Unchosen Snippet I

Watchtower seventeen was perched atop a slight rise overlooking the tiny stream that marked this stretch of Wietslar’s troubled border with the Empire of Dolsk. The stream was frozen, of course, and the surrounding plains still bore a heavy cover of snow. The long winter was finally drawing to an end, but it would be a month or more before the weather warmed and spring came to the Lakelands.

My grey cloak and surcoat blended in well enough, but I was careful to keep my movements slow as I drew my spyglass from its case and examined the distant tower. The shrub I lay under was bare of leaves, and wouldn’t hide me as well as I’d like.

The tower was round, thirty feet wide and stoutly built, with a narrow stairway winding up its outer face to a landing fifteen feet off the ground. The tower’s only entrance was located there, and the heavy door of iron-bound wood was decorated liberally with iron spikes to further discourage overenthusiastic visitors. But it stood ajar, something that would normally only happen only for brief periods while it was in use. The necromancers of Dolsk have a nasty habit of unleashing some new form of unnatural horror on us every so often, and even daylight wasn’t enough to make any border garrison with an ounce of sense feel safe.

I suspected that this particular garrison wasn’t safe at all.

The watchtowers were built at six-mile intervals along the border, and each of them had a semaphore set up on top. But tower seventeen hadn’t sent the usual all’s-well signal this morning, and had failed to respond to any other signals. It might have just been a problem with the mechanism, but that open door said otherwise.

I passed the spyglass to my companion, and she repeated the examination.

Magda was a stout, plain-faced young woman, almost as tall as a man and easily mistaken for one in her armor. But the suit of full plate I’d had made for her was barely half the weight of the ones my men wore, and I worried it would prove too fragile. Few of the Pale Lady’s priestesses were willing to venture out of their hidden shrines to serve as battle witches for the army, and those who did were a prized resource. They were the only force we had that could break the dark magic our enemies made such liberal use of, but that made them prime targets on the battlefield.

Witches could do things that would intimidate a normal man, but a crossbow bolt or vampire bite would kill them just like anyone else. The fact that they were mostly drawn from peasant families didn’t help, since it meant they could rarely afford much in the way of armor. That was one of many things I’d decided to do different when I’d formed my own team.

“You getting anything?” I asked quietly.

She handed the spyglass back to me with a frown, and drew the little dagger strapped to the inside of her left wrist. She carefully pricked her finger with the point, and chanted under her breath.

“Blessed Lady who guards the living from the dead, hear your servant’s humble plea. By my blood spilled in your name, open my eyes that I might see beyond the veil of death.”

There was no visible indication that anything had happened. None of the chill prickling of disquiet that accompanied the spells of the necromancers, or the heady warmth of a White Hand healer’s magic. Just a few drops of blood and a whisper. But when Magda sheathed her dagger and turned her eyes back to the tower her face looked like a woman gazing into the mouth of hell.

“I see dead people,” she said after a moment. “Fresh ones. Can I use the glass again?”
I handed it back to her, and she raised it to her eye.

“Four… ten… there’s the captain… is that?... no, old insignia… those three are fresh… damn. I think the garrison’s been wiped out, boss. There’s something undead in there, probably a vampire. Might be some ghouls, too. They don’t make enough of an impression for me to tell.”

“I was afraid of that. Can you tell if they have anyone alive with them?”

A vampire and a couple of fresh ghouls was already a fight. If they had a necromancer and a platoon or two of regular troops in there too things could get ugly.

She shook her head. “No necromancer of any real power, or I’d feel him. Beyond that I can’t tell. Those walls are too thick, and too much blood has been spilled on them.”

She turned to look at me, and started violently as her eyes went to something behind me. I whipped my head around… but there was nothing there.

“Sorry, boss, it’s just a ghost,” she said shakily. “Should I drop the sight now? Or keep it going just in case?”

Magda was all of sixteen years old, and as far as I knew she’d never so much as seen a real fight. But she was a feisty girl, and dangerously determined to prove herself. I approved of the sentiment, but her magic wasn’t the sort of thing you can throw around recklessly. The death witches were notoriously tight-lipped about how their powers work, but I’d noticed it was uncomfortably common for them to go mad.

I put my hand on hers. “You don’t have to try to out-tough the rest of the team, Magda. Save your strength, you never know when you might need it.”

She frowned. “I just want to pull my weight, sir. I don’t want the men to think I’m just some helpless little girl.”

“I know. That’s why I picked you for my team, instead of that crazy bitch Ilsa. But if you get in the habit of using your magic too casually you’re going to come up short when you need to do something big, like banish a ghost or break a blood curse. Don’t worry if the men give you a little ribbing, that’s natural when you’re the newest member of the team. Keep it together like you have been, and it’ll stop after you get through your first real mission.”

“Like this one?” She asked hesitantly.

“Exactly. Now turn that spell off before you wear yourself out, and let’s get back to the men.”