A Magic Broken by Vox Day Page B

mage or three, nearly anything that could be conceived could be completed. But a siege of these walls would make for a daunting and difficult challenge, especially with the forested hills that would surround a besieging army on every side and give cover to those charged to harry it. It was as close to impossible as any military task Nicolas had ever contemplated. Surely no general would be so mad as to accept a command that would not only require burrowing through solid bedrock but quite possibly subject his sappers to attack by dwarven countermines from below.
    Malkan’s northern wall was built in two rings, with the outer wall rising just past where the main pass leading toward the great gates briefly narrowed, but set back far enough that attackers could not try to descend upon it from the nearby cliffs. As they approached the outer ring, Nicolas saw a line of fifteen or twenty mule-drawn carts waiting to the side as an equally long line of carts slowly filed out from within, led by a pair of stocky, leather-armored Tessini.
    Nicolas grimaced, thinking of the toll that one battlemage supported by a few archers could inflict on a force being funneled through that gap toward the outer wall. Any archers making the difficult climb to the cliffs above to counteract the anticipated hail of missiles would themselves face a withering fire from the four tall battlements that surmounted the inner wall. It was no wonder that despite its riches, no one had tried to attack Malkan since the inner wall had been raised more than two hundred years ago.
    At the moment, however, it was not the walls that were his concern. The much more pressing issue at hand was a slender man in a red robe standing on a platform just inside the smaller gate toward which Nicolas and his guide were approaching. The robed man’s eyes were closed, and he seemed to be ignoring the people slowly making their way past the platoon of guards below. But Nicolas was quite sure this was anything but the case. He could feel the touch of the man’s spell as if it were the faintest of caresses, a thin web of invisible silk being cast delicately over the crowd in which he was trapped.
    “Ho, Ziano,” one of the guards said to his guide. “You’re back so soon?”
    “We took the Nuferan trail,” the guide explained, and a broad, yellow-toothed smile, the first Nicolas had seen on that leathery face, threatened to crack it.
    “Any trouble?”
    “Didn’t see naught but some troll tracks, mebbe two, three weeks old.”
    “It goes good then. Well done. One little moment.” The guard held up a hand and looked up at the red-robed man, who was pointing at Nicolas. “Him? All right.”
    The friendly smile suddenly disappeared from the man’s face, and the guide was staring at him as if he’d suddenly turned into an orc. “You some sort’o wizard?” the guard demanded, even as he stepped back a pace and put a hand on his sword handle.
    “Gods, no, I’m a soldier,” Nicolas lied easily. The guard wasn’t the problem. It was the red robe he had to worry about. “I was one of the Duc de Montrove’s cavalry captains. I managed to get out after the walls were breached, but, I’m sure you understand, I couldn’t stay in Savondir. I thought to come here and find work as a bodyguard, or perhaps join up with a mercenary troop.”
    “Bit late in the season for that, but mebbe you’re a lucky one if you got yourself out of Montrove alive. Well, if you ain’t a wizard, then you got anything that’s magicked?”
    “My sword.” Nicolas patted the hilt and ignored the knowing smirk that the guard exchanged with the mage. Half the men-at-arms and all the nobles in Savondir firmly believed their blades were ensorcelled with potent and deadly magics, although very few of them truly were. Nicolas’s sword was not, in fact, enchanted, but he devoutly hoped the men who were about to examine it would believe it was. Otherwise, his journey was on the verge of coming to a