Rune mage

Chaoter 37: attack

There was one warm day to serve as warning.
And then the attack came.

We might have been taken off guard if the caltrops hadn't triggered.

The enemy hadn't expected it and their screens alerted us.

From sun up to sun down we fought off the men who attempted to place ladders down and scale our walls.

I would think later on ways to protect us from such attempts. During the fight I powered runes up and did everything I could to keep our defenses solid.

Our arrows flew true. Our men fought bravely, and at the end of the day we held our walls but two had been killed.

My new page brought me this news between bites of dinner and water.

Two dead.

It felt like a death knell, if I could not protect my men in this most important of ways. Only one day's work of battle and I had lost two men.  I now had one hundred fifty five men.

I didn't have time to mourn the lost. Neither did my men. I set our night guards to their places while I worked to reinforce areas that had nearly been overrun.

I hung over the edge of the wall and placed down runes that would cause vertigo- once caused by mistake but now something I could use. I laid down more strength runes and aware runes.

And then worked on illusion runes that would make it difficult to see who was on the battlements.

I ran through my own magic and emptied two of my stores to stay awake through the night as I worked to better prepare us for the next day.

And then I disposed of our dead, when everyone but the sentries was asleep and no one would be witness.

Their personal items were set aside, but everything else that made them unique vanished.

When that chore was completed, I went to my study to look at our maps. To write letters of the dead and reports of the attack, and to think of the ways my magic, so inherently defensive, could do a better job at defending.

By the time the sun rose, my page brought me some breakfast hastily cooked and watched me eat while we waited for the day.

Perhaps the enemy had thought the caltrops would be inert. Their surprise alerted us nicely.

What followed might have been a repeat of the day before, but my runes improved the odds. At first it seemed we would fare better today.

But there were mages this time.

I ran to the highest point and activated the flashiest runes I could create, making a target of myself. The fire mage they employed didn't have range to attack me so he focused on others and there wasn't anything I could do about that.

But there was an air mage and she attacked me the moment I lit myself up.

I sucked down her power in the time it took to find her on the rocky fields below. I saw her fall. The men and women around her reacted poorly, rushing to her side. It was too late of course. I didn't stop at leaving her unconscious. She was there to kill me and my men; I had no qualms about killing her.

I snapped her power free from her body, and then stormed down to get closer to the fire mage.

By standing at the very edge of the battlements, where my own men fought side by side against flame and sword alike, I was able to grab hold the of the fire mage's power and suck it in. My power stores quickly refilled and the enemy's fire mage fell, first smiling, then dead.

I pressed a hand to the stone wall and poured the overflow power into the runes...letting them glow so that the enemy could see, so that everyone could see, that I was a damn rune mage and this was my fort now.

My show of power was not missed. The enemy pulled back.

My men did not cheer. A few offered nods. One or two offered tight lipped smiles, not daring to show hope.

In another location, the next step in a siege might have been catapults, but we held the high ground and the rock spires would not allow for any bulky machines of war.

They tried fire- launched by hundreds of arrows. But their arrows mostly landed on areas protected my fire suppression runes.

They left the field well before dark.

I might have felt elated if my page had not brought me news of two more deaths and a serious injury. I now had a hundred fifty three men in my fort.

The dead included one of the five I had held in my web. I wrote his name down dutifully in my notes. In death there was no need to record poor attitudes- he had shown up to the wall sword in hand and succumbed to the flames of war.

I ate because my page brought me food. I met with my sergeants to discuss what still needed work. They asked for more protection from fire, and reported that we were dangerously low on arrows, even with those arrows collected from the enemy's arrows.

During the dark of night I disposed of the dead.

I added runes wherever I could.

I slept because there was only so many days I could go with out.

The next day,

And the next,

And the next all blurred together in attack after attack. Each day counted at least one death of my men. The healers told me five total were incapable of fighting due to injuries. The enemy was clever and tried many ways of attack, both magic and mundane. By the fourth night I figured out how to capture any incoming mage power and render it inert. Runes now lined the walls that would capture the power and feed it into the many runes carved into the stone fort's walls and battlements.

I could wish I had figured it out sooner and save those men who died due to magic attacks, but at least I did figure it out.

The enemy tried a new tactic, one that might have worked if I didn't have webs spanning the entire fort.

"We have an intruder," I said to Rudger as I passed him. I let the intruder get a few more steps out of a newly dug tunnel. Then I trapped him in the web. I sucked down his power as I moved through the fort to meet him. I left him alive for now, powerless and stuck in my web.

Our intruder was a stone mage.

By the time we reached him, his power was gone but he had not lost hope for his victory.

"You will all die," the man swore at us.

"Do we execute him?" Howl asked.

I hadn't realized Howl was following me and Rudger.

"What good to keep him alive, unless there is some knowledge he can bring us?" I asked.

"You will die tonight!" The man sneered.

I pulled more power from him, and he would have dropped to his knees if he had any power over his body.

"Strip him down, let see what they had planned," I said.

While they worked I looked at the tunnel created.  I couldn't close it, I was not myself a stone mage and couldn't use his power. The tunnel was wide enough that the enemy could send in two at a time.

It might have been devastating to us.  Instead we could set a trap.