Battle Magic

Okay, so, elaborating beyond "Blow shit up."

The wiki says: "Also known as Battle Mages. War Mages are people with gifts more suited to causing destruction and mayhem. They can light large fires from a distance, cast assassination spells and other such things for battles. They train right along with the knights to learn the sounds of battle and the signals so that they can best serve their king. War mages must be very tough willed and willing to do anything. It is best for them to not have any families or ties to people in general since their life span is very short. They see a lot of horrors in their duty, and the death and carnage is sometimes overwhelming."

So, basically, the kind of stuff would a battle mage is anything to do with battle ;p I'll let you use your imagination. A chain lightning spell to jump from opponent to opponent. Magical traps set to trigger when someone walks within their allotted trigger radius. Maybe a good old fashioned giant firebomb shot out into the general direction of the enemy.

Anything destructive flies, really. In my mind, I've always seen battle mages as mages who flung around a lot of raw power and made things go boom. I mean, generally speaking, battle mages are in fights, the heat of battle, and they generally don't have the time to stand around and craft delicate and/or terribly complex.

I bet they could also do something like infuse their magic into weapons. Maybe use the Gift to charm arrows into flying true. I suppose that could go under assassination, though.

They could also so something like cast a wall to deflect an onslaught of arrows, or twist the metal of weapons and render them useless. Though, I'm betting that those would require some time to prepare. Maybe the mage would craft the spell ahead of time and attach it to something, to be brought out later - kind of like what Merle de Herle would do.

To be honest, what the battle mage does depends on the mage's preferences and abilities. If the mage prefers to be defensive, to shield and deflect, or to be on the offensive, to cause bloody horrors.