Aella stepped into the hallway, outside her room, behind the crowd that had gathered. One of the servants, based on his clothing, was pounding on her door."Your Majesty, is everything alright?" he called, turning to look at the crowd around him. There were the guards she had made, several palace guards, two other servants, and Edgar, holding a tray of food. Aella was just behind Frederik, so the servant didn"t see her.
"Shall we break the door down?" asked Seifer, looking alarmed.
"What happens to us, if the king dies?" asked Vesh.
"You would be sent away to fight in the army," answered the servant, turning back to the door with a sigh. "I don"t understand how this girl managed to become king. Girls are so difficult!"
Aella smiled, walking over to Edgar and taking a grape off the tray he held. The demons around her, that saw her, also smiled, but strangely enough, no one spoke up to inform the servant of her arrival.
"Your Majesty, you requested us first thing this morning!" called the servant, pounding on the door hard enough to make it bounce in its doorframe.
Taking another grape, Aella stepped up behind the servant, making the guards and other servants stiffen.
"Have you tried opening the door?" she asked softly in the silence between his calls.
"Of course, I have! What do you take me for, a foo…!" his voice trailing away in horror, as he turned to see who was speaking.
Raising an eyebrow, Aella reached past him and turned the doork.n.o.b, opening the door. She held back the laugh of delight she was feeling at the look on his face, because she knew she had just unlocked it a moment ago.
Chuckles could be heard from all around them, as Aella stepped back out of the way and motioned for the servant to step inside before she did. As soon as his eyes landed on the a.s.sa.s.sins, the servant stopped dead in his tracks, then fell to the floor in a feint. The other two servants also stepped inside, but they didn"t feint when they saw the dead a.s.sa.s.sins.
Aella ignored the bodies in her room, and walked over to the small table against the wall, where a chair was waiting for her to sit in it. Edgar set down the tray of food, and stood off to the side, out of the way. She took a sip of the drink, and found it to be milk. She hadn"t had milk in a very long time. Taking another sip, she couldn"t decide if she liked it or not, so she picked up one of the boiled eggs and began to unpeel the sh.e.l.l.
"What happened? Why are there dead people in here?" asked Ulrik, spying the a.s.sa.s.sins.
"I think they wanted to tuck me in, and wish me goodnight," said Aella, watching her new guards look around at each other uncomfortably. They all knew, it was their job to keep her safe, supposedly, and they had already failed.
"I wouldn"t touch their daggers, Torrod, unless you"re immune to poison, like our king," cautioned Frederik, as Torrod stooped to pick up one of the fallen daggers. He jerked his hand back, without having touched it.
"It seems you had an interesting evening," said Cyran, glancing around the room, and noticing the bed was untouched.
"I did. Are all of you ready for the morning sparring?" she asked.
"Before we"ve even had breakfast?" asked Kieran, alarmed.
"Do you expect your enemies to stand back and calmly wait for you to finish your food?" she asked, standing up and taking a bite of her egg.
Kieran sighed and his ma.s.sive shoulders slumped. "No, I suppose that"s fair."
Shaking her head, Aella had to remind herself, that these demons had all been spoiled. They knew how to fight and kill, but they had been treated far better than she had been. Getting to eat before the matches, if they wished was ridiculous. They had to have new training to break them of all of the habits they seemed to have formed.
Leading them towards the throne room, where they had eaten the night before, Aella finished her egg with a couple more bites. Edgar rushed to follow her with her tray of food.
"We"re going to start with your forms," she said to the demons following her. The servants had remained in the room, presumably to clean up the mess.
"What about our forms?" asked Morden.
"I have a pretty good idea of what you are all capable of, but I would like to see just where you are in your abilities. If you are going to be my personal guards, I want you to be the best there is, on or off the battlefield."
Reaching the throne room, she saw that the tables had all been cleaned off, but they were still in the middle of the room.
"Move the tables and chairs to clear a s.p.a.ce in the middle of the room, so we can begin," she said, moving to her ridiculously oversized throne. Sitting, Aella watched them move the heavy tables against the wall, and wait for her to give them directions.
Over the next two hours, she made them all run through every form they knew, and had them all covered in sweat, exhausted by the end.
"You"re used to short, quick fights. I need all of you to build up your stamina. Just because you defeat one opponent, you never know when he might have a brother, sister, father, aunt, who wants to kill you for having killed him. Dry yourselves off with the towels, then move everything back in place so we can eat."
The promise of food had Kieran moving the tables back in place before he ever grabbed a towel. She imagined he needed a lot to keep his bulk in working order. Edgar had the staff start bringing tray after tray of food. There were biscuits, eggs, sausages, cheeses, fruit, bacon, and a variety of other savory items, piled high on the long table against the wall. Aella quickly made her a plate and sat down at the table. She knew she was supposed to eat at the throne, but she wanted the demons around her, to feel she was one of them.
As they ate, the 6 Advisors entered the room, looking annoyed at the need to meet with her. She knew that they hated having their routines interrupted by a king they didn"t think would last, but she was determined to learn as much as she could, to be the best king she could be.
"I want a table set up for the Advisors. They are to have their own table each morning to sit at. Have any of you eaten yet?" she asked as the servants rushed to find a table.
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"We have, Your Majesty," said Jirga.
"Good. Then, while we wait, Jirga, you can start. Tell me more about this famine my kingdom is struggling with."
"For the past 10 years our crops have produced less and less each year. We have tried rotating them, to see if it is the fields losing strength, but it hasn"t helped. It also doesn"t help, when all of our fields along the boundary with the human lands, keep getting smaller and smaller as the humans encroach."
"What do you mean, they encroach?" Aella asked, taking a bite of a sausage. It had a hint of spice to it, that she really enjoyed, so she took another bite. "These are spicy, guys," she added, causing Torrod to pause with one almost to his mouth.
"The human armies will run a farmer off his lands, then force their people to live there. They will build a settlement, instead of just a house, to protect the lands from being reclaimed by our people. We have lost half our lands to their tactics. And they have started raiding the harvest wagons, stealing them and killing our farmers. The people are able to keep from starving, from the foods we get from the rest of the kingdom, but half our food comes from those fields."
"And why do we not have troops protecting those fields, and our border?" she asked, turning to Varnin.
"Most of our troops are positioned along the mountains. We have attacks almost constantly from griffons, wyverns, and other such beasts from the north, and attacks from the south of goblins, orcs, trolls and giants. What few we can muster beyond that, are stationed along the border, but they constantly have to rush from one attack, to another, as we don"t have enough troops to cover the entire length."
"Seems to me the humans could invade at any time. Do you know if they struggle with the monsters from the mountains, as we do?" Aella asked.
"I"m afraid I don"t. We haven"t managed to have enough extra troops to spare in a long time, to be able to put towards spying on the humans. It"s been all we can do, to keep up with what we have been."
"Why have we not been able to keep up with the monsters? Are we not killing them?"
"Oh, we are! In fact, the meat from their corpses is one of the primary foods our troops eat."
"Then how are we not making a dent in the attacks? Surely those mountains could not sustain a constant stream of monsters. Their populations would shrivel and die!"
"We believe that is why they are attacking us constantly, but the thing that is worrying, is that none of the monsters we defeat, ever look hungry or starved."
Aella knew something else had to be going on. There was no way so many monsters were living in those mountains, especially enough to keep the troops fed.