Chapter 9

  Akira faced the Relancian army across the field. Winter arrived late in the Southern lands, and the weather remained warm. It was afternoon, and the heat bore down on everything. The red sun baked the field, transforming it into a solid mass of dirt. It was beginning to set behind him, meaning soon it would be in the eyes of the Relancian army. Perfect conditions for the cavalry to advance and prevent the Relancian archers from seeing his men approach. His cavalry had been stationed well outside of bow range, so there was no risk of a stray hit. A master archer like Rock could make the shot if the wind was behind him. These new soldiers didn’t stand a chance. From this distance, it appeared they were wielding long sticks. Akira scoffed. They were mistaken if they thought a pike could take down his horses. His second cavalry unit was manoeuvring around the perimeter and preparing to cut off the infantry from its commanders once the main forces clashed.

  “Why are they only fielding infantry if they have the new armour?” General Saku said, bringing his horse next to Akira’s. “I know you said they were a poor excuse for an army, but this is unprecedented. There should be some cavalry as well. All I can see are groups of about twenty to thirty men spread out over the battlefield. Most of them look too young to have any experience as well.”

  “I told you their generals were useless without me,” Akira scoffed. “Is everyone ready?” he asked, dismissing Saku’s concerns with a wave.

  Saku nodded. “We are awaiting your command to begin the charge. Commander Jorbin is three leagues away, waiting for the signal before he engages the Relancia army.”

  “Good. We will begin in moments. Get to your position.” Akira didn’t watch Saku move away. If the man did his job, then nothing bad would happen to him today, but Finley and his partner were prepared just in case.

  Akira pulled out his sword and let the song fill his mind. He lived for this. He rode his horse out in front of the men and held the Holy Sword up high in the air. A battle was always nerve-wracking, but with the proper inspiration, soldiers could do anything. The Holy Sword was Relancia’s treasure, but today, it was dedicated to Zial. They began shouting his name, raising their swords in the air. Riding from one side of the men to the other, Akira let every soldier see him.

  They all knew who he was. Emperor Thanatos had announced his presence in Kolori before they set out. The cheers there filled his soul with peace and made him forget the rage that had defined him since the failed attack on the Demon King. On this battlefield here, he felt like a hero.

  It had been so long. Akira closed his eyes and basked in their adoration.

  When he reached the other side of the men, he turned his horse and lowered his sword. He stared at the Relancia soldiers and smirked. It was time.

  “Charge!” Akira shouted, leading the flood against Relancia’s soldiers. He watched the enemy standing in the field and could see them shaking as he raced ahead of his men. He needed to take the greatest risks as the head of the army, but the euphoria usually made up for the danger. On the outside of the charge, however, offered some safety from stray arrows.

  He raced forward, his horse eating the distance between him and the infantry before Relancia’s back row could release their arrows. Despite what he told Saku, Relancia had many good archers. Rock had trained them, and he could hit a bullseye from across a field.

  Akira saw the front row fall in fear and raise their pikes to their shoulders. They were too short to cause any trouble to the horses. “It’s too soon for those. Forget the arrows, did we, Realmwalker?” he scoffed.

  The thundering of the cavalry filled his ears. He brought his sword back. It would be over in moments, and the glory taken from him would be returned. The sun settled into the earth, framing him in the light. This was the birth of a legend.

  A thundering blast of lightning filled the air, and Akira felt something flash past his cheek. He turned his head and saw the front ranks of his men across the line go down in a spray of blood. Horses fell, taking down their neighbour. Men toppled back over saddles, blood splattering the fronts of their tunics.

  “What in the five hells?” Akira looked back at the Relancia infantry and saw a second line replace the first. “Are they using magic? The scouts didn’t report any mages in the line.” He was almost there. A few more steps and he’d be in arrow range.

  The second line stuck the short pikes on their shoulders, and the same thunderous roaring reverberated throughout the field. This time, his horse went down, screaming. Akira pitched over its head. He saw the hard dirt race towards him as time slowed down and every blade of grass became countable.

  Slamming face-first into the ground, time returned to normal. Akira felt his teeth break and scatter. He dropped his sword and lay on the ground, gasping for breath, his nose no longer working. He sucked the air in huge gulps, wheezing and coughing. Struggling up he saw the Kolori calvary charge, broken. A few of his men in the middle had met the Relancian soldiers. One of his soldiers was pulled off his horse and disappeared in a sea of blue uniforms. He turned back to the Kolori line and felt the world spin. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the spinning continued. Akira turned to the side and vomited onto the field. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked for his sword.

  The thunder continued to fill the field, but he couldn’t see or feel any magic being cast. “Where is the mana? I can’t feel it.” His eyes blurred.

  “Lord Akira, we have to retreat!”

  Akira turned, squinted and watched General Saku ride up to the front through a fog. He was reaching down to grab Akira’s hand.

  “Not without my sword,” Akira tried to shout, swatting the General’s hand away. It sounded like he was speaking through cotton.

  “It’s behind you, my lord,” said Saku, turning to the Relancia soldiers and keeping his horse between Akira and them. There was another blast of thunder, and a wave of Kolori men dropped to the ground. Relancia’s front line dropped the short pikes and drew swords. They had started to advance in groups of twenty or more. Each time they came upon a downed Kolori soldier, they stabbed him and moved on.

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  “How did they do this?” Akira found his sword and sheathed it in three ties. He couldn’t keep it out. Even in the leather, the song filled his mind, but now it was making the world turn upside down. He couldn’t summon the rage necessary to suppress the bloodlust.

  “I told you not to underestimate the Realmwalker.” Saku pulled Akira up behind him and turned his horse around.

  “Are you blaming this on me?” Akira shouted, but his voice came out garbled. Another burst of thunder and a sharp tang of burnt metal filled the air. He felt a blinding pain burst through his right shoulder. It sent him flying backward off the horse. He hit the ground with a clash and felt his other arm, the one Sam broke, snap again.

  Stunned, Akira opened and closed his mouth like a Gero. Sam’s breaking his jaw felt like a love tap compared to his shoulder. “I can’t move my fingers,” he gasped.

  “My, Lord!” Saku directed two soldiers to get behind Akira and hoist him up. He screamed and felt the blackness close in. They draped him over the pommel of Saku’s horse and stood back.

  “How dare you treat me like this,” he muttered into the side of the horse, blood dribbling down its leg from his shattered mouth.

  “Retreat!” Saku shouted over the din of battle.

  Akira heard the command pass down the line as other generals repeated the command. “No,” he mumbled into the horse’s flanks, “We can’t retreat, Finley. kill him.”

  Saku raced away from the battlefield. From his position over Saku’s horse, Akira could see the men, writhing on the field, interspaced with the carcasses of horses. He clutched Saku’s leg and vomited blood over the horse. “I think I broke something,” he said. Darkness invaded his vision and slid off the horse's head first back onto the field.

  “Blast!” Saku said.

  The thunder from the Relancia line exploded again, driving Saku back and injuring his horse. The stench of metal and blood filled the battlefield, along with a new order. A rotten, burnt smell Dragging himself to his feet, Akira staggered back to the Kolori line.

  Saku jumped off his horse and put his shoulder under the one that had received the thunder. Akira almost bit his tongue off as the pain coursed through his body. He carried Akira through three more thunder spells.

  “Where’s the mana?” Akira mumbled.

  They burst into the triage center, outside the fight. Saku pushed one soldier aside and dropped Akira on the table.

  “Apothecary. Get a potion in him, now!” said Saku.

  “But Zial forbids using the unclean,” a strange man said.

  Akira wanted to cut his head off and fumbled for his sword, but his hand flopped against his blade. “What happened to my fingers?” He raised his hand, but everything looked blurry. “I can’t see.”

  “I will beg Zial for forgiveness later. Just do it,” commanded Saku.

  Akira felt himself slip into darkness.

  ********************

  “The Realmwalker had a strange weapon that fired a ball of metal at high speeds. Our armour couldn’t withstand it and was as useless as a heretic's promise,” General Saku said. He was speaking into a message crystal in Akira’s tent. While the Kolori empire distrusted magic on principle, they had no problems using it as long as it was controlled. The mages usually kept their identities a closely guarded secret. One was hiding in the corner of the tent as far away from the lamp near Akira as possible. His face covered by a deep hood.

  Akira listened to Saku give his report and seethed. The fall from the horse had broken his remaining teeth and shattered the fake ones he was using. He tried to speak earlier, but his tongue didn’t work well. He had bitten it, and the swelling was threatening to block his throat. It was taking all his effort not to drool on his bed. They had saved his life with a potion, stopping him from vomiting blood, but there was nothing they could do for his mouth or his arms. They had to wait for the swelling to go down on its own. The pain in his groin was also threatening to send him back into the darkness. Akira gripped the edge of the wooden bed with his broken arm to keep from falling asleep and felt the splinters dig into his palm. The potion had knit the bone back together, but the twinges in his shoulder from where the thunder had hit him threatened to overwhelm him. He could feel something digging in there.

  “Was it magic?” Sir Reginald asked. Akira could hear him, but he couldn’t see his face. Eon’s portal was much better in that regard.

  “Our detectors say no,” General Saku said, shaking his head and looking at the man hidden in the corner. “I can only assume the Realmwalker brought something with him that we’ve never seen before.”

  “Were you able to obtain any of these weapons?” Sir Reginald’s voice was tired. It hung in the air, and Akira felt dirty when he heard it. Like it was blaming him for this failure.

  “We have some of the metal balls that we were able to dig out of the men, including the hero, and we were able to obtain one of the weapons, but we have no idea how it works. There is a powder necessary for it to function. The apothecary has identified one of the ingredients but has no idea how it could do what it did.” Saku rubbed his head with a towel and fidgeted in front of the crystal.

  “Bring it here, along with the so-called hero,” Reginald said.

  Akira growled. He heard the insult in Reginald’s voice when he said, ‘hero. ’ Reginald was going to blame this setback on him. Akira could feel it. There was no way he was going to take the blame for Saku’s retreat. This was not Akira’s fault. The men could have still won the battle.

  “Yes, sir.” Saku saluted and had the mage in the tent shut off the crystal. Akira

  watched the hood nod, and the man stopped sending a small stream of mana to the crystal. He paused, picked it up and left the tent. Who was in the secret mystic order in Kolori? He knew his mother was a part of it, but even that didn’t save her in the end.

  Akira grunted in Saku’s direction.

  “I agree, Lord Akira. This is a most distressing turn of events,” Saku said. He was pacing in front of Akira’s bed. “We must hurry back to the capital and report to the emperor at once.”

  Akira bounced on the bed and hit the wood with his left fist. “Mupph ra gru.” He shook in frustration. With no teeth and his tongue double the size, there was no way he could be understood. He needed some paper to write out his messages. With his right hand not working, it would be almost impossible to hold a pen, much less a sword.

  “I understand. I will send in your man to take care of you.” Saku nodded and left the tent.

  Akira felt tears fall down his cheeks and wiped them off. He still couldn’t move his sword arm. Everything today was a failure. He reached for his sword, needing the song to soothe his pain. It was missing. He searched the tent with his eyes, but it wasn’t there.

  This is all that bitch’s fault. If she had never come here. Maybe Saku is working with her?

  Was he going to lose everything? Again!

  The tent flap moved back and brought in the shallow light of the two moons. The second one was a crescent tonight, and that cut down the light by half.

  “Here is your man. Finley, I believe is his name,” Saku said as two soldiers dragged a bloody body into Akira’s tent and lay it down in front of the bed.

  Finley was still breathing, but Akira saw blood bubbles come out of his mouth. His lungs had been pierced by something. Someone had beaten the boy, broken his fingers and legs and sliced the tendons in his feet. There was no way he would ever walk again if he survived the night.

  Akira glared at General Saku and pointed to Finley. “Why?” He managed to say.

  “Your man?” General Saku shrugged. “When someone tries to kill you in battle, you expect it to be the enemy, not a soldier on your own side.” General Saku turned to leave the tent and paused at the flap. “It’s a pity the second man, Perry, died, but I wasn’t taking that risk.” Saku gestured to Finley, “Your man, however, was very talkative. My valet is very good at getting confessions. He truly believes in doing Zial’s work in every walk of life.”

  The tent flap fell and left the two men alone. The inside of the tent was bathed in the light of the candle. Akira listened to Finley crying for his mother for most of the night.

  Akira absorbed every word, his face turning harder with each sob, wishing the man would die so his suffering would end. He wasn’t sure whose was worse.

  He never took his eyes off Finley and almost missed the tent flap move slightly like someone was listening.