Linkershim sotsi-6 Read online

  Chapter 4

  Alexander feigned near unconsciousness while a soldier dressed his burns, searching for a way to escape using his all around sight. What he saw was an impossible situation. There were nearly sixty Lancers in the immediate area and they were all alert and disciplined, professional soldiers who had plenty of experience in the field and who seemed to be particularly adept at securing prisoners.

  Just as the soldier finished bandaging his arm, Anja woke with a start. Alexander saw the flare of fear and rage in her colors when she realized her hands and feet were bound. With a battle cry that would have made the most hardened barbarian proud, she broke her bonds and surged to her feet in a crouch, snatching a dagger from the soldier kneeling next to Alexander and plunging it into his neck, then stalking toward Commander Udane. Before she could lunge at him, he raised his hand and a nearby Lancer unleashed his force lance at her, sending her tumbling across the forest floor. A moment later, two men were on her, one snapping a thin metal collar around her neck before she threw them both off of her and sprang to her feet.

  Udane smiled, touching his ring. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath and struggling to remove the collar.

  “Stop!” Alexander shouted. “Please, don’t hurt her. She’ll behave if I tell her to, just don’t kill her, please.”

  Udane regarded Alexander for a moment before touching his ring again. Anja gasped for breath, then broke into a fit of coughing and sputtering.

  “Anja, listen to me,” Alexander said. “Stop fighting. They’ll kill you.”

  She looked up at him and a flurry of emotions cascaded through her colors: fear, anger, despair, loyalty, and finally love. She nodded to him.

  “She won’t be a problem for you anymore,” Alexander said. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  “Hurt her?” Udane said, looking at Alexander as if they were both speaking different languages. “Young women fetch a good price at market, but only if they’re healthy, and especially if they have a fiery spirit. She’s worth five of you. The last thing I want to do is hurt her, but she will learn obedience or she’s worthless to me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘fetch a good price at market’?” Alexander asked.

  Udane looked at him again and frowned. “Huh … well, I guess it’s understandable that you’re ignorant of our ways, so I’ll explain things to you. You’ll be sold as slaves at market in Mithel Dour, Andalia’s capital city.”

  “What do you mean ‘slaves’?”

  “Just that, you’ll probably be bought by the Andalian Mining Company along with the rest of the sailors we captured earlier, and she’ll probably be bought by some noble or other.”

  “How can you sell us into slavery?” Alexander asked. “We haven’t done anything to deserve this.”

  “Deserve’s got nothing to do with anything,” Udane said. “First, the king has decreed that all castaways who wash up on Andalian soil are to be taken as slaves. Second, this province is under a liquidation order.”

  “What does that mean?” Alexander asked, horror tickling at the back of his mind.

  “By order of the king, no subject of the Andalian Empire is permitted to live in mountainous or forested regions because of the difficulty such terrain poses to the daily operations of the Lancers. In short, we can’t adequately provide for the safety and well-being of people living in these regions, so they’ve been ordered to relocate to more suitable areas.”

  “What if they don’t want to leave their homes?”

  Udane shrugged, “That’s what the sequestration is for.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “This province has been cut off from the rest of Andalia. No trade is permitted and all who chose to remain here after the initial relocation period are to be captured as slaves or killed for treason.”

  “You’re starving out this whole province?” Alexander asked, swallowing back the urge to vomit. In that moment, his resolve hardened and his mission shifted. Until the horrible truth of Andalian rule had been made plain to him, his only concern was escaping this place and returning home, but the depravity of the Andalian government’s tyranny was beyond evil, their violation of the Old Law so complete, that Alexander silently added another enemy to the long list of those that he intended to destroy.

  Udane chuckled. “I didn’t think it’d work at first, but the strategy has proven to be remarkably effective. The number of insurrectionist attacks coming from this province has been cut nearly in half just this winter.

  “But that’s enough talk for now.” He held up a metal collar, hinged on one side with a clasp on the other, runes etched into the metal, colors of potent magic radiating from it. “Put this on.”

  Alexander reassessed his situation: there was still virtually no chance of escape.

  Choking down bile, he took the collar and snapped it around his neck.

  “That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?” Udane said. “I suppose I should tell you how these collars work so you don’t get yourself killed out of ignorance. If you wander too far from this ring I’m wearing or if I command it, the collar will choke you. Simple, right?”

  Alexander nodded curtly, still struggling to master the rage boiling in his belly.

  “I’m glad we understand each other.” Then, turning to his men, Udane said, “Let’s get mounted up.”

  “But, sir, she killed Johansson. We should hang her for that.”

  Udane snorted derisively. “If Johansson was stupid enough to let a little girl kill him, then he wasn’t fit to serve under my command.”

  He stopped, frowning to himself and then raised his voice. “Hear me well, these prisoners belong to me. If any harm comes to them while under your care, I’ll kill you myself, and I’ll take my time doing it. Understood?”

  There was a nervous murmuring of assent.

  “I said, do you understand?” Udane shouted.

  “Yes sir!” his men responded in chorus.

  “Good. Now mount up.”

  ***

  Alexander and Anja each rode behind a soldier on one of the big rhone steeds that Andalia was famous for. The soldiers were experienced riders, comfortable in the saddle and skilled at guiding their mounts through the difficult terrain of the forest, but it was clear within minutes that they couldn’t be effective in any real engagement in such terrain, certainly not with the devastating effectiveness they could bring to a battle on the open plains.

  “How’s Jack doing, Little One?”

  “He’s struggling to keep up, but your trail is easy to follow.”

  “Good. Tell him we have a new objective.”

  “Yes, My Love.”

  “We’re going to Mithel Dour to destroy the Andalian government. Tell him to stay with us as best he can and tell him to stay out of sight. Oh, and tell him he’ll need papers to travel safely through Andalia. I’m not sure what that means, but I suspect he’s resourceful enough to figure it out.”

  “I will relay your messages, My Love. Are you all right?”

  “I’m pretty beat-up at the moment, but I’ll heal.”

  An hour after they set out, they reached a big meadow where several mountain streams fed into a lake that flowed into a small river. There they joined up with another platoon that had captured some of Kalderson’s crew. Only seven remained, including the captain. Alexander hoped the others had escaped into the forest, but he suspected that most were dead.

  Udane called a rest break near the river.

  Alexander stretched after dismounting. The soldiers didn’t seem too concerned that he might run off, maybe even hoped that he would test the collar around his neck.

  “Commander, may I go get cleaned up?” Alexander asked, motioning to the vomit still staining his tunic.

  “Please let him get cleaned up, Commander,” the soldier he’d been riding with said. “If I have to keep smelling him, I’m going to retch myself.”

  “Go ahead. Just remember,” Udane said holding up his ring, “more than a hundred f
eet and I might not find you before you choke to death.”

  “I understand,” Alexander said. He would execute Udane without a second thought, but he decided that being polite and civil might buy him the leeway he would need to escape when the time was right.

  He pushed through the tall grass and found a little pool of still water next to a large tree at the edge of the meadow. After a moment of searching for any soldiers watching him, he was satisfied that they’d left him unsupervised. He stripped off his tunic. Then he took off his armor shirt, rolling up one of his most prized possessions and hiding it under the roots of the tree before thoroughly washing his tunic and wringing it as dry as possible.

  “Mark this place, Little One, and guide Jack here. Tell him to wear my armor until he can give it back to me. It’ll serve him well.”

  “But won’t you need it, My Love?”

  “If they found it on me, it would raise too many questions that I don’t care to answer. I’m safer without it for now. Just make sure Jack retrieves it, because I do want it back.”

  Alexander returned to the Lancers a few minutes later.

  “You learn quickly,” Udane said. “I expected you to run off.”

  “Then why did you let me wander away without an escort?”

  “The first attempt at escape usually proves to be a very educational experience. We wouldn’t want to deprive you of the opportunity to learn your place, now would we?”

  Alexander didn’t respond to the taunt, but instead dutifully mounted up.

  Sometime later in the afternoon, he noticed the colors of several men on a bluff overlooking the trail they were following. A moment later, the sensation of danger flooded into his mind, the coming moments revealing themselves to him all in a rush. He slipped backward off the rump of the rhone and tumbled behind a tree, attempting to make it look like it was a clumsy accident. A moment later, a volley of arrows rained into the side of the soldier and rhone, killing them both. Rocks broke free from the bluff and started crashing into the flank of the Lancers’ single-file column, killing two more rhone along with their riders, followed by a second volley of arrows that killed another three Lancers before the attackers vanished into the forest.

  It was over before any resistance could be organized. The position of the attackers, coupled with the steep terrain, made it impossible for the Lancers to give chase. Udane rode along the line of his soldiers, inspecting the damage and cursing under his breath.

  He stopped and looked down at Alexander, who sat resting against the tree. “Looks like you got lucky today.”

  “There are a lot of ways I might characterize today … lucky isn’t one of them.”

  Udane chuckled. “Mount up with another soldier and try not to fall off this time. Hate to have to put you down because you broke your leg.”

  Just before the sun slipped past the coastal range behind them, Alexander got his first look at the scope of the Lancers’ operation. Several hundred feet beyond the wood line, stretching as far as he could see in both directions, was a timber wall. Behind it was a large fortified camp divided into two sections, one with walls to keep the Lancers safe from attack and another with walls to ensure that their prisoners didn’t escape.

  Despite the blatant immorality and inherent dishonor of the Lancers, they were a well-regulated and disciplined fighting force. Rank was obeyed and they carried themselves with pride. These were professional soldiers, and all the more dangerous because of it.

  Alexander and Kalderson’s men were taken to the prison camp. While the soldiers certainly didn’t show them any respect, they were handled with the kind of care given to a valuable commodity as they were processed and assigned sleeping quarters.

  Alexander soon found himself in a large tent with eleven other men, most of them Andalians. A soldier assigned him to his cot and informed him that the evening meal would be served shortly.

  He lay down, ignoring the rest of the men in the tent and cleared his mind. Several moments later, he slipped free of his body into the boundless source of all creation and then just as quickly he slammed back into his body again, struggling to breathe, gasping for air, the collar around his neck relaxing its death grip a moment after he returned. He breathed deliberately, filling his lungs to capacity and exhaling slowly until his heart stopped racing.

  The next man over was sitting on the edge of his cot looking at Alexander intently. “That shouldn’t have happened unless you’re a wizard … and then only if you’re dumb enough to try and cast a spell with that choker around your neck.”

  Alexander sat up shaking his head, the implications of the man’s words sinking in even as he floundered for a plausible explanation. The last thing he needed was for anyone to figure out who he really was.

  “Udane said he was going to punish me for trying to run,” he said, touching his neck tenderly.

  “We all try to run.”

  “Yeah, but I busted him in the mouth when he caught me.”

  The man looked at him for several moments before a smile slowly spread across his face and he broke into laughter. He was a mousy little man, five and a half feet tall and just over a hundred pounds, but he had curiosity in his eyes and deep turmoil and loss swirling in his colors.

  “I’m Hod,” he said, extending his hand.

  Alexander took it and said, “I’m Alex.”

  “You don’t look like you’re from Andalia, Alex.”

  “I’m not. My sister and I booked passage out of Southport, bound for Baden in Tyr. The war is getting bad on Ruatha and we have kin on Baden. Unfortunately, we were attacked by pirates and our ship wrecked on the reef. We barely made it to shore.”

  Hod nodded cynically. “Doesn’t surprise me. The Babachenko and Tyr have an arrangement. Any ship off our coast that’s not flying the Andalian flag is fair game for Tyr. He attacks them, runs them to ground and then lets the crew escape into the forest, while he strips their ship of anything worth taking. Then the Lancers round up the castaways and sell them at the slave market.”

  “This place just keeps getting better. So who’s this Babachenko?”

  “You really aren’t from around here,” Hod said. “He’s the Voice of the King, the real power behind the throne. The most important thing to know about him is that you don’t want him to know anything about you. Slaves who attract his attention have a bad habit of disappearing.”

  “Good to know,” Alexander said, mentally adding a name to his list.

  In the distance, a bell tolled three times and Hod stood, rubbing his hands together. “Time to eat,” he said eagerly. “As much as I hate the Lancers, I have to admit they do feed us well. Certainly a lot better than we’ve had since the sequestration started.”

  “They feed cows and pigs pretty well, too, right before they take them to market,” Alexander said under his breath.

  ***

  After dinner, the slaves returned to the tent, not because the Lancers required them to, but because they had nowhere else to go. Alexander got the impression that the Lancers were indifferent to the prisoners’ conditions. Their only real concerns were ensuring that their merchandise wasn’t damaged and didn’t escape.

  Alexander noted that the women were being kept separately from the men, probably a wise precaution from the Lancers’ point of view, but it left him separated from Anja and he was worried about her. For all of her strength and fierceness, she was really just a child and she was very much out of her depth. More calculatingly, Alexander also had to admit that she posed the greatest risk of exposure for him and his identity. At the moment, the only thing they had going for them was anonymity. If anyone even suspected who he really was, things would get much worse very quickly.

  He lay down on his cot and reached out for Chloe.

  “Have you looked in on Anja?”

  “Yes, My Love. She seems frightened and alone. I’m worried about her.”

  “Me too. When you get a chance to talk to her without others noticing, let her know that I have
n’t forgotten about her, but that we’re going to be here for a while and I need her to be strong, I need her to avoid calling attention to herself and I need her to play the role of the obedient slave.”

  “I will tell her, My Love. Jack has retrieved your armor and he’s also discovered people resisting the Lancers in this area.”

  “I saw them, too.”

  “He wants to know if he should make contact with them.”

  “No. As much as I’d like to help these people, we just aren’t in a position to do so right now and I can’t risk Jack being exposed or captured. Our objective here is the destruction of the Andalian government and especially the king and his precious Crown.”

  “I will tell him, My Love.”

  “One more thing, Little One. I can’t touch the firmament with this collar around my neck, so let him know that I’ll have to relay messages through you.”

  “Yes, My Love. Stay safe,” she said in his mind.

  And then he was alone with his thoughts. “You still awake, Hod?”

  “Yeah, it takes me longer to fall asleep here. I guess I just don’t feel safe.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alexander said. “Tell me more about Andalia.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why the Lancers are starving out this province, for starters.”

  “Well, that depends a lot on who you ask,” Hod said. “The government says it’s to protect the people from bandits and insurrectionists, but most of the people in the areas ruled off-limits say it’s to make it easier for the Lancers to collect taxes and dictate terms to the people.”

  “Who are these insurrectionists?”

  “Mostly it’s just people who didn’t leave their homes when they were told to. When they didn’t leave, the Lancers came in and cut off trade, so they turned to banditry to feed their families. The government points to the crime happening in the area as justification for the sequestration that caused the banditry in the first place.”

  “So this province isn’t the first to be starved out?”

  “No, this is the third,” Hod said. “It all started when Phane woke. The king decreed that all taxes would double to pay for the defense of Andalia against the pretender. The people living in the plains didn’t have much choice, but those of us living in more rugged areas mostly ignored the order. Lancers were sent to collect the taxes, but a lot of them never returned. The government responded by stirring up the people in the cities, telling them that the bandits were stealing children and other nonsense. When the people didn’t believe them, children started to actually go missing. It wasn’t long after that, that the people started demanding emergency measures to deal with the threat.