by Shannon West
The enemy was torching the fields as they came—Larz watched as a group of them threw fiery brands into a farmer’s crop below. But it was the noise of the approaching army that he hadn’t counted on. As they got closer, the noise was deafening as they shouted and banged on their shields. Wild yells came from behind the walls of smoke farther behind the first advance. As they made it up to the bottom of the first rise, Larz could see the blue uniforms they wore, jackets and trousers so buttoned up he wondered how they could breathe in this heat, let alone run toward them, but the mob of men surged toward the hill and began to climb. His fellow soldiers hurled down rocks and arrows lit on fire toward them, as well as spears, sticks and even clods of dirt. The cursing and shrieking of the men who were hit drifted toward them on a thin breeze, and Larz joined the other soldiers in jeering down at them.
And still the officers told them to hold the line and keep up their heavy shields as they waited. He remembered as a small boy attending some parade or other to welcome home the Tygerian warriors, including his father, whom he hero-worshipped. He had stood at attention, so excited at being there with that huge throng of people beneath him to welcome his father and the others—the strain of waiting had been almost painful, and it felt that same way now.
A thousand details of color and form surged together in his mind, and it was hard to stand still and wait for the enemy to come close enough to attack them. His hand was sweaty on the grip of his short sword, and beside him Luc cried, “Bastion, here they come!”
The cry was repeated up and down the line, "Here they come! Here they come!"
The blurred and agitated forms of the Athelonian soldiers came closer, running toward them in a turbulent stream, dodging the rocks and arrows being hurled down, screaming and cursing as they brandished their weapons and kept coming. They climbed upward, scrambling over the rocks and stooping and swinging their swords and shields at all angles. Men fell screaming and lay motionless on the hill, their limbs twisted in death. A flag that angrily tossed in the smoke tilted forward. It was near the front for a moment and then suddenly sank as the man holding it was cut down. The Athelonians were close enough now that their cursing, groaning, and wailing could be heard quite clearly. In front of him and stretched down the hill men writhed to the ground as they were hit by arrows and spears. Close enough to him that the spray of blood hit his face, a man was nearly cut in half by a sword just below their position. There was rustling and muttering among the men around him. Larz heard Luc call something out to him again and then the first wave was upon them.
Before he was ready to begin—before he had announced to himself that he was about to actually fight for the first time—an Athelon soldier charged him and he put his gladius into position, thrusting up and into the man’s soft belly as he’d been taught. For a moment he met the man’s startled gaze with his own, just as startled, and then Larz wrenched the weapon back and the man fell at his feet. He kicked the body away and turned to the next man charging forward and from that moment on, he was working his weapon like it was an extension of his arm.
Time blurred and he forgot to have concern for himself and forgot to look for how many more men were coming up the hill toward him. He became part of the men who were fighting beside him and around him and for the first time began to feel like he was fighting for something. For Herkon—no, for Janos! The soldiers around him were his battle brothers, and their fighting gave him a feeling of confidence and invincibility. They were all sharing the smoke and the heat and the danger and the death.
It was a danger that was all too real. He was aware vaguely that people were falling around him and as wave after wave kept coming, he felt the effects of it—a drenching sweat, a feeling that his eyes were like blistered stones in his face and a parching thirst that was almost overwhelming. Then as the waves of men began to recede, and Larz began to believe they had turned the tide, the men on the upper tier of the hill began to shout and point excitedly. From the shadows of the forest came enemy soldiers dragging two large, black apparatuses on wheels. Larz didn’t have a clue as to what they could be, but as the other men spotted them, gasps of outrage and horror went up, and then a cry went down the ranks.
“Cannons!”
“Cannon fire! The dishonorable bastards have cannons! Take cover! Run! Retreat! Retreat!” The voices rang out up and down the line, and Larz stumbled backward and fell on his ass as his fellow soldiers began to turn and swarm up the hill toward him. A deep pulsating sound of thunder came from below and as Larz watched in horror, something landed on the ground in front of him and it exploded upward in a shower of grass, dirt and rocks. The hot wind blew him straight back, his arms over his head, as the noise sounded again with abrupt violence, this time a bit farther away down the line. He heard men screaming and then Luc was grabbing his arm, yelling at him and trying to haul him to his feet to run up the hill. “Run! We have to get away from the cannon fire! Run, Bastion, run!”
The captains were scurrying back and forth along the line, yelling at them and motioning for them to fall back, to take cover. Something went screaming over the huddled heads of the men who were streaming past them, and it landed in front of them, exploding with far flung black dirt and little licks of fire. There was a shower of leaves from an obliterated tree and little pellets of dirt and gravel rained down, stinging his cheeks and forehead.
A sudden outcry from above him made him remember the danger the king had put himself in, and he turned to see a group of Athelonians who had broken through their line, running wildly toward the king and the generals as they pulled out their swords and prepared to meet them head on. Without stopping to think it through, Larz scrambled to his feet and pulled roughly away from Luc to surge up the hill toward King Janos, slashing to either side of him as he was attacked. The small group of officers was being overrun, and he could no longer see the king as he disappeared behind a wave of smoke, blue uniforms and brown bodies. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed in a tight grip as he stumbled toward the last place he saw Janos. Suddenly from behind him, there was another explosion and a crashing, crushing blow landed on the back of his head. A bright flash of pain hit as he tried to turn but fell down insensible instead as the noise of the battlefield slowly faded around him, and everything went black.
Chapter Ten
Larz awoke with the smell of smoke clogging his nostrils. It was an acrid, burning smell, leaving the taste of sulphur in his dried-out mouth. He tried to open his eyes, and for one horror-stricken moment, thought he must be blind. Then he realized his eyelashes were simply stuck together like glue, and he rubbed hard at them to get at least one eye to creak open. His hand came away sticky and wet with blood. He sat up groaning, feeling like his head was about to pop off. He held onto it with one hand to make sure that didn’t happen and looked around himself to try and figure out where he might be. He was still on the hill at Lityba, but it was now eerily deserted, the army gone, leaving nothing behind except the pockmarked, bloody ground, fallen trees and bodies piled up around him in heaps. He could see now that he had been lying on the edge of one such grisly, twisted stack. Probably pulled there and left for dead. He rolled farther away and lurched to his feet, still holding to his head, which was pounding with an unrelenting ferociousness.
He began to climb back up the hill, stumbling aimlessly at first, so intent on finding water that he couldn’t think straight. Near the top, a dead captain was stretched out, his face hidden against his arm. Farther up the hill there was another jumble of four or five corpses keeping the captain grim company. They lay in a blood-soaked pile, their limbs tangled and twisted together. Larz staggered over to a big rock and sat down hard on top of it, trying to take stock of his injuries and make sense of what had happened to him.
He could feel a huge knot on the back of his head and figured one of the explosions from the cannon fire must have sent some rock or other projectile flying into him. He was literally bloody all over from scrapes and scratches. Some of i
t wasn’t his blood, but a lot of it was. Beyond the various small wounds, there was a larger scalp wound, a huge gash, near the top of his head, which had bled down all over his face and chest. With so much blood, and in the heat of battle, it was easy to see how someone had thought he must be dead and dragged his body over to the pile of corpses he’d found himself in, ready for burning. Whether that had been by the Herkons or the Athelonians, he had no idea.
There was no sign of either of the armies, and for a long moment, Larz vaguely contemplated that fact, wondering for one wild moment if he could have died and this was one of the four hells his people believed in—maybe the one for soldiers killed in battle. He didn’t think that was it, since he could feel the roughness of the rock against his ass and his head still ached abominably, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t hurt like this even after he was dead. At least he hoped not. A pall of black smoke covered the whole area and it was almost eerily quiet. Pretty soon he realized he could hear the distant sounds of men calling to one another. He crept closer up to the top of the hill and then got to his knees and crawled to a vantage point to look over the hill into the valley below.
To his horror, he saw it wasn’t a Herkon camp, but an Athelonian. They were camped just over the hill, and there was no sign of the Herkon army. From his vantage point high above them, Larz could see men in blue uniforms bustling about, looking tiny from so far away. They were building fires and erecting tents, while a blood-stained, drooping crowd of men were clustered around one big tent near the side of the camp. Larz figured that must have been where the doctors were. Wounded men were sitting outside and all around it. Larz thought they were cursing and groaning from their posture and the occasional sound that drifted toward him. Small boys acting as messengers ran back and forth and smoke funneled up into the sky from a dozen or more campfires.
The truth of what he was seeing slammed into him—this was indeed an Athelonian camp and somehow, he’d become trapped behind the enemy lines, his own army nowhere to be seen. But how had it happened? It was obvious to him now that the Herkons had retreated and the Athelonians had won the day, but how? If the Herkons had indeed been routed, then why hadn’t the Athelonians followed up their advantage and chased after them? Instead of simply going over the hill to set up camp there? And how had the Athelonians managed to win? They had every advantage, including a much larger force and the celebrated higher ground. So what could have happened? If he could just remember…
Larz lay stretched out on his stomach, just trying to wrap his mind around the idea. He was surprised to see it was almost dusk, which meant he must have lain unconscious on the hill for hours. He glanced back down toward the camp, and there on the side of one tent, he spotted two large black forms, squatting in the shadows next to two huge LVs.
The cannons! He remembered now the rumbling sounds they made as they spat out their shells to rain down on the hill. The Athelonians had used modern weapons—well, at least more modern than the knives and spears the Herkons used—and modern weapons were strictly forbidden on this planet. They were “nicurat,” or totally banned, and the use of the old weapons was definitely not allowed by their treaties with the other nations of Laltana. Yet, somebody had decided to just trample all over those treaties. Maybe somebody had figured they needed to win at any cost. But if the Herkons could come back from this, the Athelonian leaders would be put to death for war crimes, and even the Farlians would help them carry out the executions. If the Herkons could come back from this, and that was the question. Where in the four hells were they?
The horrible image of King Janos going down under the wave of blue uniforms suddenly intruded on Larz’s confused thoughts, and he groaned aloud, his heart gripped by fear. But he had seen no sign of Janos or any of the generals’ bodies as he had come up the hill or in any of the heaped-up piles of bodies. Could it be that they escaped? Or had some or all of them been captured when their position was overrun? He turned and crawled back the way he’d come. He needed to search and he needed to be quick about it, before the Athelonians organized a group to come up to the hill again to burn the bodies of the dead. If Janos were there in one of those piles… He had to find him.
It was fully dark by the time he’d finished his grisly search and he’d found no sign of the king but he had found one of the generals Janos had been standing with. The others must have been rescued and made it off the hill, or they’d been captured. If that was the case, Janos must be in one of those tents below him, possibly being interrogated or even tortured and abused right that minute.
The thought was so alarming, he stood up again with a sense of urgency and almost fell, the dizziness he’d been trying to ignore temporarily overwhelming him. He needed to rest a few minutes and he still needed water desperately. He remembered passing a little stream near the bottom of the hill as they had climbed up it—was it only that morning? It seemed like days ago.
He rested a moment longer, but the thought of water had him on his feet and moving as soon as he could manage it. It was good and dark now, and he thought the Athelonians wouldn’t come up on this hill in the dark—not if they were as superstitious as his fellow Herkon soldiers were. They’d be afraid of ghosts, and maybe with good reason. So many young men cut down in their prime would surely make angry, vengeful ghosts.
He slid as silently as he could down the hill and over to where he remembered seeing the stream running down the hill. He’d have to be careful, lest some of the Athelonians had found it too and were using it to fill their water buckets. But then the stream ran all the way down the hill, so there was no reason for the soldiers to come up so far to fill their supplies. He finally located it in the dark by following the sound of the babbling water as it fell into a small pool before spilling on down the hill, and the stream was completely deserted. He lay down on his belly and drank his fill from the pool and then splashed water over his head and upper body to try and clear away some of the blood. The water was icy cold, coming straight out of the mountain, and it helped to clear away some of the grogginess that had been plaguing him since he woke up.
He sat for a while by the cool water, bathing his forehead and face and drinking some more until finally he felt like he could stand up again without falling back over. If he could have shifted into his tiger for a moment, he could have healed his wounds, but the injections Kelan gave him were still in his system and prevented that. Still, the cold water had gone a long way toward restoring him.
He left the small copse of woods with its icy stream and crouched down to survey the camp below from this closer vantage point. The biggest tent by far sat in the middle of the camp, and now that it was fully dark, he could see vague, shadowy figures moving around inside it, outlined by lanterns. This had to be the leader’s tent, and possibly where they would have taken Janos, if they had him, at least for interrogation purposes. There was no way he would have been able to escape the mob of soldiers who had overrun his position, so Larz figured he must have been taken. Unless he’d been wounded in the battle, and in that case, he might be inside the doctor’s tents, which were several yards away.
As he mulled over the possibilities, he saw a young boy, wearing ragged blue pants and a grimy, bloodstained shirt come out of one of the smaller tents and stretch his arms over his head. One of the messengers, perhaps? He looked too young and small to be a soldier. The boy, who had black, messy hair and was skinny to the point of emaciation, scratched his ass, then ambled over to the edge of the woods, opening his fly to relieve himself.
Larz crept closer and when the boy finished his business and turned to leave, he sprang forward, wrapped a hand around the boy’s mouth and dragged him back into the shadows. Despite how thin he was, the boy was a wiry little thing and fought like a small wild animal. It took Larz a moment to subdue him by finally sitting on top of him and holding his arms over his head with one hand while he covered his mouth with the other. Larz finally picked him up bodily, still holding his hand over his mouth and dragged him up
the hill and back to the little stream. He hoped the sound of the splashing water might drown out any noises the boy might make.
When he got him there, he lowered him to the ground and knelt over him, still holding him down and keeping his hand over his mouth. “Calm down,” Larz hissed at him in Herkon. “I’m not going to hurt you unless you make it necessary.” The boy continued to fight until Larz banged his head against the ground a few times. That finally made him subside, and he glared up at Larz with savage ferocity. “I’m not going to hurt you, I said! Not anymore anyway! Now settle down because I want to show you something. I’ll let you go if you stop fighting.”
The boy seemed to think it over and then gave a sharp nod of his head. “Not a sound or I’ll make you regret it,” he warned. Slowly, carefully watching the boy’s face, Larz peeled away his hand and reached into his argyss, or his small fur purse. He pulled out the gold coin the king had given him not all that long ago. He had vowed to keep it, but if he could use it to bribe this boy, it would be well-spent. The boy made a surprised, grunting sound when he saw the gold gleaming in the moonlight.
“Be quiet, I said!” He hissed at the boy. “I’ll give you this gold coin in exchange for information.”
The boy’s eyes widened and he gave another quick nod. He looked up at Larz, his eyes still wide. “Who are you?” he asked, in heavily accented Herkon. “You wear the clothes of one of their soldiers, and your face is painted like theirs, but you’re so big, and your skin…I never saw anyone who looked like you before.”