Pt. 29
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The mercenaries briefly split up; none of them are happy about it.
Once again, Plot has caused a chapter to be much longer than anticipated. I should really have put the whole beginning of this in the previous chapter. Oh well!
CWs: Insects, questionable relationships with mortality, referenced death, implied low self-esteem, exhaustion. This isn’t an especially dark chapter. It is SFW.
Words: About 5K
No one could be seen when they reached the village, but the woman who’d guided them quickly explained. The cliff by the houses was riddled with caves. The largest of these, though not fully locust-proof, was nonetheless safer than wooden-walled buildings, so all of the fisherfolk sheltered inside.
Another cave led far away from the village, perhaps far enough that they wouldn’t be followed, but the passages there were not easy to walk. The oldest folk now in the other cave wouldn’t be able to pass through with haste.
‘They thought hiding in the large cave would be enough,’ the company’s guide said, her voice unsteady, ‘but I don’t think it will be. There are gaps - they put rocks and things in to shore them up, but I don’t think they’ll hold. There are too many locusts.’
‘How many are you talking about?’ asked Radomil. ‘We know there was a bigger patch to the north, but -’
The guide laughed, high and panicky. ‘Bigger?! I don’t know if they’re all from that spot, but there’s a cloud big enough to blot out the sun circling over the field. I saw it on my way to find you; don’t know where it went after that, but it’ll come here. I don’t doubt it.’
Catha looked to Mures, who divined her question and shrugged.
‘I don’t know how many there are,’ he said. ‘I can’t sense this spell in detail. There’s something coming, though; it’s from that direction, and I think it’s… We should probably assume the worst. And should probably hurry.’
‘Move to the cave that leads away,’ Catha told the trembling guide. ‘My comrades and I will bring up the rear; within a sealed space, we can ward off the locusts that follow.’
‘There isn’t enough time. I told you, a lot of people can’t move fast, and the caves are on opposite sides of the village. We’ll all get killed crossing the open space.’
Catha considered. The cliffs by the village formed a half-circle; some ledges even hung over the houses.
‘I’ll hold them off while you lead the people across,’ she declared. ‘You two should go with our guide; if locusts begin to break into the cave, you may need to block off more than one entry point.’
The guide looked relieved for a moment, but then her face went ashen. She pointed behind the company, towards the northeast. Catha turned, and saw on the skyline a gathering cloud of enormous scale.
Not just gathering, she realised, but quickly growing larger. The guide took fright and fled toward the cliffs.
Radomil stepped up to Catha’s side. She knew at once from the look on his face that he didn’t wish for her to wait behind.
‘Someone must stay while you go to the caves,’ she said, before he spoke. ‘The fisherfolk need more than one to defend them; I don’t believe any of them possess magic.’
‘You don’t have to be that someone,’ Radomil told her. His voice was quiet but intense. ‘I know the shield spell you use; it works by brute force. Maybe you could extend it across the gap in the cliffs, but the locusts will break through in a matter of minutes, if that. There’s too many.’
‘Enough time for you and the others to leave.’
‘And lose you, again. No.’
‘Stop arguing,’ Mures snapped.
Startled, the other two turned to face him.
‘Neither of you are equipped to cast something on this scale, but I am - I can create a shield that specifically drains necromantic energy. Covering the whole area will be somewhat challenging, but I can certainly keep it up long enough for you to get a few villagers from one cave to another. It’s not a difficult spell. Once they’re gone, I can push enough energy into it to hold it for another minute or two, and I’ll join you.’
Much as she wanted to disagree, Catha acknowledged that he was correct. Mures was clearly more able to hold the defence while she and Radomil took to the caves. She remembered the inlet outside of Jameivird, which he had frozen from shore to shore; the gap in the cliffs was no larger than that, and he’d said this spell was an easy one.
Besides, her old friend was right; she knew when in the heat of the moment, she had a strong habit of disregarding the potential for death. Dying in aid of a noble cause was hardly a terrible thought, but she had no wish to abandon the others. She only mistrusted her memory to keep that in mind when battle approached.
Mures seemed somewhat less prone to self-sacrifice, she thought, from what she had seen. At least he seemed not to seek it out - but glancing sideways at Radomil, she saw that he seemed less convinced.
‘There are a lot of locusts,’ he said to the sorcerer. ‘Are you sure you can -’
‘Yes, Radomil, I’m sure. You’re wasting time; shove off. Go help the villagers.’ Mures’ tone was exasperated, but Catha thought that he looked oddly touched before he turned away to survey the village.
Still, Radomil hesitated.
‘Can - Mures, will you give me your word? That you won’t die here.’
A few seconds passed before he responded.
‘Yes. You have my word on it.’
‘Very well, then,’ Catha confirmed, as Radomil let out a breath and nodded. Her old friend seemed somewhat reassured, if still not exactly happy.
As they went after the now-vanished guide, she hoped she could trust her companion to look after himself better than she often cared for her own life. Glancing back when near the foot of the cliffs, she saw Mures heading to the edge of the village, a film of pale green light already spreading from his hands up towards the sky.
The situation inside the cave wherein the fisherfolk sheltered was worse than she might have hoped. Though strong metal doors protected the entrance, fissures and holes in the rock were letting in locusts from the other side of the cliffs; some of the villagers worked to seal these with ill-suited rubble, while others attempted to fend off the locusts which managed to make their way in. Already, injured people lay at the edge of the cave, at least one of them seeming mortally wounded.
She spotted their guide conversing with a few people away in a corner. From their appearances, Catha could guess they were some sort of village leaders.
‘What’s the delay?’ Radomil asked, going over to join them.
One of the group, an elderly woman with scrimshaw beads braided into her hair, waved her hand at a pile of rubble against the opposite wall. It seemed to be placed to seal up a passage.
‘We didn’t know things would get this bad when we came in here,’ she said. ‘Some of us went into smaller chambers, and then - the locusts started to break through, and we had to seal the passages off because some of them have too many gaps. There are people trapped in other chambers now.’
‘If they’re even still alive,’ argued another who stood in the group. ‘We’re risking the entire village for the sake of five people -’
‘Six,’ the first speaker cut in. ‘Rahat went into the room to the west just before the first locusts appeared.’
‘Six, then. We don’t have time for this, and better for some of us to survive than none. You heard - there’s one wizard out there, he won’t last long even if he isn’t dead already. ’
‘He isn’t,’ said Radomil firmly. ‘Catha and I can cover the gaps in the passages while anyone trapped in there gets out.’
‘It’ll take a while to clear the rubble,’ warned the woman with beads in her hair.
Catha rubbed at her chin in thought. Mures had said he could hold back the locusts without specifying a maximum time. She guessed he had left a margin of error, but lacked any way to know what it was.
‘Go out and talk to him,’ she told the guide. ‘Ask if he thinks he can keep up the shield for as long as it takes to get everyone out.’
After a moment of hesitation, the young fisherwoman departed the cave. Radomil nodded at Catha; together they went to the first blocked-off passage.
As soon as the people who’d chosen to help them (notably lacking the hastier leader) had cleared a patch of rubble away, a buzzing noise sounded through the space. A second later, a locust emerged between two pieces of stone. Catha exhaled a puff of magic, burning the thing into ash.
It wasn’t the only locust which waited within the passage, however. Catha was able to handle the rest as Radomil went to another passage, but she could feel herself already tiring. Mures was right, she thought as she cast; the magic she knew was ill-suited for this.
The guide returned when the first mound of rubble was almost reduced enough to pass by.
‘He says he can keep it up,’ she told the fisherfolks’ leaders, as Catha listened with split attention. ‘But we should move as fast as we can.’
After the rubble was cleared away, a second blockade could be seen down the passage. Holding a shield of positive energy, Catha proceeded towards it with care. The person within the smaller chamber should still be alive, or so she hoped; the barrier they’d built to bar off the gap-ridden passage seemed sturdy.
Reaching the rubble, she pulled some away and shouted a greeting through what remained. A moment of silence passed - then she could hear an answering voice, and clattering stone as the person inside worked to unseal the cave chamber’s entrance.
Concentrating, she pushed back the angry, anxious tension lurking in back of her thoughts. Despite the threat to her two companions, especially Mures, still waiting outside, rushing would not accomplish a thing. This kind of mission always felt sluggish, but haste was ultimately inefficient.
As the blockade came down, Catha glanced over her shoulder to see that an argument had broken out. Back in the cavern’s main room, the fisherfolk’s leaders were locked in debate and seemed to be near a conclusion.
Tearing herself from the worrisome spectacle, she held out a hand to the young woman who until recently had been sealed in the room.
‘Come join the others,’ she said with a smile, although the expression did not match her feelings. ‘Once we’ve retrieved everyone who took shelter here, we shall strike out for the cavern that leads away from the village. Don’t worry - the locusts will not reach us ere we escape.’
Or so she hoped, Catha silently added. It seemed that the leaders shared her concern. As she and the young fisherwoman emerged from the passage, she saw the one leader who’d wanted to leave gesturing urgently.
‘We can’t wait any longer!’ he cried. ‘I don’t care what the sorcerer says, this is taking far too much time. We won’t make it out before whatever magic he has going fails.’
‘Go on ahead, then,’ said Radomil, who seemed to have finished his own exploration of one of the blocked-off passages. From his expression, Catha perceived that the outcome had not been as good as in her case.
‘We can’t, damn you. That passage has as many gaps as this cave, if not more. You two adventurers are the only hope we have of making it through there alive.’
‘Well - do you all want to leave?’ Radomil asked.
The village leaders looked at one another, faces a spectrum from angry to blank. Before anyone could offer a verdict, a burst of hysterical sobbing interrupted them.
An old man was slumped near a pile of rubble. Two other people attempted to pull him up, but he would not go, digging at the rocks with hands curled and crooked from years of sea-labour. It was he who was crying.
‘I won’t go,’ he wept. ‘My lover’s still in there. We can’t go yet. Rahat, can you hear me? Are you alive? I’ll come get you.’
The village leader with beads in her hair squeezed her eyes shut in indecision.
‘I don’t want to leave anyone behind,’ she said, ‘but risking us all for the sake of four more people is…’
‘Our friend said he can hold the locusts back,’ said Radomil.
‘He may not have realised how many there are. There were piles and piles of them everywhere, I know, and more buried underground.’
‘I trust him.’
‘You do, yes. But you could be wrong.’
‘I trust him as well,’ Catha cut in. ‘I’ve seen him work magic before on a scale not far different from this. Now, waste no more time - block off the passages we have explored and open two more where your people await.’
Her words rang with confidence, more than she felt. It was enough for the village’s leaders, who set their people to work, and Radomil gave a relieved-looking grin as he went off to search another passage.
Privately, though, she was deeply uneasy - increasingly so as the minutes ticked past. She’d seen Mures work one impressive spell, but he’d passed out near-instantly afterward, and other than that she had only his word and Radomil’s trust to go on. She trusted Radomil, of course, but her old friend could make mistakes as much as could anyone else.
They extracted two more fisherfolk, including Rahat, and started work on the final two passages. All of this was taking too long, Catha thought grimly. Watching the village’s leaders, she saw more than one of them clearly agreed, with dull resignation replacing anxiety. They did not expect to come through this alive.
As she led the last villager back to the main chamber, warding off frequent incursions of locusts, Catha found Radomil already there, by the doors at the mouth of the cave. Around him were gathered the village’s leaders, with everyone else grouped up behind them.
‘Ready to go?’ her old friend asked.
‘What if the locusts are waiting right outside?’ asked one of the fisherfolk. ‘We can’t see anything from here, and all I can hear is the locusts trying to get in through the cracks. They could be trying to get in through the door, too, I can’t tell.’
‘We’ll stand ready to ward them off until the doors can be closed once more,’ Catha assured the anxious crowd, though she knew such an act wouldn’t help in the end. Her magic, and Radomil’s, wouldn’t last long if the locusts broke into the cave, as she had little doubt that they would. Already, the ominous cracking of stone whispered from gaps in the cavern’s back wall.
Radomil stood at the doors’ other side, meeting her eyes as he drew up a string of runes like a strand of spinning wool. His eyes narrowed slightly; she nodded back. She waved at the doors, and two of the fisherfolk pushed them ajar.
The sky outside had gone black as pitch. She stared upwards, uncomprehending, til a ripple of pallid green light passed across the darkness above and illuminated it for an instant. The sky was a teeming mass of locusts.
She hadn’t imagined there could be so many. Had Mures? Probably not, she thought. This vastly surpassed his vague implications of scale on their way to the village.
The fisherfolk, frozen in shock for a moment, had now shut the doors behind them and struck out for the other cave. Radomil started to follow, but paused, gazing out towards the village’s edge.
‘Go,’ Catha told him. ‘I will return and help Mures.’
They shared a glance, wordless but holding the echo of Radomil’s worries before they had gone to the cave. Then Catha turned and jogged off towards the spot where the faint lines of magic converged.
As she approached, it quickly grew clear that Mures was not doing well. The sickly green light of his magical wall flickered against the background of black - locusts clustered and pressed tight against the translucent energy shield. As each shell was drained of its power and dropped towards the snow-covered ground (now stained dirty grey with the insects’ dead bodies), more thronged forth to fill the spaces they left.
Of greater import, Mures was swaying where he stood. Once she was close enough to make out details, she saw that his face was horribly pale, with sweat beading along his hairline and shadows smudged darkly beneath his eyes. His hands rested on the rim of a well which stood at the edge of the village; it seemed to be all that was holding him up.
‘How goes it?’ she asked, placing a hand on his shoulder. Even through layers of linen and wool, she could feel his bony frame trembling.
‘I can hold the wall,’ he rasped. ‘Catha - you should leave. I can’t let it go without the locusts getting in. Thought it could stay up on its own while we ran, but I don’t have enough energy left to give it. I didn’t think there were half this many of the damn things.’
‘What aid can I grant you?’ asked Catha.
‘Can you -’
He paused, and she saw his arms were shaking, elbows almost collapsing as he tried to hold himself up. His breathing was rough and uneven, and a line of blood ran down from his nose.
‘Tell Radomil I’m sorry,’ he said, voice no steadier than the rest of him. ‘I didn’t think - I didn’t intend to break my word to him. I’m sorry. Please tell him that. And - you should go.’
She felt a great deal of respect for his choice of last request. There could be no doubt it was a noble idea, to hold off the locusts while others escaped; had she been in Mures’ place, she doubtless would have attempted the same.
But several things gave her pause. For one, he’d be breaking an oath, which would mar the deed to some extent. Further, it did not seem he wanted to die in this way; she doubted he’d given much thought to dreams of heroic death.
Of much greater note, he was her companion, and Radomil’s very dear friend. Catha would also be proud, she thought, to call him a friend if he was willing. Both honour and sentiment bade her refuse to leave him behind.
‘I’ll tell him nothing of the sort,’ she declared. Instead of departing, she moved close beside him, lending a hand to help prop him upright. ‘I won’t let you do that to Radomil.’
She paused, debating, then added, ‘I won’t let you do that to me. Could I not take your place? My energy isn’t exhausted, and I can cast a shield spell.’
He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher, eventually shaking his head.
‘The only reason this is still holding is that it’s just draining the locusts’ energy, not physically blocking them. Unless you’ve been a dark sorceress all this time and haven’t said so, I’m the only one here capable of working with this kind of magic.’
‘It wouldn’t hold long enough for you to leave?’
‘No. And I’m -’
Mures stopped talking and violently flinched, the light of the spell-wall flickering. Catha looked up; after a moment, she noticed a denser wave of locusts had struck one part of the wall.
‘I’m not letting you die either,’ the sorcerer finished, wheezing as he leaned on the well.
Catha looked down at his trembling hands, then down at a pouch on her belt. The amulet therein, a power repository, was currently empty of magic; however, it sparked a cautious idea.
‘Could I give you some of my energy? Transferring magic would let you continue to hold this efficient spell, while drawing more power from my reserves. I’m not yet exhausted, and have more energy stored within this amulet.’
She knew such an energy transfer was possible - some of the wizards she’d fought with before (as allies or foes) had combined their powers to work greater magic than any one could do alone. She just wasn’t certain what this would involve.
Mures did not look convinced.
‘That kind of transfer is… intense,’ he said. ‘The connection doesn’t just send over energy; it incorporates the source of the energy as well. Your convictions, principles, willpower - everything that functions as a catalyst for magic.’
‘And why would that prove a problem?’
‘Because it would kill me,’ Mures informed her, his tone mostly bitter, though tinged with regret. ‘This is why you only see long-time colleagues and -’
He stopped abruptly to catch his breath. Catha could feel him almost collapsing, most of his weight on the well or her arm.
‘- and friends,’ he went on, ‘ever do this. You can’t control how the energy reacts to the recipient. If someone like you transferred energy to me, it would act on your commitment to fighting - well. It wouldn’t make the kind of exceptions you consciously make.’
Catha thought through this, then laughed aloud.
‘Mures,’ she said, ‘I don’t have some kind of core opposition to people who practice dark magic. There’s no need to fear that some piece of my heart unconsciously wishes you harm. The fact that you’ve chosen to stay here to give others time to escape is reason enough for me to admire you. Besides, I liked you even before.’
He said nothing, staring out through the wall. The flickering light made his face hard to read; mostly, she thought that he looked exhausted.
‘Fine,’ he said at last. ‘I should be able to direct part of the energy, at least, before it does whatever it’s going to do. It’ll give the wall enough power to stay up while you and Radomil get out of here.’
‘You will get out of here with us. Trust me. Now, what must I do?’
He turned to face her and held out a hand, face set despite its unhealthy pallor. She grasped his forearm, stepping in close to help prevent him from falling over.
‘I can handle the technical aspects,’ he said, scratchy voice quiet beside her ear. ‘Concentrate the energy in your hand as if you’re about to cast a spell.’
‘What will it feel like to me as it works?’ she asked, briefly afraid she might fail to direct the energy where it was needed.
Mures coughed out a humourless laugh.
‘No idea. I’ve never attempted an energy transfer before.’
Catha’s concerns were soon proven unfounded. The magic poured smoothly to pool in her hand, trickling across to Mures’ wrist. After a moment she felt something else, a kind of connection more complex than energy. Her vision blurred, and she closed her eyes, suddenly unexpectedly dizzy.
The darkness behind her eyelids wasn’t darkness at all - more like she was falling into herself, consciousness coursing down paths of conviction, with fragments of memories flickering through her mind.
She saw herself in the midst of a battle; before she could recognise which one of the many she’d been in it might be, it was gone, replaced by another fight. Others followed after this, faster and faster, some in which Radomil fought by her side, some which were duels more than battles.
Abruptly, the sounds of combat vanished, and she saw herself playing knucklebones with Radomil and their old companions. Next, she stood at one end of a stage in a battle of words with a poet she’d known.
As more moments passed in remembered contest, Catha began to grow worried. Although she was certain that none of what drove her, and granted her magic its energy, was anchored in hatred or condemnation, she didn’t know quite what it was anchored in. If competition formed a large part of it, she feared it might still cause harm to Mures - maybe her energy, instead of flowing into the spell, would turn on the conduit Mures provided, marking him as some kind of opponent.
Heedless of her concerns, the scenes in her mind rushed on. In spite of herself, she felt the excitement of all the memories through which she passed, building a sense of swelling power somewhere inside her chest. She watched herself travelling, alone or in company, over the mountains and hills of her homeland and on, to places she’d been before dying in battle. Helping people, fighting people, pushing onwards through terrible weather and harsh terrain - always, unendingly, onwards.
Catha’s fears of herself were forgotten; even were she not caught up in her memories, they were no longer about competition. Her mind had gone back to her earliest years, working alone to improve her swordplay, reading of heroes and warrior-poets and trying to write her own epics to match them. Hours spent composing poetry, each piece a more complex challenge, flitted past in splinters of seconds.
At last, her consciousness slid to a halt, drifting above a near-empty field of dust and trampled grass: a campsite after the party had left, some time not long after she and Radomil had first started out as mercenaries. Flowers, past blooming and now topped with puffs of feathery seeds, dotted the field among the dry grass.
Young Catha stood alone in the field, newly-sharpened sword in hand. A wind swept past; it scattered the flower seeds into swirling dances around her.
The Catha who watched from above the ground remembered this day very clearly. The party in which she’d been travelling had been on the way to a battle, but she had chosen to wait behind as they headed for their next campsite. As she had waited, she’d tested her swordplay by playing a game she’d made for herself.
The sword her younger self carried leapt out and sliced one seed from the tuft that held it in the air. She twisted her wrists; the blade snapped sideways and cut another suspended seed. Spinning and leaning, each strike swift and clean, she moved with precision across the field.
Catha could feel the elation she saw on her younger self’s face as the wind died down, silvery puffs now freed from their anchors floating weightless around her. She hadn’t missed one of her chosen targets.
This was the largest part of it, then: a competition, after all, but one which she held with herself. Perhaps she ought to have guessed that, she thought, but ultimately it didn’t matter. She wasn’t displeased with this newfound knowledge.
The field dissolved in a growing brightness, and Catha’s eyes snapped open; she felt the energy burst from her hand like water breaking a dam. The spell-wall flashed with renewed strength, but she barely noticed - instead, she was looking at Mures, who was staring back at her in what seemed to be shock. His fingers were clenching her forearm in an almost painful grip.
She had expected the magical shield to gain enough power to hold up alone, but this seemed like more than that; a sudden wave of force exploded into the cloud of locusts, sending a host of them falling away. Another wave followed a moment later, and then a third.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked her companion, whose gaze hadn’t wavered since she’d opened her eyes.
Mures started to speak, then stopped. Starting again, his voice still cracked, but at least his words were audible.
‘There wasn’t - none of the energy you’ve transferred is being lost in the process. I thought… I assumed most of it would be diverted away from the spell itself due to conflict with, er, with the conduit, but it hasn’t been.’
‘So without this conflict, the power I’ve added has greatly increased the strength of the shield, rather than merely extending its life?’
Mures nodded, expression still showing a curious mixture of shock and - something else.
Catha looked back at the magical wall. Though feeling the start of exhaustion set in as her reserves of power ran low, she also could see that the mass of locusts had thinned out significantly. Patches of sky could be seen through the cloud, grey but glowing with filtered sunlight.
‘Should we go after the others?’ she asked. ‘The spell should be able to hold on its own, I imagine, with this reinforcement.’
‘...I don’t think we have to.’ Mures had finally turned away to survey the wall. His hand remained wrapped around her wrist, but the flow of magic felt like it had slowed.
Catha guessed it was because there was now less pressure upon the shield. Her comrade appeared to be under less strain as well - though still somewhat shaky, he no longer seemed as though he were about to pass out.
‘If these are the last of the locusts, which I think they are, this will stay up long enough to wipe them out,’ he said.
‘What of the ones on the other side of the cliffs?’
‘They’re already coming over here.’
She looked, and indeed, at the back of the wall, over the top of the cliffs, a small wave of locusts was joining the rest. A remnant, perhaps, of their time as a swarm - some lingering instinct brought back by necromancy along with their movement and urge to partake of a rather expanded selection of food.
‘Radomil will likely return when he sees the locusts’ assault has ceased,’ Catha said..
Though doubtless her old friend was worried, she thought it wiser to remain for the moment, even if the shield could hold without them. She’d moved to stand closer behind Mures as both of them gazed at the wall, and noticed he seemed to be still on the verge of collapse.
As he rocked unsteadily where he stood, she placed her free hand on his arm and pulled him back to lean on her shoulder. He glanced at her, startled, but slowly relaxed and let her help keep him upright.
They waited together and watched the sky slowly clear, until the village was once again bathed in the light of the sun.
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