The Freedom of Slavery Ch. 11

"Before you ask questions, let me see if I can answer a few for you. I and my fellow War Lords do not expect you to do anything besides train and gather your personal kits together for the moment, as we have to get me all trained up and ready to kick ass in every imaginable way, not to mention I have to give birth.

We will draw up as many plans of attack as we can, and organize the fighting forces accordingly. For right now, we want to be able to plan for a full frontal assault in battle formation, a guerilla war strategy, and plan sieges on enemy den-sites. I admit I don't know much about how you set up your battle formations or command, but in a few weeks, once I have gotten my full medical training and some basic plans on paper, we will be sure to come calling and ask for your ideas.

The main thing I want everyone to focus on right now is helping thetsarzanjumpstart preparations for a siege, and before I forget, the important thing we are waiting for is a sign.

We will know the war has begun in earnest when an Anubite comes to call, he is a friendly who is to be taken to me immediately when sighted. Until then, we prepare for anything and everything."

Most of the people with questions resumed their seats, and the four who had questions came forward.

"All I want to know is what do you want to do about the battle packs that are still in training. I only just started my training as a battle healer, but I am a fully qualified doctor. Many of my friends, as well as my brothers and sister, may not complete our training when the war comes and I am afraid we will be asked to fight when we are not ready."

"Look, at the moment, I have no idea what is going to happen, or the million and one things that must be considered. I hear your concern, but until I have more answers, please be understanding of the fact that I have not had time to come up with solutions to your problems.

If you think it is important enough for me to address it in the planning process, please send notes to us at our house. For now, I need to rest before I get any more upset. Thank You for your support and understanding."

With that, she and her mates left the arena, and attempted to go home. That was hard, considering they were mobbed. Though she had just said she needed to rest, the people of the den site were too scared and confused to calmly prepare for anything, so Gobin decided to step up to the plate and see if he could calm the masses.

"My fellow citizens, I want to reassure you of a few things before my mate is upset enough to cause harm to her unborn cubs. We plan on setting up the ancient siege shelters for the noncombatants, of which our cubs will be included, so you can imagine that they will be up to standard and beyond. Also, at least one blood sibling from each of the patrols will be guarding the noncombatants so that everyone is on alert if there is a perimeter breach, including one of our own brothers.

To insure the safety of everyone, we need you all to calm down at some point soon and help us cover all the bases. We need the cooperation of everyone and the ideas from all to make sure our loved ones stay safe. Like my mate said, after this news has sunk in and you think of something we may have missed, please send us your ideas. We would also appreciate it if someone would be willing to field and organize all these ideas and concerns so we are not overwhelmed and can focus our attention fully to everything."

A group of brothers who looked to be at the age of retirement stood and volunteered to help field all the concerns and ideas and help find the person best suited to fulfilling the tasks that needed to be handled.

"Thank you honored elders for your support in this monumental task. Now you know who to give your ideas/concerns to first and I promise we will handle as many as possible as quickly as possible. Thank you all for your support as we prepare for these tough times ahead.

With the crowd feeling a bit calmer from Gobin's assurances, the family was able to get home so Kali could rest.

It didn't take long for the elders to start getting mobbed with eagerness to contribute to the cause. The elders came by later that afternoon with an armload of paper from what ideas and concerns had come forth before the elders politely kicked everyone out of their house so they could deliver the messages.

"Elder Mandar, we are honored with your presence."

"Don't give me that crap boy, you were the one who when I first started training you said you could kick my ass with one claw Lezar, at least Jahar said he thought I was a worthy adversary but getting too old to kick his ass without help, which I then proceeded to show you both that that was not true.

Now, to the business that brought us here, we had to clear the house of bat-shit crazy chaos before we could leave to visit, so the gods can pat themselves on the back for reintroducing chaos as properly as they demand order.

Luckily we all have enough fire left in us to demand some respect or you would have been invaded too."

"What he means by that is we had to politely show the females and cubs to the door and a few of the more 'upset' males had to be forcibly removed..."

"We kicked their asses to the curb and told them to take a damn chill pill if they wanted anything from us or our leaders. That is what I meant brother Leoald."

"I presume that at least some of our fellow citizens were polite and calm enough to meet the requirements of having their voice heard?" Kali stated, liking these brothers and thinking they were the perfect secretaries, a combination of efficient and demanding of respect that they could get shit done.

"Mostly wanting to make sure that they really had to give up products to fill the siege lockers from the merchants and females wanting to make sure that their cubs had an appropriate place to hide from the invaders, though the still active training masters are the ones who contributed to this pile of papers we have the most. They got first priority because they were the calmest and seemed like they had the most pressing concerns." Leoald replied before his brother could.

"Lezar, you, Kalba and Helius handle those, Ilan you take care of the merchants, Gobin is the Chief Medical Officer so he handles anything medical related.

To make life really easy for us all, and because this will help you field who gets what responsibilities, I will dole out the jobs and titles officially. Lezar, you are in charge of the right flank of the main army, which is also where all the guerilla war fighters and other specialists shall be mixed in battle packs. You are the general of the guerilla war army, which will be its designation from now on.

Kalba, you control the left flank, which will be the part that will rotate defense of the den site until it is attacked, then it shall be the defensive army, until then it is the main offensive army, which shall be its designation from now on.

While the Warlords are in battle, you shall be part of the battle pack as the shield to me when I use psychic attacks. This means all the field tactics and training questions go to them, and the strategies will be discussed by all of us, but they have final say for use by their armies, and I reserve the right to overrule if the gods tell me a better plan.

Jahar and Helius have very similar jobs, though Helius will stay here and relay all pertinent information from spies, prisoner questionings, and overall communications. Helius is the spymaster and chief inquisitor, and communications officer, so his job is to establish his spy network and lines of communication besides the familial mental link. Jahar is the one who makes the decisions if Helius needs a decision made based upon the information he has gather, therefore his title is Warlord: Stealth and Intelligence officer.

Ilan is the Supply and Logistics Master, if supplies are needed and the movements of supplies monitored, it goes through Ilan. Each of you are in charge of finding and promoting capable people to serve under you, and Gobin is responsible for all battle healers and medics standards of knowledge and that they are well supplied before they are sent into battle. Gobin's title is Warlord: Chief Medical Officer, he is also the healer of the Warlord battle pack."

With that all figured out, information was given to the appropriate brother to take care of, and which of the elders would work best as which brothers' "secretary", though Mandar preferred "information director" because, as he put it: "I am no damn secretary, I am a retiredhalzandrill master, I have pride."

So the appropriate "information directors" were assigned and plans to coordinate with thetsarzanand others of importance were decided on and started. That left Kali with another person who could help her train when she was ready to restart her battle training.

@@@ Two and a half months later:

Jahar and Gobin woke up to see Kali in cat form, right on schedule. So much work had been done to get everything ready, and fortunately they were spared most of the details so that they could focus on getting Kali her medical certification, which she had gotten last week, and all the stealth training had been started, including poisoning and poison making.

The medical manuals had been finished and distributed, the only major things still being done were accelerated training for the specialized units and self-defense for the non-combatants.

The spy network was up and running; and communications with other den-sites showed that they were just as prepared, though they had responded to army summons with negotiations that were fair for everyone. Wherever there was an attack, the army of awesomeness would hightail it there to lead as support for the den-sites under attack.

They were the offensive army that would get the support of local volunteers that could be spared from the defense of the den-site, and the volunteers would do the same for a siege of the "den-site hub" as it was now being called.

Now, Kali would learn basic defensive moves for protecting the cubs while in cat form, but otherwise she would be left alone to just enjoy being pregnant.

"Kali, wake up dear, you hit the four-month mark." Jahar called soothingly.

Gobin was already in cat-form ready to greet his mate. Four months was a long time to be without his mate, but now he had to be as courteous as Jahar had been about the whole situation, but for at least today he needed to be around his mate to reassure them both of their bond. He was willing to let Jahar explain the situation, but then he could fuck off for a few hours, common courtesy needed to be put in somewhere when there was no protocol to fall back on.

"Hey Jahar, now that I am awake from that lovely greeting, you want to make Gobin and I some food before I let my claws do the persuading?"

"Message received, what do you want and how long you want me gone for?"

"Whole fish de-boned, a decent slab of meat, and some of the fruit/pie things with a giant bowl of water. Come with the vitamins and the food in a few minutes then give us a few hours alone, thank you for your understanding."

"Understanding, survival instinct, same thing at this point and your welcome; how about you brother, what's your order?"

"I want to second that order."

With his marching orders in hand, Jahar left while the getting was good and had Lezar and the others help him bring in the massive order of food, helped Kali get her vitamins down by placing them in the middle of her tongue then splashing a small cup of water into one cheek so she could swallow them down; and then left the couple to their private time.

After eating enough to sate their hunger, they cuddled together, which they both knew was the best they could do while she was pregnant, but at least the cubs were due soon.

"Does this mean I get to just lay around all day until the cubs decide they want to be born?"

"Well, what else do you want to do? You could read carefully I suppose, but apart from some simple defensive training, what else is there?"

"I don't want to do nothing, after all this activity that would drive me nuts, maybe I could take a few days to explore everything with this new perspective and maybe observe a little in the clinic, until it was absolutely necessary for me to be in seclusion. Get over here, I want to be groomed."

"Alright, for the first month that could work; and you aren't the only one wanting to be groomed mate of mine."

So, with a plan to keep the boredom away for a month at least, they spend the next few hours eating, grooming, and cuddling before Jahar deemed it was safe to come check on them.

"So, am I still in danger of getting clawed or are you ready to join the rest of the world?"

Gobin answered by reverting to hybrid form and walking out to check on what was going on, Kali following in cat-form.

"We are going to go down to the clinic for the rest of the day, Kali wants to explore everything she can while in this form and wants those defense lessons tomorrow. Jahar, could you do us all a favor and think of things Kali could do in cat-form to stave off boredom? What is Mandar doing, because I think he should help too?"

"He is about to help save his own damn skin that is what he is doing. Boredom leads to pissed and pissed pregnant female is not something I wish to add to my list of having survived again, specially this cat who has been learning how to kill. At least my mate hadn't been trained to kill when she was pregnant with our cubs."

"Well, now I know that that potential disaster has been averted, we will be back for dinner. Good luck with the planning!"

@@@ Kali enjoyed going everywhere, and it helped her to meld both sides of herself because now they were able to combine similar experiences, like what the market was like, their impressions of their patients and neighbors. Senses from the smallest thing like walking out the front door to watching Gobin heal a broken bone were discussed so that they could know what the other could be helpful to enhance, like a cat having a better sense of smell or a human having better color and emotional processing.

By dinnertime, Kali was exhausted from the mental work-out, and was happy to eat a full meal and go to bed.

"Glad you guys got back. We came up with some ideas: Kali has been learning plants and poisons with human senses, so why not make it a game to guess in cat-form? For some of them she can use only smell or must tell the right one without looking at the color. We also came up with the idea of paper battles for tactics practice." Jahar said, hoping that this would work.

"I love the ideas, as does my cat. We had fun all day integrating sensory experiences and practicing switching between human senses and cat senses trying to find a perfect blend, this will just give me more practice enhancing my understanding of my cat senses."

"Glad you approve, we assume you would want what you ordered earlier, so that is waiting for you in the living room."

An urgent knock at the door interrupted Mandar from ending his sentence with his usual spiciness, and when the door was answered the male at the door informed them that an Anubite was spotted being chased by a pack of Canids.

"What the fuck, can't the gods have filibustered any longer? Kali still has two months! Alright, Kalba and I will take two teams to go rescue the Anubite and kill all the Canids." Lezar told the messenger.

As the messenger hurried off with Lezar and Kalba, the others started getting a space ready for a possibly half-dead Anubite to be nursed back to health enough to start his ambassador duties.

"Well, there goes our time of peace and order! Now we can start kicking some ass in earnest!"

"Don't sound so enthusiastic Mandar, you are retired after all to being an 'information director' to a pregnant Warlord General, not a frontline fighter. But at least you get to teach me how to defend myself during my time of vulnerability, so maybe you are a frontline fighter after all."

"I think my fur wants to stay attached, thank you very much, and I'll have you know that I may not be fighting many Canids, but a few will be stupid enough to come too close to my claws thinking they have an easy meal.

I will defend my den-site with pride because my Warlords have deemed me to still be a fighter and not a noncombatant. As for teaching a pregnant female in cat form how to kill people to defend herself, I may be brave but I am not suicidal, she has two mates for that job!"

"Cubs, you can stop fighting and focus on the fact that we will have a possibly injured visitor who will think Kali is about to attack them. That means dear, you will have to move to the corner for the moment, at least until we know he is stable." Gobin told his mate sensibly.

A few minutes later, a naked man of darker coloring, on Earth he would have been called African, was carried and put onto the couch for Gobin to examine. He struggled for a few minutes after smelling new scents around him, but when he realized that he was being helped not hurt he calmed down and Gobin was able to determine he had deep wounds on his shoulders, hips, and legs, but nothing life threatening.

Kali was given the okay to come closer as the man shifted to his hybrid form, which looked like an Anubite from the Mummy Returns, but without all the gold and clothing. He tensed as she came closer, but then he realized who she was and relaxed.

"Warlord General, my name is Aton, and yes, all our names start with an A. I came to tell you that you need to come rescue the rest of my brethren from a siege. We are well prepared, but I was sent out for help because we are trapped in our temple. About 20 battle packs surrounded our temple and we are stocked to survive for 15 days starting today, but we can ration out to 30 days if needed."

"Alright, when Lezar and Kalba come back from killing the Canids tailing you, we will tell them to mount another rescue. But has the war begun in earnest?" Jahar asked.

"Yes, one of the battle packs has a dire wolf as a leader, so I assume the answer is yes. We will be glad to take care of the dead and work as healers when we have been rescued, and also as spies. Some of us look and smell more like wolves, so we can blend in if need be. I heard the dire wolf praising the discord of Eris, so that clued me in as well to the fact that it has indeed begun."

"You rest and help us get ready to receive your brethren and we will take care of the rest. We accept your offer of help for our cause and hope that the gods of order prevail in these lands." Gobin told him.