Heroes of the Crystal Star (Valcoria Book 1) Read online

  Heroes of the Crystal Star

  Valcoria Book One

  Jason James King

  Immortal Works LLC

  1505 Glenrose Drive

  Salt Lake City, Utah 84104

  Tel: (385) 202-0116

  www.immortal-works.com

  © 2014-2019 Jason King

  http://www.authorjasonking.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For more information email [email protected] or visit http://www.immortal-works.com/contact/

  ISBN (ebook)

  ISBN (paperback)

  Map

  Contents

  Part I

  1. Providence

  2. The Broken Soldier

  3. The Sentinel Gate

  4. The Honest Thief

  5. Deadly Light

  6. Whisper on the Wind

  7. The Medasylas

  8. Awakening

  9. Tyra

  10. The Oath-bound Man

  11. In the Shadow of Death

  12. Wormwood

  13. Kinship

  Interlude I

  Part II

  14. The Shining Star

  Chapter 15

  16. House Trauel

  17. For the Greater Good

  18. The Kalyra

  Interlude II

  Part III

  19. The Battle of Hirath

  20. Aftermath

  21. The Guide

  22. Legacy Secret

  23. Dragon’s Chasm

  24. The Desperate Son

  25. Of Balance

  26. Harbinger

  27. To Make Amends

  28. The Guardian Seal

  29. The Jihan Truik

  30. Victory and Regret

  31. Rewards

  About the Author

  Also by Jason James King

  For Christina,

  The mother of my children and an exceptionally kind and caring soul.

  Part I

  Imperator Yaokken was not always the cruel tyrant spoken of in the stories. He was once a peaceful man who used his genius to discover wonderful truths and invent marvels of technology. He excelled in this, and his passion for creating helpful machines was only surpassed by the love he had for his wife. Adariel was her name, and she was his world.

  Chapter 1

  Providence

  White. Everything around Sitrell Trauel was white.

  The blizzard made the Nenassette River behind him and the line of infantry in front his only identifiable markers, and they were litt le more than ghostly shapes outlined by grey haze. He wondered how the engineers were able to accomplish something as delicate as the placing of hundreds of pounds of explosives while half blind. It made him tense, part of him anticipated a premature explosion with every breath, but everything remained hauntingly quiet. As an experiment, Sitrell strained his hearing in an attempt to detect the engineers at work.

  Nothing

  The compressed atmosphere caused by the storm made him feel as though he were not fifty miles south of civilization waiting in the wild for an innumerable army to descend upon them; an army that would be fifty times the size of his small force of one thousand infantrymen and eight hundred light cavalry.

  “We don’t need to fight them all,” his father’s words echoed in his mind. “The ice sheet over the river isn’t thick enough to march an army across. That means all we have to do is make sure the engineers can explode the bridge so that General Dyon’s army will have time to reach Sayel Nen.” Sitrell held onto that. If all went well, they may not even need to fight, though experience and his soldier’s training cautioned against such naïve optimism.

  Sitrell’s horse stamped and wickered, a dual puff of steam exhaling from its nostrils. He shivered and pulled his cloak tight across his shoulders as though he were an old woman fighting a chill. Winter was worse in his home city to the north, but under the mistaken assumption that the climate would be warmer this far south, he failed to bring along thicker, warmer clothes.

  Someone at his right chuckled. “I seem to recall telling you to bring your fur-lined cloak when you left Salatia Taeo.”

  “All of your high priced tutors taught me that it was warmer the further south you traveled,” Sitrell clenched his jaw in order to keep his teeth from chattering.

  The man chuckled again, “Perhaps, but not for another three hundred miles.”

  “You might have brought it with you.”

  Sitrell shot a glance to his right. His father, Enot Trauel, sat proudly on his white stallion, shoulders square and bearded jaw jutting resolutely from underneath his hood. He turned to look at Sitrell. “Then you would never learn,” he said with a mischevious glint in his eye.

  “Learn what?” Sitrell scoffed.

  “That your father is always right.”

  Sitrell attempted another scoff, but his trembling made it come out sounding like a sob.

  His father’s smile faded. “We could swap.”

  Sitrell suppressed another shiver as he shook his head, his shoulder length hair catching on the interior of his hood. “I will endure.”

  “I am certain your men won’t notice, if that is what you are worried about.”

  “No,” Sitrell snapped. It came out harsher than he intended.

  “Very well,” his father said patiently.

  “I am sorry, Father―I mean General.”

  Enot Trauel was one of five chief generals in the Amigus army, and Sitrell had long become accustomed to his father’s military prominence. What he wasn’t used to was serving directly under his father, something he hadn’t needed to worry about before his promotion. In fact, the Amigus force waiting here on the enemy’s side of the Nenasette was his command, not his father’s. It was only somewhat by happenstance that the two of them ended up serving together on this mission; though his father would claim it to be providence―he saw every noteworthy coincidence as either divine providence or diabolical malevolence.

  Sitrell had been running training exercises in the south city of Sayel Nen with his new command when scouts returned with the news that an Aukasian army was massing in a city a short distance from their side of the border. The scouts estimated the number of troops flowing into Vendalayel to be in the tens of thousands. That could mean only one thing―they were staging for an invasion.

  Sitrell made certain that word was sent to the capitol by rail, and in less than a week, his father arrived with several officers and a small battalion of infantry. That was a token force compared to the army that was even now marching for the river, but it would be another two weeks before General Dyon’s army of fifty thousand arrived. Blowing up the massive stone causeway that bridged the mile-wide Nenasette would delay the enemy’s attack on the south city just long enough for them to fortify it against the inevitable siege.

  “I’m sorry,” Sitrell said. “The waiting is setting my teeth on edge.”

  “It is alright, Commander.”

  For some reason, his father using his new rank to address him made him swell. It was more a compliment than an adherence to military decorum; a subtle way for him to express parental pride without embarrassing him in front of his men. His father was a very considerate man that way, something Sitrell had only begun to appreciate recently.

  “Shards of the Crystal Star. but I can’t see a thing in this storm,” Sitrell grumbled.

  “Take care what you say,” Enot Trauel whispered.

  Sitrell felt ashamed for his blasphemy. “Sorry, Fath—General. I just wish the Creator would’ve deigned to bless us with better weather for the battle.
”

  Enot Trauel shook his head. “This storm is a blessing. It may curtail our ability to see, but it has also hidden us from the Aukasian army.”

  From somewhere ahead of them, a trumpet blew.

  “Not anymore,” Sitrell said.

  The sound of hooves beating the ground behind them made Sitrell turn in his saddle. A rider materialized out of the fog and drew rein so fast that his horse skidded to a stop in the wet snow. “General, Commander,” the soldier hastily threw salutes at each of them. “Lieutenant Tribere of the engineering corps reports their rigging is not finished.”

  “Well, how much longer will it take?” Sitrell demanded.

  “At least two hours.”

  Sitrell looked to his father and Enot Trauel clenched his jaw. “Tell Tribere that we can give him one. If he is not finished by then, then he is to pile the excess dynamite at the foot of the first arch and be ready to blow the bridge on my command.”

  “Yes, General,” the man saluted, wheeled his horse, and disappeared back into the fog.

  “Creator, shield us from the weapons of our enemies,” Sitrell’s father prayed aloud before drawing a magnificent sword with a tapered blade and long silver crossguard.

  “Do you think Kyen is with us?” Sitrell asked, and for a moment he was not a Commander addressing his General, but a frightened son seeking reassurance from his father. “We are, after all, in the very shadow of death.”

  His father hesitated a long moment before turning to look at Sitrell, and there was something different in his eyes; a softness that belied his drawn sword, proud horse, and general’s insignia.

  “Yes. Your brother is with us.”

  Shouting and the first volley of musket fire erupted from somewhere in front of them.

  “To your squadrons!” Enot Trauel motioned indiscriminately to his left. “Wait until the last line of musketeers fires their third volley before calling your charge!”

  Sitrell nodded, snapped the reins of his horse and galloped away. As planned, he joined his three squadrons of cavalry lined up in an echelon formation on the left flank of the main body of Amigus infantry. He rode down the slanted line, drawing his sword and waving it over his head while shouting, “On my command!” He then wheeled his horse about so that his back was to his men, and he was facing the direction of their incoming enemy.

  A chorus of repeated cracks split the air. It was followed by another round of musket fire, this time louder. Finally, the last line of riflemen, of whom Sitrell could only see as outlined shapes, stood, took aim, and fired.

  “CHARGE!” Sitrell lowered his sword and pointed it forward.

  With a sound like a hundred thunder storms, his three squadrons of riders―roughly four hundred in all―launched their horses into a gallop with Sitrell leading the charge. Generally, they would start with a canter to maintain formation and then build up to full speed, but they needed to strike the enemy quickly. Sooner than Sitrell expected, the fog pulled back to reveal a mass of men clad in leather jerkins, armed with muskets, and wearing hooded capes. They were arrayed in a column, but were scrambling to form a musket line. The enemy had scarcely noticed Sitrell’s cavalry when they crashed into them.

  Panicked shouts and cries of pain joined the din of hollered orders and musket fire as Sitrell’s squadron rode down stunned Aukasian soldiers. They crossed into the enemy ranks at an angle, disrupting line formations and causing as much pandemonium as they could before swinging back in the direction of the river. While curving back, Sitrell saw his next squadron perpetuate the chaos he’d caused, driving even further into the enemy column. And when his third squadron struck, the front of the Aukasian column was in full retreat. Sitrell’s squadron began to cheer and he let them enjoy a moment of victory before reining it in with a stern reminder that their battle was only just beginning.

  They continued the hit and run tactic and were able to strike twice more before the enemy began to regroup. The blizzard had dwindled to a lazy snow fall and the sky cleared, rapidly improving battlefield visibility and giving Sitrell his first real look at a column of enemy troops that stretched back beyond his sight. The whiteout had made their surprise strike much more effective than it otherwise would’ve been, and now it was clearing just when they needed it to. His father was right. The Creator was in the storm.

  A Boom made Sitrell start, and for a moment, he wondered if the engineers had blown the bridge early. But screaming close by and a rain of dirt and snow indicated something else. He looked to where his infantry was arrayed; the three long lines of musketeers down on one knee at the front. They were shouting, and why had they stopped firing? A second Boom sounded as something black, little more than a blur, streaked down out of the sky and into the main body of his men. An explosion followed, sending up dirt, snow, and body parts.

  “Cannons!” Sitrell shouted.

  With the fog and element of surprise, the Aukasian soldiers shouldn’t be able to set up their cannons this quickly. Nor had he expected they’d be transporting them this close to the front of the column. And since when had the enemy started using explosive mortar? As far as Sitrell knew, the Aukasian Empire didn’t have that technology. The miscalculation was catastrophic and he watched in impotent horror as shell after shell rained down on his men, their lines breaking as they scrambled in all directions.

  “Commander!” a faraway voice called to him. “Commander,” it repeated. “SITRELL!” He felt a hand on his shoulder shaking him. He looked up to find his father standing up in his stirrups and staring into his face.

  “Father,” Sitrell said numbly.

  “I’ve sounded the retreat!”

  When had the trumpet blown?

  “I need you to lead the footsoldiers back across the river. I will take all six squadrons of cavalry and cover your retreat.”

  Sitrell nodded, his father’s decisive orders bringing him back to the moment.

  “The very moment the last of our cavalry ride across, have Tribere blow the bridge, ready or not. Understand?”

  Sitrell nodded sharply.

  His father turned away, but Sitrell shot out a hand and caught him by the arm. His father looked back, surprise and irritation both showing on his bearded face. Before he could reprimand him, Sitrell said, “Kyen is with us. I know it!”

  His father’s expression softened and he flashed a smile at Sitrell. Then, he wheeled his horse and rode away, shouting for Sitrell’s cavalry to rally to him. Sitrell turned, and began riding through the mass of Amigus soldiers scrambling about in confusion. He quickly found their captain and shouted, “Aelear!”

  The man looked up just as Sitrell rode over to him. “Get your men in order! We are warriors of the white eagle, not a group of frightened milk maids!”

  Captain Aelear saluted and began to shout orders. Another mortar screamed down from the sky and exploded not but a hundred feet from Sitrell. Fortunately, it didn’t strike any soldiers directly, but several men cried out as they were hit by hard bits of frozen ground and sharp shards of ice. The explosion so close to him had the unexpected benefit of calling the armies attention in his direction, so Sitrell used it and raised his sword shouting, “To me!”

  Captain Aelear’s men responded, and soon Sitrell was shepherding the footsoldiers across the wide stone bridge to the other side of the river. Not that the enemy couldn’t fire muskets or launch mortar across the Nenasette, but they wouldn’t be able to pursue them as they fled to a safe distance.

  Sitrell looked behind him, past the long line of fleeing infantry to where eight hundred horsemen wove in and out of the enemy ranks, harrying them and drawing their cannon fire. Please protect father, Kyen! It took a painstakingly long time for Sitrell’s footmen, even at a full sprint, to cross the bridge, but eventually the last booted foot fell onto the snow packed ground on the opposite side of the river. Having been riding at the army’s rear, Sitrell was the last to cross. A flash of gold drew his gaze to Lieutenant Tribere, and he snapped the reins of his hor
se leaping to the ground at his side before the mount had come to a halt.

  “Commander Trauel!” Tribere saluted.

  “Sound the trumpet to call back our cavalry, and then blow the bridge once they’re across!” he ordered.

  “We aren’t ready, sir.” Tribere said, raising his hands.

  “The enemy has exploding mortars, or didn’t you see that?” Sitrell snapped. “We are out of time!” The engineer nodded and did as commanded, the sound of a trumpet blasting a heartbeat later. “Aelear!” Sitrell called.

  “Yes, Commander,” the man pushed through a group of panting soldiers and jogged up to him.

  “The enemy can still hit us from their side of the Nenasette.” He waved in the opposite direction of the bridge. “Get these men a mile away from here before you let them rest!”

  “Yes, sir,” Aelear saluted before turning and barking a series of curt and reprimanding orders.

  Watching the slow disengagement of the cavalry from the enemy was agonizing, but Sitrell suppressed his urge to mount up and ride back across the bridge to join his father. It would do no good, but he had to re-convince himself of that whenever he saw or heard a shell explode. He flinched as one whistled out of the sky and buried itself on his side of the river in an explosion of dirt and snow.