Lance

They did not listen.

The man wielding the boarding axe came in first, swinging in a hard horizontal cut aimed at Cain’s head. Cain dropped at once. Just a second too late and his head would have hit the cold and muddy street.

He risked a sweep at the man’s off-balance feet with all his strength. It paid off, sending the man down hard across the threshold. He felt a throbbing pain in his shin when the second man with a sword charged straight over him.

The swordsman ignored his downed comrade and sent a clean swing for his head. Cain drew his iron knife and caught the first strike. They traded for several seconds before the second swordsman hit his flank, catching him off guard. Although the swing missed, the man took the opening to tackle him into the ground.

He fought with his fists to try to break free, but the swordsman was already gripping his weapon, ready to stab at him. It went wide and Cain countered with the knife, driving it into the man’s exposed shoulder. The swordsman winced as Cain shoved free and pulled back into the clinic.

The stab had grazed Cain along the left ribs, hard enough to draw blood. He pressed his palms to the wound, feeling the heat and wetness spreading through his coat.

Behind him, patients were already scrambling and crowding the walls. Mira, seeing the fight, decided to put her clear prism into her bag, an instinct she had already been following ever since she started travelling alone. Through the open door, Fendrel waited, his coat clean and unbothered, with a thin grin on his face.

The fourth man carried no weapon, only a grey cloak and a stone already in his hand.

The axe-man got back to his feet, coming to finish him. He moved fast, yet careful, and swung again, this time at his right side. Cain was too late to react and the blunt edge of the axe took him across the ribs. It went through his coat with a deep blunt shock, knocking him across to the other side of the room.

In the open doorway, the cloaked man stepped forward, raising the clouded stone. Compared to Mira’s clear one, this one looked cheaper. Still, the caster held it up like a trophy and started casting.

Orange flame filled the air around his free hand, forming into a spear-length line of fire that roared as it took shape. Sparks formed and showered along the frost and the smell of hot iron hit the air in the room.

He shoved his palm forward to throw the Fire Spear inside the clinic.

Any normal person would have been out cold from the axe by then, but Cain got to his knees, shaking badly.

He saw the blazing spear as the shape finished and immediately looked at Mira. It didn’t reach her, but it was violent enough to make the other men scatter. One of them staggered backwards close to the caster, making him stumble and his grip slip.

The clouded prism hit the flagstones and skittered across inside, coming to a dead stop three paces away from him.

But the fight wasn’t over yet. One of the swordsmen pushed through, eyes fixed on Mira.

Cain was out of time, and he knew it.

His vision was starting to blur, but his memories from when he was a child came rushing in. Back in the days when he had royal tutors.

One thing he would never forget was the first time he was taught what mana is and how to use it to cast a spell.

He learned of different ones, but he was only able to cast low-level and less powerful spells. In his mind, he remembered the one that stuck with him, up to that day.

Lance

It was a powerful and difficult spell but it was the only thing he knew that would help them now. Cain did not hesitate as he lunged and his fingers closed tight around the prism the caster had left behind.

His right knee found the boards and he kept watch on the swordsman charging toward Mira, now just a few feet away.

There was no room for any form. He held out his left hand and a rush of raw mana surged from his chest and started to pour directly into his hand.

It was painful.

A continuous beam thick as a man’s torso tore out of his palm. The core of it was the color of a cold blue winter sky after dusk, and its edges ran a hard white like the frost outside. It was not blinding but bright enough that the orange hearth in the center of the room looked small and dirty against it.

The beam ripped through the air, then settled as a low hum that pressed into every sternum in the room. His hair lifted in the thin air and the only thought left was keeping Mira alive.

He held it for about two seconds while the swordsman tried to step through it, then it cut. But he could feel what was left of the draw leave his body and turn into a packed mass of the same force, only now smaller and tighter, compressed into an orb. It slammed into the swordsman’s chest and detonated.

Mira got clear of the explosion as the man went down, unconscious. He lay on the clinic boards with blood at his nose and mouth. The men near the doorway saw everything and froze despite Fendrel still shouting.

A breath later they scrambled through the slush and fled into the alleys, leaving the swordsman where he had fallen.

Fendrel stared at Cain and muttered, “Who are you?”

He couldn’t hear it, but he made out the words and did not answer. Fendrel stormed away, his clean boots now filthy with mud from the run.

Cain didn’t notice at first, but when he checked the prism, he realized it was broken. He looked down at his right hand and saw the small cuts, glass dust on the boards below him mixed with blood.

The sick patients who were huddled were staring at the man down near Mira. But her attention wasn’t on him, and it wasn’t on the street either.

It was on Cain.

Mira got to him and caught him just as he was about to collapse.

“Kell,” she whispered.

He met her eyes. He could not stop shivering.

The cold air came through the doorway past the hearth that was burning low. The heat started to thin inside the room and the snow began to drift over the threshold.

He stayed on his knees against her, trembling. The room’s cold sank straight into his bones. He clamped his jaw and wrapped his left arm across his chest.

She watched his face, still holding his arm.

“Who are you?”

She asked the same question as the Master Apothecary, a question he never wanted to answer. But she said it with the same steady weight she brought to everything else she did.

He looked at her, and then at the man down near her, and said nothing.

She reached out and turned his injured palm upward toward the hearth light.

“The cuts are shallow, but the prism dust is still in the skin. It has to come out before it closes, or it will fester.”

She pulled a clean rag from her coat, poured a few drops of bitter alcohol over it from a small flask at her belt, and began wiping the glass out of his palm.

The alcohol stung, though the cold had numbed him so deeply that it faded almost at once.

“This is all I can do for now. I’m out of mana, but this will do.”

“I see. Thank you,” he breathed, the words white in the cold.

She finished cleaning the cuts and used a strip of white linen to bind his palm.

“Kell, you don’t have to tell me, but that cast… how? I mean I’ve seen war-mages up close when I was in the war hospital, and what you did was weaker, but close to what they could do.”

He stared at the boards before he answered.

“They tested me at an early age and they found out that my mana reserves were high, even against casters in the capital. I thought it was something, for a while. Then people started pushing me toward an academy,” he said. It was a half-truth.

“I never knew.”

“The pressure was a lot. I was young, and I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want them picking for me, so I left.”

“That makes sense.”

“So I ended up without a prism, working the docks like anybody else.” It was a good fabricated lie.

Mira checked the broken glass, then faced him again.

“A spell like that is not common, and you were able to control it, even just a bit. That’s why I asked you who you are.”

“I never used it before. I just remembered it from when I was a kid.” He let out a sigh. “We’re lucky they ran.”

“They won’t come back. They can’t risk it. I can always report them to the Ministry and let them handle it.”

She glanced across the clinic. Families were already hauling timber and damaged looms to brace the split doorframe against the cold.

“Kell.”

He forced his head up.

“If the Wardens ask about war-magic here,” she said, “I’ll tell them a rogue mercenary cast it and fled south.”

“Thank you,” he said.