Child of Conquest

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

an Andorian Heir

Birjer entered the room bloodied and dirty his father looked him up and down as he strode into the room.  He rose from his chair, the relief obvious on his face as he grasped his weary sons arm and led him to the table he had been sat behind.  He ordered for food and drink to be brought and was interrupted by Birjers worried questioning of the girls safe arrival.

“The girl is healing, but she will be badly scarred. She has not spoken since she arrived.”  He looked to his son for answers.

“You are aware of the situation, her village.”  Asked Birjer

“Yes Aldwyn informed me as best he could, as you can see I’m in the process of looking at our options. As you can imagine this came as more than a slight surprise.”

 He pointed at the maps before him “How many do you think?” 

Birjer shook his head “I don’t know they’ve split up, there was at least a hundred or so with Ethalinda how many have gone ahead I can only imagine.  Crossing Hallam pass should slow them down but for how long?”

 Arkell looked at the map and pointed to Merilt and Hallam.

“If they take both passes they can crush every village all the way down to the shores of Arden. They have us from both sides, we’re blind here. If they’d come from the East no one would have spotted them, they knew exactly when to attack.”

“Send scouts.” Said Birjer

“To what end.”

“We can at least warn people, bring them to the North.”

“And then what, whose to say they haven’t got ships coming to attack us from the northern shores as well, were no safer here.  We can’t even ship people out because there aren’t enough boats.”  He slammed his fist onto the table “fools, they refused to see and now they are blind and they will look to us for help.”

“We should leave the Ealdraed to their fate and take the opportunity to go home.” 

Arkell looked at his son bewildered “Go home to what?”

“They will have left but a meagre force at home we should take the opportunity to take back what is ours.”

Arkell looked at his son and shook his head despondently “Take it back with what, with who?”  Arkell gestured with his arms at the empty room

“With our people!”  Replied Birjer

“We have no people back home, we are a lost race our people are here and they are too few.”

“It is here we have become nothing more than guards to pompous officials who would not heed our warnings.” 

Arkell looked angrily at his son “Those people helped us when we were being annihilated, it was they who helped us.”

“It was them helping us that made our men stop fighting, if it wasn’t for them perhaps we would have a home left worth fighting for.  If our people had no where to run to perhaps they would have stayed and fought.”

Birjer was stopped mid flow of his rant.

 “Like now you mean, if we go home, if we take back our lands what then.  By that time they will have taken Denholme, mined all they can from the hills and become better equipped.  What will happen when they decide to come back to Erland do you think, more war.  What an earth makes you think it will be different his time. I came here to help our people and if that means forging a partnership with a bunch of administrators than that’s what had to be done.”