Panting, John bent over and urged his soul force to recover faster. That had been too close. The chariot descended and he straightened up. Below them, leaning on a spruce, a soldier with a bandaged leg waved. Master Kane landed the chariot and allowed it to vanish after they climbed down.
“Lucky you came when you did,” the injured soldier said. “I thought that giant was going to squish us.”
John bent down to examine the man’s leg, but was waved off. “Check the others first. They’re all hurt worse than me.”
He left the wounded man where he stood and went deeper into the small stand of evergreens. The coppery tang of blood and moans from the wounded reached him at about the same time. Soldiers lay on cloaks thrown over the snow. Five men and two women clutched wounds and in one unfortunate fellow’s case, the stump of his right arm.
John had studied and thought himself prepared for the aftermath of a battle, but this was worse than he imagined. None of the wounded were warlords so they wouldn’t heal quickly on their own.
Forcing himself to work through the nausea, John went to the man with the stump first, leaving a nasty stomach wound for his mentor. “So what happened?” John asked the grimacing man. He insinuated his soul force into the man’s body and blocked the flow of pain. A sigh of relief passed the man’s lips.
“Ice trolls happened. They dug themselves in under the snow. We didn’t have a clue until ten of them burst out of the ground all around us. Just damn lucky we had numbers on our side or they would have killed us all. As it was we lost over half the patrol and the rest of us are hardly in any shape to fight.”
While he talked John sealed veins and accelerated regeneration of muscle and skin over the stump to prevent infection. He frowned and burned away a nasty spot of bacteria, probably left over from the troll’s spit. A quick scan of the rest of the man’s body showed no other injuries or infections. He squeezed the soldier’s remaining hand. “You’re going to make it.”
John and Master Kane spent an hour tending the wounded before loading everyone on a soul force wagon and flying back to camp. If this was what they had to look forward to it would be an especially ugly war.
Chapter 28
Two weeks of hard riding found Damien and the others at the edge of the northern army’s war camp. Hundreds of tents sprawled along the length of a river valley. A cloud of wood smoke rising from the camp made a dark gray day even darker, so many fires burned to keep the regular warriors warm. The scent of burning pine reached them even from a mile away.
He felt bad for them, huddled around their fires, trying to keep warm while they waited for an eight-foot-tall monster to try to take their heads off. The only good thing about a winter camp was it kept the stink to a minimum.
Damien and his companions only bothered with a fire when they set up camp to enjoy a hot meal. Both warlords and sorcerers could keep themselves warm through the use of soul force. The warlords sped up their metabolism to generate heat, and Damien simply heated the surrounding air to a temperature he found comfortable. It took such a tiny portion of his power he didn’t think twice about the effort.
The other squads had fallen a day behind as they didn’t have Damien to create a road above the snow for them to ride on. They had to resort to forcing their horses to plow through ever-deeper drifts of snow the farther north they went. If the other members of Jen’s squad hadn’t already gotten to like him, the fact that he could keep them out of the snow would have made him their best friend.
The squad reined in at a checkpoint half a mile out from the camp. “Halt and name yourself.” What Damien had initially thought was a snowman spoke and raised a snow-covered spear.
Jen urged her mount a little closer, forcing Damien to extend his platform so her horse wouldn’t sink in up to its knees like the unfortunate soldier. “I’m Jennifer St. Cloud and this is my squad, reporting as ordered.”
The guard lowered his spear. “Where are the rest of the squads and how is your horse standing on top of the snow?”
“The others are about a day behind us and my brother’s a sorcerer.”
Damien waved at the guard. The poor snow-covered guy just stared at him. Perhaps he’d never seen a sorcerer before.
“Can we go?” Jen asked. “I imagine General Kord is anxious for us to report in.”
The guard scrambled out of their way and waved them through. They rode past the still-staring guard. Damien smiled at him as he rode his conjured horse past, but got no reaction. On closer inspection Damien guessed the guard was about his age and someone had probably assigned him to guard their rear line to keep him away from the fighting. He always knew John’s father was a good guy and this was more proof of it.
They reached the first of the tents and Damien let his portable road vanish. Some unfortunate had shoveled the area down to the dirt allowing them to move around without trudging through snow. Jen led them toward the center of camp where a tent twice the size of Damien’s quarters back at the tower waited, a flag with a snow-covered mountain crossed with a claymore flapping in the breeze above it. Was the duke in camp or was he leaving it to General Kord?
When they arrived, two young men standing outside the command tent rushed over to collect their horses. Damien waved them off
