Rune mage

Chapter 41: onslaught

Before summer ended we lost two men not to battle but heat.

I had found deep places within the fort that had become where most of us slept in the worst of the heat. Places deeper than the dungeons where light seldom had touched. Places that stayed cool even in the worst of the sweltering nights.

One supply wagon had come and gone. I had requested more men, of course.  More men and weapons. We got more grains and flour.

There were seventy seven of us now. Only one of the two men who had tried to leave had taken the offer to leave with the supplies. Stewart had become a model soldier. His experience watching a man die so horribly had apparently strengthened him. Or he knew he would be named a deserter and chose to stay.

Thanks to my new mage torches, we could take light anywhere. In fact, my page and I had worked through many a night setting up runes that would make the torches turn on when movement was near and turn off without movement.

The supply clerk was so impressed with the torches he begged to take one. I told him he could take six when he next returned. I hoped he would return sooner the next time.

We had fewer than eighty men, five of them healers to hold this fort. I worked through many a night to make us appear stronger, often my page was there at my side.

The supply wagon had included a stowaway in the form of a pregnant cat. The mother cat and kittens now bore collars with runes that worked like illusions, making our numbers appear slightly bigger.

I snuck out at night with my page and two fighters to place down runes that would suck the water out of the enemy. I was using the runes that turned waste into bricks to weaken living beings. I created new runes that would reflect the heat back at them. I created runes that would create illusions of my men appearing and attacking. There were so many runes on the rock spires and stones that surrounded us that I felt connected to the land.

I was collecting the power of the sun into my webs with massive sunflower designs. Those would work in the cold as long as the sun was shining. That power then fed into the runes around the fort.

I bore more rune tattoos. So did my men. Everyone remaining had opted for tattoos of protection even if they had at first wanted only charms. Everyone left now bore strength runes and runes to improve their sight as well as wellness runes. Even the healers had opted to receive what protection runes they could.

And I had more power reserves on myself to help control the overflow of power collected by the fort. Beads clinked merrily in my hair and beard. And I had additional tattoos as well.

Of course if a mage got near enough to read my power, they would see very little thanks to the damper and the other rune that hid my power.

The mages didn't get close to us though. I had laid down miles of runes that would automatically detect mages and would begin taking their power.

Maybe one day I would have to alter it so that it wasn't automatic, but right now we were at war.
The attacks we had seen came with a small number of mages, and their power was easily shifted from them to the storage runes around the keep and then through me.

I used the excess to create mage torches and illusions. I created a new sound illusion and we had an interesting evening or two of capturing different sounds to confuse the enemy. Some singing, some fighting, some nonsensical conversations all went into runes that would be triggered by cats passing, or could be triggered by men moving around in other areas of the fort, giving an appearance of more people than there really were.

It was a lot of work made possible because the enemy did not attack some days, and on days they did attack it was as though they were not really trying. The heat was literally killing them, helped along by my runes making the heat worse.