The Line of Illeniel

Chapter 24

The good baron was just leaving his manor when we arrived. I think he was surprised to see me, and not pleasantly so, which suited me just fine. Penny rode beside me to my right, while Marc sat upon his palfrey to my left. Behind us were ten men of the Washbrook militia.

“Lord Cameron, I had not expected to see you this day,” the baron addressed me. He rode at the head of over thirty guardsmen. I could see heavily laden pack mules with them, as well as an exceptional number of ‘spare’ horses. He had probably emptied his stables. The fact that he cared more for his livestock than his people did nothing to improve my temper.

“You look as though you are off upon a journey my lord,” I replied civilly.

“I plan to winter in the capital. Surely you did not expect me to stay?” his lip curled into a sneer as he spoke.

“I expected you to have the decency to inform your people of the coming war. Only a coward packs his bags and runs without giving his people some warning,” I answered coldly. Evidently he hadn’t bothered to tell his retainers either… I saw several eyes raised among his men as I spoke.

“Take care with your words Lord Cameron, lest I take umbrage. The affairs of my people are none of your concern.” He shifted uncertainly on his stallion but resisted the urge to look at his men, to do so might have shown his fear.

“I see you didn’t even have the courtesy to tell your men. Some of them must have families. Did you fear they would desert if they knew you were leaving their wives and children to die?” I raised my voice to ensure it would carry clearly to those listening. Several people had come out of his manor to see what was happening.

“I’ve had enough of your insults, dog!” the baron’s face was red with rage now. “Cut them down…” Before he could finish his order Penny spurred her horse forward and struck him from his saddle with the flat of her sword. Rising from the ground he drew his own blade, “You dare strike your betters?!” he screamed at her.

I had to give the man credit, he might be an ass but he didn’t shrink from a fight. Penny dismounted easily and strode toward him. Lord Arundel was obviously well practiced with his sword, but Penny was far too quick for him, she sidestepped his first swing and her hand darted out, wrenching the weapon from his grasp. His face registered shock before she struck him with her fist. A moment later he was stretched out face down in the dirt. She put the edge of her sword against his neck to encourage him to stay there, “I’ll dare more than to strike you if you speak again.”

The whole thing happened so quickly no one had moved. The baron’s men sat their horses with gaping mouths at the sight of him so quickly disarmed. To be truthful I was a bit surprised myself. Penny had always been feisty, but now her speed and agility were frightening. I tried not to show my own surprise though.

I addressed the guardsmen and the growing crowd of townsfolk who were gathering, “My name is Mordecai Illeniel, the new Count di’Cameron. I have come to give you the news your lord unwisely kept from you and to offer you a choice.” I had to shout now to make sure everyone could hear me. Nearly fifty people stood around us now. “Gododdin plans to invade in the spring. I gave your baron this news yesterday, but it seems he would rather hide with his wealth in the capital than safeguard his people.”

The gathered crowd gasped at the news and a chorus of hushed voices began talking among them. I worried panic might set in before I could finish. “I am here to offer you a choice. The Duke of Lancaster and I have a plan to meet the invader and defeat him. Any of you who would stay and fight for your homes are welcome to join us.”

Poor Sheldon could not stay silent, “You would steal those in my service? The king will know of this outrage!”

“Kyrtos,” I spoke and his voice fell silent. I could see his eyes bulging as he realized he was no longer capable of speaking.

“Those of you who wish to stay are welcome to come with me. Those of you who can fight may take employment with me. Those of you who fear the baron’s wrath should he return may build new homes on my lands. Where you were ‘serfs’ to this pitiful excuse for a lord you may be freeholders now.”

Someone in the crowd spoke up, “Winter is almost here. It is too late to move now; we would have no place to survive the cold.”

I had expected that. “You may stay in your homes for the winter if you wish or you may find shelter in Castle Cameron. I need men and women to prepare for the coming war. I will assist you with building homes in the spring, once the war is done,” I answered.

The crowd went silent at that. I suspect many of them were too shocked to know what to make of my offer. I didn’t dare give them time for debate. Taking my staff I drew a line in the dirt, “Those of you who wish to take my offer step forward. Those who wish to return to the capital with this piece of trash simply stay where you are, although I suspect he will only take those who were in his original party.”

Faced with a sudden choice it didn’t take them long to decide. One by one the baron’s guardsmen crossed my line. The townsfolk joined in a rush as soon as it was apparent the guardsmen wouldn’t be standing against them. In the end only two men remained to the disgraced baron. I motioned to Penny to let him up, “Very well Sheldon. You may leave now.” As an afterthought I released the magic that was holding his tongue.

“You will regret this. The king will hear of this outrage,” he told me. I noticed he kept his voice low. He motioned to his remaining retainers to gather the pack mules.

“Stop,” I declared. “You may take only what is on your person and enough food for you and your two servants to make the journey. The rest stays here.”

“So you plan to rob me as well? You are no better than a common bandit,” he spat at the ground.

“What you had came from the sweat of your people. You surrendered your right to it when you abandoned them,” I replied.

He looked at Penny, “At least return my sword.”

Penny glared at him, “It will go to someone who will defend their home.”

“You would leave me defenseless on the roads?” he asked me.

“I think you will find the roads clear,” I graced him with a cold smile.

We were almost back to Washbrook before Marc spoke, “You understand what this will mean when he reaches the king?”

I kept my eyes forward as I replied, “I have a fair idea.”

“You’ll be called before the council. He may even strip you of your title,” he informed me.

“I know, but I can’t in good conscience leave those people to the mercies of fate. Do you think I should have done otherwise?” I asked.

“You could have waited till after he had left. Then you would have been doing him a favor, protecting his people in his absence. He’d have been in your debt, rather than branding you a thief.”

I glanced at him, “Is that what you would have done?”

“It was never my decision, but if it had been… I don’t know. A year ago I might have killed him rather than let him return to the king, but now… I’m not sure. The goddess has shown me a new path, one open to all men. As I am now I probably would have waited until he was gone, though that might not have been the most tactically sound choice.” My friend paused for a long minute. If I had not known him so well I might have spoken, but I knew more was coming. “You still aren’t comfortable with my vocation are you?” he asked.

“I wish I could say I was. I trust you and I trust your intentions, but the more I learn of magic and the nature of the relationship between wizards and gods the less I trust them,” I answered carefully.

I had piqued his curiosity, “What have you learned lately?”

I studied him carefully before I continued. At last I decided to trust my friend and told him what I had read in ‘The History of Illeniel’.

After a long pause he spoke, “According to what you read the gods were once weaker than they are today? That goes against all current theological knowledge. What makes you trust it more than the words of the wise?”

“History is written by the victor,” I said simply. I didn’t need to expand on the statement; we’d had enough debates with his tutors over the years for him to understand my meaning immediately.

“According to what I’ve learned the victors of the sundering were the wizards of that time,” he responded.

“That is true in the most technical sense, but they were left diminished and vastly outnumbered. The religions of the shining gods, by contrast, had risen to much greater power. The wizards that remained had lost the trust of kings and men, while the gods had gained it,” I replied seriously. “I think that the bond was as much a political contrivance as it was a safeguard against another wizard opening a world-bridge.”

“Your own experience nearly drove you mad,” he answered.

“It may have appeared so… but I truly think I was simply adjusting to a new level of awareness. The wizards of old survived for more than a thousand years without a bond to protect them from madness,” I said earnestly.

He shook his head, “You seemed like you were losing your mind my friend. Even if I believe that, you can’t deny the bond protects you from being taken by one of the dark gods.”

“The operative word is ‘gods’, not dark gods,” I said. “When I met your goddess I got the distinct impression she would just as likely have ‘taken’ me as left me to my own devices.”

“I can’t believe that, you must have misunderstood her intentions. Besides it puts them at cross-purposes. If the shining gods want you as badly as the dark gods why would they have striven to create the accord that forces you to take a bond-bearer. If they wanted a wizard to create a world-bridge for them that would defeat their own purpose. Why would they do that?”

At first his argument struck me as logical. I hadn’t considered it from that angle before, but then a new thought occurred to me, “Perhaps they were afraid. As you pointed out at the start, technically it was wizards who defeated Balinthor at the end. More specifically it was one wizard that killed him, the archmage Moira Centyr. If you were an immortal deity wouldn’t you be afraid of someone who could slay a god?”

Marc laughed; the idea that the gods might be afraid seemed plainly ludicrous. “You mentioned the archmages in that history you read, yet you don’t even know what one is, do you?”

I had to admit my ignorance on that point, “Not a clue.”

“Then why bother thinking on them?” he asked.

“Because I think I was becoming one perhaps, and this bond, which the shining gods helped force upon me… has stopped whatever was happening to me.”

Marc gave me an empathetic look, “I think you should be grateful for it. I’m certain it was for your own good.”

I didn’t reply to that, I had made my argument knowing he couldn’t accept it. Still I couldn’t help thinking to myself, I’ve never liked anything that was done to me for my own good. It sounded like an excuse. Nevertheless it was an excuse I would have to live with.

A week had passed since my ‘visit’ to Arundel and things were proceeding smoothly. The area for the dam had been cleared and dug out so the foundations could be laid below ground level while a large amount of rough stone was being brought in to supply material for construction. At the rate it was progressing my father estimated we would finish within a year… perhaps two.

The problem wasn’t raw materials. The surrounding mountains and hills meant stone was available in great supply. We needed more timber but even that wasn’t our main issue, it was a lack of sufficient laborers.

I spent several days during the week assisting as much as possible, using magic to do things that were otherwise extremely difficult. Ironically it was the simple tasks that were the hardest for me. I had initially suggested forgoing the use of mortar, thinking I could more easily fuse the stones myself, creating a tighter bond and saving time. How wrong I was!

My idea might have been practical if the stone blocks were much larger, limiting the number of interfaces between separate stones. Unfortunately the blocks were limited to a size of no more than a foot or two on a side; otherwise they took far too much time and effort to move them from where they were cut to the construction site. I could use magic to facilitate cutting and moving much larger blocks, but then I had little time to spend joining them.

As it was there were a vast number of blocks to be joined, and there was only one of me. Whether I spent my time helping to cut, move or join didn’t matter. My father, being the practical man he is, chose to stick to building methods that the workers could manage with or without my assistance. “You won’t be able to spend every day here helping… you’ve got too much else to do,” he had told me. As usual he was right.

Since they were doing things the normal way, they needed mortar, and that meant some of the work force was occupied producing it. I hadn’t realized before then how much work was involved in creating mortar, but I soon learned. Creating mortar first required quicklime; this was made by baking limestone in a kiln. Limestone was in ready abundance, but given the amount of lime needed they were making it by baking the stone in covered pits near where the dam was being built. Apparently plain limestone wasn’t sufficient either. One of the masons explained to me that because of the water involved with a dam, a special lime was required; otherwise the mortar would erode quickly.

The details were more than I wanted to learn about the stone-mason’s art, but the end result was that fully fifty of our workers were tied up producing the mortar. We had slightly less than two hundred men on a good day, so that slowed things down considerably.

I spent the last few hours of each day producing my new iron bombs. I had perfected the amount of energy to put in each one and the glass jewels had proved excellent for setting them off, but I had other troubles. Although I could produce a similar effect instantly with a few words and a moment’s concentration it required a lot of energy. Despite my great potential as a wizard I could only manage it a few times before I was exhausted. Making the bombs was an excellent way to store that energy in advance, meaning when the war started we would be able to produce as many such explosions as we had bombs prepared ahead of time.

The general idea we had worked out was to produce hundreds and have them hidden along the road long before the enemy arrived. On paper it was a great plan, but in practice I couldn’t make more than one or two an hour. My father had set up a temporary foundry to cast the iron in fist size ingots for me to use, but he was able to produce far more than I could possibly charge. In fact he had already made over a thousand, and almost all of them were still waiting for me to fill them with power. My only hope of doing that would be to devote my every waking hour to the task over the entire winter.

Obviously I couldn’t do that, help with the dam, organize the men we had recruited, and prepare the teleportation circles needed for my other plans. You get the point I’m sure. I was working on charging my second iron bomb for the day when my father came over to check on me. He was already done with his shift supervising at the dam.

“You look exhausted son,” he said. “Maybe you should quit for the day.”

“I can’t,” I replied, still focusing on the flow of energy into the iron. “I have to get as many of these finished as possible. We only have a few months left.”

“You spent six hours today helping at the dam, and I’m sure that must have taxed you. Then you come back here and spend four or five more… you’re going to hurt yourself. We can’t afford for you to kill yourself before the enemy even gets here.” Royce rubbed his beard as he spoke, a sure sign he was worried.

I was already tired and irritated, “Do you know any other wizards who might volunteer to come help out?” I’ll admit it. I was grumpy; otherwise I would never have spoken to him like that.

He frowned but didn’t snap back, “There has to be some easier way.” In all his years smithing my father had learned a thousand tricks to make his tasks easier. He just couldn’t accept that there weren’t any shortcuts in magic.

“It isn’t something I can get around. It takes a certain amount of energy to charge each one of these bombs… and I’m the only one who can do it,” I replied sourly.

“Can’t you get the energy from somewhere else?” he suggested.

“Huh?” I responded sagely.

He ran his fingers through his beard carefully, “Well millers don’t grind their flour by hand. They use a waterwheel to do the work for them.”

I sighed, “Dad I can’t just hook this up to some sort of magic water wheel! This isn’t the same sort of…” I stopped in mid-sentence, staring at him with my mouth open.

He watched me for a moment before commenting dryly, “You’re going to start catching flies if you leave your mouth open much longer.”

I didn’t answer, just shook my head, as if the motion would help put the pieces in my head together. A water wheel draws power from the motion of water, I had no idea how to do that, but some of my earlier enchanting experiments had used heat drawn from the environment. I could conceivably set up a temporary enchantment to charge the iron bombs in the same way. In fact I had first gotten the idea for storing explosive energy had come from my ill-fated experiment using heat energy to power a ward on a paring knife. It had exploded when the ward had put more power into it than could be held safely.

There was no reason I couldn’t do the same thing here. A temporary ward could draw heat to fill the explosive containment enchantment; I would just have to be sure to remove the ward before the limit was reached. I had originally thought of using the heat storing spell to create a device that would chill air… but if I used a stronger version it would work more quickly, and have a greater chilling effect. Perhaps it would be even be great enough to freeze water.

“What would happen if the water behind the dam froze solid?” I mused aloud.

“It might fracture the dam itself. Any water between the stones would expand,” my father answered promptly. I had almost forgotten he was listening.

“Would it matter?” I asked.

“Hell yes it would matter. As soon as the water melted the dam would fall apart. Even if it didn’t the damage would probably be enough to cause it to fail once the water started flowing through the fractures,” he said.

“What if the water didn’t melt?”

“Why don’t you explain what you’re thinking? Instead of asking dumbass questions,” he suggested. My father had never been fond of answering pointless questions.

“Alright, this might sound strange though…,” I prefaced.

“Like I’m not used to that already,” he snorted.

“What if we used heat drawn from the water to charge the iron? I think I could do it in such a way that it would cause the water to freeze,” I told him.

“How much water are you talking about freezing exactly?” he asked.

“I have no idea. But what if we could manage to freeze the river where it met the dam?”

“The water level behind would keep rising, and it would melt your ice. You’d most likely wind up with a mess and a lot of wasted time. Wait, are you suggesting we build the dam itself out of ice?” His face made it plain he thought I had lost my wits.

“Suppose we kept freezing the water as it rose, building higher levels of ice…”

He shook his head, “You’d have to freeze far more than that… the highest ice would always be at the same level as the water. I don’t think it would work.”

“Let me think about it,” I said. “I’ll have something to try tomorrow.” I finished the iron bomb I was working on and decided to call it an evening. I had a lot to think about.