Guardians of Magessa (The Birthright Chronicles Book 1) (3 page)

A stream of magic blasted from Jothnial's
fingers, making the air around it glow a faint green. This was a bit like
killing a cockroach with a mace and chain, but Jothnial had had enough of this
battle. The magic met the knife halfway between the combatants flipping it to
the side and continuing straight toward the blind man. The man was oblivious to
the stream of magic and it hit him in the chest. In that moment, the only thing
that Jothnial could think of was his lessons in school about wave motion. The
magic bounced off of the blind man and rebounded back like a wave hitting a
wall. Before he had time to react, the pulse of power hit Jothnial and would have
thrown him into the wall had he not already been pressed against it. He flew
through it instead, landing outside on his butt and sliding several more feet
on the packed dirt.

The magician rose to his feet, still
gripping the baby in his left arm. She was crying now and he wondered why she
had chosen right now to start. Or maybe she had been crying the whole time and
he had just now noticed. He also wondered exactly how he had managed to keep a
grip on her for so long and through so much. He had managed, but it was
hindering his ability to fight; he would have to do something. Dropping to one
knee, he laid the girl on the ground and yanked the cloak from his shoulders.
While keeping one eye on the hole in the building's wall, he used a few deft
twists of the cloth and some creative finagling to secure the bundle to his
back with the baby facing outward. Now these unholy creatures would see exactly
what he could do.

The tiger burst through the hole first and
Jothnial rose to his full height. This beast might be faster and stronger than
he was, but he could certainly out think it. He watched in a detached manner as
the animal bounded towards him. He could see the saliva dangling off of its
teeth and the look of pure evil in its eyes. There was a lot of rage focused
behind this creature and not much else. The tiger came within striking distance
and without missing a stride leaped at Jothnial. The elf held fast, spinning
away and down at the last possible second. A well timed spell created a
concussive force that threw the tiger a dozen feet off of the island and over
the marsh. For a moment it seemed to be suspended in the air, then it fell into
the mud below. Jothnial could have been imagining things, but it seemed as if
the marsh gave gleeful sounding gurgles as it sucked the screaming tiger down
to its demise.

Jothnial felt more than heard the
whistling of the air to his left and spun just in time to catch the blind man's
blow on his bracer. The blade skidded off of the hardened leather, and he
leaped away from the attack. He pulled the last of his throwing knives from his
belt and held it in his right fist, the blade pointed toward the ground. He
brought his hands up towards his face in a fist fighter's defensive stance and
shifted his weight forward to his toes. He might be facing an armed opponent
when he had only a short knife, but it was something that he had been trained
for. The next blow from the blind man was low, and Jothnial blocked it out with
his left bracer. His right fist flashed forward, dealing a smashing blow to the
man's jaw. The punch would have staggered the stoutest of fighters, but it
didn't seem to affect the blind man who immediately countered with an
over-handed slash. Jothnial stopped the blow with his knife and captured the
sword blade with his leather clad left fist. In a movement faster than the eye
could follow, he stabbed the man three times in the throat and face with the
knife and stepped back. The man wasn't even shaken by the attack, but brought
his sword up to deal another blow.

Jothnial's brain was working overtime. The
man before him appeared to be indestructible and his twin had just stepped out
of the building. It didn't appear as if there was any way to defeat them except
for the mud. It had taken the tiger and might do the same for the men. He would
have to get a better position for that to work, since he was currently between
both of them and the swamp. All of his thoughts went to the wind and his
instincts took over when he saw his opponent's sword raise for another blow. Moving
forward to crowd the blind man, he drove the dagger in his fist into the man's
stomach while capturing his wrist with his left hand. He left the dagger buried
where it was and used his right fist to concentrate a punch on the blind man's
elbow. The arm buckled under the force and the sword dropped into Jothnial's
waiting hand. He spun left and delivered a back kick to the man's chest,
throwing him off balance. The magician pounced on his opponent and drove him to
the ground. He lifted the sword high and slammed it down into the man's stomach
and the dirt beyond.

Jothnial didn't know if the blade would
keep the man pinned or for how long, but at least it gave him a slight head
start. He turned back to the building and ran towards it. His gut told him that
the structure held the way out of this god-forsaken marsh, but getting in would
be a problem. The other blind man stood in the hole in the wall; he would have
to go around to one of the doors or... Jothnial flung a spell at the wall about
fifteen feet from where the blind man stood, blowing another hole through the
thin barrier. He squeezed through the makeshift door and broke hard to the left
to retrieve his sword from where it still stood, stuck into the floor. Out of
the corner of his eye, he saw a section of the wall at what would have been
second story level shimmering as though heat waves were rising in front of it.
He grabbed his sword and sprinted toward the shimmering wall. He couldn't make
the jump, but magic might be able to do the trick. Timing a concussion spell to
throw you upward was dangerous, but he had done it successfully before. The
timing had to be perfect, but perfection was nothing new to Jothnial. The blast
somersaulted him up and through the shimmering wall so fast that he almost flew
straight through it into whatever was beyond. As he catapulted toward the
shimmering surface, vague images began to materialize on the other side of it
though he was moving far too quickly to process them before he found himself
flying through a window that hadn’t been visible until now. He twisted around,
clawing for something to grab onto and was just able to seize the window sill.
He almost lost his grip as his momentum tried to tear his fingers loose, every
tendon in his arm stretching. For a moment he was suspended horizontally,
sticking straight out from the window, then time caught up with him and he
swung down, slamming into a wall.

Jothnial immediately recognized that he
was hanging from a second floor window of the castle that he had infiltrated
almost an hour ago. He pulled himself up and peered through the window, not
knowing what to expect. He saw nothing but an empty room and pulled himself
through. He was prepared to find himself in the house that he had just left,
but the room on the other side of the window remained the same when he tumbled
inside. He had no time to figure out what had just happened because the doors
on the far end of the room shook from a blow. Jothnial looked toward them just
in time to see them burst open and a mob of
soldiers
rush through.
Without a second’s hesitation, Jothnial formed a large
ball of magic in his right palm and used it to
create
a whirlwind. He clutched
his sword to his chest and wrapped the other
arm around his back to secure the baby as they shot upward. The whirlwind
shattered each floor as they approached and in seconds they burst through the
castle's roof. Jothnial killed the
whirlwind and
dropped
back onto what remained of the castle roof.

“Ebenezer!”
he shouted to his dragon.
“Get over here now! I've
got a bunch of soldiers after me that really want to kill me!”

Standing exposed as he was on the castle
roof, the few minutes that followed were an eternity for Jothnial. The baby on
his back was screaming again, but at least that meant that she was alive. The
soldiers could be heard below, shouting to each other as they tried to work out
a way to get onto the roof. For a moment the world stopped and nothing
happened. Despite the baby's cries and the shouts of the soldiers, silence
seemed to govern the night. The stars twinkled overhead and time stood still.

A ladder rose through the massive hole in
the castle roof, breaking Jothnial's trance. He gripped his sword tightly in
his fist and waited for the soldiers to climb. There were a lot of them, but at
least they were only human. He could fight against those kinds of odds. The
first soldier stuck his head up through the destroyed roof and looked straight
at Jothnial. The elf stared back and let his sword's tip rest on the toe of his
boot. His smile was genuine and there was a devious glint in his eye. A black
dragon with gold tracing through his scales dropped out of the night and
slammed onto the ladder's top. Jothnial rushed over to him and jumped into the
saddle on his back.

With a roar, Ebenezer took off in a rush
of wind and flew away from the tower as fast as he could. For a minute it
looked like they might make a clean getaway. The tower was fading quickly into
the distance and the night would provide Jothnial and his dragon with cover
once they were away. Then, just when it seemed that everything would work out,
a bellow reverberated across the plain. Jothnial looked back to see a dark
shape rise to block the moon. Silhouetted as it was, it was easy to make out
the shape of the dragon and the man riding on it.

Ebenezer pumped his wings faster, but the
following dragon still gained on him. Jothnial stretched out his hand and
pointed at the dragon, but his magic only bounced
harmlessly off of a translucent shield
that was surrounding the beast.
Grimacing
, Jothnial increased his attack and felt the
shield slowly begin to give way under the barrage. Another force fought back,
replenishing the shield’s power. Jothnial continued to attack, but his strength
was leaving him.

“Please help me, God," he screamed
just before he passed out. "I can’t hold out!”

******

“That can’t be good.”

Four figures sat in the shadow of a large
cluster of rocks as they looked across the marsh at the castle that Jothnial
had entered only an hour before. At first glance, they all appeared to be
humans. The truth was that they were all
humanoid
;
however, only one of them was actually a human. Two elves were on the west side
of the boulder, distinguishable from the human only by their lack of facial
hair. On the east side of the boulder was
an orc, who
also could easily be mistaken for a human. Thick hair on his arms and face was
the only telltale sign that he was an orc. The four figures carefully studied
the castle on the far side of the marsh
. Nothing had happened since
Jothnial had left; however, there was now a disturbance on the top of the
tallest turret of the castle. One of the elves whispered a word, and the entire
group could immediately see the turret as though it were only a few yards away.
Planks of wood and other debris flew into the air, and on top of the tower’s
roof stood Jothnial.

“How come it seems like this always
happens when we send him in?” one of the elves asked with a sigh.

“It doesn’t happen
every
time,
Commander,” the human responded. “Remember that time last spring when we were
infiltrating the stronghold in Gludog? He came off brilliantly that time,
except that he got wounded.”

A group of dragons stood behind the
observers, and one of them leaped into the air, shot over the men’s heads, and
flew silently toward the castle in the distance. The men’s vision normalized,
and they looked up to see which dragon had left.

“Looks like Jothnial called for his
dragon,” the commander commented. “By the way, if you will recall, at Gludog we
were not supposed to be seen at all. The mission completion was negated by the
fact that we were discovered.”

“It wasn’t his fault
, Commander
. You saw that with your own eyes. He did
everything by the book, but he was still seen.”

“That one wasn’t his fault, but what about
the time
before that? It should have been a simple
snatch-and-grab, but he screwed it up. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t even
be here in this situation.
”

“That was his second mission, so he was
anxious to please and made some stupid mistakes. He did mess up on that
mission,
but he pulled off his
first one
without a single flaw.”

“Yes, I remember that,” the commander
grumbled. “As I recall, that was the mission after which I accepted him into
our squad. Now I almost wish that I hadn’t.”

“Now, Commander, you don’t really mean
that,” the orc spoke up. “You know that he just…”

“Enemy magic in the area!” the human
hissed. Then, after a moment, “There's a magical shield surrounding the dragon
following Ebenezer. Who knows how much magic Jothnial's used in the last hour.
We can't count on him to be able to take the dragon down."

“Then help him!” ordered the commander.
“Jared and Scrogg, you attack the shield directly. Wellter and I will try to
attack the magician that's sustaining it. With any luck, we’ll be able to take
it down.”

“And it had better be fast,” the human
shouted. “Jothnial just passed out.”

The four magicians became silent as they
each concentrated on their tasks. Jared and Scrogg attacked the shield, but
with no success. The magician behind it was very powerful. The commander and
Wellter both sent out tendrils to determine the size and strength of the shield
and found that it
was small,
surrounding only
the dragon it was protecting. The commander knew that as a rule smaller shields
were easier to sustain and consequently harder to attack. With the size of this
particular one and the strength of the magician sustaining it, there was little
chance of successfully attacking it directly.