Book 5, Chapter 19: Dinner With Hafthon

“Thank you, Hafthon, for the attire you provided.”  I glared at Morry out of the corner of my eye, and tried not to choke on my own words, “It’s kind of you.  Most kind.”

“Of course.  Shall we?”

We all sat.  In his camp, his tent.  Crygmore at the table too, and three of Hafthon’s soldiers.  Generals, he’d said they were generals.  I’ll be the first to admit it, I wasn’t paying enough attention.  The dress had puffy sleeves and it was driving me mad.

I shook my head to clear it, took a deep breath, even raised my eyebrows and said what I did not want to say, “Earl Crygmore, a pleasure.  How are things?”

“My lady.”

I stared at him a bit, blinked, and marveled at his command of those two words.  The translation from Crygmorese was, ‘Things are well, but tense.  Though we’ve successfully crossed the river, I can’t help but worry about the remaining army that faces our troops later.  And, I must admit, I’m hoping my wife is taking good care of the earldom.’

“. . . and General Henton.”  Hafthon looked at me with a half-smile on his face.

Three men were standing at the table.  Shit!  I’d missed two of their names.  I quickly stood, “A pleasure.  Gentlemen, nice to meet you.”  I decided it was only fair to immediately forget this general’s name, too.

They nodded.

I continued, “And this is General Morrentz.”

More nodding, greetings, we all raised our cups, ale all around.  After so long on the road and a hot bath, the ale tasted of perfection.  God, I needed to invent Alcoholics Anon For Teens after all was said and done.  Though I’d struggle with finding a higher power to believe in.

One of Hafthon’s generals, a man with a full, dark beard and hair and thick eyebrows to match, set his cup down and said, “Am I to understand, Princess Cayce, that you invented the long sarissae our infantry now use?”

“Uh, yes, yes, that’s correct.”  I brought the ale back to my lips to put up a barrier between his and mine.  “Uhm, how do you find them?  Sarissae?”

He cocked his head, “They’re excellent weapons.  I was wondering, forgive me if this is too bold, but how did you invent these and the tactics to using them?”

I choked on my ale.  “Excuse me.”  More coughing.  Why’d he go and ask that?  Wiped my face.  “Uh, books.  Pardon me.  Books, I’ve read lots and lots of books on, you know, warfare.”

“That’s not the only weapon the princess here has invented,” Hafthon said, “Carlisele’s army boasts crossbows – it’s a very powerful sideways bow – and, what did you call them?  Full suits of armor?”

“Full plate, my lord.”  I adjusted the right sleeve, pulling it tight, “Or plate mail.  For, excuse me, instead of the chain in chainmail.”

“Indeed.”

“Ah.”  The general nodded, “These are technologies our armies here seem to be missing.”

“Yes, the princess thought it fit to not train our armorers to make the new mail, nor our bowyers the new crossbows.”

“Hafthon, you know that’s not how it went down.”

“Yet you gave them to Carlisele.”

Morry leaned forward, “You know better than anyone here that we had neither the time nor the resources to outfit all three armies, Earl Hafthon.  Perhaps you should not have returned to your earldom so quickly.  Your soldiers and smiths could have been taught to make these weapons.”

The earl raised his cup slowly, never taking his eyes off the big man and drank equally slowly and completely, setting his cup down hard, to a hollow sound.

Fudge.  I was once again faced with hypermasculine warriors, some pretending to be leaders, trying their best to impose their anger on me.  Or one another.  Or whatever.  Perhaps it was my new unlimited power, but I wasn’t enjoying myself as much as I used to.

“Alright, Hafthon.  And generals of Hafthon.  Crygmore.  I made a mistake.  You should have been included in learning how to make these technologies.  But,” I leaned forward, “let’s not lie to ourselves here.  You stymied my plans time and time again, which is why you weren’t included in all the weapons production.  You’d prefer I was removed from power and you in charge instead.  You can hardly blame-”

“You’re accusing me of being a traitor?”

Morry tensed, hands falling under the table, perhaps to his short sword.  Hafthon didn’t, but his two generals followed suit.  Crygmore stared at the fine grains of sand in the mug he was holding.

I put my hands on my head and leaned back, sighing deeply.  After the display, I waited a few seconds to make sure they were listening, then spoke to the goddamned tent roof, “I’m trying to apologize here.”

“Those weapons, the armor, would have helped tremendously.  We would have lost less of your subjects.”

“My subjects!  You can’t sit here and pretend you didn’t fight me at every step of the way!  While I tried to reorganize the military and rebuild it.”

The blond haired general, whose name I didn’t catch, spoke up then, “If you’ll excuse me, I don’t think we’ll be making any progress here on addressing the . . . intricacies of the past.  We are here, on the former Ketzillian controlled side of the river, with their army on the defensive.  Perhaps we can move on from this discussion?”

I returned to sitting normally and gave the man a smile that said, ‘Hey, sorry for missing your name.’  He seemed nice.  I kinda liked him.

“Not yet.  I want assurances from you, Princess Cayce, that you will share these technologies with us, Earl Crygmore and myself.”

I took a sip.  Small one.  Not the whole thing for I had no masculinity to protect.  I even set the cup down gently.  Then I looked at Hafthon, “Yes.  We will rectify that.  You’ll get your weapons and your armor, and your smithies will be trained.”  Assuming, I thought to myself, I survive the mages hunting me.

“Excellent.  Now, if you don’t mind, tells us all why you are here without your army.”

“Uh, that’s still a long story, Hafthon.”

“We seem to have the time.  You must admit, it’s very strange for a princess to be in such a situation.  It almost seems that you, perhaps, have lost your army.”

“Right.  Yes, it looks that way.  When we-”

“The new technologies,” Morry cut me off, “proved decisive in the battle against the Barclay forces.  They-”

“-excuse me,” the general to Hafthon’s left spoke up, “the new weapons proved so decisive on the battlefield that you no longer need an army?”

Morry continued, “The Barclay forces arranged themselves in typical fashion.  Pike and spear infantry first, cavalry to the flanks, just in front of their skirmishers and peltasts.”

“And this is the battle where you left your army?  To hold Barclay as you’ve done in the Bechalle Duchy?  Or should I call it the Carlisele Duchy?”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions there, Hafthon.”

“It’s a reasonable assumption, based on your past actions.  Did you or did you not retake your castle?”

“My Lord,” began Morry in a gravelly, tempered tone, “is it customary to interrupt your guests while they’re attempting to answer your questions?”

Tired of waiting on servants, the earl refilled his own cup.  He looked up at the big man, then moved his head slowly to me, “Is a Ketzillian force about to descend upon us?  That’s what I’m concerned about.  Are you running from a failed battle?”

“No one . . . no one has followed us.  No one is following us.”

The big man crossed his arms, staring at the earl, but Hafthon ignored him to stare at me.  I fought the strong desire to slump my shoulders and slide under the table and barely, just barely managed not to do that, while holding the earl’s gaze.

General number two interrupted, “You’re on this side of the river.  We can assume you made it to Breadamont.”

Morry said to the earl, “Yes, we liberated the Barclay Duchy and it is now under Duke Treleal.  We then increased our ranks with Treleal’s cavalry and those of his bannermen, and crossed the River Dernam.”

“Ah,” said the general, “so you lost the army to the Ketzillian forces at Breadamont.  But how did you escape with only the two of you?”

Hafthon held up his hand, “No, not your general, Princess Cayce.  I want to hear the answer from you.”

Taking a breath, I shut my eyes.  Exhaled and opened them.  “The mages turned on us.”

“What?” asked General number 1.  “That’s not possible.”

The other general chimed in, “No chance.  Mages can’t be bribed or bought.”

Still holding his palm up, Hafthon gave each general a nasty glare and they shut up.  Then gave me his attention.

“They withdrew their protection.”

“Then the Ketzles won the field?”

“No.”

“Did the Ketzle mages also leave the battle?”

“No.”

“Princess Cayce.”

“They fear me, Hafthon.  The mages.”  I felt it again.  Panic for what was going to happen to our men, so much sorrow – Gun, we lost Gun because of them!  Anger, so much anger.  Fire dropped on our men, lightning tore them apart!  I held the pottery cup so strongly, the sand grains bit into my palm.  My other hand clenched tight, ready to open and explode, the energy raging at the memories.

“Princess,” Morry put his hand on my left, startling me.

His eyes, worried, caught me.  Noticing my hands, how tight they were, I forced myself to calm down.

Hafthon crossed his arms.  “They fear you?”

Pulling his hand back to his cup, Morry spoke up, “We were winning the battle.  They had chariots but were no match for our infantry and crossbow regiments.  Rand’s cavalry and the war rhinos crushed their left flank.  We would have won the day.”

“And, what happened?”  General two leaned forward, “Whyever would the mages betray their own people?”

All eyes turned to me.  Even Morry didn’t try to stall them anymore.  I was at a loss for what to tell them.  Couldn’t think of any convincing lies, even a way to sugarcoat it.

Hafthon asked in perhaps the most gentle voice I’d heard from the man, “Princess?”

“Magic.  I have magic.  It’s unlike theirs.”

“They have magic, too,” said a general.  “I can’t imagine they’d fear a single girl.”

“They believe I’m a deity.”

A long pause at the table.  Then, Crygmore and his general burst into laughter, the general saying, “Surely you can’t expect us to-”

Hafthon’s glare cut the man short.  “And your army?”

“Once our mages dropped their protective shielding, the Ketzillian mages unleashed hell on our forces.  We lost the infantry first . . .” I couldn’t help but choke back something.  Emotion, maybe.

Morry continued, “They dropped fire on the infantry.  Lightning on the war rhinos.  Then they started on the cavalry.  At that point, I took up arms against them.  Princess Cayce’s perseidian iron spear, it protected me during my attack on the traitorous mages.”

The generals looked at Morry with respect, one of them nodding his approval.  “How?  How did you survive attacking mages, General Morrentz?”

“Never mind that.”  Hafthon’s eyes were on me.  “The enemy forces, what happened?”

“I destroyed them.”  The grip of Etienne’s deadly spell on me, tearing my insides apart, raking my limbs as he dropped tornado after tornado on the soldiers.  The magic rose up in me at the memory, calling to me to release it, yelling, screaming at me – and I wanted to!

“You destroyed the main Ketzillian army?  Yourself?”  He backed up in his chair, “And their mages did nothing to stop you?”

I couldn’t quite make out the earl, he was too blurry, so I looked down at the table, closed my eyes.  Squeezed harder on the mug.  Liquid fire falling from the sky onto my soldiers and Gun and I did nothing to stop it.  Shock, it must have been shock.  And surprise.  The anger that came after!

“Princess?”

“I . . .  I killed their mages first.”

General number one, with a touch of mirth in his voice, said, “Then you can help us defeat the Ketzles on the morrow!  Surely, they are nothing to you.”

“Princess Cayce, the mages.  You killed all of them?  How?”

“None stood a chance,” the pottery cup crushed into shards in my hand and I slammed my palm on the table, standing, “between us!  The mages and me!  God, you’ve seen them – how much power they unleash, how terrible they are.  How many men they can kill, just one of them.”  I leaned across the table, “Hafthon, I am so much worse.”  Ale dripping off my palm, a wetness on my cheek at the memories, and my voice came out almost as a whisper, “I killed . . . so many people that day.  Ten, twenty thousand men.  How could I?  How could I kill so many?”

“Princess!”  Morry’s voice, yelling, pleading.  “Stop!”

The energy twisted up into the heavens, a tower of plasma burning the night away and shining like the sun.  Free at last!

The table and chairs were aflame in front of me.  The tent, ceiling gone, the remaining canvas flapping in the vortex circling me, plasma twisting up into the atmosphere.  I watched the energy dance and weave around my arms, circling and circling my body and purple jets streaming from my eyes.

I wanted it brighter.  Hotter.

“Princess!  Stop!”

Slightly annoyed, I turned from my dancing energy to him.  Them.  The generals and earls were a distance away on the ground, arms in front of their faces. 

“Please.”  Standing, squinting, he held his palms toward me, “Bring it down.  Slowly and calm.  Princess, come back, come back to me.”

The scar running down his ear to his chin, his eyes.

“Back off!”

I stretched out my arms, feeling the vortex whirl around me.  I tore the table and chairs apart, thrust their fragments into the vortex, to feed the flames.  I felt more than heard my ravens launch themselves into the night, screeching and cheering for my emergence, foxes racing through the underbrush around the army.

Ignoring the screams and pleading, I reached forth my hand, tearing trees out of the ground, burst them into flames, and reveled in the power, and the praises from my blessed creatures, my crows and ravens and foxes, and brighter and hotter and higher did my vortex burn, reaching into the heavens, to demand the attention from the gods and to strike fear into their hearts.  For I am here and I have come for this world.

“Princess!  Cayce!”  He’d cupped his hands, yelling through them at me.  “You must stop!”

His name was Morrentz.  Morry.

I closed off the energy, the world suddenly silent, let the ash drift away into the sky, energy fade like steam in the sunlight, and the camp suddenly became dark.  And shut my eyes, holding tight the iron around my wrist, fought the urge to flare up again, pushed it back down and away.  The beach, the waves.  I almost killed Morry.

“My gods . . .” one of the generals said.

“Princess,” the big man’s hands on my arms, “are you ok?”

Small, burning embers floating away in the air, slowly become brighter as our eyes adjusted.  Like the aftermath of fireworks, but rising instead of falling, and one by one burning themselves out so high above us.

Soldiers ran up to stamp out the flames around us, on the remnants of the tent, pieces of wood and leather, and in some places, the grass itself.  Another yelled, “Get some water!  We need water here!”

With a thought, I slowed the molecules and the fires went out in a puff, leaving the soldiers with nothing to do.  The place became darker still.

“My god.  I nearly killed you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Morry.”

“You managed to control yourself and stopped.”

I shook my head and, not giving a care, hugged the big man.  He had no idea how close to death he’d come.

Hafthon stood, brushed ash off his clothes, gave me a strong and stern glance, then walked away.  Crygmore rushed off after him.  Two of the generals got themselves up, backed away, then hurried to catch up with the retreating earls.

One of the generals stayed behind, probably number two, the blond-haired man, said to me, after standing, “I’m sorry I doubted you.  My lady.”

Pulling away from Morry, I just waved my hand at the general as a ‘forget it’ gesture.  Not a thing I was worried about.  I didn’t even care to learn his name.

“I didn’t want to stop.”

“You brought it under control.”

“It was . . . harder than last time.  More difficult.”  I shook my head, “I almost . . .”

“Almosts and could-haves, no sense in worrying on those.  You restrained yourself and no one died.”

“Only because I didn’t fully give in.  Morry, if you get me to, if Hafthon makes me, damnit, if I have to attack an army, what you saw tonight was just a fraction.  Of the power.  Of me.  You wouldn’t have survived, standing so close.”  I looked up at the night sky, no trace of my energy left but the ash slowly drifting down.  “No one would.”

“Perhaps if you practice?  It took you months to handle a sword well, and you’re still far from mastery.  Perhaps this is another such skill.”

“You don’t see what’s in front of you.”  I waved at what remained of the supper tent and the rent and ravaged ground where pines once stood.  “The mages understand and that’s why they are hunting me.”

“They’re hunting you out of fear.  They can’t stop you.  It’s the same struggle you had with the earls.  The mages want to keep their power, Princess.  And you’re threatening to strip them of it.”

I put my hands on my face, rubbed my eyes.  “It really, really doesn’t feel like that, Morry.”