by Randi Darren
Even as that all happened, his own soldiers were rapidly putting together tents, cook pots, bedding, and maintenance areas. One and all, they knew their business and what would be needed. All for their new comrades.
And they all knew Alex was spending coin in such a way as to spare not just the enemy, but themselves. None of them would have to fight.
“Thank you,” Alex murmured, watching the proceedings carefully. There was still quite a high chance of all this going terribly wrong.
All it’d take was for a group to get it into their heads to rush Alex. In case of that scenario, Alex was ready mount his horse behind him in a heartbeat.
“It is rather impressive, Alex,” Rebekah said, seated on Alex’s other side. She was leaning up against him, but she seemed just as prepared to bolt as he was. “I think even our little countess thinks so. I bet she’d be willing to welcome home her conquering master tonight. Wouldn’t you, Aerin?”
“Of course I would. He’s the master,” Aerin said smoothly. She was the last of his concubines, still dressed in Rebekah’s personal uniform. “Though it was… remarkable to watch him talk an entire army into his pocket.”
“He could talk me into his pocket,” Nannie said. “Hopefully I could get him in mine first, though.”
“He could talk me into your pocket,” Eleanor said. “Then his.”
“You two are… idiots,” Carla said, but then she chuckled to herself. “We’re all idiots. And we’re all following the master out of this life.”
Not quite true. Eleanor is still quite free.
Unless Carla knows something I don’t, or something Eleanor is planning.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Rebekah said, looking at the soldiers ahead of them. “To travel for all time with… well… my family. My loves and beloved.
“Where do you think Leah will send us next?”
“Hope it’s somewhere in the future,” Nannie said. “I wanna see some of the stuff Alex talks about.”
“The past might be fun,” Riley said. “Use even more of our knowledge to better our position.”
“What if we end up extremely far in the future?” Carla asked.
“We’ll all be together. It’ll be weird to see Alex as a baby, while being babies ourselves,” Riley said. “I bet you were a cute baby.”
“Of course my baby was a cute baby,” Rebekah said. “Though… will we look like ourselves?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said in response to it all. “I don’t know how to answer any of that. Leah just… said we’d be going from world to world. I should probably firm up some details with her next time I see her. Though if I had to guess… we’d be ourselves.”
“I haven’t been able to get a hold of her in a while,” Rebekah said. “Though I do feel her, so she isn’t gone. It just feels like she’s hiding.”
“She… gave me a hint. A hint about who had Alanna killed,” Alex said, and everyone grew still and silent around him. “She said it wasn’t someone I knew or had met yet, but that I would meet them soon. After that she fled.”
“Bless her,” Nannie grumbled. “Bless her and then some. Feel like I could easily tap into my anger and pulverize a skull. I liked Alanna. A lot like Mary.”
Alex could only nod his head.
“Suppose so. For now… all we can do is hope our plan works,” Alex said, indicating the mass of Gaelis soldiers. “So far, it is. But that’s no guarantee of anything.”
“Nothing in life is,” Carla said. “And speaking of—time for coupling. Come along, Alex, my love.”
“Aren’t you a peach,” Alex muttered, getting up from the table.
“I’ll be your peach,” Nannie grumbled.
Chapter 25
“What was the final tally?” Alex asked, looking across the field to the much-diminished army of Gaelis. It was the day after he’d more or less stolen the duke’s army out from under his nose.
The man had apparently flown into a rage when he realized what’d happened.
“Roughly eighty thousand,” Tael said. “It brings our total count of soldiers up to about two hundred and fifty thousand, including our vassal levies. Reinforcements are of course streaming in to cover our losses.
“I think this is a good opportunity to remind you that the king himself only has a standing army of about two hundred thousand soldiers. If he raises his levies for all vassals, he’ll reach roughly three hundred and fifty thousand.”
In other words, we need to stand our forces down the moment this is over and then never move a single foot toward the capital of our kingdom.
“Right,” Alex muttered. “Master Brush, what do our finances look like? Did I cripple us?”
“Not at all, my lord,” William said from somewhere behind him. “You did cut the treasury down by a third between all the money you spent or set aside for the refugees, loans for your new vassals, and purchasing this new army. Just… everything you’ve done since you left Brit.
“I would recommend avoiding any other… ahem… large outlays of money.”
Alex smirked at that. He could remember being in William’s shoes plenty of times. “In other words, stop pissing it away, right?”
“Ah… yes, sire,” William said after a second. “Or at least, slow down. Our investments with Baron Ulles continue to make significant headway. It would be wise to consider putting more into the baron and letting him grow it with a cut for himself.”
Mmm. Investments. I suppose it is time for that.
I can’t always expect to just… loan-shark people to death.
With a sigh, Alex nodded.
“Consider me rightly chastised, Master Brush. We’ll move in that direction once we finish up this campaign,” he said.
“By the skies above and earth below, how much coin do you have?” Quinn asked.
“My lord has… still… a lot of coin. Even cutting into the treasury as he has, I can honestly say I expect him to be the single wealthiest man in the kingdom, if not most of the kingdoms,” William said.
“Does that mean I get half as your wife?” Quinn asked, turning to grin at Alex.
“As if I’m not already spending a fortune to populate the Wilds with farmers,” Alex muttered, not looking at her.
“That’s… actually, that’s fair,” Quinn said, looking ahead again. “And I was only teasing my grumpy Imperial husband. You may tame me and saddle me up like an Imperial bride, but I’ll always be a Wilds woman. Though I do love you. I ordered my collar and tag, by the way. As well as many bells.”
“Bah,” Nannie growled. “Is this over then? Are we done? Can we just… go home?
“I’m tired of this stupidity. I want to go home. Too much has happened, and I just… I just want to go home.”
Not that I blame her for that sentiment. I feel the same way. I just can’t say anything about it.
It wouldn’t do for the count to be considered a complainer, after all. Not when my soldiers have been losing their lives for this.
“I think we all do, Five,” Rebekah said from Alex’s immediate right.
“My place is at Master’s side,” Riley said from Alex’s immediate left. Her fingers tightened on Alex as she held on to him.
“I think that is where we all believe our place to be, One. But in the same breath, I too wish to go home,” Sylvia said with a sigh.
“What’s that?” Carla asked, pointing to the distance in the east.
“Not sure,” Alex said, following the line of her arm.
“Can’t be any of our people, no one to the east,” Tael said. “We’re too far southeast of the Gaelis capital for it to be reinforcements from there.
“That only leaves… well… the only thing out that way is the kingdom of Hefen.”
“Hefen?” Alex asked. He hadn’t heard the name, and he knew nothing about it.
“Our neighbor to the east. They’re a kingdom in the empire,” Rebekah murmured, her voice tight as she leaned to kiss his cheek. “We’re not friends, thoug
h neither are we enemies. The two royal families never really saw eye to eye.”
Suddenly, Alex was afraid. Afraid and very nervous.
“Tael, I need the fastest three messengers you’ve got. Send them all to King Harold. The message is very simple. Invasion from the east by Hefen,” Alex said. “Ten gold extra to whoever delivers the message first.
“Send two other messengers to Regina. She needs to get the hell out of here. Now. Preferably, if she can, she should fall back to a capital city and hunker down.”
“Is that the mes—”
“Yes, that’s the message—go, now. Make it happen as fast as you can, Tael.” Turning his head, Alex looked at those behind him. “Dave, Drew, get everyone spun up, camp broken, and everything ready to move. Now!”
“Alex, what’s going on?” Nannie asked.
“That’s a damn invasion,” Alex said. “Gaelis sold us all out to another king just like Ridge did to Gaelis.
“One, get everything packed up. Fast as you can.
“Quinn, get your scouts out and—”
“Already gone,” Quinn said, wheeling her horse around at a rapid pace. She was galloping away.
Shaking his head, Alex felt like what had been a victory was now surely going to be a massive defeat.
“That’s just… all cavalry,” Carla said. “That isn’t a whole army, it’s just… horsemen.”
Fuck. She’s right.
“From the older reports,” Valeria said. “Their cavalry was something akin to a hundred thousand. But none of them were called to duty.
“Their entire army with everything called up is somewhere around three hundred and ninety thousand.”
Closing his eyes, Alex let his head tip forward and pressed a hand to his brow.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered under his breath. All he could see was ruin and damnation waiting for them.
Time passed by, and the full army of Brit packed up. Everyone who didn’t have a horse was loaded up into their transport wagons and carted off.
Alex was taking no chances. He had all his slower moving elements fall back to a far more defensible position in the south. The fortifications around and in the area of Twil.
His mounted troops, which accounted for roughly one hundred thousand, weren’t in as desperate a rush.
“They’re not slowing down. Why aren’t they slowing down?” Sylvia asked.
Alex looked up from the mad pile of dispatches he was sending, receiving, and forwarding. Regina had taken flight as soon as she got his message.
His generals were falling back and rapidly building up the fortifications in Twil as their fallback position and supply depot.
There was far too much going on, and Alex could barely keep abreast of it all.
“What?” Alex asked, looking around.
“They’re not slowing down,” Sylvia repeated. “The cavalry. The Hefen soldiers. They’re… speeding up?”
Alex frowned, now watching intently.
Sylvia was right.
They weren’t slowing down, nor even moving at a trot anymore. Every soldier was rapidly moving into a full charge.
“I… don’t…” Alex paused, unsure of what to say.
With a loud crash, an explosion of sound, the Hefen soldiers slammed into the Gaelis troops.
The duke must have realized something was wrong sooner than Alex did, because they’d begun hastily erecting defenses and trying to tighten their ranks.
But it was no use. And it was absolutely pointless.
The Hefen cavalry slowed certainly, but they didn’t stop. Eventually the charge came out the other side and began to wheel around in one large half turn.
What they left behind was a mess of Gaelis bodies. Broken, bloody, and dying.
“I have no idea what’s going on anymore,” Alex said, watching the surprising scene playing out before them.
Slowly, the cavalry turned around and ran right back through the remainder of the Gaelis forces.
What the actual fuck?
“Sire, there’s a single rider heading our way,” Tael said. “From the east.”
Turning his head, Alex immediately spotted the man.
He was riding alone and bore a white flag. It was attached to a simple banner-staff that bore a flag Alex didn’t recognize below the white flag.
Everyone in Alex’s group watched the rider draw ever closer. Until the rider was standing in front of them.
When the rider said something in a language Alex didn’t recognize, Alex had no choice but to shrug his shoulders.
Clearing his throat, the messenger gave Alex a pained smile.
“We have message for you from King. You read,” said the messenger.
Not sure if it’s an insult or not to send a messenger who doesn’t speak the local language.
Then again, do I have anyone who speaks whatever language that was?
Eleanor rode ahead of Alex and took the message from the man, not wanting him to get any closer to her lord, it seemed.
Handing it over to Alex, Eleanor kept her helmet facing the messenger.
Alex thumbed open the seal and found the message was legible.
To the estimable Duchess Regina Tanulf,
I invite you to meet with me to discuss cessation of hostilities and the surrender of your duchy.
In accordance with Imperial oath and tradition, I offer you and your vassals safe passage to this discussion for today only.
His Majesty Glint VI.
“You come?” the messenger asked when Alex lifted his eyes up from the message.
It’s not really addressed to me, but it’s better for me to go than Regina. For her to keep moving away is ideal. Having her stop and turn around just to speak to their king would be… counterproductive.
It’d also put her more at risk.
Looking out to where the army of Gaelis had been, Alex saw little of it remained.
Other than the broken bodies of its soldiers.
In his mind, Alex was already viewing this as a race. A contest of endurance.
How long could Alex and Regina bob and weave before King Harold arrived with his own army?
A king moving into another kingdom’s territory was more or less a declaration of war.
“I will,” Alex said, folding the paper up and handing it off to Riley. Alex smirked at the other man. “Take me to your leader.”
***
He had no idea how they’d done it, but Alex felt like he was walking into a mansion rather than a tent.
It was an ostentatious thing, with more silk decorations than the entire keep of Brit.
I want to rob him. Rob him of everything of worth.
Clicking his tongue, Alex looked down to the ground. It wasn’t grass or dirt, but actual wood.
Someone had taken the time to fasten together a wooden floor.
It all reeked of excess above and beyond.
“You’re not the duchess.”
Turning to the speaker, Alex found that to the right, the room he’d just entered expanded into a much larger area.
A group of men and a young woman were there. Every single man wore a uniform that screamed military or bodyguard.
The young woman was dressed in a black dress that flowed down from her shoulders beautifully.
She had long, pitch-black hair with a featherlike decoration in it, the locks reaching down to her hips behind the chair. Alex knew she was young, but she had a lovely figure and a heart-shaped face that invited people to look.
Her features were pretty and delicate, with a set of large, dark eyes and full lips.
She was a clear and obvious beauty. Based on her position, and that she had no accoutrement that would proclaim her Queen or married, Alex assumed she was the daughter of the man next to her.
And that man looked to be the king himself.
Seated in a large gilded throne was a man in his middle age, if not late middle age.
He had black hair, slicked back with some type of oil
, and brown eyes so dark they looked black.
His skin was as pale as snow, only made worse by the fact that he wore all black clothing.
Upon his brow sat a large, ornate golden crown.
The area he was sitting at was raised up off the impromptu wooden floor on a dais.
There was a clear spot in front of the king for someone to sit and speak. It had a table, several chairs, and a small platter of food as well as jugs of water and wine.
Alex assumed this was where he was meant to be.
“My apologies, Your Highness,” Alex said, walking over to the seat. “My name is Count Alexander Brit, vassal to Duchess Tanulf.”
There was recognition in the king’s eyes at that statement.
Curious. Why would he know me? I’m just a count.
“I’m afraid the duchess left the field long before you were more than a dark spot on the horizon. I remained behind to observe and report back,” Alex said. And it was the absolute truth. “May I seat myself as her representative?”
The king seemed to consider that, then nodded his head. “Of course, Count Inferno. Please, have a seat.”
He does know me. Yet I’ve never met him before. Let alo—
Out of nowhere, like someone had slapped a cauldron over his head and smashed it with a hammer, Alex’s mind flipped back to the day he heard the news that Alanna was dead.
You haven’t met them yet, but you will soon. That was what she said.
It’s you, isn’t it? You.
You were afraid of my involvement for some reason and made a grab for my family.
It’s you.
IT’S YOU!
Trembling slightly, Alex sat down and immediately folded his hands into one another.
“This meeting will be short and simple,” the king said. “I asked the duchess here to surrender to me. Her lands will be mine, as will Gaelis. That is all.
“Will you surrender to me in her stead?”
Contemplating that, Alex wasn’t sure what to say.
He hadn’t expected the king to run Gaelis down as he had.
“If I may ask you a few questions, Your Highness?” Alex asked.
