The First Spark

by T J Trapp

  “It is calling the rest of the pack. We must wait,” said their captive, clearly nervous. “Only its handler will give it permission to let us pass.” He turned and glared at Erin’s riders. “A dog pack can kill even this many armed men if you don’t behave.”

  Erin looked at Alec with disgust. She remembered the role of the dogs in the slave camp, and knew that Alec did too.

  “We aren’t waiting,” said Alec, and with that, the dog’s eyes popped out and it flopped down in death. “Let’s proceed.” Startled, their captive moved on, not sure what Alec had done to the dog.

  They walked now wary of other dogs coming for them. They encountered one other dog before the top of the ridge, but Alec quickly dispatched it. At the top of the ridge, they looked down at the valley below.

  “Whew,” exclaimed Alec, softly. The scene looked like a major highway construction project back in the U.S., but with no heavy equipment, only hand labor. “They are cutting quite a path through the mountains.” There was a contingent of a few hundred slaves and some number of blue-uniformed troops. Alec could see where the rock face had been removed and the workers were using the loose rocks to build a berm across a small gulley. They blasted the rock out, thought Alec. But how? These people are primitive – they don’t have the explosives, equipment, or knowledge to do that!

  They could see that there was a general hubbub going on in the camp below, with Alder soldiers and slaves running about. Apparently the camp was preparing for their arrival.

  Erin pointed to the next hill. “Two other people are hiding on that little rise,” she told Alec. “Do you sense any death rods?”

  Alec let his senses roam over the camp.

  “No, I don’t think they have any ammunition here. I can sense the blasting material they use to clear away the rock. That’s what is making the big ‘booms,’” he explained. “It’s possible they have death rod ammunition close to it – I can’t tell the difference between blasting supplies and ammunition – but that seems very unlikely. It would be dangerous for them to store the two that close together.”

  “I don’t think it is smart to tackle them with this big an imbalance in troops, even with what we can do with your magic,” said Erin.

  Alec agreed with her. He had noticed that Erin was unconsciously assuming her natural role as head of the fighting force. Alec was happy to have her command her troops and make battle plans. He was content to be her Chief Wizard – he knew nothing about leading people or conducting warfare, and he could see Erin was good at it.

  “Maybe there is something I can do to slow them a little,” said Alec.

  “What is that?” said Erin.

  “They are using blasting material to cut their way through the rocks. I can sense it in that wagon.” Alec pointed to a wagon parked on the edge of the camp. “It makes sense for it to be stored out away from everything else. I can set the wagon on fire. That will destroy the blasting material and keep them all busy for the night.”

  “Do it,” said Erin.

  Focus. Alec felt the dark energy. Within seconds a fire sprang up on the canvas top of the wagon.

  After a few minutes, as smoke began to billow from the wagon, someone noticed the fire and started shouting. First, a couple of the soldiers ran towards the fire. Then they saw that the fire was beyond their ability to control and realized the consequences. Soldiers and slaves started scurrying to move everything to safety away from the burning wagon.

  One of the soldiers whipped five slaves to start hauling water and throwing it on the fire. Then the soldier got out of the way. The slaves were doing a hopeless task, Alec thought. He had a terrible feeling about their fate. Then the first of the blasting material ignited, throwing burning brands and lighting fires throughout the camp. Four of the five slaves were consumed as the blasting material burned. Alec saw the fifth thrown across the camp from the force of a small blast, and lay on fire, burning. He felt sick.

  “Let’s pull back,” said Erin. “You have slowed them for now. Tomorrow we will get reinforcements and see what we can do.”

  They pulled back to the first ridge and found a protected area for a camp. Erin sensed there were no watchers close to them. In the distance over the far ridgeline, they could see a dull orange glow from the burning Alder camp.

  16 – The Alder Road

  With the first light, Erin stirred. Erin had slept curled in Alec’s arms – not nearly as comfortable as in their bed, but his body was comforting and warm. The group ate most of the remaining travel supplies they had packed yesterday, feeding some of the scraps to their captive. Erin could feel the rest of her riders working their way up the ridge. She sent a scout to meet them and bring them to her location.

  We have eighteen riders plus Alec, thought Erin, with more on the way. Thom, her lead rider, had informed her the night before that he had the Queen’s authorization to send for reinforcements if need be, and he had taken the liberty of sending for help to come as quickly as possible. Since the Queen hadn’t mentioned this to Erin, she thought to herself, Mother must think I have a knack for getting in trouble. Then she added a postscript to her thought: She might be right.

  “Do you detect anyone in our path?” Alec asked Erin.

  “No, not between us and the next ridge.”

  They climbed the second ridge and returned to yesterday’s observation point. The camp was a buzz of activity. Most of the wreckage from last night’s fire had been cleaned up and work on the road had resumed. The bodies of the fallen slaves had been shoved to one side for scavengers to pick clean. The Alder soldiers were standing guard, on obvious alert.

  “There is a person on the next ridge and two others in the woods below us,” Erin said, after assessing the situation. “They are probably spying on us. The rest of the Alder soldiers and slaves are down at the camp.

  “There is a big pack of dogs assembled by the camp,” she added. “There may be twenty dogs in the pack.” Erin crossed her arms and mulled over her options.

  “This force is on our land and has only bad intentions. We need to destroy it, but I don’t think we are in any hurry. We could wait for more help if we want.”

  Their bound captive stood nearby and overheard her comments. “The Aldermen will have help arrive before you can,” he said. “We have a large force only a day’s ride from here. Our Captain would have sent for reinforcements last night after you started the fire in our camp. Our soldiers will want to quash your annoyance, like swatting a small gnat.” He puffed out his chest, boasting. “They can have more than a hundred men with several dog packs as well as many death rods here by tomorrow.” He looked at Erin, calculating. He had slowly figured out that she was in charge, not Alec.

  “Let me go,” he said in an oily voice, “and I will put in a good word for you. Our Captain just might let you live, if you surrender now.” He looked at Erin. When she ignored him, he added, “Our soldiers do not leave opposing fighters alive, so tomorrow your fate will be sealed. You will be dead. We didn’t realize we were that close to pushing all the way through these mountains. When reinforcements arrive, they will put a death-rod post up here, and it won’t matter how many troops you try to bring.”

  “He is speaking the truth as he sees it,” said Erin to Alec. “If that is the truth, then this is our best time to fight. If we wait for more help, we will just be more outnumbered. We need a plan to split them, and then take them on piece by piece, so that we will have the advantage.”

  Neither Alec nor Erin said anything aloud about what Alec could do with gunpowder. That was a secret they wanted to keep in order to shield their advantage. Once the Aldermen leaders figured out what they could do, Alec knew they would develop some strategy to thwart future explosions.

  Neither Erin, Alec, nor Thom could come up with a plan that would force the Alderman Captain to split his force. They decided instead that a direct approach was their best chance. Theland was not engaged in active hostilities with these people, so Erin decided to act inqu
isitively and use that as an excuse to allow her force to get closer to the camp. Erin and Alec discussed potential options; they had practiced different tactics during their respite in Theland in case a combat situation occurred sometime in their future – they just didn’t expect that it would happen so soon.

  Erin’s riders tied their captive to a tree on the ridge and started down the slope. Since the opponents already knew of their presence, they hailed the Aldermen from the top of the ridge and descended noisily. They came to the bottom of the ridge and formed up to march into the Alder camp. Erin led the group with her riders arrayed in six rows behind her. Alec had wanted to be in front with Erin, but she insisted that Alec be strategically placed in the middle of the group where he could react to any surprise without being pressed for survival.

  Erin could feel the enemies’ disposition. All the enemy troops were arrayed in front of them. The Alder Captain was counting on his dogs for his initial attack. The dogs were deployed on both sides of them in four packs of five dogs each. Erin relayed the information to Alec and Alec was able to quietly relay the situation to the rest of the troops from his strategic location.

  Good call putting me here in the middle, he thought to Erin. If we didn’t know about the dogs, we could have been surprised and distracted by the dogs and then totally dismantled with a frontal assault.

  Erin and her force marched up to where the Alder Captain and his troops were arrayed. She noticed they were armed with long swords as well as pikes and shields. Those were potent weapons when used by trained teams on open ground. The pike was not good in mountainous terrain or by mounted troops, but it was the superior weapon for the terrain here. Her people were not as heavily armed as the Aldermen. They all carried the short sword because it was more suited for use while riding trogus, as well as short spears. They did not have any shields. In an even fight, they would be at a disadvantage, and the Alder soldiers knew that. Erin could see that essentially all work had stopped in the camp. There were a lot of ragged-looking workers – slaves – and all of them were watching Erin’s approach with trepidation. They knew that they were expendable if a fight broke out.

  Erin came five paces in front of the Alder Captain.

  “I am Princess Erin of Theland,” she announced. “This is my land. What are you doing in my land?”

  “Your land. Pah! This land was empty!” retorted the Captain. “This land has been claimed by the great Lord Alder as his land! We are making a trail through it for the benefit of our Lordship.”

  Lots of deception in that, thought Erin.

  “You may agree to be servants of Lord Alder,” the Captain continued, “and we will allow you the privilege of serving his needs. Otherwise, I must ask you to depart our land; although you may not survive, as you are intruders in Lord Alder’s realm.” The Captain looked menacingly at Erin.

  “You may start serving Lord Alder by providing us with workers for our road,” he said. “We use up about fifty workers a week, so you can provide us with replacements until our road is finished. Mostly men please. We use them a lot faster than women. But we will take some women,” he said looking at Erin. She could sense his thoughts about her, and why he wanted some women.

  “This is my land,” Erin repeated, without wavering. “I command that you stop building your road and leave immediately.” Erin could be very imperious when she wanted to be.

  Erin had a tactical advantage. She could sense precisely when the Captain decided to quit talking and launch his attack; therefore, she could cue Alec to respond even as the Captain was giving the signal. Alec had called this his ‘stealing the snap count’ strategy based on some game he knew; Erin thought his game made no sense but understood the meaning of his phrase.

  Now. Erin felt the Captain’s decision and cued Alec, who went into action just as the dogs were being released.

  Focus, and he created three small golden spheres about ten feet above the heads of the Aldermen. Alec carefully spaced the three spheres in a triangular array over the middle of the Alder troops. Probably don’t need such precision, he thought, but, oh well, what good is it to be a Wizard if you can’t do it right.

  The three spheres scavenged the neutrons and protons from the local air to conserve physical properties, which in turn created a vacuum. Surrounding air flowed into the vacuum from above, gathering speed. The infill air hit the ground and rebounded upward taking a cloud of dust with it. The resulting whirlwind knocked the Aldermen to the ground and then picked them up and tossed them around like sticks.

  Alec was pleased with himself. He had tested this back in Theland, and it had taken him many tries before he figured out how big to make the spheres so that he could affect the enemy troops underneath but not Erin’s riders. He hadn’t been sure it would work in practice. Looking at the results, he could tell it had.

  Now, time for Step Two. Alec had no love for the killer dogs. Having seen the levels of savagery that the dogs were trained to pursue he felt no inhibitions about eliminating these animals – these dogs had everything but brutality beaten out of them. Focus. All the dogs collapsed, eyes bulging out and boiling blood spattering.

  Now it was Erin’s turn. He gave her the mental signal. Go.

  She whistled to her riders. They smoothly broke into three teams and ran towards the disarray of the Aldermen, taking on the now-scattered soldiers with organized precision. In a mass battle, the pike and shield were a better weapon, but a single pike wielded against a trained team was no match. The Aldermen were fighting singly and ineffectively, and Erin’s troops were quickly slaughtering them.

  The Alder Captain looked at the disarray about him, saw Erin’s riders coming at him, and drew his sword. Erin stepped forward to engage him. He took a soft swing at Erin. Too bad for him, thought Alec. No one fights at anything less than their best and survives against Erin. He thought of all the extra practice she had put in over the winter months.

  Alec’s thought snapped back to the present. The Captain’s sword stroke snaked towards Erin. She knew that he thought since she was merely a girl, she needn’t be taken seriously. Erin’s sword flashed as the side lit up, distracting the Captain. His sword hand flinched, and the big blade’s trajectory changed slightly – enough to leave Erin an opening. Her blade flicked again and again, and a broad gash appeared across the Captain’s throat. With a gurgling sound, he collapsed to the ground.

  Good girl, thought Alec, you used some of the tricks I built into the sword. They had spent many weeks converting her sword into a perfect weapon. It still glowed when Erin used it and the tiny crystal that lit the blade also continually sharpened the blade so that it always had a razor edge.

  Alec watched the battle progress. The last handful of the Aldermen soldiers had regained a semblance of organization and squeezed into a narrow spot between two rocks where the only attack against them would be frontal. Erin and her riders turned towards the soldiers.

  Time for the heavy artillery, Alec thought towards Erin. Erin nodded in agreement. That was another of Alec’s favorite sayings. Even after Alec had explained it, she still didn’t understand what ‘artillery’ was, or why it was needed, or why it was heavy, but she understood the meaning of the expression.

  Focus. Dark energy swirled and acted.

  The middle section of the pike of the first soldier turned to smoke, and the point fell to the ground in front of his feet with a soft plop! In rapid succession, the other soldiers’ pikes also disintegrated, leaving the men holding stubbed-off sticks. The pike-men discarded their useless weapons and drew their swords. Now the situation had changed. Long swords in a tight setting with shields designed for pike work were poor weapons against the short spear. Erin’s riders made quick work of the Alder soldiers. The first five men fell and the last two surrendered.

  Erin’s troops were victorious. Alec looked with wonder at his Consort. She truly is a warrior princess! This is what she was born for.

  ✽✽✽

  Erin, Alec, and Thom assess
ed their situation in the aftermath of the battle. Four of their riders had been killed. Two others were badly injured. Some of the other troops had minor injuries that wouldn’t impact their fighting ability.

  Alec knew that he didn’t have the skill with dark energy to heal serious injuries. Although he suspected that it could be used to heal serious wounds, he had tried and failed on a couple of times, unable to effectively stem the suffering. He knew he could use dark energy to eliminate infections, however, thus saving a lot of lives from complications of minor wounds. He helped the others bandage the injured riders and make them as comfortable as possible.

  They had captured two soldiers, four dog-handlers, and ten construction overseers. Additionally, there were about two hundred construction workers – slaves – as well as ten camp staff. Alec thought he recognized a few of the workers as part of the group of captive slaves he had seen on the Grasslands.

  They needed as much information as they could accumulate before proceeding further. Alec and Erin decided to interrogate the Aldermen while some of Erin’s riders would talk to each of the workers. However, the Alder soldiers didn’t add much to what they had already learned. They were troops committed to someone called ‘Lord Alder.’ Most of them were recruited mercenaries, in it for the money. They had come from different places and then appeared in the Grassland. They did confirm that a significant army had been amassed on the Upper Grasslands – the soldiers thought the army was moving towards the mountain passes into Gott. An Alder side-force was only a day away; the Captain had sent a messenger yesterday to request backup assistance.

  Alec felt that they had a better chance of learning about the blasting project if he interrogated the Alderman’s construction foreman instead of the soldiers. “What is this project that you are working on?”

  “The Aldermen hired us to make a path through the mountains. I really don’t know why,” the man answered.