Free Ajacii and Demons: The Ingenairii Series by Jeffrey Quyle Page B

more large withdrawals, and two more round trips to Krimshelm, delivering more gold to Major Perry, and discussing with him the arrangements for gathering the best archers to serve in the ambushing army. And that night he colored himself blue again, and spent the night with Caitlen, and they made plans for the future.
    Talk to me. Let me know that you’re alive and well. I will learn to speak to you from afar, I promise. I hope that you find peace, dear Alec , Caitlen told him as they parted that last morning together.
    Alec took out his last withdrawal of gold, closed the bank account, and took his money back to Krimshelm to fight the war that would defeat the Conglomerate’s northern army.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 5 – The Battle of the North
     
    Alec was leading a group of the new mercenary archers along the southern rim of the canyon, positioning them for the ambush that was expected to happen that afternoon. It was early morning, and Alec had remained exclusively in Krimshelm for the past several days. He had worked with Perry, and given routine medical attention to the countess, and used Macon the page as his own personal message-runner, something the boy took delight in, while training and developing his own relationship with the mercenaries assigned to him.
    Their intelligence reports told of the Conglomerate army slowly on the move, suffering badly from the losses inflicted by the raid that Harbin’s squad had carried out on them. They had recovered hardly any horses at all, and a few officers with egos larger than brains had apparently commandeered those rather than use them to haul supplies. Alec and nearly one hundred archers were lined along the canyon rim, from which they could look down at the road two hundred feet below. The whole plan of ambush was spread out for them to see: the thin line of Krimshelm defenders who would rise to start the ambush, bottling the invaders up in the confined space, after which the archers would rain copious amounts of arrows down into the canyon.
    A matching set of mercenaries were hidden on the north side of the canyon, prepared to match the death that Alec’s forces intended to inflict. By mid-afternoon, all the men were in place, and there was only waiting and watching left to do, something that Alec hoped would not dull their fighting spirit. At last a murmur began to rise among the archers, and Alec checked to see that the scouts of the Conglomerate army were in sight, climbing up the roadway in advance of the main body of the army. Alec scurried up and down the line, forcing his men to keep out of sight, not wanting to spoil the ambush.
    Minutes later the front line of the invaders began to arrive below Alec’s position. They were strung out, widely dispersed in a way that would prevent the ambush archery from inflicting enough damage to stop the invasion. On cue a string of Krimshelm soldiers appeared to block the Conglomerate progress. Units of the invaders began to slow down and stop in the face of the opposition, as more units came up behind them, and the canyon began to display the dense population Alec wanted to see, with only one exception – there weren’t enough soldiers down below; half the Conglomerate army seemed to be missing.
    From what Alec had seen at the campsite, he expected twice as many Conglomerate warriors to be involved in the invasion. “Macon, take this message to Major Perry; tell him this is not the whole invasion,” Alec told his messenger. “Go fast and tell him there must be more elsewhere.”
    He tried to imagine what he could do. Before he had considered all the possibilities though, a shout rose from the far side of the canyon. The other half of the ambush had begun to fire their arrows at the soldiers stuck below. “Fire only half your arrows!” Alec gave the order along his line. “Fire half and hold half in reserve,” he told each cluster of men he reached as he ran along the canyon edge. They had each been given a