“There’s a supply vessel coming down the river right now,” a soldier hurried back to Alec to report. “Shall we destroy it?”
This was the moment the whole journey had been designed to accomplish. “We’re hardly prepared at this point to destroy a ship,” Alec pointed out. “What size is it?” He had imagined a number of ways to destroy the shipping coming down the river, but he had expected to have men in place to cover all the possible outcomes before they began their work.
“It’s as large as our entire camp site, and covered with bundles under covers. It must be carrying a great deal of material for the filthy lacertii,” the soldier told him hopefully.
“We aren’t ready yet,” Alec decided. “Let it pass. Call everyone down here and let’s begin to outline our positions so we can make sure we do this right.” The one thing he dinot want to do was botch an attack and allow survivors to get away and reveal their presence in this spot. The longer they could completely destroy all the shipments, the longer the Goldenfields strategy would go unknown by the lacertii.
Alec saw the disappointment in the young soldier’s face, but she obediently left him to bring the troops together for the meeting. “That was the right decision,” Armilla said as they watched the soldier climbing the hillside. “One ship now won’t matter compared to the many ships we’ll be able to plunder later.”
Soon Alec was surrounded by his sizable contingent. “Many of you are disappointed I’m sure that we didn’t destroy the first target that was sent our way,” he told them, then explained that they were going to make sure no remnants of any shipping got through them. “We need to set up multiple positions to bring our firepower on each boat that passes. We need to have archers on both sides of the river so that there are no protected positions on any boat, or any protected parts of the river we can’t reach,” he said, remembering the survivors from Walnut Creek who he and Leah had watched float away from the lacertii. “If any of the lacertii get past us, they will alert their troops to our presence and we will be trapped behind enemy lines unable to rejoin our forces or perform the duty we were sent to do.
“We also need to have troops downstream to prevent anything from floating past us. We want there to be no evidence whatsoever that shipments are leaving the mountains to sustain the lacertii invasion,” he explained.
Alec dispatched several scouting groups, some of whom were to cross the river, to map both shores for the best locations to place ambushes, and instructed all scouts to return to the campsite before sundown.
The remaining members of the team he set to work building a strong camp site on top of a small knoll, set away from the river. He set Streed and Waln to work on creating foundations and embankments for the temporary village, and then asked Allisma to join him for a stroll back to the top of the river bluff.
“Could you direct this river to flow in a certain way, if we wanted you to crash a boat onto the shore?” he asked the vivacious brunette as they sat on the ground and studied the landscape.
“That’s a lot of water, Alec,” she replied, looking down at the valley. “There are certain places where I could manipulate the stream to do that. Down there,” she pointed to a spot, “the water is moving around a rock in the bottom of the riverbed, and the current will take a boat toward shore right about…there,” she pointed a second later. “I could manage that relatively easily if the river is flowing like this.”
“How many times a day?” Alec asked. “Could you handle three or four in a day? Would it help if an air ingenaire had a breeze blowing to assist you?”
“I think I could do three boats, if they were spaced out throughout the day,” Allisma answered. “I’m sure a breeze blowing would help too.”
“Do you miss Bethany?” she asked abruptly, voicing the question she had wanted to ask for weeks.
Alec had been studying the river intently, and was unprepared for the change of topic. “What?” was all he answered.
“Sometimes when you and Bethany were together in Goldenfields, and then definitely on the trip to Bondell, I thought you would get married,” Allisma recalled. “You were so good for each other. She cares for you so much.”
“I was sent on a mission, and it took me away for a long time. It changed me,” Alec said softly. “Many things were happening and I had to make choices about what my role would be,” he added. “And when I made those choices, I didn’t put Bethany first. I couldn’t; she wasn’t an option, regardless of how much I wanted her to be.
“I know how good she is and I wish there was a way we could have stayed together, but that turned out to be impossible, because I was gone so long, and she couldn’t wait,” he drifted off.
“I saw her in Oyster Bay,” he added in the long silence that Allisma let stretch out without comment. “Of course you know that. She was with Tritos, and he cares for her a great deal. She told me Tritos would always be reliable for her in a way I can’t guarantee. In response, I pointed out to her that Brandeis had waited faithfully for years for Noranda.
“Not exactly the kind words of parting lovers, are they?” he said with self-pity. He’d never had someone to talk to about his frustrations over his relationship with Bethany, and the pent up emotions came bursting out even all these weeks later. “And maybe she was right. Here I am, out on another adventure again, aren’t I?”
“If you had told her you loved her a little sooner, or a little more frequently, she would have waited for you forever,” Allisma replied fervently. “She would have been your Penelope, without question.”
“You should have invited her instead of me,” Allisma continued. “She would have come if you had asked.”
“What do you mean?” Alec asked, asking two questions at once. “I didn’t invite you. You came on your own. Not that I don’t want you here,” he added hastily. “And she wouldn’t have come if I had asked. She’s too devoted to Tritos.”
“I got a note that said you wanted me to come on this campaign,” Allisma responded swiftly. “You don’t think I’d just force my way into something like this, do you?
“And she would have come if you had asked her. We talked about it, and I know she would have come for you,” Allisma asserted. “She would have.”
“I didn’t send you a note. I don’t know who did. Someone smarter than me, apparently,” Alec said.
“You know her better than I do, especially lately,” Alec said carefully. “It seems like every time we could have grown closer, the situation got complicated and ended up being a ‘should have been’ or ‘could have been’ but for something outside of us which kept getting in the way.”
“Don’t give up, Alec,” Allisma said. “That’s all I’ll say: don’t give up,” the water ingenaire repeated. She stood up. “I didn’t mean to make you relive that; sorry. Shall we return to the camp?”
They walked down the hillside back to the camp, and waited for the scouting teams to return as the sun set. “Do any boats float through at night?” Alec asked Imelda later as they sat to eat dinner. It was a question that had bothered him for several days.
“We don’t know. You can’t see them unless they have lights on them,” the cavalry leader replied.
“When Leah and I rode our raft down the river, we never stopped. We just kept on floating day and night,” Alec remembered. “We’ll have to figure out if they do ride the river at night, and then work on detecting and destroying them. It’ll be tougher,” he thought out loud.
“Can your light ingenairii see them in the dark?” Imelda promptly asked.
“I’ll ask them now,” he told her, and called Shaiss and Alder over.
“Yes, we can use our powers to see things better at night, as long as there’s some light available. Even starlight or the moon is enough,” Alder replied promptly to Alec’s question. “I don’t know how to let others see at night though, so it will mean not much sleep for the two of us if we have to stay up all night every night.”
“It could mean not much sleep for an
y of us if we have to get up two or three times every night to attack boats,” Imelda added.
They all concluded that the situation would simply have to evolve for them to know what to do. “If we only had a fire ingenaire, he could set the boats on fire and make them easy targets to take care of,” Shaiss said.
“That may be the answer,” Nathaniel exclaimed. He had walked into the group during the conversation. “We have to find some way to make them burn, maybe with flaming arrows.”
“When we get this all figured out, destroying the boats in the daytime will seem easy,” Alec commented wryly. “Let’s get everyone together tomorrow to go over some of our options. I’m going to go pitch my tent and get some sleep. Imelda, would you set the sentries for the evening, please?” he said, then left to go in search of his supplies, and to bed down for the evening.
“You won’t mind sharing a tent, will you, your majesty?” Alec heard Nathaniel ask, and he turned to see the warrior ingenaire grinning at him. They set up their tent, and Alec fell asleep with little further comment, happy to have his friend as a tent mate.
The next morning the whole squadron, except for perimeter guards, gathered together to plan their operations. “We need to be able to position people in hidden spots on both sides of the river throughout the day, possibly even during the night, in order to make sure that when we attack a craft on the river, we completely destroy it. I want Streed and Waln to use their skills to create the ambush holes where we can hide and wai for the opportunity to attack,” Alec began. “We will need to set up two additional spots to launch an attack, in case a second boat comes quickly after a first boat, before we have time to hide the evidence of our attacks.”
“We’re working on the matter of attacking boats that run the river at night. If anyone has any ideas, see Nathaniel to tell him,” Alec made the delegation of the night attacks on the spot.
“Imelda, do you think we’ll be able to organize foraging parties that will keep us supplied with game?” he asked the cavalry commander.
“We’ll find a fair amount of small game out here, but for a group this size, I think we’ll have to eat a lot of fish to keep everyone well fed,” she said.
After further discussion, people were assigned to begin scouting, hunting, and building. Streed and Waln went with Allisma and the air ingenairii to begin creating the placements for the ambush. Alec picked up a bag for plant specimens, then sought out Yula. “I’d like for you to help me,” he began.
“I know,” she said petulantly. They’d spoken to one another not at all so far in the trip, although she had gotten along well with the other ingenairii and the soldiers. “That’s why I’m out here, to satisfy you.”
“I’d like you to help me,” Alec began again, his voice riding a slight edge, “locate and cultivate plants we can use for the diet of everyone here. I know a lot about plants from a medicine point of view, and you know about the ones that are edible. Let’s go look for plants we know folks will need and want and start tending them.”
She looked at him and her cheeks showed a slight crimson beneath the tan she had acquired from the days riding across the plains. “Oh, that kind of help. That would be good. When do you want to go?”
“Let’s start right now,” Alec suggested. We can visit the valleys immediately around us to find plants and convenient places to grow them.” Alec had recollections of eating a monotonous diet of roots and tubers from riverside plants when he and Leah rode down the river together, and he wanted to avoid that by all means possible.
“When did you eat roots?” Yula asked.
Alec looked startled. Had the plant ingenaire read his mind?
“You just muttered something about ‘roots every day’?” she explained in an inquisitive voice.
“Oh, I rode down the river on a raft when we escaped from Walnut Creek, and it seems like Leah and I ate roots and fish and nothing else day after day after day,” Alec explained.
“And you went from being a refugee to become the ruler of the Dominion,” Yula finished. “And what became of Leah?”
Alec paused. “She died. I did not have enough ingenaire powers available to heal her and she died in childbirth. Her daughter was adopted by Annalea, who you met in Goldields. That little girl you saw was the only child Leah had.”
Yula was abashed and silent for several minutes as they walked through a valley that ran north from their camp. Alec noted several plants with medicinal value, and picked them to carry in his sack. “What edible plants do you see?” he asked his companion.
“Grains, mostly. If we can get some water up here we’ll have grain enough for bread. There are berries along the western edge of the valley, and they’ll ripen in a few weeks. That boggy spot halfway back had some wild celery,” she inventoried some of the things she had seen.
They turned around and began walking back. As they approached the camp they heard loud shouts coming from the river, and saw that the camp was empty. Alec began running up the hill to the crest of the bluff that looked out over the river. When he arrived at the top, he looked down and saw a pitched battle underway between a boat of lacertii that had beached on the far shore and a small band of his troops who were besieged by the enemy. Meanwhile scores of the rest of the Oyster Bay and Goldenfields forces were slowly crossing the river to aid their comrades. Alec climbed and slid rapidly down the steep bluff of stone and dirt to reach the shore of the river, removed his sword, and dove into the river. Immediately the current began sweeping him downstream as he stroked his way across. After minutes he felt the bottom of the river and stood up in the current, then waded to the shore line, and began jogging back towards the battle. He saw that the Dominion forces clearly had the situation in hand.
By the time he arrived, not a lacerta was alive. “Alec over here! Hurry!” he heard Nathaniel’s voice. “It’s Allisma; she’s been injured.”
Alec bent over the unconscious water ingenaire. An arrow had pierced her midsection, and she had lost a lot of blood. “Are there other injuries?” he asked.
“Yes, two hurt arms, and one dead,” Nathaniel said.
Alec pulled out his knife, and cut the arrow out of Allisma; he heard someone retch behind him. He sent a powerful flash of healing power into her internal organs to heal her thoroughly, and began knitting the muscles together. “Would someone please go find Yula on the other shore and help her cross over to me?” he called.
Alec sensed he had stabilized the injured woman, and began paying more particular attention to the areas damaged by the arrow, trying to start the healing in a way that would reduce scarring. He closed up the wound opening, and continued to work on her, as he heard a horse approach from the river.
“You sent for me?” Yula asked, bending over him to look at Allisma.
“Yes. Give me your power to help heal her, and then we’ll go look at the others,” Alec ordered. He took her energy and continued to probe Allisma internally, especially mindful of Annalea’s injury-induced infertility, seeking to avoid future problems for this patient at all costs. He then refocused on healing her skin, and heard Yula gasp as the reddened new scar of her injury dwindled into a healthy surface.
“font siz2">She’s lost blood and that will take time to heal. I have some herbs on the other shore we can mix in a soup to help her,” Alec said reaching back to remove Yula’s hand from his shoulder as he stood up. “Where are the other injured men?” he asked Nathaniel.
He followed his friend across several yards to a pile of stones, where the two soldiers were resting with bandages on their injuries. One had been cut with a sword, while the other had been pierced in the shoulder with an arrow. Using Yula’s power, Alec healed them both quickly.
“Who was killed?” he asked.
“A soldier from the Nineteenth regiment took a sword to the neck,” Nathaniel answered, pointing to a blanket over a body near the river.
“Let’s go look at the lacertii and their boat, and explain to me how this happened,” Alec sa
id to his warrior ingenaire.
“We were not supposed to start a fight like this,” Alec said with a trace of anger in his voice, as they walked away from the others. “This was supposed to be a well coordinated and stealthy ambush. What went wrong?”
“Allisma, Streed and a pair of soldiers were over on this side of the river alone, looking at sites to place battle pits,” Nathaniel explained. “They apparently got careless, and a boat of lacertii came down river and spotted them. The lacertii got careless then and put on shore to attack without considering that there might be more of us around. When we all heard shouting, we came to join the battle and here are the results,” Nathaniel concluded.
They stopped by a small cluster of lacertii corpses, riddled with arrows. Alec looked at them intently, using his health vision to examine their bodies and internal structures. “They’re virtually identical to us,” he said to Nathaniel as he stooped down to look more closely.
“You see them differently than I do,” Nathaniel said with a shudder.
Alec considered the comment and forced himself to remember two years prior when he’d had his own first glimpses of this other race. The skin was gray, and had a texture he’d describe as scaly, although his health sense showed that it was similar to human skin, only thicker. The ears were clearly pointed, the legs were much shorter proportionally compared to the length of human legs, and they only had the four long toes that he had first learned about after Jonso disappeared. The lips were very thin, and as he graphically remembered, the teeth were pointed. And he noted that the blood had a different chemistry than human blood, which would lead to a number of different medical needs, he realized. Would he ever have to minister to a wounded lacerta, he wondered uncomfortably?
A swarm of soldiers were gathered around the beached flatboat, going through the cargo it carried. “What have you found?” Nathaniel asked. “Lots of arrows and spears,” one soldier replied. “Shovels and picks and stout posts,” another answered.
The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold Page 31
