Majutsu-shi no Chikara
loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"
CHAPTER 2: Burning Daylight
The cold, gray morning was still, in South-wold. Water dripped from the thatched roofs, soaked in the storm's deluge the night before. Thick gray clouds weighed heavily in the sky, a spear-throw above the plains. The ground, speckled with scorch-marks from magical fire and lightning, was a soggy, muddy bog, several inches deep. It was as though winter had stolen into the night after the fighting died-down and smothered the flames. Large chunks of ice, easily the size of a fist or small melon, were scattered throughout, and thin white smoke wafted up from charred wreckage that might once have been the bodies of orks.
The hunters and warriors were the first to return, their spears and axes testing each ork carcass as they went. Every few corpses, they would stop and kneel -- identifying the remains of one of their friends, one of their family... they lacked the strength to mourn, and the unnatural chill of the air spurred them to their task. Searching the homes, shacks, sheds, barns, and stables, a single, shrill whistle sounded the all-clear. It was a joyless return home, for the survivors.
"What have you done, Matta?" Elder Shaum's voice was scarcely audible, but the Sorcerer looked up from his ashen hands with unfocused eyes.
"...rain..." Matta whispered.
It was the only thing he said for several minutes -- even as children returned and the village, as one, began the laborious task of picking up the pieces of their lives and clearing the wreckage. The stronger youth were set to clearing the ork bodies, while the more nimble were tasked with gathering the animals back from the fields whence they fled.
When at last Matta pulled his body up from the mud, he looked defeated... broken beyond even the ravages of age. Shaum had not left his side, the pain and betrayal written in his face as he surveyed the ruins of three generations.
"Where are the others?" Matta's voice was weak, far softer than ever Shaum had heard.
"Dead." Shaum grunted. "I will lead the selection of a new council, once our dead are burned. I will ask that they spare you, if you yet live."
The threat was heavy in Shaum's words, but Matta only nodded thoughtfully.
"I will seek to apprentice as many of the young as possible." Matta sighed. "You will all need to be ready, when the Tower's hunters come."
"That is not my concern." Shaum coughed, and then rubbed his face. "Damn you, Matta. You were never this reckless...even at your worst, you never..."
"I know, Shaum, I know." Matta's body shook with shame. "I am a shell of the man you knew, but..."
"I counted twelve dead, alone, as I stood here." Shaum's voice conveyed his anger, even though only Matta could hear him. "Twelve of
my
children and grandchildren, Matta. My family is culled, to wither on the vine."
Shaum's voice cracked, and fresh tears flowed down his face.
"I'm sorry, my friend." Matta wept with him. "I tried... but I..."
"You may find, Matta..." Shaum turned slowly, his face filled only with great sorrow. "...that your magic has taken all your friends in South-wold."
Matta nodded, his hands covering his eyes, unable to look Shaum in the face.
"I spared as many as I could -- but the orks..." Matta's voice was a faint whine.
"I know, Matta." Shaum's hands flexed feebly and he turned away, taking a shuddering breath and exhaling cavernously. "You saved South-wold... but you have murdered us all."
"Who remains that may speak to me?" Matta sniffed, wiping his face and coughing a gob of phlegm into the mud. "I know I cannot ask of you."
"Anyone else alive." Shaum sighed again, finding a steady breath far between his own quiet sobbing. "Few enough saw what you have done -- fewer still may blame you as I do. None of them, save Bhosti, would blame you as I do... and she, too, is dead."
"I would beg your forgiveness." Matta bunched himself and struggled to his feet with noisy grunts and cracking of joints.
"And were we newborn, we would die of old age before I forgive you ever again." Shaum clenched his jaw and nodded resolutely, his eyes traversing the wreckage once more.
"And in two more lifetimes, I would still beg." Matta said, and Shaum knew it was true, but the Sorcerer knew he would never be forgiven by the other. Shaum only nodded once, his eyes dry for a moment. Of his surviving children, Shaum's eldest daughter approached.
"It's bad, father." her jaw was set, and the pain in her eyes was fresh. She had been crying. They all had been crying.
"Yet I would have you tell me, anyway." Shaum stepped forward and embraced her, laying his aging body against her and leaning on her for strength. "Gods, let it break me to hear it -- and none of you should suffer so."
They wept together for several minutes, accompanied by other wailing families, friends, and loved-ones. In all of South-wold, a village of more than one-hundred strong... only three score and six remained. The only mercy -- if that gray day of ash, mud, and tears could be said to have any mercy -- was that there were no gravely wounded among the survivors, and only three of the younger children numbered among the dead.
By midday, as the sun shone like a brilliant moon through the clouds and the air was still full of winter's chill, it was known that several men were missing -- and new dread filled their already wounded hearts.
Already racked with grief, there was little left but a clenching horror at the fate they would face in an ork war camp -- and the torturous deaths that would follow.
For the survivors, it seemed a truly bitter victory that the livestock were all recovered, few of the houses needed any urgent repair, and the Sorcerer that had rained destruction upon South-wold had survived. Odd, then, when it was also discovered that the fields -- so laboriously plowed and seeded in hope of rain -- had sprouted, rather than being flooded-out. That alone was a minor miracle. For all the flooding within the living spaces of the village, and the wreckage of fences; and the loss of life... the seeds were sprouting.
Warring emotions kept the village muted as mid-afternoon saw a breaking in the clouds, and the oppressive glare of the sun seemed to boil the mud into cracked rivers of clay... even as the fields gripped their moisture in defiance and the tiny sprouts basked in the light of life. Whatever sins Matta had committed that night, it was undeniable that the Sorcerer had also called the life-giving rains to their fields -- and the village would see a bountiful harvest... those who yet lived to see it.
"Matta." Shaum offered a simple wooden drinking ladle of water to his fellow ancient. "It is time."
Matta looked up from where he sat, lost to his thoughts all that day until this moment... seeming to have just risen from a fitful sleep, possessed of a strange vigor that belied his age.
"I accept this gift of water." Matta said ceremoniously, and Shaum blanched but nodded in answer. The ancient Sorcerer cradled the vessel in both hands as one might a wounded bird, and drank deeply, not a drop escaping the corners of his mouth -- though it seemed he must be holding his breath unnaturally long to quaff with such thirst. When the ladle was emptied, Matta sighed and offered the ladle back to Shaum and dared to meet his eyes.
"Know this, Shaum..." Matta stood, his body shaking with effort, but his eyes steady to the other Elder's gaze. "I should beg your forgiveness were I to live a thousand lifetimes."
"But you cannot live a thousand lifetimes, Matta, anymore than can I." Shaum offered a cheerless smile. "Know that I will content my spite that no more of my family die before you are forgotten."
"I pray it so." Matta nodded thoughtfully. "Do you think there are any ready to speak with me?"
"I pray none of them ready... if I know your mind, or what's left, as once I did -- I do not like your thinking." Shaum frowned, now -- becoming the voice of a man with practiced skill in speaking as Matta's peer for many years. "The Tower will send hunters, especially if that messenger -- I hear your eyes call him
assassin
, but he carried his message -- if that messenger returned to Renks Cairn... if he died, or was captured by the orks, the best you can hope is that the Tower's replacement finds your cold ashes among the fields."
