Chapter 106

Tír na nÓg was, as ever, a hive of activity as Verenestra sorted out her liberated territories and brought her armies to bear on any Daoine Sidhe formations not covered by their fortresses. As Verenestra’s armies were so much larger than the Daoine Sidhe’s this usually led to victory on the part of the liberators, but casualties were often high. The Daoine Sidhe were very effective with area effect magics whereas your ordinary Sidhe simply weren’t. Still, the rate of attrition was definitely in Verenestra’s favour, along with growing ordinary Sidhe numbers as her reform of the marriage bonding process grew apace. In essence the lack of new numbers to the Daoine Sidhe armies was counting against them and they knew it, though seemed disinclined to do anything about it.

It was the fortresses though that were drawing our main attention. Other than using some form of mass destruction there didn’t appear to be any way to get at them. Their security had been beefed up after the debacle of Oberon’s release. The other area of concern was to enable some form of mental protection for the day when Oonagh decided to talk. Though again she appeared disinclined to do so, for which we were quite grateful. The bulk of the ordinary Sidhe society was turning to a mostly pastoral base which was being used to support a standing army which meant that Verenestra could use them all year round unlike Oonagh’s army which apart from a core of Daoine Sidhe had a seasonal aspect to it.

As allies we supported the general direction the war was taking, though had not needed to be placed on the front lines again. Mostly our role was in support, logistics and intelligence, though the latter was mostly done by the Seers. Not that the Seers had it easy, they were more often than not trying to keep Princess Arwen from being way too intrusive on any aspect of life that took her interest. Not that Arwen meant any harm, just that at the tender age of three everyone felt there were some aspects of adult life that ought to remain a mystery until she at least reached that stage, not that we were having a great deal of luck there.

The other thing we also had to tolerate was Mage Sofya’s coterie constantly springing ‘surprise’ information gathering visits. Not that we were particularly hiding anything, just they had a tendency to turn up and immediately start questioning us as to how we viewed the progress of the war. Mind you, they could only get at the Earth Mages; no one else would give them the time of day. Leonova in particular having threatened to rip the head off one of Sofya’s aides if he ever came near her again. He did try to stop her ‘change’ but I’d already placed a shield over it as a favour and hence he’d been forced to flee for his life pursued by a very angry wolf, to the amusement of all who witnessed it.

I was also fortunate that Sofya, for all her dislike of me along with a desire to keep an eye on me at all times often in flagrant breach of Council guidelines, hadn’t noticed either Dorry, Ketty or Niras in my circle of friends. Nor had she noticed the investigation launched by Morgana through Róisín into how much Sofya had gleaned about Loegria, which turned out to be the name and nothing else, save it was possibly linked to some sort of activity in the Enforcement Office. This had since gone ‘off the boil’ as it were when Simon had informed the Council that Loegria was a Healing Magic project of some kind.

Morgana herself was rather tired of Sofya’s activities but was constrained by Council rules as to how one of them chose to investigate anything they thought to be a breach of conduct and Sofya was treading a very fine line in not quite breaching the rules. Besides, it took a very brave Mage to interrupt Morgana in anything, particularly if it was what she deemed intrusive questioning. Hence Sofya’s aides went for easier targets, hence their pestering of my (mostly) journeyman group.

This forced me into taking my team out into the field as often as possible, not that they minded too much, it was usually better than being asked the same question in several different versions over and over again. We were all pretty much sure that this was Mage Sofya’s way of getting revenge on Morgana as it certainly didn’t appear to be doing them any good whatsoever. Morgana was occasionally a little flexible with the rules, though never in breach of them despite the belief of Mage Sofya that Morgana was a loose cannon. Fortunately unlike Mage Hermes, Sofya had very limited powers when investigating something personal and Mage Cixi, who was in charge of the Interrogation Office, was not having any truck with the pressure from Sofya or the Amity Caucus.

Because of her we were under cover, watching a patrol of Daoine Sidhe whom we believed were looking for something or someone (most likely Sidhe, they wouldn’t normally have a problem detecting a normal human).

‘Must be important, ‘ Adsila sent to me. ‘They’re way too close to areas we control for it to be anything but.’ ‘I agree, though we’ve seen no sign of whatever they’re after, ‘ I replied.

‘I’m not detecting anyone, but they are capable of hiding from us if they really want to, ‘ she acknowledged.

‘Can we take them out?’ came the question from Mage Clara.

‘Only if we absolutely need to, ‘ I sent back. ‘They could summon assistance ... then again so could we.’ ‘Over there, ‘ Róisín pointed mentally.

We could see a small party of well shielded Sidhe heading very carefully towards the territory Verenestra held, also amongst them being covered by the party were a number of humans including children.

‘That tears it. Lock and load. Null bullets readied but do not activate, ‘ I ordered.

‘Plan?’ Adsila asked.

‘Draw the patrol to us and let the Sidhe escape, we’ll collect them later if we survive this, ‘ I replied.

I deliberately allowed a hint of my humanity to leak out if only for a second, but it was enough to turn the Daoine Sidhe in our direction. They immediately blanketed the area with anti-teleport and anti-telepath spells as well as a magical dampening field.

“Definitely getting smarter,” I chuckled. “Adsila, take out the lead.”

Adsila was able to Null up a bullet despite the field and at extreme range placed the shot directly through the eyehole of the lead Daoine Sidhe’s helmet.

“Good shot,” I murmured, knowing Adsila was by far the best shot on my team.

“They’re holding position. Looks like they’re deciding what to do. I don’t think they expected to find us here,” Róisín stated.

“Lot of them,” murmured journeywoman Mage Kate.

“Going to try and flank us, I bet,” Adsila added.

“Nothing if not predictable,” chuckled Róisín.

The Daoine Sidhe quickly came to a decision and they started an attempt to envelop our position, whist their centre used their composite bows to force us to keep our heads down. This did cause problems for their archers as Adsila could usually hit them if they exposed themselves, though not always fatally. The other eight members of my team were preparing grenades and other anti-personnel devices to deal with the first wave of the Daoine Sidhe as there was no way for us to keep them at a distance.

“Tarlek’s patrol is heading for this position but will be at least an hour,” Adsila announced. “We’re out of artillery range too.”

“Par for the course,” I murmured.

Pierre fired off a few shots as a Sidhe momentarily exposed himself on one of our flanks.

“Think I got him,” he stated.

Ball lightning then arced down on our position though was diverted by Adsila back towards where the main Daoine Sidhe position was.

“They’re still assessing the threat I think,” she mused.

“Get ready, they’ll try a charge first,” I warned.

Twenty Daoine Sidhe burst from cover at a run straight for our position and right into a hail of fire. Six of them went tumbling down to disintegrate but the rest shielded up as they rapidly closed until Pierre and Kate launched a couple of grenades into them to stall their advance and enable the rest of us to take several others down before they pulled back under cover.

“They’ll know not to try that again,” Clara observed.

“Wouldn’t bet on it,” Xi chuckled.

Xi was right. This time thirty Daoine Sidhe burst from cover, along with a further ten from the flank. The ten from the flank though were literally torn apart by an RPG fired by journeywoman Mage Janice before they’d managed to get a couple of metres from cover. The thirty charged directly at us, waving their swords, whilst a hail of arrows tried to pepper the area we were using for cover along with several bursts of balefire. Five of them managed to leap the fallen tree we were hiding behind only to fall swiftly to Adsila and myself with our blades and Clara, Róisín and Pierre with their shotguns.

“Lost just under a third of their squad,” I mused. “Wonder if they’ll pull back or give it another go.”

“Send for reinforcements, I reckon,” Róisín replied as she loaded shells into her shotgun.

“Hope whoever was in that party was important,” Adsila chuckled.

“Me too, though this definitely beats getting it in the neck from Mage Sofya’s aides,” I replied.

“You’re telling me. One of them had the nerve to ask me for a date after all but accusing me of complicity in treason against the Council, he didn’t even realise I’m already part of a group,” Adsila huffed.

“Didn’t he realise if one Seer was in it, you all were?” I asked.

“I’m not sure what he thought. It might just have been some sort of move to get me into their camp,” she shrugged.