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___Portunista told herself she wasn’t fleeing the forge; but she couldn’t get rid of the feel of defeat. This “Jian” had met her stroke for stroke. She’d hoped to dislodge some useful information—or else to drive him away—but he seemed to have no pride to inflame or burst.
___And so she stomped uphill, unsure of what she would do when she returned to her tent, other than pore once more over maps and rumors and figures. And drink, of course; the night was warm, the forge-tent had been hot—that was why she was flushing…
___But she didn’t want mead.
___What she really wanted, was…
___She altered her route, heading north across the top of the western slope and then downhill, into Gaekwar’s side of camp. She had brought her only bottle of vania, whenever she last had visited him. He hadn’t returned it, so probably kept it, while the brigade was on the move. He wouldn’t be there now, but to the west downhill with most of her brigade, keeping a watch on his company-soldiers and muttering cutting remarks about cows.
___She hadn’t felt like visiting him for weeks, and didn’t feel like seeing him now.
___She only wanted a drink; of something that wasn’t mead. Something she enjoyed.
___That was what she wanted—that was all she wanted…
___She ground her teeth in baffled frustration. What she really wanted—was to strike and smash and—!
___And, she got her wish.
___With a hooting roar, a monstrous form crashed out of the trees—not far in front of Portunista!
___A line of hollering humans also poured into the clearing.
___Portunista blinked in confusion, as the enemies charged the hill, swatting aside the empty tents—the creature’s roars seemed to echo out of phase, downhill to her left, where the enemy line stretched out, charging upon her shocked brigade.
___Then with a curse she remembered the squad, reported by Seifas. That had been to the north: this must be a retaliation. They would have easily found her camp, especially once the festival started.
___The damned midsummer’s celebration…
___Portunista had wanted a target.
___Here a target was.
___The maga slashed her fingernails across her other palm, hissing from the back of her mouth with a rising pitch. The mystical pain increased the elemental Yrthen force she violently infused beneath her enemies.
___The natural earth exploded—long rough parallel furrows, peeling back at the speed of sound, throwing men in the air, sharply slamming the monstrous mammal, leaving soldiers stunned and bleeding as the battle line behind them stumbled into the shallow trenches—their momentum broken.
___Portunista smiled. Very satisfactory.
___But she doubted that she would be able to use her personal variation of the Yrthrip skill again—unconsciously she flicked her hand, slinging blood upon the ground, as she squinted in the starlit night.
___The creature was a shoulderbeast; ten wristlengths to foreleg top. Four men rode in wicker baskets: one each side, one upon the back, and one set in-between the topmost basket and the mahout who was guiding from a saddle on the neck.
___The topmost basket held the commander. And the others…
___…were jotting! She could hear them clacking away at some effect she couldn’t recognize with all the noise.
___Three magi. Only apprentices, or else she would have been dead already, but still—
___The commander shouted a code, and pointed at her. His shortbowmen, near at hand behind the line, nocked their shafts.
___Portunista craned her neck, as she trotted briskly to her left, wanting a better view of the fighting down the hill, while keeping an eye on her proximate threat: half a brigade and a magi-reinforced shoulderbeast. She still didn’t know what those men were chattering, but most jottings required a line-of-sight—and now those bowmen were wending their way through the battle line!
___Some cover, some cover, she told herself, her skin now prickling in panic…any cover!—well, those would have to do—
___She slid feet first behind a stack of empty casks, as the shortbows sang, their missiles thunking oakwood slats, and otherwise whistling past her.
___Good enough as shelter for the moment; but she’d easily be outflanked—besides, a waist-high pile would not be stopping a shoulderbeast! And what were those magi doing…?
___Portunista ground her teeth: she could not hold the line. She must escape downhill. If, she amended acidly, she could do it while flat on her back, before those men regained enough of their balance to…
___…ah, wait; that might work…
___She closed her eyes, and jotted an Yrthescrution.
___Binding her scrution behind her lids, she ‘saw’ the nearby surface-pressures of the enemy line. Only a very few moments had passed—they were regrouping and picking their way across the scars.
___Good.
___Chuckling deviously, Portunista jotted an Yrthepool; letting the contours of her earlier ripping be her guide, for infusing just the right proportions of materia.
___Guided by her will and skill, the Yrthe changed a prism of ground, five paces wide, knee-deep, and forty paces long, into a liquid consistent with water—but vitally reactive.
___Even the shoulderbeast stumbled again, as its mahout drove it forward trying to reestablish the line. Its escape annoyed the maga; still she laughed while most of the upper line abruptly washed downhill in a tumbling roll of vitalized earth!
___The enemy commander now was shouting for his mahout to be crushing her with the shoulderbeast.
___Good. That fit perfectly into her plan.
___She could feel the beast approaching, for she hadn’t released her Yrthescrution yet. Portunista jotted again, pooling another forty-pace trough; but this time only inches deep—and wide as a shoulderbeast!
___She set it several paces uphill of the creature, running it through her own position, pointing down the hill behind her soldiers’ battle line.
___Releasing the bind upon her scrution, Portunista rapidly blinked, rubbing her eyes and flushing away the microthin materia layer. The Yrthescrution’s annoying aftereffects were more than compensated by the exhilarant rush downhill on a river of earth, much like a child on a slide: an escape while flat on her back!
___The wave of vitalized earth didn’t end with the trough. Portunista kept her concentration and her balance through her enjoyment, lying back and banking the rushing river with her will, tacking left and right, avoiding tents and such.
___She fetched up moments later near the bottom of the hill; her soldiers steadily struggling in a battle-line to her right.
___Releasing the earth around her, she staggered with relative grace to her feet, and hopefully looked back up the hill…
___The creature had only suffered another stumble, hopping out of the earthen stream to better footing.
___Portunista ineffectively wiped some mud from her face, spitting to clear her teeth, growling her disappointment.
___But she had gained some time, to oversee her situation—although she hoped her opponent would urge an immediate chase, rather than charging her line or jotting down a strike upon them.
___Here, at the bottom of the hill, she could see more clearly what was happening. Her troops had splendidly met the surprise attack, rushing against the invaders with high morale.
___She couldn’t see Seifas in the campfire-lit confusion; but she figured he wouldn’t be among the front-line anyway. He would be somewhere uphill, striking out of the darkness like an ebony razorwyrm. She smiled possessive pride: these imprudent fools had called down on themselves the wrath of one of the Guacu-ara! She could safely leave the remains of the enemy’s upper line to him and to his aasagai.
___She could see Othon easily, though: Othon the Implacable indeed! He should have been mowing her enemies like a hailstorm scything grass. But the giantish subcommander hadn’t been wearing his armor—now some soldiers from his company guarded his flanks, while he restrained his edged mace, lest he sweep his own men from the field. The fight was settling round him on both sides, like metal filings near a magnet; but with a balance as tenuous as a bubble.
___Yet with half the enemy floundering to their feet, after tumbling down the hill, the chaos on the lower line was shifting decisively in her favor—and neither side was strong enough to prolong the battle’s breaking point. Without klerosa, soldiers now were much less willing to risk themselves in battle.
___The break would happen soon. As far as she could tell, by carefully checking the flows of the skirmish, she would have won already, if she hadn’t needed to fight those magi and their shoulderbeast. Her soldiers’ morale was remarkably high…probably thanks to…
___Her mouth twisted.
___…probably thanks to being inspired to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve with so much gusto.
___She doubted Jian was helping to hold the line, however—he didn’t look the type. Probably he had run for cover the moment that he had heard the roar from…
___Wait—hadn’t she left the shoulderbeast behind her…?
___Her heart froze—she scampered leftward, trying to see more clearly. She had thought she’d only been hearing an echo off the nearby tentsides; but—
___—there were two shoulderbeasts!
___One of them was behind her line this minute!
___She had lost after all—she wouldn’t be able to stop it in time, before it tromped her defensive—!
___Portunista’s feet, and her thoughts, skidded to a stop. Now that she had a clearer view, she could see the truth.
___Jian was playing with it.
___“I simply cannot describe what I was seeing any other way,” she would write years later. “And, he and the beast both seemed to be enjoying their ‘game’ immensely!
___“Later I learned that Jian had raced downhill, to help to gather the children away from the fight. Seeing my soldiers engaged along the line, the young and inexperienced beast had whooped and challenged them; while its mahout tried to goad it into position for charging up our line. And Jian had been the only man who was free to answer the threat.
___“So he’d jumped and whooped in kind, waving his arms, calling the shoulderbeast’s attention.
___“Jian had drawn the beast—which remained oblivious of its mahout—into an open patch of ground behind the line; and he was speeding back and forth, jinking and janking, swatting the legs of the beast with the flat of his blade. The shoulderbeast plunged and spun, rearing and hooting, as in a primal dance, billowing clouds of summer dust in the flickering bonfirelight.
___“And the purblind fool of a man, was laughing fit to burst!”
___Then the situation changed.
___Other adults had been gathering children into groups, but hadn’t yet hustled them into the relative safety of the forest, lacking a definite order. Not being far away, the children were cheering Jian—and the shoulderbeast as well!
___It didn’t take the creature and its mahout long to recognize the sound.
___The shoulderbeast jerked to a stop, facing the clusters of clapping children. The mahout, seeing a way to distract the defensive line, spurred his mount, shouting commands to which the beast was trained to respond.
___Jian, no longer laughing, darted in front of it.
___“No!!” he cried. “Not the children! Not the children!”
___He stood his ground, waving his arms insistently.
___The mahout pointed, and spurred his mount again, calling down a cursing taunt upon the fool in front of him.
___The shoulderbeast, reacting to commands and goads, surged ahead, toward its ‘playmate’—and toward the children beyond.
___Jian continued to wave his arms, shouting: “No!!”
___He wouldn’t dodge again.
___The children no longer were laughing and clapping.
___The mahout, sensing victory, struck even harder with his goad—
___The beast plowed to a halt, spraying Jian with dirt and grass.
___One last time the mahout spurred his mount, shrilling commands to strike!
___Snorting in annoyance, the creature rolled on its back.
___“It was not,” the maga will later write, “that the children in those days were barbarous. They simply hadn’t expected to see this—yet, somehow they also had. So they responded like children.
___“They could see the astonishment on the face of their persecutor—and thought it the funniest thing in the world!
___“And when the shoulderbeast happily grunted, and wriggled on its back, as if scratching a spot that was hard to reach, the children literally rolled on the ground with glee—despite the sinister scrunching sounds!
___“Even Jian stood frozen in bemusement.
___“Then I saw him recover, shrug, and mouth the words, ‘Oh, well…’”
___The adolescent creature quickly rolled upright again, regaining its feet with a glorious sigh. It squinted in curiosity at the rejoicing children, whose guardians stood in confused relief.
___Leaning on his sword, Jian flourished a courtly bow to the beast, inspiring another round of applause. Giving a grunt, the creature ambled away on a shallow tangent, settling to the ground between one group of children and the defensive line.
___Portunista couldn’t pull herself away from this fantastic sight. A few unruly children scampered to its flanks, shouting a combination of names, resolving into “Tumblecrumble.” The creature practically preened beneath the praise—
___A mother shrieked.
___Jian whipped round to find the cause; even Tumblecrumble jerked his head in alarm.
___One of the foes had broken through the line.
___A heavyset lump had somehow survived the onslaught; he had decided not even to risk an attack on his enemies’ backs, but instead was floundering full-speed toward the children!—seeing some helpless targets, and one distracted defender.
___No one had noticed, before he had covered half the distance.
___Portunista disentangled her thoughts and leapt into a run—knowing she would arrive too late.
___The shoulderbeast heaved upright; but couldn’t safely move with children underfoot—he would arrive too late.
___Jian burst into a vicious acceleration, smiling no more…
___he would arrive too late.
“I still can see the developing tragedy, in my memory,” Portunista will write in her testimony…
Also with more natural leather armor plating.)
“Othon” has Othon’s name but Ogier’s legendary size. (The Wiki article linked above neglects to mention this, but demonstrates it with a photo of 16th century artwork in a Danish church. The Othon of my novels isn’t that much bigger than normal humans though; nor the Ogier of the Song for that matter.)
It’s extremely important to the plot of Book 2 (with direct consequences throughout the rest of Portunista’s plot of the series), although not quite in a fashion I expect readers to be expecting. 