A Song and Ale

by M E Wolf

  “Yes, you will need other training. Someone other than Zoilex will be training you in combat and then both of our husband and us will train you in magic. We have also heard that your father will come once we are done training you and teach you the Dochani arts, well to what he has started teaching you.

  “First let us check your speed in firing arrows, remember that when you increase your speed you still must put all of the arrows into your target. The bull’s eye of course is your target.” Katlin brought Alexandra to another red chalk line, which was only one hundred yards from the target.

  Alexandra stood at the red chalk line and fired as fast as she could. She was able to fire off twelve arrows before the first hit the target. All hit the bull’s eye. Katlin instructed her to keep going till she was able to fire all eighty of her arrows into the bull’s eye before the first arrow hit the target and left with the others to do other duties she had no knowledge of. Where was SilverFox? She kept at her practice firing arrows as quickly as she could into the bull’s eye. Days and years passed by as she practiced diligently firing arrows at the target. After some time she was able to fire all of her eighty arrows into her target well before the first arrow hit the bull’s eye.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Soon after Katlin and Tasheia came back to observe Alexandra and nodded with approval when Alexandra fired all eighty arrows before the first arrow hit the target.

  Katlin then spoke,

  “You are done your bow training. It is time for your combat training. It may have taken you only one hundred years to do your bow speed training, but we are well pleased with your results.

  “We have chosen a well bread ogre warrior to train you in combat. Anyone else may not be strong enough or quick enough to do a good job training you. He will nearly match you in strength and is my son.

  “Ghargenji is only one hundred and fifty years old, but then again you are only eight hundred or more years old. Tasheia’s son, Hogenja, will also be there to train you.

  “Both of them stand at a height of eight and a half feet so you will have good training even though you are far taller than their mothers’ at six feet and eight inches tall. Follow us and we will take you to our first born and heirs to our husband’s throne.”

  Alexandra followed Katlin and Tasheia to where their sons were practicing the sword. She wondered how well she would do since she had never wielded a sword before, despite her age. Both of them were wearing plate armour as they practiced against each other. There were thousands of straw filled sword dummies all in various positions around fortifications and set up in ambush simulations. Roughly thirty students of various levels were practicing the sword and unarmed combat in an open area just off to the right of Ghargenji and Hogenja.

  All of them had some form of light to heavy armour on as they practiced with real swords. Waiting till the two were done sparring, Alexandra witnessed their fluid movements that flowed like water in a wave each blocking or parrying the others' attack. Once done the two warriors turned towards their mothers and when they saw Alexandra they saw a challenge in training her.

  Katlin spoke when she noticed that her son and Tasheia’s son were done their sparring,

  “Alexandra, the one with the light green complexion is my son, Ghargenji and the one who has a dark brown complexion is Tasheia’s son, Hogenja. They will train you in the combat arts especially the sword, staff and spear.

  “You will be taught dagger fighting skills as well. Unarmed combat will be taught to you as well as many other life saving techniques. Ghargenji will speak to you now.”

  Ghargenji walked over to where Alexandra was standing and walked around her and looked her up and down from front to back and then spoke,

  “From what I can see from the way you stand and hold your self it may take a while to train you in the combat arts. From what I can see, you have good muscle tone Alexandra, very good muscle tone.” He winked at her, but she was not interested in a creature with tusks.

  His muscles were appealing, but she wanted SilverFox. She longed to see him again. Where was he?

  “Training will not be too hard for you, but no good training is ever easy. I will enjoy the many years we three spend together training.

  “In order to have better results we like to use real weapons because what is the point of learning to fight with weapons if you don’t use em in your training.

  “So, you will learn how to use the weapons that have been given to you and how to drop your bow and have another weapon ready for melee fighting.

  “We used to teach with choreographed forms called kata, but we found that that was too restrictive and did not allow for new ways of using your weapons.

  “You, instead, will be taught through intense mock battles that are not necessarily with any set form. It will go very fast. Of course we will teach you the basic uses of your weapons before we get into the battles.

  “After all these we will spar with you and you will spar with everyone here. Your limits will be tested beyond their breaking points and then we will go beyond your new limits and make new ones to break.

  “Alexandra you have probably noticed that each warrior here has a belt of a different colour. Each belt represents a rank. Hogenja and I both have the highest belt available, which is a solid black belt, which represents the last black belt you will get.

  “The first black belt will have a white stripe in the middle. In the order received the belts that you will strive for are white, yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, red, purple, black with white stripe, black with yellow stripe, black with orange stripe, black with green stripe, black with blue stripe, black with brown stripe, black with red stripe, black with purple stripe, and lastly solid black.

  “So there are seventeen belts or ranks to strive for. Everyone starts with a white belt no matter their level. After you get through this preliminary training with us you will go through more in-depth weapons and hand-to-hand combat training.

  “Now, I am going to explain how to go up in ranks. To gain a rank you must defeat someone who already holds that rank. The last rank you will have to defeat us two in order to gain it.

  “We in the Go’gen style have you fight real opponents to learn the martial style of fighting as opposed to fighting imaginary opponents that do not hit back and have no real chances of improving your abilities as much as the way that we do it. Let us begin your training.”

  Over the next few months Alexandra was taught various kicks including the roundhouse kick, front kick, sidekick, back kick, spinning back kick, crescent kick, hook kick, heel kick, stomp kick and various other kicks. She was also trained in various blocks, holds and many grappling techniques. Along with the hand-to-hand combat training she was coached into getting into the splits and doing various rolls, feints and many gymnastic maneuvers.

  After her bow training she did not expect her muscles to be worked anymore than they already had been thus far, but she was wrong in that assumption. Her legs, arms, chest and back hurt constantly with the pain of new muscle growth. Muscles she had never used before were being worked hard, so hard that she had a permanent haze of sweat running down her body.

  Ghargenji and Hogenja worked on her to improve her abilities in hand-to-hand combat, dagger fighting, longsword and longsword and dagger fighting with the weapons she was given before her bow training. Thoroughly beaten every night she had to be carried to the tent that she slept in every night. It took four years for her to be rid of the first set of bruises.

  Her first battle simulation training would be done with yellow belts and thus it would be done that way for each rank as she went up in rank after single combat with someone at a higher rank than what she needed to gain the rank. Being drilled every day by either Ghargenji or Hogenja since they had been in training for over the last one hundred and fifty or so years was like she knew nothing about combat, which was true since she did not know anything about combat with the exception of her Dochani instinct for survival.

  She r
ealized that she would not make it through the hard combat training if she did not focus and use all of the knowledge and skills that she had at her disposal. Instinctively she began to do Dochani meditation that no one had taught her, except her training in meditation, it was just there and she got up two hours earlier than she needed to do her combat training just to get some meditation into her schedule.

  At first it was slow getting into her meditation, but after the first hour she began to go deep into meditation. Two hours after she had begun Ghargenji came to her to get her for her training. Alexandra’s bruises were completely gone and she felt revitalized. One day she would truly come into her Dochani inheritance, but not for a while yet. Not till her mother’s abilities and memories came to her would she feel complete and finally know how to contact her father.

  Taking ten more years to finally defeat her first single combat to be warranted the yellow belt and two hundred more years to get the first black belt, the black belt with the white stripe, made her feel so inadequate. During all this training, SilverFox finally came to see her. He was alive. It was hard to explain how his life was altered due to her blood being constituted into his system he was now in fact a Dochani and not human anymore.

  SilverFox had stayed away from her because he was trying to cope with his transformation and only came to see her when he had found out that she had laid her egg and found out that it had hatched bringing forth a son. Darien is what him and Alexandra had known his name to be as Dochani knew their names from the moment they hatched from their eggs. Alexandra and SilverFox were married by Ghak’s uncle Ghuk, the shaman. He did look ancient after all these years that had passed since he was old when Ghak had gotten married to Katlin and Tasheia.

  Alexandra was finally happy with her life and the last two hundred years were spent being married to SilverFox. Even though she was now more than one thousand, three hundred and ninety years old and had accomplished a lot in that time, she felt like she had not even begun. She enjoyed spending time with SilverFox and hoped they could spend an eternity together. While she was doing her combat training SilverFox was being trained in archaeology and other intellectual pursuits he never dreamed of studying when he was a mere human.

  Apart from her training each day, she took to having tea with the women of the army. They had briefed her on the last three hundred and sixty years that she had been away from the council because of the demands on her time that her training was on her and her family. She was happy to have a more political role in society now that there were fewer demands on her physically even though she would have to get some experience in the military.

  Since SilverFox was a Dochani now he remained in the position that his brothers took up after the death of his father and was king of the Grand Reach, of which their son was heir. This made her the queen of Grand Reach. She was loved by all the people of her and SilverFox’s kingdom and she in turn loved all of her people. Many wars had taken place while Alexandra was in training.

  She was still in training now, but was being briefed on the goings on in the Elvin / Ghast ogre campaign as well as being kept abreast via her husband SilverFox of the campaigns that he had been involved in. There was a peace treaty between the elves, ogres and the Grand Reach which had included a ceremony that had made her, SilverFox and her children part of the Magi of the Ghast Ogres. It was hard for them all to receive the magi tattoos all over their bodies but they had felt it necessary for the treaty to hold.

  Because Alexandra was a Dochani, SilverFox and her children were Dochani they each received fifty tattoos from Ghak, fifty tattoos from Katlin and fifty tattoos from Tasheia making them the most powerful magi in thousands of years. Katlin and Tasheia’s husband, Ghak was still king of the Ghast ogres and commander of the armies of the humans, Ghast ogres, Ice Deep elves and the Burnt Deep elves.

  Alexandra was being briefed now because the magic users of the allied kingdoms of the army detected a great evil that was due to arrive any time within the next two hundred or more years. No one now living or present on the planet knew this evil that was to come, but they did know that it had been here before. This is why Alexandra’s training would be split between being in the war council meetings, her martial arts training and her magical training.

  She would also have to be involved in many of the border skirmishes against an enemy that seemed to be awaiting the return of the evil. They were some sort of occult who seemed to worship this evil that would come. Between all of her training and meetings she was being worked three times as hard as she had been in all of her training including her bow training. She even had to spend time on her bow training to make sure that she did not lose any skills that she worked so hard to get.

  Only with four hours of sleep every night she was always tired and most times she did not sleep while with SilverFox. Without her meditating she would certainly not be able to continue in her training. Not continuing her training would be unfortunate and something that she could not afford to be without. In all of this training she still found time to have an intimate relationship with her husband SilverFox, and spend time with her son.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Alexandra stood at the edge of the cliff where a city wall once was only a short time ago holding her husband SilverFox’s hand. Over two hundred years ago she was told that a great evil would come to ravage the land. She had no idea that on her fifteen hundred and ninetieth year they would come. Now that the evil was here and had destroyed countless amounts of cities, towns and even empires, she and her husband were sent out to track and kill each and every one of the beasts.

  For some reason when she had her armour fully out, they could not track her and sometimes thought her to be one of them. Her husband had found similar armour to hers for himself and their three children, two boys and one girl Darien, Sebastian and Sarah were their names. She surmised that her armour was not made from dragon scales as she was led to believe for so many years, but the scales of these evil creatures.

  Some of them were as dumb as a creature could get, sometimes even dumber than that and sometimes very cunning to the point of being more cunning than any other creature alive. So far even the dumbest of these evil beings eluded her. Wave after wave of soldiers were sent after the evil race called the Fenshians. None of the Fenshians were killed despite what was done to them and there were not many armies left to go after them and not many of those left wanted to go after them.

  The technology of the Fenshians was so advanced that it was not possible to fight against them. With them brandishing silver weapons, Alexandra’s vulnerability kept her and her family out of the war, but who else was there to fight them if not for her and her family. Now, it was not possible for her not to be involved in the war against the Fenshians. She did not blame the people for not wanting to be involved because thus far all those involved with the exception of herself and her family were now dead.

  This burnt out city was like most of the others except for the smell. It smelt like charred meat at this location. Like the others though there was not much evidence of the creatures actually landing on the ground. She supposed they burnt the cities to the ground without landing. Their vulnerabilities were not known and she was never closer than four thousand yards. With an accurate range of three thousand yards she did not want to take the chance of falling short and missing.

  All that her tracking was doing was finding the devastation after the Fenshians were already gone and it would not be a good idea for her and her family to split up. These beasts were supposed to be very devastating, but she and her family had not encountered one yet. The Fenshians seemed to be everywhere at once and no one knew exactly where they were or how many had arrived. Alexandra figured that she would have to kill them all until no destruction took place.

  As she was about to move to another area in the devastation, fire raked the ground where she stood sending her and her family careening into the crater where the city used to be. Alexandra fell into the fifty-foot deep crater lan
ding hard on her right leg. Even with her armour on she felt the bone in her lower leg protruding out through her skin. Her leg throbbed and tears came to her eyes at every movement of her right leg.

  She could not see where her family had went and had to fight to remain conscious, but felt herself going in and out of consciousness. Alexandra’s body shook or more closely vibrated and she could feel a trickle of blood drying and sticking to the cloth close to her leg. A burning sensation was between her eyes and concentration was being lost as though time did not exist for her and everything including life was borrowed.

  Looking through glazed tear filled eyes she observed no hiding place away from the wrath of whatever was sending the fire down upon her. With her leg the way it was and her mind reeling in pain she could only manage to crawl. Meditation or going into a trance-like state was out of the question because it would only give the beast a chance to kill her. Out of the corner of her left eye she saw something land. Its shadow said that it was huge, as large or larger than she remembered the creature from the sea that had attacked her when she was so much younger than she was now.

  Turning her head to the left so that her back was to the ground gave her a better view and also told her that its shadow had lied to her. Despite the crater that was once a large city, a capital city for a distant empire, that spanned over three hundred feet long, two hundred feet wide and fifty feet deep the creature took most of the space in the crater and was a good fifty feet over the top of the crater. It made the crater look small and Alexandra smaller than the smallest insect. Fear crept up her spine from her past when she used to have nightmares and encounter these beasts in her dreams.