“You’re lucky you survived, Rashrew,” Imelda told him in a tone of plain warning. She looked around at the slowly moving group. The sun was no longer shining down on the floor of the canyon as it moved towards the west.
“Everyone stop,” she ordered loudly. “Water your horses. Wounded come to me,” she added. “Rashrew, post guards around us. Let’s take time to get ready for the ride back to the village.”
Imelda looked at the nine riders who were hurt badly enough to admit it by coming to her. She knew she didn’t have enough healing ability to treat them all, so she focused on the four worst injuries, two broken bones, a pierced shoulder, and a hand that had lost two fingers. The injuries healed, or at least the pain diminished, she re-mounted her horse, and the cavalry group started moving south again towards the main canyon.
At the mouth of their gorge, Carter waited with a dozen and a half more riders. They gaped at the disheveled state of the returning warriors, and listened to the stories of the battle as they rendezvoused.
“Before we go, Rashrew, I think we need to leave someone here to watch the gorge. If that army comes out, we need to know,” Imelda suggested.
Imelda looked up and around at the wider canyon they had returned to. The eastern wall, exposed to the sunlight of the setting sun, glowed red, while the western wall was dark with shade. The sentry was posted, ready to watch for any movement that might come from the military force still in the gorge to the west.
“We’ll send a replacement out at dawn to replace you,” Rashrew assured the man who was selected to remain behind. “Don’t do anything stupid; just come riding to warn us if there’s any sign of that army heading this way.”
With that the sentry nodded, and the body of forces started riding north towards the village they had adopted as their base of operations.
“They speak differently than us, they fight like a trained army, and did you see that animal they had that disappeared?” Imelda asked Rashrew as they rode along. “What was that animal?”
“I didn’t see it,” Rashrew responded.
“Did anyone see a strange animal during the battle, an ugly one that disappeared?” Imelda called out loudly, addressing the group at large, her voice faintly echoing off the canyon wall.
There was a silent lack of response for several seconds. “I saw it,” two voices answered. “I saw it too,” another voice added.
“Does anyone know anything about it?” she followed up.
“I might,” one rider shouted from far behind, and rode up to join the two leaders. “I come from South Harbor,” he said by way of explanation, as Rashrew nodded confirmation. “We see the traders from the southlands that make it through the sea barrier. They talk to folks down at the harbor, and they say they have an animal in the southlands empire that can jump through space. A man can sit on the animal and move from one city to another. The animals have to know the places they’re jumping from and to – they can’t go to a place they’ve never been before.
“There aren’t a lot of those animals around. The royalty and the army and the richest businesses have them all. The sailors say that most people go their whole lives without ever riding on one,” the soldier finished his narrative.
“So that army is from the southlands? How would they get out here in the middle of nowhere?” Imelda asked both the sailor and Rashrew.
“Why would they be here?” Rashrew added.
“Could they use that animal to bring more soldiers in?” Imelda wondered out loud.
“They could. They could bring new soldiers ever few minutes I suppose,” he conjectured.
Rashrew’s mind was turning. “We can’t let the animal give them this back door to our country!” Rashrew said with agitation. “How do we stop them?”
Imelda looked up at the mountains they were riding through. “Could you put some archers up on the top of the ridges looking down on the southlanders, and then kill the animal when it shows up?”
Rashrew craned his neck in imitation of Imelda, looking at the cliffs. He had a doubtful look on his face.
“Is there anyone here who knows how to climb these cliffs?” Rashrew called out to the group.
“My cousin and I used to climb cliffs,” another voice answered from behind them.
“Come up here,” Rashrew ordered.
A woman urged her horse up to the front. “Why did you climb cliffs?” Rashrew asked her.
“We did it for fun. It was a challenge,” the woman said with a slight grin.
“Could you climb these cliffs?” Imelda asked, thinking that it didn’t sound fun at all.
Her neck also swiveled to examine the red stone walls that loomed over them. “With enough rope, yes. There look to be game trails up there already, so it shouldn’t be impossible.”
“Could you take four or five others with you?” Rashrew clarified.
“Would they listen to me? If they listen and do what I tell them to, then yes I could. What do you have in mind?” the woman wanted to know, her eyebrows cocked.
Imelda looked at the thick bodied woman. She looked strong, and her face was filled with confidence. “What’s your name?” Imelda asked.
“Marina. Sergeant Marina of the Bondell Guards. Pember and Alec of Goldenfields recruited me as one of the very first members of the Guard, and I’ve been fighting ever since,” the woman said proudly.
“You knew Alec and Pember?” Imelda asked, thrilled by the unexpected mention of her colleagues.
“I did. They taught me to use a sword. I take it you knew them too?” Marina replied with a smile.
“I did. I do,” Imelda corrected herself. “Pember is my second in command, and Alec is,” she hesitated, wondering how to describe Alec.
“Alec is in charge of all the Dominion!” Rashrew excitedly inserted.
Marina looked at the two leaders with widened eyes. “Alec? How can that be?”
“I don’t really know myself,” Imelda answered. “He apparently did great things to beat the criminals in Oyster Bay, and then went to Stronghold and won there too.” She thought about Alec, remembering his battle atop the hill, besieged by lacertii as he fought to protect his small collection of friends.
“We want you to lead a group up the ridge to kill the transport animal the invaders are using,” Rashrew abruptly redirected the conversation, disrupting Imelda’s reminiscence.
“You just want to kill a transport animal?” Marina asked in bewilderment.
“These warriors we fought seem to have come from the southlands. We’ve never seen them in the Dominion before,” Imelda explained. “They have transport animals that are magic. We think these animals can transport from their homeland back here instantly, carrying new soldiers on their back every trip.”
“If we can kill that animal, or animals if there are more than one, then there won’t be more reinforcement soldiers we’ll have to fight. We aren’t going to win if our enemy has an unending stream of reinforcements and supplies coming out of thin air,” Rashrew followed up.
“How close can we get to the animals to shoot them, and how will we get away after we do?” Marina asked, turning the project over in her mind.
They were difficult questions to answer. Imelda considered the unfairness of leaving Marina to carry those decisions on her shoulders. “I’ll accompany you and we’ll make those decisions after we know more about the situation,” she impetuously decided.
Marina looked at her gratefully, while Rashrew looked at her incredulously. “You can’t go! The troops need your leadership,” he argued.
“If you’re going to go, I’m going too,” he said after just another breath. “I’m not going to let you do this alone.”
“I won’t be alone; I’ll be with several troopers. And won’t the soldiers need you to stay and provide leadership?” Imelda asked both mockingly and genuinely.
The troop was arriving on the outskirts of the village they had left the previous morning. The settlement looked much more precarious to
Imelda now than it had when she left, as she considered the force that was sitting in the canyon a few miles away.
“We need to evacuate these people from here, and tell out troops to be ready to pull back until we can get reinforcements,” Imelda told Rashrew.
If you and I are going to go shoot the transporter animals, who do you think will be able to lead the village evacuation and the removal of the troops?” Rashrew asked.
Imelda looked at the faces that were visible in the dim light of the sunset and the torches that were being lit. “Carter,” she called. “Carter, report over here.”
The cavalry rider’s horse sauntered over, and she looked at the two commanders. “Reporting for duty,” she laconically drawled.
“Carter,” Rashrew spoke, “we are going to split our forces. Imelda and I will be in a small group on a short mission away from the village. If, while we are gone, the enemy starts to advance towards this village, you will be charged with evacuating the village and pulling our troops back to a defensible location.”
Carter digested her orders. “You think it may come to that?” she asked after several seconds of consideration.
“It may,” Rashrew confirmed. “I’m going to send two riders back towards South Harbor tonight to let the commander there know what we’ve found and make preparations to send reinforcements.
Imelda was sitting near Rashrew, distracted as she considered who to take on this reckless expedition. A sudden flash of inspiration came over her. “Shaiss! Shaiss!” she called loudly. A movement in the back of the group resulted, and seconds later the light ingenaire and cavalry rider was next to her.
“Yes, Imelda?” he replied, curious about what he might do.
Imelda had seen him do things that turned light into a weapon, in a way she’d never imagined before. When a small band of riders had intervened in a battle between lacertii forces, Shaiss and another light ingenairii had honed light into energy weapons that burned and killed. They’d also managed to bend light to make themselves invisible to observers. He was the weapon they needed on this excursion.
“I’d like for you to go with us on this cliff-climbing expedition,” she told him.
“Alright. What’s the mission?” Shaiss replied.
Imelda explained the theory about the animals that could provide transport services.
“I’ve never heard of any such thing,” Shaiss said with astonishment. “But if that’s true, it makes sense to kill the animals as soon as possible. I’ll help,” he confirmed.
Imelda bit her tongue. She had to remind herself that the ingenairii hadn’t ever been given military training, and saw the world differently from the rest of her force. She hadn’t given him a choice on whether to participate or not, she was giving him an order, so of course he was going to help!
Rashrew had selected two archers to round out the group. “Let’s all get a couple of hours sleep, and then we’ll leave before dawn,” he suggested. With that they set a watch schedule for the village, then settled in for a very short night.
Imelda felt that she had just shut her eyes when Marina shook her shoulder to awaken her. Imelda sat up immediately, walked over to Shaiss to nudge him with her toe, then began saddling her horse. Minutes later Shaiss also started to strap his bedroll on his horse, and the group mounted to leave the village. In addition to the six who would climb the cliffs, Rashrew had prudently brought two others to watch their horses while they were atop the ridges, so eight horses clopped loudly out of the village and into the dark night, passing the watch guards and setting off to kill the strange beasts that were bringing more enemies to their land.
Chapter 10 – Setting the Ambush
Imelda felt a deep sense of self-satisfaction as she clasped her hands around the fingers of the other members of her group while they rested in a crevasse atop a mountain ridge. Climbing the cliffs with Marina’s system of ropes and pegs had worked, though it had been arduous and time-consuming. They’d reached the top of the ridgeline and clambered along until they judged it was about the right location to move towards the invaders’ camp. For the second time Imelda was healing the cuts and nicks on the fingers of her compatriots, so they’d have the manual dexterity needed to accurately shoot their arrows.
“There they are!” Shaiss called from thirty yards ahead of Imelda and the archers. He was standing at the edge of a stony ledge, crouched down and pointing. Rashrew hurried over and crouched down next to him.
“Mother of God!” Rashrew swore, and Imelda steeled herself for an unpleasant sight. The rest of the group moved over as well to peer down into the canyon.
“Holy Mother of God!” Imelda re-emphasized Rashrew’s expres-sion of dismay. Three hundred feet below them the floor of the canyon swarmed with hundreds of soldiers. The invasion force had multiplied throughout the night.
“Over there,” Rashrew hissed as he pointed back towards the southwest end of the canyon. A large empty area was roped off, and one of the ugly transportation animals was standing with an attendant. As they watched, the animal disappeared, while twenty feet away another animal appeared suddenly, with three men sitting astride its back. They passengers rapidly dismounted, and were escorted outside the arrival area.
“Down there,” one of the archers directed everyone’s attention. “There’s a game trail running along the canyon wall. If we can find a place to reach it, we can get down within easy range of those animals.” Another one of the animals arrived with several sacks of supplies that were unloaded.
All eyes followed the line of the trail as it rose and dropped and disappeared behind outcroppings. “Over there. There’s another trail that descends to meet it,” Shaiss pointed. As a single person the whole group began scampering to find a way down to the trail. Half an hour later Marina and Rashrew were ready to lower the archers down thirty feet by rope to land on the trail.
“Shaiss, you go with them, and keep them hidden with your light-bending powers,” Imelda instructed. “Kill each animal as soon as it shows up. Don’t let a wounded animal return to their homeland to warn them it’s an ambush. We want to kill as many of these animals as we can.”
“We’ll be down close to their level, Imelda. What if they figure out where we are and come after us?” one of the Bondell archers asked.
“Move around. Shaiss can keep you hidden as you skip around on the trail. It’s extremely important that you exterminate as many of those animals as you can,” she said, seeking to emphasize the point. The number of soldiers who had arrived already was disturbing, far outnumbering the Goldenfields and Bondell forces that were sitting at the village.
“They’re starting to move out,” Rashrew observed grimly. “And we don’t have any way to warn our folks.”
The sense of urgency communicated itself to everyone in the group, and the archers shimmied down the rope rapidly, followed by Shaiss. The three who remained above watched the three below scurry along the trail northward towards their targets.
Chapter 11 – The Price of Success
Shaiss and the two archers, Pollux and Nestor, crouched and ran towards the large military encampment below them. “This is good,” Nes-tor announced quietly as they knelt behind a natural ledge along their trail. They peered over the edge of the stony wall, where the animals seemed close enough to touch. “We don’t know if a single arrow will kill an animal or not,” Nestor added as he studied his target.
“Let’s wait until there’s just one animal, then see how quickly we can bring it down,” Pollux responded.
“If you can do it fast, we’ll hunker down here. If it takes too long, the soldiers down there will figure out where the arrows are coming from and we’ll have to move,” Shaiss tried to anticipate the next step. “When we move, stay very close to me; keep a hand on me. We’ll move fifty feet that way,” he indicated.
The two archers strung their bows. “I’ll aim under the fore leg,” Nestor coordinated.
“I’ll aim for the eyes,” Pollux replied, “and I’ll
string a second arrow for the neck.”
Both archers pulled their arrows back. “On the count, three, two one,” Pollux called, and both strings twanged sharply. The single animal then on the lawn moaned loudly as it received the two arrows. The shot at the body entered the flesh to a depth of several inches, though seemingly not enough to be mortal. The arrow aimed at the eye had instead hit the animal in the jaw, and pierced the flesh on both sides of the face as it hit its target. Pollux let his second arrow fly, and despite the animal’s thrashing, the arrow entered its throat and pierced an artery, sending copious amounts of blood flowing to the ground.
The animal handlers, unarmed soldiers, were shouting and calling wildly as their valuable charge sank to the ground with mortal wounds. Just then a second animal, laden with supplies arrived at a spot nearby.
Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian Page 8