Rune mage

Chapter 39: supplies

We received our first resupply two months after the fighting started.

We had begun to ration food tightly and I knew the men were struggling. There was only so many eggs a man could eat before he craved something else. Only so much flat bread, only so many bowls of beans.

The enemy must have had some way of knowing our resupply was arriving, because we had a full on attack already in full swing when I heard the horn call of coming wagons.

So I pushed all of my magic out, save for two of my reserves, and pushed the excess power out of runes surrounding the fort. The enemy was shocked or fainted or fell from vertigo, everyone of them was impacted by some rune as I pushed the magic to its upper limits.

It gave the wagons time to get inside.

Then I nearly collapsed with the effort. My page, the good lad, kept me on my feet until I could access my reserves to keep me up.

There was only three wagons.

"This...this is our resupply?" I looked at the soldier who presented himself.

"Yes sir. I've got your orders here," he handed me a single sheet of parchment, "and will depart in darkness tonight with any severely injured you wish to send back. I am not a warrior, sir. Just a supply runner."

He wasn't at fault for our sparse supplies, and wouldn't even stay to be at risk from attack.

I didn't call for help to empty the wagons, letting the men currently on the battlements do their jobs. My page and I and the supply clerk unloaded everything.

I pulled out some stamps and placed some runes of protection and strength into the supply wagons. If this young man survived his trip back, I hoped he would be willing to return more often.

"I have messages and notes," I said. "In the mean time you and your men please rest in what safety we can provide while I finish these runes."

"Runes sir?" He asked.

"They will protect the wagon from breaking, I'll add fire suppression as well, so if you're under attack you don't have to worry about fire. I'll add a silencer as well so you don't make as much noise. I don't have a barrier yet, I'm still trying to make one."

"Is that what the explosion was this morning sir" my too clever page asked.

"Never stop trying," I replied. "Eventually I will figure it out." The wagons were unloaded quickly.

We were pleased to find a large quantity of arrows. But no meat. Flour, thankfully, and a lot of it. Grains, and a lot of it. We wouldn't starve.

There were no replacement men for our dead or injured.

As I read over the reports sent to me, I realized the war was taxing the army greatly. We were fortunate anything was sent.

I put down runes on all three wagons and helped prepare the departing men for transport.

I had ten men so badly injured they couldn't stand or fight. Arms, legs, or eyes too damaged to be useful even in the slightest. Those men I thanked for their service and helped them into the carts.

"Will the wellness runes continue to work?" One of the men, blinded and disfigured by fire asked.

"Until my death," I said and clasped his arm. "I have met others similarly injured by war, and they live successfully. Do not despair."

"I am leaving this place. I have no despair."

We waited until deep in the dark of night to send the wagons out.

The silence runes kept the sounds of their passage to a minimum, and the darkness of the moonless night protected them from view.

"Before the wagons arrived, what was it you did with your magic?" Rudger asked me as we closed the heavy metal gate.

"I pushed massive amounts of power out of the runes outside of the fort. I essentially overloaded them, causing the power to attack whoever was near."

"How do you not do that more often, save our men from injury?" Howl huffed as he slammed the lock into place.

"It will take me three days to replace the power lost." I replied simply. "That...half an hour, give or take, where I pushed magic through will take three days to regain. In the mean time, please avoid injury as I had to take from every where, including the healer's store of power."

The two of them looked at me aghast.

My page handed me a roll and a mug of water.
"Tonight I will sleep," I said and walked away.

"Sir?" My page asked. His name was Ryan but I found I could treat him like a page if I simply thought of him as "my page" and left it at that. I wasn't used to having someone so available to my every whim.

"Yes?"

He paused and shuffled back and forth. "Might I bed down inside your quarters, by the door is fine, I don't want to be far away from you when you might need me,"

His rushed words almost sounded like babble, and it took my exhausted mind a moment to process what he had said.

"Is there something wrong with your assigned room?"

He shook his head, but blushed deeply.

We were in a war, what could make a 16 year old blush?

I decided I'd didn't want to know right then, and shrugged, "I don't see why not, you are my page and expected to be within reach. I don't expect you to keep my hours, I usually only sleep every third night, when no amount of magic will fuel me. Tonight though, I have no choice. I cannot spare the magic to keep myself awake."

The page looked so relieved that I couldn't help but smile. I wished all of my problems could so easily be solved.

In my quarters I dutifully recorded the day's news and names of those sent home. There had been no deaths this day, likely because after my magic had incapacitated the enemy, they had retreated in case it was the start of an aggression on our part.

It never would be. I had started with 157 men. Forty had died in the first two months of my command, and ten had just been sent away, too injured to fight. We did not have the manpower to attack. We would hold this pass until the end of the war, until we were replaced, or we were all dead.

I hoped there would be no more deaths. Every night as I wrote down the name of the dead I prayed to every known deity to spare more from this war.

I had never been a religious man.

And our chaplain had been killed at the start of the second month, caught by an arrow aimed at an illusion above him.

I wasn't sure deities even remembered this place even existed. I counted in my head each man upon my web, noted their placement and movement. We may have been forgotten by deities but I would not forget my men.