“I thought I could help. I’ve fought with my sister’s squad before and we did good work. This seemed like an opportunity to do that again.”
The woman’s pale lips turned down in a frown. “My sister spoke of you. You embarrassed my lord’s son in a duel. For that insult alone I should send you back to the tower.”
“I saved Sig’s life,” Damien said. Annoyed by the woman’s attitude he went on. “He thought he knew how to fight. With his meager skills he was liable to get killed in a real fight. I showed him the truth. Where’s the insult in that?”
She stood up; the woman was easily as tall as Jen, with a slender, boyish figure. “You have no mentor and no place here.”
Damien walked deeper into the tent. If she thought he’d just walk away on her say-so she’d miscalculated. “I don’t have a mentor because none of the more experienced sorcerers have the guts to take on an apprentice more powerful than them. I’ve been sitting on my hands for four months waiting to find someone with the stones to work with me. Now there’s a war on and you want me to go home and sit around some more?”
She stepped around the table and soul force gathered around her. “What do you think you can do that we can’t?”
Damien gathered his own power, enough to make the tent shake. “Nothing, but since when is having an extra set of hands a bad thing in war? I’m not planning to sit around camp getting in your way. I’m going out with my sister in the morning. Just pretend you never saw me. Every ogre I kill is one less for you to deal with.”
She spun away from him and released her power. “Do what you will. I don’t care.” She dismissed him with the back of her hand.
Damien reclaimed his power, bowed to her back, and left.
Chapter 30
When they crossed the border it felt like the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The wind blew waves of loose snow, obscuring their vision beyond forty feet. The Ice Queen’s magic controlled the weather, hindering her enemies and aiding her own forces. Only a dragon had that much power. The kingdom was fortunate she’d never come against them herself. If that ever changed he feared for their survival.
They’d been running at a brisk pace all morning, Damien’s power allowing them to travel on the surface of the snow. They’d seen no signs of ogres or ice trolls; the general’s information looked good. If he was right about the locations of the supply depots it would make their jobs a lot easier. Hunting around in a blizzard would be a miserable process.
“Can anyone tell where the hell we are?” Talon asked.
“I’m not sure.” Jen squinted into the wind. “But we’ve got to be within a mile of the first depot.”
“Want me to see if I can find it?” Damien asked.
Jen nodded and Damien conjured a remote viewing construct. Instead of a bug this time he conjured an invisible sphere and sent it flying in the direction they believed the depot lay. The rest of the squad gathered around to watch. For several minutes the only images the sphere sent back were white and empty. As Damien guided it through the empty terrain he passed something dark.
With a thought he moved it back. The dark object turned out to be the head of an ogre. Beyond the ogre several large tents sat in a clearing free of wind and snow. The orb circled the clearing revealing seven more ogres guarding the tents. They had found the depot. Jen clapped him on the shoulder.
Following the link to his orb, Damien led the squad to their target. They crouched forty yards away from the clearing. It looked like someone had set up an invisible wall blocking the storm.
It wasn’t fair.
Still, the blowing snow made for good cover, allowing them to approach without the ogres noticing. Jen used hand gestures to direct her squad to surround the depot.
“What should I do?” Damien asked.
“Wait here and keep your eyes open. We can handle eight ogres. I just don’t want anything sneaking up on us.”
She waited a full minute, let out a shrill whistle, and charged, drawing her sword as she went. Damien stepped out of the storm to better watch. Before he got clear of the wind the first ogre lay in two pieces in the snow, staining it red. Their speed and strength enhanced by soul force, the warlords finished the guards in less than a minute. It was an impressive bit of work. The power of a warlord never ceased to amaze Damien.
He ambled into the clearing in time to see Jen flick the blood off her sword and slip it into the sheath on her back.
“How did it work?” Damien asked.
“Like a dream. It cut through them with hardly any resistance.”
Talon slashed open one of the tents, revealing rows of heavy spears standing upright in wooden racks. The next tent held slabs of meat—no one wanted to inquire too closely about type—hanging from what looked like a clothesline. They tore open the other tents and found either weapons or food in each of them.
“What now?” Edward asked. “We can’t exactly make a fire out in the snow.”
“I’ll handle it.” Damien conjured bubbles around the tents and yanked them together in the center of the clearing, merging the bubbles into one. He drew a heavy portion of soul force and squeezed. The bubble shrank to the size of a large boulder, crushing everything inside and fusing it together in a solid mass. The bubble shifted, turning into a catapult with the crushed supplies as the stone. Damien launched the mass out into the storm where it vanished.
He dusted off his hands, reabsorbed the leftover energy, and grinned. “All done. Where’s the
