Warlord of the Lonely Fortress

By Alex James

~ Exploring difference through autism-based characters~

On a world of fortresses, gone is the age of barbarians when Aerol, their warlord, built his fighting force into warriors powerful enough to defeat any enemy standing before them.

Now, with Aerol’s old friend bewitched, rumours of a dread sorcerer abound with the fantastical. Aerol refuses to believe the rumours – he cannot allow himself to, for the integrity of the fortress, but when assassination rears its ugly head he needs a plan.

The Fortress holds the key to Aerol's salvation, if only he can find a way in.

~ A Tale of Sword & Sorcery, Mana-wielding Heroes and Demons ~

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex James
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005418205

Alex James

Alex James was the bass guitarist in the nineties band Blur, a life he chronicled with great success in his first book, Bit of a Blur. He now lives on a farm in the Cotswolds with his wife and five children, makes cheese, writes for both the Sun and the Spectator and has his own show on Classic FM. In September 2011 he hosted the ‘Harvest’ festival at his farm, combining the best in British music and food.

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Warlord of the Lonely Fortress

Alex James

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2022 Alex James. All rights reserved.

Discover other titles by Alex James at Smashwords.com

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https://www.alexjamesnovels.com

Cover art by Lawrence Mann

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Dramatis Personae

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Glossary

About Alex James

Connect With Me Online

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank James and Caroline Maston of Cazbounces Books, for their constructive feedback that prompted me to re-evaluate the premise of the story, to provide an introduction to lay out the world, and to include more characters. They also provided their invaluable book advice on my blurb.

Tim Brighten, for his insightful observations in a developmental edit that smoothed out many areas and allowed me to tighten the structure, adding a sense of place.

Author Rebecca Gransden for her balanced and valuable feedback, helping me with her general impressions and polishing where necessary. Author Nick Crutchley for giving his time and thoughts about the book.

Thanks to Michael R. Ames for the time he took working magic into my blurbs and for sharing his knowledge of the fantasy genre.

I thank my family and friends who have always supported me unconditionally online and in person, with whatever I happen to be doing.

Dramatis Personae

Denan

Independently minded female Tekromun with a warrior’s instincts and leadership skills. Aerol sees her as rebellious and with a threatening intellect. She has an influence within the warlordship that concerns Aerol.

General Cress

Aerol’s general, and his most loyal and able military acquisition. Cress is calm and practical, able to listen well, with a cautious and caring approach to Aerol’s problems. In battle he’s fearsome and can often lapse into quiet moods when talking about civilian life. In this way, he’s like Aerol.

Gunder

Aerol’s past self, who has now become an alter ego. Gunder was a monster in the Age of Heroes, and some eye-opening event in the past made Aerol aware of his past self.

Hemis

Once revered by Aerol as a Master Scholar and inventor, Aerol now sees his financial mentor and link with the City of Nemea, civilisation itself, as a pompous arrogant administrator with his own agenda who prizes his own intelligence and shows little sign of being trustworthy.

Inde

Aerol’s partner: an elegant and attractive shifter with many talents. Aerol sees her as demanding and a threat to his peace of mind. He doesn’t understand her, and this frustrates him.

Mentor Galouch

Galouch is a learned leader of the order of apprentices, and a secretive one who closets himself away inside the Lonely Fortress, acting as Aerol’s administrator for civilian problems and dealings with Nemea. After Aerol saved him and his apprentices from a raid in the north, where their building was burnt, Galouch and his apprentices have served Aerol since. But those pesky apprentices do get in Aerol’s way!

Warlord Aerol

Aerol is the main character of this story, and the only Tekromun who exists with purpose as far as he is concerned. There are things within his control, and there is everything else he doesn’t understand. He’s a not-quite-hero with a bad temper and villainous ruthlessness. He only really wants to be left alone to escape the rough hands of barbarism – and the demands of civilian life. Why can’t anybody understand that?

Please remember there is a glossary at the back!

Chapter 1: Northern Bridges – Day One

The group headed north. Aerol spearheaded a relaxed line of soldiers as they hastily went to work on the bridges. He hadn’t asked the reason, but assumed it was the occasion. That was until he saw his soldiers were folding or sliding the bloodied and battered enemy soldiers away, revealing puddles of smeared blood that could not be hidden.

The fallen scarcely had bodies left, crushed as they had been by brutal warfare, caked with blood, bruises having burst to leak with congealing blood spots. The bodies were dotted all over the place, lying in wait. No pattern to the conflict and attack, but whether they’d been cleared away or whether it was the reason for their demise, remained to be seen. Their armour, weapons, and possessions had mostly been stripped, and flimsy tunics and the odd weak segment of mail their only protection from nakedness. Their eyes stared upward in shock, the whites of them chilling to behold.

Did soldiers, or any Tekromun, ever really die? There was something ‘present’ about their stillness. A few shifting noises and grunts preceded his soldiers hurling the bodies off the edge of the bridge, falling to the silent all-encompassing black abyss that they called the chasm, a spectator of this event. Aerol walked to the edge of the twelve-foot wide bridge, and watched the bodies engulfed by the immensity of the blackness, returning to the womb of the world, until a mist flowed over the chasm to hide it from view. He could hear no roaring or see no magical emanations from the chasm at this time. All was dull.

Aerol shook his head, and then noticed General Cress close by, issuing orders with a calm voice.

‘They looked like soldiers, but with cheap armour. Care to enlighten me, General?’ Aerol said.

Cress’s square body still had heavy armour plates on with gaps to allow for movement and skill – important for Aerol’s soldiers. His helmet rose with a peak, and sat on his head like a squat creature, with its narrow nose-shaped protrusion at the top looking down below as if to see Cress’s chubby face and emerald eyes.

‘It was ridiculous, Aerol,’ Cress began. ‘There were soldiers, bandits, warriors, and all manner of odd creatures we’d never seen before. We hacked them and hewed them for years but they kept coming. Then, they stopped early this month. We sent scouts in all directions, and the way was safe. Perhaps we finally beat their numbers. We were gaining ground year on year, after all.’

Aerol crouched at the edge of the bridge and squinted below, looking into the mist where the enemy soldiers had been swallowed. ‘Yes, but where did they come from?’

‘Our territories are not so great to know that. I assumed they came from the dilapidated structures that are north-west, which are the usual hideouts for warriors, and there are a few theories from the apprentices they came from the under-surface at specific locations. Even the apprentices don’t know why there was a rise in the enemy population. Now they’ve been culled, it may not matter until we’ve conquered further.’

Aerol stood and looked back the way they’d come.

Behind him were the onlookers outside the West Dominion: soldiers and lines of civilian spectators forming a semi-circle of expectant faces, or the more judgemental faces and folded arms of the white-robed apprentices above on higher ledges, appraising this event. Where the apprentices were now, the expressions had become indistinct. The impressive West Dominion was encircled by rising white-grey walls that curved to conceal turrets, structures, and the curious habitations of the city that had grown within.

‘Apprentices … I rely on them too much and they’re overstretched working on demand for the thriving city that my dominion has become. I can’t rely on them much longer.’ Aerol rubbed his chin with thumb and index finger. ‘Warlord Grin is a Tekromun who has been north, and has seen horrors, perhaps not too dissimilar from those you describe. Could he shed light on this?’

Cress turned and gave Aerol a bizarre look. ‘You told me his theories were crackpot ones and that he was crazed. We’d give credit to his ravings now?’

‘What choice do we have?’ Aerol said.

‘Sole Inde has travelled further also. Should I bring her on the trip to see what she says?’ Cress said.

Aerol glared at him.

Cress shifted back and hesitated. ‘She is, after all, still a member of the War Council. Her contributions may help.’

Aerol let silence be his answer.

On opposite bridges were soldiers going back and forth in lines, idle, and Aerol looked away in distaste at the lack of discipline and orderliness. Their purple forms bobbed up and down, and they passed among themselves trinkets they’d forgotten on previous searches of the bodies, before casting the bodies away, and some of them handed things down the line all the way back to the dominion where eager Tekromun waited for them. It still seemed strange to Aerol that the soldiers had wives – it had never been commonplace in the past.

‘I’ll bring them both, then,’ Cress said.

Aerol tensed the fingers of his right hand and then clenched them, but didn’t reply as Cress left to bring them. The soldiers surrounding him were perhaps waiting for new orders in Cress’s absence, and he brushed away from them to gaze north at the mists that hid from view the great spaces that would lead to yet more bridges, destroyed structures of battlefields, and even surface platforms. He wondered how far up he’d continue before reaching the limits of what could one day form part of his new dominion.

***

Aerol crouched and picked at what he saw as the northern edge of the bridges he’d traversed more often than any others, placing his fingers in grooves and aware that he was away from the bustle and weight of his own soldiery further south on the bridges. The bridges here widened until they expanded out, or thinned, on the way north. The air was silent and the mist was thin, leaving the open black chasm visible, embracing him from below on all sides as a curtain, inviting in its gaps between the bridges.

He felt he was at a point in life where things had to change. Gone were the times of barbarism, and gone were the difficulties posed by Nemea. He wanted something else, hope even, for the future, and not just for himself. If there was something that could get him away from the noise and distraction from everyday life, then maybe he ought to pursue it. He’d tried to read the future before from within his warlordship, using his shifter abilities, and it told him he was to move to a different location. He put his head up, still picking at the ground, and wondered if this was the time.

Aerol turned, and Cress appeared from between his soldiers to announce Grin’s presence. Some commotion was happening from behind, and the soldiers were insecure, making angry movements in response to the presence of a new company heralded by a white flag with a black Nemean stalk on it.

They held daggers with arrowhead-shaped protrusions beneath the sharp blades as hand-guard protection – only good for stabbing – and they did not sheathe them as the company of two dozen stopped, with Grin at its head: a short, diminished figure with vigorous movements. Grin was well known for arriving to the north-east of Nemea, attempting to establish his own dominion, illegally, but he’d been defeated far north of Nemea and had given in to Nemea with uncharacteristic fatalism, at the mercy of self-appointed Nemean Hemis’s harsh policies.

Grin’s sewn mouth was made bloody being held together as it was with metal needles to prevent a gaping comical inability to talk. He’d taken an axe to his mouth in the past, and a shard had also embedded into his nose. But he was presentable now, encumbered by shiny armour, golden gauntlets, and a breastplate with the same Nemean stalk. Two headdress flaps flowed beside his face underneath his open helmet, decorated with serpentine monsters and a nasal piece.

Aerol felt uncomfortable about his presence. Their friendship had parted on unfortunate grounds, with Grin a victim of Nemean economic policies, and they’d not had opportunity to repair it. Aerol suspected Grin had lost his marbles, which didn’t help. The sight of the soldiers with arms, bearing Nemean standards, only made Aerol more distrustful. Some said the Age of Warlords had gone, but if somebody with Grin’s experience could still attain leadership over a city then maybe it still was alive, and it put Aerol on edge as he stepped back and put his foot at an angle.

‘You summon me, Warlord Aerol?’ Grin said.

Not ‘old friend’ as he used to call him.

Aerol glanced away and tried to keep his tone neutral. The situation was awkward. Where was his social intermediary and mentor, Galouch, at a time like this? He should be here.

Aerol stood to his full height to address him. ‘You’ve been north, Grin, and I’d like information on your travels.’

‘Now … not over a tankard? Where is the respect between warlords, between friends even?’ Grin said, and the soldiers behind him nodded fiercely.

‘I see you’ve claimed Nemea as your own, Grin. I had no idea. I’m concerned at the absence of enemies around these bridges, and you once tried to tell me—’

‘Tried to tell you and you wouldn’t listen,’ Grin said. ‘You only wanted to know what would help you survive, as you still do. That day I was afraid of the north, and I was trying to help. But no … Your dominion, your warlordship, and your Tekromun are all you care about. Well, the surface isn’t just about your plans. There are thousands who would back me in Nemea, Aerol, thousands!’

‘What do you want, Grin?’ Aerol said. Aerol didn’t want to fight his old friend, invade Nemea again, or even grab him by the throat and coerce him. He’d hoped he was past those days.

Grin straightened his back and put his arms behind his waist. ‘You think a trade can solve this, Aerol? There are problems between us—’

‘Problems that I do not know how to resolve. I’m a warlord, not a diplomat. Get to the point, and quickly!’ Aerol said.

Grin’s face fell. Did he look hurt? ‘I don’t want you to leave, old friend. Not north. I can’t rule Nemea by myself.’

Oh … that changed things. The crux of the matter was that Grin couldn’t do it by himself. He didn’t realise he was in good company. ‘What’s wrong up north?’ Aerol said. ‘The cities will still be here, but if we’re to defend them we need to know what’s there, and my soldiers don’t know.’

Grin shook his head. ‘Only pain, Aerol. North has always been the realm of the past and the fantastical. I wasn’t the same when I returned from there. There are enemies you’ve not defeated, shifters, and there are mutant monsters that would confuse you. I’ve told you this before.’

‘What else? Where do they all reside? Do you have a map in your mind?’ Aerol said.

‘No, I wasn’t that far north. I went south-east and then to the centre where the mega-fortress …’ Grin paused.

News of the mega-fortress: what was this? A circle of Aerol’s soldiers gathered closer to listen and with relief he noticed members of his council: Mentor Galouch, General Cress, Prima Denan, Sole Inde, and Guard Captain Heyt.

‘Don’t go there, Aerol. We were entranced, but something guards it.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Aerol said. ‘Attacks by soldiers and warriors in nearby locations doesn’t necessarily mean …’

He was quite taken with the idea now. Perhaps the mega-fortress was the salvation he sought for himself and his Tekromun: that something new he’d been looking for to expand his horizons and better rule these cities. It didn’t matter that he’d never been able to enter and examine its contents. After all, there were rumours it had never been entered. But what dense bandits couldn’t achieve, surely the organised soldiers he trained could.

Thoughts raced. The mega-fortress was a landmark he could use as a temporary fortress. From inside it was likely defensible. He brandished his fist in triumph.

But Grin shook his head. ‘There is a horror there, Aerol, and sorrow. The elements have taken over it. Some power of the past.’

‘You’re not making any sense, Grin. Galouch?’ Aerol directed the question at his mentor.

Galouch shook his wide head slowly, wagging his appendages. He didn’t know about what Grin spoke of, it seemed.

Grin walked towards Aerol and Aerol’s soldiers shuffled forward in alarm, but Grin had dropped his arrow-headed blade, which clattered and then went still as if stuck on the ground. It reminded Aerol of a dream, for some reason, when he’d been stabbed in the back, and he realised it was his alter ego Gunder, claiming as he usually did with these visions that what Aerol was seeing was in fact a real memory from Gunder’s past. In the vision, a realm only in his mind, Aerol saw Gunder crouch and pick up the arrowhead, brushing his fingers on the shiny blade. Echoes of screams blasted into his ears, of atrocities committed with the blade.

The heart stabber.

In the vision, Gunder turned and ran up the yellow path, shoving the infirm out of the way to catch up with the leading armed figures at the front, on the path that rose from wooden structures, away from the hundreds of stretched tubular hissing monsters, snakes he somehow knew, which connected the edges of the path to a featureless base that passed for a surface.

A blink later, the vision ended and Aerol was back among his council, Grin, and the soldiers.

Grin didn’t seem to even notice anything, and neither had anybody else. It was as if time had frozen over, with some events running parallel to these ones in a heartbeat that represented a longer stretch of time. Grin came closer, and was now six feet away from Aerol, benefiting from a lot of space on the bridge. He held out his bare hands, palms down. What was this? Then, Aerol saw that Grin’s hands shook, with increasing vigour. Aerol took a step back in wariness. No, this must be an excuse or a joke.

‘A cheap parlour trick of veterans, Grin, and I’d hoped—’

Aerol’s shifter abilities exploded outward in sensory awareness, stopping him mid-sentence as he perceived something encircling him, some presence that slid in the air like a viscous black liquid that had lived so long it had begun to eat itself from within, making him sickly. He gulped. He’d not had experience of late combating shifters, and what else could this be.

The air itself shook, threatening to tear Aerol’s heart out of his body, tugging at the mighty vessels that held it central. He glanced at Inde, who was as apprehensive as he was, and yet she must have been the source of the demonstration. There was nobody else who possessed such power. Certainly not Grin.

Quiet, from all around Aerol. Whether everybody else was transfixed by Grin’s wobbling hands, time passed more slowly for them, or they could at some subliminal level feel that something was amiss, Aerol didn’t know.

And then the chasm spoke, rising up with a deep thrumming and an angry, vengeful roar. Aerol panicked and gazed around his space, and then bent to assess the chasm. Breathing rapidly, Aerol wondered what foul invisible predator surrounded them.

‘Rrrooaarrhhaa!’

‘Hisssssssss!

Something passed close by Aerol’s ear. Then he saw them: hundreds of black snakes slithering in straight lines up walls that were not there, towards the edges of the bridge, eagerly shifting their black underbellies to reach him, tongues darting out in forked anticipation. Before Aerol thought to break himself free of his paralysis they surrounded him, coiling and stretching around his feet.

They leaked a reflective puddle of some semi-luminescent liquid, and Aerol knelt to probe his finger into the mysterious pool, until two mini snakes hissed loudly, breaking their necks and upper bodies above the pool to warn his fingers away. Aerol recoiled and looked back towards Grin and everybody else. Grin had transformed, holding a staff with a cobra head on it: a fearsome monster, Gunder told him in his mind. Shielding his eyes from Grin, he realised he couldn’t look at him because he now wore a pointed hat and grey or dark blue robes akin to some mana civilian. And he could not be seen distinctly when Aerol tried to, or was it fear that prevented him from looking at him. Behind the figure that had been Grin was a cave blocking out his view of everybody else, and a faint mist oozed from the bottom. Inside there was only darkness.

The figure regarded him and Aerol dared not move. In fact, he was inclined to run away. The snakes continued towards the entrance to the black cave. For some reason, Aerol did not know, they had to be stopped. But first, he had to address the unknown character before him, whose cobra staff gazed towards him with threat. Still, Aerol shielded his eyes while talking to him.

‘Grin, what is this? What happened to you?’

‘More than what, Aerol is who.’ The voice was deep, unlike Grin’s at all, as if it came from the darkest reaches of the chasm. ‘The monster you see everywhere around you has entered the collective unconscious of the world you live on. And it rules.’

‘There are no monsters,’ Aerol said.

‘It calls itself a sorcerer,’ Grin said.

‘There are no sorcerers or supernatural oddities. They were even less than monsters back at the time. There are only shifters. This isn’t the Age of Heroes, Grin.’

‘I’m not Grin. I’m the Shadow, your enemy, and these snakes are my essence. I’m the unknown and all fear the unknown, ’the laughter boomed.

Aerol crouched, dug his hand into the bridge and pulled out a stick, which he fashioned into a sharp bladed weapon with a thought. He held it aloft, now a spear, and charged towards the figure. Snakes all around him sealed off his escape, bunching together, stretching, and squirming in tandem to stop him from reaching any of his allies. He held the spear in raised fist, and then aimed at the figure, the Shadow. He missed.

The illusion, if it had been one, vanished, and Grin collapsed, to everybody’s horror. There was no Shadow, no cave, and only an ordinary and weak Grin, riddled with snakes of blood that slithered behind the skin of his face as he moaned and writhed on the ground.

Cress ran up to Aerol’s side. ‘What happened, Aerol? There was some kind of optical illusion. We couldn’t see behind this screen.’

‘Sorcery … from the sorcerer,’ Grin said.

Aerol shook his head. ‘No, it was just a shifter. Somebody turned Grin into a shifter, and I don’t know how,’ Aerol said.

Grin’s breastplate cracked apart, to reveal an open heart, mutated and with discoloured patches of pulsing purple that had been basted on. It looked like a double heart.

‘Some strange shifter,’ Cress said.

‘Monster power,’ Grin said.

‘Don’t listen to him, Cress,’ Aerol began. ‘Whatever has happened to him has altered his perception.’

Aerol felt rather than saw Galouch hovering by his right shoulder, peering down.

‘He’ll have to be treated, you