The Dreaming Hunt (25 page)

Will left his casting hand bare as he would do in actual combat conditions. He took up his staff once more and dropped into a defensive stance. Subtle heat pulsed through the hickory staff and into his hand shield. It was almost as if the two items were old friends sharing a warm greeting with one another. He did not often wear both items at once. He could not actually use the shield while wielding the staff, but he sensed he might need it before this sparring match ended. An enchanted gift from his mother and a magically enhanced gift from his father—of course the two items recognized one another.

An odd sense of comfort settled around him. They were still with him, his parents. If not in body, then in the skills and training they had passed on to him, and in the fighting spirit they had imbued in him.

If only they were still alive. What he wouldn't give to be trained by them, knowing what he did now about the world and about their hidden abilities. Anger rolled through Will at the Imperial Army colors standing before him. He hated everything that Krugar represented. The fellow wanted full-out combat? Then full-out he would have.

Will did not wait for the soldier to attack. He leaped forward, battering at his foe with a barrage of fast strikes. To his credit, Krugar met him blow for blow, blocking everything Will threw at him. It was as if their training and skills had been cut from the identical cloth. For every move Will knew, Krugar knew the countermeasure, and vice versa. The courtyard rang with the knocking of their weapons, and Will peripherally registered an audience gathering in doorways and windows to watch.

Neither he nor his foe yielded an inch as the battle aged. Sweat rolled down Will's face and his lungs and legs burned, but determination to take down this Imperial bastard fueled his body anew whenever it began to lag. Krugar's face settled into lines of determination every bit as grim. On and on they fought, raging back and forth across the yard, first one of them on the attack and then the other.

Eventually, Will began to despair of ever breaking through Krugar's defenses. As fatigue began to override his mental discipline, he became aware of his staff growing first warm, then hot, in his grip. Magic crackled down its length, seeking escape from the veins of copper eagerly channeling the energy.

He … would … not … cast … magic.

This fight was about sinew and strength, speed and cunning. He would win this on his own merit, curse it.

So much magical energy built up in his staff that he could barely maintain his grip upon the wooden shaft. Finally, it was too much. He threw the tip of the weapon up toward the sky and let loose a mighty bolt of force magic into the heavens.

It took only an instant, but that instant was enough for Krugar. The soldier snapped his staff around, catching the shaft of Will's weapon and sweeping it aside. The other end of Krugar's staff swung lightning fast and struck Will so hard on the ear that he dropped to the ground, stunned.

His head rang and stars danced before his eyes.

“Do you yield?” Krugar demanded from above.

“Aye,” Will replied sourly.

Immediately, Krugar's raised staff lowered. A hand appeared before Will's eyes. It would be poor sportsmanship not to take the offer of help. Grumpy, though, he took the officer's hand and let Krugar haul him upright.

“Not bad, boy. Not bad at all.”

But he'd lost. In a real fight, he would be dead right now. Failure was unacceptable in actual combat. Of course, in a real fight he would have aimed that massive bolt of magical damage at his foe and not discharged it harmlessly into the sky. His bruised pride took some small comfort in that knowledge. But then he spied the fading glow of magic in Krugar's fist as well. Light blue.

Wind magic. “Could you teach your magic to me?”

“Kinetic magics like your force magic are entirely different animals than the elemental magics. It takes a certain knack for it to corral the elemental paths.”

“I'd like to try,” Will replied intently.

“Next time. I also want to try you at the sword. Your moves, your balance speak of a sword fighter's stance. You'd take to the blade well, I think.”

It made sense. His father had been one of the preeminent swordsmen in the land by all accounts. It had just been too dangerous for Ty to teach bladed combat to Will. “I would like that, sir.”

It galled Will to admit it, but he looked forward to learning swordplay from Krugar. The man obviously knew what he was about with fighting.

Aurelius stepped out of a shadowed doorway into the courtyard and immediately, the other mages hanging out of the windows and doors melted from sight. “What do you think, Krugar? Does he have something worth developing?”

Krugar assessed Will for a long moment. “Aye. He's too old to begin serious training as a weapons master, but he's too talented not to train up as far as he is able to progress.”

The guildmaster nodded. “My men report that he does not know how to get started in a fight, but once he's in motion, he's a natural.”

Will's gaze snapped to his grandfather. Was
that
what the Celestial knights thought of him?

“He reminds me of a Casted warrior I saw once,” Krugar said ominously. “How did this boy come by his skill? You did not implant it in him magically, did you?”

Aurelius sucked in a sharp breath. In an offended voice, he declared, “The Casted do not actually learn their skills; rather their abilities are implanted magically. I promise you, Will comes by his naturally. Furthermore, the Casted burn out quickly, leaving little more than a hull behind. I ask, does yon lad fight like a Remnant?”

“Nay, Guildmaster. I meant no offense. But he has the same unconscious quality when he calls upon a complex skill. As if he learned it but then forgot it long ago and only just now is recalling it.” He spoke the words as if still convinced that Will was some sort of unnaturally dangerous freak.

Will looked back and forth between the two men who were measuring one another skeptically as if they both thought the other one not being entirely honest. He spoke up cautiously, “I assure you. I have memory of the hundreds of bumps and bruises it took to become skilled with my staff. It was a long road spanning many years.”

Eventually, Krugar looked away from Aurelius and smiled a little. “He reminds me a little of myself at his age. Overeager. Undisciplined. Unfocused. But there's a seed of talent within him. It remains to be seen if the seed will germinate and grow, however.”

Will's teeth ground together at Krugar's assessment. He'd gone toe-to-toe with the best fighter in Dupree for better than a quarter of an hour, hadn't he? If he hadn't had to discharge that stupid magic build-up, they would still be fighting.

“—be back tomorrow to work with him. Same time acceptable to you?” Krugar was saying.

“He'll be here.” Aurelius added dryly, “And he will have his magic under better control on the morrow, as well.”

Will winced. His grandfather had seen that, huh?

“Come, Will. It is clear you need further training in how to suppress your magics in addition to summoning them.”

*   *   *

Gunther scowled at a brace of children who whispered among themselves as they stared at his mechanical leg. He stumped past them, ignoring their pointing fingers. Someday they would appreciate the value of being alive in spite of one's scars and imperfections. But not yet. For now, they were merely impudent brats.

It looked and felt strange coming down out of the mountains into the lowlands of Kel south of the Groenn's Rest Range. Everything was so blasted green and moist. Even the stones were covered with bright moss. He missed the windswept peaks and barren granite cliffs of his home. Kel was soft and gentle with low rolling hills, misty mornings, and picturesque villages tucked into forest glades. Gah. His beard felt as if it were starting to mildew.

Humans were abundant, pale skinned and soft cheeked. They fit this place. He breathed a sigh of relief when he arrived at the village that was his destination and heard the familiar clang of a hammer on steel. Following the sound, he spied a good-sized smithy. The familiar sizzle of hot steel meeting cold water and the gasping of bellows announced that the smith was at his anvil.

He'd not wielded hammer and tongs since the accident. Weapon smithing had proven too strenuous for him on a single leg, and he'd had to give it up. Now and again, though, an itch to forge a good sword came over him, and this was one of those moments. As if in wry response, the stump of his leg ached where it had been severed. The rain that had been threatening all afternoon commenced as a drizzle, and Gunther ducked under the roof covering the forge.

A barrel-shaped dwarf, sleeves rolled up to reveal massively muscled forearms, glanced up between rhythmic blows on some metal piece. He grunted to acknowledge Gunther's presence but then went back to work.

Over the next few minutes, the rain intensified to a loud, steady drumming against what must be a metal roof. His stump continued aching, and he looked around for a spot to sit. He spied a short barrel with a lid on it and dropped onto it with a grunt.

The smith held up some sort of oversized buckle in his tongs, turning it this way and that. He plunged the piece into the trough of water beside his anvil and steam rose along with the sizzle of quenching metal.

“Can I 'elp thee?” the smith growled, wiping his hands on his jerkin.

“Are you Halvar Langskaag?” Gunther replied.

“Aye. An' 'oo's askin'?”

“Druumedar. Gunther Druumedar of the Hauksgraffen Druumedars.”

“The Hauk? I got me a cousin over that way.”

“Aye, he's the one who sent me here. To see thee.”

The smith picked up a short-handled iron shovel and pushed ashes over the glowing coals, stoking the forge against the cold and damp. “Let's go inside. Hoist an ale. Cursed rotten day to be outside.”

Gunther followed the fellow into a sturdy stone cottage next to the forge. The thatched roof absorbed the rain sounds, and deep silence embraced the two men. The smith fetched a pair of mugs and filled them from a tap on the side of an ale barrel.

“Whot brings ye all the way to Kel on a foul day like this?”

“This.” Gunther unlaced his shirt to reveal the breastplate beneath. He unbuckled it from the matching boiled leather backpiece he'd fashioned to pair with it. Carefully, he laid the copper piece on the rough plank table in front of the smith.

Halvar took one look at the breastplate and shoved his bench away from the table abruptly. He leaped to his feet and rushed to the windows, slammed the shutters closed, dropped the locking bar across the door, and checked inside the cupboard and under the cot in the corner before coming back to the table warily.

He leaned close to Gunther and whispered yeastily, “Where'd ye get that?”

“You know what it is, then?”

“Seen the like 'afore. Where'd ye get it?”

“Found it.”

“
Where?
”

“In an abandoned mine.”

“'Tis death to possess that thing,” Halvar muttered direly. “And there's plenty o' folk who'd kill thee to take it from thee.”

“Why? Your cousin called it hardened copper. What's that?”

“Just what it sounds like.”

Now he was only a miner these days and spent more time with rocks than people, but he knew an evasion when he heard one. This bloke, Halvar, wasn't being square with him. “Your cousin sent a letter for you.” Gunther fished the dirtied parchment roll out of his pouch and passed it across the table.

With a harrumph, Halvar took the letter and clumped over to the hearth with it. Holding the paper up to the firelight, he broke the wax seal and read the letter. “He says you're a trusty type. That I can speak freely wit' ye.”

The smith threw several pieces of split oak on the fire and sat down once more, picking up the breastplate to turn it this way and that in the fledgling flames. The firelight picked up the intricate inlay of darker green copper stretching across the broad surface in winding knots that must have taken forever to painstakingly craft and pound into the plate.

“First, tell me exactly where ye found this piece.”

“In an old mine, like I said.” He was reluctant to tell anyone exactly where the mine was, however. No need to set off a flurry of prospectors looking for more of this rare copper until he knew if he'd stumbled upon a fortune for himself.

“Was there a forge in this mine? Or mayhap next to it? On a mountaintop?”

“Why a mountaintop?”

“The lightning, man, the lightning. How else would storm copper be forged?”

Storm copper? He frowned, not understanding. “There was a forge in the mine. Or there used to be. All that was left was a bunch of auger holes where the anvil must have been, a quenching pool, and a pile of charred coal.”

“And a chimney? With copper rods all around it?”

“Short rods sticking out about a hand's span with turquoise deposits all around?”

Halvar nodded. “The turquoise is formed as the copper rods channel the lightning bolts.”

All at once, the working of the ancient forge came clear in Gunther's head. He always had been mechanically inclined, and that one piece of information filled in the missing gap in his understanding. He asked eagerly, “Did lightning strike raw metal that the smiths worked later? Or did smiths work items first and then get them lightning struck?”

“My guess is that pieces were mostly forged first. They were finished after the metal was infused with lightning's power.”

It made sense. “Cold quenching would seal the magic in the metal, methinks.”

Halvar nodded. “When this cursed rain abates, I'll take ye into the mountains. Introduce ye to them who might know more.”

Gunther lurched. It was a generous offer. Or mayhap Halvar was trying to horn in on his discovery. Learn more of where Gunther'd found the bracer so he could search for more pieces of the rare copper for himself.