Page 29 of Pawns of Fate
NICHOLAS
S weat dripping down his face, Nicholas raised his broadsword and struck the wooden training dummy. His arms and back burned; he’d been training for hours.
One of the knights approached him cautiously. Nicholas swung the sword one more time, letting out a frustrated grunt. He didn’t blame the knights for tiptoeing around him. He’d been more irritable than a treasure-hoarding dragon since Rose had gone with the Ojoh.
“Lord Nicholas?”
“What?” He swung the sword again .
“Perhaps we could all take a break. We’ve been training for two hours.”
Nicholas glanced over at the half dozen men training with him, panting and sweating even more than he was.
The overwhelming majority of the Sharp forces had deployed with York last week and were wading through swamp water by now.
His father had only left enough men at the castle to protect against a mountain troll or ogre attack, which was unlikely.
So the men left behind were the Sharp’s B-team, at best. Nicholas tried not to think too much about what that said about him.
“Fine. You lot, go get lunch. I’m staying here.” He swung his sword again. And again. And again, as the men limped away from the training grounds.
The spell runes engraved on his sword taunted him. He should practice actuating a few lightning spells while no one was around to watch. But he just couldn’t focus on anything today, so he kept swinging.
“Missing your wife much?” Syzman’s lazy voice inquired.
Nicholas stopped mid-swing. “What the hell are you doing here, Syzman? I thought you went to the swamps with York. Have you been shirking your duties this whole time?”
“Of course, I went to the swamps.” Syzman held up a parchment filled with spell runes and a couple of mana-less star crystals. “Lyla left me a few teleportation scrolls. You know. Since she’s busy guarding your wife.”
“Shut up,” Nicholas growled. “What’s gone wrong enough for you to teleport here?”
Syzman’s eyes looked around at anything but Nicholas. “ Well, a lot, actually.”
“Shit.”
“I’m heading to your father’s office. Get cleaned up and join us,” Syzman called over his shoulder and waltzed into the castle.
Nicholas tried to keep dread and anxiety from gripping him with cold talons as he quickly bathed and dressed himself, but he knew that things had to be dire if Syzman had teleported here. What on earth were they going to do from this far away? He’d felt so helpless lately, and he hated it.
He swiftly made his way through the castle, almost running at times. When he opened the door to the office and saw his father’s face, dread squeezed his heart.
“Read this.” His father tossed a hastily scrawled note at Nicholas as he sat down.
Father,
Send reinforcements. Immediately.
-York
“The camp was attacked by lizardmen and swamp octupi last night,” Syzman announced.
“What? The imperial family exterminated lizardment decades ago,” Nicholas asserted. He’d thought Hector Robson was exaggerating when he’d insisted that his men had seen the scaly, humanoid monsters.
Syzman flung a scaly, clawed hand onto the desk. “That one was some sort of shaman. I had to strangle it with my shadows, and it still put up a fight.”
Nicholas swallowed unconsciously. He’d seen Syzman’s shadows kill before. It was not something he hoped to see again.
Matthew cut in. “What worries me most is that Syzman said the monster’s corpses had strange spell markings. Almost like they were being controlled.”
“That’s… concerning,” Nicholas replied, but he was putting it mildly. The ability to control and manipulate monsters? If something like that fell into the wrong hands, it could spell disaster for all of Albion.
“You’re joining York in the swamps. Take our last unit of men with you.” His father’s command snapped him out of his thoughts.
“What? That will only leave a handful here!”
“It will leave eight guards. I’ve already contacted a few mercenary guilds.
I’ll send some after you and hire enough to guard Onanish Town adequately.
The swamp campaign takes priority right now.
” His father ran his hand through his hair.
“I need your brains for this, Nicholas. York isn’t half the strategist you are. I want you there as soon as possible.”
“Wasn’t Robson supposed to send mercenaries? Five units, if I remember?”
“He sent two,” Syzman replied, casually placing the lizardman’s hand into a leather bag. Nicholas remembered the mage putting a twiddletoad corpse in there, too, and shuddered to think what else might be in that bag.
“That’s why I said that I need you on this, Nicholas. Go save your brother. ”
His father penned a short reply to York, then handed it to Syzman. The shadow mage produced a parchment covered in layers of scripted spell circles with an evil eye at the center.
“What will we do when you run out of teleportation scrolls?” Nicholas asked.
Lyla was their only mage capable of producing them, and Syzman could use them, but only to teleport himself.
None of the other mages had enough skill to even attempt using the scrolls.
And from what Nicholas understood, it was tedious, slow, and demanding work to produce the scrolls; Lyla didn’t have dozens lying around.
Syzman shrugged. “I’ll save one so that I can teleport to Uddedin. I’m dying to see her in that bonnet again anyway.” He activated the scroll, and a large, green spell circle sprang to life around him, then flickered out of existence, taking Syzman with it.