Chapter 51
From there, we hit the next four towns and took them before we attracted the attention of the Emperor’s Royal Forces in the town of Albans. There, we met up with the first resistance that seriously challenged us. Both Imperial Hussars and Dragoons met us on the plains outside the city armed with cannons and wands of their own.
We took our first casualties but pressed on to hold the southern part of the city where we burned the Imperial boats at the harbor down to the waterline.
Within four hours, we had massed to the very foot of the huge stone fortress called the Castle, modeled after the stone Fort Ti across the river. Bolts of magic, cannonballs and firebombs laid waste around us but our shields held against everything they threw at us.
I sent in the slithern to bore a tunnel under their walls and once done, brought a small group of commandos with me to infiltrate and attack from inside.
The tunnel was long and dank, dirty and smelling of less than pristine soil. The walls and ceiling were trembling around and above us making me wonder if it would collapse while we were in it yet it held until I could sense the presence of warm bodies above us.
Quietly, I had my squad wait until I stuck my head through and inspected the exit. I was inside a storage room used for root vegetables; the floor was dirt and the walls laid stone. Burlap bags of onions, potatoes and beets were stacked neatly around me. The imprint of a soldier’s boots were laid in the dirt and dried enough to tell me that one had been down here no more than a day earlier. There were racks on the walls stacked with filled jars; the doors were directly opposite my searching eyes.
I stuck my head back in the tunnel and called my men to follow me out into the room. The door opened easily at my touch into a hallway that climbed stone steps up to a series of rooms that were clearly kitchens and work areas. All were empty as if more pressing matters had called their occupants’ attention away from cooking.
It wasn’t until we emerged into the fortress bailey proper that we encountered any resistance and my squad efficiently and quietly eliminated all the soldiers. Surprisingly, there were only a mere handful inside and armed with rifles and pistols; not the modern tube wands of the wizard.
We left the officer alive and my captain dragged him to his office where I waited until my men had taken the entire castle. There were bodies lying everywhere.
“Your name, Major-General?” I asked my hunger growing as he cringed at the loss of blood.
“Major-General Lyle Talbot Baines,” he said. “His Imperial Majesty’s Dragoons, First Rifles. You are?” His upper class sneer dissected me from my head to my toes and found me lacking.
“I guess you would call me General Tobias Spencer,” I returned forcing my eyes away from his bloodied face. He had been wounded by a saber strike and it bled freely.
“Spencer! Lord Gleneden’s…grandson?”
“I am no kin to the Warlord,” I denied. “I am a Newlander born and bred. And I have the scars to prove neither wizard nor grandfather are any friends of mine!”
He sneered and I opened my mouth wide to expose my very sharp, dangerous fangs. Let loose the Dracule glamour on him and watched him lose his will as his mind took over. “Where’s Blackfin and his main force?” I asked and before the hour was over, I had the wizard’s entire battle plan laid out and reported back to the hologram. Wrung dry of his information, I had no further use for the Major General and drained him without a thought. I ignored the strange looks from my second-in-command and Arianell. She didn’t bring it up later that night when we went for a patrol around the castle’s inner walls but I could see she wanted to mention it. Instead, we observed the field out on the plain with thousands of bodies lying in piles.
Our men had stacked them as high as they could and as they retreated, I used magic to incinerate the corpses into greasy ash that drifted heavily on the night wind. Most blew out to sea and coated what was left of the Imperial fleet with a gray cast that glistened in the early morning light as the dew hit it. In the morning, I left a sizable force of troops in the city and under a new shield that Laioli and I had erected. Only the new commander knew how to raise or lower it.
The rest of us traveled on towards my old home valley where the Wizard Blackfin and my grandfather the Emperor’s Warlord had made their headquarters. There, I would take this fight to them, not planning on stopping until both of them lay dead or drained at my feet.