by Radu Aldea
She darted a last look in the direction of Aleyna and the two servants. Aleyna was in front now and they were close to the forest, but the riders weren’t far behind. Damn, they won’t let anyone escape. Kara started thinking. She had enough power to help Aleyna escape, but she seemed too far. She was about five hundred paces away. Selfishly, she could use her remaining powers to help her fight her attackers. Kara easily made the decision. It would make no difference if she managed to take over five or ten riders. So she lashed with her powers across the distance separating her from Aleyna and took over the first ten of her pursuers. Don’t let them get caught. Stop anyone who is trying to follow them!
Now, that she had done all she could to help the women she moved her attention to her own problems. The attackers seemed to be confused and didn’t know what to do. They could not charge in the water and the superior numbers didn’t help them that much. Someone came with an idea though, and spears appeared in their hands. Kara swore in her mind. She really hoped they didn’t have spears. Some even took their horses a few paces in the water. Shield wall! Keep the shields up, three quarters over the water to protect our heads!
The plan seemed to work because the spears either hit the shields or hit the water and lost their speed so they couldn’t do much damage. The light armor was enough protection. The riders caught on fast enough that wouldn’t work so they gave up. They spread up over a large portion of the shore and were waiting for someone to figure out a solution. Kara thought they could wait until the cold got her, with the freezing water and all, but somehow she doubted they were that patient and couldn’t risk her regaining her power. She was right!
“Get in the water after them!” one of the men shouted the order, their leader probably. Kara smiled and hoped none of the riders saw that. They probably didn’t, she was hidden pretty well behind her guards. Some of the men started to direct their horses towards her. They can’t be this stupid! Going in deep water with their heavy armor on! But it was what she had hoped.
Kara figured there weren’t too many places between her and her attackers where the water would go over their heads. Maybe it would go over their horses’ heads, but horses could swim even with someone on their back. It was still very tricky to ride a horse in deep water with all the hidden rocks and holes. They certainly couldn’t move fast.
And they didn’t. There were only twenty-five or thirty riders in the water. Sending more wouldn’t have helped, anyway. When I give the order you will swim under water and kill the horses I tell you. You won’t touch the last rider on the left. He is mine! When you’ve done what I told you, try to get some horses for yourself, follow me and try to stop anyone who’s coming after us. Then she told them which horses they should kill. They were those on the left, the closest to the horse she chose for herself.
The riders were getting really close. They were only ten paces away. Kara gave the order and in one instant they all dove under water. Luckily, the water was not clear, it never was, and nobody could see where they were. They could only see the ripples, but there were too many of those to be of any help. Kara started swimming for her target. She was sure enough she was swimming in the right direction, although there was no way to be certain. She couldn’t see very far under water. “Where have they gone?” she heard the riders shouting, but it was too late for them to correct their mistake. Kara thought she was closing in on the last man on the left. She didn’t see any other horses, so she figured she was where she wanted to be. She slid through the water trying to disturb it as little as she could. Another plan hatched in her mind. She could swim close to the shore and try to make a run for the forest. She dismissed it immediately. There was no way she could swim all that distance under water and not be noticed. For better or worse she needed a horse to make her escape.
She somehow managed to get close enough to her target without being noticed. Then the screaming started. Her men were doing what she had told them and had killed the horses. The riders learned the foolishness of going in deep water with their armor on. In one motion she grabbed the man with her left hand and stabbed him in the neck. The armor didn’t protect him there. She let herself fall in the water, pulling him with her. With a second motion she was on the horse and started moving. She didn’t look at the damage behind her. She just headed as fast as she could to a point on the shore. The riders on the bank understood what had happened and were galloping in her direction. She didn’t care about that. She didn’t care she was in the water. She pushed her horse as hard as she could. She was almost at the shore and didn’t think they were close enough to catch her. She would lose them in the woods. A sense of joy overwhelmed her when she thought she had escaped. She forgot the spears. One struck her horse. She fell. She hit her head on a stone. Blackness!
Chapter three
Michael kept running as fast as he could. He had to get to the edge of the forest before it was too late. And he had a nagging feeling it would be too late very soon. He didn’t know why the voice inside his head told him to run without holding anything back. Why he had to get there before it was too late. To stop it! Michael just knew it was there. It had been there since the soldiers appeared. He even suspected what that voice was. Serratus had told him about something called wizard instinct. It was like an inner voice that advised you on a course of action. Truthfully, it was more like a command. You could choose to ignore it, but it was at your own peril. Serratus also told him that wizard’s intuition was very rare. So rare, in fact, that they knew very little about it. Some of the books he read had stories of wizards who had ignored it and disaster fell upon them. At that moment their decision seemed logical. Time proved it wasn’t. Of course, there were other cautionary tales when listening to that inner voice was catastrophic. Things were so complicated because it was difficult to know if it was real wizard instinct or something else. Michael was sure now, though. He wasn’t going to ignore that voice.
He kept running. He’d lost Serratus some time ago. Serratus may have been a powerful wizard, but he was old and couldn’t keep up with him. As powerful as wizards were, they hadn’t managed to find a faster way to travel. Michael was really annoyed about that now and he promised himself he would look into it when he had some time. Serratus would’ve known if it was possible, although this was not the time to ask. They had only a short conversation while they were running, just before he lost sight of the old wizard.
“Slow down,” Serratus managed to speak between the heavy breaths.
“There’s no time! I have to get there!” Michael replied without slowing down. His breathing was regular, but he was aware he couldn’t keep this rhythm for long.
“Why do you have to get there?” Serratus was slowing down, almost stopping.
“There is no time,” Michael said and kept running.
Then he lost sight of Serratus. Michael knew he was there and falling quickly behind, but still following. There was not much chance Serratus would lose him. Not at this distance. He tried to figure out how much he had until the edge of the forest. It was difficult to do while running. He somehow managed it. He didn’t even stumble or fall down. It was almost a miracle considering the circumstances. His earlier prediction that he couldn’t keep running this fast also seemed to be wrong.
Suddenly, the world exploded. In fact, it didn’t really explode, (how could it?), it just fell that way to him. It began with the surge of power. The raw amount of it was mind-blowing. He had never seen someone use that much, not even wizards. Michael doubted that he or Serratus would be capable of it. He instantly knew where it was coming from. The battle had begun and this was the senator’s first strike. For a moment he doubted he was needed. But the voice inside him shouted keep running and he listened.
Death had a certain feeling attached to it. One no wizard liked to experience. But on a scale like this it was something else altogether. Hundreds of lives extinguish within seconds, or maybe minutes. All Michael knew was it had happened so fast and it made him stop for a moment. Noth
ing prepares you for something like this, he thought.
The battle died down. Michael knew that because after the few staggering moments when there was an explosion of death, now there wasn’t so much. People were still dying, but not as many. He was fairly sure the senator was winning this battle. She was still near the lake and the fighting didn’t come near her. Even so, Michael was still running, but he was starting to get tired. His instinct still told him to keep moving. And soon enough he understood why.
Michael felt the humans, the horses and a lot of iron. This was something different than the first attack. At first, he thought the senator called for reinforcements. Soon enough, he was proved wrong. The second wave of death hit. It was just as sudden, vicious and brutal as the first. Only when they started moving quickly towards the senator was Michael sure they were her enemies. He knew the senator didn’t have much time – there was no way she could have the power to fight a second attack – but the edge of the forest seemed to slide further away.
Another flare of senatorial power drew his attention. After what he felt before Michael didn’t think she still had it in her. He wasn’t sure, but the distance she struck across was amazing. Who the hell are they hunting? The bastards must be really arrogant to attack someone like this! Death hit again. This time it was on a far smaller scale, ten dead at most. The senator was still alive and it seemed she was fleeing. And then she wasn’t.
After a few more minutes of running he finally reached the edge of the trees. He felt he had run for hours, but his mind told him it couldn’t have been more than fifteen-twenty minutes. The battle had been fought so quickly, he never imagined it could be like this. All that teaching and training didn’t really prepare you for what just happened.
Michael would stay hidden and decide on a course of action. The senator was still alive, but unconscious. Two men were dragging her to their commander, probably. From five hundred paces away he couldn’t say much about her – now there was confirmation he had been right and the attack was against a female senator – except that she seemed tall and young. Still, she shouldn’t have been a bother and they could’ve carried her.
For the moment she appeared to be safe, so Michael turned his attention to the battlefield. There were hundreds of dead lying on the ground, more than he thought there would be while running through the forest. There were about two or three hundred heavily armored soldiers talking, laughing and taking care of their horses. All that death didn’t seem to affect them. Michael realized two things: someone had sent almost a thousand men after the senator and the men who were still alive were soldiers, not brigands.
He spent the next few minutes trying to formulate a plan to save the female senator. It wasn’t going too well because, although Michael was relatively sure he could deal with the soldiers, in every conceivable scenario she ended up dead. He didn’t even consider abandoning her, forgetting that senators and wizards had been bitter enemies for some time.
Serratus joined him about the same time six riders dragged two other women out of the woods about two hundred paces away. They were kicking and screaming, but that didn’t seem to bother their captors much as they didn’t do much damage. Michael figured they weren’t trained to fight and were probably servants.
“By the Gray Gods, I’ve never seen a senator as powerful as that,” Serratus spoke not taking his eyes away from the unconscious Kara.
“We have to save her! This is not right,” Michael told him.
“Are you serious?” Serratus asked laughing. “She will hunt us and kill us. We wouldn’t manage to get far from here. That’s if she won’t succeed in taking over us, which she might, considering all we know about senators does not seem to apply to her. I tell you something, it will not end here. She has clients who will track down whoever is responsible for this.”
Michael took another look at the battlefield and where Kara stood. Three hundred paces! But if he was not mistaking she was capable of taking over someone who was even further away. It was quite possible she would take over them if they would get close enough. However, for a reason that eluded him, he wasn’t that concerned about that.
“We have to save her.” Michael was unbelievably calm.
“We don’t have to do anything. It isn’t our problem if someone decided to kill a senator, even a senator like her.”
“Then I have to save her. Letting someone like her die is just not right.”
“She made a mistake you know! She was overconfident and didn’t consider fleeing. She might’ve gotten away in the forest.”
“Maybe, but it’s not relevant to the present situation.”
“I guess it’s not!” Serratus was looking very intensely at him as if he was trying to read his mind. After what seemed like an eternity to Michael – in fact only a few very charged seconds passed – Serratus conceded. “Let’s save her then!”
Near the lake the men started to rip the dresses of the two screaming women. Their wails before did not come even close to revealing the terror they felt now. Michael knew what was going to happen and started to do something about it when Serratus stopped him by putting his hand on Michael’s shoulder.
“Do you want to save your senator or will you do something for those girls?”
“We can’t let those men do that to them.”
“Can you do something that would kill the men and not the women?”
“Not from here,” Michael answered.
“I can’t either!”
“Then we have to get closer.”
“Wait a minute! I think the fools are trying to wake her up.”
It seemed Serratus was right because one of them filled a bucket from the lake while another tied Kara’s hands behind her back. If there was a prize for stupidity these guys would take first place, Michael thought.
“What the hell are they trying to do?” Michael asked.
“I think they are being monumental idiots,” Serratus replied smiling cunningly. “They think she is drained of power.”
“And she is not?”
“Can’t you sense it? She was empty a few minutes ago, but she’s recharging now. That’s very impressive. Even with the most powerful senators I’ve met, it took hours before they started recharging after they used all their power. This girl did it in minutes.”
Michael focused on Kara. While a few minutes ago there was only emptiness where senatorial power had been stored, now he sensed a faint trickle of it.
The man with the bucket of water threw it on Kara.
“Here’s the plan,” Serratus said.
Chapter four
Kara woke up in a puddle of water. At first she didn’t know what happened and was a little confused, but after a few moments she remembered. It was a surprise she was still alive. She figured they would kill her immediately. Apparently, they had something else in mind for her. Maybe I am dead and this is the afterlife! That couldn’t be it! She was still at the lake with the same bastards who attacked her before she lost consciousness. Besides, she was wet and cold. The afterlife couldn’t be that wet and cold. And she was lying in a puddle, although it hadn’t rained. The water could’ve dripped from her hair and clothes. Somehow she knew that wasn’t true. The idiots threw water on her although she was already wet. Are they trying to wake me up? Whatever they planned she figured it was better to pretend she was still out.
That didn’t work out that well. She felt a gloved hand grab her hair and pull her up to her knees. She would’ve risen to her feet, but a heavy boot stepped on her calves. That really hurt and it didn’t seem to matter to the man holding her. It must be a man; he was very strong. Kara thought they could’ve done this from the beginning and not troubled themselves with the water. It was much more effective. Then she realized her hands were tied behind her back. She couldn’t tell this before because she had been freezing.
“Are you awake, honey? Did you get your beauty sleep?”
The mocking tone of the man’s voice sent another kind of shiver down h
er spine. There was not much use in pretending she was not awake anymore. She tried to rotate to see who was holding her. The man grabbed her chin with his other hand and kept her head in place. It felt like her head was caught in a vise. He stepped harder on her calves and struck her kidney with his knee. There should’ve been more pain. Kara understood the cold numbed her.
“You aren’t trying to do something stupid, are you?”
She shook her head as far as she could, which was not very.
“Personally I think you are drained of your power, but who knows! You are a tough bitch, tougher than we thought, you know. You might still have some left.”
Kara wished she still had some of her power. She had used all of it when she tried to save the women. Then she realized there was still a trace of her senatorial power left. That couldn’t be possible. She distinctly remembered she had been drained completely. The only explanation was her power was recharging. She forced herself not to smile. It wouldn’t have been a very good idea. The fact her power came back so fast was surprising even to her. She’d never been empty before, so she had no idea when her power would return.
“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just cold,” Kara answered.
“That’s a good girl. Continue to be a good girl and I’ll be very nice to you.”
Kara didn’t like the implications of his words, but she chose to ignore them. The longer she stalled the more power she would have.
“Are you the boss of these men?”
“Honey, as far as you are concerned, I’m a god.”
He wasn’t the boss. The boss wouldn’t come anywhere near her, he would be too scared. He would watch her from somewhere far away, where he thought he would be safe. He probably had men with their weapons trained on her, just in case something happened. As it was, all she could see was the lake the man was forcing her to watch. She heard voices, but they were too far away to understand.