Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

Lord Ailus chuckled as his finger traced the red line on his map. He could see his daughters lounging on his vanity and bed looking at him with raised eyebrows. They must think him crazy; even they didn’t understand his master plan. That was fine though, it made sense to him.

Ciolia looked at her red nails and began to file them each individually into a sharp point using a piece of metal she’d removed from her Father’s draw. Carlia looked at the map, the corner of her mouth shifting into a sly smile, “Tell us again Father how you are going to make that Dwarf King fight his own brother for us.”

The fire in the corner of Ailus’ chamber had flickered out; the only light that was left was the glow from the fire wisps above, which caused flickering silhouettes to appear. Even though Lord Ailus stood still, he felt more like his shadow which refused to stop dancing across the wall. His shadows enveloped the room as the many fire wisps surrounded him with their light, and he looked back at his plan.  

Ailus pursed his lips and walked around the battle map. Echoes bounced around the rectangular room from his footsteps on the marble floor. “I have a way to get our refined moonstone weaponry.”

Ciolia cocked her head sideways to look at her sister, “We’re listening.”
“Get on with it then,” Carlia spat.

“Hand me that metal shard,” Ailus said. Ciolia stopped filing her nails and threw the metal at him, which he caught just before it punctured his eye. “I’ll show you girls again... in an even simpler way than before. Come here.” Ailus manoeuvred past the golden sheet that no longer was covering his main map, and was now resting on the floor. He sat down in front of an oak draw to the left side of his room and dug the shard into the wooden top.

“This is the wall I’ve built,” he ripped the knife across the wood scaring the surface. On one side he drew a box and labelled it elf. “This is my city Kheissa.” Next to it he etched a small cross, “This is Cleawood tunnel.” The other side of the wall he drew two more crosses symbolising tunnel entrances and stopped. Smiling he taunted “Anyone figured it out yet?”

Ciolia placed her right hand on his shoulder and clenched down hard. “Carry on.”

To the bottom of his drawing he drew another box and labelled it dwarf. “This is Volodars kingdom, Laeroth. By here, there’s a small desert with a cave.” He carved another x close to Laeroth. “Four tunnels. Three in our lands. One in Volodars.”

It was Ciolia’s eyes that widened first and she removed her hand from Ailus’ shoulder and peered closer onto the crude map. “You’ve exploded the entrance to Cleawood tunnel; the only cave on our side of the wall.”

“Very good,” Ailus purred. He ripped through the cross marking Cleawood tunnel, and etched two lines from the caves the other side of the wall to the one in Volodar’s desert. “Thanks to this tunnel system...there’s a direct route to him. It’s sad really that there happens to be infected that side of the wall too, with their only exits through the caves.”

Carlia and Ciolia snickered. “They’ll pour into Volodar’s lands,” Ciolia’s eyes filled with glee. But Carlia shook her head. “There may be a direct route for the infected to storm through. But there’s only one hundred or so infected behind that wall at the moment. How is that going to take on a whole army?”

“Good question,” Ailus began again. “Remember the banquet when I allowed three infected to attack us? Remember just how... unprepared and frightened the people were?” Ciolia nodded her head in agreement. “Well, it’ll have the same effect. The dwarves will be caught unprepared when I release them into their lands and they’ll need help. They will call for aid, and we will be there to help them. Once we’ve dealt with the few straggling infected that survived, Volodar will have no choice but to help us in our war against Orrian. After all, we will have... saved him. ”

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