by Radu Aldea
The pain in her shoulder blade was more acute. That forced reality to come into focus. Her upper body was on dry land, clutching a log, while her legs were still in the cold water. Aleyna realized that during her dream she grabbed the log and that saved her life. Nobody saved her, she saved herself. Somehow she must’ve floated until she reached land.
Aleyna dragged herself completely out of the water. That took the last bit of strength she had. She wasn’t sure the voice she had heard was real or just a dream. At this moment she favored the dream because being cold, wet, and in dire need of a fire to get warm didn’t stop the memories from coming back to her.
Kara! Aleyna remembered the battle, the bodies and the fact they had lost. Could Kara still be alive? The answer to that question hurt her more than the shoulder. Her friend had used all her power. She was sure of that. When she ran for the forest because Kara wanted her to she had riders trailing her closely. Then something happened and her chasers stopped chasing and started fighting among themselves. The reason that happened was because Kara used the last bit of power she had. Her friend was a fighter and she would never give up, but Aleyna had to accept her chances were very slim considering the hundreds of riders. The last thing she remembered about Kara was that she entered the lake. The senator must’ve had some kind of a plan, but she did not witness it. Aleyna managed to get to the forest. Amelia and Cecilia were not far behind. The riders were still coming for them. In the forest their advantage was not as great, but they still had numbers. Aleyna hoped they didn’t have any tracker with them and she could disappear into the woods. Kara wanted her to escape and she would do the best she could. Besides, she needed to get help.
So Aleyna kept running. It seemed like hours, but reason told her only minutes had passed. She had lost sight of the girls. The need to go back and try to help them almost overcame her. They had no chance, she knew that. Amelia and Cecilia were servants, not fighters, and did not have the strength and endurance to run for a long time and escape their pursuers. Reason told her she could not fight armored soldiers with a dagger. She caught glimpses of them when she looked back. Mostly she saw flashes of something moving through the trees. They were not giving up.
Aleyna heard the girls scream. They must’ve caught up to them. It pained her to think what the riders would do. Would they kill them immediately or take them back? If it were up to her she would’ve wanted to be killed. They would never take her back. She knew what that meant and would rather die. So she kept running.
It was a futile effort. As she caught more and more glimpses of them she realized that. Perhaps she was looking back more often. There was a reason for that. She was getting tired and had no idea where she was going. She didn’t have any plan other than this desperate attempt to escape. Keeping her mind focused was getting increasingly difficult as fear crept in.
She was going to die. This became more obvious as time slowly flowed. Then Aleyna heard the water. If the river bank was abrupt enough over a sufficient length she had a chance. A small chance, but for the first time since she started running she felt hope. She finally had a goal. The water was still far away. Her hearing told her that. They might still catch her. A glance back told her one rider was getting too close. He must’ve deduced what the water meant because he pushed his horse to run faster. It was dangerous in the woods, but they must’ve had orders not to let anyone escape. It made sense if they were going to get out of this alive.
Aleyna kept running. She tried to remember the river. Much to her dismay she recalled it wasn’t exactly a river, but something smaller, a brook. Luckily, its banks were steep almost everywhere, enough to inconvenience a horse. If they wanted to follow her they had to dismount. Good luck trying to catch her with their heavy armor on. All she had to do was get to the water. Then she would escape and go get help. None of these men would live if she managed it. This knowledge was what drove her pursuer.
He was lucky. He didn’t hit a branch and his horse didn’t break his leg or something like that. Aleyna was not going to make it. She looked back. Only one rider was close enough to her. Others were coming, but they weren’t close. The man must’ve wanted to capture her. Otherwise, he would’ve just used his spear. Or maybe he was not confident enough he would hit her while galloping in the woods. Aleyna slowed her running and clutched her dagger. There was only going to be one opportunity. A prolonged fight would not help her, even if she did win. The other riders would be on her. And she had to admit that even with one opponent her chances were not very good. She only had a dagger while the man had a horse, armor, spear and sword. The odds were not in her favor. She slowed down even more. He must’ve thought she was getting tired, which was true, because he slowed down as well. Fifteen paces! Now her run closely resembled a fast walk. Ten paces! He definitely wanted to catch her because he wasn’t using his spear. Five paces! It was time to act. Aleyna looked back and almost ran backward. This was her chance. She threw the dagger ignoring the fact she had never been that good at throwing knives. When she had trained the targets were further away but she hadn’t been running. The dagger slowly flew towards him. It didn’t spin or rotate, it just moved directly in the direction of his throat just as it would’ve done if a hand controlled it. The man didn’t see it or he saw it too late. The blade hit his throat and remained there. It must’ve hit something important because the man fell from the horse. Aleyna instinctively knew he was dead or would be very soon. That throw was almost impossible, yet she managed it.
There was no time to enjoy her victory. Others were coming. They saw what happened and it was not likely they would try to capture her after she killed one of them. It was just as well, she didn’t want to be taken alive. Aleyna started running with renewed energy. The water was getting closer by the second and her chasers were not close enough. The first glimpses of the stream through the trees gave her hope. She had achieved what seemed impossible and wished the water was deeper and wider than it actually was. Another rider was catching her. There would be no dagger this time and no lucky throw. But the water was not far away now; all she had to do was get to it. No more than a hundred feet separated her from the water so she sprinted. It took every ounce of energy she had but she covered the distance in seconds. Something told her the rider was getting closer, but she didn’t look back. Aleyna was just going to jump in the water at full speed. She wouldn’t make it to the other side and chances were she was going to break something, but she didn’t care. Aleyna jumped!
The man threw the spear just before she sprang. It was his last chance to stop her. If she managed to get to the other side it was all over. She would go to her senator friends and they would kill all of them. They would raise a net to catch them like flies. The spear hit her shoulder blade and threw her off balance. Aleyna hit the water in an awkward position and quickly sank. The water was not that deep so she reached the bottom. Unlucky for her there was a rock there and it made contact with her shoulder and head. The spear must’ve not stuck in deeply because it detached from her body when she hit the rock.
That didn’t matter to Aleyna. That rock almost knocked her unconscious. She didn’t know how she managed but she got to the surface. The man was dismounted on the bank and was looking at her. Surprisingly, he didn’t do anything more, just turned around.
“I got her! She’s dead!” Aleyna heard him speaking.
“Too bad, she was pretty. I would’ve had some fun with her,” an answer came.
“There was nothing I could do. She would’ve gotten away otherwise.”
As she floated away she thought she saw a shadow further down in the trees. Maybe it was just her mind playing one last trick on her as it shut down.
Now, as she lay on the ground, she could not believe her luck. All the men had to do was come after her and make sure she was really dead. They didn’t. Aleyna looked around and there was no one. She had escaped. It was a miracle.
Deciding on a plan of action was the most important thing she could do. The first t
hing on the list was to stop the bleeding and bandage her wound. The spear had left an ugly gash. It was not fatal, but she could not afford to lose any more blood. She ripped her dress and bandaged her wound as best she could. It was a difficult position and she didn’t think she had done a very good job. Regardless, there was no time to lose. She tried to guess how long had she been unconscious and decided it couldn’t have been more than an hour.
At first, Aleyna wanted to go back and find Kara. Her friend might’ve won the fight. She quickly decided against it. If there was no danger, Kara would command her to come back. There was no command. She could go back to the villa, but it was far away and she might run into the men who attacked them. There was someone closer, but she wasn’t sure what to do. The fact that someone might’ve betrayed them crossed her mind.
“Marcia practically raised Kara. She is like a mother to her,” Aleyna told herself.
It was true and she didn’t know what else she could do. Besides, she didn’t think Marcia was involved. This was probably Julia’s or Lucian’s doing, she thought, although she didn’t know why they would attack with soldiers who weren’t under their control. She didn’t dare to think how all those men managed to get this deep into their territory.
Yet Marcia was the only option. She was the closest senator Aleyna knew and her villa was situated in the opposite direction to the men. First thing she had to do was get her bearings. She quickly established which way was north. Aleyna had a pretty good idea which direction she had been running and was confident she maintained a straight line. Yet she had training and knew forests were notoriously tricky and because of all the trees you couldn’t keep an exact straight line. To maintain a semblance of it you had to use the sun, which she hadn’t done in her desperate flight. And there was no telling how far the water had dragged her.
Aleyna smiled bitterly. Senators, including Kara, dreaded forests even more than cities. It was the only place they were truly vulnerable to even humans because in the forests humans could sneak close to them. Yet Aleyna liked the trees and had trained with Kara in forests. Her friend didn’t like them but she didn’t neglect any aspect of her training. Aleyna didn’t think she would get any use out of the thousands of hours of relentless training. Minus the lessons in the use of senatorial power, she had been taught the same things as Kara. Now she was just glad she paid attention and had the physical endurance.
She didn’t have any more time to lose and started walking north-west towards the mountains where Marcia’s villa was. Kara’s villa, her home, was to the east. Luckily, the forest would end soon enough if she was correct. After fifteen minutes of walking she was still in the forest with no edge in sight. Perhaps she had been wrong and she hadn’t calculated her position as well as she thought. She knew the forest and she knew it would end. After another fifteen minutes of walking she was finally out of the forest and she had landmarks to help her.
Marcia’s villa was an hour and a half walk away. Everything hurt and her shoulder started bleeding again. She didn’t have much hope the dressing would hold. If she had a horse she would be at Marcia’s by now, yet they had the brilliant idea to walk to the lake. She didn’t even remember who came up with that, although it was probably Kara. Hopefully, she would run into one of Marcia’s clients or human servants and this way the news would reach the senator sooner. In was not an unfounded hope, Marcia’s soldiers controlled the territory around the villa. As should’ve done Kara and her father, but they had only one hundred soldiers between the two. Aleyna couldn’t really blame them. Who would be stupid enough to attack the most powerful senatorial family in the empire? She would really want to know the answer to that question. Maybe Marcia would help enlighten her. The senator and her son controlled about two hundred fifty soldiers. That would be less than half the people they could control. Kara had taken over more than that in that first flash of senatorial power. Aleyna was sure her friend had taken over more than three hundred people, maybe three hundred and fifty. That had been really impressive and it didn’t help at all. To be fair, even if they had a hundred or more soldiers with them the outcome would’ve been the same. The only avenue of escape had been the forest and Kara’s power was crippled in there.
Nothing could be done to change the past, but she could make sure the persons responsible would be punished. She had walked for another hour without meeting another person. Villages were rare in this area, as they got closer to the mountains. The land was owned by senators or human lords and the villages knew who was owed money and produce. In this region, north of Hilderfort until the mountains, the land was owned almost exclusively by senators, who liked their impregnable fortresses and the mountains where they built them.
Aleyna heard the old woman a few seconds before she saw her. It was the first person she had encountered since she escaped the riders. The old woman was leading a donkey, probably as old as she was. The woman was of no use to Aleyna as she definitely was not under the control of any senator. So Aleyna tried to ignore her and walked past her.
“If you have trouble around these parts, that’s not the way you want to be going.”
The old woman’s voice startled Aleyna and made her stop. She realized how she must look to the women with her ripped and dirty fine clothes. What must’ve the woman thought? Probably that she was trying to escape a senator who wanted to have his way with her. She must’ve mistaken Aleyna for a human lord’s wife or daughter. Even this woman, though Aleyna suspected she was at least half blind, didn’t mistake her for a senator. It wasn’t surprising, really, as she wasn’t dressed like one and senators didn’t look like her because the woman could not conceive a senator running for his life. And Aleyna wasn’t a senator although right now she wished she were. So she burst into a laughter that sounded like the laughter of an insane woman and started walking again without speaking to the old woman.
She didn’t have to walk long and it was unlikely that she could’ve marched on much further as all her reserves of strength were spent. And she was getting colder, which Aleyna suspected it was not because night was coming but because she had lost too much blood. She heard the horses and the men talking. At first she wanted to hide, panic almost gripping her, then she realized these were not the men who chased her. She was far away from them now. Marcia’s villa was close now and it was very likely these were her soldiers. That is if something hadn’t happened to her too. Aleyna fought these dark thoughts and headed towards the men.
She was lucky. They were Marcia’s men and they recognized her immediately. Even if they didn’t Marcia would know what happened immediately through her link to them. Distance didn’t matter if the senator managed to establish the link and take over a human. They might as well be in the northern forest and Marcia would still know immediately. As it happened, they were less than two miles away from the villa. The men were puzzled as they looked at her.
“We were attacked near the lake. There were hundreds of them.” It was all she managed to speak before she collapsed.
The men moved into a frenzy of actions. Perhaps Marcia gave them orders, but it was just as likely they had acted on their own. Aleyna was not unconscious, but she was not entirely lucid either. She must’ve been weaker than she thought and she had only made it this far because her mind stubbornly ordered her body to go on. Now, that she finally achieved her purpose she could let go. Aleyna smiled! She had survived, she had found help and the men who had attacked them would die. She had succeeded!
The men seemed to know what they were doing. They noticed her wound immediately and checked it. It didn’t worry them much, so they put her on a horse. Aleyna smiled at the irony. Two hours ago she would’ve murdered for a horse and now she wasn’t sure that she would manage to stay in the saddle and not fall. The soldiers didn’t think she could stay on a horse either because a man climbed behind her on the saddle. He put his hands around her so she was supported and grabbed the reins. Then the horses broke into gallop. Aleyna couldn’t remember the last time
she rode like this. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was almost like floating and she didn’t know when the time passed because Marcia’s villa was in front of them and they darted in full gallop through the open gates.
They carried her to a bedroom where Marcia Antonia and her son, Christian Antonius were waiting. There was a grim look on their faces. The little Aleyna managed to tell them was enough to worry them, but it didn’t clarify everything that happened.
“What happened?” Marcia asked.
Marcia Antonia was a woman of medium height and had severe features. Her raven black hair was shorter than Aleyna remembered. It reached the shoulders, but it was as usual tied in a short ponytail. The powerful female senator looked much younger than her age of thirty-seven. She was second only to Kara and her father and although many considered her their client the relationship was more like one between equals. She was almost as powerful as Kara’s father and her son surpassed him. Marcia’s big, brown eyes fixed Aleyna expectantly.
“We decided to walk to the lake,” Aleyna began to speak. “We were attacked shortly after we arrived. There were two waves of attackers, first about six hundred archers. Kara dealt with them easily. About two hundred fifty cavalry followed and I think Kara was drained of power. I think Kara is dead,” Aleyna barely whispered the words.
“What do you mean, Kara’s dead? What about her father?” Marcia bombarded her with questions. The senator was growing even more impatient.
“I don’t know. He was at the villa. The villa should be safe.”
“Mother, there is an easier way to do this. Don’t you see she has been through hell,” Christian spoke. He was taller than his mother and had the same black hair and brown eyes. He was sixteen years old and an adult, the age of majority for senators being fifteen.
“I don’t think Kara will like it very much if I attempt to take control of Aleyna.”