Blood Tempered: Book 1 of the Sword Monk Saga

Blood Tempered: Part 34

"Too far," Anya muttered to herself. She could hear the clash of swords and the screams of the wounded drawing closer on the stair. "The damned Ardeshi need to hurry. Then I'd best hurry them."

She called forth the power that had been growing in her since she first found sorcery. It was dangerous, the magic she was about to attempt – there were no safeguards, unlike all the spells she had cast previously. There were no guidelines, either. She was about to attempt the creation of an entirely new spell, a wholly unique sorcery.

If she failed, it might well kill her. It might kill her even if she succeeded.

Quickly, despite her exhaustion, she laid down a protective circle in chalk, then sat down in its center. She lit a candle and stared into its flickering flame until her thoughts settled, and then began to chant in a language not spoken in hundreds of years.

She shaped a Gift of speed, and cast it out toward the approaching Ardeshi. Then she collapsed.

The Gift, invisible and yet in some weird sense palpable, flew across the ruined Wyeth landscape, an invisible, sorcerous wave. It crashed into the Ardeshi cavalry, which was already approaching the besieged fortress at a canter. It passed into and was absorbed by perhaps half of the men and their mounts. Instantly, they began to live, and move, at twice the speed of anyone else in the mortal realm. They had no choice in the matter, and most did not at first even realize that they had been altered.

The Ardeshi force split into two groups as those affected drew away from those who had not. Once they got within a hundred yards of the Roumnan camp, the great spell that Anya had prepared in the courtyard flared into life, and a column of sorcerous green fire shot into the sky.

Its effect was to turn virtually every man within a quarter mile of it into a blood-crazed, near-mindless killer.

There were no more Roumnans, no more Ardeshi, no more defenders of Thunderhead. Friend did not recognize friend. Each and every soldier burned with the need to kill, and they fell on whoever was closest.

If Anya had been conscious, she could have shielded Thunderhead's defenders from the spell's effects. Whether she would have done so? That is a question that, perhaps, even the witch herself did not know the answer to.

All was gore-spattered chaos and screaming, red-handed savagery.

Of all the players caught up in the orbit of the sorceress's machinations, only three men within Thunderhead and three without did not succumb to that terrible magic.