She walked now to get away from the army. She’d helped with the wounded and to bury the dead and repair parts of the town destroyed by the fighting. She’d set up tents in the camp and served meals and cleaned pots and pans. The continuous work kept her mind off the losses of the battle and the many fights still to come.
But when the work ended or the men wouldn’t allow their princess to help them anymore, she had to find other things to occupy her mind.
She could only clean her pistols and sharpen her cutlass so much.
Elisa’s hand dropped and touched the silver engraving of her weapons. Thoughts on her father and mother came to her. Happy memories appeared from the time before the empire’s fall.
Elisa was a small girl running and squealing through the hedge maze on the upper terrace of the palace back in Plancenoit. Her father growled like a bear and ran after her as her mother laughed and looked on. All three had big smiles on their faces and the sun above them was bright and happy too.
Elisa kept walking and tried to focus on these positive thoughts and images. She rounded a large oak tree and climbed over a boulder protruding from the ground and continued along a deer path until she ran into a now familiar face.
“Good morning, Princess,” the guide said.
Elisa had expected the vision might appear if she wandered off alone.
“Good morning.” She stopped on the trail a few feet in front of the guide. “Thank you for protecting me during the fight.”
The memories of her mother’s laughing face faded away. They were replaced by the image of the evil Kurakin god staring her down in the house at the end of the battle a few days before.
The guide waved off her thanks. “It was nothing, you weren’t in any danger. Although I was surprised he appeared to you in the middle of all that.”
The memories and sadness from Mon had outweighed the questions surrounding the Kurakin god’s appearance during the fight. But now Elisa started to sift through those questions some more.
“Who was he?” she said. “He was like you but Kurakin.”
“He is like me, you’re correct there.” The guide shifted his weight and leaned a shoulder against an elm tree. The forest was quiet all around them. “We’re still very different, but he’s like a relative of sorts.”
“Like your brother?” Elisa stayed standing in the middle of the path.
“More like a cousin.”
The guide didn’t say anything more. Elisa thought through the encounter at the very end of the battle and the largest question jumped to the front of her mind.
“He said he sought my mother. What does he want with her?”
“Ah, that is a good question.” The vision stood straight from the tree and motioned for Elisa to follow him as he turned up the path in front of them. “He is guiding General Duroc, similar to how I’m guiding you.”
“You mean how you just told me to run north and had me figure the rest out on my own?” Elisa walked slightly behind the guide as they made their way through the trees.
“Exactly.”
The guide didn’t appear to understand the sarcasm behind Elisa’s words.
“This new war,” the guide continued. He paused after the first words and seemed to weigh what to say next. “There are a lot of moving pieces on the Continent right now. Lots of forces at work that haven’t been active in a long time.”
The guide paused again and Elisa allowed the silence to sit between them as they walked along the edge of the forest. The distant sounds of soldiers chopping firewood in the camp drifted over their heads.
“You don’t know where your mother has gone, right?” the guide said eventually.
“No.”
Until the recent memory from her childhood in the palace, Elisa hadn’t thought much on her mother at all. She used to dwell on her absence while on Mon’s farm, but the flight north had pushed those thoughts from her mind for the last few weeks.
“Did you ever wonder about her? What she’s doing?”
“Yes. Of course. But it wasn’t the happiest subject to think of. Especially with my father…”
Elisa’s voice trailed off. She didn’t need these thoughts right now. It was sad enough dealing with the loss of Mon. She didn’t need to be reminded that her mother had abandoned the empire and her father was in exile.
The guide ducked under a low branch and then sat on a log at the side of the trail. Elisa stayed standing and crossed her arms across her chest.
“That Kurakin you saw is looking for Epona because he believes she’s is searching out something,” the guide said. He looked up at Elisa. “A long-dormant power. He believes it’ll change the war. It’ll change the whole Continent.”
Elisa wasn’t sure what to make of the information. It was vague and ominous, like most things the guide told her.
“Do you know where she is then? Or how to find her?” Elisa shifted her weight and stared back at the guide. Of course she wanted to see her mother again, but that didn’t do much to dampen the feelings of betrayal that still boiled within her.
“No.”
That was all that was offered. Elisa felt like she was back on Mon’s farm and the guide was telling her only part of the story again.
“Maybe she’s gone for good.” Elisa couldn’t keep the bite out of the words. “Maybe that Kurakin god is searching for nothing.”
“I doubt that,” the guide said with a thin smile. “But the important thing right now is that you’re safe and with the army.”
“Why do I matter?” Elisa’s said the words loudly and they echoed through the trees beyond their trail.
The guide was talking in circles. Half the time Elisa wished he wouldn’t appear at all and just leave her in peace.
“You lead Erlon. It’s important to keep the alliance against the Kurakin strong. It’s important to keep the Continent alive.”
The guide stood up and a breeze passed along Elisa’s neck. Their conversation was almost over. The guide was already beginning to fade away. He still wasn’t telling her everything.
“So I’m to just keep fighting then?” Elisa said. She didn’t expect to get much more information.
“And leading.” The guide nodded and smiled at her. “I’ll be in touch over the winter. Stay with the army and help to lead. Things will change in this war yet. But for now, the key is to keep fighting.”
The breeze picked up and the last outline of the guide shifted and blew away. Elisa was left alone in the forest with more questions than answers running through her head again.
* * *
That night, Elisa dreamed about her mother. In the morning, she couldn’t remember the details, but her mind didn’t dwell on it. There was too much distraction in the real world, as the day had finally come for the army to break camp and march.
She hoisted herself up on her horse at the front of the army. Quatre sat beside her. Lauriston and Lodi rode in front of her.
The sun was just poking its head out over the forest in the east and the southwestern horizon was open in front of them.
It was finally time to move again. The guide and his vague instructions and her swirling thoughts on her family and the problems on the Continent would soon fade away. The action of the march would keep Elisa focused on the tasks at hand.
Lauriston and the other generals had told her the campaign plan. Elisa knew where they were heading, but she didn’t know what would happen through winter and beyond.
That was fine with her. She was with her friends and protectors and the great Erlonian army. It didn’t matter who the foe was. They could be gods or men or Kurakin. She would fight on with the soldiers around her.
Elisa looked behind her as they started marching. The Erlonian soldiers had cleaned their uniforms and stood in neat and organized rows. The tents were packed and the camp cleared. Feet kicked up dust and they set off on the next portion of the campaign.
There was hope in all of them after the victory at Neuse. There was a buzz of en
ergy over the whole army and Elisa felt that she may be the most hopeful of them all.
“This is the way to march,” Quatre said from beside her. “Much better than sneaking through a forest.”
“Seems like it.” Elisa returned Quatre’s smile.
“I’ll take the men at our back against anyone.”
“I agree.” Elisa looked behind her and made eye contact with a guardsman in the front rank. He raised his musket in a salute. Elisa gave a wave back.
“Onward, Emperor!”
It was a single voice that rang out over the march. One soldier called out and started it all.
More cheers drifted forward from farther back in the ranks. Elisa waved again at all the men and more chants started. They were soon roaring up in waves from the marching soldiers.
“Onward, Emperor!”
“Onward!”
“Onward, Princess!”
“Onward, Erlon!”
The roars wouldn’t stop.
“Boy, do I enjoy hearing that again.” Lauriston turned around in his saddle and smiled at Elisa.
Elisa enjoyed it too. It took her back to Plancenoit and the parades of soldiers that her father would observe on the palace grounds before a campaign. She remembered the adoration of the people during his Ascension Day speeches. There’d been hope and happiness everywhere. The memories made her smile as the roars kept coming from the Erlonian soldiers.
They were marching off to war and death. But this would be a war on equal footing. Erlon had hope again.
Whatever games her guide and the Kurakin god and her sorceress mother were playing didn’t matter. The only important things were Elisa’s friends around her.
“Onward, Emperor! Onward!”
Elisa smiled wide enough to make her cheeks hurt. The Kurakin Horde had pushed too far north. Now they would pay the price for sacking Erlonian cities. They would have to face an army of allies that would only grow stronger.
“Onward, Erlon!”
Elisa would fight the Horde, as would every man who cheered behind her. The spirit of the emperor was back once again.
And Erlon’s enemies didn’t stand a chance.
Onward.
Epilogue
The sorceress’s footprints stretched behind her across the sand of the desert. No relief from the heat came from the wind as it kicked up waves of biting specks into her face.
Dunes rose on the path in front of her. The top of the great basilica was visible beyond them.
“Not much farther to walk,” Epona told herself. The city would be just over a few more of the dunes. Her long journey north was almost over.
Epona wrapped her headscarf tighter around her face and forced her legs to move up the next giant dune.
“Almost there,” she said to herself. “Almost there.”
The peak came quickly and she started down the other side. She didn’t stop and stare at the view of the ruined city in front of her.
Momentum carried her down the hill and she reached level ground and found a path between the last dunes to the entrance of the city. There were no streets visible and all the structures were half buried. Some structures were completely consumed by the drifts of sand.
The stone edges of meeting halls and cathedrals and military barracks were worn away and rounded. Toppled columns and collapsed roofs jutted out of the mounds and the windswept sand up and down the streets.
The great city was empty. It was only her and the sand and the howling wind.
She’d had a small hope that the place would be different. That someone else would’ve come back to where things ended. Or that the Ascended One would still be sitting atop the basilica waiting to greet her.
“No, you’re far away somewhere,” she said as she walked past the collapsed facade of a tiny house in the middle of an open square. “You’re not here.”
Maybe she’d been wrong to make this journey. To leave everything behind. To abandon those she loved to call on a god.
But there was a higher purpose. She had to keep reminding herself that. She left to protect her family. To protect everyone on the Continent.
Epona moved across the square. She passed toppled statues and mounds of broken brick. Collapsed structures lined the main street until she reached the city center and the great basilica of the Ascended One towered above her.
There was no wear on this building. The columns still stood strong. The corners of the facade were still pointed and crisp and the engravings as clear as if they’d been carved yesterday. The basilica’s front doors stood open.
Sand covered the steps up completely and she crawled up the slope and passed through the giant opening.
At first glance she thought the Ascended One was on his throne waiting for her.
Her eyes adjusted to the light and saw it was only a statue in place of the old throne. With a closer look, Epona saw the figure was larger than life. The depth of the room and the height of the throne platform skewed the normal aspects of proportion.
She walked across the open throne room and knelt down at the foot of the platform steps.
The figure was reclined in his throne with both hands gripping the armrests. The god’s face showed no emotion and he had short, curly hair and no crown atop his head. He was adorned in a simple cloth toga instead of armor.
Epona looked into the god’s marble eyes. They were the same color as the rest of the face. There was no power behind this statue. It was only decoration.
“No matter,” she said as she got up and looked around her. There was a doorway to the right of the statue platform.
She moved towards it and found a dark stairwell. She conjured a flame in front of her and started her ascent.
The stairs went on forever. They curved around the outer wall of the basilica’s dome. The curve got smaller and smaller until she reached a stone door at the very top.
Epona pushed it with her mind but it wouldn’t budge. She tried again with more force but found the same result. She looked down at the door handle. A golden ring.
She grabbed it and turned, and the door snapped free and swung outward.
“Strange,” Epona said.
Sunlight poured into the stairwell. She extinguished her flame and stepped into the open air that overlooked the broken and buried city below.
There was another statue here. This one smaller and made of black marble. It was the Ascended One again in full battle dress. His shield was down at his side and his sword was up and pointed towards the north.
Epona followed the direction of the blade but could only see the desert and the sea beyond stretching to the horizon. She walked around the statue without touching it.
“Yes.” She nodded to herself. “This is it.”
She found an engraving on the floor. The symbol of the Ascended One’s Holy Guard. A round shield with two lines crossed across the middle.
She knelt and touched it and was about to pray when the noises came.
The wind shifted with a howl. The basilica shuddered.
Epona jumped up and steadied herself on a column, but the shaking was over just as quickly as it began.
The wind continued to howl.
She watched the gusts change direction and begin to whip in from the south and throw sand off the towering dunes. The sea in the distance turned to whitecaps and swirls of sand began to be carried down the streets of the ruined city.
The prevailing winds pointed north. The dunes all sloped to the north. But now the balance of the desert and the sea beyond were changed. The top of the sea churned up for as far as she could see.
Epona felt something else. It was on the wind and moved through the stones of the ancient basilica. It was an unmistakable power. She looked out over the ocean to the horizon in the north and smiled.
He was coming.
Further Reading in The Falling Empires Saga!
I hope you enjoyed The Fall of Erlon. I’m hard at work on book 2 in the series, titled Gods of Gunpowder. In the meantime,
I’d like to offer my readers a FREE prequel novella to help pass the time before Elisa’s adventure with the army of Erlon continues:
RIOM - a prequel novella from Emperor Lannes’s rise to power.
This FREE story is exclusive to my reader group. I use this community to send periodic updates on my writing, announce new publication dates, and provide exclusive stories such as RIOM.
Sign up HERE to receive the free story and join the community!
RIOM is the story of one of Lannes’s first great battles as a general, before he rose to crown himself Emperor of Erlon and conquer most of the Continent. This famous battle took place long before Elisa was born and even before Lannes met his sorceress wife, Epona.
You’ll find a younger General Montholon was present, as well as Lauriston, Desaix, and other famous Erlonian generals.
The Battle of Riom was pivotal in Lannes’s fight against the Wahrians and served as his announcement to the enemy realm of what was to come.
Click HERE to get your exclusive story.
I hope you enjoy!
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About the Author
The Fall of Erlon Page 36