The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (42 page)

Chapter 24
– Stripped of Powers

Alec awoke in an alley in the warehouse district of Michian, sore and bloody.  His face felt puffy, and he knew that if he were to look in a mirror he would see a grievous mass of bruises, cuts and lacerations.  He still had his sword, but the bandoliers of knives, and the bow and arrows were gone.  Even his boots had been taken for some reason, leaving him barefoot to roam about the city.  He stood and steadied himself by placing one hand against the rough wooden wall of the storage building he was next to.

He stood and raised his head to the sky, his eyes closed, trying to find some shred of hope, something he could grasp as a way to turn the unthinkable situation around.  He was without powers, while Andi’s body and soul were possessed by Hellmann the great, virtually immortal being who controlled powers beyond comprehension.

There is hope, Alec.  Come visit me
, he imagined he heard John Mark’s voice say to him.

“John Mark!  Please take me home,” Alec cried aloud.  “I need your help.”

There was a noise behind him, and Alec turned to see a tramp emerge from a hole in the wall of the building.

“Who are you talking to?” the vagrant asked, looking around at the otherwise empty alleyway.

Just then a foursome of toughs walked by the mouth of the alley, then stopped and stared at Alec and the other man.

“Oh stormy day,” the other vagrant said softly.  There was some soft murmuring among the men at the end of the alley, and then the foursome started to walk towards Alec.

With his disheveled appearance and well-beaten face he surely looked like an easy mark, Alec guessed, and the other vagrant looked like easy pickings as well.

Find a way.  Come to me,
John Mark’s voice called softly again.

Alec drew his sword.  “Come no closer,” he warned the approaching men.

One of them laughed, as two of them drew their own swords.  “Worthless trash,” another muttered, and pulled a long knife from his belt.

The alley way wasn’t wide, Alec noted, so the attackers wouldn’t be able to spread out in their attack.  He would have preferred if they had spread out, because such a formation usually allowed him to isolate and conquer one or more members of any multiple opponent attack.  But he would fight under the circumstances, and he would fight to show that he could – he wanted to prove to these aggressors – and to himself –that he was formidable, even without his powers.

As the unprepared attackers came within range, Alec lashed out, swinging his sword with all his force in an arc that knocked one man’s sword out of his grip, and caused the man with the long knife to jump back and stumble away.  Only one armed opponent stood before Alec in the succeeding moments, and Alec wasted no time in launching an attack that was fueled by sheer rage, cutting and slicing until the man looked down at the nasty wound across his stomach, and fell to the ground clutching himself in pain.  Alec charged forward, past the man on the ground and carried his fury on his face, stabbing another of the attackers hard in the thigh, cutting another’s throat, and slicing the buttocks of the last one who tried to run away.

“Oh blue skies!” the other vagrant in the alley way crowed.  He ran up to Alec.  “Thank you, friend.  Thank you.  These men have been beating and robbing my friends for weeks, looking at us as easy pickings.

“What’s a fighter like you doing here anyway?  You oughta be serving guard duty on a trader’s caravan headed to the Dominion.  They’ll feed and pay money for swords like yours, unless you’re a thief,” the vagabond said to Alec.

“I’m no thief,” Alec shoved his sword back into the scabbard on his hip, and prepared to walk away, when the implications of the vagrant’s words sunk in.

“How would I find a caravan that needs a guard?” he asked the vagrant.

“Come with me,” the man told him.  “I’ve got a friend, well, an acquaintance.  She runs her own little trading company, and I know she always wants help, not that I’ve ever heard about her getting robbed.  She’s always worried about being taken advantage of by men though; you wouldn’t cheat her would you?” the vagrant looked into Alec’s eyes.  “No, you look like a man with an honest soul.  She deserves to be treated fairly; she’s always been fair with my buddies and me – she’ll hand out a meal if she can afford it.”

“Take me to her, and we’ll see if she’s looking for help,” Alec replied, looking down as he began to tread cautiously among the littered pavement of the alley.

“How did someone who fights as good as you get beat up that bad?” the vagrant asked as they started walking down the street.  “Was it over a girl?”

“Yeah,” Alec said after a pause, “it was over a girl.  I never saw it coming.”

“Well, Roslyn may look like a girl, and have a big heart like a girl, but she’s still all business.  If she hires you on – and I’ll make you sound as good as I can ! – don’t make the mistake of thinking you can share her blankets.  Keep your hands to yourself; she’ll treat you fair if you treat her fair,” the vagrant told Alec.  “I’ve seen her hire other guards on the spot.”

“Did they like working for her?” Alec asked.

“I don’t know,” the vagrant answered.  “I never saw them again to ask how she was to work for.”

“What’s your name?” Alec asked the man.

“Boris,” the man answered Alec.  “What’s yours?”

“I’m Alec,” he held out his hand to shake.

“That’s a Dominion name,” the vagrant said.  “And you’ve got an accent that’s mostly Dominion, and a little something else.  Roslyn will like that.”

“I’ve lived in the Dominion, and I’ve lived out in the far east,” Alec told him.  “That probably gave me an accent.”

“Those are the traders,” Boris pointed at a wide field of tents and mules.  “Roslyn usually is in the middle of the field, with the Dominion traders, not that I know for sure she’s one of them; she’s just a one-woman trading shop, but the other traders seem to respect her.  She’s been in the business more than a dozen years and keeps coming back with more goods on every journey,” Alec followed Boris through the unorganized maze until they reached a small encampment.

“No, I’m not going to give you three golds for ale today,” a gruff female voice shouted as Boris and Alec stopped next to a dirty green and yellow tent.  There was a tra
ce of a lilt in her voice that A
lec couldn’t place, but it distinguished her from the other Michian residents

“I don’t want golds for ale today, Roslyn,” Boris said in response, turning to face the roped-in yard where a couple of dozen mules were tied.  There was a figure among them, Alec realized, bent over, distributing a bale of hay among the mules.  “I’m here to try to help a couple of friends.

“This is Alec, the finest swordsman I ever saw.  He’d be the perfect guard for your next journey,” Boris introduced.

The woman in the mule pen stood up to look at them, and Alec stared back.  She was an unkempt, dark-haired beauty, and Alec was astonished at the notion that a woman of such fine looks would need to operate her own trading caravan.

“I don’t want him,” she said flatly.  “If he was any good at fighting he wouldn’t have let his face get used for boxing practice, and I don’t like him looking at me with moon eyes.”

“I’m the best swordsman you can hire,” Alec said.  “And I may have been staring at your beauty, but I’m in love with another.  I’m just surprised a beauty has to, or chooses to, work as a trader.”

“Hmmph,” she sounded non-committally.  Roslyn waded through the mules and out of the pen.

“Where’re your boots?” she asked circling around Alec in an inspection.

“I don’t know,” Alec admitted.  “I woke up without them.”

“I don’t need a drunkard,” the woman said flatly.  “You can go.”

“I don’t get drunk,” Alec answered.  “I only drink berry juice and water.”

“How’d you get beat up?” Roslyn asked.

“I fought for a girl, and I lost,” Alec said.

“So now you’re turning tail and running away?  Or are you running home?  You sound a little out of the ordinary,” she said.

“I told him the same thing,” Boris interjected.

“I’m not running at all,” Alec answered.  “I’ll be back.”

“You, Boris, watch my camp for me.  I’ll give you two silvers when we get back, three if he suits me,” Roslyn told the vagrant.  “Come with me,” she commanded Alec, and started to walk away.

“Where are we going, my lady?” Alec asked politely as he hurried to catch up with Roslyn’s brisk pace.

“I’m going to take you to an armory and see how well you handle yourself.  Are you up to the challenge, or do you want to quit now?” she asked over her shoulder as she continued to march.

“We won’t need to spend much time there,” Alec assured her.  “You’ll be satisfied with me.”

He desperately wanted to get the job.  While working on a trader’s caravan would entail constant work, it was work he could do, and the promise of a journey to the Dominion satisfied his needs.  John Mark had told him to have hope, and to come to the saint.  That required a trip to the Dominion if he was to find the hope John Mark promised.

Alec followed blindly in Roslyn’s footsteps, thinking about what had happened to him.  His soul quaked at the thought that Hellmann had returned to earth somehow.  The imprisonment that Alec had created had only lasted a few decades, and then Hellmann had escaped it somehow, proof of failure on Alec’s part.

And after escaping, Hellmann had ultimately ended up possessing Andi’s body; of all the people he could have chosen, he had picked her.  He had picked her because of the strength and powers she had acquired through her affiliation with Alec, and that horrible irony wrenched Alec’s heart.  It was the infusion of Alec’s own powers within Andi that made her such an attractive host body for Hellmann to possess.  And Hellmann claimed that Andi was pregnant with child, a child that had to be Alec’s own offspring, and that Hellmann claimed was destined to be his next host.

It was evil wrapped in evil wrapped in evil, and all of it was Alec’s fault – he was sick with the thought of what his failures were leading to.  Hellmann was free because of Alec’s flawed imprisonment; Andi was targeted as a host because of Alec’s powers within her; and her child was targeted as the next host, because Alec had fathered it.  He felt his stomach tighten at the thought of Andi held captive, her spirit smothering within her own body as Hellmann controlled it and commanded her abilities, the abilities that had been his own.

“Are you with me or on your own?” Roslyn said, as Alec walked past her, lost in his thoughts.  He stopped and looked around to see that she was standing in a doorway, and the sounds that emerged from the building left no doubt that there was active sword work going on within, as the sound of thwacking wooden practice blades drummed incessantly.

“Have you got your head on to do this, or are you more interested in going to the tavern down the road and having a pot of ale?” Roslyn asked Alec.  “I’ve got a silver for you right here, right now, if you want to leave me and go enjoy yourself.”

“No.  I’m not a drinker.  Whatever my faults are, that’s not one of them,” Alec told her.  “I’m going to Bondell, and if I can go with you and get paid for the trip, there’s nothing else I ask for.”

“Let’s see, big talker,” she muttered, and banged the door open to enter, with Alec trailing behind her.

She stood at the edge of the open practice room, watching various men practicing their sword work, as Alec stood beside her, awaiting direction.  As Roslyn was noticed, men started coming over to see her.  “Need a swordsman?  I’ll work for you,” one of them said, voicing the question that seemed to be on the minds of most of them.

“This fellow claims he can be my next guard.  I’m here to see if he’s any good.  Anyone who can beat him can have a shot at working for me and will have a gold bonus to boot; I’ll be pulling out tomorrow,” Roslyn said shortly.  “Go put on pads and get a blade,” she told Alec.

Five minutes later Alec was on the practice pad in front of Roslyn, facing off against his first opponent, who had seemed to have been acknowledged by the other competitors to be the best of those who were interested in working for Roslyn.  The man was right-handed, tall, and cocky, Alec observed, beginning with his blade in his own right hand.

Alec let his opponent advance confidently, then confronted the man with a sudden flurry of strikes and thrusts that drove him backwards, off-balance and unable to protect himself as Alec flipped his sword to his left hand and delivered a quick coup-de-grace that knocked the man off his feet.

“Let’s go,” Roslyn said as soon as the man was sitting on the mat.

Alec hastily stripped off his pads and placed them back on the wall peg, then jogged out the door, where Roslyn was waiting for him.

“Tell me who you are,” Roslyn said frankly to Alec.  “You’re better than any swordsman I’ve ever seen, other than the ingenairii.”

“My name is Alec, and I am your guard,” he replied.  “There’s no more to tell.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.  “It’s a long trip to Bondell.  There’re going to be a lot of lonely hours on the road, and lonely nights when you’ll think about trying to crawl into my blankets.

“You’re never going to get there,” she stopped his protest, “but you’re going to want to be friendly, and so you’re going to want to talk to me sooner or later.”