Masters of Magic Read online

  As one, the soldiers unsheathed their weapons. The naked blades gleamed coldly in the shallow light. Their faces were drawn, pale, but unflinching. Hulking shapes moved dimly beyond the protective shroud. Lothar nodded to the castellan, and steadily began to dismantle the wall of force surrounding them. Marius came to his side as the grey substance started to thin and drift away. The world was rushing back into focus.

  “Good work, lad,” he said in a low voice, his expression alive with expectation. “Now let’s finish this thing, you and me.”

  With a shudder and a sigh, the ward collapsed. Bright sunlight flooded in, as did the shocking noise and the stench of battle. They were in the heart of the horde, alone and far from help. Red eyes swung round to face them, green faces snarled with surprise and anger. Ahead, something huge stirred from its concentration, something clad in rags, its gnarled staff raised high over its hunched back. It turned, its weary, weeping eyes fixing on them with a terrible, noxious malice. A flicker of recognition passed across its wrinkled, ruined features. As it brought its staff down, clasped tightly in both claw-like hands, it smiled.

  * * *

  Where was Ambrosius? Katerina was beginning to get angry. It was unreasonable to leave her to deal with the abomination on her own. Her robes were splattered with blood and grime and her face ran with sweat. She had fallen back, along with the entire army, in the face of the stampeding apparition. Its strength had been renewed, and once more bodies were flung in every direction as it staggered forwards. The chanting had resumed � Gork! Gork! Gork!—whatever that meant. Nothing seemed to stop it, and the orcs were jubilant. Wearily, she gripped her staff one more time. There was little strength left in her, but there was no choice. No one else in the army could stop the apparition.

  She raised her hands, and then paused, her half-recited spell sticking in her throat. Something was happening to the spectral green form. It shuddered, as if a breeze had passed through it. Like a guttering candle flame, it seemed to pass in and out of existence rapidly. Frowning, she walked slowly forwards from her vantage point, trying to get closer and make out what was happening. It looked as if a figure stood at the very base of the apparition, his arms raised as if in supplication. He was surrounded by some of Schwarzhelm’s knights, but the champion was busy marshalling a desperate defence of the right flank. She peered closer, in disbelief. The man holding the apparition back was Ambrosius.

  “You!” she cried to a young captain preparing to lead his company of men against the orc lines. “Come with me. I need to get closer to that thing.”

  “Closer?” asked the captain, horrified. “Are you mad?”

  Katerina gave him a look of contempt.

  “I may be tired, but if you don’t escort me to Lord Kalliston right now I’ll flay you alive where you stand.”

  The man swallowed noticeably, and nodded. Calling his men, they formed a cordon around her. Together, they hurried down the hillside towards the cluster of knights. The greenskins in their path were swept aside in the charge, but as they neared the heart of the fighting, the press of orcs around them became thicker, and men began to be dragged down into the mire of the battlefield. Eventually, and with losses, they cut their way through to the press of knights at the centre of the conflict. Ahead of them, the lurid apparition loomed close, fighting hard against some magical impediment.

  “What’s happening?” asked Katerina, leaving the captain to fend for himself in the confusion and hastening to the side of the leader of the knights. Schwarzhelm was still nowhere to be seen, caught up in fierce fighting elsewhere.

  “The lord wizard is attempting to banish the apparition,” said the knight brusquely, slashing his broadsword in a savage arc against a row of ravenous-looking orc warriors. “If you’re here to help him, then do it. If not, get out of the way!”

  All around them, the orcs pressed forwards. Their eyes were like points of fire, their grinning jaws bestial and ferocious. In the thick of combat, the clamour was deafening. Katerina stepped back from the fray, working her way between the knights towards Ambrosius. Protected by his armoured bodyguard, he was casting bolt after bolt of golden energy directly at the gigantic figure before him. It was working, the apparition was being weakened, dissipated, flung back to whatever mysterious realm it belonged in. The orcs raged against the wall of Imperial troops, but the line held. Ambrosius was exhausted, his fingers streaked with his own blood, his eyes wide and staring. It looked as if he was near the end of his strength.

  Katerina joined him, silently, raising her own staff in unison with the panting Gold wizard, willing her strained powers to regenerate. With a cry of pain, she managed to summon more of the gem-like projectiles. Dizzy from the effort, she flung them at the shifting figure. She saw, with satisfaction, that they still had some effect. The raging monster staggered and diminished, its lethal blows halted amidst the rain of gold and amethyst bolts. The orcs around them, seeing their talisman thrown back, were being driven mad with frustration. They clawed desperately to get at the two wizards, but the line of knights held firm. Their heavy armour turned the crude blades of the greenskins, while their swords laboured against the enemy, slick with blood and gore.

  “It’s a summoning,” gasped Ambrosius, his breath coming in shallow heaves, “some strange sending of their primitive god, the essence of the waaagh. A spell, no more, but the power! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Katerina nodded grimly, trying to drag up reserves of more strength from somewhere, but she was nearly on her knees with fatigue. Her ability to tap into the Wind of Shyish was weak and uncertain. She looked upwards grimly, seeing how close the apparition was to dissipating, its edges fraying in the wind. With a sigh, she began to prepare a fresh spell, not knowing whether it would work. Perhaps it would fizzle out, or engulf them all in ruin. Then she turned back to Ambrosius, a sixth sense making her suddenly afraid.

  He was making a strange sound, and his eyes were wide and bloodshot. Something had gone wrong. His palms seemed to bulge, as if something was crawling under his skin. His voluminous robes flapped unnaturally, as if a flock of birds was trapped beneath them.

  “Ambrosius!” Katerina cried, forgetting protocol in her anxiety. “What is it?”

  “I… ah…” began the Gold wizard, foam frothing at his mouth, but the words died in his throat. He was being consumed by something, a spell gone wrong, the price paid for his extreme fatigue. Katerina watched in horror as the consequences of his error began to magnify.

  “Fall back!” she screamed at the knights around her. They ignored her, busy with the slaughter before them. Even if they had heard her, they wouldn’t readily take orders from a wizard. “Retreat!” she cried again, trying physically to drag them backwards. “Get away from the wizard!”

  Ambrosius was lurching back and forth, clutching his throat, vomit streaming down his chest. A weird, throttled cry escaped his crimson lips, as unearthly as anything the orcs were uttering. Gradually, despite the chaos of the battle, he began to be noticed, and the press of bodies, both orc and man, started to edge away from him. Flashes of gold exploded from his pierced skin, spraying blood into the air. The knights began to retreat up the hillside, their eyes fixed with alarm at the disintegrating form of the Gold wizard. The orcs hesitated to charge after them. Even their brute minds were caught up in the terrible spectacle unfolding before them.

  The knight commander looked down at Katerina sharply.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, his face at once sickened and confused.

  “He’s made an error in spellcasting,” said Katerina quickly, anxious to get away. “Withdraw! He’s unleashed some power he can’t control. Fall back, I beg you!”

  Ambrosius was gurgling blood. What remained of his face was purple and swollen, and his breath came in frothing heaves. More bright golden energy was erupting from his broken palms, spraying into the air like water from a fountain. He started to spin around uncontrollably, wrestling with the elemental forces he
had unleashed. The knight commander needed only a second glance to see that she was right.

  “Fall back!” he roared, and the knights started to back up the hill more quickly, watching the orc lines carefully all the time.

  Katerina pulled away from the spiralling form of Ambrosius, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew more than the others what was happening, the thing a wizard feared more than anything. The belief that wizards truly controlled the magic they used was an illusion, and they all knew it. Perhaps only the elves really understood what forces they had at their command. With humans, the possibility of catastrophic failure was always just around the corner, especially when under stress or fatigue. So it had proved with Ambrosius. Katerina turned briefly from her retreat, a safe distance from the stricken figure. She looked on with mingled pity and horror. He had been a pompous, self-important man, but didn’t deserve such a fate.

  With a lurch and a rip, his torso was torn open by the golden energy flooding from within him. Gore was flung across the few orcs slow or stupid enough not to have retreated far from the grisly scene. With a crack and gruesome squelch, he was torn apart by the raw magical essence boiling up within him. Once released, the golden substance tore outwards like a blackpowder explosion, flattening all in its range, tearing across the battlefield like molten ore from the ovens of a forge.

  Even from some distance away, Katerina was floored, and her chin hit the ground hard. She felt the hot material splatter against her. The copper taste of blood rose in her mouth. She flipped over, mindful of the orcs nearby, and scrabbled desperately for her staff. All around her, Imperial soldiers were picking themselves up, scraping gobbets of steaming metallic substance from their armour. Somehow, in his dying moments, Ambrosius had staggered towards the apparition, itself reeling from the earlier attacks. It had been shattered, blown apart into a hundred flickering green shards of insubstantial essence. The air shimmered and glowed where it had been moments earlier, but the strong wind was driving even the memory of its presence away. The orcs clustered underneath seemed momentarily uncertain, but the knights around her did not hesitate. They were used to war and its rapidly changing fortunes. With a roar of aggression, they charged down the slope, and the harsh sounds of battle resumed.

  Feeling drained, sick and useless, Katerina dragged herself to her feet. There was little she could offer until her strength returned. She would have to find some spot of relative safety and wait for her reserves of power to replenish. All around her, men were locked in combat with greenskins. The balance of power was still poised delicately. Shading her eyes, watchful for rogue orcs breaking through the lines of defenders, she scanned the battlefield for Schwarzhelm. It was hard to make anything out in the confusion. Despite the monstrous apparition having being destroyed, greenskins swarmed with abandon in all directions. The dreadful power of the shaman still animated them. She wondered whether Lothar had even made it through the forest and into the rearguard. Her head thick, her vision blurry, she staggered upwards, away from the worst of the fighting. Too late she heard the orc approach behind her. Turning quickly, she saw the huge form slavering madly, its cudgel raised high.

  “By Morr…” she started, raising her staff against the blow.

  But then the weapon fell, and pain, and then darkness, overwhelmed her. Falling heavily to the ground, she crumpled in a heap. The orc warrior raised the bloodstained cudgel high in the air above, bellowing in triumph.

  * * *

  Lothar looked around quickly. Karsten and Marius were by his side. The rest of the men brandished their weapons uneasily. They were at the rear of the huge orc host, surrounded by startled, angry greenskins, but surprise was quickly turning to deliberate malice. Ahead of them, the shaman grinned greedily, distracted for a moment from casting its baleful magic at the Imperial lines. It lumbered in their direction, wheezing and cackling. The orcs rushed in towards them. They were huge black orcs, the mightiest of their breed, draped in thick armour and brandishing heavy cleavers. Their tusks dripped with anticipation, and their crimson eyes burned with madness.

  “Protect the wizards!” yelled Karsten, and his men fanned out in a circle around them. With a clash of steel, the fighting began. The soldiers, hopelessly outnumbered, fought with the ferocity of men knowing they were destined to die.

  For a few moments, the charge was halted, but they knew it could not last long. Lothar and Marius walked forwards quickly to a small gap in the circle of defenders, straight towards the grinning form of the shaman. Beyond, the sounds of the battle were everywhere. In the distance, across ranks and ranks of whooping orc warriors, Lothar could make out the wavering Imperial standards. They looked like ships lost in a large and stormy sea. He should have been exhausted after conjuring the protective ward, but he was only angry. His fury with the grotesque form fuelled him, burning through his veins like pitch.

  He felt Malgar’s staff hum in his hands, in anticipation. At last, the terrible sequence of events kindled by the attack on Helmgart would end, one way or another. He looked deep into the crazed eyes of the beast, seeing its madness and agony. He forced his expression to become impassive, flat and cold.

  “It finishes here,” he hissed, feeling the surge of power around him as Marius raised his staff.

  In a blur of activity, the two wizards let fly two streams of crackling energy from their staffs, each targeted directly at the shaman. One was dark, apparently drawn from the shadows around them, its grey surface dull and hard to make out. The other was bright amber, flicking and writhing like a herd of trapped beasts. Together, the different magics met at the shaman, and exploded in a bizarre mixture of colours: gold, green, grey and others besides. Any orcs stationed near the shaman were blasted aside. Ripples of deadly force whipped across the ground like snakes, driving the greenskin bodyguard backwards.

  With a grunt of effort, Marius slammed his staff into the ground, cracking the earth apart, toppling the orcs in their heavy armour, crushing them between the moving, fluid slabs of mud and soil. The area became a maelstrom of magic, a burning cauldron of force and power, searing the air with its intensity. Lothar whirled his staff, feeling the eddies and flow of the Wind of Ulgu, directing it in waves of dark force towards the hunched figure. The air was thick with diffused heat, burning like the heart of a furnace where the rippling streams of magical energy stroked.

  From the heart of the storm, the nexus of the unleashed forces, a strange sound emerged. It was almost inaudible amid the clamour around them, a low wheezing, a grating coughing. It was the shaman. It was laughing. With a stamp of its great, clawed foot, the magical energies swarming around it were shrugged aside like water. The deadly bolts of force from the two wizards were hurled carelessly into the air.

  It came forwards. Its shambling form wobbled and swayed as it moved. Even through his anger, Lothar felt the horror of its being acutely. It seemed to have grown in size since he had last encountered it, even though that was surely impossible. Its wizened, cruel talons clutched at the gnarled staff tightly, its drooling mouth fixed in an inane, bleary grin. Dribbles of green fluid seemed to leak from every pore in its pockmarked, leathery skin. The stench was almost overpowering: animal aromas, putrid ritual incense, manure, sweat, and a hundred other indefinable substances. Its tusks rose high up its wrinkled cheeks, scoring the flesh deeply. Every exposed slab of skin was riddled with sores and scabs. It looked like it was in permanent pain, a tortured existence, driven on by the whims of the greenskin gods, both the victim and the chosen instrument of their inscrutable, violent ways.

  Lothar was dimly aware of the fighting around him, and the thin cordon of men labouring to keep the horde from their backs, but he couldn’t think about that even for a moment. All his attention was focussed on the shaman as it lumbered towards him. The monstrous form raised its twisted staff, and bellowed some obscene gibberish into the air. For a moment, nothing happened. Marius strode forwards, preparing to unleash a second stream of Amber energy. But then it struc
k, a tidal wave of pain, hammering at Lothar’s temples, crushing his will, forcing him onto his knees. Somehow, the shaman had unlocked some door deep within him. Lights burst in his eyes, and his heart began to race out of his control. In his mind’s eye, he saw an endless tide of greenskins marching over a blasted, ruined world, nothing but ashes and dust beneath their bloodstained feet. Lothar staggered backwards, only just keeping a hand on his staff, his whole being descending into agony and confusion.

  As if from a far distance, he heard what sounded like Marius’ voice shouting, but he couldn’t make out what was said. Instead, he felt as if he was being drawn into the fevered mind of the shaman, caught in a nightmare existence with no hope of escape or rescue.

  He screwed his eyes shut, fighting against the excruciating sensations coursing through his body. All he could see, whether his eyes were open or not, was the vision of endless ranks of orcs, their mania running all over the Old World, drowning everything in an endless tide of war. He felt his blood pulse thickly in his veins, clogging and bursting. With an effort, he stopped retreating, but the pain got worse.

  With a sudden chill, he knew what was happening. The shaman was trying to crush his very self from the inside. It was as if the torment within its ruined mind was being transferred to his. In an instant, he understood something of what life must be like for the wretched brute, forever driven by bloodlust, always goaded onwards by the never-ending gaze of Mork, prevented from rest, from health, from peace, from anything except destruction and madness.

  Lothar shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the crushing terror, but it was no good. The shaman was as strong as iron, as immoveable as stone. He attempted to calm down, to find some solution before all was lost. Why did he know the name Mork? Why had he given that term to the dreadful presence infesting his mind? Someone had used that name once, a long time ago. It was so hard to think, so hard to concentrate. Who had it been? More words came, unbidden, to his mind, like cool drops of water on a fevered brow.