Sparo Rising: Mason of York

By Erik Schubach

Sparo Rising is a spinoff series from the Techromancy Scrolls. Each book features a standalone story of a different side character from the Techromancy Scrolls that readers wished to hear more about. This second book centers around Geneveive Mason Wexbury, and her rise to Knighthood.

Almost three thousand years after an extinction level event on Earth, mankind seeks to regain its former glory, in a new world where magic and technology collide.

The life of Genevieve Mason, a commoner and serf of the Realm of York, in the Lower Ten of Sparo, had been turned upside down when she was young. Being the daughter of a mason, she always knew her place in the cogs of the wheel of life, until the Keep came under siege by the Reaper and his Horde of Marauders.

She was saved at the gates when York fell, by a huge muscular female Squire from the neighboring realm of Wexbury, Verna. This woman had taken a killing axe blow meant for her, and yet stood, saving Gen from an untimely demise.

That set the course for her life, as she aspired to be like Verna and champion the weak, to challenge the stars to change her own destiny and become one of the greatest Knights of York.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erik Schubach
• Release date: Jul 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005443559

Erik Schubach

I got my start writing romance novels by accident. I have always been drawn to strong female characters in books, like Honor Harrington. And I also believe that there is a lack of LGBT characters in media. So one day I came up with a story idea that combines the two... two days later I completed the manuscript for Music of the Soul.My writing style may not be the most professional nor grammatically correct, but I never profess to be an English major, just a person that wants to share a story. I maintain that my primary language is sarcasm.Each of my books features strong likeable female characters that are flawed. I think that flaws and emotional or physical scars make us human and give us more character than simply conforming to some "social norm".I have also started a SciFi series, The Valkyrie Chronicles which features a Valkyrie, Kara, who was left behind on Earth five thousand years ago to help the Asgard race escape the onslaught of the Ragnarok horde. With the aid of a human, Kate, she holds the line in battle to herald the return of the Asgard!If you like magic, paranormal romance and witches, then my new series Fracture might tickle your fancy. In the first book Fracture: Divergence, Alex King must stop magic from destroying reality. The problem is that Alex must solve the case in parallel universes where in one Alex is male and female in the other.There is even a modern shapeshifter paranormal series, Drakon. Featuring a fiery Irish woman with a sharp wit and sharper temper who finds out she is a dragon of legend.

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Sparo Rising: Mason of York

By Erik Schubach

Copyright © 2021 by Erik Schubach

Published by Erik Schubach on Smashwords

P.O. Box 523

Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

Cover Photo © 2021 PashkaRay / FaeSstock Depositphotos.com & ShutterStock.com licenses

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

FIRST EDITION

Chapter 1 - Reaper

I awoke with a start, sweat matting my hair as I sat up in the cot. The familiar nightmare receded as my racing heart slowed. The frame of the cot creaked under my hands as I gripped it, chasing away the memory that haunted my dreams like this. Even now, so many years later, another lifetime, when I had been Genevieve Mason, a commoner without a care in the world.

I looked around to the other Knights in the space here at Templar Hall in Wexbury, still asleep as the horizon outside the window, above the fortified walls started to lighten. I grunted as I stood. I had about an hour before sunrise and the others rose. Was it really finally here? The mission us volunteers had been spirited away to Wexbury to prepare for?

I sighed and started gearing up, donning my armor and hefting the two stones in a sling to hang over my shoulders as I slipped outside. The Templar guards noted me exiting the Hall, ever vigilant eyes tracking me as I started my run. The small portcullis in the gate rose at my approach, as I found my running rhythm.

The Knights at the gate inclined their heads to me as I passed through into Templarville and the Dig beyond. I had to smile at the Penny Library, and what a wonder it was as I ran past on my loop to Wexbury Minor and the Wexbury Keep before returning to prepare for the mission.

I waved at some faces I've become familiar with in the past four mornings since I arrived, the Diggers and that always busy Steward of the Dig, what was her name? Yvette? She waved and I waved back as I continued my workout.

As soon as I passed through the growing settlement and onto the Ring, the cobblestone road that connected all the Lower Ten, and now even the Bridging of the Gap up to Highland Reach, I drew my double-handed dual blade, my sword breaker, and I went about thrusting and sweeping it through the air, working on my muscle memory, and arm strength as the blades made a vibrating whoosh through the air.

If I were back home in York, my morning workout and strength training would be much different. I know we aren't expected to be diligent in our workouts except possibly sparring when we are away from the Keep, but I couldn't afford to slack too much. It actually took work to maintain my bulk and muscle to compete with the male Knights.

So... I ran, adjusting the fifty pounds of stone in the sling, and I reflected on the waking memory. The memory that drove me, inspired me, a simple commoner, a stone mason's daughter, to aspire to become a Knight of the realm. A Knight of York.

On the nights the memory snuck into my dreams, I relived the one time in my life I felt so helpless as if I were living an actual nightmare I couldn't wake up from. Sure my life hadn't been idyllic, living the hard life of a commoner. We were better off than some and were able to eat most nights, and I had only known gnawing unstated hunger a few times in my first eleven years of life. Father took all the job commissions he could from the nobles, being a master mason, and worked long days and sometimes nights to put bread on the table for mother, my older brother Oliver, and me.

When times were tight, Oliver and I would pitch in when father took more jobs so that we might not starve or freeze in the harsh winters of York. We were training to be masons, learning as was common, a parent passing down skills to their children. I always felt less than useless to dad, being so small and thin, not able to move the large stones or wheelbarrows of mortar as Oliver could.

We had been having a good year, and my brother became a journeyman under the guidance of our father, so he was able to take on contracts of his own, under the supervision of dad or another master. So we had not felt the hunger for many months. We were feeling blessed, so should have known that good things do not last.

For one day, word came from a failed siege on the impenetrable Iron Walls of Treth, the army of marauders that had been building up under a man named the Reaper in the Lower Ten, and they were on the move after Solomon was on the move to corner them, but criers in the Keep informed the people that The Reaper's Horde had entered the realm of York.

We all rallied at the gates when our brave Knights, on their powerful chargers, rode out to route the Horde before any of our outlying villages could be razed and burned to the ground by the brutish brigands, as was their way, a new scorched earth policy they had taken on.

The following morning, of all the Knights who rode to meet the unorganized rabble, only three returned with two others on their shields. Our mobile battalion had been ambushed and slaughtered by the enemy. And the war horns sounded, calling the people from York Minor outside the walls of the keep, to come inside the gates.

Most of the villagers had made it in when the Reaper rode on York Minor, killing the male stragglers, and taking the women and female children for unconscionable acts. We all watched from inside the main portcullis as the few Knights that rode out to buy the villagers time, were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the enemy, and the Reaper... he just wore a sadistic smile on his face as he and his men beheaded the corpses of our valiant Knights and placed them on pikes, riding to just beyond our archers' range at the wall to plant the pikes for all to see.

The war horns sounded again, and bells were rung on the wall as the Portcullis was lowered in place while the Horde set fire to the village beyond. Three blasts of the horns... we have had yearly drills in the Keep as I grew up. Three blasts meant we were under siege, and everyone was to bring whatever supplies and foodstuffs we may have, to bring to the Steward of the Castle for rationing. And all able-bodied adults were to report to the training courtyard so the Duke could address them.

We used to laugh and play Knights during the drills, it was never real... until then, and nobody was playing that time.

Our aged Duke, Wendell, had addressed us, as we children hid by the stables to listen, his voice still carried even though he was well advanced in age, nearing sixty. He has always been a fair and kind ruler when he ought, and harsh when required. But after he stepped up onto the makeshift stage, using his sheathed blade as a walking stick, the Duchess supporting his elbow on the other side, he gave a rousing speech, displaying why even now, his people followed him.

He spoke of the dispatch Solomon had sent to the rest of the Lower Ten, that they would ride on the Horde for Treth, so they had to be close now and would help to end the siege.

But Solomon... never came. Without contact with the outer world, we could only speculate. Had the Horde stopped the riders of Solomon as they had our Mobile Battalion? Or were they devising a plan just then to route the Reaper's men?

For three days and nights, York Minor burned. Father said that the Horde must have been bringing in more trees for fuel since the village should have burned that first night. It was a psychological game they played to demoralize us.

They sent in probing attack after attack, retreating when our archers launched volley after volley at their upturned shields. Until... there were no more arrows to loose. That's when they started their first direct assault on the portcullis with their battering rams, and ladders to the ramparts of the wall where our Home Battalion repelled them time and again, losing more of our number each time.

They would toss flaming pots of tar over the walls, and brigades of commoners would form lines from the wells to extinguish the flames. And some buckets contained heads of villagers or Knights soaked in tar and ignited. It instilled a gnawing terror in everyone in the Keep.

The Duke announced that upon nightfall when the Horde withdrew back to the burning bones of York Minor, that volunteer riders would be sent out in all directions with one task. To beg the aid of Wexbury. Other realms sometimes joke about Wexbury, being one of the smallest realms in the lower ten. But one thing every realm knew for a certainty, that when called Wexbury would always lend her blade.

There has never been a time in history that Wexbury has not answered the call of any ally. And though they were a smaller realm, their fighting prowess matched that of Highland or Solomon, because they fought with what has been called the Fire of Wexbury by all.

Half of our volunteer Knights didn't even make the forest before being taken down by Marauder archers, and the huge War Bow the Reaper wielded. But three men made it to the cover of the trees, Marauders in pursuit.

For days we held, but the storehouse with all of our supplies had been bombarded by flaming tar, and our sparse gardens inside the walls were quickly depleted.

I remember mother on her knees at night, whispering to the heavens, Where is Wexbury? Surely our riders had to get through.

That was the first time I realized how important Wexbury truly was, they were the embodiment of Sparo, the lands of Hope, as they kindled that hope in our people. I went out with father and Oliver that night, to reinforce the stonework that was crumbling under the daily assaults of the portcullis gate by their battering ram.

Looking out across the fields that were between the Keep and the burning embers of York Minor, where torchlight and magic spark vessels, normally lit. I shuddered at the shadows in the smoke, knowing that those shadows were watching back, smug in the knowledge that the beaten and bent gate would not last much longer.

We mortared the now bent track on one side where the stone had broken away. We couldn't survive another assault. Even as a child I knew that this was the end for York, and I was afraid. I knew that mortar alone wouldn't stand up to the massive battering ram again. And I knew what few Knights we had left knew it as well, as they were having everyone bring whatever they could, the more substantial the better, to help barricade the portcullis opening behind the gate.

I looked at father as he stared into the darkness and asked him, aware of how afraid my small voice had been, Father, why has Wexbury not come?

He exchanged a look with my brother, then shook his head as he cupped my cheek and started, Poppet, I don't think our Knights survived. We have to...

And that's when my mother's prayer to whatever gods listened was answered when chaos erupted in the Marauder Camp in the razed village. Screams and the clanging of metal on metal rang out. Whumps of magic caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise as more screams followed. The twang of bowstrings and whooshing of arrows.

Someone on the walls called out in a relieved excitement, Wexbury rides!

That first engagement didn't last long, because a second Marauder force had been hidden in the forest, waiting, as if they knew Wexbury would come as they did. I scrambled up the steps to the top of the defensive wall, father calling me back.

But I watched as Knights in the colors of Wexbury... and Flatlash? Retreated into the forest in the flickering light of the bonfires and the dim light the Three Sisters and the debris ring around the Earth provided. A man who could only be Duke Frederick, the leader of Wexbury himself, standing tall in defiance, was backing out with them. I could barely catch shouts on the wind being exchanged but couldn't make out the words. I heard my own sharp intake of breath when two mounted riders started bearing down on the Duke.

I wanted to cry out, to tell him to run, but I froze when a Knight beside me pointed as a muscular female Knight, easily twice the size of any Knight I've ever seen, charged out past Duke Frederick. She had no fear, no hesitation as she ran at the incoming horses. My eyes bulged when she dove and grabbed a branch the size of a sapling from the ground and thrust it up as the horses thundered past her, the enemy swinging weapons down upon her.

I gasped when the two horses went down, their hind legs fouled by the large branch. And the woman was there, rolling to her feet and slamming the heads of the two Marauders together with such force, we heard it from where we watched. She brushed her sides in a dismissive gesture then turned her back on the Reaper and stepped back into the woods with the rest of her kin.

The Knights beside me exchanged shocked looks, one whispering out, Holy shit, did you see that?

It had to be the single most brave act I've ever witnessed. This fearless woman who could take down charging horses, who dared turn her back on the Reaper, dismissing him. Who was she? And what did they feed their Knights in Wexbury to have spawned such a monster? She was amazing.

Then the Horde moved back and started gathering the dead, killing any of the injured Knights left out there in the darkness like savages. I looked up at the Knight beside me, Sir Jarvis, a Squire freshly Knighted just this harvest season. They're... leaving? Is it over?

He looked down at me, the pained and shocked look on his face telling me volumes, but Sir Harrison beside him shook his head at us, explaining, No, that was just a probing attack. To keep the Horde off balance. The battle will begin in the morning.

Jarvis pointed at the carnage below. There were so... few. Is that all Wexbury and Flatlash could send to our defense? And they were ambushed by the Reaper.

Sir Harrison inhaled deeply through his nose, tightlipped, his brow creased before saying, They are Wexbury, every blade is worth two. He said it with a confidence I didn't understand, after seeing the Reaper's men repel our would-be rescuers who even had magic users in their ranks. And I've heard the Knights, including Harrison, joke about Wexbury in the past; how could he be so confident now, or was it just desperation?

I looked up at the silver-haired, grizzled man. And he seemed to know my thoughts as he gave me a pained smile. "It is a fool's folly to underestimate the mettle of Wexbury. We may tease because they are bleeding hearts who will ride in defense of any who call, but that is really just to cover our own shortcomings. It is why Highland has allowed them to have an out-sized force for their population without taking corrective measures, and why none in the lower ten has ever ridden against