Forest For The Trees (Book 3) by Damien Lake Page A

controllers to heathen gods materializing and
slaughtering the ranks.  No one knew what had actually happened to Adrian’s
forces.  Given the condition of the few survivors, as well as the land itself,
any explanation seemed feasible.
    Jide swung his leg over the mount and dropped to the
ground.  He ignored the lingering winter chill.  His clothing was ample enough
for colder climates than this.
    The chill through his knee passed without notice when
he knelt in the center of the blast zone.  He bent until his lone eye hovered
inches over a deceptively small, flat stone.  In truth it was the crown of a
buried boulder.
    Numerous times Jide had poked through the aftereffects
of fires.  In the early days it had been a great way to score undamaged goods,
to hide them away and then claim they too had been destroyed.  Later, under
Adrian, he had learned to recognize infinitesimal signs that meant the fire had
been no accident.  That it had been set in order to eliminate evidence after a
corrupt officer sensed the number of his days dwindling.
    He knew what fire-touched stone looked like, which was
to say it looked about the same as it ever did once the soot and grime was
cleaned away.  This stone struck a discordant note with him.  His senses
insisted it was far too smooth for stone of its type.  Jide ran his fingers
across the surface, his touch confirmed what his eye already saw.
    His mouth tightened into a deeper frown.  He walked
back across the field into territory unmarked by fire damage.  In moments he
located similar stone patches peeking through the lush grasses.
    Examining these provided him with exactly what he
would have expected.  He stood to gaze about the field while he rubbed his
eye-patch in thought.
    No reason to believe the stone might be a different
type.  They both looked to be exactly the same.
    Which meant the bastard rock had melted .  No
conventional fire could create that much heat.  Else all the warehouses he’d
crawled through would have been slag.
    Adrian had brought none of the mages with him.  Hardly
surprising, since most of the army mages were tied to the Citadel.  The few who
were free of that endless exertion were the ones weak enough to be of no use,
assigned instead to tasks such as testing local water for flux-inducing
taints.  What few mages of any battle strength left were kept in mobile
reserve, ready to be sent to specific points if enemy forces slipped wild cards
out from their sleeves.
    This type of damage must have been mage-wrought.  No
shock that the locals, these Galemarans, would bring into play whatever
strengths they had…yet it boded ill.  The Taurs were always a shielding wall
between Adrian and the natives, but a mage’s powers could have cause serious
damage among the commanding ranks.  That is why it was inconceivable that Adrian
would have pushed so hard without adequately positioning his available assets.
    “What in the blue sky happened to us?”  Jide murmured
the unanswerable question while his fingers ceaselessly rubbed circles around
his leather-covered socket.
    A cockup of a mission objective in the first place,
hostile lands on a continent cutoff from Arronath for centuries where the
damned pollen attacked their health, vipers slithering through the ranks
and their forces spread from hells to breakfast!  Since he had ‘borrowed’ a
horse after crossing the mountains, he’d had to dodge each of the patrols. 
Mendell was running the Galemaran territories according to his rules, his writ.  Jide’s usual accepted slinking around would likely not be shrugged away
with a sly wink.  In all probability they would take him back to answer a slew
of inquiries.
    That had become painfully clear in the town by the
pass.  Every aspect of the campaign east of the Stoneseams operated under
strict regulations imposed by Mendell, down to how much tea should be used to
brew a single pot.  The locations of all personnel were to be reported and
damned