§131 Iredale I (Patreon)

The bulk of the opposition's force was situated well beyond the range of a normal praxis weapon or most magicians' long-range spells. Instead of huddling up in one place or making an organized camp, they scattered themselves on the expanse of empty land between the town and the hills. From high up, Taylor could get a sense of the organization that was difficult to spot from the ground. The monster and human slaves tended to clump together by like types. Humans with humans, a pack of wolves, a clutch of giant rams, a madness of marmots, and so on. The tamers were nowhere to be seen, but he could feel mana squirming in the enslaved individuals of the army, burrowed worm-deep.

They were waiting, but Taylor wasn't sure what for. They could be wary of the IEF's area-effect spells. If that were the case, they should attack from multiple directions at once. They had the numbers for it. Regardless of their plan, the best way to wreck it was to do something they didn't expect, like drop two hundred new fighters on the field.  With his aerial survey complete, he landed and summoned his armies in a fold of the land where they were less likely to be seen. He checked his comms, gave his orders, and took to the sky to watch.

The first attacks were probes, just to see what the enemy would do, and they were educational. The enslaved troops were slow to respond and, once moved, acted with single-mindedness. When the tamers started ordering their troops about, their magic shone like beacons. Taylor had no trouble picking them out.

"Long-range casters and spotters to the rally point," Taylor said into the earcuff that connected him to his leaders, "Teams, listen up." He explained what he discovered and his plan to exploit it, while his forces withdrew. To the enemy, it might look like he had given up.

"Hermes." The ghost butler appeared within a few seconds. He wasn't a true ghost: he was just naturally incorporeal. "Take this to Cadmius and teach him how to use it." He dropped a curl of silver into the spirit's hand and, half a heartbeat later, Hermes was gone. The spirit was a puzzle: How did a ghost butler hold objects? For that matter, how did he wear clothes? It seemed impolite to pry.

Taylor dropped to the ground to talk to his four sniper teams, groups of two or three composed of long-range spell casters with acute accuracy, with a spotter who knew camouflage magic. There was no high ground to stand them on, but Taylor had a solution to that problem. Summoners had a useful second-tier ability that let them share a spell's or skill's effect with their summoned companion. He had taken the skill far beyond that point and could grant a spirit the ability to use a spell or ability at their discretion. He granted Airwalk to each spotter, and the spotters knew how to spread the effect wide enough to include their shooter. The tactic had proven so powerful in the mock skirmishes that several more teams were in training. For now, four teams were all he could field at once.

For an hour, he watched as hit-and-run teams provoked opposition forces, causing the tamers to order troops around and thus reveal their hidden locations. The Army of Lightness had been teaching mana sensing to selected spirits, and here was the payoff. As soon as a tamer moved his slaves, they died from several long-range spells. He made sure to hit the slavers controlling the rams early in the battle, effectively removing the greatest threat to the town's defense. The animals ran south for the Rim and didn't look back.

The tamers caught on quickly: they ordered their slaves to act defensively and then refused to react to minor attacks, preferring to lose expendable troops over getting themselves killed. With the slaves stuck on standing orders, Taylor couldn't force the tamers to show themselves. As he didn't want to kill any more innocent people than he had to, he commanded his troops to maneuver around them and strike at juicy targets, like the huge tamed lizards, larger than Daisy, that spit corrupted saliva and glowed red-hot. They were called Dimmik caldera dragons, although there was nothing truly draconic about them. The normals ones were the length of his hand, and children kept them as pets. At such a monstrous size, they were more than a little dangerous.

His only act of offensive magic in the engagement was when he built a narrow cyclone of super-cooled air and dropped it onto two dozen of the lizards, conveniently massed together by the Army of Lightness and two teams from the Praxium Brigade. They froze in place, and their tamer, caught almost in the center of the blast, froze solid to its core. Even that one bit of magic tired him out. Maintaining two armies while he was recovering from his last battle was taxing.

"Is this thing on?" Cadmius was late getting on comms.

"What kept you? I sent Hermes ages ago."

"Been ferrying wounded to medical. Did you know Meltissa could shoot?"

"I knew she owned pistols." Taylor had never seen her pick up a weapon to use it.

"Not the same thing. You need help out there?"

Taylor laughed. "No." Several other voices joined his, his army commanders and immediate subordinates, assuring Cadmius they had things well in hand.

"Sorry. I didn't know it was a group invitation."

"Welcome, Oathbreaker," said Balhadra. "Few can say they won a battle against Dux Twilight."

"As long as you're on our side, this time," added Genova.

"Cadmius," Taylor broke in on the fun before it got out of hand, "you're about to have a problem. These guys are going to break, but they're not running for the hills. They're going to try for the town."

"The rams…"

"First thing we took care of. They have some ents, so you still need to man those walls, at least for a few minutes."

"You want us to be your anvil?"

"Yes, please."

"See you there. I'll bring what I can."

Taylor hit the ground and resummoned every defeated spirit, while his armies worked just hard enough to keep pressure on the enemy. The slavers, having lost half their fellows, were getting cagey. Possibly, the survivors were more skilled and had better stealth abilities. Within several minutes, tamed animals and enslaved people charged toward Iredale, as Taylor knew they would. He sent his armies in an organized pursuit.

"Attack groups, slow down and keep together," he had to order them more than once, "they're not trying to escape. Bastions prepare to wall up."

The enemy, miners and monsters both, hit the town wall and tried to climb on top of each other to get over it. They were running on the last orders they'd been given by their masters, to cover the tamers' escape. There were only a few hundred remaining, and Taylor's forces pinned them against one section of the town's wall. The defenders apparently got a few mages together, and they dropped a large lightning spell into the middle of the scrum. All the humans and most of the smaller monsters collapsed in fits of twitching agony.

Cadmius jumped from the wall, driving his sword deep into an ent's trunk. He split the entire length of the monster and landed on his feet, then set to taking down anything and everything within reach that was still standing. A few of Taylor's heavies joined him, including Orangeatang and the fiery great dane, Dogenah. The select group of heavy fighters cleaned up the largest remnants in an ever-shrinking arena. Anything that tried to escape found themselves corraled by an organized force of defender-class spirits.

Taylor wanted very badly to join them, but he wasn't in peak condition and should stick to his command role. Instead, he watched while the bright-haired paladin in literal shining armor danced and posed his way through the fight. He was an efficient fighter who didn't make unnecessary movements, but a few times, after a particularly impressive strike, he paused just long enough to draw attention before he launched his next attack. He looked like he was having fun.

"Anyone ever tell you you're a pretty fighter?"

"All the time." Taylor could hear his grunt as he finished off the last ent. Voices cheered, on the wall and outside of it."Jealous?"

Cadmius looked like every ideal of the noble knight come to life from every storybook, all rolled into one scintillating person. "… No."

The hunter team reported in, the ones he sent toward the hills to head off retreating monsters. "Dux, we found and killed seven tamers, all reptilian."

"That'll do for now. Form up for a send-off."

Taylor dispelled his camouflage and drifted to ground level near Cadmius. The man's skills weren't just system button-mashing. He didn't need a class at all to fight like a third-tier swordsman. From across the village sounded another round of cheers, as the matter of the breech was settled. It sounded like the city was firmly in the hands of government forces.

"Can I ask for a small favor?" It annoyed him that he had to look up to talk to the man, and that he was so damn pretty. But he wasn't such a bad sort, really. His biggest problem was that he was just too shiny.

"I wish you would. I owe you."

"Assemble as many people on the wall as you can get, to send off my spirits. They didn't get a proper invocation on the way in …"

"I get it." Cadmius clapped Taylor on the shoulder hard enough to sting through his enhancements. "I'll go farther than that. You form them up, and I'll make sure they're greeted with honor."

The armies formed up on a side of the city that wasn't covered in monster corpses and waited. When the north gate opened, a man emerged dressed in finely tooled leather and a gold-trimmed cloak, and a tall helmet with the imperial sigil worked in silver, surmounted by a steel coronet. He was the imperial in charge of the expedition and a prince, one trusted enough to hold some responsibility.

If Cadmius had said he was roping an imperial broodling into the party, Taylor would have called the whole thing off. But it was too late to get around it now. Prince Wolson strode past the wall as if it were his personal property and turned to face Taylor. He was trailed by the town's elderly legate, Cadmius, Commander Bolan, and several officers. Meltissa was there, too, pistols stuck into her pantsuit. Soldiers crowded the top of the wall.

Talor had his Army of Lightness behind him, the Army of Darkness on his right, and the Praxium Brigade on his left. He was well aware that this made him the most powerful summoner in the empire by a large margin. They were not here to report to the defenders, nor to salute them. Taylor kept his mouth shut because they were here to be thanked. He knew it. The IEF knew it. Cadmius knew it and looked entirely too amused by it. The prince knew it, too, but he was harder to read.

Commander Bolan stepped forward and spoke for his prince. "You stand before Prince Wolson, second in line to the imperial throne, Deputy Minister of Industry, and Prefect of this expedition. To whom does he owe thanks for this assistance?"

Corrupted iron ore. A mysterious metalwork facility in the capital. And here was a prince from the Ministry of Industry to clean it up. Taylor could almost praise him for coming out personally, but it would have been too unwise, even for him. Besides, he was more worried about the protocol here. Taylor couldn't bow to the prince. He wasn't here as a soldier, a legate, or even as a subject of the empire. Twilight had come to the empire's rescue – again – and deserved recognition as an equal power.

Hermes appeared by his side, and Taylor gave the ghostly butler the slightest of nods. He spoke for them in a hollow voice that filled the space between the spirits' formation and the wall, hovered over the prince and his retinue like an open hand prepared to reward or punish.

"You stand before Dux Twilight, friend to great spirits, conqueror of rifts, and summoner without peer. Arrayed before you on your left is the Army of Darkness, the Dux's Sword. They are led by Proctor Balhadra, Sword of the Southland and Matriarch of Magma, and Proctor Ramitha, the Ironwood Mistress and Dryad of Disaster. Their champion is Proctor Orangeatang, a warrior of legend who once fought for Darius the First.

"On your right stands the Praxium Brigade, the Dux's Favored Hammer. They are commanded by Proctor Dogenah, Flame of the East."

These announcements were interrupted by much cheering from the wall, especially in response to Orangetang's relationship to a historical figure. The proctor-level spirits, especially, had stories to tell. According to Saria, proctors held third-tier classes plus a range of special titles and tended to be quite old. Any one of them would have an interesting take on human history.

"It was our privilege to answer the call of our Dux Twilight!" More cheering. Taylor was glad to see his spirits get their due, but shoving him in front of a prince wasn't what he imagined. There were spirits on the wall, too, summoned companions of IEF soldiers. They cheered louder than anyone.

Taylor raised his arms, fingers spread wide, and reached for all his bonds with the members of both armies, then clenched his fists as if he had found and grasped some great force. He didn't like telegraphing his magic because it was tactically unsound, but on some occasions, a little form was required. He swung his fists down, and hundreds of simultaneous lightning strikes blinded the world and thundered off the nearby hillsides. When the stunned spectators blinked away the afterimages, Taylor and his armies were gone.

"Where did you go?"

"I'm on the battlefield," Taylor told Cadmius, "rounding up enslaved people. We saved most of them, but I'm not sure what to do with them."

"I can't see you. That's quite a trick."

"We're behind a camouflage screen. Can you send some wagons out here? Most of these people can't even walk."

Taylor and his spirits with healing ability worked their way through the field of battle. Everything was different on the ground than it was from the air. The stench of blood and viscera was sharper, and the ground was often wet. They had fought in fields of oat, the stalks grown tall enough to block his view. This year, the town would lose a quarter of its harvest. There wasn't anything he could have done to avoid it, but as the former legate of a farming town, he should have noticed sooner.

Some of the tamers' victims were killed in the fighting, their faces slackened by the total lack of will in their last moments. Others were missing, dragged off by released monsters as an easy meal; the only evidence of their existence was wide trails of blood leading to the hills. Survivors stared blankly at the sky. A very few could stand if prompted, and would even walk for as long as someone led them by the hand. Most of them, by their ragged clothes and thinning bodies caked in rock dust, had worked the mines for months. A minority looked like they had just been grabbed off the street that morning, including women and teenagers. Whoever selected them preferred beastkin and dwarves, obvious candidates for fighters. 

Those people hadn't asked to be part of a doomed army. They hadn't done anything to deserve enslavement or death. Taylor knew better than to blame himself, but it was hard not to when he could feel their souls lurking just out of reach. C'cora should have come for most of them already. Why hadn't he?

Taylor made his first detailed examination of a survivor, a female dwarf who looked barely touched by the episode. She lay on her back, sapphire eyes reflecting the clouds above her. Corruption had settled into parts of her brain and several other organs, leaving her healthy and utterly without her own will. He also found splinters of a substance that didn't belong inside her body, a malignancy that pulsed when he tried to touch it with magic. Looking at them too closely with mana sense made the otherwise passive woman squirm and groan.

It was fascinating, in a grotesque sense of the word. The corruption by itself wasn't enough to have this effect. It had to be driven by focused intent; otherwise, victims couldn't survive for months on end. Normally, they would liquify within a few weeks.

There was plenty to do while waiting for Cadmius to arrive. The wounded had to be staged for pick-up, a path had to be cleared for the wagons, and a location chosen for the pyre.