Chapter Two
“No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.”
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
The rest of that day and the next were mostly a blur.
Later on, I would barely remember anything that was said to me or what I had done during those first days.
I had been placed in a room that was in the wing of the palace reserved for guests.
It was a huge palace, mostly all on just two levels and sprawling across a large area.
It was the same dull color as most of the houses on Tygeria, but like everything else, it was built on a grand scale.
At first, I was too exhausted to get up, and it was for the best, as the servants told me there had been rioting outside the capitol building and the palace.
No one could figure out exactly what the crowds wanted, except to express their anger and outrage about what had happened to the king and the Dyson. But why were they so angry?
The true story about what happened and about their tragic deaths had just been revealed and the people wanted revenge. They wanted only to destroy the Alliance, and anyone associated with it.
The state funerals had just taken place, though thank God, I was still too unwell to attend, even if it had been safe to do so.
I was still grieving deeply and unable to get out of bed for long.
I was miserable about it at first, until Werros took my hand and explained to me that both coffins were mostly empty of anything but ashes, a few bones and some scraps of their uniforms. He refused to give me details, until I cried tears that slowly streamed down my face and begged him to tell me. Not knowing was even worse, I told him.
He shook his head but finally took my hand and told me what had happened during what they were now calling the Battle of Lathalen Hill.
That was when I first heard the horrible story that later figured prominently in all my nightmares.
I later wished I’d never begged Werros to tell me.
The battle that had cost Davos his life was on Myrthia, a planet that was heavily forested, and mostly uninhabited, except for a few large Alliance settlements/outposts.
That was all I’d heard about it when the news first broke, before my brain went tilt and all I could concentrate on was the fact that he was dead.
Now I was hearing about how it happened.
The king’s plan of attack had been for a portion of the Tygerian army to attack the Alliance front, while the main attack column swung far to the right, using narrow paths through deep woods and fields, and then moving around behind the Alliance’s left flank.
Davos had argued against this plan, but the king was adamant.
The march around to the flank, led by Davos, was a difficult one for the Tygerian forces.
The Alliance army had felled trees to block the road, which in many places was just a simple woods path that became full of tired, sweating soldiers.
The weather on Myrthia was much hotter and more humid than on Tygeria, and it was said that the soldiers complained bitterly.
Most of them were very young, in their early teens and had only very recently finished their training.
They had to be pressed into action because of the large number of recent casualties.
They were used to using hovercrafts, but the dense woods prevented that, and made this march the only viable option, Werros told me.
It was one reason why Davos had argued against this maneuver, but the king had overruled him.
Finally, well behind schedule, the Tygerian regiments splashed across some streams and headed south toward the outpost—but not before the men took up even more time as they slaked their thirst in the muddy waters of the fords.
Five companies heralded the advance, spread out on both sides of the road.
To the left, the land rose steeply to form high ground, locally called Lathalen Hill.
While the advance group cautiously moved toward the summit, they received their first hostile blasts in the form of a volley delivered by the Alliance soldiers and what I called their disruptor “rifles.” They had long barrels like a rifle and were meant to shoot over a long distance.
Davos quickly shifted his men to cover and meet the threat, forming the balance of the men in a battle line and ordering them up the hill behind the skirmishers.
The disorganized but enthusiastic and recent graduates reached the crest of the hill not long abandoned by the outnumbered Alliance skirmish line.
The Alliance soldiers, however, had not given up the field; they had only fallen back down a little distance on the southern slope of the hill, and one portion had broken off from the rest and segued down and to the side.
They greeted the young Tygerian soldiers with blasts from their disruptors, and the part that had broken off the main group heard the shooting and came up behind the Tygerians.
They had even received friendly fire at first, scattering death and confusion on all sides.
Davos had been very active during the attack, and his men later said he showed great courage and conspicuous leadership.
He had climbed atop some rocks that ran across Lathalen Hill and began to rally and encourage his men, but he was struck down with a grievous wound.
Reports about what kind of wound were confused and inaccurate.
The only thing known for sure was that he was carried off the field to a grove of trees where medics were working and then later evacuated to the field hospital that had been quickly set up at the rear.
Command of the regiment was taken over by another general named Thaylar and the king himself.
In order to better direct his men, Thaylar was in front of his regiment and turned his back for a moment to the Alliance army.
At that point, a strong blast from one of those rifle-type disruptors tore off his leg.
The stricken general was then also carried off the field, half dead from blood loss.
That left only the king to lead the charge.
Eventually, the balance of the brigade came up, and the king led it in a brave and reckless push that cleared the Alliance soldiers from the area as the enemy retreated.
The battle ended as a Tygerian victory. But as they began to move forward, a sudden outcry from the king’s aides at the rear of the column alerted them to the fact that the king, who had fallen behind with his entourage of guards and aides, was lying dead on the side of the road, killed by a stray shot from the retreating army.
What happened later that afternoon was even worse, however, and was the final tipping point for the wrath of the people of Tygeria when they learned of it, as word began to spread back home.
Once the Tygerians had made it back to their ships preparing for takeoff, a number of men from the Alliance managed to sneak up on the aides who were still attending the king’s body.
They overwhelmed and killed the aides and stole the king’s dead body.
They also overcame the field hospital as they packed up to leave as well, killing many of the wounded who were still there, as they searched for Davos.
When they found him, they severed his head from his body, along with the king’s, and burned the mutilated corpses in an attempt to remove the flesh and procure the bones and skulls as trophies.
Horrified and incensed when they learned of what had happened, the exhausted Tygerian troops strongly rallied and surged out of the ship and back toward the outpost. They shifted into their tygers and killed every man, woman and child there, because that’s what happened when they reverted to their beasts.
They no longer had any rational thought processes.
Afterward, they searched and found a heap of burning embers along the banks of the nearby creek.
They also found what appeared to be charred and severed bones.
Upon closer inspection, they identified a Tygerian femur, vertebrae and portions of pelvic bones.
Nearby they found some items of Tygerian uniforms that from their colors denoted they had belonged to individuals of high rank.
As they carefully collected the grisly remains, someone noticed even more circumstantial evidence and items that seemed to back up their conclusion that the bodies of both Davos and the king had been chopped up, burned and desecrated.
I understood now why the people were so incensed.
I was incandescent with rage, not to mention horror.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so upset. It was awful enough that the bastards had killed my beautiful mate, but to destroy his body—the one I had loved so much and held in my arms and caressed and kissed every part of?
I couldn’t even hold the thought in my mind.
After Werros finished his terrible recounting of what happened, I was half-swooning and violently ill and had to be put back to bed for a couple of days.
The doctors were called, and I had to be restrained so I wouldn’t make an attempt to end my own life.
Each time I woke up, I began shaking and crying as I remembered what I’d been told about Davos’s grisly death. Something had to be done.
It was when I was only a little better that the priests first came to see me.
The religion of Tygeria was ancient and highly revered by its people.
Not everyone on Tygeria adhered to this one religion, however, and a new one had sprung up in the last few years, The name of the older religion was pretty much unpronounceable to me, but about half the population, including Davos had followed it.