Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild Read online

  The Galactic Mage Series

  Book 1: The Galactic Mage

  Book 2: Rift in the Races

  Book 3: Hostiles

  Book 4: Alien Arrivals (out mid-2014)

  Prequels

  Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy’s Wild

  Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Zombie Apple Collapse

  (in progress)

  John Daulton

  www.DaultonBooks.com

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  John Daulton

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  ILBEI SPADEBREAKER AND THE HARPY’S WILD

  A Galactic Mage Series prequel

  The phrase “The Galactic Mage” is the trademark of

  John Daulton.

  Copyright © 2014 John Daulton

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9894787-2-4 (Paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9894787-3-1 (Kindle Ebook)

  Cover art by Cris Ortega

  Interior layout by Fernando Soria

  DEDICATION

  In loving memory of Uncle Jim.

  Chapter 1

  Jasper’s jump was terrible. Less than a pace and a half of water separated the riverbank from the weathered gray planks of the raft, and yet the misaligned mage missed that craft by as far as he would have had he been trying to jump the whole river. He’d given it a go, of course, and he flung himself forward headlong, fully committed, his frail body parallel to the water and already falling short before his feet left the mud. He soared—if such failure might be so described—for less than a moment, achieving an altitude so scant that his toes dragged the surface, arresting what little momentum he had and dooming his launch. He reached for the raft, head up, eyes wide, mouth wider. His face hit the planks with a thud, and his hands clapped two drumbeats on the wood. His skull rebounded, throwing him backward, where he slid into the water, the last things visible his pale palms, held up as if he’d surrendered to indignity. And, of course, Kaige and Meggins laughed.

  Sergeant Ilbei Spadebreaker saw it happen and harrumphed, then bent at the waist to shrug off his chainmail. He was a muscular fellow, broad across the shoulders, extremely so, and, admittedly, broad across the belly—though that was a different sort of girth, which he blamed on alehouses and eateries. But despite his bulk, the heavy rings came off easily, being a practiced exercise, and they slid over his head and down his powerful arms with a metallic hiss, pouring onto the riverbank like a slurry of silver coins. He straightened and quickly undid the brass buckle that held his weapons belt in place beneath his rounded middle. It fell to the grass, and a moment after, he was in the water, his dive timed neatly with Jasper’s place in the current so that the scrawny sorcerer was just tumbling by.

  The water was dark and gray, the silt stirred up and cloudy, churning with the confluence of two tributaries whose flow was only marginally diminished by the late summer sun. Ilbei dove under and looked around for the washed-away wizard. He saw the flash of a white leg, the angle of a foot flitting by. He reached for it, grasping the boney shin in a grip made powerful by a life of soldiering and toil. He hauled the young wizard to him, and then, with a few strokes and a few kicks, he got them both back to the riverbank.

  The mud was slick and the grass slicker, but with some effort, Ilbei crawled up the bank, dragging his catch behind him like a wet sack of sticks. Once Jasper was out of the river, Ilbei turned back, shaking his head at what he saw. The exposed body of the mage was barely more than bones rattling beneath pale skin, as white as the belly of a frog. He wondered how a kid like that got through boot camp at all, knowing even as he thought it that it didn’t matter how, since the mages always made it through. They had to. The Queen’s law, and that was that. Every platoon got a wizard, whether they wanted one or not, and no matter what the magician could or couldn’t do. So Jasper was Ilbei’s new wizard.

  Ilbei watched the sodden sorcerer lying there and let go a long breath. They hadn’t even started the mission yet. But at least the skinny kid was still breathing. “Get up,” Ilbei said. “Ya ain’t dead yet.”

  Jasper sat up, the wet cloth of his robes clinging to him and revealing the wicker cage of his body beneath. His hood had somehow got up over his head, and it lay upon his face, looking as if molded from dark blue phyllo dough. Through it, Ilbei could see the movements of the magician’s eyes as he blinked and tried to get his bearings. He expected young Jasper to cry out, but the wizard did not. Instead, he peeled the wet fabric away and stared up at Ilbei, bewilderment upon him like a pox. “I was certain I had planned that jump correctly. I hardly understand why it didn’t work.” His voice broke some as he spoke, a pubescent warble, though Ilbei knew he had to be in his late teens or early twenties. The army wouldn’t take them any younger than that.

  “Well,” said Ilbei, reaching a hand down to help the fellow up, “from where I sat, didn’t look like ya planned it at all. I seen box turtles jump farther’n that.”

  Jasper regarded Ilbei’s hand suspended in the space above him, contemplation creasing his countenance as he considered what Ilbei had said. A moment after, he looked up and remarked, “Well that can’t be true. Not even the Solbax-Ferrund box turtles in the southern marshes of Dae can jump that far, and they have the best skeletal structure for it. While it is possible that, in a state of agitation, they might manage some marginal degree of lift, it couldn’t possibly be considered a ju—”

  Ilbei cut him off by bending down and lifting him to his feet, gripping him by both shoulders and standing him up as easily as if he were a child. He did it so quickly, and with such easy strength, that the didactic spell caster simply blinked at him, his mouth still open but silent, the word he’d been shaping abandoned. “Listen, son,” said Ilbei. “I don’t need no stories about no jumpin turtles from Dae. What I need is fer ya to pay attention and do what you’re told. I don’t know why they keep sendin you magic fellers out here, when ya ain’t fit fer campin out back a’ yer parents’ house—much less ridin down bandits in minin camps—but if’n ya got any ideas about goin home when yer time is done, ya better straighten up quick.”

  “I was only trying to point out—”

  “Son, just plug up that there gob of yers and get on with another run at the raft.”

  Jasper swiveled his head and looked forlornly at the raft, upon which sat the rest of the squad amongst a few crates and bags of gear, all three of them bent by laughter. The largest of them, a giant of a man named Kaige, had fallen to the planks, struck down by the hilarity of Jasper’s folly and at risk of rolling right off into the river. Their guffaws mixed with the giggling of the current, and Ilbei reckoned that in Jasper’s ears it must have seemed as if the whole world laughed at him. The movement of the wizard’s shoulders beneath the sagging drape of his robes set Ilbei’s head to shaking once again.

  “Them fellers ain’t gonna take ya serious till ya straighten up,” Ilbei said, low enough that only Jasper could hear, and not without a note of sympathy. The endless tendency of the army to send these young wizards out so unprepared, year after year, had given Ilbei some degree of empathy for the lads. Some of these fellows simply weren’t cut out to be outdoors. Doting, proud mothers and coddled upbringings didn’t prepare young mages for army life—or any life worth much, as Ilbei could figure it. “Now get over there and give yerself three or four steps to get goin first. And aim for the middle of the raft, not the edge.”

  “But they’re in the middle o
f the raft,” Jasper said. “I will collide with them.”

  “They’ll keep ya from runnin off the other side when ya get there, so just do it. I ain’t here to steer ya wrong.”

  The young wizard looked Ilbei in the eye, having to tip his head down to do it, as Ilbei was a hand and a half shorter than the mage, but he nodded that he would try. He strode purposefully back up the bank to where the raft was tethered to a stake and once more contemplated the trajectory required.

  Ilbei watched him evaluating the distance, the wizard’s brows furrowed, his eyes narrow. The old sergeant had to resist the temptation to go haul the raft back to the shore and spare him the trouble. If he did it for him, the rest of the men would never give Jasper any respect, and worse, their teasing would make a tough road even tougher, at least for a while. “Go on,” he said. “We ain’t got forever to get this here mission done.”

  Jasper backed up the bank four long strides, then hoisted his soggy robes up above his knees and ran for it full tilt. He hit the edge of the water, made his leap, and out went his foot, sliding sideways in the mud. He piled left ear first into the water with a smack and rolled the rest of the way in like a corpse. Fortunately, he managed to grab onto a thick tuft of watergrass, preventing him from being carried out into the swifter currents, and Ilbei had time to get to him and drag him out and up the bank again.

  The boys on the raft were, of course, aflame with hilarity, and this time Kaige’s great muscled mass did roll off, right into the water with a splash.

  “By Hestra, you’re a sorry sort of athlete if’n I ever saw one,” Ilbei said as he stared down at the flummoxed Jasper lying at his feet. “Worst ever, and I seen a few.”

  “Well I never said I was an athlete.” Jasper made no move to regain his feet. He lay back in the grass, wearily content to stare up into the warm summer sky. “Frankly, I think it’s ridiculous that I am forced to waste two years of my life in the service of barbarity anyway. I have no more interest in taming the wilds than I do in purging the kingdom of Her Majesty’s enemies. Clearly, we both agree that I am not suited for this kind of activity.”

  “I expect the two of us won’t never agree on anythin as much as that there,” Ilbei said, once again hoisting the soggy sorcerer to his feet. “But you’re here now, and ya do have to get on that damn raft. So get to it. I’m gonna give ya another crack at it on yer own before I’ll sell ya out to them laughin devils there and let em figure how to get ya aboard as they please. Now, let her fly this time—that is, unless ya think ya can haul that thing to shore yerself, against the current and them boys a-layin there no less.”

  “You already saw that I could not.”

  It was true. Jasper had tried that first. “Well, maybe if’n ya put yer back into it this time. Use yer legs.”

  “I’ll get him, Sarge,” said the mountainous Kaige. He was coming up the riverbank, having made short work of extricating himself only a few spans downstream. He snatched up the spindly Jasper and lugged him under one arm like an ale keg to the water’s edge, where he then cleared the distance to the raft in what was little more than an energetic stride. He dumped the dripping wizard at the feet of the other two already aboard, then turned back to Ilbei with a shrug. “See.”

  Ilbei looked downstream to where another raft was already tiny in the distance. He blew out a long breath that inflated his cheeks like white-whiskered balloons. It was going to be a long mission, he could tell.

  “C’mon, Sarge,” called Hams, the one man among the group near Ilbei’s age. “The wizard is aboard well enough. If we let the others get too far ahead, they’re gonna blame me for dinner being late.”

  As Ilbei donned his armor and weapons again, he watched his squad untangling themselves from the knot of their amusement, preparing to get underway. He wondered if they might be the rattiest batch of misfits he’d gotten in all his ninety-some years serving Her Majesty. It seemed like the most powerful woman on planet Prosperion ought to be able to conscript a sharper lot than this. With a grumble and a curse sent to Anvilwrath for what had to be a great heavenly joke, Ilbei pulled up the stake and leapt onto the raft.

  Chapter 2

  Ilbei let Hams work the rudder, as Hams knew the river and Ilbei did not. Ilbei had never been down the Desertborn River before. The army had brought him south because there was trouble in Three Tents. Three Tents was a small network of foothill mining camps near the Softwater River, a place where Ilbei Spadebreaker would be well suited to address problems that might arise. And they likely would, as a band of highway robbers led by a man known as Ergo the Skewer had found Three Tents and the strings of private claims along its local waterways. The bandits preyed on the miners for the copper they dug and the pittances of gold dust they occasionally came across—which by all reports would not even fill a teaspoon over the course of a year.

  At first, the miners had come together and attempted to run the brigands off, but the Skewer was too clever to be caught, and worse, too brutal to be dealt with directly—the heads of three miners were found mounted on pikes a week after the vigilantes made their first, and only, brave head-on attempt. The locals had set traps after, but those failed as well and, worse, brought further violence. In fear for their lives and the meager livings they scraped out of those brush-covered hills, the miners had been forced to go to the garrison to ask for the army’s help.

  Ilbei was called down from the north to lead the mission because mining was in his blood. It was his past, his present (albeit reduced to a hobby when he got leave), and likely his future—when he decided to retire from the army someday. He’d grown up in a mining camp, and while he’d never been to Three Tents before, he knew it wouldn’t be much different than the camps he’d grown up around. The fact that some gang of thieves would fall upon the kindly sorts that took up such simple, honest lives rankled him. So, when the assignment came up, Ilbei made no objections at all.

  Besides, one job was as good as another in Her Majesty’s army, as long as the pay came steady. If he could do a bit of good for good people, that was all the more reward, although, he was getting older now. Sometimes he felt like neither was enough to keep him at it much longer. At a hundred and fifteen years old, it might be time to retire from army life. Maybe go find a river or some nice ravine to mine on his own. Spend the last six decades of his life in peace. Maybe eight or nine decades if he dug up enough gold to pay them fancy magic doctors to keep his old carcass alive. Magickless folks like him, blanks as they were called, rarely made it past two centuries on Prosperion, but that was still a lot of time. It was also still a long way off, and he had work to do. He suspected the dragon’s share of that work would be spent dealing with his new sorcerer.

  As if to prove that very thing, Jasper sat upon a corner of the raft, naked as the day he was born, his wet robes set aside and not the least bit of modesty or embarrassment evident. He held a small hand mirror and moved it about with twitching motions, maneuvering it as best he could that he might see down his back and around his pasty pale backside. Ilbei thought the odd fellow might throw out his neck, he was contorting himself so urgently. And of course the rest of the lads, barely having caught their breath from laughing at Jasper’s attempts to board, were now once more tortured with hilarity as the ghostly white wizard twisted and pried, peering anxiously about with his mirror as if looking for a spider crawling on him somewhere.

  “There’s one,” goaded Ferster Meggins, a seasoned soldier in his early middle years, a man with a promising gift for both the bow and the small battle-axe, if Ilbei’s glimpse of him practicing the other day was any evidence.

  “Where?” Jasper shrieked as he said it, his eyes so wide Ilbei could see the whites all the way around the irises. The frantic wizard leapt up and spun in a circle like a dog chasing its tail, leading each revolution with the mirror hooked around and trying to catch a view of his entire backside. After two full circuits, Jasper looked back to Meggins pleadingly. “Where?”

  “I think it’s
gone and run into your butt crack there,” Meggins said. He pointed helpfully toward Jasper’s rump and nodded with a most serious look upon his face. “Likely hiding under Jimmy and his traveling bags.”

  This gave poor Jasper pause, as he had to stop and work through the slang, his eyes once more flung wide. He reached down and lifted up his privates, horrified, his skinny legs bowed outward in a diamond shape as he bent and peered beneath, dreading what he might find.

  This spectacle set the rest to new heights of hysteria, and even Hams had a hard time holding it back. Ilbei had to resist the urge to throw himself into the water and swim for shore. He could tell General Hanswicket that he’d fallen in and gotten tangled in some roots for a time, and by the time he got out, the rest of them were too far off to catch.

  Instead, he asked, “Dragon’s teeth, son, what are ya lookin fer?”

  Jasper looked up at him as if he were missing the most obvious thing in the world. “Leeches, of course. What else would I be looking for?”

  “Leeches?”

  “Yes, leeches. Leeches frequent bodies of water in this part of Kurr, especially this time of year, and, in particular, the species known as the ‘concubine’s pin,’ which, while small, can extract nearly a pint of blood in under an hour. They’ve got both heat and magical resistance, making surgery the only way to remove them.”

  “Oh no,” Meggins said, sounding terribly concerned. “They don’t have any surgeons down here. Sarge will have to carve them out with his old dagger. But he’ll do it if you need him to. Won’t you, Sarge?”

  Jasper gasped, fixing Ilbei with a shame-on-you sort of look. “Do you have any idea how unsanitary that is?”