Three boats against five. Thirty against a hundred—mages and musketeers, one monster and a diplomat against city militia. Armed with spears and a few bows, the enemy soldiers gaped as they drifted forward, still a hundred meters from Adarin’s boats. The illusion screen had to be that large to hide the waves they might make.

  Adarin and Francesco reacted at the same moment. Gray light flickered around Francesco as he grabbed Liora’s hand, using her magic to empower the illusion screen. Adarin felt the strange sensation of unreality creep over him as the veil extended. Francesco whispered quickly, even as Adarin shot forward, undulating at a vicious pace.

  ‘We’ve got three hundred meters’ radius now. No sound. Don’t make too big waves.’

  Adarin hissed back one sentence as he propelled himself swiftly though the stale muck.

  ‘Jam any magical communication.’

  Francesco gave a hissing sound in response, just as Adarin was halfway to the boats. Screams erupted from the city militia as they saw the huge swamp creature approaching.

  ‘Done,’ Francesco reported. ‘I don’t think they have any communication devices.’

  Adarin recalled the magical artifacts he had seen earlier—their crude equivalent of radios. A third of the way left. Then his mind kicked into gear and he began considering tactics instead of just brute combat. The enemy was barreling toward the city. They were trying to sabotage—control of the Dray River, and with it, their plans for lumber and coaling industries.

  Adarin made a split-second decision.

  ‘We take them alive.’

  The first boat closed to ten meters. Protestations erupted over the noospheric link, but he was focused on the target. He surged up and came crashing down hard on the bow, capsizing it in a cacophony of screams and splashes. Soldiers spilled into the water.

  Johan, who had been excluded until now while babysitting the last boat of musketeers, made a sharp cutting gesture. Suddenly the night blazed as enemy torches exploded—Johann had forced oxygen into them.

  Adarin smiled as all the light the enemy relied upon died at once.

  He heard splashes as several of their own musketeers, shocked by the blinding flare against night-adapted eyes, fell into the water. But Adarin was already on the next boat. Men screamed, spears jabbed. He slipped under and flipped the boat from below. What had been a combat-ready militia quickly turned into sputtering men without weapons, fighting their armor in the swamp.

  As he struck the third boat, he noticed Francesco arguing with two other mages. The three formed a ritual circle, and blue light erupted like lazy mortar fire. Dozens of cold-blue globes splashed into the water. The screams from the fourth boat went even louder as one struck among them—yet it did not burn.

  As soon as the globules touched water, they ignited into bright pillars of fire.

  Adarin was about to curse—Francesco playing with illusions again—when he realized what was happening. The illusion barrier was contracting, focusing, turning into a vertical pillar. Then the water around him grew icy.

  The spell was ripping heat from the swamp and venting it skyward as fire.

  Adarin grinned viciously as the screams of soldiers mixed with chattering teeth. He hit the last boat, herding its occupants as their own boats closed in.

  What had been a military force mere minutes before had turned into a sorrowful pool of men—some swimming, some desperately clutching capsized hulls or comrades, some already sinking beneath the swamp, unable to bear their armor’s weight.

  Adarin smirked. Let’s see… forty percent volume should be enough. “Attention, militia of Timberlanding! You are under arrest!”

  He made a split-second choice.

  “You face the Archmagister Rüdiger von Erlenwald. Surrender, and we will save you. Fight, and his magics will tear you apart.”

  Screams of terror and gasps of shock broke through the sound of drowning and teeth chattering.

  Adarin reached out to Francesco, who gave a wicked smile and cast another illusion. Suddenly, Rüdiger stood on one of the boats.

  Obviously fake, Adarin cursed inwardly. Idiot. Still—good enough to terrify drowning men.

  From there it turned into a rescue operation. His fangs alone did a good job convincing drowning men not to resist as he dragged them onto swamp islets. Adarin had expected trouble from prisoners—there usually was—but the icy water had robbed them of their will to fight.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  In the end, they counted ninety-one prisoners and nine corpses. The boats were dragged onto another islet, their planks hammered through with his tail—easy to repair, but impossible to fix quickly. The musketeers busied themselves binding and gagging the prisoners with their own underclothes while the sergeants kept order.

  Adarin reconvened with Francesco, still cloaked in illusions. Liora stood sheepishly at his side until Francesco gently supported her shoulder.

  “Tell him, Liora,” Francesco prompted.

  “I—” She swallowed. “Before the jamming cut the link, I told Commodore Ashfield to advance. I thought we needed it—”

  Adarin ground his teeth and tried to reestablish contact, but no. The noospheric link could stretch when already active, but establishing it at distance had proven impossible.

  He focused on Liora.

  “What did he say? He’s hardly going to take a flotilla into a swamp, is he?”

  Liora answered tightly, voice low.

  “He… he said he’s coming.”

  Adarin cursed. “Great. Another timer on us.”

  He studied their little council—Johann, Duchess Viola, Francesco, Liora.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  Liora shifted from foot to foot.

  “He said… he’s commencing the assault.”

  Adarin swiveled his snake head side to side. Assaulting the swamp? He considered the cold, competent, imperturbable man—and smiled.

  “My dear comrades,” he said, “I believe all we need to do is continue our mission.”

  “Francesco, how long until the ships arrive at the port?”

  Francesco hesitated, then nodded. Rüdiger’s eyes widened briefly in the projection, then the young mage’s smile spread. He too understood: the city’s militia had been committed here.

  Adarin nodded.

  “And I think Ashfield has enough experience to realize we have a chance.”

  He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. He had spoken with the Commodore about independent command—not blindly following orders, but thinking like a soldier—and Ashfield had accepted those ideas eagerly.

  If all goes well, we’ll return to a conquered city. If not…

  He gestured.

  “Johan, you’ll stay here with some musketeers. Guard the prisoners, we will need them later as leverage for negotiation.”

  He looked at Duchess Viola. She frowned, dissatisfied, then nodded with a sigh.

  “I suppose it can’t hurt. But after attacking their soldiers—aren’t we already at war?”

  Adarin shrugged.

  “They sent militia into a night fight in the swamp. I think the losses we inflicted were lesser.” He smiled broadly, tension rising in those around him. “And we haven’t raised their dead—so they have one less reason to be pissed at us.”

  Soon the guards were left behind and the strike force continued into the night. Adarin advanced with the rest, watching the battle unfold. The orcs were clearly trapped in a swamp full of pitfalls, tripwires, and nasty tricks near the city walls. The defenders had learned their terrain well—but it wouldn’t matter.

  The city had once housed nearly twenty thousand. Barely ten percent remained by their best estimate. And as they came under the shadow of the bastion, having circumnavigated the battle without incident, the reduced population became clear. The walls were maintained—barely. The bastion was underwashed by nearly three metres by the Dray River’s current.

  With gentle crunches, the two boats and Adarin landed on the rocky beach. The recess was deep and dark, perfect to funnel the explosion upwards to bring down the bastion. He assessed the tower that anchored the chain.

  Adarin considered just sabotaging the chain, but the bastions were the real problem. Better to have the fortress gone than leave such a threat to the Order’s economic interests. In their way, the bastion guarded both the swamp and the walls.

  As the musketeers began unloading the gunpowder, an older female mage gestured and summoned light around them, revealing the screen of musketeers.

  The light was cut off by a sickening squelch—the sound of a torso being sheared apart. Adarin spun and studied what he had thought were rocks. But no—the flat-topped, nearly one-meter-wide “rocks” had legs and massive shears.

  River crabs.

  One of the musketeers hissed, stumbled back, and fell. Adarin didn’t see what happened next, only the blood in the water. Liora scrambled backwards on the boat and crashed into Francesco, who—already preparing an electric spell—went overboard. The two mages splashed into the shallows and convulsed, stunned by Francesco’s half-cast spell discharging into the water.

  A strange slurping noise followed as the illusionary barrier around them collapsed.

  Musketeers lifted their weapons. Adarin lunged into the attack. Curses on his tongue. Shots rang out, most of them glancing off the crabs’ thick shells. He slammed into one of the creatures headfirst like a hammer—crack—a satisfying sound of its shell splitting. His tail whipped around like a bat, crushing another crab to the ground.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that made his stomach sink—golden flickers of light on the water. Torches. A patrol moving along the top of the bastion.

  “Fuck,” Adarin hissed, slamming his head into another crab. He extended his tail toward the two hulls carrying the gunpowder, dragging at least one boat further under cover.

  He looked up—straight at the murder holes cut into the bastion walls. From there, the defenders could drop anything: stones, oil, boiling water, worse.

  He imagined the screams already erupting above, though he couldn’t hear them clearly.

  Half of the musketeers were down. One mage had lost a limb. Another unleashed evocation magic wildly into the recess. Lifting the boats and men up like a Christmas tree. Duchess Viola was slapping at Liora, trying to wake her and Francesco back up.

  Adarin froze, paralyzed by indecision. His eyes darted between the torchlight on the wall, the swarming crabs in the recess that had seemed safe, and the powder barrels that could destroy the bastion if they got them in place.

  If we hide in the recess, we can’t blow it. If we don’t, they’ll start dropping death on us.

  He took a deep breath. Then he made a decision.