Rune mage

Chapter 56: unfortunate success

Someone sent assassins after that.

I assume they were sent by the enemy, but our own army had long forgotten us.

They came in the night, slipping through shadows as though I wouldn't feel them on my land.

I killed them without alerting my men at all, while laying in my cot not sleeping.

The next morning the fire mage and my boy Levi and I finally managed to make a stone hold heat. There was a good half of the day where I had to send them away, my mind caught in memories of holding hot rocks until I nearly died.

But then I called them back and we made several.

We presented it to Jess as a belated birthday present, since she was always saying she was cold at night.

Everyone ended up with a stone, and we made extra to trade when we next had visitors.

I waited, awake and alert the next few nights.

The next batch of assassins came high, climbing rock to rock with ropes and magic.

I sucked the magic down.

They were on my land. Attempting to attack My fort.

This time one of them screamed as he died.

The fort captured the sound easily.

The next morning my sergeant met me with a hard look.

"How many?" He asked.

I could have pretended I didn't know what he was talking about, but instead I shrugged and replied, "three last night, four some nights ago."

"There was no alert to the rest of us."

That was the problem. The men had slept peacefully, and the one sentry had not been alerted until there was someone screaming in the darkness.

I winced. "I should have let the night sentry know. My apologies."

My sergeant huffed at me. Then stared at me a good long while. "When was the last time you slept the night through?"

It took too long to answer because he huffed again and walked away.

The next night I slept, not because I wanted to but because the healer conspired with the woman and my sergeant.

I was grumpy the following day and only distracted by my boy.

And the fire mage.

We were trying to capture more than heat in stone, to see if we could create a fireball with a heart of stone that could explode upon the enemy.

The only thing that exploded was my desk. Thankfully the boys were behind a protection rune.

And my hair was only slightly singed.

I expected the urgent footsteps approaching to be about the explosion.

"Smoke rising from the village," my sergeant said when he reached the door.

We all ran out atop the battlements.

I couldn't do anything about the smoke. The village was too far.

By sun down a few stragglers approached my land. Three families, plus two men.

"The families feel safe, I have seen some of them with supplies," I told my sergeant. "But I do not know those men and they do not feel safe."

My magic wasn't great at killing only some, so instead I froze everyone. I watched as Carver and Archer approached the group.

I unfroze the families at the signal of my men but left the other two.