“I need to prove myself, then?” she said, holding the sword tightly. “What if I injure you? They’ll think me an assassin.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t,” he said with a smile.
She lunged toward him and swung the sword at his chest. He blocked it with the dagger and pushed her away. “Again,” he said.
Frustrated, she lunged toward him again and swung the sword at his face. He blocked it with the dagger and lightly jabbed her abdomen with his free hand before pushing her away from his dagger hand. “Again.”
She lunged toward him a third time and when he blocked her sword with his dagger she used her free hand to punch him in the neck. This caught him by surprise and caused him to drop the dagger. She then kicked him in the stomach so hard that he flew across the room and crashed into some pots and pans that were sitting against the wall.
She rushed over to him and grabbed the back of his head. “Are you hurt?” she said, genuinely afraid she had harmed him.
He looked up at her and smiled. “You won this round,” he said in a belabored voice.
“This round? Are we to fight again?” she asked, relieved he was not injured.
“I surely hope so,” he said, sitting up, moving his face close to hers.
They locked eyes for a few seconds before she moved in to kiss him. They embraced and kissed for what felt like an eternity to Viktor. She finished unbuttoning his undershirt and he did the same with her blouse. They made their way over to the table used to strategize and make battle plans. Viktor shoved all the maps and books onto the floor and laid her down on top of it. He took charge and she let him, and they didn’t emerge from the war room until well into the afternoon.
Five
∞
Alexander and his army from King’s Square marched at a snail’s pace. The wintry storm that should’ve ended weeks ago was still raging and the patience of his top generals was wearing thin. They were halfway to the Hamelesh where his army would combine with regiments that were stationed near there when they first set out. Yet, concern grew that not all of his army would make the trek as desertions were becoming frequent and food was becoming scarce.
“Another horse has died. That makes four today alone,” Dover said. “It seemed a smart idea at the time to bring food with us, but the weight of it and the storm are proving to be too much for the horses.”
The freezing rain was more like ice than rain and it pummeled the helmets of Alexander’s generals and lieutenants. It also cracked branches and weighed the trees down enough to create a frozen jungle for the army to march through. Alexander couldn’t help but doubt the decision he had made to march south during such a terrible cold season. They stood on a ledge overlooking a vast frozen wasteland that awaited them.
“Another deserter, your majesty,” Benvero said, riding up to join the group. He held a rope that was tied around the neck of a boy no older than seventeen. The boy’s hands were tied behind his back and his face was sunken in from starvation and lips blue from frostbite.
Alexander turned to look at the boy. “You refuse to fight for you king?” The boy knelt and kept his head low. Alexander could hear his teeth chattering and could see his body trembling. “Do you know the punishment for desertion? I’m assuming you don’t.”
“I do, your majesty,” the boy said. “I just can’t do it anymore.”
“Can’t do what? Serve your king? Is that what you’re saying?” Alexander asked.
“I can’t keep going in this storm is what I’m saying, your majesty,” the boy replied. “None of us can.”
“You have it wrong. You see back there?” Alexander said, pointing through the forest where his army had made camp for the night. “There are thousands of men that may disagree with you.”
“That’s not agreement, your majesty. That’s fear. They only keep going because of what you’d do to them if they stopped,” the boy replied.
Alexander jumped down from his horse and got close to the boy. The ice tinged off his armor and onto the snowy forest floor. The boy had been stripped of his armor and only wore a soaked leather undershirt and britches. “That would suggest you don’t fear me. Would that be correct?”
“Not anymore, your majesty,” the boy said. “I would’ve rather died escaping than in battle for you. You are a terrible king and an even worse human.”
Alexander looked around at his generals and lieutenants. “Does this boy represent the morale of our army?”
“No, milord,” Benvero said, quickly. “He’s a treasonous deserter who hopes to poison our minds.”
“Dover, what say you?” Alexander asked.
Dover thought long and hard about what he should say. “Food is scarce and we have a long way to travel in a wintry storm that seems to have been administered by the Old Gods. The men are tired, cold, and hungry. I’m certain there is frustration among them.”
Alexander grabbed a sword that was in a sheath tied to his back and struck the boy in the neck. He pulled it out and then drove through the boy’s abdomen. “Bring me the frustrated ones then,” he said, slowly pulling the sword out of the boy’s belly. “Bring me all of them so I can discover how frustrated they really are.”
∞
“How many days then?” Alexander asked, keeping his eyes on a map on a table.
“Twenty, twenty-four at the most,” Benvero replied.
The two of them were alone in Alexander’s tent. He had come to trust Benvero more than he anticipated.
“I expect we’ll crush the boy’s army in a day’s time. We just have to get there,” Alexander said, looking up at his oldest general. “So, twenty days of food and we are expecting to arrive at Fort Asbury in twelve.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Benvero said. “Which means we’ll only have eight days worth of rations for the march back to King’s Square.”
“You’re forgetting the spoils. Surely he’s feeding his army.”
“True, but we can’t be certain how much they’ll leave behind. I received word this morning that he and his men burned thousands of acres of farmland on the northern side of Avanton and Asbury. They’re intending to starve us out.”
“Do you think he’ll burn everything if we defeat them in battle?”
“I’m sure of it, your majesty,” Benvero replied. “There’s something else.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“It’s better that I show you,” Benvero sighed.
∞
Alexander rode with Benvero through the camp toward the edge of a forest. The ice beat against his helmet and shoulder pads and he could see the beginnings of red and blue bruises on the back of his horse. He looked back at the camp and noticed a hundred or so soldiers come out from their tents and watch him enter the forest. He heard them mumble amongst themselves.
“Dover and the others are already there,” Benvero said.
“Where are you taking me?”
“They’re calling it suicide forest now, your majesty,” he replied. “You’ll see why when we get there.”
They rode for a few minutes until they came upon a clearing. The ground was red with blood and Alexander’s heart stopped when he saw it. More than five hundred men were lying on the ground, face down. Underneath each was a circle of red six yards in diameter. Blood-stained swords could be seen protruding from each man’s back. He saw Dover and some of the others turning men over to see if any were alive.
“They chose suicide over desertion, milord,” Benvero said.
Dover looked up and saw Alexander. “These must be the frustrated ones, your majesty,” he called out.
“How could anyone do this? I don’t understand it.” Alexander asked in a hushed tone.
“There’s no limit to what a man will do to himself when pushed to the edge,” Benvero replied.
“Did they think there was honor in this?”
“There’s a passage in the book of Suntzul that mentions it when all hope is lost.”
“A religious text encourages p
eople to kill themselves?” Alexander asked in disgust. “I’ll never understand the hold religion has on a person.”
“Let me accompany you back to camp and I’ll return to supervise the disposal of the bodies,” Benvero said.
“Don’t bother,” Alexander said. “Dover, leave them. Return to camp.”
“They’ll need a proper burial or they’ll be scavenged,” a lieutenant shouted back.
“Leave them. That’s an order,” Alexander replied, turning his horse to leave.
Dover finished looking at a dead man’s face before mounting up. It was almost as if each man had died in peace, something he wasn’t used to seeing on the face of a dead man. Their mouths were closed, and many were smiling, a stark contrast to the many terrified dead faces he had seen over the years. It was unnatural, and he didn’t know what to make of it. “You heard your king,” he said to the lieutenant that shouted back at the king. “Mount up.”
Six
∞
There was a slight break in the ice storm that day. It was a surprise to everyone as it had not stopped raining for three weeks. Kelond and Gideonis took it as a sign to assemble a few scouting parties. They arranged a dozen men into three groups and sent them out in various directions from Fort Asbury with the objective of locating either divisions of the king’s army or the entire army if the divisions had already joined. A previous scouting expedition had revealed that a large portion of the king’s army was stationed near Demiscus, a township to the northeast. It was Kelond’s theory that they were waiting to join Alexander’s troops from King’s Square soon.
Kelond, Gideonis, and another man, Matrio, traveled north on horseback. They took enough food and supplies to last a week. None of them planned on being gone that long, though.
“Looks like it’ll start back up in no time,” Kelond said, observing some dark ominous clouds roll in.
“We still have many miles to go before we camp,” Gideonis replied.
“I’m not complain’, druid. Just makin’ an observation is all,” Kelond snapped back.
“Did I say you were complaining, dwarf?”
“It’s not what ya said outright,” Kelond replied. “It’s what was underneath what ya said.”
“I am not sure what you mean,” Gideonis said, smiling at Matrio who smiled back.
“Ya playin’ me for a fool, so I’m not gonna explain myself,” Kelond grumbled. “Ya know there’s more to what ya say when ya say it.”
The three of them rode on for miles until the sun went down. They set up camp and started a small fire. They ate and shared battle stories, Kelond and Gideonis always needing to tell a better story than the other, until it was late in the night. They fell asleep in a small makeshift tent just before it started raining again.
∞
Kelond had just finished packing his horse when he saw them. “Druid, there, through the trees,” he whispered to Gideonis.
Gideonis saw them, too; three soldiers dress in Royal Guard armor. They were sitting on a log conversing with one another.
“A scouting party?” Matrio asked in a whisper.
“No doubt, lad,” Kelond replied. “They’re here to find us and we’re here to find them.”
“How do we know they’re a scouting party? What if they’re deserters?” Gideonis asked.
“Either way, I say we ambush ‘em,” Kelond said, quietly pulling his axe from the pack on his horse.
“We’re scouts today, dwarf. Not raiders,” Gideonis replied. “Our goal is to gather information; information they may have.”
“He’s right,” Matrio added.
“Who asked ya?” Kelond grumbled at Matrio. “Ya here for training purposes only. Keep ya mouth shut.” Kelond lightly shoved Matrio to ensure his point was received.
“I guess when you are wearing iron armor the rain does not affect you as much,” Gideonis observed, impressed at how the men sat unbothered by the freezing rain.
“What’s the plan, then?” Kelond asked, annoyed they weren’t already attacking the soldiers.
“I will approach them and the two of you will join me if you believe my life to be in danger. Only if my life is in danger, dwarf,” Gideonis said sternly.
“Aye,” Kelond said, holding up his axe.
Gideonis slowly approached the men. His feet crunched in the snow and ice as he inched toward them. Just before he was to announce his presence he saw the three men pull swords from their belts and jam them into the ground. He watched them take off their helmets and chestguards and toss them aside. Each of them then picked their swords back up and held them vertically against their faces. “Prestige and honor,” he heard them say just before each man jammed his own sword into his abdomen. “Wait,” Gideonis shouted, running towards them.
“What’s he doin’,” Kelond said. “Let’s go.”
Kelond and Matrio jumped up from their spots and raced toward Gideonis and the men.
“What have you done?” Gideonis said, looking down at the three dying men. He noticed one of them was still choking on his own blood. He knelt next to the man and held his head up. “Why have you done this?”
“There’s,” the dying man started, “no honor in serving the king.” He choked on every word and died seconds later.
“This wasn’t a scoutin’ party,” Kelond said.
“Keen observation, dwarf,” Gideonis replied, letting the man’s head fall gently to the snow. “Deserters that would rather kill themselves than serve in the king’s army. A division must not be far from here. Is there a town to the north of us?”
“Yes, Capernaum,” Matrio said. “It’s more a city than a town.”
“There must be a division stationed there awaiting the troops from King’s Square,” Gideonis replied.
“Don’t we have to see it with our own eyes?” Kelond said. “Don’t wanna go back to the boy with just our thoughts in our hands.”
“I agree,” Gideonis said. “Matrio, you return to Asbury with news of what we just witnessed. The dwarf and I will continue scouting ahead.”
Matrio nodded and jogged back to his horse.
“This is a tragic sight, but you have to admit,” Kelond said, “this bodes well for the prince. Come on, let’s bury ‘em.”
∞
Kelond and Gideonis rode quietly through the forest up the side of a hill they thought would overlook Capernaum. It was nearing dark and they hadn’t spoken much since the incident in the woods earlier that day. They heard a bell ring in the distance, suggesting they were rather close to the city. “That’s a town center bell,” Kelond said. “They ring it when someone has somethin’ important to say or when there’s an execution.”
“Why would they make a public spectacle of an execution?” Gideonis asked.
“Humans are like that. They love their violence.”
“I could say that about dwarves as well.”
“True,” Kelond replied with a smile.
They jumped off their horses and walked slowly and quietly through the trees and crouched down atop a hill overlooking the southern side of Capernaum. They could see a thousand or so troops milling about and another two thousand lined up just outside the western gates of the city.
“We have confirmation. Some troops are here. I’d say anywhere from three to five thousand. What say you?” Kelond whispered.
“I would say your estimate is good,” Gideonis whispered back.
“Best we get back and report.”
“I want to see what they are doing in the town center.”
One soldier continued ringing the bell so that most of the city’s residents would show up to the town center. They were unaware so many of the Royal Guard were waiting on them when they arrived. A few hundred troops dragged women out of their houses and into the middle of the town center. If their husbands objected, which most did, they were impaled with spears or cut down with swords. Violent and unspeakable things were done to the men, women, and children of the city as Kelond and Gideonis watched
helplessly.
“I’ve never seen anythin’ so evil,” Kelond gasped.
“This is a sign of the times, dwarf. It’s more important than ever that we win this war. Let’s go, I’ve seen enough.”
Seven
∞
Erwin’s chamber was small compared to the war room where he met with Viktor and the others. He didn’t mind, though, as he had a fireplace to keep him warm and books and scrolls to keep him occupied.
He heard the clanging of swords and men laughing outside. It was raining lightly today which allowed for the men to come out from their tents and exercise. In all his years he couldn’t remember a storm like this, where freezing rain poured from the sky so many weeks in a row.
He coughed, and a little blood spewed from his mouth. “Not long now,” he said, wiping his lips with his drooping sleeve.
He unwrapped a tattered scroll he had been given by the professor at Kingsford. His eyes scanned the top lines of each page before stopping on a sheet titled Barriers. He sat back against a cold stone wall adjacent to his cot, scratching his beard while he read the page top to bottom. “A tier one barrier can be summoned to protect up to five people while a tier two barrier can be used to shield more than one hundred,” he read aloud. He sat up, slowly, and looked out the small window above his bed. His eyes darted back and forth as he counted the number of soldiers he could see practicing in the commons area. He turned and continued reading from the scroll. “A tier three barrier, the strongest of all, can be summoned to protect more than a thousand men and was most notably used by Archmage Hendri during the Battle of the Night in 345 E.O.G. A tier three barrier, like all tier three spells, is taxing on the conjurer and may result in injury or death.”
He wrestled out of bed and grabbed a wooden cane. He placed the scroll on a small table and set two small stones on the top and bottom of the page so that he could read it without holding it. He leaned in and read a small section under the Tier One Barriers subtitle. “Dranic is such an ugly language. No wonder we did away with it,” he said. He held out his right hand and recited the lines of the spell, “Dey obstructis envelopum.” He repeated those words for nearly an hour before giving up.
The Warrior Prince (The Tragedy of King Viktor Book 2) Page 3