David Wells - Linkershim

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 feet 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.