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Beyond that, he had detected Skyseeker’s intentions, as though her mind was a door that he had opened without any input. She had been scared, anxious, she had seen him become paralysed and had sought to destroy the relic with her remaining warp-blade. Yet he had stopped her, how? He couldn’t remember speaking, but she’d stopped in her tracks all the same, obeying his will in an instant.
That kind of power was terrible to imagine, let alone experience, but Roderick could see its uses. Imagine if he had possessed this power all those years ago, on the battle that had decided his exile. He could have told the secessionists to drop their arms and kneel, or to turn on their fellow comrades while he moved in his forces.
He remembered how Wilfred had warned him of its dangers, of the Warp’s ability to afflict those who sought to use it, as he had felt personally on their voyage north. His old friend would never have sanctioned its use, and yet what was the point in not exploring every avenue available to him? Just as he told Von Kessel with the orcs, they needed every advantage they could get – securing the loyalty of the orcs, and maybe even manipulating the will of the Chaos forces they were yet to face – these things could turn the tide of battle.
He peeled back the wrapping of cloth, exposing the staff to the candles that lit his tent. The rocks shaped into obsidian skulls on its head clashed against the polished sandstone colour of the haft, but otherwise unassuming at a glance. Wilfred’s wizard staff was wrapped in cloth and decorated in flowery vines, and long ago he’d seen a fire mage decorate his weapon with rubies and other gemstones, but the relic was plain, functional, yet he starred at it as though it was made of pure gold.
Roderick took a moment to cast the wards Wilfred had taught him. They were basic, and Roderick was no magician, and the whole ritual probably would account to nothing against the power of the Warp, but the formality gave him a little more encouragement to get on with whatever he was about to do.
He slowly inched his hand towards it. He expected touching the relic to take more effort the closer his fingers got, but instead it was the opposite. His worries seemed to drain away in its presence, trepidation vacating in place of confidence. Indeed, why shouldn’t he use the relic? Everything he did, he did for the Empire, after all.
His palm wrapped snugly over the haft, as though it had been smithed and enchanted just for his exact shape of hand. The grainy texture of it was ambient to the cool night, and its weight was feather-light as he drew it into both hands.
He wasn’t where to start, but that wasn’t a problem for long. There was a strange sensation, like a half-remembered thought pulling at the back of his mind, ready to come forward. He had felt this way before, he realised, when he’d claimed the relic in the temple, a heat building in the muscles in his arms. It was a good heat, like the burn one feels after a desperate but vigorous battle, the adrenaline making him feel light on his feet.
He closed his eyes, trying to focus on this new incoming energy. In his mind’s eye it took on the form of a current, cascading from the relic into his hands, his body. He pictured a door standing before him, anchored to nothing but air, but never toppling. The wisps of the Warp obeyed him, and when he opened his eyes he could almost see the door’s outline in a split second before it faded, like the afterimage of a bright light leaving an imprint on one’s vision.
He willed it to open, just a sliver, and the handle twisted as though a phantom hand had obeyed. It made no sound of its opening, but it wasn’t silent either. As a beam of white line shone through the crack, there came a voice, one he did not recognise.
He did not hear the words, but he could feel their emotion and meaning, and his mind was processing them into something coherent. It was wondering aloud about its armour, if perhaps it should fetch more polish from the smith, wishing that Lord Edouart would notice his pristine armour and commend him for upholding the standards of Brettonia.
Another ‘voice’ overrode the first, this one contemplating whether to ask the Brettonains if they had any seasoning for his soup. A third was considering reshoeing his horse, a fourth contemplating cheating at a card game he and his companions were playing in hopes of winning the pot.
These were the men around his tent, there thoughts like a wind wending tis way out the door. He opened it up a little further, and ten more voices joined in, jumbling into a incompressible mess, as though he’d found himself in the middle of a bustling alehouse.
Roderick took a moment to compose himself to this sudden madness. A man’s thoughts were his own, and yet he found himself with several at the end of his fingertips. It was incomprehensible, it did not make sense, and yet he was sure he had the right of it.
He tried to project his own thoughts through the door, sending out a simple hello, but if it made it through the jumble of emotions and feelings, then it wasn’t detected by any of them. He seemed to be unnoticed, was the because of his door? Did he have control over it, or was the staff itself hiding his presence?
He tried single out a thought, the one who was pondering on his evening meal. The relic seemed to catch onto what he wanted, closing the door a little so he could focus. More details came to him. The man was one of Von Kessel’s sailors, and he’d heard many stories about the luxurious food the Brettonians enjoyed. He wanted to ask one of the knights if they’d brought anything he could have, but he also thought the knights were a bunch of buffoons who loved their ponies a little too much. Besides, they called his friend a peasant to his face, if they did the same to him they would come to blows and that wasn’t worth it.
He had studied for hundreds of hours beneath Wilfred’s tutorage, but he hadn’t even reached a novice’s level of skill before giving it up, but this… this was so natural. Could Wilfred have overcomplicated all his talks of the Warp and its powers?
This time he focused on projecting to that man’s line of thought, pouring his willpower into the effort, trying to sway his opinion. He told him to put his reservations aside, to just ask and see what happened. Try as he might, the man did not budge, and soon his train of thought drifted elsewhere.
Roderick shook his head in frustration. This was just a person, surely he couldn’t withstand against the relic and the Warp? Roderick concentrated, harder than he ever had before thanks to the relic’s strength pouring into him. He opened the door wider, the extra leverage giving him a better approach to his test subject.
Instead of projecting, he pushed harder, forcing his will across the threshold. He could feel their resistance crumbling before him, the Warp bringing them down with ease. The sailor decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask the knights, but why stop there? Roderick told him to take off his boots, and he heard his command across the Winds, and undid his laces without a second’s hesitation. The man held nothing but absolute deference to him, and the authority felt good. This was what Roderick had been denied for all these years, his exile had forced him to let go of all this, of using his forces like a sword to crush his foes. This was more than simple deference to rank, this was pure command he held. If he could control one man like this, why not two? A dozen? Hundreds? He could wield entire armies like this, relaying orders in an instant.
Roderick sucked in a breath, interrupting the train of thought. He pulled away from the man’s thoughts, willing the door to close, and the influx of emotions ceased. Roderick opened his eyes to the real world, dropping the staff and lurching away as though it burned his fingers.
His heart was slamming against his chest, adrenaline still pumping through his veins. He felt sick, he had violated that poor sailor’s mind, used it like it was a tool for Roderick’s amusement. He had no right to toy with him like that, yet in the moment he hadn’t felt a shred of regret.
He scowled down at the relic, plucking the cloth and draping it over the staff. Wilfred had warned him about this, the relic was a tool of Chaos, it would try to convert him in any way it could, and it seemed it had made him more lustful for power than ever before. Roderick didn’t like the connotations of that.
He moved for the flap of his tent, searching for the man he’d manipulated. Stars glittered in the dark canvas above, while the world below was a sprawl of tents in all directions, the camp planted on the slope of a hill. Down the road to the left, he spotted a fellow putting his boots back on with a terrified expression on his face, a couple of nearby onlookers watching him strangely. Roderick wanted to apologise, but what could he say without sanding mad himself?
Roderick moved back inside, sitting on his cot and laying his head in his hands. He felt terrible, and yet the energy of the relic, the ease of which he could detect and move the thoughts of others, it had felt so good, proper.
.
He laid down on his cushions, closing his eyes and trying to get some rest.
He promised himself he would never touch the staff again. It was a lapse in judgement, no more and no less. Recruiting orcs was one thing, but tempting the Warp was where he drew the line.
-xXx-
The wilds of Brettonia were flowery and colourful stretches of meadows and the occasional brook, with healthy cone-shaped trees stretching out in great swathes of leaves, the habitat continuing on long into the early weeks of their march from Lyonesse. That was why it was so jarring when they saw the fort.
It was a generous description, the walls were made from wood palisades two men high, surrounding a few small brick buildings and watchtowers. There was a river curling over its eastern side, wending out into a dark forest beyond, while its west side was occupied by a scattering of huts. It was smaller than a town but bigger than a holdfast, and through its heart cut the paved track that the band had followed straight from the Brettonian capital.
“That is Cassel!” Edouart said, pointing a gauntleted finger down into the valley. The group was looking down on the fort from a hill to its south, a mix of Kessel’s men and Edouart’s. The leaders had gathered after the scouts had come back with troubling reports.
“It was,” one of Edouart’s knights added, shaking his head. Roderick had seen the smoke trails from far off, and Cassel was their source. The huts had been pillaged, a third of them burning to cinders while the rest were damaged. He could see the gate to the fortress was breached, some of the outer defences toppled, but the buildings within looked untouched.
“Looks like bandit’s work,” Von Kessel remarked, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Impossible,” Edouart replied. “Couronne is not a day’s ride north, and we patrol our woods well. Bandits would not have travelled far before our peasants would have raised the alarm. I must search for survivors.”
“Very well, you can have some of my men to accompany you,” Von Kessel said.
The group made their way back to their camp a few leagues down the road, Edouart gathering a few more riders to his group. Roderick was surprised when he was picked to accompany the knights. “I’d rather have Imperial eyes report back your findings. That little knight’s fresh to war, we both know that, he’ll miss things, I’m certain of it.”
“Don’t you trust him?” Roderick asked.
“I trust in the Empire, same as you.”
Roderick didn’t mind, it would do him some good to ride at speed for once, get out of all the noise and smell of the camps. He mounted up with three sailors who were decent in the saddle, and rode up to meet Edouart’s group. They were five knights strong, including Edouart himself, and the eight of them fell into a gallop.