“Alec! Commander!” a voice called him, and he turned to see which of his mercenaries had called him. A man pointed out movement, and Alec quickly recognized with a shock that the bulk of the missing Conglomerate army was nearby, atop the plateau where his own unit of men were stationed, far out-numbering them, and threatening to outflank the whole Krimshelm army. If they got past Alec’s position, there would be almost no opposition to stop them from walking into the main city gate of Krimshelm the next day.
“All men fall back to me! Fall back here! We form a new line!” Alec shouted out. He began to arrange men behind rocks and mounds that would let them have some temporary protection before being overrun by the unexpected invaders.
“Hold your fire until you can’t miss. Make ever arrow count!” Alec instructed. “I’ll send for reinforcements, but we need to hold them here as long as we can to protect the city.” He saw two men drop their weapons and run, then used his powers to trans-locate to the site of Perry’s command post.
“They’re coming up on the left! Half the Conglomerate army is out there. I’m going back to use my men to try to check them, but you have to get stout men over there to protect the city,” Alec urged, and then was back at his beleaguered position again within a minute. He picked up the abandoned quivers of arrows the runaways had left behind, and began firing at every man he could identify as a Conglomerate army officer, shooting at men with braids on their shoulders, swords at their sides, and formal hats or other emblems of leadership, trying to reduce the control and intelligence of the invading force.
Some of Alec’s small force was beginning to fire arrows as well. They each had well over a dozen shafts left, and if used carefully, could significantly slow the advance of the Conglomerate forces. Alec longed to have a couple of squads of the Goldenfields cavalry he had worked with so long ago; he could picture the joy of war that Imelda’s face would have display if she had been unleashed to ride around among the foot soldiers Alec was facing. Several arrows were falling among Alec’s own men now, a few causing instant death, others only wounding his men.
Alec harvested arrows from the dead, and judiciously healed those he thought could continue to fire, knowing that his energy might not last throughout the long battle that he appeared destined to face. He began to send men back to form a new defensive line, remaining within a rocky jumble that was a safe bastion for him, as he fired off all the arrows that he could. He wanted to hold the invasion back while his men took up their newly designated line, and he wanted to delay, delay, and delay while Perry sent reinforcements. Already Alec felt good about his men’s success; the Conglomerate forces were hardly advancing at all for the moment, and he could see that his men, although reduced by a third, were now in position to inflict more pain.
There were a number of Conglomerate soldiers attempting to re-adjust and move further to the right flank out of the range of Alec’s bow. Shoving all his arrows into a single quiver, Alec ran right, looking for a new safe spot to shoot from. He set up in a location from which he unleashed a withering flanking fire of his own, forcing the soldiers to retreat. And after only a few minutes, he used the last of his arrows.
He decided to wait until some of the Conglomerate forces advanced, then he charged out when they were close, swinging his sword with abandon, recklessly exerting his powers to their fullest, and creating a concentrated tangle of destruction in the center of the battlefield.
Alec, there are men in the castle. We need help, Countess Ailse’s voice suddenly was in his mind, warning him of another attack. Without a moment’s thought, and leaving behind shaken fighters – astonished by his disappearance, Alec trans-located himself from the battlefield to the castle. He was in the private residence hallway, outside the doors to the countess’s room.
Where in the castle are you? He inquired. I am outside your room.
They have me, near the main gate, she told him. Thank you for coming.
Alec trans-located again, to the main gate. The pair of guards there were dead, and he heard the sound of boots in the cobbled yard outside the stables, then a group of a dozen people came into view.
Alec was weary. He felt the impact of his high level of Warrior energy usage compounded by his translocations and selective healing activities. He knew he could fight one more fight, this fight, but then he would be teetering on the brink of completely shutting down.
“Let the Countess go. Release her to me,” Alec ordered.
In response the group of Conglomerate invaders slowed their pace, while the three at the front of the group sprinted towards Alec. Grabbing knives from his bandolier, Alec swiftly felled all three before they were halfway to him. The rest of the group stopped precipitously, and four more advanced slowly, spreading out. Alec drew his own sword, then pulled out two more knives. He moved towards the fighters on his left, singling them out for sword work, then threw the knives at the soldiers behind him on the right, planting the knife blades in their throats. His sword flashed in attack on the men he faced, and they too fell dead.
Alec looked at the four men who still held the countess. “If you release her, I will take you to a prison cell. If you choose to fight, you will die,” he told them bluntly. “Throw down your weapons and step away from her.”
One man did step away, his sword on the ground. As his partners looked at him, Alec threw his last three knives, killing them, and leaving the countess standing alone.
“Go,” Alec told the man. “Go back to the Conglomerate and tell them to never come to Krimshelm again. Tell them I will attack their leaders, and the families of their leaders, if this goes on.” Alec released his grip on his Warrior energy, feeling how tenuous his connection to the energy now was. As his released prisoner ran past him and out the gate, Alec’s shoulders slumped in weariness, and he sheathed his sword.
“Are you okay?” he asked the countess, stooping to pull his knives from the bodies of his victims.
“My water has burst!” she said to him with tears. “The running and jostling, just now, as we were coming around the corner,” she couldn’t finish her sentence, and tears began to stream down her face.
“We’ll get you to your bedroom. Everything will be okay,” he tried to reassure her, though his heart was full of foreboding.
Do not fret, my friend. We will hope for the best, she told him silently as he began to assist her to her room.
They stopped as she endured contractions, and then once more the same thing happened before they reached her bedroom. They had gained a following of supporters and friends along the way, and Alec sent maids to get hot water and towels and other items as Ailse settled into her bed. Alec sat on a stool beside the bed, and began to examine the three critical issues he needed to know for the delivery that was imminent: the baby was coming early, and would need him to apply his healing energy to help its lungs and heart maintain life after delivery; the countess was agitated and disturbed, but in no apparent physical danger; and his energies were nearly inoperable after all the fighting and trans-location activity he had used during the day.
Alec was haunted by memories of Leah’s troubled childbirth, when he had lacked the energy to save her from death. He could only pray, as he did repeatedly, for health for the countess, so that he could focus on the needs of the baby immediately upon its delivery to the world.
“Sir, are you ready to leave now?” a woman tapped him on the shoulder and asked the question.
Startled, Alec turned to see what was happening. “This is the midwife, sir,” a servant explained.
“Oh. Oh good,” Alec replied. “I’ll stay with the countess. I am a healer too,” he added.
Alec took a different seat next to Alise’s head, letting the midwife take the seat for the delivery, and he held the countess’s hand, letting her squeeze it tightly with each of the increasingly common contractions.
Why do you worry? She asked him. Please be honest with me.
The baby is premature, but not dangerously so, he replied.
If the delivery is smooth, we can insure that both of you will be fine.
You are tired. Don’t push yourself too hard; I know you have done great things for my city already today these past few days, she tried to reassure Alec. Just your presence here is a help now.
Alec gave a mental laugh at the fact that she was trying to give him comfort. You are strong in spirit milady to be able to reassure me in your time of stress, he told her.
“Push hard now, this is the time,” the midwife spoke to them, and Ailse began to push with all her might, wailing out her pain and desires as she did. “Here it comes. It’s a boy!” the midwife said.
“Such a poor, wee little thing,” she added as she quickly began to wipe the baby clean.
“Give it to the countess. Let her hold it,” Alec instructed, speaking in a commanding tone of voice that caused the midwife to obey.
The baby was tiny, and having difficulty breathing. As it came to rest in its mother’s arms, Alec placed his hand on it, and reached deep inside himself, pulling healing power through his body and releasing it in a single, massive burst that coursed through and strengthened the infant body, while residual traces of his energy continued into Ailse’s body, diminishing the trauma of giving birth.
The baby would be fine, Alec knew. He had promoted growth and strength in every fiber and organ of its body. He watched as the countess opened her gown and brought it to her breast, letting its tiny mouth begin to suckle as she looked down at it with a gentle smile.
Thank you, Alec, she gently broadcast her mental voice to him. But he did not hear her, as he toppled off the stool and slid to the floor, unconscious and exhausted.
Chapter 6 – After the Krimshelm Battle
Alec awoke in a plush bed, atop a soft mattress. He had been dressed in a night gown by unknown hands. He let his head remain on the pillow and looked up at the soft blue color of the ceiling above his head, then he raised up and looked around the room. Macon sat in a comfortably stuffed armchair, dozing.
“Where are we?” Alec woke the boy with his question.
“We’re in the castle, in the family wing, just a floor below the countess’s own room,” the boy immediately answered.
“I take it we won the battle with the Conglomerate army?” Alec asked.
“Oh yes! As soon as I told the major what you said, he started moving men around to fight the invasion. They trapped them against the canyon, and forced them all to surrender!” Macon said enthusiastically. “We took all their weapons, and put them on their ships and forced them to sail away. And Krimshelm got to keep some of the ships to add to our own fleet.”
“How long have I been asleep?” Alec asked, puzzled that so much could have transpired.
“Five days,” Macon said shortly. “The midwife said it was the birth of the new earl that made you pass out, but the countess said it was all the work you did. She said your body needed to rest, and I should stay with you. She spoke to me in person! But she didn’t say you were going to sleep for five days.”
Alec got up, got cleaned and refreshed, and went to see Major Perry. They had a long talk about the battle and its aftermath. “I’m going to leave now,” Alec told the commander.
“You are going to leave us in good shape; we sincerely appreciate your help,” the major told him.
“Are you appreciative enough to send some of your army to help Princess Esmere?” Alec asked.
“Your precious princess? Yes, we’ll help her, if the countess wants us to. We owe her a great debt for having sent you our way,” Perry answered. “I don’t think anyone here even thinks of you as a foreigner any more, after all you’ve done!”
“I wish it was that easy down south,” Alec said.
“I’m going to take my leave from the countess now,” he said. “If you ever think the city needs my help, tell the countess to contact me. She has ways to reach me quickly,” he said, then shook hands with the commander and parted from the man he had come to respect and think of as a friend.
He was quickly admitted to visit the countess, catching her as she paused between interviews with candidates for her new major domo.
“It is time for you to go?” Ailse asked as he sat down with her. “Are you going to return to the princess who holds your heart?”
“Not right away,” Alec said. “I need to learn more about my past. I’m going to a holy place in my own homeland.”
“Will you be happy then?” she asked. “You deserve to find some happiness, my friend.”
“I won’t find happiness until I,” Alec paused. “I’m not sure when I’ll find complete happiness,” he admitted. “There may be troubling memories of the past; and as a foreigner who is unworthy of Caitlen I have an unhappy present, and I don’t even know what to think about the future.”
In the things we have shared, I have seen one clear thing; your God is a God of hope and promise, Alec. Find your own faith and you will find happiness, she told him.
He rose and bent to kiss her, then held her against him in a long hug. Thank you. I will come again if you ever need me. Tell me if you want me to come.
We will meet again, I know, Ailse replied.
Caitlen, I’m going to the Dominion now to learn the rest of my life story. I’ll come back to you, I promise. I love you Caitlen, Alec sent a last message to the girl he loved. He smiled a sad smile to the countess, and disappeared from Krimshelm.
Chapter 7 – Dreams of the Life Before
The horses were struggling up the mountain passes, and Alec set the example of dismounting to ease the load his horse had to bear. They were following a barely remembered path, the same path Alec had taken decades before when he rode in Richard’s carnival. It had grown up into wilderness, and Alec’s procession travelled slowly as the bushes and weeds and even small trees were cut to allow the caravan of thirty horses to progress towards the east. It was their fourth day in the mountains, and they had not reached the ruins of Riverside, the site of the ancient bridge that still spanned the upper reaches of the Giffey River.
Alec shook his head one more time as he sweated his way up the mountain path. There was a strange irony in the fact that he was the leader of the Dominion, traveling through the wilderness, to meet the lacertii, in order to open negotiations to bring about peace between the lacertii and Michian. He was just past the first anniversary of his marriage to Jeswyne, and this peace was what she had asked for as an anniversary present. And Alec had immediately agreed, even though it meant he had to temporarily leave behind his own pet project in the Dominion, re-establishing a strong Ingenairii Hill, his effort to organize the ingenairii in their traditional location and culture.
He felt the pain of leaving behind Jeswyne and their newborn daughter, Valera. He felt no great shame in trans-locating himself back to the palace in Michian many nights, but always made sure he arrived back with his entourage early in the following morning so that he could travel with them.
Although he loved his family and enjoyed warm and cordial relations with the palace leaders he knew in Michian, Alec did not relish time in his wife’s realm. He felt a certain guilt over his early establishment of such poor relations with the nation his wife ruled; he had clinched the ill will of much of the Michian leadership when he had heard a rumor that there would be another demon attack on his family, and he had personally launched a one man assault on the headquarters and training center of the sorcerers and sorceresses, killing many of them, and destroying their building, records, artifacts, and traditions.
That in turn had slowed even more the use of demons as a part of the warfare used by the Michian army in its on-going war with the lacertii. And without the sorcerers and sorceresses, and the demons they called, the soldiers of Michian were subject to increasing slaughter and defeat as they were ambushed in the mountains that were controlled by the lacertii.
As he led the horse uphill to finally reach the relatively level stretch of the trail at the top of the ridge they were crossing, Alec felt a nagging sen
se of déjà vu and unreality. This all seemed as though he was reliving some experience, or he was dreaming of reliving some experience that was long ago. Whether it was a recollection of his first trip with Richard’s carnival, or his later trip to save the ingenairii, or some muddled mix up in his brain, this moment seemed to be one that he knew had already happened. The confusion buzzed gently in his head, throughout the afternoon’s walk, and the odd feeling only dissipated as he fell asleep that night.
Two days later they reached the ruins of Riverside near sunset, now a softened landscape, where the straight lines of former human habitation were barely visible. A few feet of random walls rose occasionally from mounds of earth to show that buildings had once lined the path they followed, but when they rounded the corner of a copse of mature trees, the ancient bridge across the Giffey still stood rock solid, undiminished by age, and the road that led eastward from it, rising into the heart of the Pale Mountains on its way to the lands of the lacertii, showed itself still impervious to decay, built by ancient techniques that resisted the passage of time.
Alec refused to stop in Riverside, but urged his delegation across the river, and then set up camp for the night. He thought of his last journey to this site, with Delle and Berlisle and Brandeis, and most of all he remembered Armilla, his bodyguard, for whom he had been such a difficult subject to protect. That had been the journey to the capital of the lacertii kingdom, Chanradala. He had counted on his personal relationship with Rosebay back then to make conversation possible between the Dominion and the lacertii, even in the immediate aftermath of a bloody war.
Now, decades later, he could only hope that the young boy-king at that time, Frinungeard, was still on the throne, to make his introduction to the court easier. A week later, within Dorimibiladum, the royal palace, Alec met the elderly lacertii king again, and they remembered together the details of the king’s vivid memory of his aunt Rosebay and Alec performing a friendship ritual that had startled the court at the time. Alec and Rosebay had bit and kissed each other, and in the name of pursuing a peace between the lacertii and Michian, Alec and the king carried out the same ceremony.
Ajacii and Demons: The Ingenairii Series Page 7
