In the Enemy's Service (Annals of Alasia Book 2)

by Annie Douglass Lima

  Seizing one of the short-bladed medical knives from the top drawer of the cabinet, Tonnis carefully cut away the man’s blood -soaked coat and tunic, revealing a long, straight wound across part of the chest and right shoulder. It had just missed the heart, but was obviously deep, and was bleeding profusely.

  Where’s Dal when I need him? Tonnis thought, starting to clean the wound with the cloth and bowl of water Eleya held ready. This man will need stitches, and that’s not my specialty. Tonnis was better at setting broken bones, treating muscle and joint problems and other common work-related injuries. It was Dal who usually dealt with serious wounds and illnesses.

  But Dal, who lived in town with his family, wouldn’t be in until morning; and this poor fellow had lost far too much blood already. Wordlessly, Eleya readied the needle and thread for him, and Tonnis gritted his teeth and started in.

  The two armed men who stood by flinched as they watched the needle dive in and out of their companion’s flesh. Luckily for him, the patient was nearly unconscious now and barely moaned.

  Not as even as Dal could have made it, Tonnis observed when he had finished, standing back to examine his row of stitches, but it’ll hold together. As he prepared a dressing to speed up healing and fight off infection, he found himself puzzling over the situation once more. This wound had obviously been made by a bladed weapon – a knife or sword or dagger. But whose? And who were these men, anyway?

  “Who attacked this fellow?” Eleya asked from beside him, obviously pondering the same thing.

  “A guard,” replied one of the men shortly.

  One of our palace guards? Tonnis paused in his work, disturbed. He had learned years ago that it didn’t pay to stop and think about other issues when he was treating a patient, but the more his mind woke up, the more bothered he was growing.

  “And where is this guard now?” Eleya asked carefully, bandage in hand, and he could tell from her voice that she was afraid – not only of the answer, but of what it might mean.

  “He’s dead,” the man replied carelessly. “They almost all are, now.”

  Tonnis froze in the act of taking the bandage from his wife. “Who? Who are almost all dead?”

  “Just get that bandage on him, all right? There are more injured soldiers waiting out front. You heard what Sergeant Morriss said. You’ve got your night’s work cut out for you.” When Tonnis didn’t move, the man jerked out a sword and pointed it at him threateningly. “Now!”

  The blade was smeared with blood – fresh blood, by the looks of it. Slowly, Tonnis bent to his work again. His head was still throbbing, but the last vestiges of sleep had finally fled as the situation became clear. Soldiers. In the Alasian army, soldiers wore green, not red and black like these men. And now that he thought about it, something was different about the way they talked. Who were they?

  They had to be Malornians. Tonnis didn’t know much about the kingdom to the south, except that Malorn and Alasia generally left each other alone. Rulers attended each other’s weddings and funerals but otherwise stayed on their own sides of the Grenn, the river that divided their lands. A few merchants traveled back and forth bringing goods from one kingdom to the other to trade or sell, but that was all. And he knew there weren’t supposed to be any royal Malornian visitors in Almar at the moment. So why were these soldiers here?

  There was only one explanation. Malorn had attacked Alasia. In Tonnis’s forty-five years there had never been any serious conflicts on Alasian soil, unless you counted the seafaring raiders who sometimes attacked towns and villages along the northwest coast. But now, apparently, they were at war.

  And Tonnis had just treated one of the enemy.

  The thought made him feel sicker than he had when they had first awakened him. Finished, he straightened up and faced the man who had last spoken. “We aren’t going to help you anymore.”

  “Oh, yes, you are.” Sword still in hand, the man strode around the table toward them, his partner following. “You will do exactly as you’re told if you want to stay alive.” He stopped with the tip of his blade just inches from Tonnis’s throat. “We need your services, doctor. That’s the only reason you aren’t dead in your bed right now like most of the others.”

  “Who exactly is dead in their beds?” Eleya demanded, staring down at the other man’s red-streaked sword, poised by her own throat.

  The second soldier shrugged. “Lots of people. I lost count of how many I took out. Just about everybody who has a room in this palace, I suppose, except for a few we spared to work for us. And all the guards, of course, except for those on our side.”

  Tonnis stared at them, frozen in horror, his heart pounding as the enormity of the catastrophe sank in. Lots of people. I lost count. Just about everybody. But what about King Jaymin? And the queen, and the young prince? Surely they wouldn’t have harmed the royal family. The question burned on his tongue, but he didn’t dare ask.

  “Now hurry and tell us what we can do with our colleague here,” the first soldier ordered. “Is there a bed somewhere where he can lie until he recovers, or shall we take him upstairs to yours? Some of the others are sure to need beds, too.”

  When Tonnis didn’t answer, both swords crept closer. Finally Eleya pointed, her finger trembling, and when she spoke, he could tell she was holding back tears with an effort. “There are four patient rooms down that hall, each with two beds.”

  “Help me carry him, then, doctor,” the soldier barked. He sheathed his sword and bent to his injured companion. When Tonnis didn’t move, the other soldier seized Eleya’s arm and touched the blade of his sword to her neck. Tonnis got the point and bent to help lift the moaning man.

  What can we do? What can we do? His mind screamed the question all the way down the hall and back again, but he had no answer. There were plenty of objects in the clinic that he could use as weapons, but what would it accomplish? We’re outnumbered. And if they’re telling the truth, most of our people are already dead. Besides, they have swords.

  Prodded from behind by Malornian blades, Tonnis and Eleya returned to the front room, where the situation seemed to have calmed down a little. He looked around, assessing the situation now that he was in full possession of his faculties. Twelve soldiers in black and red sat or lay on the benches, and one even had the audacity to sit at Dal’s desk in the corner. Most of them were clutching bleeding limbs and had grimaces of pain on their faces. Three more who seemed to be uninjured stood by the door and windows with drawn swords as though guarding their companions against possible attack.

  We’ll have to treat them, Tonnis thought, resigned. If he were alone, he might find the courage to refuse and face the consequences, but he couldn’t forget how the soldier had seized Eleya and brought that bloody sword up to her throat. So help him, he wouldn’t, couldn’t do anything to endanger his wife. Maybe later the two of them could find a way to somehow strike against the enemy, but for now they would follow orders. They had to.

  And so they tended soldier after injured soldier throughout the rest of that dreadful night, always under the watchful gaze of at least two others. Some of the patients thrashed and screamed in pain and had to be held down by their companions while their wounds were treated. Others, less seriously injured, bragged about their exploits and chuckled as they boasted of how many they had killed. All the while husband and wife worked together silently, saying not a word except when absolutely necessary to give an instruction to a patient or those holding him down. Long after Tonnis had expected to be finished, injured soldiers kept coming in, and so they toiled on.

  The gray light of dawn was beginning to filter through the curtains by the time he and Eleya had finally bandaged up the last Malornian. “Someone will send for you in a few minutes,” one of the two soldiers who had been hovering nearby told them. “Best be ready for instructions from our captain.”

  “And don’t think you can try anything in the meantime,” his partner added as the two of them headed out the front door into the c
ourtyard. “You’ll regret it.”

  Tonnis and Eleya turned to each other, exhausted, as the door slammed. Tonnis wanted to collapse into his armchair by the fire in their sitting room upstairs and shut his eyes, but he didn’t dare try to rest. They had to find out what was going on, plan what they ought to do now.

  Eleya wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Tonnis, I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “It can’t be true, can it? They can’t really have killed everyone.”

  “I don’t know,” Tonnis whispered back, holding her close. Part of him didn’t even want to know. The little they knew already was bad enough. Once they stepped outside or opened the curtains, the full scope of the disaster would hit them, but as long as they stayed in here, in the clinic, in this room, in each other’s arms, nothing else had to be real. He shut his eyes tightly, refusing to think about what might have happened last night. “I don’t know,” he whispered again. “I don’t know.”

  But Tonnis could only shut out reality for so long. They had to try to make a plan of some sort, but he was too tired to think clearly, and his head was still throbbing. Abruptly, he wondered if they had all somehow been drugged. That would explain why the enemy had supposedly been able to kill so many people in their beds.

  Wearily, he opened the cabinet and mixed some honeyed ginger root with water to settle their stomachs, adding a little powdered willow bark for the headache. Wordlessly, he and Eleya each downed a cupful before trudging upstairs together to get dressed.

  A shout from below brought them trudging back down again almost immediately. Torch Man – Sergeant Morriss, someone had called him – was waiting in the front room, torch gone now but sword in hand. “Come on out. The captain wants to talk to you both outside.”

  Stepping out into the palace courtyard in the morning drizzle, Tonnis peered around, and his breath caught in his throat. The ground was covered with corpses. Soldiers in black and red were emerging from the palace, dragging or carrying more bodies, laying them down in rows. Most of the corpses, he saw, were Alasian palace guards, their blue and white uniforms stained with blood. Some were servants, unlucky enough to have been on duty after most had gone home for the night. Others, still in their night clothes, were among the personnel who were privileged to have quarters in the palace, as Tonnis and Eleya did. Tonnis felt a surge of thankfulness that most palace employees lived elsewhere in Almar and commuted back and forth to work every day. Though some of them grumbled about the inconvenience of not living on site, that inconvenience had probably saved their lives last night.

  “This way,” the sergeant ordered, shepherding the two of them around the corner in the direction of the barracks where the palace guards normally slept. Beside him, Eleya drew a steadying breath as they stepped aside to avoid soldiers dragging out the bodies of yet more dead guards, these too in their night clothes. Apparently those off duty had been slain in their bunks.

  Behind the barracks, Tonnis was relieved to see a cluster of Alasians standing huddled together surrounded by a ring of soldiers. He and Eleya hurried into their midst, exchanging quick whispered greetings and murmurs of relief as they saw who was alive. Half a dozen members of the king’s Council of Advisors, some with their wives and children. The head chef and a couple of assistant cooks. Sethius, the palace blacksmith, his frightened young apprentice Jommal hovering close to his side. The stable master, the chief gardener, the king’s secretary, the master-at-arms, the prince’s tutor. At least not everyone was dead. But where were King Jaymin and Queen Esarelle and the prince?

  “Attention, Alasians,” boomed a voice from behind them. The whispers quieted as everyone turned to face the Malornian who had addressed them. From the way the other soldiers stood respectfully around him, and from his tone of authority, Tonnis knew he must be an officer, probably the officer in charge of this operation. Unlike the others, this man had blue stripes, probably some sort of rank marking, around the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. A red cloak and hood protected him from the drizzling rain.

  “I am Captain Almanian,” the officer announced, looking them over sternly. “Congratulations. You have been chosen to live, at least for now. If you’d like to continue living, you will of course cooperate completely with all instructions my men or I give. Any disobedience or attempts at rebellion or sabotage will be regarded as acts of war against Malorn and will be punished accordingly.” He paused to make sure they all understood. “You have been spared because I assume you will be useful to us. By proving me right, you prove yourselves worthy to continue living. If I discover I was wrong, I will correct my mistake immediately.” He laid a hand on the hilt of his sword, his meaning plain.

  “You will be assigned various tasks, at which you will be supervised by my soldiers. For today most of you will work on cleaning the guard barracks so my men can move in – removing and washing soiled bedding, scrubbing the blood from the floor, and so forth. Later some of you will do the same with the rest of the palace, while others dig a pit out back for the bodies.” He turned to the cooks, identifiable by their white uniform aprons. “In the meantime, the three of you will go into the kitchen and help Phenniel prepare breakfast for everyone. You’ll be working under him from now on.”

  “But Phenniel is my assistant,” protested Lutian, the head chef, in confusion.

  “No, Phenniel is my assistant,” the captain told them bluntly. “From this point forward he is your superior.”

  Lutian’s jaw dropped, and abruptly Tonnis realized what that meant. Phenniel had been working for the Malornians. He must somehow have helped orchestrate this takeover. Traitor!

  “And in case you get any clever ideas about poisoning us,” the captain was continuing, “from now on I will personally watch one of you taste a little of anything you cook before it’s served to my men.” He turned back to the rest of them. “You will be allowed to eat your meals in the dining hall after the soldiers have finished, assuming you’ve been diligent at your assigned tasks that day. Laziness will be punished by loss of meal privileges.”

  He frowned sternly around at all of them. “From this time forth, you are forbidden to carry or use weapons of any sort. I realize, of course, that most of you will have access to tools and other implements that could be used as weapons, but for your own safety, I suggest you refrain from acting on any murderous thoughts you may entertain against us. I assure you, you will regret it.” He cast his eyes through their little group as though looking for someone to use as an example. Spying fourteen-year-old Jommal at Sethius’ side, he stepped into their midst, seized the boy’s arm, and pulled him to the front of the group.

  “Now just a moment,” Sethius protested anxiously, moving to follow them, but two of the other soldiers stepped forward with drawn swords to block his way.

  “Is this your son?” the captain demanded, drawing his own sword.

  “Let him go,” the blacksmith exclaimed, alarm rising in his voice. Tonnis knew that Sethius, who had never married or had children of his own, loved Jommal as his own child.

  The captain brought the blade up close to Jommal’s throat. The boy, who had turned pale, bit his lip in fear but didn’t cry out. “When a Malornian officer asks you a question, you are to answer immediately,” the captain informed them all grimly. “I’ll give you one more chance, Alasian. Is this your son?”

  “No,” Sethius breathed, his eyes locked on the boy’s. “He’s my apprentice in the smithy.”

  “No, sir,” the captain prompted.

  “No, sir.”

  “But perhaps you would be reluctant to see him die, just the same,” Captain Almanian suggested.

  Blacksmith and boy both swallowed. “Yes, sir,” Sethius was quick to agree.

  “Good. Well, blacksmith, by way of example, let’s say a soldier brings his sword to you to be sharpened, as many no doubt will, and you decide to try to cut his throat with it. It is remotely possible that you might accomplish such a thing, but it is not possible that you wo
uld get away with it. The first thing that would happen is that you would watch your apprentice here die a slow and painful death, followed by a couple of these others – whomever I decide to use as examples to the rest of you. After watching them die to pay for your crime, you would eventually be executed yourself – again, slowly and painfully, not quickly like your friends out there in the courtyard.” He looked around again to make sure they all understood, and then released Jommal’s arm and gave him a little push back into the group. As the boy stumbled back to his master’s side, Tonnis saw him shove his hands into his pockets to hide the way they were shaking.

  “I hope you all understand,” the captain continued, “that if a single one of my men should ever suffer harm at any of your hands, three or four of you will pay for it with your lives. And even if you should feel inclined to be martyrs, remember that there are hundreds of us here and only a handful of you. Nothing you can do will stop our occupation of your kingdom anyway, or bring back the lives already taken. Your best strategy will be to cooperate fully to protect your own lives. If you do so, you will be treated fairly.” He paused to let this sink in. “Is that understood?”

  Heads nodded reluctantly. The captain frowned. “I have already told you how I expect to be answered. One more time: is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” they chorused.

  “If you please, sir,” one of the Council members put in quickly. “May I ask a question?” Without waiting for permission, he plunged on. “Sir, what’s been done with King Jaymin?”

  They all held their breath, anxious for the answer everyone had been waiting to hear.

  “Your king and queen and their son are dead,” the captain informed them flatly. “Prince Korram of Malorn rules Alasia now.”

  There were gasps of horror and cries of disbelief and despair. Tonnis and Eleya turned to each other, and he saw his own dismay mirrored in her eyes as they welled up with tears. Dead! The whole royal family was dead! He had feared as much, but part of him had dared to hope that they might have been kept alive as trophies, prisoners of war, bargaining chips. But no. They were dead, and with them all hope for Alasia’s future. For only the second time in its nearly four-hundred-year history, the Alasian royal line had been broken. Although kings had been killed before, there had almost always been an heir. But not this time. It seemed that Alasia really and truly belonged to the Malornians now.