Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (4 page)

Now she was distractedly riding through the scattered remnants of a horrific battleground. She remembered how challenging it had all felt, and how invigorating she’d found those hours of swinging her sword to protect her life, when the adrenaline flowed, and her muscles burned, but she had focused more acutely than ever before in her life. And then had apparently come death (more than once according to Kinsey), and she indistinctly remembered the feeling of frustration, anger and failure as her life had ended, but for Alec’s superhuman intervention. She hadn’t been fearful when she died, just mad. And now, after that experience, maybe she’d had enough of the battles for the moment.

“There, that might be them,” Pember’s voice ended her wool-gathering as he pointed to a group of living among the many dead still scattered around the fields of slaughter.

“We need to get crews out to gather the dead for respectful burial,” Imelda said as they headed towards the people Pember had spotted. Several horses were tethered together in one spot, but the riders were not with them. Pember pointed out to Imelda where there was activity atop a nearby hill, which they approached on foot after adding their steeds to the Bondell horses.

Imelda suspected she knew this hill. There were a few scattered around the battlefield, but Imelda believed Kinsey had come to this particular one for a reason. The soiled yellow jackets had been cast aside by the soldiers who were working diligently at some laborious task, overseen by a slender woman. The jackets were the uniforms of Bondell, and the slender overseer was the Spiritual ingenaire Imelda was seeking.

“Kinsey!” she called from the foot of the hill as she began to determinedly clamber up the slope. Kinsey was standing with her back to the arriving riders, intently watching the work at hand. At the sound of Imelda’s voice the petite ingenaire turned, recognized the visitor, and waved vigorously. When Imelda arrived at the top of the knoll, she was engulfed in a hug of greeting.

“Imelda! I’m so glad to see you up! You look good,” Kinsey said, eyeing her from her toes to her eyes. Imelda happily noted that she did not feel the sense of scrutiny that she had felt previously from the examinations by Kinsey. She didn’t feel ready for her soul to be exposed more quickly than she wanted.

Kinsey herself looked more placid than she had the day before. That wasn’t surprising, given that yesterday had been a day of violent conflict, battle and discord. Imelda sensed something out of the ordinary about Kinsey, something else besides her state of mind. “Do you feel okay? Have you strained your arm working with the men up here? What are you all doing here, anyway?” she asked, looking about her at the Bondell forces that were moving lacertii corpses away from the hill top and carrying stones up the hillside.

“I did hurt my arm. How did you know?” Kinsey asked, her eyes narrowing. “And I have a slight touch of something else. I can’t explain it, but it doesn’t feel right. Probably just a girl thing…” her voice trailed off.

“I suppose it’s just the work that’s going on around us that made me wonder; that and all the stress,” Imelda replied. “What is this?” she repeated, gesturing at the men.

“I wanted to come out here this morning, and the Bondell riders came out with me. When I got here, I knew what we needed to do. We’re building a chapel,” she explained. “This is a place where folks should come to pray and say thank you to the lord and ask for more miracles,” she added. “There was so much that happened here yesterday, this is a special place.”

The men had taken a break from their labors and gathered around the women. “Were you one of the ones out here?” a thin man who was sweating profusely asked. Imelda nodded yes. “You all killed a powerful lot of lacertii here. This must have been a horrible place.”

“It was like being a pie in the middle of the table, wasn’t it, Rashrew?” Imelda responded, noting the arrival of the Bondell rider she had met the night before last.

“If Rashrew was involved, it was a sour berry pie,” a wise crack from an anonymous crew member raised guffaws.

“We’ll need to go down to the river to restock our supply of stones,” Rashrew reported to Kinsey. “We’ve got a good start to the project today. We’ll call it a day today, and start early tomorrow.

“How is it that Alec’s two favorite women are out and about without him?” Rashrew asked, stooping to pick up his yellow jersey. “Looking for more adventure? We can offer some back in Bondell, when the work here is done.”

“Alec is still recuperating, just as he did in Bondell,” Imelda told the friend of the crown-keeper. “He used so much power yesterday that his body may need days of sleep to recover.” She began walking downhill along with the others, Pember still patiently following her. “What kinds of adventures can you offer in Bondell?” she asked, curious to know what Rashrew was hinting at.

“We have always had raiders on our southern borders. Bondell’s governance peters out along the coast and the mountains, and there’s a vast land without rule that stretches between us and the foreign domains further south. It’s a place that breeds and harbors outlaws, smugglers, raiders, and worse,” Rashrew answered. “We need a force of cavalry to clear out the outlaws and bring peace to the region. Are you going to come over to visit us again and help us hunt this problem? It won’t be as ferocious as the war with the lacertii, but it will still provide the chance to ride and swing a sword, and it will make life better for many people.”

“What do you say, Pember? Do you think the Duke will lend us to his cousins in Bondell?” Imelda asked playfully. Even as she asked the question, and despite feeling her fill of war, she felt genuine interest stirring in her soul at a chance to go out and ride and fight again, after a chance to rest and recharge. Besides, she could avoid the unpleasant implications of getting tied down just yet in the politics of the Goldenfields court. She could go off for a few months and have one more adventure, one more chance to test herself in battle. As long as it did not become as brutally contested as the battlefield of the lacertii war had been, she’d be happy, and what chance was there of a brutal war with smugglers?

Pember grinned back at his captain’s jest, and the whole group rode together back in the direction of the sunset to return to camp.

Soon after their arrival, Kinsey showed up at Alec’s tent, where Imelda already sat with the unconscious warrior. “There’s something about him that isn’t the same,” Kinsey said as she knelt on the floor next to his cot. “I think that’s what I feel. He looks different, doesn’t he? He feels…different,” she frowned. “He disturbs me.”

“I thought the same thing,” Imelda answered. “Even under all the weariness, there is something going on; he has lost all his powers, you know. I wish he’d awaken soon so we could talk to him and set things right.”

“Lost his powers?” Kinsey said with a face that twisted in sympathetic pain and horror. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Are you sure? How did that happen? Just yesterday he controlled more energy than I’ve ever seen anyone manage.”

“He knew of some prophecy that said he could trade all his powers …to save me,” Imelda told her companion after a pause. “He did it while we were together the last time. I felt him give them up.”

“No wonder he feels so different,” Kinsey said under her breath as she studied both Imelda and Alec.

Imelda felt greater guilt, and a greater sense of obligation to Alec as she read the despair on Kinsey’s face, and guessed what an ingenaire would feel about losing their power. Alec had given it all up for her, she realized again. And what had she done for him? She’d turned down his affection, though she’d been a good friend about it, she felt. She heaved a great sigh.

She and Kinsey spoke no more to each other as they mulled their thoughts. Later that night, after Kinsey left with a silent hug, Imelda knelt by the cot where Alec lay. “Thank you, Alec,” she whispered.

Chapter 2 – Imelda’s Note

The next morning began early as Imelda sorted through the paperwork and reports that had piled up during her weeks upriver. Sorting through the reports was numbing, but also helped her to gain an understanding of all that had gone on in her absence. She realized in short order that Pember had done a yeoman’s work of keeping the papers moving up the chain of command effectively. As lunchtime arrived, she stretched and walked back to the tent where Alec still slept, with a priest gently chanting over his form. Armilla had appeared, and stood at guard outside the tent. She gave Imelda a friendly nod as she walked past, and the cavalry rider smiled at the sight of the stalwart protector.

“Not to worry brother, he’ll heal,” Imelda said as she entered the tent and stood by the kneeling priest.

“You say that with such casual confidence,” Antonio replied, not lifting his head.

Imelda paused. She had spoken without thinking, and it had come out with less feeling for Alec than she possessed. The presence of the priest had been unexpected, and had disrupted her plan to sit and quietly talk to Alec. Although he couldn’t hear her, she still wanted to talk to him, to comfort him and herself. Instead, she had just blundered, but she didn’t want to admit it to this uninvited stranger who was here interrupting her time with Alec. She understood why Bethany had spent so much time sitting with him in Bondell, and wondered if Bethany had resented her own presence at times.

Antonio wanted to shake his head at the girl who had barged into the tent. The guard had allowed her to enter, so she must have some role here, but her cavalier comment had disturbed the placid priest. He had recollected the events of the previous year, at a spot not far upriver, when long bouts of intense and arcane prayers had helped release a young healer from a prison of ingenaire energies. This morning he had come to the tent and begun his prayer vigil. He was virtually finished now, but he didn’t intend to leave as long as the girl was fidgeting beside him.

Another rustling behind introduced the arrival of another person into the tent of the invalid. “Imelda!” a woman’s voice called, and the two women embraced. Antonio finished his prayer, and stood, concluding that it was perhaps time to leave after all. He saw one woman with short hair and an athletic build, her arms wrapped around a willowy, green robed woman with long blond hair in a pony tail.

“Yula! I am so glad to see you,” Imelda murmured. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m doing very well,” Yula answered as they broke apart. “I slept most of the day yesterday, and took a bath, a real bath, with hot water,” she laughed a giddy laugh. “The girls from the court arranged that for me,” she finished, and noted Imelda’s slight flinch at the mention of the court.

“I saw Kinsey and the warriors from Bondell leave the camp early this morning,” Yula announced. She sat on the edge of Alec’s bed, oblivious to any protocol she might have breached. “Have you seen Shaiss or Alder or Armilla or Nathaniel?” she asked.

Antonio left the tent, still distressed by the casual manner the two women showed in the presence of the ailing sovereign. Yula glanced pointedly at the exit as he departed without speaking.

“I may have failed to properly show reverence for Alec,” Imelda explained as she rolled her eyes.

“Who would show reverence for him?” Yula asked archly, then laughed. “You know, for as much as I hated being hauled around as his container of extra energy, I wouldn’t trade most of our adventure for anything else in life. Of course, there are a couple of things I could do without,” she said as she reached over to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear. “He looks different, doesn’t he?” she observed, then continued without waiting for an answer. “He’s a good boy. He really only wanted to take care of others,” she shifted her voice from its introspective mode. “I won’t ever admit that to him of course; the way he bullied me into helping him was unfair. But I learned a lot from him, and I do feel different now.” A momentary pause gave her time to lighten her mood. “So, who have you seen since we got back?”

“Kinsey, and Allisma, and some of the Bondell riders,” Imelda answered, coming over to place her own hand on Alec’s forehead. She stroked his head repeatedly, thinking about how much she hoped he would heal soon, so they could talk. He took a deep breath, then exhaled, still looking drained and different.

“He looks a little better, don’t you think?” Yula asked. “Do you believe what Kinsey said? About them seeing us dead on the battlefield? And traveling through time to save us all? That sounds creepy, like we’re the walking dead or something unclean.”

“I believe it,” Imelda said without hesitation. “He did some things that were extraordinary, even for him, out there,” she said, thinking again about his decision to surrender his ingenaire powers. “I don’t think even Kinsey understands all that he did,” she added quietly.

“I’m going to go out to see how Kinsey and Rashrew’s crew are getting along. Do you want to come along?” Imelda asked. She bent over and kissed Alec softly, then walked to the tent flap.

“No, I’ve had all the battlefield sights I want for the time being,” Yula said, following her out of the tent. “I’m going to go see if that bathtub is still working, and then I want to see when I can return to the city, to serve the Duchess. Alec won’t need me any more, now that the battle has ended.”

Imelda promised Armilla that she’d return to talk, then rode out through the battlefield again, observing the crews at work moving corpses into rows of graves that appeared to be arranged by units, with new graveyards arising every quarter mile or so; it was a somber sight. She reached the foot of the battlefield hill and saw that the Bondell soldiers’ industrious work had already raised walls that were waist-high in some spots on top of the knoll.