BECMI Chapter 243 – Recruitment Drives

Laird Fergus McConnder’s nose flattened against his face, and his two front teeth shattered and flew from his mouth as he went flying backwards ten feet, unconscious before he hit the ground.Sama idly looked about at the man’s personal guards, who had their claymores out or were drawing them nervously. She was radiating a complete lack of concern for them and any threat she posed as she drew her extended-fist back leisurely.

“Boys, you have steel drawn on me. If that steel isn’t dropped or sheathed in the next ten seconds, I’m going to take it and shove it up under those kilts. I am assuming it will be a mite painful, given the horrified expressions on the faces of the men I’ve put sharp pointy objects in before.”

“Drop them, ye dullards,” the Mick said flatly. “She can kill ye all before ye take a long breath, and that sot McConnder be not about to wake up and save ye.”

Swallowing, the half-dozen armored Caers slowly put their swords down and stepped back and away from the tall blonde who had just walked through four combat spells without a mark on her and one-hit the Wizard who lorded it over the town. Fergus McConnder wasn’t great shakes as far as Zanzyran Wizards went, but he was still a graduate of the School and a proud spellcaster.

She had treated him like his powerful spells and booming words were air. One blow!

Fear, aye, fear of being hit by that fist was a good reason to set their swords down and back away. Along with the unique pleasure of seeing their lord cousin’s face beat in.

“You. Pick up all of those swords in your arms and carry them away.” The scruffy-bearded fellow with light brown hair hastened to do what her clipped voice said. “You four, one to a limb, carry the sot away. I’d say carry him to the Cleric to be Healed, but alas, you don’t have those here. Don’t waste your Healing Potions on him, let him do that when he wakes up in couple of days.

“Two things.” She turned to the last and oldest of the men, definitely in charge of the others. He tensed up at her gaze.

“First, I’ve seen to it that the cemetery of the town is properly Blessed. There’ll be no bodies harvested from it in the future, your kin interred there won’t be dug up, Animated, or hied forth from their rest. Do you have a problem with that?”

The man blinked. “N-no, Lady Sama,” he answered after a moment of hesitation.

“Second, I’m going into this idiot’s tower. I’m going under his tower. I am going to wreck and obliterate anything that has to do with undead that I find. If I find anything dealing with undead, I’m also going to torch that whole bloody tower and bring it down in fire, and anyone inside it. If there’s anyone inside it and there’s anything undead there, you just might want to run and beat me there before I get there.” She slapped a fist in her hand, and there was a sound like breaking rocks as she popped her knuckles.

Then she started walking in the direction of the wizard’s tower.

“Shit!” the older man exclaimed, and took off at a run.

Sama just smiled.

The hill about the tower was collapsing in, and things were burning with unnatural hues, black and green flames wailing under the sullen gray skies as white flames gouted up here and there and ate them.

If you looked just right, you could see souls flashing and flaring in those white flames, ephemeral things that shot towards the skies… or were grabbed and hauled screaming back to worse fates.

The tower itself was completely ablaze, the stones leaking bluish flames of popping magic as magic fried, smoke billowing out as the wood inside and numerous objects of paper burned and fell apart to ash within.

None of the gathered townfolk lifted a hand to help with anything. Parts of the ground were still falling in, see, and the foundation of the tower was starting to tilt. Who dared go up there and throw water on the place?

Strangely enough, the apprentices to the laird had been confident in their magic, and had stayed behind when Wendler McConnder had come racing up to pull out the servants and warn them to leave.

None of them had made it out alive, despite the skeletons of their ancestors and servants supposedly protecting them, and now they burned with the tower and its master’s library and spellbooks.

Fergus McConnder was now a Wizard without his spellbooks. Unless he had a set stashed, he would have to rebuild his magic from scratch, an expensive and humiliating task, aye.

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Would have. It seemed he’d overindulged in the bourbon and died in the tavern with a bottle in his hand. That a spout had been shoved in his mouth and nigh a gallon poured down into it was something those responsible decided not to mention to anyone.

The MacKlannisters would send another monstrous excuse for a human being along to take over. In the meantime, they’d just have to see to their own defenses, and send out word that the laird had pissed off some powerful warrior woman passing through and she’d taken out his tower in payment for his rudeness.

Sama Rantha’s exploits didn’t stop there, and soon word of the Golden Hag was spreading beyond the Caergard lands as she visited each and every town and village in the principality, looking for her Forsaken.

If the local lairds didn’t like her whisking away their fighting men, who seemed overwhelmed and quite happy to go with the outlander woman who could beat twenty of them senseless without much apparent effort, they were soon sprawled out among their living guards, beaten senseless and crippled if they tried bringing along magical constructs.

If they brought undead to face her, powerful things made from dead Caergard warriors in plate and wielding their famous Claymores, she drew her Sword, and it sang two killing notes. She killed everything without any hesitation, generally starting with the Wizard as she crashed through their guards and cut them apart through all their magical defenses, softly singing a song that made their blood grow cold and their hearts heat up as she treated magic like air and showed Wizards the power of a sword in hand.

The angry wizards even turned out the Third Banner from Torloch, where the MacKlannisters ruled, and mustered them to try and corral her and cut her down. They were set upon in the night, and three-quarters of the soldiers suffered broken bones, although miraculously none of them died. As for the wizards and officers who led their units, they all seemed to have undead attendants, and they died with them, revealing that at least one of those lords was a lich himself in the process.

the wounded men whispered, and if some of them were smiling in deep satisfaction, the listeners only ate it up.

Incensed, Prince Cannarl MacKlannister ordered the First Banner of the Zanzyran army to return from Fort Blackrock and hunt her down. The warrior-mages returned home with great confidence and fanfare, which they probably noticed was a little forced, and set off to scour the region about Dunhall to find her.

The next day, Sama Rantha walked into Dunhall for her meeting, handing the aghast guards at the gate the broken staff of Cyrus MacKlannister as she walked by, and they didn’t dare to stop her. No one ever found out what happened to the First Banner, although there were signs of a fight some twenty miles from town out in the hills, but horses and bodies had all vanished and were gone without a trace.

A hundred and twenty Zanzyran wizard-soldiers, wiped away from the world, with no clue how it was done or remains left behind to explain anything.

If over a hundred horses found themselves in far-away Eislas, well, trained war horses were valuable assets for the well-trained Moorians there, who were pleased to start rebuilding their own cavalry.

The Kladelanders were very, very happy to spread word of her coming near and far, that no magic was going to stop her, and of just how many wizards she had killed who had come to make trouble with her. When master duelists, mercenaries, and adventurers were hired to dispose of her, and died either in complete secrecy or in very public displays, the latter only given to those who didn’t use magic to endanger those around her, her legend continued to spread, and her enemies to grow among the powerful.

Many were hoping she’d march on Torloch, and challenge the Prince and his rumored Bone Guard entombed all about his grim tower, the corpses of dead Caers animated and empowered and awaiting the command of their master, but it was not to be.

Instead, the Kladelanders quietly spread word, and young men and women stole out of the town to meet her. When magic tried to follow them, it ran into powerful magic on the other side disrupting the scrying, to at least one explosive result that blew out windows in Torloch Tower and was seen by half the town.

The citizens held their breath, wondering what was going to be sent off after their sons and daughters… but no further action was taken by Prince MacKlannister, seemingly content to see unwanted non-Casters leave and seethe and plot revenge.

Then Briggs showed up. In Neuva Vascovune.

There were far fewer challenges to Brigg’s martial ability in the lands of the former French immigrants. Since he was well over seven feet tall and built like a heroic figure of legends, the idle duelists took a look at him, his reach with his Greathammer, the way he was happy to demonstrate whipping it out and pounding through a dividing wall with nothing more than a roaring blur of motion, and decided it was better to drink with him than it was to fight him.

He was also preternaturally good at sussing out were-beasts, and wherever he went, he inevitably revealed some of them hiding among the population and summarily disposed of them, completely unafraid of their legendary combat prowess or being infected by their Curse.

His ability to find them was absolutely uncanny, making his way around the borders of the Principality and leaving none behind him, as if he was being guided by a divine spirit to expunge such horrors hidden among them.

Some of the lycanthropes were spellcasters, and they got to demonstrate the absolute uselessness of magic against him, too. Several clever Wizards who were too confident of themselves and tried to or otherwise shackle him to service ended up promptly dead and not coming back under the impacts of a great Hammer that sounded like the booming of a great kettle drum every time it hit anything.

As the Name of a Sword called came in from the east, the Name of a beating Hammer called came from the west. The warriors of Vascovune flocked to see him, and then many of them up and vanished, taking a chance to change their lives and find a new fortune many of them had never imagined elsewhere.

The swirl of a Source’s destiny caught them up, and with much less notoriety, the would-be Forsaken of Vascovune were sent away to chase it.