A Duel of Evils

by Anthony Ryan

  The vile practice of employing slaves in Volarian armies would not take root for another four centuries, so their soldiers of this period were all free men. The basic Volarian military unit consisted of the infantry battalion with an official complement of one thousand men, though many would remain under strength in the field as battle and sickness inevitably took a toll. Most soldiers were conscripts aged between sixteen and twenty-five, their numbers swelled for the Kethian campaign by reservists called back to the army by emergency Council decree. Most battalions were a mix of youthful conscripts and veterans who had chosen a career in the army in preference to the often dire uncertainties of Volarian civilian life; the practice of enslaving impoverished debtors had been enshrined in law by this point, and life for those without wealthy family connections could be highly unpleasant. At the very least the army offered some measure of security. Three meals a day, a whore twice a week and a battle every now and then to sate the belly and fill the purse with loot, Entril records his senior sergeant saying. The recipe for a happy soldier, Honoured Commander.

  Although life in the army may have been preferable to poverty, standards of discipline were so rigid as to border on sadism. The most lenient punishment prescribed by the Volarian military code consisted of ten strokes of a barbed whip, usually meted out for such crimes as an unpolished breastplate or tarnished belt buckle. Unauthorised drunkenness earned fifteen strokes, and disrespect to an officer twenty, which may well have been fatal for many recipients. The harshest punishment was reserved for deserters, who could expect to have their hands and feet cut off and the stumps coated in pitch before being set upon by a pack of slave-hounds. A particularly cruel, but undoubtedly effective disciplinary measure took the form of collective punishment for battalions deemed to have acted in a cowardly fashion. One hundred men would be chosen by lot and obliged to lead the charge in the next engagement, completely naked and armed only with a single sword. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that those who fought the Volarians often spoke of their unmatched bravery.

  In addition to the standard battalions the Volarians also maintained a number of elite, all-veteran formations, each with a long list of battle honours and bearing a name rather than the bland number afforded other units. These names were mostly derived from the heroes of legend, ‘Livella’s Blades’ and ‘The Sons of Korsev’ being perhaps the most celebrated, having fought in every major engagement of the Forging Age without ever tasting defeat. In the struggle that followed, however, even such formidable soldiers would come to learn that invincibility in war is a myth.

  Whilst the bulk of the Volarian army consisted of infantry, they did maintain strong cavalry contingents, mostly drawn from the sons of the wealthy merchant class, and a highly effective, perhaps crucial corps of military engineers. Via a remarkably swift series of bridging operations, it was these engineers that enabled the Volarians to cover more than one hundred miles of Kethian territory within the first five days of the campaign, all without meeting serious opposition or word of the invasion reaching Tavurek, now licking his wounds in Kethia. Once word arrived, however, the king lost no time in responding.

  Kethia had a small standing army of perhaps twenty thousand men, though its strength had been severely denuded by the Battle of the Cut. To augment this meagre force Kethia had instituted a long-standing tradition of hiring mercenaries from far and wide, a practice that had increased tenfold with the advent of war. So it is unsurprising that the picture Karvalev paints of the force that marched out to confront the Volarians is a cosmopolitan one, as well as shedding more light on Tavurek’s uncanny ability to inspire loyalty in even the most hardened heart:

  Archers from the shores of the Jarven Sea took their place alongside dark-skinned slingers from Vehrel. Lancers from Atethia called ‘brother’ to savage pale-skinned axe-men from the northern mountains. And all bowed low to mighty Tavurek, giving solemn oath to follow him to the fire pit and fight the Dermos themselves should he so ask. That this oath was truly spoken, none can doubt, for these men no longer received pay. They came to us as mercenaries but stayed as loyal Kethians, and as such they died.

  As ever, sources vary in estimating the size of the Kethian force, but it was almost certainly outnumbered by at least two to one. Despite the disparity in strength, the clash that followed four days later was anything but one-sided. The two armies met at a point some thirty miles from Kethia and barely a mile inland from the southern bank of the Cut of Lokar. The Volarians had wisely opted to keep close to the shore in order to enable constant resupply by their fleet, another factor in the swiftness of their march. Entril describes the battlefield as:

  . . . merely rolling farmland, devoid of hill or landmark that might afford it a name. The Kethians came on in a solid mass, eschewing manoeuvre or feint for a charge aimed straight at the centre of our line. When the day was done we had a name for the field, The Spoiled Land, for what could grow on such corrupted earth?

  Entril’s own account of the fighting is a confused morass of close-quarters encounters with men he describes as maddened beasts, void of reason or fear. Therefore, we are obliged to refer to the report of the overall Volarian commander, one General Derilev, for a description of the battle as a whole. Derilev appears to have been an experienced officer of some renown, though his handling of the campaign speaks more of basic competence than inspired leadership. His account must be treated with considerable caution, conveying as it does the sense of a long-serving officer employing outlandish claims to avoid responsibility for near disaster:

  There are several unquestionable reports from my most seasoned veterans firmly asserting that they saw Kethian soldiers continuing to fight on after suffering mortal wounds. Clearly, we have underestimated the vileness of our enemy, for it is my belief that they could only have effected a penetration of our centre through unnatural means. When the dead are seen to fight there can be only one conclusion: the Dermos are risen anew and now make their home in Kethia.

  The Dermos, My Emperor will surely recall from Land of Nightmares, are the legendary enemies of both gods and men, said to reside in a fiery pit beneath the earth. Derilev goes on to describe how the Kethian breakthrough was stemmed by the vaunted Sons of Korsev who threw themselves into the breach at the last moment, sacrificing two-thirds of their number but fighting with such ferocity that the Volarian line had time to reorganise. Derilev expends considerable ink in describing his deftly executed counterstroke, pulling back the battalions in the centre whilst reinforcing his flanks and sending his cavalry against the Kethian rear, thereby inflicting a crushing defeat. This must all be considered at best an exaggeration and at worst a desperate lie, for Karvalev describes the Kethian army retreating to the city in good order, albeit badly mauled. The length of the subsequent siege is also evidence that, regardless of Derilev’s claims, Tavurek retained considerable military strength in the aftermath of defeat. It is also significant that Derilev would soon find himself replaced by a new commander. I searched in vain for further mention of him in any history, although the Council’s notorious treatment of unsuccessful generals is probably ample explanation for his absence.

  Entril wrote to his wife shortly after the battle, relating that he had lost a third of his men most to battle, a few to madness, and found himself elevated to battalion commander as all the officers senior to him were now dead. If losses on such a scale were typical it must have been a badly shaken army that laid siege to Kethia, but lay siege they did.

  The Volarians were no strangers to siegecraft, the Forging Age being rich in tales of their expertise and patience in reducing enemy fortresses and cities. Initially, it appeared Kethia would be little different. Entril relates how the newly appointed Volarian commander gave a rousing speech to the assembled army soon after the siege began:

  ‘A month of spadework, men,’ he promised us, ‘to earn a lifetime’s worth of loot.’

  This new commander emerges as an even more obscure figure than the unfortunate Derilev, kn
own to history only by the less-than-flattering title Entril has his men affording him when his optimistic speeches became tiresome—‘The Lying Ape.’ In fact it was more than two months before the first direct assault, The Ape having grown impatient at the meagre progress made by Volarian engineers as they inched their trenches closer to the walls. Over ten thousand men were ordered into the attack, charging forward with scaling ladders at three different places in the hope of dividing the defence sufficiently to allow a breakthrough. It proved an unmitigated disaster, barely three thousand men straggling back come nightfall. Entril described the survivors as:

  Wide-eyed and black with soot. Babbling of unkillable enemies and the Kethian king appearing at will in their midst, wielding an axe that cut through armour as if it was rice paper. The Ape gave the coward’s punishment to one in every ten, but the fear provoked by their rantings took root, and fear is the worst plague for any army.

  Clearly possessed of a stubborn streak, The Ape tried again three days later, doubling the size of the assault force and placing his elite battalions in the vanguard. Entril’s men were ordered to support an assault on the main gate by the Spears of Morivek, one of the most celebrated formations in Volarian history. A palpable sense of shock, not to mention mystification at his own survival, is discernible in his next letter home:

  Assailed from above by a ceaseless rain of arrow and rock, the Spears clawed their way onto the battlements on either side of the gate. How they fought, my dear—I do not have the words—it seemed as if I gazed upon men fashioned into rock, the Kethians breaking on them like a storm-driven tide. As ordered, we charged forward with our great iron-headed ram, pounding and pounding at the gate as the Spears held the wall above. All for nothing.

  Entril describes his men breaking through the gate but finding their way blocked by a deep pit filled with what appeared to be water, revealed in fact as oil when a single torch fell from above and soon all was flame. Entril tried to rally his men but their waning courage shattered completely when the Kethians on the battlements above began to throw bodies into their midst:

  . . . bodies in Volarian armour each bearing the crest of the Spears of Morivek, and every one was headless. The men ran, heedless of my exhortations, and soon I stood alone at the shattered gate. Knowing death would come swiftly, I straightened my back and resolved to meet my end with the dignity due my rank. On emerging from the gatehouse I forced myself to pause and raise a defiant gaze to the Kethians on the walls. I saw only one man, face lost to the gloom of gathering night, though I knew him by now. He looked at me for a long time, hands resting on the haft of his great axe, then raised his arm and pointed a finger at our own lines.

  Curiously, Entril appears to have suffered no punishment as a result of his men’s cowardice. This is perhaps due to the fact that The Ape was found dead by his own hand the following morning. This, of course, necessitated the appointment of a new commander, and he proved to be a man with a surfeit of patience.

  Vartek Lovril remains the most celebrated figure of the Forging Age, and one of the few luminaries of the pre-imperial period not to be largely expunged from the visual and historical record during the Great Cleansing. His reputation had already begun to grow by the advent of the final Kethian war, but it was a renown built entirely on personal courage and fighting skill rather than command. Vartek had spent his early years in the northern port of Varral, until recently an independent city state. Vartek’s father had been one of the principal conspirators in the coup which had unseated the previous regime and opened the way for Volarian annexation.

  Being a third son, and therefore unlikely to receive more than a paltry inheritance, Vartek had enlisted in the Volarian army at an early age. This appears to have been done without his father’s approval, for Vartek entered the ranks as a common soldier whereas his social standing should have been sufficient to secure a junior officer’s commission. However, the myriad opportunities for distinction offered by the Forging Age soon saw Vartek’s courage and skill vaunted throughout the empire, ensuring swift promotion. I’m sure My Emperor would find a complete list of all the battles and feats of martial prowess ascribed to Vartek somewhat tedious, so suffice it to say that he was quite possibly the most dangerous man to ever wear a Volarian uniform.

  By the time of the Kethian war we find him commanding an elite battalion of amphibious troops, The Sea Eagles. He is known to have won considerable acclaim in the Battle of the Cut but seems to have played little part in the land campaign until the demise of The Ape. His exact age at this time is not known but can be reasonably estimated at thirty to thirty-three, the youngest officer ever to hold General rank.

  For a man of such fearsome reputation, it seems odd that many contemporary descriptions of Vartek paint a surprising picture; A more kindly soul I never met, Entril says of him. To win his friendship was to know brotherhood and generosity for all your days, for he never forsook a friend. Entril’s opinion may well be coloured by the fact that his subsequent fortunes were greatly improved by Vartek’s patronage, but this remains a curious portrait of a man believed to have dispatched over a hundred enemies in personal combat. However, it appears Entril’s admiration was far from unique, for all accounts are unanimous is recording the extraordinary loyalty and affection he enjoyed amongst his men, something Karvalev dolefully recorded in one of his last missives to escape the city: They have their own Tavurek now. Our fate is surely sealed.

  Vartek is also unique in the ranks of notable Volarians in owning no more than one slave throughout his life, a woman captured during one of his campaigns against the northern mountain tribes. Her name has been lost but Entril describes her as:

  . . . pale of skin and long of limb, with a pleasant aspect showing little of her savage origins. My General would allow no harshness to her, and his few private moments were always spent in her company, from which he seemed to draw considerable fortitude. Some even said he took counsel from her, but that is, of course, an absurdity.

  Vartek’s first act was to pardon all soldiers condemned to the coward’s punishment before embarking upon a wholesale reorganisation of the army. Ineffective commanders were dismissed and given a chance to redeem their failure via service in the ranks. The fact that most chose to do so is a measure of the opprobrium Volarian society affords to military disgrace. Understrength battalions were merged and placed under the control of officers promoted on merit alone. Hence, former commanders found themselves taking orders from their sergeants. Entril in particular profited from the changes in winning promotion to the post of General’s Eye, a highly influential role which saw him take charge of the army’s intelligence apparatus and enjoy first place in the ranks of Vartek’s advisors.

  Vartek’s most important changes, however, were tactical in nature. The naval blockade was strengthened yet further as some Kethian ships still continued to slip past the cordon. The siege lines were placed under sole control of the army’s chief of engineers and new engines were shipped in from Volaria. Vartek also forbade any further frontal assaults, Volarian offensive action now consisting of digging thirty yards of trench a day whilst their ballista discouraged interference from Kethian archers. Every siege is an epic tale, Vartek said to Entril as they toured the entrenchments, and this has been but the opening verse.

  For six long months the Volarians dug away at the loose red soil of the Eskethian plane, weaving a network of trenches around the low rise on which the city sat. In modern times the Volarians are strict in their control of foreign visitors, forbidding them to venture from the confines of their port of arrival unless under close escort, and then only with special permission from a Council-man. Due to such constraints My Emperor will, I’m sure, forgive my failure to undertake a personal inspection of the ruins of Old Kethia. However, I was able to pay a Volarian of some artistic skill to provide sketches of the site, duly appended for your perusal. My Emperor will no doubt perceive the fact that the siege lines remain visible today as shallow depressions in the eart
h, deepening into gullies where they meet the now vanished walls, for it was here that Vartek’s patience bore fruit.

  The Volarian engineers eschewed the traditional approach to siegecraft, whereby the engines would cast stones at the walls until a breach of sufficient width had been achieved, in favour of undermining their foundations. Unwilling to risk an assault at a single point, Vartek ordered the construction of four such tunnels, two in the south and two in the north. This necessitated extending the siege by another two months, engineers and slaves working to exhaustion as they chipped away at the foundations, replacing ancient stone with timber and close-packed bundles of oil-soaked cotton.

  The great attack came on a day normally reserved to commemorate the final demise of the legendary warrior-maiden Livella. The Volarians continue to celebrate this day under its modern guise of a late summer festival of typically bloody spectacles and sword races. In antiquity, however, it was an uncharacteristic day of peace where all men would name each other brothers and all women sisters. Throughout their dreadful history, no Volarian had ever fought a battle on Livella’s Day, a fact Vartek no doubt hoped would count in his favour.

  Entril relates how, come the midnight hour, the general had the camp-followers and slaves caper about and raise their voices in song, giving all appearance of a festival in full swing. Meanwhile, the assault battalions gathered in silence to the north and south and the engineers crept through the tunnels with torches in hand. Entril provides the following account of the subsequent assault: