The Storm King

Things started off fairly quietly when the Heaven’s Eye convoy got moving again, but Leon couldn’t dispel the disquiet in his heart. While he fully hoped that no one would be so stupid as to attack a group from Heaven’s Eye this large, everything he’d heard of the local bandit problems had him continuously watching for any more groups of men stalking their convoy.

Making him even more paranoid were the environs they found themselves in: hilly and reasonably forested. If he were to run through this land, he knew that he could find no shortage of places to hide and avoid detection by all but the most dedicated of mages using their magic senses.

As it was, he spent the first half of the day running himself ragged exhaustively probing the land around the road ahead for anything unexpected. And the road itself hardly gave him much confidence, either, for given the general roughness of the terrain, the road was relatively narrow, which would hamper the ability of the Heaven’s Eye guards in their chariots to move if they were to be ambushed.

By the time noon rolled around, Elise had to force Leon to relax, else he’d completely waste all of his magic and mental energy before anything were to happen. Trust in the guards, she’d told him, and rest. If they were to be attacked, then he could start moving again.

Leon wasn’t too happy about it, but he listened to his wife. She had a lot more faith in the name of Heaven’s Eye than he did, though, and relaxing wasn’t something that he was able to do easily.

And so, it came as absolutely no surprise—and even a little bit of relief at seeing his worry vindicated—that the guards up front called the convoy to an abrupt halt. Leon, having no doubt that this wasn’t just a normal stop, burst out of his carriage and stared wildly around, weapon in hand, his magic senses almost exploding out of his body in his rush to analyze the situation.

He was almost disappointed, then, to see that there weren’t hordes of murderous bandits rushing down from the nearest hills, intent on plundering their caravan, and embarrassed at the strange looks that a few others nearby gave him at his dramatic exit.

But then, he saw it, the reason for their abrupt halt: a great cloud of smoke in the distance, just over the hills and in the very direction that they were moving. He directed his magic senses in that direction, sending them rolling across the grassy hills between where they’d stopped and where the smoke was originating from.

He saw a village under assault by hundreds of wild, unkempt men armed with what looked like standardized military equipment and moving with relatively strict discipline.

‘The soldiers-turned-bandits,’ Leon instantly identified. By his count, there could be as many as a thousand assaulting the village about ten miles further down the road. He guessed that they were there for food, for the village wasn’t that large, and with not a single building larger than a single story, it hardly seemed like the place that would have great stores of gold, silver, or other treasures just waiting to be stolen.

But for several miles along the road on either side of the village were long fields growing various unripe grains, so Leon took it as not that much of a stretch that the soldiers, after having turned to banditry from having not been furnished with pay or supplies, were looting the village for its food stores.

And yet, even as he settled on that explanation, something seemed off about it. He leaped down from the doorway of the carriage and pondered why it seemed strange as he ran toward the front of the convoy, closely followed by Anzu, who seemed to sense Leon’s excitement.

By the time he reached the guard detail up front, he finally figured out what was bothering him: the fields weren’t even close to ripe for harvest, and if the Cortuban Alliance operated at all under similar principles as the Bull Kingdom, Leon knew that this village of less than a thousand residents would hardly be storing their own harvest for long. In short, apart from whatever stores of food the farmers might save for themselves, there wouldn’t be much for the bandits to steal. All the food would’ve been taken to nearby granaries where it could be distributed or sold, and more importantly, protected.

Maybe the bandits didn’t care about the farmers, Leon considered, and were taking their stores and leaving them with nothing. But as he watched the bandits, he didn’t see a single one of them actually taking anything. It almost seemed like they were just driving off the farmers and setting their homes and fields ablaze.

When he realized that last bit, Leon’s excitement died down, and all of his worry came rushing back. The Heaven’s Eye convoy was huge, and even if those bandits weren’t affiliated with those groups that Leon had noticed keeping an eye on them the day before, they still had to know that they were passing through.

Nothing about this sat right with him. He acknowledged that maybe the bandits were burning the village just because they could, but he couldn’t believe that was the case. There had to be a reason, he just couldn’t see it yet.

Jordan, Emilie’s first husband, sixth-tier mage, and Elise’s father, was in charge of the guards at the front. Leon called out to him on approach, and Jordan turned to answer.

“Leon! Good to see you up and about!”

“Everything all right up here?” Leon asked, walking up to Jordan’s chariot. The man smiled and dismounted, so that he could speak with Leon on even terms.

“Yes, but we don’t want to go much further with those fires in front of us. There’s a village in that direction, and I wanted to send out some scouts before proceeding…”

Leon told him not to bother, and quickly informed him of what he could see.

“A bandit raid, huh?” Jordan growled with a look of distaste. “I would love nothing more than to drive that parasitic vermin off, but that’s not something I can do.”

“Heaven’s Eye must be separate from these issues?” Leon asked despite already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” Jordan wearily replied. “Unless we’re contracted by a Kingdom in question, we cannot act as peacekeepers or interfere in their internal politics at all. We can only adapt as well as we can and fight back if provoked.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Leon stated. “I’m not Heaven’s Eye, though.”

Jordan gave him an intrigued look. “No, you’re not.”

Leon smiled and glanced around. “Bad place for us to stop, though. I can’t see any threats, but who knows what could be hiding in these hills?”

“Aye, it’s not an enviable position. I’m going to try and establish some security around us and hope that someone deals with those bandits and clears the way for us to continue, else we’ll have to wait out here for them to pass or attack us first. Having to camp out here is not something I want to do…”

Leon nodded once more and took a quick look at Anzu. The griffin was standing close, staring at Leon with his blood red eyes, a silent question within them. Running his hands through Anzu’s head feathers, Leon said his goodbyes to Jordan and then turned around to return to his carriage. He was going to deal with those bandits, but he needed to actually tell people that’s what he was doing instead of running off without another word. He also didn’t want to head out alone, but that’s why he had his retinue; six experienced warriors stood at his back, and he’d be a damn fool not to use them.

Elise didn’t object to Leon heading out drive off the bandits, especially after hearing that their strongest warrior was only of the sixth-tier. Valeria, already suited up as per Leon’s standing directive from the previous day, went to get the rest of the retinue ready, but Maia was where Leon met his first issue.

He didn’t want her coming with him. He wasn’t going to let his guard down, but he thought that going even just by himself was overkill. She and him together weren’t needed out there, but she might be needed here, for Leon wasn’t being cheeky when he told Jordan that anything could be in the surrounding hills. He asked Maia to stay behind to protect Elise and the rest of the convoy just in case, and while Maia wasn’t happy, she did consent to stay behind.

Stay behind again, as she reminded him.

“I’ll make it up to you!” Leon enthusiastically replied as he leaped back out of the carriage and met with his retinue. His people had done as he’d requested and remained ready for battle, spending most of the day armed and armored within their carriage. As a result, they were ready to go just as soon as Leon needed them to be.

Without further ado, they set out at a brisk pace. Leon felt it was kind of slow, actually, but he was an eighth-tier lightning mage, while they could only go as quickly as his fourth-tier subordinates could maintain. Still, he estimated that the ten miles between the convoy and the village could be traversed in less than half an hour.

They made good time, but slowed as they entered the village’s fields. With Leon and Valeria, the fires that the bandits started were no obstacle, and Leon had everyone get in a line to his right and left. He took the center while Anshu and Valeria anchored the sides, with Alix and Anzu in the center-right and Marcus and Alcander in the center-left.

They were up against about a thousand bandits by his estimation, though, so Leon knew that their specific tactics weren’t going to mean much. There was only one way through this, and that was using power. The villagers had been largely driven off, so they couldn’t even rally any militia around them. It was just them against the bandits.

To start with, Leon had them use ranged attacks. The more they could delay closing with them into melee combat, the better. Fortunately, he didn’t have to lend anyone any weapons, with both Marcus and Alcander remembering the humiliation they endured having to borrow Legion bows during the campaign through the Serpentine Isles and subsequently making sure to pack their own bows.

That said, Leon still distributed spell arrows amongst them, greatly making up for the disparity in the powers of those with elemental magic and those without.

It wasn’t long before they were seen by the bandits at the outskirts of the village. Their appearance drew some cries of alarm from those bandits keeping watch, but Leon had them answered with a salvo of explosive arrows. He wasn’t intending to be particularly stealthy, and the ear-splitting explosions that killed a handful of bandits were proof enough of that—he’d yet to truly let himself go after reaching the eighth-tier, and a thousand bandits were just what he wanted to explore his power.

The explosions were more than enough to alert the rest of the bandits to their presence, and Leon watched as they, like ants reacting an invader, swarmed through the village in their direction. Showing off their roots as former soldiers, they moved with good coordination, ensuring that they didn’t come at Leon’s retinue with anything less than what might’ve been overwhelming force if they were fighting more conventionally.

Bandits poured out of village and into the burned field. Leon kept his people from immediately firing at them, merely maintaining a good distance just inside the max effective range of their bows as the bandits formed up into tight formations. First, it was a few dozen, then a hundred, two hundred, and soon enough, Leon and his comparatively tiny retinue were facing a horde of at least half of the bandits that had attacked the village.

Through the smoky haze of the burning village, Leon could see the man who seemed to be their leader quite clearly. He was tall, handsome, and well-built, with eyes like glimmering silver, and an air of deep solemnity about him as he met Leon’s gaze across the field. A frown spread across the man’s heavily tanned face, and Leon saw him whisper something into the ear of a buck-toothed bandit next to him, after which the subordinate scurried off.

And then the bandit leader did something that Leon truly wasn’t expecting: he ordered his men to hold the line and lock their shields into a tight shield wall.

“Look at them cowering at the sight of us!” Alcander roared more than loudly enough for the bandits to hear. “Just us seven and a single griffin, and they can’t even bring themselves to advance!”

“Are these our opponents?!” Marcus added. “These cravens who hide behind their shields out of fear?! Well-suited attitudes for brigands, I see! Not a shred of courage to be found!”

The bandits were clearly proud, for Leon saw many of them scowl at Marcus and Alcander’s words, and a few here and there almost charged out of their shield walls before being pulled back by who Leon thought to be their equivalent of Legion Prefects.

“If they’re not going to come out and play…” he muttered just loudly enough for his people to hear, “… I can live with it. They’ll just die like terrified turtles instead of as men.”

Leon stepped forward, his magic surging through his body, and so much lightning danced across his body that his form was almost entirely obscured within its silver-blue light. As he strode forward, he scanned the shield walls, looking for weak spots; and he found many. These weren’t the great rectangular shields of the Legion, designed to protect their bearers from neck to shin, but were much smaller and rounder, and with obviously less robust enchantments. A Legion shield was enchanted with ingenious fractal enchantments that fit together almost like puzzle pieces with the shields of those at an infantryman’s right and left, strengthening themselves when the Legion closed ranks. These shields were just… shields, nearly all without anything more than one or two strengthening enchantments to keep from being torn apart by a single swing of a strong mage’s ax.

Leon supposed that the shields were adequate enough for a garrison army that was about as far away from the frontlines of the war their state was fighting as they could be, but they were not nearly enough to stop him. With little more than a thought, lightning glazed across his blade in a dazzling display of power.

Then, with a single swing, Leon let loose with a wave of lightning that cascaded across the field, digging trenches into the scorched earth several feet deep and wide enough to strike the entire frontline of the bandit shield wall. Silver-blue lightning tore into the bandits, crashing into their shields and throwing their wielders back, surging through the gaps between each shield and searing and ripping and tearing at armor and flesh, laying utter waste to the men in the shield wall.

With a single swing of his blade, packed with as much power as Leon built up in the few seconds he’d taken to stride forward, more than a hundred bandits perished, hundreds more were injured, and their formations were torn asunder.

“Open up!” Leon roared as the formations shattered into men screaming in pain, terror, and disbelief, a terrible cacophony that rose to the heavens that Leon thought might’ve even been so loud as to be audible to the convoy miles away.

A moment later, four more explosive arrows were sent sailing through the air from Leon’s four fourth-tier retainers, while Anshu and Valeria sent spikes of ice and rays of light slicing into the bandit lines. Leon then again added his power to the mix, conjuring a lightning bolt in his off-hand and hurling it into the great crush of men that the bandits had become. His lightning bolt exploded amongst them, sending dozens flying as many were ripped apart and a couple were burned almost entirely to ash. Fire from the explosive arrows washed over their shattered lines, and Anshu and Valeria picked off the more composed bandits shouting for order, peppering them with their respective magics.

But after that second strike, Leon stopped, and so did his retainers, for what they now saw was a horrific sight. With just those two moves, Leon and his retinue had completely crushed the bandits’ will to fight, and they were trying to flee as quickly as they could; all order within the few survivors was lost, as was all sense of camaraderie they had with their fellows to their right and left. Men were trampled, others were left behind, too injured to flee with their comrades and left screaming in the dirt.

During his days in the Legion, Leon had been taught that the place of the common soldier was in large formations where they could reinforce their comrades, while the stronger mages were to act as ‘formation breakers’, using their magic to disrupt enemy lines and tie down their enemy equivalents in duels. But it wasn’t until Leon saw his lightning utterly ravage the bandits that he truly understood was it was to use his magic to break a formation. If he’d ever killed so many people with a single strike before, or caused so much damage to the forces of an enemy in one move, he couldn’t think of it.

“Keep it up!” Marcus shouted from not too far behind him. “They’re on the run! We have to ensure the rout! Keep them from rallying!”

Leon was pulled out of his momentary reverie, and he opened up with another blast of lightning as his retinue loosed more arrows and launched more of their own magic into the bandit’s lines. Dozens more fell to light, ice, fire, and lightning, until the bandit’s retreat was too desperate to stop, and hundreds were left behind as little more than charred corpses.

Leon even saw that the silver-eyed bandit leader had chosen to retreat as well, having been far enough behind his formations to avoid any serious injury, though he was still admirably trying to get his people to retreat in an orderly fashion. As he did so, he tossed a glance back over his shoulder, his expression one of fear and regret, and Leon reveled in that look. In barely more than a minute, Leon had won a battle, and put the fear of the gods into his enemy.

He was just about to order his retinue to pursue and cut down as many bandits as they could before they vanished into the hills, but then he saw the bandit leader pause his retreat just long enough for his expression to morph into something almost akin to a smile of triumph, though tinged with deep sorrow.

That look struck Leon—the man had just lost at least a quarter of his total force in seconds if not more, and yet he smiled as he was driven away from the village.

‘Maybe he got what he came for?’ Leon wondered, but as he turned back to give his retinue further orders, he stopped and projected his magic senses to check in on the Heaven’s Eye convoy, and a dark look crossed his face.

He was right once more. This raid on the village was only a distraction; even now, thousands more bandits had appeared from the hills and were surrounding the convoy. Some were even already clashing with the guards protecting the central carriages.

“Keep going!” Leon shouted, making a snap decision. His priority was the convoy, but it was defended well enough that he felt secure in leaving them to Maia and the rest of the Heaven’s Eye guards.

Actually, he couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the bandits. He supposed greed and desperation might be reason enough for them to attack Heaven’s Eye, but now they were attacking a convoy protected by three eighth-tier equivalent beings between himself, the Heaven’s Eye Investigator, and Maia—four, if he included Xaphan. Two were about to demolish their forces attacking the convoy, while the other was going to slaughter their decoy force.

And as he watched the convoy with his magic senses, he saw an enormous water dragon erupt into being and easily sweep aside two dozen bandits who’d come close to Elise’s carriage, all traces of mercy died within Leon. At almost the same time, a bright white light rose over the convoy and began to fire deadly rays of light into the bandit hordes, slicing scores to pieces with every blast as Damien Makedon made his move. Maia and Damien would keep everyone safe, but the audacity to threaten his family and allies was quickly overpowering his admiration for the bandits’ boldness.

So, Leon furiously set in to his pursuit of the silver-eyed bandit, and he had no intention of stopping until he’d sliced, skewered, and blasted apart every single bandit that had participated in this raid.