Knights Magi (Book 4) Read Free Page A

don’t much like reading,” Tyndal shot back.
    “And I don’t much like idiocy ,” I said, rolling my eyes.  “I’m going to need you both for a number of missions by the end of the summer.  Things I can’t trust anyone else with, frankly.  I need you as competent and as trained as possible . . . with all of this boyish rivalry safely buried.  You need to learn how to work together, despite your differences . . . because you’re going to be working together, like it or not.”
    That wasn’t an understatement.  I did need them.  The problem was Gilmora.  
    Last summer the goblins had rushed an invasion of the north-central Riverlands, pouring about a hundred-thousand gurvani warriors, trolls, and the occasional dragon into one of the most fertile and productive regions in the Duchies.  Gilmora grew just about everything, but the region’s major crop was cotton.  Gilmora grew the finest cotton in the world, and the land had become ridiculously wealthy on its export to Merwyn, Remere, and Vore.  
    Gilmora was also full of people.  It took a lot of people to deliver cotton to market, and Gilmora had a lot of people.  Or at least it used to.
    Now the goblins occupied the northern and western third of the region.  They had not assembled in one nice, neat, easy-to-defeat army, of course.  They went after the smaller human settlements piecemeal, mostly looking for slaves, driving the survivors to flee south and east, consolidating them in the larger cities.  The invasion had played havoc with unsuspecting Gilmora last year.  The folk there were used to civilized feuds between cotton dynasties, not the savage attacks of genocidal non-humans.  The Dead God had even sent dragons out of legend there to destroy the armed strength protecting the land.
    That hadn’t worked out so well, after the initial shock wore off.  My warmagi and I had slain the last one he’d sent.  Barely.  Tyndal and Rondal had both been involved in that fight.
    So now the goblins had stopped advancing.  They were just . . . waiting .  Waiting and rounding up every human they could find to feed the sacrifice pits at Boval Castle.  
    This had been a fell winter for Gilmora’s normally-mild climate.  The daily dispatches I received from Lord Commander Terleman were grisly tales of gurvani raids that had driven thousands into flight and had seen thousands more captured, coffled, tormented, and force-marched north into the Penumbra and beyond.  
    As horrific as the reports were, the focus of the nascent kingdom had been on stopping the advance, not reclaiming lost territory.  The resistance behind the loosely-defined “front line” was strong in some areas, extinct in others.  Gilmora was not a bellicose land – “make cotton, not war” was the motto of one prominent family.  Most of those who had chosen to flee from the region were now castled or still moving away from the front lines in long columns of refugees.  Those who stayed to try to protect their property were often left alone . . . at first.  
    The goblins weren’t advancing.  But they wouldn’t stay in such a playful mood for long.  Soon they would be on the march again.  South, west, east, any direction they picked to march didn’t bode well for the kingdom.  If they persisted in an aggressive attack the kingdom’s resources would be required to repel it.
    Like it or not, these two half-grown half-men who had resorted to exploding chamberpots and itching spells were some of the best potential resources we had.  As I watched Tyndal cut sidelong looks at his rival, and Rondal’s eyes narrow in boyish derision, I wondered whether or not we were already doomed.
    “I have no choice but to train you into the men that I need,” I said, almost apologetically.  “Our fate is rarely our own to choose, but we can make the best of what the gods have gifted us with.  You both have tremendous potential.  For harm as well as good.  You’re both reasonably