Reborn 10 - Demonic Valor

by D. W. Jackson

  Ash had never been one to watch his words before, but then again he had never been in a spot where he needed to. He had many conflicting views from those around him, but that was to be expected considering that he came from a completely different world. He had given those feelings of his a lot of thought over the past year and he had never come to a concrete decision.

  The more Ash had thought about it, the more he came to understand that morality was in a lot of ways in the eye of the people and person viewing them and when they were viewing them. There was no clear black or white and even calling it a shade of grey was not completely accurate. The question had been posed many times by many great thinkers and Ash knew that he was far from a deep thinker. In the end, all Ash could do was follow his own heart and try not to let the people and world around him change him too much, but he knew that he would have to change some, otherwise neither he nor those around him would be happy. He was still a bit stiff and felt out of place sometimes, but it was getting better with each passing day.

  When Ash walked into the room, he found seventeen of the clan heads waiting on him. He recognized a few faces in the crowd, but most of them were completely unknown to him. Ash took a brief moment to look at each face, not to remember them, but to see their expression. As he expected a few of them looked more than a little displeased to be present. Sighing inside, Ash forced himself to walk forward until he reached his seat which was at a raised chair at the end of a long table with a map of the world etched into it.

  Having never been in the room before, it was the first time that he had seen the large map. As he looked at it, Ash noticed that it wasn’t an old version and even had Emelia’s duchy capital along with all of the small villages that he remembered.

  “As I said before, we keep a close eye on our neighbors, even if we are separated from them. Every three years, if there are any major changes in the land, we have people come in to update the map,” the sage answered his unasked question. “We never know if we were going to need it, but better to have it and not need it and need it and not have it.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” an older demon said gruffly.

  “Why don’t we get this over with?” A demon with long red wings and silk black hair asked. “I don’t feel like babysitting the new Maoh all day while he plays war.”

  “Barborus, if you are getting that crotchety then maybe it is time for you to ask the goddess to give you an eternal slumber,” a female demon with dark black skin and light grey hair said.

  “Tenna, I didn’t know you were still alive,” Barborus replied. “I am surprised you haven’t asked for the goddess’s slumber yourself. Then again, given how nasty you are, even hell would spit you back out.”

  “Enough,” the sage said, his tone even yet carrying a lot of weight within that one word. “We are here today to discuss the coming war. I know many of you have generations of animosity, but right now we must do our best to make sure that as few demons as possible fall during the battle. The only way to do that is for us to think of everything that might happen and come up with an appropriate response for it.”

  “If you want to keep the demons from being killed, then just keep them from the human’s foolishness,” Barborus said.

  “That isn’t possible,” Ash said slightly louder than he planned. Everyone turned their attention to Ash, who they were mostly ignoring before. “This war isn’t just two groups of humans killing each other, but about the rights of those bearing the blood of demons and that of the beast tribe.”

  “I haven’t heard of that before,” Barborus said, the scowl on his face deepening.

  “In a way, he is right,” the sage interjected. “As all of you know, for years we have been searching the human lands for those bearing demon blood and bringing them back here if they wished. That is because the humans treat our brethren worse than trash and they do the same with those belonging to our cousins the beast tribe. We have debated many times whether we should bring them into our land or not, but so far we have never come to an agreement on the issue, but I know all us believe that their treatment is detestable.”

  “It is a shame that humans are so shameful,” another demon Ash had not seem before said.

  “My wife Emelia believes the same,” Ash said, interrupting the group’s discussion. “She knew that I carried demon blood, yet chose me as her partner. We made laws to protect those with nonhuman blood, but the other nobles of the kingdom used this as a reason to go to war and demanded my head as recompense. If not for me, then this war would not have started and I will not leave Emelia with a fate I started alone. If the demons will not stand at my side, then I shall still go alone to fight my enemies.”

  “Don’t say it like that my lord,” Celina said from behind Ash. He didn’t know when his wives had entered the room, but tried his best not to act startled when he heard her voice. “If you go to fight, then we will follow along with you.”

  “Well said young lady,” Tenna said with a smirk to Barborus. “My lord, most of us have been clan heads for longer than anyone has a right to be alive so we tend to overthink things and since we have been separated from the outside world for centuries, we tend to forget the problems of others. Right now we shouldn’t be arguing about whether we should go to war or not, but how we will be fighting it.”

  “Right,” the sage said as he started to place a number of stone circles on the map. Each stone had a different symbol etched into them and it didn’t take long for Ash to understand that the stones were meant to represent different groups or clans of demons. “We have already moved around two hundred demons to stay inside the walled city. They are acting like adventures who have moved there in light of the new laws offering protection to those of the demon race. We have also started to open up a tunnel into the human lands. It was finished not long ago, but it still two day’s march from the city so it won’t be easily discovered and given the limited movement in the outlying areas of the duchy, I doubt it will be at all unless we advertise its location purposefully.”

  “Have any other moves been made?” another demon asked leaning forward in his seat.

  “We have moved around four hundred demons through the tunnel and set up a small camp in the woods, but we feared to take more through. There was just too much chance of being discovered.”

  “That fear would be alleviated if we used the Tao to cast and enchantment aura over the forest. It would keep out any unwanted visitors and then we could move close to two thousand troops over.”

  Slowly more and more ideas were brought up and each time the sage would secretly pass Ash a note. Since only a quarter of the clan heads were currently present no final decisions were made but there was no rush. The plan was for the conference to last three days and once everything was finalized everyone would start moving. That still left them about three weeks before the fighting started, but it would be a tight fit as far as time went. The farthest clans would take nearly a month to arrive. They could use the large eagles to transport a small number of them, but the number of mounts were limited and even if they organized all of them, it would be less than four hundred.

  Ash had asked why the demons didn’t breed more of them. The answer was simple, the birds ate a lot and were hard to train and keep so they were mostly limited to less than ten per clan. The only one that had more than that was the Maoh who kept fifty of them to be used by himself, his wives, and his children. Ash wanted to use his personal mounts, but it was forbidden by their own laws and while Ash could countermand them, there would be few demons who would dare ride on one of the Maoh’s mounts.

  It wasn’t the first time that the laws that had been in place bothered Ash, but he knew that he simply trying to force the issue wouldn’t work and would only end in him wasting valuable time.

  Throughout the meeting, more and more clan heads began to show up and by the end of the day, only seven were missing and they were the ones that belonged to the clans that lived at the far end of the kingdom.
The sage assured Ash that they would arrive by tomorrow morning. He hoped so, otherwise the war conference would have to be lengthened and though it would only be by one or two days, it was time that they didn’t really have to play with.

  As he thought about this, Ash started to think he should have left his training a bit earlier, but the sage assured him that it wouldn’t have really have made much of a difference as they had to have enough time to inform all the clan heads of the coming meeting and that was only done a few days before he left for his own palace.

  After the meeting, Ash ate a large meal with the gathered clan heads and they talked about his previous life and what his plans were for the demon race. When Ash mentioned that he planned to bring the demons back into the outside world, he thought he would receive more than a little dissension, but no one seemed to think it was a bad idea. In fact more than a few thought it was far past time they had joined the rest of the world instead of hiding away from it. Once that was passed, the tension that had been building with him throughout the day seemed to evaporate and Ash enjoyed the rest of the meal talking with the clan heads as if they were old friends.

  10-4

  The few missing clan heads arrived the next morning as promised but Ash was still forced to length the war council by one day due to the large amount of ideas that were being brought up. That alone could have been finished on time but Ash didn’t think that he was expected to assign the commanders to any post that was considered important.

  Having no real knowledge of who would be good for what post Ash could only listen to the suggestions made by the clan heads. Not even the sage was of much help since it was almost impossible to know the name and abilities of each person within such a large number of people.

  Each clan head nominated someone from their own clan for each post and Ash was forced to choose between them. No matter what decision he made there would be a number of people who were not happy about it but since a decision had to be made he did it and hoped it would work out. Once all the positions were appointed the council was over and a large feast was prepared. Out of the forty-two clan heads only nine of them would be participating in the war itself. Most of the others would be remaining within the kingdom to help with logistic and support.

  The night after the meetings were finally finished Ash didn’t sleep well but that was due to the fact that in the morning he and the others would be flying over the mountain to join the few demons who were already camped awaiting the start of battle.

  The next morning before Ash was going to set off he received the news that Emelia had pulled back all her forces to the partially complete fort outside the capital. Ash wasn’t sure if it was a good move or not but the sage and the other demons seemed to applaud it. When they saw Ash’s confused look Tolarea voiced the answer to his unspoken question.

  “When greatly outnumbered it is best to consolidate your forces in one defensible place rather than to string them out. Tough her chances to win the war are extremely slime she has a lot better chance this way to hold out for much longer. In a way you could say she is playing a game of chance with time, but it is still a smart bet on her part.”

  Ash didn’t respond and merely kicked the flanks of his steed making it jump into the air. He had done his best not to think about Emelia over the past weeks. Not because he was bothered by thoughts of her but bothered by the fact that he had left her in the dark about whether he was alive or dead. Emelia was a strong woman but she also had her soft side even if she hid it in front of everyone but him.

  Once he was in the air Ash couldn’t help but keep his eyes on the ground. The Maoh’s palace was not located in the center of the country but instead was located only a couple dozen miles from what had used to be the mountain pass between the demon country and the human kingdom that had once been there.

  The reason for this was simple enough. The humans and demons had to visit often in order to coordinate the many wars and the humans didn’t want the demons within their own lands so they would send people to visit the demon lord. To make this easier the demons had built their palace near the border between the two countries.

  When Ash had read the history of the demons it was not hard to see what the humans really thought of the demons at the time. Yet it was as if the demons didn’t even notice that they were nothing but tools even to the humans they had made friends with. When he had asked the sage about it the look on the sage’s face had soured.

  “You must understand the demons had never had much contact with anyone outside the facility where they were created. When they first came across the humans it was a small group of knights who had fought under the goddess’s name during the annihilation of the mage’s experimental facility. At that time the demons numbered less than a thousand and under the orders of the king they were placed at edge of what would be become their new kingdom. Then it was only a vast sea of trees that were filled with dangerous monsters. As the years passed the number of demons started to increase and the land began to be cleared. Then came a small war and the king called upon the demons for aid. During their first battle the power of the demons were seen and that was the start of the vast war the devastated the continent for nearly a hundred year.”

  When the sage explained it to Ash it seemed reasonable but it was still hard for him to accept. Shaking the thoughts away Ash looked down in time to see a large number of demons at the edge of the mountain range. Ash knew that they were the soldiers that were waiting to be moved across. They were men who were marked to fight and if need be die if needed.

  Soon the sight of the demons disappeared and all that Ash could see was the gray stone and white snow of the mountain as they passed over. This was the second time that Ash had passed over the mountain but it was the first time he had done so awake.

  The mountain was much larger than he had expected but each second that passed the scenery of the mountain changed slightly. It was much more different than flying over a forest which simply looked as if he was flying over a green blanket. It was beautiful but it quickly got old. The mountain on the other hand changed every second.

  It took a little over two hours to fly over the mountain but Ash had been so absorbed in his own thoughts and the surrounding view that the time had passed by quickly. As the scenery changed from gray back to green Ash looked and tried to find the demons who were awaiting him below but die to the trees he couldn’t even see a hint of the ground below. Ash pulled back on his eagle’s reigns letting it know to slow down as he watched the sage. Once the sage started to descend Ash followed suite by leaning forward in his saddle and pulling down on the right reign then the left. As the large bird started to tighten its circles as it lowered toward the ground Ash looked off in the direction of Emelia but even from his height al he could see was the blue sky in the distance.

  Once they neared the tops of the trees the bird stop circling as it looked for an opening in the foliage so that it could land. After a few moments the bird spotted what it was looking for a dived through the tops of the trees landing hard on the ground below. Unlike when it landed in the open land there was no for the bird to slow itself so the landing was rough leaving Ash’s stomach in his throat.

  After dismounting Ash looked around but couldn’t see any sign of the sage or the others. “Can anyone hear me?” Ash yelled loudly.

  “Over here my lord,” Ash heard Celina’s musical voice yell from his left.

  Soon more and more voices began to call out and Ash started moving in the direction of the loudest. It didn’t take long before the companions were reunited. Once they were all back together they sage led them to the east where the large camp of demons were supposed to be waiting.

  As soon as they neared the camp Ash started to see tents hung in-between trees. They were done differently than he had seen other army camps do before and in a way helped mask the presence of the force. If he had been with humans they would have looked for a large cleaning or during the long stay would have cleared some of the land them
selves to make it more accommodating. The demons on the other hand didn’t chop down a single tree and instead used them as support poles for their tents since the root filled ground made it hard to place anything more than a few feet deep into it. Seeing as how for the past countless years the demons had only fought against each other, it was a smart move. It didn’t make sense to hide in open ground when your enemy could fly though as far as Ash knew none of the humans had such an ability.

  Near what Ash figured was the center of the camp they found a large tent with four trees sticking out from the top. They were greeted by two armed guards then quickly let inside. One through the flap of the tent they found an imposing demon with green skin awaiting them.

  “Greetings my lord I am Uthla and the current commander of the forces you saw outside,” the demon said with a slight bow of his bald head.

  After the greetings Ash started to explain the current plans that had been decided during the war council the day before. The commander listened without interrupting though from the look on his face though Ash could tell that there were a few time that he wanted to. When Uthla heard that he would be left as the commander of the force he looked surprised. It was one of the many decisions he had been forced to decide on. Since Uthla had already been on site Ash no reason to have him disposed so he decided to allow him to continue on as the commander.

  “Thank you for your trust my lord,” Uthla said bowing once again.

  “I know none of the people who were suggested for the post so trusting you was just the same as any of the others if I were to tell the truth,” Ash said. “That said if you do well it could guarantee you a great post within the kingdom. It is one of the benefits to serving a new ruler who has no other ties within the kingdom.”