Rune mage

Chapter 50: attack imminent

I was asleep with the boy - he had crawled into my cot after a nightmare- when I felt disruptions upon my land. It was before sunrise but not by much.

I woke and carried his still sleeping self to the kitchen, where we had decided non-combatants should stay in the event of an attack.

Then I ran up the the battlements and looked not to the west but to the east. Someone was approaching from the village.

It wasn't villagers. This felt different in a way I couldn't put into words. It felt heavy.

A small group of properly uniformed soldiers were riding upon horses towards us.

I looked for my sergeant and found him standing next to me.

"They look like ours," he said with the same hesitancy I felt. "Too few to be a new rotation, on horseback is usually for mobile units. The kingdom cannot afford a mount for every soldier, usually reserved for elite or specialists or officers."

I had never gotten a mount. I had been tossed unceremoniously in with so much baggage.

I hadn't intended to say that out loud but I had because my sergeant huffed once and replied.

"You weren't expected to survive any more than the rest of us." He nodded toward the approaching men. "Which makes this visit suspect."

I watched the group of twenty men approach. There were no mages. There were no obvious threats...but the rock in my stomach told me my intuition agreed with my sergeant: this group was suspect.

"Inform the men we will treat them with polite suspicion. Lock down our civilians and secrets."

I walked down the many stairs, one hand on the wall brushing past countless runes out of habit. While I walked I found the runes of our secrets in my mind. The illusion runes, the sound runes, anything that had helped us appear more full...and I pulled power from them into me.

I had grown used to the here and gone again specters of lost soldiers, of the faint sounds of conversations that had happened long ago. The fort felt empty without it.

I met the newcomers at our gate.

"Lieutenant Lofe," the captain said as he dismounted. "I have news."

"We are a small fort and not able to house twenty horses easily," I said without greeting the man in return.

He stopped his move to shake my hand and looked back at his men. "Surely twenty is not too many."

"Our stable can hold ten." I replied. "I will leave it up to you to decide, captain, what to do with the other horses. There is a village not far, I am sure you passed it, where you could keep the others. For a modest fee."

"We shouldn't have to pay a fee, we are keeping them safe!" The captain said with a snap.

He issued orders to his men. Half of them remounted and rode back down the road. I hoped they would be kind to our tiny village, but they didn't seem the type.

"How long will you be here?" I asked. I could tell my lack of protocol irked him. I didn't exchange polite words with people I didn't trust.

"You sound like you want us gone, I would think you would welcome the help, with over half your force missing."

"I know where every one of my men is, no one is missing." I stepped aside and gestured them in. "Sergeant, assign a guide to the men so they can find the rooms we set aside for them. The captain and I will be in my study. Oh, and sergeant?"

My sergeant raised a brow, "yes sir?"

"Make sure they know not to wander alone without one of us. We know where the traps are."