"You want us to walk right into their trap?"
"I want Alrik to lead a hit unit," Kalen said smoothly. "He will take the fight to them and push them back before they settle. He has done it before."
Roan looked skeptical. "With what? Wishful thinking? We barely have a dozen archers still breathing."
Kalen shrugged. "He's our strongest. If anyone can—"
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Alrik interrupted flatly.
Kalen turned to look at Alrik very slowly. "It is a compliment, cousin."
"No, Kalen, it's a bad plan."
Kalen kept smiling. "Is that how you see it? Come on. I thought you're the bravest among us. Alrik the beast slayer. That's the name you were given by the soldiers because of your prowess on the battlefield. Don't tell me you're afraid of Valderran soldiers."
Alrik didn't respond. He walked slowly to the table and traced a finger across the edge of the map. He was suspicious of Kalen's plan.
Kalen was supposed to be in charge of the soldiers. He had the papers, the name, and the rank. But instead of him, the soldiers followed Alrik because they believed he would keep them alive. And that made Kalen very jealous, and then dangerous.
What nobody else knew — yet — was that Kalen had already made a secret deal with Valdera. He had promised them intel, trade routes, and supply maps, and all he wanted in return was get Alrik out of the way. Valdera would do the dirty work, and Kalen would come out of it as the hero. He just needed Alrik gone so that he would take his place back. He hated not being the center of attention.
When the others started arguing again, Alrik stepped outside. He did not have the time for arguments and he knew that he did not need to convince anyone. They would follow whatever call he made.
Kalen approached him quietly.
"Take the ridge, cousin," he said. "Be the hero."
Alrik didn't look at him. "And if I don't?"
Kalen lowered his voice and leaned in. "If you don't, I will find your wife and make sure she is slaughtered, and dies a slow and painful death. Remember how easy it was to kidnap you from your honeymoon and force you to fight. It will be just as easy to slice her throat."
Kalen said it so plainly, as if he was commenting on the weather or making small talk.
Alrik's face didn't change. He refused to give Kalen the satisfaction of seeing his emotions, so he bottled up his anger and fear deep inside.
"She's far from here," Alrik said finally.
"For now." Kalen smirked.
That was the end of it. Kalen went back into the tent and joined the other men to talk about strategy. Alrik stood there for a while before finally joining the men inside again. When he agreed to Kalen's plan to take the west encampment, the room had gone silent as though someone had pulled all the air in the room out.
Alrik did not trust Kalen at all, not even a little. But trust was not going to help him at this point in time. What would help him was common sense and only the thought of survival. Survival and timing.
Something fishy was definitely going on, probably a trap. But Alrik still said yes. Because, he could not risk having his wife's life being threatened. For her, he would do anything.
Besides, he wasn't just any frontline fighter anymore, he was the country's top General, a title given to him by the soldiers themselves. He had fought worse battles than this and prevailed. He also had loyal people by his side now, his inner circle. So he knew he could count on being safe to an extent.
And he had his secret company that was slowly becoming the biggest in the country. He was not about to screw that up now, or let Kalen get in the way of that. And he had plans, big plans. But first, he had to survive this war and shame his cousin. His battle skills were exceptional, but he walked right into an ambush.
"Everybody get down!"
Those were his last words before a massive explosion rocked the battlefield. Alrik was injured badly and rushed back to the camp medic tent. It took three days before he regained consciousness. He blinked slowly as he opened his eyes, like a child who was waking up from a very long nap. When he finally opened them, his face fell slack with confusion. Something about the way he moved was off, his limbs were twitchy and not coordinated. Even his eyes were unfocused as though he was trying to remember how to use them. He tried to speak but his words came out wrong, something that sounded like, "Hot bread,"
A young soldier who had been assigned to sit at the edge of his cot leaned closer when he noticed Alrik's movements.
"General?" The soldier called, "you are awake? We thought we lost…" He stopped suddenly to stare at the abnormality that he was seeing. The General was squinting at the lamp hanging above him, with cross eyes, while repeating the word "light" over and over again. Very strange.
"Lieutenent Gaya?" The soldier called. "The General is awake."
Gaya who was sitting somewhere across the tent rushed over to look at what she was being called for. She dropped to her knees beside Alrik. "General? It's me, Gaya. How do you feel?"
He tilted his head, blinked slowly, and started moving his lips. "Gay...a. Pretty name," he muttered and grinned. "have, sweets?"
Gaya's face crumpled. "Huh?"
"He's acting mad," the young soldier said, as if to confirm his fears.
Gaya stared at him for a very long moment. She did not know what to say. The General of the Front, who once trained hundreds of soldiers with just a stick and a glare, and who could read battlefield shifts with terrifying accuracy, was gone.
After a short moment, the healer arrived to examine Alrik.
"He is acting very differently. Why is that?" Gaya said slowly.
The healer sighed. "I figured he was going to be this way. Alive, but...not the same. I have summoned other healers and doctors from the country, they will arrive soon. We will administer different treatments on him to see if they can revive him."
"Revive him?" Gaya asked. She was desperately hoping that the healer would not confirm what she feared.
"You see, his memories are patchy now, which only means that his cognitive regression is significant."
"Regression?" The young soldier repeated after the healer. His eyebrows were furrowing together.
"Yes. He is mentally functioning at a child's level now."
"And physically?" Gaya asked.
"Physically, he is recovering, but he's not fit for war anymore. He's mentally retarded, and will only be a danger to himself and others till he has fully recovered. If he ever recovers."
There was a stunned silence after that. Gaya stood up immediately.
"So you're saying there's a chance that he could never recover? He could stay like this forever?"
"I hope not. But in all honesty, the answer is yes. He must have been hit really hard in the head during the blast."
She swallowed hard, then turned toward the flap of the tent and left to inform the others.
By afternoon, the private medic tent had become very busy. Kalen himself stood a few tents away to observe the flurry of activity. He was a little disgusted at the soldiers running in and out of the medic tent, trying to help with supplies for the newly arrived medic personnel to start treatments on Alrik.
He turned away angrily. Alrik was supposed to be dead, why wasn't he dead? The fake victory, the bomb, everything was very well lined up. The Valderrans promised they would assassinate Alrik for him, yet Alrik still lived. It wasn't supposed to end with Alrik alive. Kalen decided to go see Alrik himself. Alrik had become the shell of the man he once was? Maybe that could be enough, but for Kalen, it was not.
Kalen had taken too many risks. He had sold out too much to that filthy nation called Valdera. He had given them secrets about his country's troop positions, their code names, and even weapon stockpiles in exchange for Alrik's elimination and letting him negotiate peace on his own terms so that he would be the hero. Oh, how badly Kalen wanted to be the war ending diplomat.
But now, even with Alrik in this state, he could still prove to be a liability. He needed to get rid of Alrik in a less suspicious way. Soldiers were already beginning to speculate that the attack was planned by him, because he made Alrik go there. He knew he had to move fast.
When Gaya stepped into the medic tent the next morning, Alrik was nowhere to be found. A search team was immediately organised, but three days passed with no news.
"The General is gone. We all saw how retarded he was, I'm sure he wandered off on his own." Kalen said when he addressed the soldiers to call off the search party.
"If he had simply wandered off, we would have found him by now. Something is wrong, and we won't stop searching until we find him." Gaya responded, and she was backed by Alrik's inner circle.
"Are you disobeying a direct order to stop the search?" Kalen asked.
"Yes, we are."
"Then so be it. The six of you are hereby dishonourably discharged from this camp for insubordination. Anyone else who joins them will share the same fate. Alrik is gone. I'm in charge now. You all better get used to it because it seems he's never coming back." Kalen announced.