Key to Magic 03 King by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

Author:H. Jonas Rhynedahll
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Rhynedahll Software
Published: 2011-12-29T06:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

17th Year of the Phaelle’n Ascension, 52nd Day of Glorious Work

(Eighthday, Waxing, 3rd Summermoon, 1644 After the Founding of the Empire)

An unknown farmer's black bean field

Marching steadily at a pace synchronized to that of the brethren at his sides, Recruit Brother First Mhers risked a quick scratch at the fresh tattoo on his cheek. When Encourager Second Szhelm had applied the needle, Mhers had been too proud to wince at the pain, but now the symbol of his advancement in the Brotherhood itched abominably.

"No movement in the ranks!" Junior Ascertainer N'hil bellowed, who stomped along the moving line and then back-stepped expertly while he confronted Mhers. "The order was to stand ready Recruit! That mean's no scratching you stupid sod!"

Jolted, Mhers snatched his hand back to the pommel of his sword, freezing his upper body in the Ready stance: buckler held at his waist in his left hand with his right ready to draw. Satisfied, Brother N'hil stalked farther down the line, glaring at the ranks of the Seventeenth Cloister of the Fourteenth Holy Legion.

As a swordsman in the reserve, Mhers -- thankfully -- would not face the enemy's first blows. He was not a coward, but he was afraid.

He had become a Salient in order to free himself of the dictatorial confines of his tyrannical mother's household on Khikhos, save himself from the drudgery of a lifetime as a fisherman, and avoid the certain destiny of a marriage to one of the daughters of a neighboring family, whose females tended almost exclusively to the hirsute and heavy.

There were many zealots in the Salient Order, but, while he made the responses to the litany with quick enthusiasm and demonstrative fervor, he was not one of them.

Truth to be told, though he never dared put his doubts to words, he only half-believed in magic. He had seen the demonstration of Holy Relics in the guise of the far talking disks and other devices that his legion possessed, witnessed from a distance the might of the Holy Trio and of the astounding new Shrikes, and heard tales of the Emerald Gate and other fantastic salvaged apparatus, but it seemed to him that magic was no more a matter of spiritual belief than an axe or hammer. To his mind, these recovered wonders seemed more the product of lost scholarship than of a mystical power that no man could see and a scarce few could work.

A command echoed down the line and he halted in perfect unison with his comrades, forming an arrow-straight line across the crushed rows of beans. Thinking that the battle line of Droahmaerii thirty paces in front of him, a full legion three ranks deep, was about to make contact with the Mhajhkaeirii'n marines, he looked out beyond the spears and shields of the allied armsmen. The marines were normally lightly armed and armored, according to Junior Ascertainer N'hil, but could move quickly and were given to unorthodox tactics. Brother N'hil had said that it might be an intense fight, but with the odds looking to be more than two to one, it should also be a short one.

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