The Failed Mage

Killing was hard work. That was what a certain failed mage on the battlefield thought. His name was Lawrence Cazwick, a mercenary swordsman with some small magical ability. He and his men were taking a quick breather as they waited for their next orders, which would inevitably come at any moment.

The man had been in too many battles to count and half as many mercenary companies. These days he preferred to work alone, though now he was with other soldiers and mercenaries for the war effort.

“I… hope… they don’t send… those cavalry men back,” Isao panted as he rested in a sitting position, his legs spread.

The small company had just repelled an enemy advance and Lawrence was thinking the same thing, though he wasn’t half as winded as the men he fought with. “We were lucky to be atop this hill,” the failed mage said.

Hikaru, taller than the average man of these parts, nodded, his fingers visibly tightening on his katana hilt. He was a samurai and wore the customary close-fitting leather armor of his warrior class. Isao was a spearman, the shaft of his weapon lay at his side. The other men—other yari spearmen, samurai, and a few archers—milled about, looking expectantly across the battlefield.

Lawrence couldn’t see anything, though he could hear the clamor of battle, the cries of men, both in fury and in death. Today they weren’t fighting a normal foe and the assault they had just repelled had not contained any enemy units they were meant to destroy in this area.

“Where are they, Kazu-wikku?” Nishi, another samurai asked as he wiped dirt and sweat from his face. “Honorable mage?” he prodded when he didn’t answer.

His name was Cazwick, but the local language didn’t permit the people to pronounce it correctly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Be ready.” Then louder he called, “Be on your guard. They could ambush us from the tree line.” He pointed, emphasizing the area below, the same direction of fierce battle. It was coming closer. “We were sent here to take this hill. We were fortunate that our enemy did not see the advantage in taking this position before our own generals did.”

We might need this position, he thought, for our retreat.

A portion of the army would hold the enemy here while the rest of the forces escaped, very likely dooming the men holding this ground. Well, Lawrence wouldn’t die here. He wasn’t held to this post by any honor—he was a mercenary—a failed mage, though he didn’t let on about it.

“Are they coming?” Isao asked, speaking of the increasing pitch of the skirmish taking place behind the tree line. The fighting was quickly nearing their position and a horn blew, one of their own.

“They’re recalling cavalry?” Nishi asked.

Hikaru moved toward Isao and lightly kicked him on the thigh. “Get up, you rat.”

The spearman quickly obeyed, grabbing up his weapon. He loped off toward the rest of his squad at the front of the group.

“Pike line!” Lawrence called, “Three rows!” He wanted a nice long line of pikes up front, the samurai would be the reserve force to reinforce any breaches in the line, with the archers waiting patiently behind the lines.

“Prepare to break!” Nishi called. He was Lawrence’s second, a reliable warrior, an even more reliable man.

If a troll broke through those trees to charge them on the hill, their force would split into multiple small squads. That was how you dealt with a troll, otherwise they would smash your pretty little lines to pieces. But if the enemy brought their own squads to bear on them as well, things would be much more complicated. Each squad would work almost independently of one another, taking orders from their own captains unless otherwise given other orders by Lawrence or Nishi.

The underbrush at the foot of the trees moved, the screaming and yelling and battle cries of fighting men only a few feet behind them.

“Get ready!” Nishi called, more to Lawrence than to anyone else. The failed mage still thought that was funny.

They don’t have me lead for no reason.

He watched the tree line. He missed having proper shield bearers, but they didn’t have those in these lands—none that he’d seen before anyway.

Men poured out of the tree line, their backs facing Lawrence and his small force atop the hill. Their colors were wrong. They were red and yellow, the same colors Lawrence and his forces were wearing. They were the colors of daimyō Isekio, their own lord!

They were retreating fast. Most of the men turned and ran up the hill.

“Cowards,” Nishi spat. “Turn and fight!”

They weren’t bad soldiers. Many of them turned to hold their ground again in front of Lawrence’s pikes. They knew they had reinforcements now.

Their commander lumbered up the hill to Lawrence and Nishi, a harried look on his face, a bit of blood and dirt in his bandana. He bowed quickly. It was Captain Hiyashi. “Forced to retreat. A troll just beyond the tree line,” he said, pointing.

Lawrence liked his battlefield communication style--truncated and as to the point as possible. The failed mage nodded, turned to Nishi and gave the order. His second barked out the order for the force to break up into squads, each force containing pikes, katanas and bows. Even in a small squad, a force of combined arms was much more effective against enemy attacks because of its versatility.

“My men are exhausted and wounded,” Hiyashi said, a dour look on his dirtied face. He liked to fight with his mask split, opened to providing small panels of armor from oncoming attacks from his sides, but leaving his face unarmored for easier fighting. “We will assist you as best we can by keeping their support forces off your backs.

Lawrence nodded and they waited.

The enemy appeared from behind the tree line shortly afterward. Nishi gave the signal for the archers to let loose and shafts flitted from behind them, came back down to hit their marks. The Xai Qi forces were spread out in loose formation to avoid the arrow shafts. Enemy soldiers fell intermittently, many of the crying out as they did so. Volleys often lamed enemies on the battlefield, leaving them to die days or even weeks later without proper medical or magical aid. The archers were more of a cumulative, disheartening tactic at this point.

The Xai Qi archers loosed their arrows as well, but Lawrence’s forces took even fewer casualties, as they were atop the hill and the arrows had less penetrative force when loosed from below. Bucklers came out, but they provided little protection, though they were better than nothing.

“It won’t be long before they send their troll up this hill, Kazu-wikku!”

“I know.”

Just then a tree cracked over, its canopy crashing to the ground and sending several Xai Qi soldiers scurrying for cover as an enormous, hulking savage stepped out of the forest. Twelve feet tall, arms like tree trunks and legs like bulwarks, the troll came forward, covered in armor and ready for battle. There were multiple arrows jutting out of the armor on its shoulders and back, evidently the shafts that had been loosed from Captain Hanashi’s men.

“That sword…” Hikaru murmured, holding fast to his katana hilt sticking out of its sheath at his hip.

“Just keep your men away from her while I take it down,” Lawrence replied. “And keep those Xai Qi soldiers off my back.”

The enemy forces consisted of as many varied troops as their own, except they had no pikes. But what they had that Lawrence’s forces didn’t was cavalry—mounted men with yari spears.

“You can count on us,” Hikaru said. He barked out an order and his squad moved forward, pikes up front, samurai behind. Most of the archers would remain on the hill, detached from the rest of the force so they could remain as mobile as possible.

“Nishi, make sure the archers don’t get flanked by their cavalry.”

The samurai commander nodded, holding the hill as Lawrence and his men charged, rushed down the hill, spearmen with the intent of going straight toward any adventurous cavalry.

Xai Qi arrows flitted past them, some arrows struck, but most of the men were wearing scale mail armor which deflected a fair amount of incoming arrows.

The troll, large and snarling as ever, roared, the sheer onus of its battle cry almost seemed to shake the air itself. Yari spears and samurai alike slowed under its offense. But this wasn’t the first time any of them had faced a troll. In fact, they were a troll killer force.

Unheeding of enemy arrows, Lawrence rushed the troll as he unsheathed his sword. The creature cocked its head in apparent surprise before Lawrence swung his blade in an overhead arch, but the troll parried his blow with its armored forearm. It attempted to sweep the failed mage aside, but Lawrence rolled from its reach, spun on his heel and stabbed his blade toward his enemy’s thigh, his blade merely glancing aside.

Difficult to get in the gaps, he thought as he turned and began slashing at Xai Qi archers, deflecting arrows with his blade in short swift strikes.

The failed mage paid little heed to his peripheral surroundings as Nishi and his samurai, along with their yari pike counterparts, joined the melee. Men fell, screaming, grunting, and howling battle cries. A bloody samurai fell before him, but Lawrence ignored the dying man, jumped over his soon to be corpse and went after the troll that had completely forgotten about him.

The brute was moving laboriously up the hill, grunting and hulking like an oversized swine when the failed mage swiped his blade upward, bringing the tapering edge through the flesh at the back of the troll’s armpit where there wasn’t any armor.

The troll howled, turned and swiped its long cleaver of a blade in blind fury, but the attempt was a failed one. Lawrence had already backed away. The troll paused for a moment, eying him as pikes from atop the hill began to fan out for the inevitable fight.

The troll looked at him, narrowed her eyes and with a baleful look of teeth and saliva, turned about and pursued him.

He taunted the enemy by goading the lumbering beast. It roared in fury and charged him. One wrong move and the failed mage would be a dead failed mage. Surprisingly the troll attempted to stab him with her blade, but the mercenary stepped aside, not bothering to parry such a large blade and rejoined the attack with his own sword, but the troll pulled back, narrowly missing his blade.

“You fight carefully,” Lawrence called. “What kind of troll are you?”

A narrowing of those big yellow eyes told the man that the troll wasn’t going to fall for his taunting.

She’s smart, he thought. Usually it was easy to goad a troll into a blind fury so that it would, though incredibly dangerous in this state, act stupidly in a low-form brawling way. She’s experienced.

Something hit the failed mage in the back of the arm. It hurt, but he paid it no mind. But when the troll’s eyes narrowed in on where the pain was coming from, he glanced down toward his upper arm to find a bloodied shaft and an arrow head. She lunged while he was distracted, her blade nearly slicing him in half, but Lawrence, distracted, managed to lunge for the ground. The blade came back, but he rolled from its edge, the arrow sticking through his shoulder exploding like fiery pain.

Men shouted and the troll roared another thunderous blast as the spearmen jabbed at it. Three of them were swept away instantly, two of the men didn’t even have a chance to scream their death cries before their bodies were crunched. Lawrence never saw the ragdoll forms come back down, not while he was getting up, moving in for a killing blow.

He shot out his hand, pulled the element he was known for, and screamed as many of the archers on the hill surely found the fires on their arrow tips sucked away. The troll turned to face her attacker with a fling of its tree-trunk arm, but Lawrence crouched to avoid the blow.

He came back up and volleyed a fireball into the trolls face. It’s mouth was open mid roar and the back of its neck exploded in blood and fire. It stood for a moment, already dead before falling heavily, face-first into the grass.

Lawrence jumped to avoid the creature crushing him. By the time he got back up, which was only half a moment, the Xai Qi retreat sounded.

Their forces cheered and out of excitement for the battle, naturally pursued, until their own horns blew in recall of the scattered squads, calling them back to the hill.

This hill had been won, but the battle today was far from over, and Lawrence was bleeding profusely from his wound. Two samurai rushed to his aid, lending him their shoulders when he collapsed. He closed his eyes, feeling his legs hauled up as he was carried back up the hill. The magical healers would be stationed in a tent near the command area. They were too valuable to keep on the battlefield proper—that was a place for lesser healers.

“Well done,” Nishi called to him, shaking his good shoulder. “Another one down. We will win this battle!”

The failed mage blinked his eyes open. “I hope so.” He had a lot riding on this battle. He may have been a mercenary, but he had built his life in Omosaku. Having a Xai Qi warlord take it wouldn’t do. “I’m planning to retire you know.”

Nishi laughed. “And you will, my friend!”

Lawrence smiled just before losing consciousness.