Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (8 page)

“Kinsey trusted Rosebay, and Alec trusted Rosebay, so Nathaniel and I ended up trusting Alec to make the right decision,” Imelda added. “Kinsey is a spirit ingenaire, and Alec trusts her. I do too,” the guard finished.

“So the Crown Protector told Ryder and the others not to pursue the lacertii we were fighting?” the Duke asked one last question as he prepared to move on to his next appointment.

“No, Alec didn’t give that order. He was unconscious after all the energy he expended on the battlefield. I think the others who survived on the battlefield with him told the leaders what we had done out in the wilderness,” Imelda explained.

“Did Alec agree when he awoke?”

“He hadn’t awoken by the time I left camp, but I believe he’d agree with the decision. Our own army lost a lot of men on the battlefield as well, you know. I saw so many corpses when we rode through the battleground, your grace. I’m not afraid to fight and die, but that battle, well, I don’t have words,” Imelda trailed off.

“I understand. That’s enough; I didn’t mean to grill you,” the duke responded. “You did well I know, and your service is greatly appreciated, as is your willingness to plunge right back in and go help our friends in Bondell. You’ll be sufficiently rewarded when you return, I assure you. Keep yourself and your people safe over there, and come back soon.” He walked off with his guards, leaving Imelda alone in the hallway.

After that exchange, Imelda did not see the Duke again. She felt uneasy that both Ryder and the Duke implied some criticism of Alec’s decision to send Rosebay home safely. If they had been on the battlefield they would understand so much better, she was sure. Instead, Alec, who had fought so hard, so far above any other warrior she had seen, was somehow subtly seen as weak for making a compassionate decision.

When she got back from Bondell, she would straighten things out for Alec and with Alec.

Chapter 6 – Alec in the Wilderness

Alec let Walnut ride at a gentle pace through the night. Alec didn’t have the energy to try to guide the horse through the hazards of an unknown terrain in the dark, and Walnut had spent the past two weeks without exercise, confined while Alec was unconscious, leaving the horse less fit than usual.

Alec dozed as they walked upriver, away from the camp. By the starlight and the partial moon he had seen Kinsey’s chapel on the hill when they had passed it. They continued to ride eastward, across land where the Goldenfields and Dominion armies had not pursued the fleeing lacertii. The lands had not become battlefields, and there were neither graveyards, nor many bodies still unburied, except for those lacertii soldiers who had died from injuries they received earlier. The ground nonetheless continued to be littered with equipment and material the soldiers had discarded as heavy or unnecessary while they continued their long walk homeward.

After several hours, the rim of the horizon began to brighten as dawn started to appear in front of Alec and Walnut. By the rising sun’s crimson light, Alec realized that even if the river valley hadn’t been easy to follow, the trail of the retreating army would have shown him the way towards his destination. With the sunlight illustrating the trampled ground and all the debris from the lacertii retreat, Alec had no problem in moving ahead. By mid-morning he was worn out, and got off Walnut, letting them both rest in the shade of a small riverside grove of cottonwoods, to avoid the worst of the mid-day heat.

When the height of the heat had passed, he roused himself to get back in the saddle and rode out again, heading east. His pace continued to be deliberate and easy, since he had no deadline for reaching his goal. Late in the day, he stopped to examine a sad formation; dozens of lacertii bodies lay together. He’d seen fewer and fewer dead lacertii the further he rode away from the battlefield, and this particular site was a closely packed cluster of men and women.

They were, he belatedly realized, the officer corps. They all wore uniforms with stripes and markings, and many wore elaborate swords that appeared to be too delicate for real use.

The officers must have tried to stop the retreat at this point, and the soldiers had resisted. They’d resisted to the point of mutiny, corralling the officers together, and then butchering them. Then, freed of the constraint of leaders, the soldiers must have continued on their way towards home. The smell in the air from the long-dead bodies was more than Alec could withstand, and he remounted the uneasy Walnut to ride further away.

They continued to ride until well past sunset. Alec wasn’t sure if he’d be followed. He suspected he would be; Armilla would not take kindly to his disappearance, he knew. He suffered punishment from her once before when he’d abandoned her protection, and he knew more was coming when they met again. He didn’t have the stamina to ride hard and fast, but he would travel as far as possible, to delay being caught.

After a night without a fire, he departed early and rode further, and continued to do so for several days without incident. Walnut has an abundant supply of grass to forage, while Alec ran out of camp supplies within a few days and started having to forage as well. He started eating riverside roots again, and other edible plants as he found them. His healer knowledge remained available to help him decide if something was safe or not. The same was not true of his warrior skills however. He discovered that he could not successfully use a lacertii bow and arrow he found to hunt for small game. And so he suffered a monotonous diet growing constantly thinner, and rode along, with too much time to think about too many things.

Chapter 7 – Companions in Pursuit

Kinsey awoke on the morning Alec was gone, and sensed a change. She attended her needs, then walked to Alec’s tent and discovered he was out of bed already. Surprised, she went to the mess tent, then went to Armilla’s tent. “I didn’t see Alec at his tent or having breakfast,” she informed the guardian of the crown protector.

“That boy!” Armilla immediately growled with exasperation before she even opened her eyes. “He’s run away! He was ready to yesterday, and he’s gone and done it. Let’s go see if Walnut is in camp.” They hurried over to the rope corral, where a quick survey showed Walnut was gone, and they then hurried around the guard posts to see if Alec had gone out for an early morning ride.

“No ma’am,” the sentries replied when asked if they had seen Alec ride away.

“Where’d he go, Kinsey?” Armilla asked, visibly straining to maintain her temper.

“I can’t tell,” the ingenaire replied. “I can tell he’s gone. I have a feeling, but it is so vague I don’t really even know if it is my imagination or Alec. You say he was ready to go yesterday? Where was he going to go? Why?”

“Let’s go talk to Ryder about this,” Armilla responded, and minutes later they were in the tent with the commanding officer at the camp that had remained behind to watch over Alec.

“What exactly did he say yesterday that makes you so sure he’s run away?” Ryder asked.

“We were at the chapel, and he tried to shoo me away, but I wouldn’t have any of that,” Armilla told her small audience. “Then he told me he wanted to go on a journey, and he didn’t know if he’d go back to Oyster Bay or not.”

“Let’s get a patrol mounted, and out looking for him right now,” Ryder said decisively.

“That boy has been nothing but trouble. When we find him I’m going to whip him into shape,” Armilla muttered.

Ryder briefly spoke to an aide, who went off to send the patrols in motion. Once the three of them were alone, he turned to Armilla and Kinsey again. “I don’t know exactly what happened out there while you all were along the river, but Imelda was flustered about Alec, I could tell. Then, when he awoke, I gave him a note she had left for him, and I could see the light go out in his eyes, as if she had reached out and snuffed the candle right then and there.

“He is heartbroken,” Ryder said simply.

“That’s not all,” Kinsey added tentatively.

“What else is there?” Armilla asked.

“He, he lost all his powers,” Kinsey said.

“How? When? He didn’t say anything about that,” Armilla exclaimed.

“Imelda told me. It was some type of prophecy. In order to bring Imelda back to life the last time, he had to surrender all his powers,” Kinsey explained.

“The last time? He brought her back to life more than once?” Ryder gasped.

“Twice. Actually three times, if you include the time he healed her while we were giving Rosebay her army,” Kinsey continued.

“After I knock some sense into him, I’m going to ride to Bondell and knock some sense into her!” Armilla bellowed. “That stupid girl! What was she thinking, riding away and leaving him like that after he made that type of sacrifice for her?”

“That may have been my fault,” Ryder jumped in. “I ordered her to leave quickly. I thought I was doing her a favor, getting her out of this camp. I didn’t know Alec had done so much for her. Good Lord, you should have seen the two of them fight with each other back in Goldenfields. I never would have thought there could have been any type of attachment between them.

“She’s the one who gave him one of those scars, you know,” he said, motioning to his face.

“You stay here and wait for someone to bring him back, then don’t let him out of your sight,” Ryder said as he stood. “I’m going to take the rest of what little we have in this camp out in another couple of patrols to try to find him. He must be on his way back to Goldenfields to try to find Imelda.” He left the two girls alone in the tent.

Looking at one another wordlessly, they walked out of the tent, and soon were virtually alone in the camp as all the soldiers went off in search of the missing commander.

A couple of the patrols returned empty-handed that night, but others stayed out as they ranged further towards Goldenfields in search of Alec. By the next morning, Armilla and Kinsey were getting nervous about the failure to find Alec. They met at the entrance to his empty tent, where they surprised the only two other people in camp who were not part of the search effort.

Brother Antonio and Delle Locksfort were at the tent when the girls arrived. Locksfort had stayed at the camp when the rest of the Stronghold contingent had returned to their native home. Delle had stayed because he wanted to see Alec again, even though he was ignored if not blatantly ostracized by the other residents of the camp. The Locksfort name held a terrible stigma outside of Stronghold, and so Delle had made no acquaintances except Brother Antonio.

“Any word on the search?” Delle asked Armilla as the women arrived.

“Not so far, and it’s been a day and a half since he left,” she answered. “With the road being built, he could travel quite a way in a hurry,” she thought out loud.

“What if he’s not riding on the road?” Delle asked. “What if he’s riding in the other direction?”

“You mean he might be following Rosebay?” Kinsey asked, her curiosity sparked.

“Or running away, or something else,” Delle replied.

“You don’t think he would, do you?” Armilla chimed in.

“He isn’t the type to surrender or run away,” Brother Antonio protested. “When he was trapped in his body last year, he didn’t ever give up.”

“No he wouldn’t give up, but maybe there’s something he’s running to. He could be chasing after Rosebay, to see if he could help her,” Kinsey responded.

“What good would he be to her, without his powers?” Armilla asked.

There was a silent pause as they all pondered the possibility. “It sounds right. I think he did go up the river,” Kinsey interjected. “But I don’t know why.”

“Perhaps he wanted to go back to our camp site by the river, just as a retreat, to think through everything that’s happened,” Armilla tentatively suggested.

“Maybe,” Kinsey said without conviction.

“Well, regardless, if he went east, and all the search parties went west, they aren’t going to find Alec,” Delle declared. “I’m ready to go after him and bring him back in right now.”

Armilla and Kinsey looked at one another. Kinsey sensed no malevolence or ill intent in Delle, and shrugged slightly to indicate so to Armilla.

“He’s got a day and a half lead on us,” Armilla commented without arguing, indicating she was willing to travel with the Locksfort family member. “Brother, you’ll stay here in camp and let Colonel Ryder know where we’ve gone?”

“I will,” Antonio agreed.

“Let’s get packed and get moving as quickly as we can,” Armilla told the other two. “Get your gear together, get a horse, and we’ll meet on the east side of camp in half an hour,” leading the group to briefly disband as they each momentarily went their own ways.

Chapter 8 – At the Ruined City

Alec continued his journey across the summer time steppes of the open land between Goldenfields and the Pale Mountains. Occasional summer storms drenched him with brief bouts of rain, while long stretches of sunny days left him dry and warm most of the time during his ride along the River Giffey.

A fortnight after leaving the army camp, Alec spotted a distant change on the horizon, a shadow that he knew was the first sign of the Pale Mountains. The flatness of the terrain diminished, and trees began to appear along more small waterways. Within two days, the mountains were an overwhelming fact, not to be ignored as they cast morning shadows far out across the land.