Ajacii and Demons: The Ingenairii Series (24 page)

That night and the next day Alec and Caitlen remained alone, isolated in their rooms, talking only to each other, and emerged sober-eyed the next morning. Alec went to the stables and emerged with three horses, loaded them with supplies, weapons and messages, made his farewells to numerous people, then last of all to Caitlen and Elisan in her arms, and rode out of the gates of the palace.

He switched horses often and stopped only if the night weather promised to be bad. He reached the port city of Witten in three days, and rode on to Raysing in another four days. Around Witten he passed the boundary of Caitlen’s strength in sending messages through her Spiritual powers, and thereafter he could only send her messages of his love, without hearing replies. At Raysing he began to catch up with the tail of the army, riding past supply depots and wounded soldiers. He showed the passes he needed to show in order to ride forward towards the front without delay, and within a day he had reached the headquarters, where a long conversation ensued one morning.

For the leaders of the Vincennes forces, the reports that the consort of the princess had beaten a demon were preposterous, once they had seen the monsters in battle with their own eyes. And the reports that the consort had lost limbs and nearly lost his life added to the dubiousness of the man who arrived and claimed to be the Demonslayer, restored to health and sent back to do further battle.

“
You tell us that you can kill a demon single-handedly?” Field Marshal Stocker, still the leader of the Vincennes forces said in their first long meeting. “That’s impossible. We’d be doing ourselves a favor to send you out there to be the first one slaughtered, just to get rid of your foreign insanity.”

After a long verbal battle without resolution, Alec left the tent and went towards the front. He managed to find a Black Crag unit, who had members who knew the members of his own Black Crag squad, and Alec settled in among them, questioning them about the battles they’d been in and the strategies they’d seen.

“
Here’s what we have to do next time,” Alec told them his second evening in camp, as they sat near a fire pit. “I will go out to face the demon, and keep it away from an attack on our people. You need to put your best archers in place, and look for people who are dressed all in black, perhaps with a dead body near them.”

Alec explained the means by which a demon was called to the world, and how the death of the sorcerer or sorceress would diminish the monster, making it more vulnerable to defeat. The squad of Black Crag soldiers he settled in with were more seasoned than those he had worked with in Vincennes; not only had they seen demons three times in the past month, but they had guarded a score of traders’ caravans that had ridden into the western wilderness, and had fought bandits and opportunistic villagers countless times while protecting the goods the traders carried in either direction.

“
They use children, a lot,” explained Adelmo, the squad leader, talking about the caravan bandits.

“
Sometimes the kid is the thief and sometimes she’s just a deliberate distraction,” agreed Hector.

“
And you really can’t do much to a kid,” added Claudia, “even when you want to wring his neck!”

“
I expect we’ll be happy to chase kids after all this is over,” Hector reflected.

“
They won’t seem so bad,” Alec agreed.

“
The next time we face a demon, we have to stop it,” he emphasized, smacking his palm against his knee. “The opposing army is probably getting lazy now, thinking that they will win every time a demon fights for them.”

“
I would,” Adelmo agree.

“
So if we show that their greatest weapon can be defeated, they will panic; they’ll be ripe for plucking – I saw it before when I fought the demons of Michian,” Alec told them, leaning in close to the fire and speaking in a lower and lower voice.

“
It’s going to take Black Crag to show our army how to fight when the time comes; the field marshal doesn’t understand how to do this,” he continued. “But once the sorcerer is dead and the demon is defeated and Black Crag charges into the front of the rebels, Vincennes’ army will follow us to victory.

“
Is the army of Krimshelm here?” Alec asked.

“
The rumors say that they will be soon; they’re sailing down the coast, so we don’t know exactly when we’ll see them,” Hector said.

“
I want to use them,” Alec muttered as he continued to consider ways to implement his alternative leadership of the army.
Major Perry, we’ll need your forces at the front soon. I look forward to seeing you again
, Alec sent a message to his former companion, and hoped they would meet in person very soon.

The next day Alec approached the field marshal again in hopes of making his case for a battle against the demon, but the marshal and his staff remained obstinately opposed to Alec’s plan. Still convinced of his chances to succeed, Alec returned to the Black Crag contingent, where he spent the afternoon practicing his sword work with a variety of guards.

As the practice was winding down into desultory jousting, Alec felt an enormous pain in the back of his head. “They’re doing it! They’re calling a demon,” he shouted. He started to run, then stumbled and fell to his knees in weakness, before he arose and started running towards the front again.

Black Crag archers, look for the people in black robes, and aim for them
, he sent out a command. He was wearing dark clothes to hide any blood he might shed, so that neither his opponents or supporters would know when he suffered injury. He focused on grasping his three powers, engaging his Spiritual energy first, then his Healer energies, and then last he called upon his Warrior energies. None of them were as strong as they would have been had he only grasped one, but he counted on the Healer power to overcome any injuries that might be inflicted as he fought the demon.

Alec thought of Caitlen back at home, perhaps nursing their son peacefully.
I love you
, he sent a soft message to her.

He reached the front line, and saw the nervous Vincennes and Valeriane forces already starting to edge back, ready to retreat when there was no demon in sight. “Stand still! Stand and fight!” Alec shouted at the men. “We can win this battle if you fight!” he shouted again before he turned and faced the front line of the rebellious forces, on the far side of a shallow valley.

He felt another staggering psychic blow, and then heard a bellowing, and saw the demon appear on his right.
The sorcerer will be near where the demon is now
, he told the archers, as he began to run at an angle through the empty plain between the two armies.

The demon was coming out into the open as well, not yet paying attention to Alec. Already a part of the Vincennes line was starting to retreat, and Alec knew he had to take action to prevent them from breaking. He leaped into the small brook that ran through the center of the valley, then pulled two knives loose and threw them at the demon to make sure it paid attention to him.

The creature knocked both knives down into the ground without suffering harm, and turned to approach Alec rapidly. He pulled both swords out and continued his rush towards the demon wielding the blades with a flourish as the two adversaries collided. The demon swiped at Alec, but each paw that reached towards him was summarily stabbed with a blade that moved with lightning speed and strength. After a prolonged series of jabs that accomplished nothing, the demon paused, then opened its mouth to belch a small flurry of bats at Alec.

Alec backpedaled, swinging his blades constantly above his head to protect himself from the small vampires. The demon dove at him, trying to take advantage of his distraction, and swiped a set of claws across his calf as he back-rolled away from the monster. Alec felt pain in his leg, and he landed in a kneeling position, but as he raised his head to find the demon’s location, his leg self-healed. He stood erect and began throwing knives, one from each hand, in a rhythm that the demon easily blocked, until Alec pulled four and aimed them all at its eyes.

The third knife penetrated the demon’s defenses, plunging its blade into the right eye socket, and making the monster roar with pain.

Alec charged around to his left, seeking to get in the demon’s blind spot. He drew closer to the monster as he sprinted in, then sprang high in the air when he judged the monster could no longer see him. He had drawn both swords, and planned to try to sever the demon’s head as he passed over. As he reached the spot where he could best swing at the demon’s neck, his plans went astray. The demon was overcome with a paroxysm of shaking, then shrank noticeably. Its head and neck were no longer where Alec expected them to be, and his swords vainly sliced through empty air. The archers from Black Crag had done their job.

Alec landed in the center of the brook on the far side of the demon, and his feet struck unsteady stones in the bed of the stream. The stone beneath his left foot slid away as he began to push off from it, and Alec dove forward into the stream without meaning to. He rolled to his right, and as he did the demon slammed a clawed fist down in the spot he had vacated.

Alec rolled again, then pushed himself upward, but as he rose he struck the belly of the demon, which immediately raked his torso with both hands, tearing into his flesh and ripping his bandoliers away.

Alec screamed in pain as he swept his swords around behind him, backwards, so that their blades entered the demon’s flesh on either side, plunging deeply into the monster’s body. It too screamed in pain, and Alec stumbled forward away from it, leaving his swords fixed inside its body.

Alec stood away from the demon, standing now on the rebellion’s side of the brook, while the shrunken demon stood on the Vincennes side of the stream. The demon was screaming in pain, futilely pawing at the sword handles that protruded from its ribcage. The audience of soldiers from both armies stood transfixed, standing still to watch the epic battle that was taking place before them. None of the watchers had ever before seen a demon challenged on such equal footing.

Alec looked down and saw that his Healer powers were restoring his own body, repairing the many great wounds he had suffered. His bandoliers across his chest were gone, and both his swords were in the demon. The third bandolier of knives that hung low on his hips was his only remaining set of weapons.

Alec pulled two daggers free and tossed both of them at the remaining good eye of the distracted demon. Each of them found the spot, and suddenly the demon was totally blind. Alec ran to the monster’s rear, then reached around and plucked each sword from its flesh, eliciting further screams as Alec jumped away to avoid being struck by the demon’s flailing limbs.

Alec ran to the side of the monster, and launched himself into the air again. This time his effort to decapitate the wounded demon succeeded, and as he landed, Alec continued to run away from the slumping carcass. He stopped after a hard sprint and looked back at the body of the demon, where small bats were already beginning to rise from the sloughing flesh and fly about in search of victims.

Invigorated by the successful defeat of the demon while using his new triple utilization of ingenairii energies, Alec looked at the Vincennes front lines, ready to urge them to charge into battle. To his shock he saw that although the Black Crag portion of the line was advancing, the rest of the forces were in a retreat mode, too conditioned by past appearances of demons to do anything else but flee for their lives, despite the battle he had just shown them. He turned, and on the far side he saw the reverse was happening; the rebellious forces that saw Black Crag coming towards them, in shock from the defeat of the demon they counted on, were beginning to flee, while the rest of the rebel forces, although astonished by the death of the demon, still were being driven forward into the breach created by the retreat of Vincennes and Valeriane.

Perry, if you are near the battlefield, we need you desperately
, Alec sent a message to the ally he hoped would be approaching soon. He looked at where the demon’s body had burst into flame, and ran around it to pick up his slashed bandoliers. Holding them in his right hand, he ran towards the charge of the rebellious army and began flinging his knives with his left hand, picking off as many officers as he could, until his supply of daggers was quickly depleted. He dodged the rain of arrows that were shot at him, and ran again towards where the Black Crag forces had crossed the plain and were breaching the lines that were falling open for them.

Go to their supply depot
, Alec issued an order to the Black Crag units. We
can destroy their supplies
. He caught up with them and reached their leading edge. “We need to tighten up,” he told the men and women around him. “We’re too strung out, and vulnerable. Let our people regain formation, then go after their supplies. Now give me a bow and as many arrows as you can, and I’ll try to protect you from a flanking attack.