“Get to the horses!” I yelled, no longer concerned about bruising Millowend’s chain of command. It was my job to ward us all from harm, and the best possible safeguard would be for us to scurry, leaving our dignity on the field like a trampled tent.
The surviving penitents came charging up a nearby defile to the top of Montveil’s Wall. Caladesh met them, standing tall, his favorite over-and-under double flintlocks barking smoke. Those pistols threw .60 caliber balls, and at such close range the effect was… well, you’ve squeezed fruit before, haven’t you?
The world became a tumbling confusion of incident. Iron Ring penitents falling down the slope, tangled in the heavy bodies of dead comrades, imps dancing in green light, cannonballs ripping holes in the air, a lurching war machine—all this while I frantically tried to spot our horses, revive my mother, and layer us in what protections I could muster.
They weren’t sufficient. A swarm of small water elementals burst upon us, translucent blobs the color of gutter-silt, smelling like the edge of a summer storm. They poured themselves into the barrels and touch-holes of Caladesh’s pistols, leaving him cursing. A line of them surged up and down the barrel of Tariel’s musket, and the salamander faced them with steaming red blades in its hands like the captain of a boarded vessel. The situation required more than my spells could give it, so I resolved at last to surrender an advantage I was loath to part with.
On my left wrist I wore a bracelet woven from the tail-hairs of an Iron Unicorn, bound with a spell given to me by the Thinking Sharks of the Jewelwine Sea, for which I had traded documents whose contents are still the state secrets of one of our former clients. I tore it off, snapped it in half, and threw it to the ground.
It’s dangerous arrogance for any sorcerer to think of a fifth-order demon as a familiar; at best such beings can be indentured to a very limited span of time or errands, and against even the most ironclad terms of service they will scheme and clamor with exhausting persistence. However, if you can convince them to shut up and take orders…
“Felderasticus Sixth-Quickened, Baronet of the Flayed Skulls of Faithless Dogs, Princeling of the House of Recurring Shame,” I bellowed, pausing to take a breath, “get up here and get your ass to work!”
“I deem that an irretrievably non-specific request,” said a voice like fingernails on desert-dry bones. “I shall therefore return to my customary place and assume my indenture to be dissolved by mutual—”
“Stuff that, you second-rate legal fantasist! When you spend three months questing for spells to bind me into jewelry, then you can start assuming things! Get rid of these shot-fall imps!”
“Reluctant apologies, most impatient of spell-dabblers and lore-cheats, softest of cannon-ball targets, but again your lamentably hasty nonspecificity confounds my generous intentions. When you say, ‘get rid of,’ how exactly do you propose—”
“Remove them instantly and absolutely from our presence without harm to ourselves and banish them to their previous plane of habitation!”
A chill wind blew, and it was done. The shot-fall imps with their damned green light and their pointing and shouting were packed off in a cosmic bag, back to their rightful home, where they would most likely be used as light snacks for higher perversities like Felderasticus Sixth-Quickened. I was savagely annoyed. Using Felderasticus to swat them was akin to using a guillotine as a mouse-trap, but you can see the mess we were in.
“Now, I shall withdraw, having satisfied all the terms of our compact,” said the demon.
“Oh, screw yourself!” I snarled.
“Specify physically, metaphysically, or figuratively.”
“Shut it! You know you’re not finished. I need a moment to think.”
Tariel and Caladesh were fending off penitents, inelegantly but emphatically, with their waterlogged weapons. Rumstandel was trying to help them as well as keep life hot for the Iron Ring sorcerer that must have been mixed in with the penitents. I couldn’t see him (or her) from my vantage, but the imps and water elementals proved their proximity. Millowend was stirring, muttering, but not yet herself. I peered at the towering war machine and calculated. No, that was too much of a job for my demon. Too much mass, too much magic, and now it was just two hundred yards distant.
“We require transportation,” I said, “Instantly and—”
“Wait,” cried my mother. She sat up, blinked, and appeared unsurprised as a cannon ball swatted the earth not ten feet away, spattering both of us with mud. “Don’t finish that command, Watchdog! We all need to die!”
“Watchdog,” said Rumstandel, “our good captain is plainly experiencing a vacancy in the upper-story rooms, so please apply something heavy to her skull and get on with that escape you were arranging.”
“No! I’m sorry,” cried Millowend, and now she bounced to her feet with sprightliness that was more than a little unfair in someone her age. “My mind was still a bit at luncheon. You know that flying around being a hundred of myself is a very taxing business. What I mean is, this is a bespoke ambush, and if we vanish safely out of it they’ll just keep expecting us. But if it looks as though we’re snuffed, the Iron Ring might drop their guard enough to let us back in the fight!”
“Ahh!” I cried, chagrined that I hadn’t thought of that myself. In my defense, you have just read my account of the previous few minutes. I cleared my throat.
“Felderasticus, these next-named tasks, once achieved, shall purchase the end of your indenture without further caveat or reservation! NOW! Interpreting my words in the broadest possible spirit of good faith, we, all five of us, must be brought alive with our possessions to a place of safety within the North Elaran encampment just south of here. Furthermore—FURTHERMORE! Upon the instant of our passage, you must create a convincing illusion of our deaths, as though… as though we had been caught by cannon-fire and the subsequent combustion of our powder-flasks and alchemical miscellanies!”
I remain very proud of that last flourish. Wizards, like musketeers, are notorious for carrying all sorts of volatile things on their persons, and if we were seen to explode the Iron Ringers might not bother examining our alleged remains too closely.
“Faithfully shall I work your will and thereby end my indenture,” said the cold voice of the demon.
The world turned gray and spun around me. After a moment of disjointed nausea I found myself once again lying under sharp-elbowed Caladesh, with Rumstandel, Tariel, and my mother into the bargain. Roughly six hundred pounds of Red Hats, all balanced atop my stomach, did something for my freshly-eaten pie that I hesitate to describe. But, ah, you’ve squeezed fruit before, haven’t you?
Moaning, swearing, and retching, we all fell or scrambled apart. Guns, bandoliers, and hats littered the ground around us. When I had managed to wipe my mouth and take in a few breaths, I finally noticed that we were surrounded by a veritable forest of legs, legs wearing the boots and uniform trousers of North Elaran staff officers.
I followed some of those legs upward with my eyes and met the disbelieving gaze of General Arad Vorstal, supreme field commander of the army of North Elara. Beside him stood his general of engineers, the equally surprised Luthienne Alune.
“Generals,” said my mother suavely, dusting herself off and restoring her battered hat to its proper place. “Apologies for the suddenness of our arrival. I’m afraid I have to report that our reconnaissance of the Iron Ring war machine ended somewhat prematurely. And the machine retains its full motive power.”
She cleared her throat.