“I would like for your leader to come to me,” Rosebay called back. “No harm will befall him while he bargains in good faith. We can discuss the opportunity to return to Chanradala and bring an end to this senseless war,” she said loudly for good measure.
“Your proposal would subject us to charges of treason. We will not have any such discussions,” came the response. “Come to us peacefully and we will treat you respectfully. Otherwise, you will suffer the consequences.”
Rosebay waited a moment. “My only offer is to discuss with your leaders a return to home for purposes of peace and protection of our homeland. I will wait here until you agree.”
“You leave me no choice,” her adversary replied. He turned to his men for a moment, and issued a brief order. Within seconds a flight of arrows left the cluster of infantry and arced towards Rosebay.
As the arrows flew, a single arrow appeared from nowhere to strike the breast of the officer who had ordered the assault, and he toppled dead. A moment later, Alecpeared as if by magic to stand in front of Rosebay and deflect the arrows aimed her way, using his shield and sword to leave her unmarked, and then he disappeared from view again.
The lacertii goggled in disbelief at the inexplicable sight. “Let’s move a few yards,” Alec said quietly to Shaiss, “so they don’t try to draw a bead on our location, now that they’ve seen where I appeared and disappeared from,” and the small group of Shaiss, Alec, Yula, and Armilla moved several yards left of Rosebay.
Another lacerta stepped forward. “We cannot speak to you on the terms you ask. I say again, you should come with us for a discussion. Are you working with the humans to have us killed?” He asked with a genuine, plaintive note in his voice.
“And I say again, we will discuss matters here,” Rosebay replied. “Send someone senior enough to speak and commit your force to following the right course for all of us. You don’t want to stay forever stuck in this war far from home, watching your fellows die, waiting for your turn to die, starving and living in poor conditions, do you? Let us all return home, turn our backs on this land, and fight the good war to protect our families and neighbors. I can work with the humans to end this war and give us all better lives,” she added in an oblique acknowledgement of Alec’s appearance.
The lacerta stood in his place, apparently uncertain about what he should do next. After a minute without comment, he turned to the troops and gave an order. Two of them picked up the body of the fallen officer, and then the group retreated back to their column, which had watched and heard the whole event, just as Alec had hoped.
More time passed, and Rosebay remained a solitary figure, waiting for the column to send forth its next effort. This time, four squads left the lacertii force and spread out wide. The outermost groups swung rapidly left and right, then approached at right angles, while the front two groups divided less dramatically, and approached Rosebay.
“You have attacked our officers,” a new leader said sternly from a distance of forty yards. “You have also sought to spread dissension and treason among us, and you have collaborated with the enemy. For these alleged crimes you must be judged,” the new officer said sternly. “Walk towards me so that we may escort you back to our force for a fair trial to take place.”
“I have a simple request,” Rosebay answered immediately. “I wish for your good soldiers to join me in returning to our homeland, so that we may put an end to this unfortunate war they are trapped in. I would like for your leaders to come meet with me to discuss the terms of taking this force towards Chanradala. Why have you failed to do this simple thing?”
The officer raised his arm high above his head for a long moment, then dropped it abruptly.
All four groups of lacerta soldiers began charging towards Rosebay, their swords drawn, more than two dozen converging towards the target in the center.
Three things happened simultaneously: an arrow appeared from nowhere, again, and struck dead the leader of the attack, again; Rosebay stepped sideways and disappeared;and, several arrows suddenly shot forth, one by one, from behind a large stone, striking and falling among the group of lacerta that were charging from Rosebay’s left. Two of the six there fell, and the remaining four altered course to spread out and charge towards the boulder.
As they reached the stone, a last arrow struck down one of the armed attackers, and then Imelda jumped out of hiding and stood on top of the craggy rock, wielding her sword to protect herself from the attackers.
“No!” a voice cried from an invisible throat, and suddenly a blur resulted in Alec arriving at the small, intense battle as a lacerta sword pierced Imelda’s abdomen, by sheer luck finding the breach that was an opening between the overlapping sections of her leather armor and penetrating deeply within her.
All eyes turned to the tableau, as Alec struck three times quickly, dispatching the remaining lacertii, and then caught Imelda as she tumbled to the ground.
Alec laid her out on a flat stretch of ground, and began to examine her.
Nathaniel, meanwhile, began letting a shower of arrows fly rapidly towards all the targets he saw still moving forward. Several more lacertii fell to the ground, while others stopped in their tracks, and some started running back towards their column.
As that occurred, Alec intensely focused his health vision on Imelda. Her shallow breathing was noisy, and bubbles of blood were forming at the corner of her mouth.
“No, Imelda, no, no,” Alec moaned softly as he tried to mentally catalog all the damage to organs that the single unfortunate sword stroke had caused.
Imelda opened her eyes at the sound of Alec’s voice. “I had to stay to protect you; I couldn’t live with the thought that I was leaving you behind to die at the hands of the lacertii,” she labored to say.
“Yula! Yula! Come to me now, quickly,” Alec bellowed loudly.
“Already calling in the next pretty girl to kiss and cuddle?” Imelda said with an attempt at irony.
Yula suddenly emerged into view and ran towards Alec. As she did, a single lacerta sent an arrow flying towards her. The head of the barbed shaft plunged into the back of her thigh. Yula let out a scream of pain and fell face first to the ground, while Nathaniel let another arrow fly to kill Yula’s attacker.
Alec heard Yula scream, and turned to see her lying on the ground in pain. “Oh Lord,” he said quietly.
He looked back at Imelda. She was dying. He did not know if he could heal her without Yula’s help, and he did not know if he could leave her long enough to go heal Yula and bring her back to where Imelda lay.
He turned again to look at Yula. Her injury was not life-threatening. As he looked, Alec saw Armilla emerge from Shaiss’s invisible space of bent light, running towards him, at a rate that seemed slow compahis own warrior ability. She had a comparatively long journey to make from one side of the stony battlefield to the other. Deciding that the loyal bodyguard would not arrive in time to help, Alec used his warrior ingenaire powers to run to where Yula lay and picked her up, causing her to scream from the pain of the arrowhead grating against her femur. He carried her and laid her beside Imelda, then looked over his shoulder to see if any new threats were approaching.
The surviving lacertii who had come to attack Rosebay, only ten of them still alive, were laying their weapons at her feet in submission. Alec took that as a hopeful sign, and turned back to the two injured women who had come to the battlefield in his service.
Alec touched Yula’s leg to lessen the pain she felt, and he saw her eyes widen at the sudden relief. “Yula, thank you for coming when I called,” he said. “It was very brave of you.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Alec,” she snapped, and grimaced as a muscle contraction in her leg brought new pain. Alec soothed her again.
“Can you give me your powers right now to help heal Imelda?” he asked through gritted teeth. “I’ll be able to repair your leg afterwards, but Imelda needs our help right now.”
“It’s the pain, Alec; I don’
t know if I can concentrate enough to exercise my powers,” Yula replied.
Imelda gave a groan, and a gush of blood emerged from her mouth. Her head rolled to the side and she passed out. Alec realized that she was just moments from death, and laying both hands on her torso, he recklessly released his warrior powers, not knowing if he could access them again, and plunged into the effort to try to keep her alive and repair the great harm she had suffered.
He sent a thread of his energy throughout her body to keep the vessels in the extremities functioning, and he split off another thread to go to her heart to supplement the regular beat that had begun to falter. Another stream of energy went to the elusive spirit and clung to it as it began to prepare to leave its earthly vessel. Alec felt his energy sink into Imelda’s soul, and the process of incorporation and revelation began to occur as he tried to tie her to him on earth as he engaged in the complex duet of body and souls. The remainder of his energy was directed to the lungs, trying to heal each damaged area, stopping the bleeding and restoring the power to exchange good air for bad in the bloodstream.
Slowly he began to sense progress, as the healing of one section of the lung was completed, and he moved to the next tiny area of the complex organ to extend his success. Again he began to heal her, focusing on the lung, trying to ignore the intermixing of thoughts taking place between their souls. Yet despite all that was happening, the ineffable spirit of Imelda continued to stretch away from him, not drawing further distant, but not coming back to him either.
He withdrew some of his healing energy from the other portions of the body to focus more on the lungs, but he felt the girl’s spirit suffer more stress as the extremities of her body began to shut down. Alec reduced his focus on the lung and reinstated the healing stream that suffused the body, gratified to see Imelda stabilize, but he realized he didn’t have enough energy to do all that was needed. While trying to maintain all the other body functions of the cavalry rider, he couldn’t manage to heal the lung fast enough to keep adequate oxygen flowing through her blood. Alec summoned every ounce of power he could find, and distantly sensed that his own body was slumping to the ground as he pulled reserves from himself into Imelda.
Her lung gave a jump of vigor as a burst of healing occurred, but then Alec was drained, and could do little more for her than before. “Imelda, I don’t want to lose you,” he thought. “I rely on your strength and courage and spirit.”
And then a stream of tremendous vitality coursed through him. Alec felt great new energy spreading in every direction; it was power with a different feeling from his own. He pulled the energy into himself, trying to gain more and more of it to carry out his tasks, as he focused it on the lung to close and heal the gash, then pulled his focus back along the track the damaging metal of the lacerta sword had left amidst the flesh of his patient, reconnecting the severed bowel and cleaning the filth and infection left behind, then healing the liver, and next the muscle.
Inexplicably, the surge of energy ended. Alec realized that not only was the miraculous energy gone, but he was now drained to the point of danger to himself. He hadn’t healed the flesh where the sword had entered Imelda’s body, and she would be left with a scar, but he had done all that he felt able to accomplish for her physically; it was certainly enough to allow her to live. He rallied himself to focus the small trickle of energy he had left on her spirit, gently holding onto it, waiting for the soul of this indomitable girl to regain her connection to her body. He somehow adjusted his own body’s energy to retain the connection between the two of them, and then passed out, even as his power continued to weave his soul to Imelda’s.
Yula, had lain next to Alec and Imelda. Alec had taken away the worst of the pain in her leg, but the arrow continued to throb in her thigh. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. She saw Alec slump down to the ground, falling partially on the injured girl he wanted to save, the cavalry rider he had bantered with and planned with. Yula realized how much Alec wanted to save the girl, and how desperate he was for her ingenaire powers.
Concentrating all her focus on her ingenaire powers, Yula reached over to Alec, her hand landing on his leg. She found her source of energy and tapped into it, letting a stream of power pass through her and into Alec. The connection lasted for just a moment and then was lost, her concentration faltering as a muscle spasm convulsed her leg in pain. Determined to help Alec, Yula restored the connection with her powers and transferred her energy to Alec. He greedily sucked the current from her, and she felt it alter as it left her body and came under his influence. Yula felt the need Alec had, and she felt the energy moving through her faster than she expected, as it was forcibly conjured away from her by Alec’s demand for it. She sensed something of the intimate connection that was growing between Alec and Imelda like a vine growing between two strong trees, binding the two together. Yula felt her abilities being surpassed, and she closed her eyes so that she could more exclusively focus on the healer’s claim upon her energy, trying to keep up with his consumption. The effort morphed into a struggle, then became a tenuous fall towards failure as Yula felt herself being pulled beyond any use of ingenaire abilities she had ever managed on her own. Like a tree limb lashing back after being pushed aside, Yula was whipped by the sudden release of her energy as her portal slammed closed, and gave a groan as she passed out from the trauma, leaving Alec to rely again solely on his own power.
Armilla had arrived in time to see Yula place her hand on Alec, but the rest of the dynamic struggle occurring as ingenaire energies flowed through the three bodies was lost to her eyes. She scanned the terrain around them to make sure no new threats were nearby, then looked back down to see the two ingenairii go limp as they used themselves up in their efforts to save Imelda.
“Shaiss! Shaiss, come over here right now,” she screamed commandingly.
“I’m here, Armilla,” the light ingenaire said calmly as he stepped into her view, just two steps away. He had approached undetected behind his circle of reflected light but appeared to Armilla as she and the unconscious trio became enveloped within the protective circle.
“They’re all passed out,” she said, stooping to check the conditions of the three. “But they’re alive,” she added. “Can you do anything?”
“I can keep them out of sight. I can make a bright flash of light. I can concentrate light so intensely it’s like fire. I can do lots of things with light, but I don’t think I can do anything for them right now, besides let them sleep,” he responded with asperity.
“Keep them well hidden, because here comes more trouble,” Armilla replied, watching two more large squads detach from the main column of lacertii and come towards them.
Rosebay had seen the same thing, and arranged her small new band of lacertii supporters in a semi-circle on her left, leaving the unseen Nathaniel to provide defense on her right.
“Stop where you are,” she commanded the new arrivals. “Come no closer without permission. Tell me your mission.”
The two groups of hostile soldiers continued to move closer. “Send a warning arrow before them,” Rosebay told her new supporters. One lacerta let loose an arrow, that caused the menacing new arrivals to part around it as they continued to approach.
“Everyone take aim,” Rosebay ordered. “If you come any closer, we will defend ourselves,” she shouted loudly.
The attackers began to notch their own arrows. “Fire now,” Rosebay ordered preemptively, and a swarm of arrows flew into the two groups – a small cloud coming from Rosebay’s new lacertii supporters, and a rapid series of well-aimed missiles coming from Nathaniel’s unseen bow. A chorus of cries from wounded soldiers rose just before the survivors let loose their own shafts, harming two of Rosebay’s soldiers.
As a new volley of arrows was fired into the advancing lacertii, the exchange turned rapidly in Rosebay’s favor, and the newest survivors conceded and joined her growing forces. Meanwhile Armilla stood guard over her invisible unconscious tabl
eau, ready to take action to protect her ruler.e tow>
Nathaniel imagined the frustration that must be exploding inside the lacertii leadership, and anticipated that a greater force, one capable of overwhelming Rosebay’s small band would soon be sent to annihilate her. If Alec had remained in action, Nathaniel might have expected them to withstand such a charge. But with no sign of any action coming from Alec, Nathaniel decided to take action first.
“Let’s move down closer to the column and let me start shooting at the officers’ cluster on the right,” he commanded Alder. “If we hurry, we can strike them down before they send a hundred at once against us.”
The light ingenaire began to obediently descend the slope towards the army, until Nathaniel touched his shoulder. “I should be able to hit them from here,” the warrior ingenaire said confidently, and then he began sending a series of arrows arcing towards a group of several leaders standing around their standard.
Nathaniel’s attack caught them off-guard, and a half dozen were dead or wounded before they realized what was happening. Arrows began to fly back up the hillside towards the spot where the unseen archer was, but the wooden shafts could not fly far enough, and bounced off the rocks in front of Alder, Nathaniel, and their third partner, Kinsey.
“Let’s go back up the hill now,” Nathaniel suggested. Alder, whose circle of light-bending invisibility marked the zone the group was to stay within, began climbing as Nathaniel suggested, his companions staying in his immediate proximity, hidden from view of their former prey. They soon regained their earlier location, near Rosebay and her new supporters.
Opposite the small lacertii band now supporting Rosebay, Armilla was at a loss about what to do next. She thought Nathaniel’s surprising decision to go on the offensive had been brilliant. She didn’t have any way to complement it however, with two unconscious ingenairii and the unconscious cavalry officer in a heap at her feet, and the only standing partner she had was a light ingenaire.
The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold Page 34
