole castle.

The archers on the walls kept their men at bay, and those that had gotten close had triggered additional defenses. Now three of the streets that approached the castle walls were doused in boiling oil that had been poured down the walls, making advancing on the smooth stone street slopes hazardous, even if there were no archers.

“This is surprisingly boring.” Bridget observed.

Wrach nodded. “It looks like they’re stalling.” He declared. “Their strategy is likely holding out until reinforcements get here."

“Think they’ve got reinforcements elsewhere? Maybe an army to flank us?” Bridget asked.

Wrach shook his head. “I am not sure. Perhaps. I will send some scouts out to the surrounding region and have them look around. Though if Balen's forces are still moving south, then the only direction their reinforcements would come from is Ironsoul City.”

"No one's in charge of that place." Bridget commented.

Wrach muttered to one of the messengers, who raced down to the catapults. Soon, the two that missed would be making adjustments to their shots.

Bridget sighed. "I hope something changes soon."

"Well, do you want to go knock on their door and ask them to surrender?" Wrach asked. "Might work this time."

Bridget surveyed the battlefield. The castle was somewhat off center of the city that had been built around it. Large slabs of stone were embedded as the foundation of the curtain wall. They had not much more information to go on, but Balator's military was not that concerned with specifics. A skilled enough warrior would be able to handle changing environments on the battlefield, so figuring out floorplans was not even considered.

But Bridget was not just a skilled warrior. She was also a Draugnoa, and had spent so many hours listening to Endrance think aloud that she'd picked up more than just how to read. Being clever and creative was not 'cheating' or fighting unfairly in her husband's eyes; they were merely using what one had to their greatest advantage.

"Wrach." Bridget stated, trying her best to think her way through their current standstill. "Do you see any way the castle disposes of their waste?"

"Other than the boiling oil, no. I do not see any means to remove waste. There are no grates along the ground that we can see, nor sewage channels." Gnaeus observed. "Are you suggesting there's an alternate means to dispose of it?"

"Well, it's worth looking around for." Bridget said.

The next volley of catapult shot was dead on. The three large rock projectiles slammed into the same ten foot space of wall. The barbarians cheered as visible cracks spread across the stone and part of the wall looked buckled in. Another couple of volleys like that-

The cheers died down as light emanated from the cracks and mortar in the area of damaged wall. The damage it took seemed to reverse itself, the cracked stone healing and buckling, pushing back into its proper place.

Wrach looked over to Bridget as cries of anger and dismay rolled back at them from their warriors. "Take some warriors, search the city and find a way in. There's a mage in their number and this fight will not end anytime soon unless he is dead."

"We will need to interrogate any prisoners we find. Is there a problem with that?" Bridget asked.

"No."

"Great." Bridget said. "Get me my warriors and I'll find you a way into that castle."

Bridget took a step back as Wrach let out a howl that echoed over the city. When he finished, he turned to one of the messengers who stood nearby.

"Go, ask each commander to get volunteers to go with Bridget and search the city." Wrach ordered.

"Are you sure, sir?" the messenger asked, pointedly ignoring her presence. "There is no one living who would serve under the command of the dead."

Wrach's lips pulled away from his fangs as he growled under his breath. "Just do it." he said, making an effort to speak softly. The man grunted and set out to deliver his message.

Bridget was placed in charge of twelve wolfmen and four humans. The humans were the few that Wrach could get to volunteer, since it was considered taboo to interact with the Ghost-Women of Balator. The wolfmen were not imposed with such tradition, and those that were best suited to scouting the city offered to help.

The way the wolfmen volunteered was something strange for Bridget. They seemed more than willing to volunteer to do things that would help the overall good of the army. Unlike humans, Balatoran warriors sometimes need to be badgered or forced to comply. Once they accepted, they would fully commit to their task. The wolfmen had never needed such urging for them to cooperate. Perhaps that was what Wrach was talking about with Kaie.

"Okay, so the castle's locked up tight." Bridget started. "It's also got some pretty formidable defenses, but nothing we couldn't take care of with time, right?"

The humans nodded, three of them women. The wolfmen looked to her quietly, either being respectful or just waiting for their orders.

"But Balen doesn’t want to wait weeks or months for this siege to break on its own. He's eager to get more of Ironsoul under our control, and has left the capture of this castle to us. I personally don't like sitting around on my ass and waiting for us to knock the walls down, so what we're going to do is find another way to get in there and personally kick the doors open to let our men in."

The wolfmen finally nodded. Bridget smiled. "Now, there's something else we need to do while we're out. There's at least one mage in their castle, and if we want to prevent our men from getting their heads set on fire, we need to kill that guy first."

"How?" One of the women asked.

Bridget turned and gestured to the city. "There's got to be a few hundred people who didn't evacuate when we showed up at their doorsteps. We find someone who knows the area, and get them to tell us how to get in there."

The wolfmen nodded and one of them stepped forward; a female with a gray coat. She was armed with a mace and a light shield. "We would be best suited to sniffing out someone who could tell us what we need."

Bridget nodded, "Go. Do it."

The twelve wolves scattered, swiftly disappearing into the city. The four humans milled around, looking at her for direction.

"You four, come with me." Bridget said, starting off after the wolves. "We're going to follow. Maybe you can learn something from them. Stick close to me, and keep an eye out for any more of those archers."

The four moved into the city in the direction the wolfmen had gone. The human bulk of the army could probably sweep the entire city methodically within a few days, but with the wolfmen under Wrach's command helping, it could likely be done in one. Their especially keen wolf senses and hunter's instincts would make hunting down any defenders outside the castle a snap. They were powerful combatants too, ferocious and cunning when they lived long enough to learn. The younger pups would go through a rash, defiant stage where their animal instincts developed faster than their intelligent minds. Those youths were the ones most barbarians encountered, and they did the race no favors when it came to making good impressions with the local tribes. Now there was talk about building something similar to a berserker's refuge for the young wolfmen to be locked into until they became capable of rational thought again. Their species as a whole would benefit just as much from working with the barbarians as the barbarians were currently benefiting from them.

Bridget could hardly keep up with the wolves who were tearing their way through the city, in some places loping on all fours. Though panting, they were also sniffing the air as they moved, occasionally pausing their motion to give an area a more thorough search before continuing onward. Bridget wasn't certain the other humans noticed, but whenever one of the wolves stopped to sniff out a location, the other wolves would slow their search pattern so they didn't leave one of the pack behind.