Wandering Warrior: Jury - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Pain was the best teacher I had ever known.  Not because it taught me what I should do, but because it showed me exactly what not to do.  Like, say, try to teach a barmaid lycanthrope shifter some magic spells with the potential to wipe out entire buildings.

“Okay, nice try, but this time you should be sure to aim the cone of destruction away from us.  Sound good?”  I coughed, waving away the cloying dust in the air.  The ever-present headache and pain in my chest that had stuck with me for the last month reminded me that I still wasn’t back to my peak, and my body certainly didn’t appreciate the heavy impact of rocks and dirt clods that had hit me after the explosion.  “It would go a long way toward keeping us in one piece.”

“Sorry about that, James.  It got away from me right at the end.”  Jess, the cat-eyed apprentice that I never asked for, did her best to shake out the dirt from her hair.  She avoided looking at me as she surveyed the destruction of the forest clearing around us.  “I’ll try it again with a focusing rod, like you said I should.”

Her training over the last few weeks had been steadily working toward these bigger spells, and I had been dreading it for exactly this reason.  Jess had a natural affinity with earth magic, which was like throwing gasoline on a bonfire.  Explosive.

“First, we need to move again.  Destruction like this is bound to draw attention, and we don’t know who’s still looking for us.”  I picked up my gear and tied it to the back of my new horse.  It had once belonged to the White Wardens and was trained not to run when things started to go boom, making it a great choice for a mount.  “Once we reposition to the west, you can try Earthen Eruption a few more times before we have to return to camp.”

Jess gave me a thumbs up as she packed up her own gear.  Her horse was another of the White Warden’s horses we had gathered up after they had been wiped out by the undead forces of the lich I had barely managed to kill a month ago.  I had nearly been killed myself in the battle, and even with my advanced healing and spells the recovery had been slow.

The damage I had suffered during the fight hadn’t been physical.  Well, it had definitely been physical, but it wasn’t just physical.  I didn’t have a quantifiable way to describe how I had been injured.

When I had battled the undead monster, it had gone in a way all twenty years of my experience fighting across twenty worlds hadn’t prepared me for.  The lich had wrested control of my body away from me after I had absorbed a fountain of energy from a place of power it had already claimed for itself.  That allowed it to use my body like a puppet, even without actually possessing my mind in the traditional sense.  I had fought tooth and nail to regain control of myself, and eventually found a way to break free.  The wounds from that confrontation still hadn’t closed properly.  My body was perfectly fine, of course.

Somehow, the lich had damaged my soul.

“How much longer until you think we can risk going into the city?”

Jess broke me from my inner thoughts, forcing them back into the present.  I answered with a shrug of my shoulders, not willing to voice a reply.  We had hashed over the same arguments as a group dozens of times, and always came back to the same answer.

Not yet.

Avoiding Greendown and all its hazards was the best choice for now, even if it meant I might fail my gods-given quests by running out of time before I was yanked off of this planet and sent to a different one.  Completely against my will, of course.  Like the gods always did things, year after year.

Being stuck in my twenty-seven year old body over the past two decades had made it hard to keep the sense of urgency necessary to accomplish the tasks I knew were expected of me.  It felt like I was an old man trapped in a young body.  I guess that’s kind of what I was, but I also knew if I ever wanted to make it back to my own world, I couldn’t hold back for too long.  We would have to go to Greendown sometime soon.  Just not today.

“All I’m saying is, I think I’m ready.  Even the Button Guild would have to think twice before coming after me now.”  Jess held up a hand as we led our horses side by side down the dirt track, making a fist with only her pinky extended.  “Stone Spears!”

Faint light glowed under the edges of her bracers and pauldrons for a brief moment before a good twenty pointed rods of black rock erupted from the ground in two neat rows along either side of the trail.  The runes I had carved into the underside of her armor plates were meant to focus and enhance the spells cast through them, which made Jess even more deadly to our enemies.  When she remembered to use them, of course.

“See?  That didn’t tire me out at all, and I placed them all perfectly, with no mistakes.”  Jess looked over at me with a smug grin on her face, obviously proud at how far she had come.

“That isn’t the point, Jess.  And I don’t think the assassins of the Button Guild are the kind of people who would confront you face-to-face anyway.”  I snapped my fingers, and her stone spears sank beneath the surface of the trail like they had never been there.

None of my armor pieces lit up like hers had, but I did have my own copies of the runes just in case I needed a little extra juice.  I had practiced with them a few times, and the results had been as dramatic as I had hoped.  The only downside was the materials the runes were carved in.  My armor was mostly hardened leather with wooden reinforcement, so using the runes too often would burn them out quickly.  Which was why I didn’t use them all willy-nilly.

“I know how the Button Guild works.  They make a chimney fall on you, some bad wine gets served only at your table, or a runaway freight wagon runs you over in a freak accident.  Supposedly, you never even see them before you die.  You end up in the cemetery, and weeks later the rumors start to spread that it wasn’t really an accident at all.”  Jess guided her horse around a stump in the trail, looking at her feet to avoid tripping over old tree roots.  “Between the five of us, I think we can keep anything like that from happening.”

“Look, I’m tired of sleeping on the ground, same as everybody else.  That doesn’t mean we should rush the process here.  Your training is going well, but that hasn’t been the case for everyone else.”  I held back the sigh that tried to escape at the thought of what I had been going through with Cross over the past few weeks.  “There are still plenty of…issues we need to work out before I trust everyone can handle themselves in a crowd if we get separated.”

Jess didn’t have an easy answer for that one.  She knew as well as I did that the three former Wardens in our group would definitely have a harder time in Greendown than the two of us would, despite the probability of hired assassins trying to kill us.

During the battle with both a member of the White Wardens–from what I had seen, they were basically this world’s version of the Spanish Inquisition–and the evil undead lich who had nearly killed me, I had redeemed Captain Cross from a disgraced member of the Blue Wardens to a fellow member of my own order.  I had made him a Judge.

Now, there were two of us on the entire planet, and sometimes I felt like it was one too many.  Most of the problems I was having came from the differences in culture between Cross and myself.  Passing on the skills of a Judge wasn’t all that hard.  The knowledge and wisdom of how and when to use them was a completely different issue.

“Does this work?”  Jess had led us to another clearing, this one much smaller.  From the small pile of weathered lumber left on the far side, one made for a purpose long-forgotten by the people who had clear-cut it years ago.  “We’ve been walking for quite a while.  I’m sure we’ve made enough distance between the other clearing and this one.”

I took a moment to look around and gave her a thumbs up.  “Looks good to me.  Try using the large focusing rod this time, and then you can move down to the more specific ones after you get the hang of keeping the spell under control.”

She moved off, taking the premade tools I had prepared to help with her training weeks ago.  I should have started with them in the beginning, but the mad rush of my first arrival on this planet hadn’t been very conducive to proper preparation.  Especially when I hadn’t even wanted an apprentice mage in the first place.  Now, I had both an apprentice mage, and an apprentice Judge to deal with.

At least I didn’t have to worry about what Jess would do when I left.  She was going to be a powerful earth mage, sure, but I had no doubt there were plenty of even more powerful mages running around somewhere if she got too far out of hand.  Cross, on the other hand…that was like I was leaving behind a kind of legacy, and I couldn’t afford to mess it up.

He was raised to believe the guilds on this planet were doing good things for the people, and they only needed slight adjustments to be put right back on the top of the proverbial food chain.  From what I had seen, they needed to be burned to the ground and then salt the earth.  Twice.

And that wasn’t even mentioning his views on some stupid book called The Oracle, which was supposed to be a direct line to the gods.  I was about ninety percent sure it had been hijacked by somebody decidedly not this planet's gods, if it ever had actually been a holy relic of some kind in the first place.  If I wasn’t around to argue with the finer points of right and wrong with him, he might end up taking orders from some dusty tome like some medieval form of text messaging straight from the desk of the bad guys.  Hence the importance of instilling a strict moral code that at least pointed in the same general direction of my own.

A powerful explosion rocked the forest clearing, nearly knocking off my straw hat.  I looked up to see a rather sheepish grin on Jess’s face.

“Sorry!”  She lifted up the baseball-bat sized focusing rod of carved wood and banded iron I had fashioned from a broken axle we had salvaged from an old freight wagon at the cheese factory south of Greendown.  The runes running up and down its length were meant to help control and focus the mana of a large spell, kind of like training wheels for a new mage.  “I already know what I did wrong.  Too much push into the end of the spell, and not enough emphasis on the targeting portion.”

“Look, you’ve already made enough noise to alert half the forest.  Just hurry up and get it right.  There’s no point in repositioning a third time.”  I shook the hilt of my sword in its sheath, making sure it was loose enough to draw in case I needed to pull it out quickly.  “It’s only a matter of time before we have some kind of uninvited guests.  I’d rather face them now, then lead them back to camp.”

“R-right.”  Jess gave me a shaky nod as her hands tightened around the focusing rod.  Talk of real enemies had her jittery, but I knew from experience that she’d shake them if things popped off.  By now, she was a veteran of several battles, and even I couldn’t call her a rookie anymore.  “I’ll get it this time.  No more mistakes.”

I positioned myself to better see both directions up and down the trail while she got back to work.  The rapid series of booms behind me seemed much more controlled, and I only had to brush off the occasional clump of dirt that came raining down from the sky.  It’s amazing how real danger can provide improved performance.

She kept at it for another hour, only taking a single five minute break to get a drink of water and allow her mana to recover a bit.  The drastic improvement in her ability to recover from spell casting was the biggest change I had seen in Jess over the last month.  It wasn’t nearly as pronounced if she was using non-earthen spells, but since that was our sole focus, I had no doubt she could keep it up for at least another hour or two.

But, that wasn’t going to happen.

After the fight with the lich, our little band of misfits had scrounged what we could from the remains of the battle, and traveled farther east, circling the edge of the forest surrounding Greendown.  It was the least inhabited section of forest even before the undead uprising due to the lack of natural resources, and now it was absolutely empty.

We had stayed on the move, avoiding the few major hordes of undead moving through the area, and taking down any smaller groups we thought wouldn’t be missed by the undead leadership we knew were still out there somewhere.

There had even been a few Warden patrols, but they made more noise than the undead.  It made for a miserable month of camping in the ever-present damp and almost daily rainstorms.  Keeping out of sight while we recovered had been necessary, though.  Necessity always seemed to make things more bearable.  And, we still ran into enough groups of enemies that keeping our skills sharp wasn’t a problem.

“Jess, I’ve got movement to the north.”  I didn’t exactly shout, but I wasn’t trying to keep my voice down, either.  There was no question whoever was coming had already heard all the noise we had been making.  “Grab the horses and swing to the west.  You can hit their left flank while I hold them at the front.  Make sure none of them escape, whoever they are.”

“You got it, James.  No one gets away.”  She gave me a sharp nod as she led the horses away, all signs of her earlier jitters evaporated in the afternoon sun.

I noticed a bit of tiredness to her steps that hadn’t been there before.  Maybe I should have stopped training sooner, especially with the expected confrontation coming.

No.  Jess would have to fight when she was tired far more often than when she was well-rested and fully recharged.  This was far better training for her in the long run.

Pushing aside my thoughts, I stepped out of the bushes and into plain view of the group approaching on the path.  I still didn’t know if it was wild animals, monsters, undead, or people, but it didn’t really change how this would ultimately go down.  Whoever it was, we would fight, and I would win.  There was no room for any other thought process.

Until Jess came running right past me, ducking low to stay out of sight.  I had no idea where our horses had gone, but her frantic waving caused me to let out a long sigh of frustration.

“What is it, Jess?  Why are you hiding?”  I motioned behind her, clearly peeved at the lack of horses.  “And where are our things?”

“Forget all of that!  We have to run, right now, or we’re going to die.”  The whites of her eyes were visible all the way around her irises, and I started to realize just how freaked out she really was.

“Calm down.  Tell me what’s going on.”  I leaned back to look up the path, my view still partially blocked by all the foliage and shadows cast by the trees.  If I couldn’t clearly see them, then they couldn’t clearly see me, either.  “You should know by now there isn’t much in this forest that I can’t handle.  What is it?  More dinosaurs?  Wendigo?  Some of those one-legged fae creatures that like to sneak up behind people and kick them in the butt called Paul?”

“No.  It’s much worse.  Green Wardens.  There’s two of them, and they have lots of friends.  A full platoon of Blue and White Wardens.”

“Well…shit.”