Ink Mage 1

blow punctured his jugular and let rip a gout of foul-smelling dark blood into the crisp forest air. His stubby hands flailed at me, clawing at my face and trying to find a grip on my throat. Blood choked his mouth and nose.
He was dying, but I switched my dagger into my right hand and put it through his eye and deep into the brain to finish the job.
“Fuck you, Boris,” I growled as the wreck of the trollman slumped to the floor of the wagon.
In my haste to kill Boris, I’d nearly forgotten the woman. She was still seated, pushed as far back on her bench as it was possible to be. Her mouth was open as she stared at what had just happened. Horror and relief mingled in her beautiful face. Ice-blue eyes met my gaze, and she took a breath as if about to speak.
I raised a finger to my lips and glanced at the wagon driver. Her gaze followed mine, and she nodded. I had no way of knowing when the driver might wake up from his doze, or when the other wagon might come into view behind us.
Crouching down in the wagon, I took a deep breath and gripped the ropes at my feet with my left hand. My right hand still held the dagger, but its rounded edge and sharp point would not be much use for severing cords. I tried not to think too hard about what I was going to try, or about what would happen if it didn’t work.
A breath.
My head spun again suddenly, then my perception slipped back into place. From somewhere at the back of my mind, I felt a welling up of power. Instinctively, I exerted my own strength of will upon it and felt it move. It was a warm sensation, as if hot, viscous liquid were being sucked from my mind, down through my right arm, and into my hand.
“It’s working,” I breathed as a sudden trickle of acrid smoke curled up from the ropes that bound my ankles. With sheer willpower, I pushed more of the warm magical power into my hand. The smoke increased suddenly, and I felt the ropes give under my hand. I wrenched at them, and they fell smoldering to the floor of the wagon.
As I turned my attention to the woman, a sudden wave of dizziness swept me. I dropped to my knees. The floor of the wagon was sticky with Boris’s blood, and I knelt there, gasping, as a blackness swept my vision for a moment. As suddenly as it appeared, it passed, and I felt a flow of power coming back into the place where I’d drawn on before.
The corpse of Boris filled my vision as I came back to myself. He had a sturdy sheath knife clipped to the belt that cinched his robes at his thick waist. I could feel my power regenerating, but perhaps taking Boris’s knife would be a better idea than trying to use my newly discovered fire magic on the woman’s ropes.
I yanked the knife, sheath and all, from Boris’s belt and turned to the woman as I pulled the blade free from the sheath. She nodded approvingly and held out her wrists. As I sawed through her bonds with the knife’s dull edge, I felt quite distinctly the pool of magic which I had drawn on replenish. Thoughts raced through my mind as the woman’s hands came loose and I knelt to free her feet.
It was Mana, the internal pool of magic which Mages drew upon to do spells.
When I had drawn on it to burn my own bonds, I had depleted it. As is often the way in life, I had only truly noticed it when it was gone. Now, it was regenerating, and I realized that I had become used to the feeling of warm power resting at the back of my mind.
Mana. I had a Mana pool. Did this mean I was a Mage? I guessed it did.
A slow feeling of excitement built in me.
“Thank you,” breathed the woman as I finished cutting the ropes at her feet. Her wrists were bruised where the ropes had cut into them and restricted the circulation, and she rubbed at them gingerly.
That was when the driver woke from his snooze and turned to glance over his shoulder.
“Boris, you asshole, where’s the…” but the words died on his lips as he took in me and the woman standing upright in the wagon.
I glanced around. The wagon had drifted to the right-hand side of the road, where a riot of lush undergrowth marked the edge of the forest.
I didn’t fancy our chances on the road. We would head straight into the forest.
“Time for us to go, I think,” I said to the woman as the driver hauled the oxen to a stop and struggled to turn and jump from his saddle.
The woman picked up her book and tucked it under her arm. “Go? Go where?” She glanced around, looking panicked.
I pointed in the direction of the lush forest. My face was grim.
“Anywhere but here.”
I had stuck my foster-father’s dagger through my belt, but I still held Boris’s belt-knife in my right hand. I vaulted the edge of the wagon, landing with a grunt on the road then turning back to help the woman down. She clambered awkwardly from the wagon, leaning on me, her book still clutched in her other hand.
The driver had managed to get clear of his oxen and took a few lumbering steps toward us, hauling a short, stabbing sword from its sheath. He glanced over the edge of his wagon.
“The slaves are getting away! They’ve killed Boris!” he cried. On the road behind us, the other wagon with its load of four trollmen was coming around the corner.
“Get to the forest,” I said to the woman. “I’ll deal with this damn slaver!”
She staggered a few steps, her circulation still weak from days of being tied up. I wasn’t feeling