Alodar was a mere journeyman, learning the least of the five arts of magic. As such, he had no right to aspire to the hand of Vendora, Queen of all of Procolon. But aspire he did.

Second edition includes an Author’s Afterward about how the book came to be, and a Glossary of weapon terms and their Wikipedia URL links.

Get a copy now from Amazon,  Barnes and Noble,,  Kobo, GooglePlay, or Apple Books

Chapter 1 The Iron Fist

Alodar closed his mind to the pounding of the stones against the lower walls of the keep. He ignored the growl of his stomach and tried to concentrate on the spinning disk. Forty-one days of siege, he thought, and the last five on half rations. Half rations for himself and the other craftsmen, while the men at arms still received full shares.

It wasn’t just the hunger of course. There had been whole winters that were worse. It was the leaflets hurled yesterday over the walls. If they did not surrender, then as the blood red script had proclaimed, none would walk out alive.

That could not be true, could it? Surely somehow, from somewhere, maybe even from the north, help would arrive.

“Faster Morwin, faster until it buzzes like an angry hive,” Alodar refocused his attention and listened as the apprentice pushed against the two-handed crank. The massive flywheel slowly increased its speed. After several minutes, a faint tone from the serrated edge mixed with the crash of rock and cry of pain below. Morwin stepped back from the rough wooden frame that supported the rotating wheel and sat panting on the smooth and hard alure that ran along the curtain wall.

Make the rest of your preparations, journeyman, the sergeant in mail next to Alodar barked. You two may rest if this air gondola proves its worth, but not before.

Alodar tried to disregard the harsh tone. He squinted up at the sun midway between the east and overhead. They will have to look directly into the glare to see us, he said. Your men can begin.

It was worth a try. Better than sitting on ones hands like so many of the others and wondering if the next day would bring a breach of one of the walls. A breach? No, of course not. The Iron Fist had never weakened. It held the west firmly secure, repulsed all invaders for hundreds and hundreds of years. Bandor s siege could end no differently.

The sergeant shrugged and turned to the group of men crouching within the archway into the keep. To your positions then, he ordered.

The men rose. Two edged out to the crenellations that framed a deep cut in the hills to the west. The third and the smallest of the three climbed into a waist-high wicker basket that stood by the spinning disk. He looked about, nervously.

Alodar stepped to the woven basket, withdrew a chisel from one of the pockets in his cape, and hacked a splinter from it. His cowl was thrown back over his shoulders, revealing a narrow face topped with fine yellow-brown hair. His nose and mouth were drawn with an economy of line, plain and straight, neither handsome nor uncomely.

Only his eyes removed him from the nondescript; they were bright and alive, darting like dragonflies, missing no detail of what happened around him. His face held the smoothness of youth, now marked only by two short furrows above his nose as he concentrated on the task before him.

He stepped back from the box, holding the scrap of wood at waist level, glanced again at the position of the sun, and began the incantation. The words came quickly, but with the sharpness necessary for success. His tone was even and the rhythm smooth. The two words of power sounded with a lack of distinction. They fitted unnoticed into the stream of improvised nonsense that surrounded them. In a moment he was done.

Alodar nodded a warning to the man-at-arms facing him and slowly began to raise the splinter upward. Simultaneously the basket lurched and cleared the stonework of the platform. The splinter rose with almost imperceptible slowness, but the gondola with its passenger climbed at a rapid rate.

The sergeant returned to Alodar s side. Can you go faster? They will spy him before he lines with the sun.

No, Alodar said. He kept his attention on the small splinter he held in his hand. This sliver is about one part in a thousand of the basket as a whole. For each palm that I raise it, your man climbs another quarter rod. If I moved faster, we might use too much of the wheel s spin in fighting the wind we would make in our haste. I do not yet wear the cape of a master, but I understand enough thaumaturgy to do what is proper for this task.

The sergeant grunted, and Alodar continued to raise the splinter upward. Several minutes passed, and the basket climbed to become a speck in the sky.

High enough, one of the men shouted while sighting through his sextant. Alodar glanced at the wheel. The crank now turned lazy circles about the axle with no hint of the blurring speed it had possessed moments ago. The sergeant followed his gaze and looked back at Alodar.

If there is little wind, Alodar explained, there is enough spin left to keep the gondola properly positioned for some time. It takes far less energy to resist a sideward thrust than to fight the earth for height.

While he spoke, Alodar began to step in the direction of the hills. The platform far above moved in proportion. The two observers darted their instruments about, sighting first the sun, then the basket, and finally the crags in the middle distance. Alodar took two short steps and part of another before one of the observers called him to stop.

A little more forward now. Hold it an instant. To the left a knuckle s worth. Now, freeze it in place, he directed as Alodar shifted the splinter back and forth.

Morwin jumped from his inactivity beside the slowly turning disk and ran through the archway to the chamber beyond. He fetched a tripod with a small clamp attached and returned to where Alodar stood with the splinter still at arm s length. After a few moments of adjustment, the clamp was in position to secure the scrap of wood firmly, and Alodar relinquished his grip. He moved to the edge of the wall to see the results of his efforts.

He whisked his own scope from his cape and scanned for the basket. The gray hills in the west stretched from horizon to horizon stark and unbroken except for the one deep and wide notch like a missing tooth that faced him about a mile distant. The walls on the right rose tall and sheer, monoliths, smooth and inaccessible; the slopes on the left were as steep but cracked with fissures, chimneys, and ledges. There Alodar sighted the basket. It now stood fixed in the sky, suspended directly in front of one of the sheer cliffs that was the target. As he watched, the man Alodar had transported there clambered out of the basket and onto the slope.

Between the two cliff faces, a train of wagons and carts, piled with baggage and arrayed with no pattern hid the floor of the pass from view. Alodar could make out a motley collection of tents rising in its midst, and from the pinnacles of each flew a blue and silver banner.

Much closer stood an orderly array of artillery, drawn out in a precise circle that Alodar knew completely surrounded their stronghold. With drilled exactness, their crews would load and fire in unison. The great bows of the ballistas hurled their rock hard and flat against the battered outer walls, while the mangonels sent theirs high and lofted to rain down on the foundation of the keep and the surrounding courtyard. Lighter but more accurate trebuchets blasted at the spots already weakened by the heavier siegecraft. Like gnats swarming around a decaying carcass, the fusillade converged on the castle from all directions.

Nearer still, in more irregular array, many clusters of armed men crouched behind full-length shields shining angrily in the morning sun. The groups farther back used their protection, casually bobbing heads and torsos to see the battle s progress. Those closer, within range of the defender s long bows huddled in tight balls, exposing no arm or leg as a target.

With each volley of the rock throwers the answering fire from the machicolations and loopholes in the castle s walls would cease and the men in the field would creep a little closer, their scaling ladders and belfries dragging behind them. Long before the clusters reached the outer wall, they would converge into a continuous ring of attackers.

Luck be with him soon, the sergeant muttered as he watched with his own glass. If he does not find a ledge wide enough for the catapult within the hour we will not strike a blow for ourselves this day. And tomorrow, who knows? Tomorrow may be too late for any scheme, sound or foolish to prevent the fall.

But the sagas say that the Iron Fist has withstood each and every attack, Alodar protested. The walls are too thick. The towers too well placed.

It takes more than stone and iron to defend this mound, the sergeant said. Muscle pulls tight the bowstrings and swings the broadswords, and at last muster we numbered fewer than two hundred able fighting men. Two hundred for over half a mile of wall.

He shook his head, his lips pulled into a tight line of disapproval. A mere two hundred because Vendora wanted to flaunt her might along the southern border. Almost every garrison in Procolon including this one stripped to nothing so that those petty border kingdoms think to stop their raids and return to bickering among themselves. Hah, I wonder if those raids seem so important to her now that there is a real threat from the west. Vendora, Queen of all of Procolon; she is but a shadow of her departed father.

Fully provisioned we could withstand anything that Bandor could throw at us, the sergeant continued, but the siege has been too long without relief. Provisions are finally running out. Soon even the men-at-arms will be too feeble to defend.

And then?

The sergeant did not answer at once. It depends, he said at last. For men such as myself, ones that do survive the final onslaught, there will be an offer to join the forces of the victors. Each able sword is a welcome addition. No questions will be asked.

Then all of the women, regardless of station will suffer of course. Soon enough they will wish that they had been immediately dispatched.

The sergeant paused for a moment and then continued more slowly. For the rest, for the rest such as yourself, yes, many will die in the bloodlust of victory. Most that do not will survive only as cripples, the butt of cruel revelries – limbs sundered in contests of strength, ears deafened with glowing embers, eyes gouged out by those with the longest nails.

Alodar s shoulders slumped. He tried to suppress the feeling of panic that has been growing since the beginning of his captivity. The words were not ones he wanted to hear. Once was enough. It had been long ago, but the fall of his parent s stronghold still haunted his memories. No, surely it was not meant to be that he would have to suffer such a fate a second time.

And if this time, he did not escape, if this time was to be the end, then what had been the purpose of it all? What was the point of all his wanderings, the goat herding, the tavern keeping, and the toils of the past? What was served by all those dirty and laborious tasks – wriggling down into rodent holes to snatch a few hairs while keeping his fingers intact, carrying bucket after bucket up rickety stairs until the landing would hold no more, memorizing catalogs of nonsense syllables, reciting them over and over again until he could do so without error?

Yes, for the last few years, for the first time in his life at least the hours of the day were filled. Master Periac had kept him busy enough that he did not really have time to ponder the emptiness, the why of what had gone on before.

Master Periac, Alodar thought. What had been his words that got them here? Be in the same place at the same time as the queen and we are sure to be noticed. How hard can it be?

“One of the most logical detailing of the laws of magic ever to appear in fantasy” – famous first generation science fiction author Lester del Rey

A definite must read
As my bookshelves continue to grow, I can name only a handful of books that I continue revisit time and time again. Duncan’s Magic Casement series. Feist’s Riftwar. Moon’s Saga of Paksenarrion. And above all, Hardy’s Master of the Five Magics.

One of the greatest fantasy novels from the 1980s
I grew up reading fantasy and science fiction, and one of the greatest regrets I have is that I never found more than three books written by Lyndon Hardy, an author I still consider an automatic buy. In a way, this man’s work defined what I expect from fantasy

Great book
I can’t say enough good things about this book.

A truly great read
This book is flawless and fascinating. I can’t wait to read it again.

Over 1000 Goodreads 5 star rankings

To be notified when my next book is available, click here

Get a copy now from Amazon,  Barnes and Noble,,  Kobo, GooglePlay, or Apple Books