by Ian Gregoire
“Commander!” Sartis was retreating from the front-line, approaching Kayden on horseback.
“Commander!” he repeated, pulling up alongside Onyx. “Around that corner, down Aznavor Street is Danzir Prison. If, as we’ve been led to believe, the bulk of the Royal Guard has been imprisoned for refusing to follow orders, it’s possible that some of them are being held there. If we could break them out, you’d have trained soldiers to spearhead the push into the centre of town.”
Kayden saw a flying arrow erupt in a cloud of dust before it could embed itself into a target. She knew at once that the burst of Zarantar she had sensed from one of the Sisters was responsible, and had probably saved another life in the process.
“I don’t want to be distracted from our course,” she replied. “Besides, depending on how long they’ve been imprisoned for, any soldiers held there may not be in a fit condition to fight.” She thrust out a hand, invoking Yuksaydan to pull the sword from the grasp of a bandit about to kill one of her militiamen. “Forget about the prison. We continue pushing towards the administrative district. The sooner we capture or kill Kazdaranian, the sooner we end this battle.”
It was clear Sartis wanted to object. He opened his mouth to speak.
“You have your orders,” snapped Kayden, cutting him off before he could utter a word. She urged Onyx forward, returning her focus to the ongoing confrontation.
For several minutes Kayden’s militia continued to slowly push Kazdaranian’s men backward through the streets. By now over three hundred casualties had been inflicted upon the bandits, by Kayden’s reckoning, but it still wasn’t enough to force a surrender. Meanwhile, casualties were mounting among the resistance. Despite the best efforts of the seven Sisters in tandem with Kayden, her militiamen had sustained four or five dozen losses in total.
Suddenly, without warning, the bandits began to flee the street battle, turning on their heels and running for all they were worth. An exultant cheer went up, and several militiamen proceeded to give chase.
“Hold position!” yelled Kayden. “Hold position!”
“Hold your position!” bellowed Sartis, echoing her command.
The order was obeyed, and the running men promptly ended their pursuit, albeit reluctantly. From the looks they were casting in Kayden’s direction, there was both confusion and annoyance at not being permitted to press home the advantage now that the tide of battle had apparently shifted in favour of the resistance. “Why have we stopped?” cried out one person. “We are winning!” shouted someone else. “Yeah!” said a chorus of voices, affirming that several people shared the sentiment.
“They may be trying to lure us into an ambush,” said Kayden, keeping her voice raised to ensure she was heard. “It’s vital we maintain our discipline so we don’t hand the initiative back to the enemy. We hold here until I know what prompted their sudden withdrawal.”
“Commander, how do you propose to find out?” asked Sartis. His horse had pulled up alongside Onyx once again.
Handing over the reins of her mount to him, Kayden replied, “Here, hold this.” She flashed a wry smile in response to the befuddled look on his face, and before he could say anything, she levitated out of the saddle, high into the air, courtesy of her invocation of Makfayshulat. With the awed murmurings of the watching militiamen in her ears, Kayden drifted steadily through the air in pursuit of the retreating bandits. Noting that the men on the street below were heading south towards the town centre, she surmised that they were falling back to the administrative district, where she believed Baranzev Kazdaranian was based. It seemed that her concerns about possibly being lured into an ambush were unwarranted, though. The withdrawal from the street battle was genuine. She just needed to ascertain what had prompted the decision.
On the ground below, Kayden finally caught sight of someone who wasn’t running. The bearded bandit was standing at the side of a crossroads, pointing south, and seemingly urging his cohorts onward. Maybe he was even issuing instructions. If so, thought Kayden, he might know the reason for the sudden retreat, and what plans had been made for the continued defence of the provincial capital.
Kayden continued to hover high above the teeming crossroads. Still she remained unnoticed by any of the men below, but if she was going to acquire the information she wanted, now was the time to make her presence known. With her eyes focussed intently on her target, she invoked Yuksaydan to seize hold of the stationary bandit below. In an instant the ‘unseen hand’ lifted the unsuspecting man off his feet, up into the air towards her. The display of Zarantar gained the immediate attention of several running bandits who slowed down to witness the skyward ascent of their fellow bandit, wriggling in a futile bid to free himself from the invisible hold on him. To her surprise, Kayden sensed an imminent Zarantar strike. Suddenly, an incendiary orb was hurtling up towards her from below.
Oh drat! she thought. Only now did she realise she had drifted beyond the boundary of the dampening ward set by the Sisters. Once again, the Sanatsai contingent among the bandits could invoke their offensive abilities against her.
Instinctively, Kayden diverted the flight of the incendiary orb with her invocation of Yuksaydan, sending it straight back towards the person who had unleashed it. The fiery ball struck the cobblestone street below and detonated. Half a dozen or more bandits were blown off their feet by the force the detonation, and Kayden doubted if all of them would get up again. But she wasn’t about to stick around to find out for sure. As Kazdaranian’s panic-stricken loyalists sped up their retreat, she began drifting backwards in the direction she had come from, pulling her airborne captive along with her.
“Let me go, you damned foreign whore!” yelled the bearded bandit, his hand seemingly trying to reach for his dagger.
“I don’t think you really want me to do that,” quipped Kayden in retort. “There’s no guarantee you’d survive the fall.”
The bandit looked down. He blanched in realisation of how high above the streets they were.
“That’s what I thought,” muttered Kayden with a smirk.
A short while later, Kayden caught sight of a rooftop terrace as she looked this way and that, in search of somewhere to land. She decide it was the ideal spot to set down and interrogate her prisoner, so she adjusted her course, drifting steadily towards the building. Once she was above the deserted terrace, Kayden ceased her invocation of Yuksaydan, letting the captive bandit drop like a stone, and land in a heap. She descended slowly after him, alighting gracefully on her feet. Without warning, the bandit scrambled to his feet, drawing his dagger, but Kayden was ready for him. Invoking Yuksaydan once more, she seized him around the throat with the ‘unseen hand’ and squeezed. He dropped the dagger right away, and clawed at the invisible grasp around his neck with both hands.
“Now,” said Kayden. “I am going to ask you a couple of questions. If you refuse to answer them, I will throw you head first off this roof. Is that clear?”
The prisoner vigorously nodded his head, allowing Kayden to release the Zarantar-induced hold squeezing his throat. He coughed and spluttered momentarily, staring at her with bitterness in his eyes, but he made no further attempts to harm her.
“Good,” said Kayden. “This is your first question. Where are your fellow scumbags retreating to?”
A reply wasn’t forthcoming. Kayden cocked her head.
“We were instructed to fall back to the governor’s residence.” The bandit’s reply was uttered with obvious reluctance.
The answer coincided with Kayden’s assumption that the bandits were making their way to the administrative district in the town centre. “Why?” she asked.
“To mount a defence of the compound,” he said with a sigh. “From what I gather, hundreds of people in neighbourhoods all across Sevdanor have taken up arms and started attacking us. There is speculation that they intend to march on the governor’s residence, hence the order to fall back and consolidate our defence around the compound.”
A wry
smile tugged the corners of Kayden’s mouth. So, the inhabitants of Sevdanor had been receptive to her appeal for them to throw off the yoke of their oppressors, she realised. Victory was now a lot closer.
“Can I assume the governor’s residence is where I will find your leader, Baranzev Kazdaranian, cowering behind his ragtag band of lackeys?” she asked.
Kayden sighed wearily when her captive failed to respond. Placing her hands behind her back, she surreptitiously invoked Yuksaydan, lifting the beleaguered man off his feet.
“Wait, wait, wait!” he pleaded in a blind panic, no doubt remembering her threat to throw him head first off the rooftop terrace. “I don’t know if Kazdaranian is there; I’ve never met the man.”
After a moment’s contemplation, Kayden set the bearded bandit back down again, relinquishing her hold on him. It didn’t matter if he was telling the truth about not knowing Kazdaranian’s whereabouts. There was little doubt that the bandit leader would be found where his followers were withdrawing to. The governor’s residence was to be the location of Kazdaranian’s last stand, now Kayden had to return to her militia and help them achieve their victory.
“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful,” she said in a playful tone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my people. I’m sure you can find your own way down from this rooftop.” She turned on her heels and took a running jump off the terrace, invoking Makfayshulat to levitate back into the air.
Setting a course back to where she left her fighting force, she drifted high above the streets of Sevdanor.
It came as no surprise to Kayden that her militia had encountered no resistance during their advance on the town centre. The only people who approached them were excited well-wishers urging them onwards, some of whom chose to join their ranks. But the easy ride ended abruptly once they reached the administrative district. Numerous bowmen had taken up positions in various locations, lying in wait to launch hit and run attacks from rooftops, windows, doorways, and street corners. Kayden and the Sisters had little trouble neutralising the threat, but the militia’s advance was slowed down, nonetheless, and a handful of injuries were sustained, some fatal.
As they neared their objective, Kayden’s militia came upon scores of embattled, injured townspeople armed with makeshift weaponry crowded at the threshold of the north avenue leading into Mirazan Square. Kayden called a halt to the advance in order to assess the situation, and to allow the Sisters to render medical assistance to the injured. From her elevated position in the saddle, she cast her gaze at the opposite end of the avenue, catching sight of the walled compound that was the governor’s residence situated in the middle of the large piazza. Countless sword-wielding men loyal to Baranzev Kazdaranian were positioned outside the perimeter wall, while several more were manning the top of the wall itself. The paved square was littered with the corpses of townspeople, and it appeared to Kayden that many of the dead had arrows and crossbow bolts protruding from their bodies.
It wasn’t hard to guess what had transpired before her arrival, Kayden realised. The people she inspired to take up arms against their oppressors had pursued the bandits all the way to the administrative district, and attempted to storm the governor’s residence in Mirazan Square. That attempt had obviously failed and been costly in terms of lives lost. Now she would have to question the survivors to ensure her own militia didn’t make the same mistake.
“There’s no point trying to enter the square,” offered an uninjured survivor. The thirty-something man was of medium height and build. He stood in front of Sartis’ horse, staring up at him as though believing him to be the person in charge. “Each side of the square only has one point of entry, so there are just four ways in and out for Kazdaranian’s men to defend, and these avenues aren’t really wide enough to allow a large enough number of people to flood into the square en masse.”
Kayden listened intently, unconcerned that the speaker was addressing Sartis.
“When we entered the square and tried to rush the governor’s compound,” continued the man, “we immediately found ourselves struck down from behind before we even had a chance to engage the swordsmen outside the perimeter wall. It turns out several of the buildings bordering the square are occupied by bowmen, so we were forced to withdraw.”
“I see an awful lot of bodies from here,” Kayden interjected. “Not everyone was killed by an arrow or crossbow bolt.”
The man shifted his gaze to Kayden. For a moment he looked both surprised and confused. Maybe it was her Vaidasovian features. Maybe it was her fluent Anzarmenian. Kayden didn’t know the cause of the expression until he spoke again.
“Yes,” he said, sounding almost awestruck. “It was your voice we heard in the streets earlier this morning. The voice of the resistance.” He paused. Again his expression changed, this time he looked like a man realising he had been distracted from his train of thought and had to get the conversation back on track. “We lost a lot more people just before you arrived,” he continued. “A second attempt to storm the compound was made. A co-ordinated assault from all four sides of the square this time. It allowed us to get more people in at once, but at a cost. While we got close enough to the perimeter wall to engage Kazdaranian’s men at close quarters, it wasn’t just their swords, and the arrows of the bowmen we had to contend with. They have several wielders of Zarantar in their midst, and we didn’t have a hope against them.”
Surprisingly, he didn’t look like someone who had lost hope. He spoke like a man whose resolve had only been increased by adversity.
“Now that we’ve been forced to withdraw for a second time,” he said, “it makes more sense for us to maintain a siege around Mirazan Square. We have hundreds of people amassed at the entrances to the four avenues, cutting off the only means of escape.”
Kayden admired the man’s optimistic outlook. It was entirely possible Kazdaranian and his followers would surrender rather than be starved to death, but she thought it much more likely that once their situation became desperate enough they would attempt to break the siege and flee the provincial capital.
“Your proposal could take weeks,” she replied. “I’m not prepared to wait that long. We’re going to end Baranzev Kazdaranian today, this very hour.”
There was no enthusiasm for storming the governor’s compound among the locals who’d already survived two failed attempts to do so, but Kayden’s militia was more than eager to go the extra mile to get the job done. She dismounted and hastily convened a meeting in the doorway of a jewellery store with Sartis, Sister Valeria, and the optimistic survivor who said his name was Tovar, to discuss how to subdue the bandits and gain access to the governor’s residence, while minimising potential casualties among the resistance. Her initial suggestion was guaranteed to cause significant structural damage to the compound and several other buildings around the square, which she deemed to be necessary in order to eliminate the threat posed by bowmen. Only after Tovar raised an objection that couldn’t be ignored did she relent and abandon the idea. If he was correct about the widely held belief in Sevdanor that scores of abducted women from all over the province were being held in some of the buildings, as sex slaves for the pleasure of Kazdaranian and his favoured loyalists, then she couldn’t justify jeopardising their safety.
It quickly dawned on Kayden that the best way to prevent loss of life among her militia, as well as innocent civilians, was by entering the square and storming the governor’s compound by herself. If push came to shove, she could simply stroll to the end of the avenue and enter the square, knowing there was nothing the remnants of the four thousand bandits could do about it. Her Zarantar would protect her from their swords and arrows, while the thirty or so Sanatsai she knew to be among their ranks were unlikely to be a match for her.
“I will enter the governor’s residence alone,” she announced, silencing her counterparts. “If I apprehend Kazdaranian by myself it will negate the prospect of sustaining further casualties among our own people.”
>
“Have you lost your mind?” said Tovar. “You’ll be killed the moment you set foot in the square… if you’re lucky. Frankly, looking the way you do it’s more likely you’ll be captured alive and enslaved. If your plan is to reach Kazdaranian by being taken into the governor’s residence as a sex slave, it’s a terrible plan.”
Kayden flashed him a look. “Your concern is duly noted,” she said, “but the enemy will not see me coming.”
“While I don’t doubt your ability to enter the compound without difficulty,” said Valeria, “I hope you realise that cutting off the head of the snake may not kill the body in this instance. There’s no guarantee Kazdaranian’s men will surrender if he is captured or killed.”
“Which is where you and the other Sisters come in,” replied Kayden, hoping her Jaymidari allies were up to the task. Otherwise, if the bandits did refuse to surrender after the defeat of their leader, as Valeria suggested, it would necessitate turning the square into a bloodbath. “While I’m inside the residence searching for Kazdaranian, perhaps there is something you can do to incapacitate his followers outside. I realise your Zarantar cannot be used offensively, but surely you can invoke the equivalent of concussion orbs to render people unconscious?”
Eyes cast down, Valeria looked contemplative for a moment, clearly mulling over the inquiry. “It would be impractical for us to knockout so many men individually,” she said finally, “but there are a couple of ways we could render them unconscious all at once. However, both invocations would have limitations in the present scenario.”
“Tell me,” said Kayden, intrigued by what she heard.
“The first option is to unleash a cascading concussion wave through the square; anyone caught in the path of the wave will instantly keel over, unconscious. But the wave cannot pass through walls or other solid obstructions, so only the bandits outside the perimeter wall would be affected. Those behind the wall, those inside the residence, and the bowmen lurking in the buildings bordering the square would be unaffected.”
