Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Read online

  Black Coven

  A Daniel Black Novel

  By E. William Brown

  Copyright 2015 E. William Brown

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 1

  A thin veil of falling snow muffled the sounds of my men settling into cover behind me, while Captain Rain and I crept to the edge of the little patch of woods for a look at the open field beyond. But the racket that had drawn us here was too loud to hide. Men shouting. Women and children screaming. The roar of angry trolls, and the crackle of flames.

  Sounds I’d become all too familiar with in the last three weeks. Another settlement was falling.

  I peered between a pair of snow-covered bushes at the scene. It was a country inn, of a sort that was pretty common in Varmland. An L-shaped building of stone two stories high, with a barn-like stable behind it and a stone wall enclosing the courtyard between the two buildings. With a stout wooden door and no outward-facing windows on the first floor the place was easily proof against wolves or bandit gangs, and had room to shelter several dozen people. Evidently a group of soldiers had decided to hole up there, and managed to hold out until now.

  But there were five trolls attacking the place. Not the smaller forest trolls that worked with goblins, either. These were mountain trolls, twelve-foot monsters with grey hide that was almost as hard as the stone it resembled. They were armed with a motley assortment of tree trunks and boulders, but as strong as they were they wouldn’t even need weapons to tear a place like this apart.

  Indeed, they’d managed to rip open a good-sized stretch of the building around where the front door had been. A group of armored men inside were trying to fend them off with spears, while crossbowmen loosed flaming bolts at them from the upper windows. Neither group was doing much damage, but a couple of the trolls were more singed than I would have expected.

  As I watched, a bolt of fire erupted from inside the building to splash against a troll’s leg. The great beast staggered back, howling and beating frantically at the flames. The other trolls roared, and one of them heaved a boulder that probably weighed more than I did into the mass of defenders.

  “They’ve got a wizard,” Marcus observed unnecessarily. “What do you think, sir? Do we try to rescue him?”

  I considered the scene for a moment. Mountain trolls were tough as hell, but unlike their smaller cousins they usually weren’t accompanied by other monsters. I didn’t see any goblins around, and considering how dumb trolls are the odds of a trick were low. Five of them was more than I could safely fight alone, of course. But I’d done quite a bit of enchanting in the weeks since my little band had fled Lanrest.

  I nodded. “Yeah, we can do it. Cerise?”

  The dark-haired witch seemed to coalesce out of the shadows under the snow-laden trees, her slender form completely hidden by the cloak she wore against the cold. It also served to hide the tail she’d acquired back in Lanrest. Absorbing the power of her foes was such a central aspect of her magic she had trouble avoiding it, but the side effects were starting to add up.

  “I’m here, Daniel. What are we doing?”

  “Killing some trolls,” I told her. “You’re in charge of guarding the caravan until the fight is over.”

  Her human appearance was a thin disguise these days, and she tended to lose her grip on it in moments of passion. Our own people were getting used to it, but the last thing we needed was for her to sprout obvious claws and horns in the middle of the fight and panic the inn’s defenders.

  She pouted, but didn’t argue. “I guess someone needs to do that. Alright, but stay safe.”

  “I’ll try. Marcus, have Gronir sneak his group around to the left and put a volley of arrows into them. As soon as they’re distracted I’ll drop into the middle of the big group, and then your boys can move in without having to worry too much about them throwing boulders at you. Spears and ranged weapons only, and don’t box them in completely.”

  “Yes, sir,” he nodded, and moved back to give orders.

  I eyeballed the distance as the men crept through the woods behind me, and began preparing my opening move. There was seldom time for fancy magical tricks in the middle of a battle, but the minutes before an ambush were another story. I’d been practicing with more elaborate constructs recently, looking for ways to make that first blow count as much as possible.

  The situation deteriorated steadily in the few minutes it took to get ready. One of the trolls ripped the shutters off a second-floor window and began fishing around blindly inside, while a second one smashed down the gate and wandered into the inn’s courtyard looking for another way into the building. The remaining three were still occupied with the hole in the wall, but the bolts of fire that kept them at bay were coming weaker and further apart. The biggest troll managed to snatch up one of the men defending the breach, and bit his head off with a loud crunch. The other two lobbed a few more boulders in, and I noticed there weren’t as many spear points in the opening as there had been before.

  Then a volley of arrows arched across the snow-covered field to rain down on the trolls. Unlike the crossbowmen defending the inn my men’s weapons were enhanced with force magic, and most of the arrows sank deep into their targets. The trolls roared in pain, no doubt exacerbated by the fire magic that would now be heating the arrowheads red hot.

  I unleashed the burst of force magic I’d gathered, and flung myself into the air.

  I still couldn’t manage controlled flight, but painful experience had taught me how to make long leaps safely. I checked my trajectory in midair, noted I was going to fall short a bit, and gave myself a little extra push to ensure I’d come down in the middle of the trolls. Then I turned my attention back to the spell I’d been building, trusting my force field’s soft-landing effect to arrest my fall safely.

  Dozens of baseball-sized rocks materialized in the air and began to whirl around me at high speeds, while heating up rapidly. By the time I landed they were mostly molten, becoming lumps of lava that slammed into the main group of trolls as I touched down among them. Even their supernaturally tough flesh couldn’t withstand that level of heat, and the projectiles gouged out deep wounds before their kinetic energy was exhausted. I wasn’t sure if the resulting pockets of molten stone would be enough to kill the monsters, but they’d certainly do a lot of damage.

  One of the trolls flailed at me with the tree trunk it was using as a club, sending me sprawling despite the force shield that protected me from the blow. But it didn’t actually hurt, and my shield was only weakened momentarily. I pulled the barrier in close to my body so it wouldn’t get in the way, and drew Grinder.

  My personal weapon was a brutal little device I’d build for killing inhumanly tough monsters up close and personal. Just a stone hilt when deactivated, but when I turned it on a three-foot bar of superheated plasma extended to form a blade. That would have been dangerous enough, but what really made it effective were the dozens of counter-rotating saw blades made of force that extended along the length of
the weapon. A high-pitched shriek of tortured air arose as the blades came up to speed, and I hacked at the nearest troll’s leg.

  It was so distracted by the pockets of lava melting chunks out of its body that it didn’t even notice me until Grinder bit into its shin, chewing through flesh and bone alike and spraying burning fragments everywhere. The troll staggered, and jerked away before I could cut all the way through. Then a heavy impact drove me to my knees, as the troll who’d been fishing in the windows decided to smash this new nuisance instead. My shield’s power reserve dropped again, but there was enough left to tank a few more hits.

  Flames washed over everything, the trolls and me as well, and I knew I’d held their attention long enough. It flowed harmlessly over my shield, melting the snow beneath my feet and filling the air with steam. But when it enveloped the trolls they panicked.

  The squad Captain Rain led was equipped with most of the magical weapons I’d managed to create in the course of our trip. Six of the men held shields and boar spears I’d enhanced with force magic, to ensure they’d deflect heavy blows and penetrate armored monster hides. But the four flamers produced most of the group’s damage output. These weapons were basically a long rod of stone with a pistol grip at the back and another one halfway down its length, a design I’d copied from WWII-era flamethrowers. The tip of the rod projected a continuous stream of flame when the trigger was pulled, along with a strong force push that elongated the blast into a fifteen-foot cone.

  They didn’t kill very quickly, but we’d yet to encounter anything that could shrug off that much fire. Indeed, the troll behind me almost immediately decided that this was too much to take and turned to run. I took its leg off at the knee, and it toppled face-first into the snow just beyond the edge of the flames. One of the men immediately turned his flamer on it, and held it as the beast tried to crawl away.

  One of the more injured trolls behind me collapsed, and another was trying to stagger away from me. But the biggest one roared and charged through the flames, its now-burning tree trunk held high over its head. It bulled through the fire, only to immediately be impaled on three long spears that easily pierced its armored hide.

  But trolls are unbelievably tough, and they take a long time to die. It brought the club down, sending two men flying and forcing the rest to scramble out of the way.

  I leaped at its unguarded back, another burst of force magic carrying me far higher than I could normally jump, and slammed Grinder down on its head. My weapon’s shriek turned to an angry growl, and it spewed a spray of mangled bone fragments in all directions.

  Any normal creature would have died instantly, but not a troll. Before my weapon could chew far enough into its skull to find its tiny brain the monster reached back and grabbed me. Its giant fingers wrapped around my chest, and it whipped me around to slam into the ground.

  Thankfully the deep snow and my force shield both cushioned the blow, so instead of being stunned I just pointed the end of my weapon at its face and triggered a plasma blast.

  I’d sunk a lot more effort into making Grinder than I had the flamers for my men, and the jet it produced wasn’t normal flame. The violet beam was denser than air and hotter than the surface of the sun, delivering enough energy to melt stone surfaces in seconds. It burned the troll’s face away in an instant, blinding it and sending it reeling back.

  A spearman stepped up and stabbed the thing through the heart with his weapon. I turned off the plasma beam, and another man drove his spear through one of the monster’s ruined eye sockets into its brain.

  The thing finally realized it was dead, and collapsed.

  I made a note to burn the body soon to make sure it didn’t get back up, and turned my attention to the rest of the battle. Two trolls were on the ground, struggling feebly as the flamers kept them bathed in fire. Roars and crashes from the woods on our left flank told me Gronir’s crew was having fun with the other troll I’d caught in my initial attack, while the last monster had just emerged from the inn’s courtyard. It stood there staring at us for a moment, clutching a boulder the size of a basketball in one hand.

  I took a step towards it, raising Grinder in one hand and conjuring a ball of flame in the other.

  It threw the boulder at me, and ran.

  A projectile like that would squash any of my men, so I stood still and let it hit me instead of dodging. It smashed into my shield with a dull boom, and sent me flying back to bounce across the snow. But it was just a few bruises, and I had my healing amulet on.

  I picked myself back up, and the men cheered. I smiled grimly. “That’s one troll band that won’t be eating any more people. Casualties?”

  “Nothing serious, milord,” Sergeant Thomas reported. “The shields stopped most of that one blow the big troll got in. These new ones work a lot better than the first set.”

  Yeah, those had been a disaster. Turns out making the face of a shield violently repel anything that tries to touch it isn’t such a great idea, especially since Newton’s Third Law applies to magic too. We’d had a whole string of accidents involving shields knocking things over, smashing their users in the face and generally playing havoc with their surroundings. The damned things were almost as dangerous to their users as the enemy, so I’d been forced to spend several precious days of enchantment time working out a better design and making new ones.

  At least I’d known better than to try giving anyone else a personal force field amulet like the one I wore. With my force sorcery it was second nature to constantly adjust my defenses based on the needs of the moment, but for anyone without that advantage it would be like being trapped in a transparent prison. I was getting better at designing enchantments other people could control, but I had a long way to go before something that complex would be feasible.

  “Glad to hear it, Sergeant. It sounds like Gronir’s people have run off their troll, so we should be clear for now. Captain, signal the convoy to approach and maintain a watch in case the surviving trolls come back. I’m going to see who we’ve rescued here.”

  Marcus nodded. “Yes, sir. Sergeant, detail two men to accompany the wizard.”

  A few men were carefully peering out the hole in the side of the inn when I approached. They were a lot better geared than most of the men-at-arms I’d seen in this land, wearing full chainmail hauberks and fairly elaborate helmets instead of the simple chain shirts and pot helms that seemed to be the norm. They also had proper boots, and each man had a sword at his side in addition to the assortment of spears, axes and crossbows they carried. I’d found the latter weapons were generally more useful for monster hunting, since a sword blow that would kill a man only annoys the larger beasts.

  In the middle of the group was a tall man in full plate armor, with the helm off to reveal a craggy face with a full beard of red hair. He strode boldly towards me.

  “Well met, stranger!” He boomed. “Carl Stenberg, Adept of the Red Conclave. That was some impressive battle magic there.”

  “Those things take a lot of killing,” I replied. “Daniel Black, wandering adept.”

  His eyes lit up in recognition. “Ah, the mysterious man with limitless earth magic? We had word of you back in Kozalin, but then the priests stopped getting reports from that town you were in. Lanrest, I think it was. I don’t suppose you know what happened to the place?”

  “A dragon and an army of frost giants. I got a few people out, but not many. Baron Stein and Holger Drakebane both went down fighting.”

  Fighting me, actually. When they thought I’d been killed in a goblin raid the Baron of Lanrest had immediately kidnapped Avilla with the intention of forcing her into his service, while the High Priest had dragged Cerise off to his temple for a binding ritual. Killing them both seemed like a reasonable response to me, but according to Cerise the other nobles of the kingdom probably wouldn’t see it that way.

  The girls were both witches, worshippers of ancient Greek goddesses instead of the younger Norse pantheon that seemed to dominate t
his alternate version of Europe. That made them free game for anyone who wanted to kill or enslave them, and indeed the church of Odin had a long history of binding witches into magical slavery. Given that their powers were far too useful to keep hidden during the current crisis, the only way to keep them safe was to make it look like they were already taken. Which, of course, didn’t work if people thought I was dead.

  Obviously I wasn’t going to tell Carl any of that, but we’d invested a bit of effort in putting together a story to use when we reached Kozalin. Assuming no one in our little band of survivors talked, but my worries on that score diminished with every crisis we weathered together.

  Carl frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure you did all you could, but we can’t save everyone. I take it you’re headed to Kozalin, then? Coming to answer the Conclave’s call?”

  “More or less. I won’t be much help with that weather magic I heard you’re working on, but concentrating as much firepower as possible in one settlement seems like a good survival strategy. Are you headed there as well?”

  “‘Firepower,’ eh?” He chuckled. “I like that one. Yes, I think it’s about time to pull out of here. I’ve been using the inn as a base to recover supplies and survivors from the surrounding villages, but it’s been four days since we found anyone alive and the monsters are getting worse.” He paused, and shook his head. “I’ve never seen trolls in such numbers. How bad was your trip?”

  “Bad. The whole countryside is overrun with goblin raiding parties, most of them with trolls and shamans in tow. We haven’t seen frost giants since leaving Lanrest, but there was an ice worm in the Sava River and we’ve hit roaming packs of felwolves everywhere. The only good news is the weather’s gotten so cold even the goblins don’t come out at night anymore.”

  He shook his head. “If that’s the case I’m surprised you got anyone out at all.”

  There was an exclamation of surprise from behind me, and I grinned. “Oh, I applied a bit of magic to the problem.”