The Nightmare Ends

A storm had dumped a light cover of snow on the battleground late in the night, but the bright sun reflected off the armor of the imperial troops like a signal. The flickering figures spread out before us, gray against the white field.

From my vantage point behind the front shield wall of Aygar warriors I could see rolls and rolls of mail clad soldiers, armed to the teeth with the best the Letranian Empire could offer.

Here and there the banners of the noble houses of Letran defined the different companies. I counted three. Three out of seven.

 I could see the battle formation in my mind, just as it was displayed on wall of the common room of my Letranian barracks. I knew the formation instantly. Once the Imperial army was on the field it would choose the best formation based on the tactical needs and the terrain. 

My mind traveled back to my days in the dorms in the Guardian Barbican, I saw the circles representing the archers, the squares for the horseman, the crosses for the pikeman, the dots for the footman. And the star, the leader of the company.

 Without thought, I had summed these factors within minutes of reaching this field before the besieged city of Rocia.

The city the Letran Empire consider its ancient homeland. The city sat on the Cospor Strait dominating the passage between the White Sea and the Northern Sea of Rocia.

The Aygar horde warriors surrounding me were a stark contrast to their adversaries. They gathered shoulder to shoulder in a tight wall, a formation the imperial troops had not seen since ancient times.

Earlier the year before, the Aygar had rode out of the Untac plains, allied with the smaller valley tribes and began to raid the smaller border towns and cities until the great barbarian horde threaten to cut off Rocian supply routes and strangle it slowly.

Demek, their prince, literally bounced beside me. His great double headed battle axe passed from one large palm to the other.  He was magnificent, his brown eyes shined with anticipation, his wide broad face grim. He wore a battle harness stretched across his powerful chest.

I grinned, remembering the first time I saw him, in the site of my crossbow, charging across an icy battlefield swinging that battle axe the size of a wagon wheel.

The plan was to kill the young prince during the battle on the Plain of Frost, ridding his older brother of a popular rival. I was the assassin given this simple task. It was my profession.

Needless to say, I did not close my assignment that day. I had taken him as a lover, instead. As I stated before, he was magnificent. It was proving to be a passionate, guarded relationship.

A battle horn sounded, pealing through the still cold morning air, and Demek’s axe handle stopped in his fist with a smack.

A rumble started as the Imperial troops started forward in their nice, neat battle formations.

The Aygar warrior were not so nice, or neat.

They banged their weapons on their shields. They screamed insults and slurs, forming at the mouth like rabid dogs. I could only aspire that the line of screaming cussing bare-chested barbarians would startle the facing troops.

Demek turned his head locking his golden gaze with mine. Suddenly, he reached across, with one arm, seizing me about the waist. He caught my mouth in a crushing kiss.

My body immediately molded itself against his side; my arms reaching up to grasp his neck and hang there returning his kiss with equal savor. The clamor in my head turned to liquid fire and flowed through my body.

Demek released me finally, sliding me down his body to his side. He looked down at me and frowned. “Stay behind me.”

“No!” I whispered. Demek’s brow lowered with a growl.

The line broke and Dakar’s hunting horn blasted the call to advance.

Demek reached for me, but I swirled from him and was gone.

 I was free.

I still tasted Demek, could still feel the fire in my veins and I let that fire free. It consumed me and I dance in it. I flew into the struggle, hardly noticing my fellow combatants. 

Among the horde’s weapon stash, I had found a genuine heft staff, it’s long staff a beautiful, polished wood, the head solid pure heft metal. Where the barbarians had found it, the stars only know, but I precured it immediately

I did want to lose the weapon and held it firm as I used it to vault for the elongated shields of the Imperials line, landing behind and in the midst of the main foot soldiers.

Even in my heated battle rage, my goal was clear. My mind set the circles, squares crosses and dots in the formation.  Foot soldiers. Pikeman, Horseman. And the Star, right before his bannerman, his personal guards.

I knew of one unit that would not be on the battlefield that day. In fact, the unit had not been included in an Letranian Imperial Army in almost a decade. It was a unit that had no symbol. An invisible unit.

The Dini warrior. I knew the Dini would not be there, because only a few dini trained were alive and I was one of those few.

I threw the staff, impaling a unshielded footman yards ahead of me. I would retrieve the staff later.

In an instant, I drew both knives in a hissing cross.

I was well in front of the charging line, and I swirled into the first three shielded warriors before me, slicing them down in a long ribbon of blood. Leaping over the fallen men, I spun again taking out the two warriors behind them. Before my feet had squared, I was slashing right down and up, before slipping under a raised arm holding an Letranian board sword.

The Aygar objective was the Duke of Ausing, Leto Neron, brother to the emperor, and consider the leader of the Imperial army. The reasoning being in capturing or killing the duke would end the conflict. I knew a faster way to resolve this battle.

Jerni.

The head of Attu’s army and his most formable general. I reasoned on my own, taking out Jerni of Fells Uster would dissolve the battle lines into chaos in a matter of minutes.

Also, it would soothe my inner demons. My revenge against a man who had too long held my life in his steel gantlet hand.

Jerni had formed the Dini, recruiting the low street children of the dock district into the secret unit while we were barely adolescents. Most of us saw it was an opportunity to escape the hardship and starvation of the day-to-day existence of the gutter of the dock. I was volunteered by my mother, a popular dock whore looking for a position in the upper pleasure houses. My mother, Falene, figured it was the dini or whoring. 

“You will take to this life easy, Elu.” She told me as she braided my unruly copper locks into a warrior braid before she shaved my temples. “It is in your blood. You are half Aygarian.”

Her argument surprised me. She rarely spoke of my barbarian blood or her captivity amongst the plain tribes.

In the end it did not matter that I did excel at the harsh training, becoming the most successful dini warrior of the unit five year later.  Jerni gifted the unit to Attu Regard, the Emperor, who promptly sold the whole unit to a faraway country as bride price for the hand of a foreign princess. The males in the company were to be sold into mercenary camps, while the females were to be whored out as spies and assassins. Five years of brutal training to become the whore my mother hoped to save me from.

When I rebelled, Jerni gave me to the dini training master, Broccus, to rape and torture.

He had thrown my battered and torn body into the East harbor. I was saved by a beggar boy hoping to steal the torn training leathers I still wore.

Five hard years later, I had regained my health, a little of my mind, but I had lost so most because of this man.

I sought the blue and gold pennant with the Golden Sparrow, emblem of Jerni’s house.  The dots, circles, squares and cross narrowed to just the star. Jerni.

A man in Letranian red roared towards me, I did not slacken my charge. Lifting my daggers, I threw back and slide on my rump pass him, hamstringing him with my right dagger as I pass. With an enormous heave, I bounced to my feet. I reached the staff, still embedded, and heaved it loose.

I saw him then.

Jerni sat atop a large black destriers, behind him the Golden Sparrow banner moved fitfully in the still cold air.

I quickly counted six bannerman ranged around their master, but they didn’t seem interested in one lone female barbarian.  I did not wear the classic fighting leather of a dini warrior with the distinctive red and black stripping.  I wore the boiled leather of the horde.  No one seemed to notice that heft staff as I raised the weapons and took aim.

I heaved the staff back. Jerni sat unaware. The perfect target.

I caught the movement a second before the moving man rammed into my left side. My shoulder screamed, and a white blur of pain blinded me, as I was slammed to the hard frozen ground.

I laid in the snow and dirt, the air in my chest driven out by the blow. 

A warrior in only leathers dyed in the green and gold of Jerni’s house stood above me. He wore an old fashion helm, the nose piece obscured most of his face.

I attempted to scoot back as he moved to stand astride me, but my shoulder failed me, the pain too intense for movement.

“I thought that was you, Mouse.” He growled down at me. “I recognized the movements.”

It was the voice of my nightmares.

He bent drawing the helm off and there he was. Broccus.

The last years fell away and I more once more the scared trainee and the defiant warrior hoping to save some dignity before this monster.  

Even as my mind and body froze, I saw Jerni and his bannerman had noticed Broccus and me. Jerni frown to doubt confused at the strange tableau.

One gesture from the old training master and the six bannerman moved to circle us.  

Broccus bent to me again, his grin splitting his ugly torn face. “Well, well. I heard you were alive. Image my surprise when I see you spinning like a dini.” He grabbed brace of my fighting harness, jerking me up. “You soil the tradition with your dirty half blood, just like you also did. You’re a traitor to the other half your whore mother gave you.” He screamed in my face, his breath warming my skin.

He took a firmer grip on my brace, freeing one hand. He drew a blade from his leathers.

I was going to die. Here on a frozen battlefield, miles from my homeland, by the hand of a beast I thought I had escaped.

Suddenly my mind cleared, and I stared up at Broccus, watching his arm swing back and the familiar fighting blade, twin to my own, arch towards my throat. I would watch death come for me. I would force myself to meet his gaze even as I bled out in his hands.

There was a cry and gurgle and I thought it was sad I sounded that way.

Broccus’ arm stopped abruptly, his head jerking up a moment before huge shadow covered us both.  

I caught the look of surprise on Broccus’ face, and then he was gone, my body dropped back to the ground with a thud.

Demek stood before me and on top of Broccus. 

I watched in wonder and awe as Demek’s back muscles bunched and twisted when he wretched his battle axe from Broccus’ skull. I turned my eyes to the Broccius’ body beneath Demek’s boots as it jerked, sending blood spurting over the thin layer of snow.

Demek turned to me then, his wide chest heaving. Bending he offered his free hand.

I could just stare at it, still amazed that one of horrors of my life as gone forever.

“We are in the middle of a battle, Elu.” Demek crouched and sat me up. I gasped in pain, and he stilled instantly.

“What? How bad are you injured.”

“My shoulder. Something is broken.”

He frowned, then nodded before turning. “Raff!”

I suddenly noticed all his men had reached us, some bending to dispatch Jerni’s bannerman. Jerni was gone, retreating back towards the Letranian lines.

A tall lanky figure came running at Demek’s bellow and I was relieved to see the youngest warrior in Demek’s train had made it through the fighting.

“Stay with her. Shield her. If she comes to anymore grief, you suffer the same.” Demek pointed a thick finger at the youngster before turning back to me. “I have to finish this battle. Stay with Raff. Stay down until the rest of the company finds you. Understand me. Stay down.”

A strange calm came over me, there in the middle of a battle, injured and tended by a lackey.  Demek had relived me of my worries, past and present and I was suddenly too tired to move.

I nodded, my head barely moving, Demek stomped once and kissed my forehead, and he was gone.

Raff immediately propped his war shield over us, and I huddled against the shaking boy falling asleep or passing out. I was unaware to the rest of the battle as it raged around us till someone woke me briefly to lay me amongst the injured. Raff never left my side.

I woke to Raff talking and saw a man riding beside the wagon carrying the injured. It was Neca, Demek’s right handman.

“Where is Demek?” My voice broke. “Did we win?”

Neca smiled. “Oh Yes, we won. The Lactarians have retreated back towards their ships. Rocia is ours.”

He gestured behind him. “Demek is tying up some loose ends. I’m to escort you to the palace in Rocia.”

Deep in the night, as I lay in the furs of the big bed in the master chamber of the concurred palace, Demek crawled in beside me.

Groggy from the numbing liquor the healers had given me, I instinctively moved to defend myself, but Demek batted away my blade with a flick of his hand, reaching for me, he folded me against his chest, laying my blade beside us on the furs.