The Caravan Road Read online

  “And if I had ever needed your assistance, I still would never have given you license to abuse the people of the city. This is wrong and it needs to stop!” he barked, and with that he raised his sword. “Either surrender your captive to me, or fight for the right to keep her,” Alec challenged, knowing that his explanation would make no difference to this Ajax he faced, a man who seemed determined to defend his privilege to plunder the city’s occupants of their liberty.

  The Ajax approached, and swung his sword at Alec, a tactic that Alec riposted easily. The two men disengaged and circled warily in the open space at the center of the square. The Ajax pulled a knife from his belt and held it in his left hand, while the sword remained in his right hand, and he attacked again, swinging the sword high while he flung the knife low, trying to plant it in Alec’s thigh.

  Alec dodged the low projectile with a sideways roll that also threw him clear of the man’s sword, then pulled a knife of his own out of his bandolier and tossed it before he rose back to a standing position. The knife caught the man by surprise, strangely enough, as it landed in his right shoulder, and Alec took advantage of the injury to close in upon the man. The injured Ajax was close enough, and surprised enough by the wound he had suffered, that Alec was able to launch the final stroke quickly, before the warrior could begin another attack against him.

  Alec stabbed the sword suddenly, piercing the blade into the man’s chest, letting it find the narrow gap between the ribs that allowed the metal to enter his opponent’s heart, and drop the dead officer to the ground instantaneously, a look of unspoken astonishment on his face.

  “Release the girl,” Alec told the two men who were standing slack-jawed before him. “Pick up your companions, and take them back to the palace. Tell everyone there that the rightful Duke has returned to Valeriane. The pretender must leave immediately, along with his followers.

  “Do you know where my steward, Charls, is?” Alec asked the guards before they could begin to move away from him.

  “The old Duke’s steward is in the dungeon, sir,” one of the guards spoke quickly, his eyes deferentially averted from Alec’s face.

  “I want him released, unharmed, tomorrow at nightfall, or I will punish his captors,” Alec said. “Explain that clearly to everyone at the palace. Now pick up your companions, and take your officer and go. Give the girl to me.”

  The captive was thrust forward at Alec as the soldiers hastily gathered their loads, the windblown soldiers picking up the dead officer while the other two began dragging the unconscious soldiers. Alec looked down at the girl who huddled against his chest, her pretty face pathetically streaked with tears.

  “Are you hurt?” Alec asked her.

  “No, but they murdered my father,” the girl began to cry.

  “Let’s go see. Take me to his body,” Alec commanded. “Let’s hurry.”

  He glanced over his shoulder as the girl began to run towards the market, and saw that the patrol was slowly leaving the square, while the perimeter of the open space was ringed by silent watchers, people of the neighborhood who had come to watch the unfolding confrontation. A cheer began to rise from one corner, and within seconds it had erupted on all sides.

  “Thank you,” the girl spoke over her shoulder to Alec as they entered the market. “Are you truly the old Duke? My parents said he died years ago.”

  “Those soldiers don’t think I’m dead, now do they?” Alec answered.

  They reached a knot of people gathered and stooping over someone lying on the ground. Alec shouldered his way through the crowd, dragging the girl with him, then knelt next to the man. He engaged his Healer vision and examined the man closely, as he heard the girl describing the confrontation in the square.

  “The old Duke had healing hands, I remember,” he heard one voice affirm, and then he focused solely on the body before him.

  The man was not dead. His throat had been slashed, and his blood was spreading in a pool around his body. Alec placed his hand over the man’s throat and healed the jagged cut, ending the loss of blood, then he drew one of his daggers and slashed his own arm, slashed the man’s arm, and pressed the two together. He flashed a spark of his energy to make the flesh of their two bodies grow together as a murmur went through the watching crowd.

  “What are you doing?” the girl asked in a fearful tone, leaning down over him.

  “Your father isn’t dead. I’ve healed the cut on his neck, and I’m giving him some of my blood now to replace the blood he lost, and to give him strength,” Alec reached with his free hand to take the girl and guide her to his side, then placed one of her hands on her father’s chest, followed by placing her other hand on his own chest. “Do you feel that?” he asked.

  “Our hearts are beating in rhythm right now while we pump blood through one another. Your father should revive in just a few more seconds,” he told her.

  The girl’s eyes shifted from watching his face to looking intently at her father’s face.

  “Everyone stand back so the man can have air,” Alec spoke loudly, raising his eyes to look at the surrounding faces. There was rapt reverence in the faces.

  “You are the old Duke,” one woman whispered.

  Just then there was a groan from the man on the ground. His eyes fluttered open, and he tried to move his hand towards his throat, only to find it bound to Alec’s arm. He blinked and looked at his daughter’s face.

  “Carla?” he asked.

  While the man was distracted, Alec slashed his knife between their arms, severing the contact, then reached quickly with his right hand to heal the man’s cut forearm, while Alec’s left hand dropped his knife and reached over to heal his own arm.

  “The Duke! The Duke brought him back to life! Duke Alec is back to save us!” voices began to cheer and whisper simultaneously.

  “Oh daddy,” the red-headed girl began to cry, and wrapped her father in a fierce hug, all the pent up emotions of her traumatic afternoon erupting.

  Alec stood. “I imagine the pretender may send soldiers here to seek vengeance for his dead courtier,” he warned everyone nearby. “I’d suggest everyone may want to stay away for a day or two until I can straighten things out at the palace.” With that warning, he pressed his way out of the crowd and began to leave the market, followed by an enthusiastic crowd of new adherents.

  When he reached the open space of the square, he turned to address the crowd that was devotedly following him. “I am the Duke Alec, returned to reclaim the seat of power in the palace, and to restore the proper administration of the city. For now, I ask that you all disperse, and take steps to protect yourselves for the next few days until I have control of the city.”

  He looked around at the crowd which remained in place, and realized that he would not be able to evade them as long as they could see him. He needed to get away from his followers to take the next step he had planned, so he engaged his Light ingenaire powers and disappeared from the view of the crowd, drawing startled gasps and screams.

  Alec worked his way free of the crowd in the square, and silently prayed that he would be able to unseat the pretender Duke before the man had time to send soldiers on a mission of vengeance to the market. He needed to get to the palace and infiltrate it immediately, so that he could spring free his steward Charls, before any harm was done to the man in the dungeon, provided Charls really was in the dungeon.

  Alec had not used so many of his ingenaire powers, so continuously, since long before he had left the clinic up in the mountains, and he felt the strain of continuing to call upon the energy from the ingenaire realm; he’d used Warrior, Air, Healer, and Light powers so far during the encounter. He stepped into a doorway and dropped his Light powers so that he was once again visible, then returned to his inn to rest briefly before his planned rescue mission at the palace. He sat in the tavern room, drinking berry juice and eating a bowl of stew, trying to recollect the layout of the palace in the heart of the city, and the best way to slip into the dungeons to set
Charls free.

  He concluded that a passage through the gardens would be best, and sat back to watch the people in the tavern. It was the drama of everyday life, played out before his very eyes; a craftsman was talking to an apprentice at one table, sternly setting the young man’s feet on a responsible path, hopefully, while at another table a wife listened with barely concealed boredom as her husband described his plans to make a brand new start through some business venture Alec didn’t comprehend, and at another table a merchant was alternately trying to sell his wares to a customer while flirting with the waitress.

  There were so many lives in the city, Alec reflected, each person chasing some purpose or cause. He had not pursued a cause in many decades, he realized, not since he had defeated Hellmann, after he had fought so long and hard to secure the throne for Caitlen. He had worked in recent years to create his oasis of stability in the mountains, the clinic and surrounding community, over a protracted period of time, but without facing great obstacles. It had been a work of love and the establishment of a refuge from Avonellene’s petty politics, but it had not been driven by the passion or desperate need that had driven him to defeat Hellmann, over a century earlier.

  He paused as his mind rolled over the concept of a century of placid, relatively peaceful life, interrupted only by his grief over Caitlen’s death, at a ripe old age, after her long, fulfilling life. He had overseen the burial of his wife, his third great love, and had concluded that wrenching as the pain of loss was, he had been blessed in his supernaturally long life to have been given three such romances, with three such extraordinary women. His reign with Caitlen had been a powerfully rewarding one because she had shared with him the power of healing, following her visit to John Mark’s cave, and their ability to move among her subjects and spontaneously cure their ailments had made them a beloved imperial couple.

  This quest he was on now, he realized, was in part his effort to approximate the sense of purpose that a grand quest provided. Yet scouring the false Duke out of Valeriane and restoring proper governance to the city did not truly feel like an all-consuming quest. He knew that he would accomplish his goal, then leave the city once again, placing it back in the hands of his steward, and return to the clinic in the mountains. He planned only one indulgence for himself, with a side trip to Warm Springs, to visit his lokasennii friends, who he had not seen in twenty years or more.

  “The old duke has returned! He’s going to set us free from the tyrant!” a man burst into the tavern.

  “Sit down and have another drink!” someone shouted at the crier, believing the man to be drunk.

  “No, it’s true! He killed the Marquis of Thermore, right in the middle of the eastern market square, when the marquis tried to take a girl to the palace,” the man spoke insistently.

  There was a muttering of acknowledgement of the likelihood of such an action by the Marquis, and as Alec extended his Spiritual powers gently into the crowded room, he sensed profound distaste for the marquis, and satisfaction over the rumors of his demise.

  “Where is the old duke now?” someone asked.

  “He disappeared. He said he was going to go fight the new duke and take control of the city!” the announcer shouted. “Go to the castle and you’ll see for yourself,” he instructed, and then he was gone back out the door, on his way to spread his urgent tidings to more people.

  Most folks turned away from the door following the man’s departure, and muttered among themselves at their tables, laughing at the notion of the mythical duke returning to Valeriane.

  “Quite the entertainment,” the waiter commented as he checked to see if Alec wanted more to drink.

  “He was telling the truth,” Alec said quietly.

  The waiter looked at Alec is disbelief.

  “The old duke is back, Duke Alec, and he’s going to reclaim the palace,” Alec told the waiter. He reached out his hand and placed it on the waiter’s forearm. This city will soon change for the better, he silently communicated, then stood, and walked out of the tavern room, back out onto the street so that he could head towards the palace to set Charls free.

  As he walked among the people and the vendors and the horse-drawn wagons upon the city’s streets, Alec listened to the buzzing conversations taking place around him, conversations that were uniformly focused on the rumors about what had happened in the square. He was bemused by the realization of how quickly the one single event had catalyzed the entire city; it was evidence that the city had been full of dry kindling waiting for a spark to drop in and light a fire, he concluded.

  “The duke is going to attack the square,” he heard one person tell another as he approached the palace. Alec turned and seized the arm of the man who had just spoken.

  “What did you say?” Alec asked.

  “The duke is sending a score of troops to the market to get vengeance for the death of the marquis. I just saw the troops leave the palace five minutes ago,” the man said to Alec.

  Without further comment, or even thanks, Alec released the man and reversed his course, running through the streets. He didn’t want the innocent bystanders at the market square to suffer for his actions; the duke was resorting to violence too quickly. If, he told himself, he could cut off this attack, then he could go directly to the palace and start to take action there, to freeze the pretender in place until Alec could eliminate him.

  Running, dodging, hurdling over obstacles at times, Alec moved rapidly back towards the square. As he approached it he looked down a side street and saw the soldiers in question moving in the same direction as him, marching down a parallel street, at a slower pace than Alec traveled. He put on a burst of ingenaire energy and sprinted ahead, then reached the square with a minute to spare.

  “He’s back! Duke Alec is returned!” someone recognized him and started to herald him.

  “Get back! Everyone seek safety; soldiers are coming,” Alec shouted out a warning as he took a position in the center of the square. The level of activity in the square increased as people started to run for cover, urging their animals, gathering their belongings, and otherwise trying to vacate the imminent battlefield.

  “We’ll help you, your highness,” Alec heard a voice, and turned to see the man he had healed earlier, the father of the red-headed girl, holding a hatchet, at the head of a small column of other marketplace denizens, all similarly armed with simple weapons.

  If Alec were to let such untrained citizens attempt to fight the practiced veterans of the palace guard, the result would be a horrific slaughter, he foresaw. But he felt touched by the loyalty the men had so quickly pledged to him, and their offer to fight on his behalf. He looked around at the physical environment of the market square, then motioned towards an alley. “Do any of you have bows and arrows?” he asked. Less than half the men raised their hands.

  “Everyone who has them, go to that alley,” he told them. “The rest of you, go to that alley over there,” he pointed in the opposite direction. “Once you’re there remain there silently until I signal to you to attack,” he instructed, then watched the mob separate into two portions that went their separate ways. When each was in place, Alec engaged his light energies to create invisibility shields that hid each group from sight. The rest of the square rapidly grew empty in short order, and Alec stood alone in the empty space, able to hear the sound of the approaching soldiers, who emerged into view within minutes, and came directly towards him when they found no other obvious target. Alec let them approach, carefully walking backwards at a slow pace, drifting to his left, towards the alley where his armed supporters waited.

  He stopped when he was within ten paces of the alley, and examined his pending opponents. The column of soldiers was over two score in number, but the two men at the front of the column were the ones he focused on. They displayed such an arrogant air of smooth confidence that Alec was sure they had to be Ajacii, a pair of imposing warriors sent to investigate and avenge the circumstances that had felled one of their fellows.
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  “I am the Duke Alec, rightful leader of Valeriane. I command you all to kneel in acknowledgement of my sovereignty in the city, or be prepared to face the consequences,” Alec spoke first.

  “Whoever you are,” one of the presumed Ajacii said, “whatever you are, you are accused of murder for the death of the Marquis of Thermore. Surrender your weapons and submit to capture.”

  “I’ve fought two Ajacii before,” Alec replied in a careful tone. “They were good. Abelard and Isial: I fought them long ago, and it was a hard battle, but in the end I was alive and they weren’t. Don’t tempt fate – surrender and acknowledge my rule now.”

  “I am little impressed by your ability to cite mythology,” the other Ajax replied. They two were not twins, but they shared dark brown hair and round faces that sat atop stocky, muscular bodies. From the rear they might have seemed to be twins, Alec guessed as he looked at them closely.

  Alec knew that his Warrior abilities were strong, but his use of them was rusty. Other than his struggle earlier in the day, he’d not fought a battle for a purpose in over a decade, not since the last time he had cleared a gang of bandits off the caravan road. And he intended to split the stream of ingenaire power he called upon, which would diminish his Warrior strength to some degree. He would need to be very careful with this match, and take his time.

  Alec proceeded to engage his Spiritual ingenaire energy while keeping his Light energy flowing, then added the stream of power from the Warrior portion of the Ingenairii realm. All three flows of energy coursed smoothly through him, the Light power maintaining the camouflage for his small bands of supporters, the Warrior power coiled and ready to propel him into battle, while the Spiritual power separated the two, preventing his body from shutting down by insulating the two conflicting energy sources from one another. All three energies would be less than maximal, but Alec was strong in his ability to handle the powers, strong enough to utilize great resources from each.