Shadow Cursed Read online

  Every night soldiers defended against the goblin attacks and the civilians had to repair the damage during the day.

  Central was barely hanging on. Food was running low and they had no access to the forest with the goblins entrenched only a short distance away from the edge. Munitions were almost gone and rifles were being replaced with goblin spears and other weapons gathered from the goblin dead.

  The greatest asset of Central could not be used effectively without ships and without trained artisans and more wood the mainframe’s stores of ship designs were almost useless.

  Gabriel gritted his teeth and pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He raised his voice to interrupt the officer, “We need to strike!”

  The tent became silent as everyone turned to stare at him but he locked his gaze on Esperanza.

  Esperanza asked, “How?”

  “We need to bring the fight to them where they feel safe and when they cower from the sun. We cannot let them have free rein anymore.” Gabriel turned his gaze around the gathering trying to catch every eye. “We need to adopt guerrilla tactics on their camps during the night and set traps throughout the forest during the day. When we’ve destabilized them enough we can harvest the wood we need to create a fishing fleet. We may even gain the time we need to build the second wall.”

  “Since you suggested it will you lead the guerrilla attacks, Gabriel?” asked General Allister twisting his moustache.

  “Yes,” agreed Gabriel feeling the sweat on his back freeze under the General Allister’s gaze.

  Esperanza asked, “How many men do you need?”

  Gabriel swung his gaze back to Esperanza, “About twenty to start with, preferably navy seals, green berets or rangers.”

  “Done. Take your pick of men and supplies, I expect to see results within a week. You may continue officer,” said Esperanza glancing at General Allister.

  Gabriel began to jot down names of men he had met who fitted the profile but on the twentieth name he hesitated crossing the name out and writing another, Jack Manning. A man he could trust and a man who knew how to fight.

  CHAPTER 32

  Cane

  Hours passed as Cane paced the area he had cleared and wondered what a four man crew could accomplish that one man couldn’t.

  His com unit buzzed and the director ordered through his earpiece, “Prepare to act as a jump focus.”

  Cane immediately moved to the centre of the room. A jump focus was fixed location that acted like a jump tower using a jump unit such as the one built into his suit. It made it possible to move large forces behind enemy lines or to remote areas that had no jump point. The suits AI would scan the area around it to detect solid objects and relay their positions to prevent two solid objects from occupying the same space during a jump. He stood as still as possible while his suit worked out its calculations.

  A message scrolled across his visor jump initiating in five, four, three, two, one… Four points of light flared around him and suddenly he was not alone.

  He felt his blood run cold as he saw the team the director had sent. Four battle armoured Enforcers. Their suits were designed for only one purpose - fighting. They had none of his suits stealth capabilities. The men wearing them were six feet tall and made even bigger by the armour they wore even bent over as they were to fit in the low ceiling room.

  A voice hissed in Canes earphones from the team leader. “We have arrived director.”

  Director Sutcliff replied, “You know what to do, deploy and prepare. Cane, remain where you are and be ready to act as jump focus again.”

  “Yes sir,” replied Cane. His heart raced as the Enforcers moved out of the room, closing the door behind them.

  Everyone knew about Enforcers. Wherever they went, death followed. They rooted out traitors, captured runners and occasionally fought against orcs and won. While their numbers were small they made up for it in brutal strength and firepower. Their weapons were superior to the battlesuits that other soldiers wore but they preferred melee weapons to projectile ones.

  If they were here something terrible was going to happen. He moved to the door and slowly opened it. Peering through the crack he watched them set stunner mines and web casters about the entrance of the house. They were obviously going to capture living dwarves for study. The thought sickened him.

  He watched as one Enforcer placed a cylindrical device in the centre of the room and began to secure it to the floor with bolts.

  Cane had never seen anything like it. His optics picked up the power source and the AI began decoding the script circuits inside. Cane stumbled backwards as the device’s purpose scrolled across the screen. High intensity antimagic bomb, radius approximately one mile. He voiced a command to find out more. Timing device, high power high intensity power supply crystal and hardened casing.

  He had seen small grenades with the same design used against orcs, the wave they produced reacted violently with the crystals imbedded under orcs’ skins, exploding and often killing them. A wave this powerful would overload and discharge every power crystal in the area. The resulting explosions would destroy every object with runes and everything around the objects.

  The entire population would be devastated, their weapons, amour, houses, and defences would be destroyed in an instant. Anyone near a rune object would be wounded or killed.

  What was the director thinking, thought Cane. He felt fear grip him as the door slid open and an Enforcer turned and saw him. Cane’s optics picked up scripts charging in the enforcer’s com unit as he changed to a private encrypted link which Cane’s AI refused to decrypt. A minute passed and the Enforcer strode forward and grabbed Cane by the neck lifting him effortlessly.

  The height of the roof prevented the enforcer from lifting Cane off his feet so he dragged Cane behind him. The suits AI flashed warning messages on Cane’s screen about the pressure being exerted on it.

  While the enforcers conversed with each other over the encrypted link the front door opened and a dwarf stepped into the room carrying a pickaxe.

  The enforcer watching the door activated a web caster which fired an electrified web of steel at the dwarf. The reaction time of the dwarf was amazing, he threw his weapon at the net pegging it to a wall next to the Enforcer, glanced around the room and then made a run for it.

  The dwarf managed to draw out a whistle from his shirt and blow a warning blast before the first stun gun fired and hit him in the back. The dwarf stumbled forwards, rose on one hand and blew the whistle again before a second blast hit him in the head. He crumpled onto the ground unconscious.

  Whistles began to blow all around the city as the warning spread.

  As the enforcers gathered round the unconscious dwarf, a female dwarf charged at them from down the corridor and slammed a sledgehammer into the closest enforcer’s helmet. She began beating him until he fell to his knees and was winding up for final blow when a second Enforcer backhanded her into a wall.

  She managed to stay standing but her weapon slipped from her grasp. The enforcer then blasted her in the chest with a stun gun and gathered her body up. Cane watched helplessly as the dwarves and enforcers disappeared in flashes using his suit as a jump focus.

  Dwarven children came running down the wide passage screaming war cries as they waved their practice weapons over their heads. The wounded enforcer casually removed a grenade from its suit and tossed it down the passage. The children ignored the object and carried on running even when Cane shouted a warning.

  The enforcer holding him slammed his head into the ceiling and then dropped him on the floor. He watched as the children were caught in the flames and concussion of the blast, then his eyes closed as a wave of dizziness overwhelmed him. He forced his eyes open a while later and watched the remaining two Enforcers stride forward and gather two children from the wreckage.

  One disappeared in a flash of light while the other removed a remote from his suit, depressing its button and a moment later the enforcer disappeared as well.<
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  The AI in Cane’s suit detected the arming of the antimagic bomb and realized the threat it posed to Cane. It tried to locate a jump tower but the faint signal had been cut off. The AI systems raced against the countdown for a safe option until only a blind jump remained.

  Three seconds from detonation, the suit used all its power to send him to a location beyond the blast radius.

  Suddenly Cane felt weightless, he opened his eyes and couldn’t remember closing them but the optics were dead and all he could see was darkness. Seconds later his body hit something hard, his minimal amour tore savagely and broke as he rolled down a rocky slope before coming to a stop.

  CHAPTER 33

  Carthus

  The smell of beer mixed with sweeter alcohols and sweat lay thick in the dimly lit tavern. The fire in the corner provided more smoke than heat but in the close confines and with a packed bar it was probably just as well.

  Carthus was growing weary of holding the image of Melthius around him while his head lay in a pool of beer. He had convinced Dalanius to invite Tagier for a drink in order to discover what was distracting Tagier but his plan was not going well.

  Tagier had barely touched his one drink while Dalanius had kept Carthus busy working magic all night to alter his own drinks so that he wouldn’t consume the alcohol. Unfortunately the magic wasn’t perfect and his head was beginning to spin.

  Finally Dalanius asked Tagier, “Where are you going?”

  Tagier focused his eyes on Dalanius and Carthus caught a flash of blue. “Dalanius, what if I were to tell you that all this fighting, all this death along the Barrier, will be for nothing.”

  Dalanius tried to sober up but his body resisted and Tagier split into two images in front of him. Tagier seemed to think he was too far gone to remember anything the next day so he continued talking, “The goblins are coming Dalanius, not in their hundreds but in their thousands and the barrier will fall before them.”

  Dalanius pulled his head off the table where it had somehow come to lie and said, “No.” Or at least that was what he tried to say.

  Tagier seemed to understand. “I didn’t believe it either until the Emperor told me that the Barrier has already been breached once.”

  Tagier was becoming a blur that danced in front of him and Dalanius felt the table beneath his head again and wondered how it had gotten there. “I was there,” whispered Dalanius.

  Tagier nodded, “I know, the Emperor sent me the documents about the breach. I recognised your name on the list of survivors, it’s the only reason I agreed to come tonight.”

  Tagier seemed to be struggling with inner turmoil, between rage and despair his fingers turned his glass in circles. Again his eyes blazed with cold blue light and Carthus finally recognised what he was seeing. “The Emperor wants me to contact another race and create an alliance with them, he sends me away from the Barrier when I am needed to train the next generation of guards in sword fighting.”

  Dalanius took it as a cue and tried to draw his sword. “I can fight sword.”

  The blue light vanished from Tagier’s eyes leaving only a vague silhouette in front of Dalanius.

  “I hope for your sake you can, Dalanius. If you remember anything tonight, remember this, there won’t be enough arrows to stop the goblins from gaining a foothold on the Barrier and you will need cold steel and blood to retake every step.”

  Dalanius heard a dull clanking sound close by and wondered why his foot was suddenly so sore.

  Carthus suppressed a grin and reasoned as the Emperor would have. Once the Barrier fell anywhere along its length, there would be no stopping the goblins. There would be no dwarven army to rescue the elves this time and the Riverlands would run with blood again. This mission could draw the goblins’ attention away from the Riverlands for a while and give his people a chance to master the way of the sword.

  Tagier tried to encourage the near comatose barrier Dalanius, to take up sword training again. A short while later Tagier gave up and left. Carthus lifted his beer stained head off the table and wiped his face clean. Next to him Dalanius appeared to have fallen asleep, snoring loudly in a puddle of beer.

  Seeing Dalanius unconscious before him he could imagine the Riverland’s fields sown with the bodies of elves. In all his years he had never used magic to change a person’s mind, only reason and logic. For once he was tempted, knowing that he violated his oath as a mage but he decided something subtle might work a compulsion that would wear off eventually.

  Whispering into Dalanius’s ear he wove a simple chant over and over into his unconscious mind, “Become a swordmaster, bring the blades of death to your enemy, let no goblin stand in your way.” As he repeated the litany he pulled a charm from his pocket and clipped it to Dalanius’s shirt binding the magic to the charm. So long as he kept the charm he would continue to hear the words when he slept and they would build within him until the magic ran out.

  Feeling a little violated by his own actions he left the bar trying to catch up with Tagier, and held the image of Melthius around him as he ran until he was lost in the darkness.

  Finally catching up to Tagier he began to use every stealth spell he knew, hoping it would be enough to give him the time to figure out how to get Tagier focussed on the mission. The image of Tagier’s eyes flashing blue kept haunting him.

  A cold wind began to stir the leaves hiding his footsteps but tugging at the robe he held tightly around himself. Ahead Tagier glanced round but his eyes passed over Carthus without stopping and returned to the seemingly random path he was making through the dimly lit forest.

  Carthus followed as close as he dared hoping the spells that blurred his form and silenced the noise around him held out.

  Tagier eventually stopped in a clearing where the circle of stone paving had been worn away by the feet of swordmasters as they trained decades ago. Grass struggled to grow between the cracks in the paving but eventually life would prevail in this circle of death.

  Carthus hid himself at the edge of the clearing and waited.

  Tagier seemed to explode into motion, one moment he was in the centre the next he had drawn both swords and struck an invisible foe to his right. He rolled backwards to dodge a counter move that never came and blocked another attack as he rose to his feet at the edge of the circle.

  Carthus blinked and Tagier had moved once again in an act that defied logic, leaping sideways and spinning in a tight circle parallel to the ground. He landed and barely had time to settle his weight before he swept forward in a fury of cuts and slashes.

  Carthus could feel the rage building into each attack as Tagier let loose his emotion the only way he knew how. His eyes blazed with blue fire lighting the circle wherever he looked.

  While the sword cuts grew more powerful with his rage Carthus could see that he was slowing down and his strokes were becoming erratic, not because he was tiring but because he was no longer in control of himself. He was literally tearing himself apart, each attack meant to wound or kill the demons within was hurting his ability and wearing down the defences he had built against the darkness he carried inside.

  The expedition needed Tagier to be in control of himself and if he continued to destroy himself on this battleground he could become a liability. Carthus knew that now was the time to intervene.

  Carthus drew on his least powerful spell and as Tagier launched forward in a brutal downward attack against an enemy an image formed before him for a split second of a child clinging to a log in a raging river of darkness.

  Tagier broke the attack at the last second and the blade slid over the child’s head. Tagier’s momentum forced him to leap over the illusion and by the time he had rolled on the other side and managed to turn round, the illusion was gone.

  Only then did weariness seem to hit him and he dropped to his knees. Carthus watched him sit there as sweat ran down his body cooling him in the night air. Finally Tagier moved to wipe the sweat from his eyes and for a moment Carthus caught sight of a tear
forming in the corner before it disappeared in a smear of dust.

  Tagier waited until his breathing had calmed then stood up and headed off in the direction of a stream to clean himself.

  Carthus stayed hidden for ten minutes to be certain that Tagier was gone, then began the return journey to their quarters at the Barrier using his staff as a crutch to favour his swollen knee.

  The tear could have been a drop of sweat but Carthus wanted to believe that the violence within Tagier was held in check by something greater. Time will tell, thought Carthus. For now Tagier had regained control.

  CHAPTER 34

  Magdar