Sachihiro

We walk another hour past two more estates flanked with threatening but curious guards and even a few onlookers clearly free civilians gawking at us before Vahe indicates the presence a town and a contingent of soldiers barring our way forward at the far side of the hill. ‘’Finally, these southerners show some spine,’’ Esuas echoes my sentiment and I can’t help but get nervously excited even as I asses everyone for readiness to do battle if need be.

The ambush by the mages has gotten a thirst for the fight burning in me again, something that has waned somewhat in my years as a responsible father. Children are a handful and I really don’t know whether I prefer them young and playful or older and vexing with cheek, so much cheek from my girls these past few years but their mothers get the worst of it thank the stars.

We walk the road at our leisurely pace, taking our time and chatting casually even with the potential fight looming just over the rise. We seem casual but we're ready and in formation.

I look at my babies Aurora, Ikigai, Hannah, Nikita and of course my babies by default Andrew, Hiro kids fathered by Om but raised by me and my wives these past 7 or so years. I gauge their readiness of what might happen if this turns ugly, are they ready to fight to the last breath I wonder. Their training is not an issue for I know all of them are much more capable and better equipped mentally than I was at their age, but are they and should they have to be?

Yea, the Barbaric spark for the fight has waned greatly in me and I suspect it is because the Rage has been denied me since Honour left my side back in Tiba.

We crest the hill and without even missing stride continue walking forward surveying the force assembled against us. There are about a 100 armed and armoured guards in the usual uniform armour and arms expected from a Sandersonian military division, its a big town behind them as we are almost at the heart of their kingdom. Six people stand in front of the group of lined soldiers, three of them in robes of blue in what I have learnt to associated with the uniform of magister magicians, two in casual clothing that doesn’t match any form of uniform I know of in the Sandie hierarchy but the way mana is quiet around them speaks volumes about them. I smile as I recognise the last one as a royal just by his resemblance to Brand, though I might be wrong.

We stop some 200 metres away from them, within spell ranger of the two I’m guessing are at the very least masters of their craft and ma and Zhen walk forward to do the talking. Neither of them carries weapons and ma hardly looks threatening being of size with most of their women. Five of the six mages step forward everyone eventually meeting roughly in the centre of our two parties, I disregard the discussion scanning the force before us and assessing any ambush points that they could surprise us through.

To be honest I’m surprised how seriously they are taking us. Sure our people were at war not long ago and they probably know that somewhere on their lands over 20 000 Barbarian warriors are working their way to make war on the Maori. But really, there are only 45 of us and though we bear arms and look fresh coming out of nowhere some of our party are clearly children by their standards. Children and women as I know in their culture women are sometimes relegated to an inferior role in society.

I notice no obvious duplicitous or hidden threats which doesn’t mean I don’t have a long rang death hex aimed at my head, I unnecessarily signal to Soal to be vigilant anyways. I can’t spot him either but he’s out there somewhere sneaking his way past the line of troops to see whats what with the town ahead of us. Though the fae or the elf would probably sneak past quicker they’d stand out in the town proper amongst humans making their talents mute.

‘’.... that is unacceptable, do not forget yourself. I myself am a Master of the kingdom and will teach you humility in the presence of your betters if your teaching is so lacking in etiquette.’’ Zhen says with sparks dancing on his robes happily as though playful nymphs eager to please.

Hmph, ‘’A Master that has gone native, do not think we do not know of you and your elk Master of Lightning Zhen, and please attack my subordinate, I dare you.’’ The response comes from one of the ununiformly dressed men, the ground rumbling enthusiastically at his feet as he suddenly seems larger and heavier somehow without having moved only to take a threatening step forward. So the negotiations are going about as well as I expected.

I again shift my focus looking for the threat I don’t yet see coming, that’s always the one to watch out for according to my Shadow Conclave teachers Anastasia, Pherastasia and Sergei. I’m starting to get frustrated at not being able to spot it as everything else the Sandersorians have done has been so sloppy that I could almost take offense at where they judge my level of intelligence.

‘’Found any hidden threats?’’ I eventually send to Vahe in frustration with a slight headache forming behind my eye from focusing my awareness to its limit distance for so long.

‘’Yes, but I can neutralise it so you need not worry,’’ the aggravating man says not pointing out where the threat is yet knowing full well I wanted him to point it out. I strain even further trying not to be undone, using both my awareness and eyes scanning around for any snipers or hidden mages that could have a clear vantage from which to sling a spell or weapon.

I focus on the talks again as ma signals for Mira to bring the handless mage forward. The man shuffles with his head down and eyes downcast though the hood we had the captives wear covers his head completely already. He keeps up though making sure the chain of the kusarigama wrapped around his forearm doesn’t tighten and rip into his flesh again. Mira has pride and arrogance aplenty as she surveys the four people as though they were beneath her, I smile, its been a while since I’ve seen that look.

She doesn’t spit at their feet thankfully but she stands there eyeballing then one by one before grabbing the mage captive by the scruff of his neck and shoving him at their feet to sprawl with a puff of dust unceremoniously as she brings her awakened strength to the fore.

Zhen suddenly looks older but quickly turns his expression into his characteristic old man scowl, Ava giggles but has the forethought to turn it into a cough looking at the sky to hide her amused expression. Rigdis shakes his head also amused but judging by the grin on his face and the sparkle in his eyes as he watches Mira deal with Sandorians.

‘’Anything else?’’ she asks ma, completely ignoring the outraged mages trying to talk over each other even with mana visibly fluctuating around them.

‘’No dear thank you,’’ ma says letting Mira retreat a few steps back before facing the mages fuming at the mouths with pinpricks for pupils. The female one is helping the captive up, she is red faced with anger and relief. So she knows him and was worried for his return, interesting.

‘’This is the witness and evidence of the attacks on our party by ranking mages of your kingdom that should know better after the peace that has been recently brokered between our people.’’ Ma says ignoring the charged emotions cutting through the bullshit without a hint of remorse or patience for these people.

‘’You dare, you come to our lands assault our people, a member of the Mageocracy and you dare sling accusations at us, woman you are very close to losing your tongue.’’ One of the mages says coldly, clearly feeling confident in his abilities whatever they may be. I assess him closely, spirit sense, mana sense, vibrational sense, soul sense and I relax, finding him wanting. Do these people really not know their own limits or is it us they underestimate? Or maybe I’m being too arrogant but assessing Zhen’s body language, who knows best what these mages should be capable of at their level they really aren’t all they think they are.

‘’Threaten her again and you die very painfully,’’ Mira’s voice cuts insidiously through all the emotions as a dark miasma leaks from her like smoke as she brings the djinn within her to the fore. Two of them take a step back, the woman with the flinching captive clinging to her activates a shield that does nothing to stop the insubstantial miasma from passing through eliciting a whimper from the package she hold in her hands before the spector of the djinn is gone like nothing at all happened.

*

Everything is civil and polite from then onwards with the mages promising to thoroughly investigate this ‘supposed’ attack on our persons while subtly enquiring of the Host’s where-about and what our intentions are and why we are so far into their kingdom. Ma secures lodging for us, an entire manor as they fear we will aggravate the locals if we are allowed into a public inn. Our host is a low level noble of little consequence with a manor just outside the city. I understand his status by the way in which we are thrust upon the ‘’lord’’ without much consultation from him.

The house is neighboured by two other similarly large houses on either side of it without partitioning walls about a 20 minute walk from the farming town of Maq inhabited by roughly 20 000 people as we hear it. Once I would have considered that not just a city but a metropolis but my standards have changed in the 30 years since I left home to get more cultured.

We secure the house as best we can, inspecting everything with da growling at the house lord whenever the man tries to bare our way. Within no time every room and hidden passage has been inspected and wards marked on the spy holes and escape tunnels that could be used for nefarious purposes against us, or by ourselves if escape becomes necessary. Dewan traps the estate grounds in case of unwelcomed guests with Vahe growing a tree from a seed within a few minutes with his magic on each side of the house as sentries.

We have a ‘liaison’ watch our every move, the young man that looks like Brand also looks nothing like Brand as his facial lines are tighter, sterner, his expressions more carefully controlled and his hands always hidden within the folds of the long round sleeves of his mage robes. Zhen leaves with ma, Sway and Tóma to enquire about things in the town and likely contact his old friends through long range messenger scrying. A service that magisters and master magicians can apparently pay for in this kingdom that trumps sending according to Zhen in that it’s a longer ranged form of communication.

I check on Katya after the privacy wards are activated by Cicilia, Ursula and Gaia working in concert. The tattoo of a laughing cat’s face on her thigh new and still worrying but the deal the Spirit negotiated for the privilege of being a passenger in her too good a bargain even with the inherent risks of dealing with Spirits.

‘’Are you still alright, no further discomfort?’’ I ask her probing her spiritually for anything strange that the passenger we picked up at the edge of the Red might be trying to get away with doing to her.

‘’Nothing has changed Master, the thing is sleeping and recuperating from whatever ordeal it survived. I am monitoring it closely as you said Master.’’

‘’Good, let me know if anything changes.’’ I say still not sure I made the right decision but the thing could not have lied, not after allowing itself to be bound by name to me so I could allow it into Katya’s body and I had ma and Vahe’s wisdom to peruse carefully to it’s choice of words when making the deal.

I walk outside where Onimorē, Ava and Michael are preparing to make a warding camp fire for us to sit around later tonight and plan our next moves with the information we currently have. Hopefully Zhen will be able to get in touch with more influential Master and guarantee safe passage for us but if not, well I’m tired of hiding and am ever prepared to kill. I look at Niki, interacting and laughing with Ingwe and a red faced John who doesn’t keep talking even though it’s evident from here that whatever he is saying is embarrassing him.

I look at Hannah distracting our ‘Liaison’ and the lord of the manor on the patio as the disgruntled man slowly falls to her charms as she flirts outrageously. I shake my head, what will I do with that one? I ask myself my eyes connecting with Kuyoki’s across the field who seems to have been thing similar thoughts, we smile at each other before she lowers her head demurely. Playing the exotic servant in the clutches of ‘savage barbarians’ with the maidservants of the lady of the estate in case we can get information from them.

Sirimiri is playing a similar role but as the servant of Vahe so he is with the stable hands and the servants tending the garden wherever they may have slunk off too.

I notice a very calm Rigdis walking towards me unhurriedly, something is off but I’m not sure what yet. I look around again to see if there is any noticeable change to my surroundings without being too obvious of my hyper alert state. We did find a few listening glyphs as opposed to the usual way of scrying the Sandies have been known to employ but ma would probably have been insulted had they not tried to drop eaves, I know I would have been disappointed. Everything seems fine though relatively speaking considering where we are but I am sorely aware that I am still young and new to my power to sus out the tricks of some these ancient fools that think themselves master and grandmasters.

Rigs stands before me looking at me in the eyes coolly, we are almost of a height but again he is slightly taller and wider. His eyebrows are dark and thick without being bushy, his eyes dark but reflective of light when it catches the. He seems relaxed, like he has discovered something vital and found peace with it or himself, odd time to be self reflecting but okay...

‘’I challenge you to a formal fight,’’ he says seriously surprising me completely. Here, now?

He gazes at me coolly, unchallengingly despite his words. But he is very serious and this is not something I can disregard as I have many others in recent years, he needs this I feel, I’ve been craving this.

I stop the grin bubbling at the edge of my face.

‘’I accept,’’ I say and he nods like he expected nothing else before turning away from me, a grin forming on his face as he goes to prepare.

‘’I want a rug, one hour,’’ he sends as he extracts a tent from his storage ring and starts setting it up hastily beneath a tree.

Right, one hour then.

*

Carl Woess

"You couldn't even have the decency to die when you realised escape was beyond you" Ramiel says scathingly. The disdain he has for me clear for all to see but I say nothing, clean and refreshed for the first time in days with the stumps on my wrists itching profusely from the expensive healing I now owe Sandra's House for conducting. It’s not the expense in materials that I’m currently worrying about though regrowing a limb is certainly not easy on the coin purse.

I look at her sitting next to me from the corner of my eye. I never used to give the woman or any in her faction the time of day and even now somewhere deep down I’m appalled at my actions clinging to her for comfort as I have but after what I’ve been subjected to I feel no shame in taking refuge in the embrace of a former slave. I may even understand her faction a bit better actually as small and marginalised as they historically have been in the kingdom they are probably the most resilient mages we have if slavery is anything like what I've been subjected to, and to pull themselves from that...

No one trusts them though, who can blame us, even now they are probably silently plotting the overthrow of the entire kingdom. It’s probably only their low numbers and the fact that not even one former slave has reached grandmastery yet that makes them so impotent in the true running of things.

"What are we to do with the Barbarians?" Lady Zanele asks, worry, vindictiveness and fascination warring with each other on her face. Her foot stops tapping and she stands, her consort silent watching everything in the eerie way the man does since his head injury.

"Grandmaster Hyde advised we watch and wait until a representative of the Internal Ministry has a chance to speak with them. Do not forget there is an army of them roaming around out there somewhere."

‘’You mean commanded we do nothing, this area of the province is under our banner for a reason. Where does he get off telling us what to do when we find invaders at our doorstep.’’ Lord Erusmas says, his water mana steaming off him in hot waves as he grumbles, his favourite slave pink skinned as she endures the heat at his feet. "We should have marked a path for them so we can watch their progress carefully now we no idea where they are."

" I wonder how they crossed the Red," Master Selena says to no one in particular, then her uncanny eyes rest on me. I’m immediately uncomfortable under her gaze, the woman has been a master magician for over a 100 years now, the is no telling what she is capable of.

"Maybe they are all dead and these are the last survivors of the entire war party, devastated by some Ancient Beast they pissed off with their arrogance." Ramiel says hopefully, its evident he doesn’t really want to deal with this. The man might be a House raised mage but he is first and foremost a ruthless businessman and this will affect his bottom line I imagine. He looks at his father’s other son, the one that will inherit the title and lands but the ever quiet Raguel says nothing but somehow Ramiel seems to have gotten a response.

"One could only hope but sadly they don't seem to me like desperate people that want to go home. They aren't even heading north and they have a fae with them if Magister Carl here is to be believed " Master Selena says waving a hand towards me dismissively.

They all look at me but I see disgust and pity on a lot of eyes as they swing towards me. I don't mind, I’m a sorry sight I know but by gods I'm the only surviving mage of that ill conceived attack and that counts as something. I'm lucky to be alive really. I say nothing but try to keep an eye on Master Selena, a dangerous conniving woman that, nowhere near as transparent as the others.

A novice mage messenger rushes in with a sealed scrolled fresh from the messenger scribes. As the most senior magus in the room Selena unseals it, her mana signature captured somewhere by the Messangers that she is the one that opened it before she passes it to Raguel. Meaning its a message from the crown and not the Mageocracy, the Lords take president. He reads it and floats it to his brother without word or reaction. Ramiel unrolls it and grunts floating it back to Master Selena instead of the next Noble peer in Seniority.

‘’The Crown commands we do nothing, representatives from Elysium will be here tomorrow.’’ He says summarizing for everyone, a slightly puzzled tone in his voice.

Another messenger sidles into the interior chamber of the open warded interior courtyard of the Maq oratory. Slaves are not usually allowed this deep into meeting building unless they are accompanied by their masters, even then it’s considered rude. So whatever the lanky half named man is whispering Raguel’s primary advisor must be urgent or dire. A servant walks in a moment later handing Zanele a note, another enters and goes to a corner who’s inhabitant I didn’t notice.

‘’What in the name of the Seven is going on?’’ Erasmus again fumes but its more an irritated grumble than actual hostility as another servant walks in for a note for a lord who’s manor neighbours the one the barbarians have been placed in.

‘’The Barbarians are doing something,’’ Zanele says with a frown, curiosity clear on her face.

‘’What are they doing now?’’

‘’Who do we have scrying on them?’’

‘’Our scrys are blocked,’’ someone responds with a grumble.

‘’Even that girl of yours, what’s her name, sees nothing?’’ Another mage asks hopeful, some are probing at each other I notice. The discussion is on now and everyone has their two Dari to say about how they could probably get eyes and ears in if only they had this or that.

‘’Why don’t we just go watch them?’’ someone says, the figure shrinks under the silence and gazes falling on him for the question.

‘’We’ll send some ahh... sentries to keep an eye on them. I’m sure Lord ahm... what’s his name?’’

"Peter, Lord Peter Staff,’’ the neighbour supplies speaking for the first time.

‘’Yes, I’m sure Lord Staff will appreciate red blooded Sandorian guards with mages almost them on his property keeping an eye o things. If they ask we’ll tell them this is to guarantee their privacy from the general populace and keep everyone safe,’’ Raguel speaks over most people until only his voice again remains.

‘’And of course said mages will provide a direct all seeing eye,’’ Master Selena says whilst standing and giving instructions.

I keep my mouth firmly shut but I have a bad feeling about this. Barbarians are much smarter and capable than we have all been led to believe, the evidence of their ability is evident in everything they’ve so far accomplished the least of which repelling our army at their gates. But still somehow we’ve kept underestimating them over and over, it must be their rough language, public debauchery habits and general drunkardness while valuing brawn over brain. I’ve seen the light though, I use the fabric of my bandages against my tight to try and relieve some of the itch from my stump.