He had come to Athesia to avenge his father, to restore pride to his nation. A meaningless task now, but it was the only certainty in his life right now. Perhaps his fate had been shaped in the lashes of his father’s switch against his back all those years ago, and he was only now grasping the truth.
I might never be as fearless and merciful as Adam or Pyotr. I might never win the hearts of the Athesians. They might never love me. But he was the king of Parus, and he owed everything to his people. The king’s duty was to serve his nation. And that was what he would do.
CHAPTER 52
Mali made a pained face and rushed into the bushes. A few moments later, there was a loud, squelching, unmistakable sound. She staggered back to her unit, white-faced, sweating, exhausted.
Spring had brought warmth and disease. Soldiers were no longer at risk of losing their limbs to the cold, but bad food, bad water, bad hygiene, and a wave of other maladies that came with the first thawing of snows kept most of the women busy day and night, their commander among them.
She was lucky her case was mild. Some women were bedridden, others vomiting and shitting blood thin as soup. A solid quarter of the force was incapacitated one way or another, but the worst thing was, they could not afford to stop and rest.
They had to fight the nomads.
That meant traveling a few short, ragged miles, then stopping. Units sometimes straggled hours behind the main body. There was little cohesion during the march, women rushing off to the sides of the road to empty their bowels and spit bile into the sodden grass. Then, they would try to chew and swallow a hard bite, because they needed energy, knowing all too well this would send them back to the bushes all too soon.
The big problem was dehydration. Women were dying with their skin shriveled like old fruit. No matter how much they drank, their guts would not keep anything. Corpsman Lydia was brewing maythen teas and giving women nothing but salted water, hoping to keep them alive. Her tricks seemed to work somewhat, but the girls were all frightfully weak.
Mali wiped a sheen of filthy sweat from her brow. She reached into a pouch containing her ration of water biscuits, but then she stopped herself. Carefully, she wiped her hands on the back of her trousers, then fished out a coin-size cracker and nibbled on it. Her stomach rumbled, aching for sustenance, but she knew she had to be careful. The only way for her to keep the food in was to eat slowly, throughout the day.
Her one consolation was that the Namsue seemed to be suffering the same fate. The road they followed was marked with the discarded bodies of dead nomads.
She paused in midswallow as her belly rumbled and roiled and made a burpy, bubbly sound. Her guts clenched, sending a three-fingered spasm down her groin, but then the urge to soil herself silly calmed. Well, she was getting better. She only had to rush into the bushes four or five times a day now, and her fever was almost gone.
The Third Battalion smelled of puke and feces. The yolk-like brown layer of pain was everywhere, in their hair, down the front of their shirts, on their boots. Shame was a distant concept. Mali believed she would never again be embarrassed about anything in her life if she survived this.
Alexa was unaffected, a random toss of random luck. She was glad she could rely on her best friend to take over while she was incapacitated.
They were going to call this the Shit Campaign, she mused.
The Namsue had led them far north, skirting the rich provinces to the east and heading for the Emorok Hills. Mali was not sure why they would go there, and she suspected they did not know either. But they had avoided getting caught in a trap with the Eracians pounding against them from two different directions.
It turned out the nomad force they were chasing was not the only body of enemy troops retreating north. Scouts reported at least another five thousand men from an unknown tribe marching farther west, with another Eracian unit at their heels. Maybe the nomads were not so stupid after all. Their ruse seemed to be working. They were forcing the defenders to pursue them, away from the capital, which meant fewer soldiers who could assist in the siege on Somar. It bought them time and allowed them to fight the Eracians on even terms.
With reinforcements from the Barrin and Elfast counties, Finley had some eleven thousand men and women under his command facing a somewhat smaller body of the tribesmen. They had only sporadically clashed, without any major engagement.
That was before the shitstorm.
Now, the armies were straggling, limping, leaving a wet brown trail behind them, converging toward an uncertain battle with a sizable percentage of the fighting force out of action. The mess could not be described. Discipline and morale no longer existed. The colonel seemed to have lost all control of his regiments, and it was only inertia and musty loyalty that kept the troops marching.
Finley’s men were faring no better than her girls, but men being men, they wailed and complained thrice as much. His entire division was following a whole day behind her battalion. Men rode in the backs of carts, and horses dragged stretchers, sometimes two or three chained together. Those lucky enough to keep their health had given up their horses to their weaker sick comrades.
Meagan’s cavalry, augmented with Winfred’s stolen steeds, was also being used to lug the ill women, two to a saddle. They could barely afford to send as many girls scouting the road ahead. Fortunately, the enemy did not seem capable of mounting an ambush.
Mali spotted one of the horsewomen returning to formation from farther down the road, one of the animals still used for reconnoitering. The girl was riding a roan with thick, tufty fetlocks smeared in mud. She approached and saluted.
“Enemy scouted ahead, maybe a mile away, no more, sir.”
So close, Mali mused. “Their entire body?”
The woman shook her head. “No, sir. Maybe two thousand. Looks like rear guard. They are in pretty bad shape, hardly walking.”
Mali closed her eyes, thinking. For more than two months, her force had limped after the nomads, playing hide-and-seek, trying to engage and destroy them in a large battle, without success. Meanwhile, they had passed villages deserted of men, wells spoiled with dead bodies; they had buried small children found rotting in the snowy fields. One in seven girls missed a toe now, taken by the frostbite. Many others had scars on their hands and faces. They had all grown lean on cold, hard food. The only warm lump in their bellies was the seething glow of revenge.
She had no idea what was happening in the south of the realm. Maybe the war had ended already, and she was a fool on a fool’s errand. Maybe Somar was in friendly hands, and people were eating fresh bread and sipping ale in comfy taverns. Or maybe Commander Velten had failed miserably, and the Kataji were feasting on the charred corpses of dead Eracians. Maybe something else was afoot, something surprisingly pleasant or jarringly awful, but she was isolated in her shit-specked reality.
A month ago, she had still kept receiving news from Lord Karsten, still seen fingers of reinforcements trickling in, merging into their force. But the farther away they went, the more desolate their mission became. They were getting away from central Eracia, heading into the rural areas. The well-paved roads had become narrow, dappled in old, cracked cobbles and sometimes not at all. The few people that saw them pass by scowled and spat. The countryside had become wild and thorny.
Now, she had an opportunity to vent all her anger in one fell swoop.
“We attack,” she said.
Alexa frowned. “Can we mount an attack?”
Mali smiled weakly. “We will do our best. Relay the order. I want every able-bodied woman ready with her weapons. Get Captain Gordon to assemble his skirmishers, too.” She had not seen him much in the past few weeks. They were both too tired to rut.
Alexa sniffed. “All right, sir. We’ll get it done. But you stay here.”
Mali snorted. “Oh no, I am coming too.” She took a deep breath as if to show how healthy she was, ignoring the dizziness tugging at the corners of her eyes. “I will be fine.”
O
ne hour later, a sorry force of maybe seven hundred women and a few odd companies from Finley’s division, who had gotten confused or lost or just found their way amid their female comrades, moved off the main body, marching toward the enemy.
Every rule in the book warned against striking at a superior force. Every sense in her head warned her against leading women with a bloody flux to combat. But she knew that no matter how experienced or tricky the nomads might be, they would never expect the Eracians to attack them this way.
The world was a pleasant mirage if she ignored her guts. The smells, the colors, the rejuvenation of nature, the mild sunshine that warmed the skin. There was a gurgle of frogs in marshy ponds that skirted their road, the croak of birds. The air was thick with the buzz of gnats and other bugs. Well, the insects annoyed her, really.
Soon enough, they stumbled upon the enemy unit. The Namsue had not bothered posting sentries. They seemed to be doing one of their midday rests, the various units just indisposed wherever they had stopped. There was battle gear everywhere, blankets, cooking pots. Some men seemed to be sleeping; others were trying to prepare light meals they hoped to keep down. To the west, toward one of the tributaries of the net of rivers that crisscrossed the land, a whole gang of men were washing their pale, haggard bodies. The sight almost made her gag.
Mali had never imagined she would lead a charge against men rubbing off the trots stains from their trousers and boots, but she did just that. With a ragged scream in their throats, the women rushed forward, over the soft, slippery earth, scattering ducks from their path.
Her view of the battlefield was quite limited, but she had a decent grasp of how the Namsue legion was positioned. They camped along the road, in a narrow column. They would not be able to see and gauge the size of the attacking force. Moreover, the units farther down the road would not immediately understand what was happening, and if they reacted, they would have to push through their own ranks to get to the fighting.
Alexa and Gordon took the left flank. Meagan led her few riders in a wide berth around the nomads, trying to block their retreat. Major Theresa and the newly promoted Major Nolene followed Mali toward the half-naked, shocked soldiers holding bits of soap and wet clothes in their hands.
Eight hundred women against two thousand men. Madness. The Dash of the Runny Bowels. The Crap Charge. She had a dozen funny names rolling in her head, trying to push fear away.
She was panting by her tenth step, wheezing by her twentieth. Soon, she found herself lagging behind, her heart drumming noisily, the world spinning ever so slightly. Her limbs felt light, uncoordinated, and her muscles spasmed with fatigue. She felt her stomach harden in protest, but she could not stop now, even if she soiled herself.
I am mad, she thought and raised her sword. The blade fell slowly, but it still bit deep in the pasty shoulder of the nomad soldier in front of her. He wailed, then fell backward, dropping his vest. The pond water became turgid with kicked-up bottom mud and fresh blood.
Another nomad looked at her stupidly, then stumbled back and tripped on a clot of wet grass. Her blade caught him across the shins. Then, she lost balance and staggered toward him. Mali had not intended to impale him, but the sword slithered into his groin. He just moaned weakly. Her grip slipped, and she landed on top of him. But he just kept moaning, a thin, fetid breath of stale vomit on his lips.
She rolled over and rose to her knees, cold water dripping from her soaked leathers. Now, she had to bear that extra weight, too. There was a huddle of Eracian soldiers behind her, waiting, half protecting her. She grinned weakly and stood up, faint and woozy.
“Keep killing those nomad bastards,” she offered. Her sword came out with a sucking sound. Mali did not look. She stepped over the body and began inching forward, searching for new prey.
The din of the battle was oddly muted and sporadic. There were screams and gurgles and bloodcurdling shrieks, but the solid din of a large clash was missing. She was used to that heavy noise pressing on her eardrums, the living beat of marching feet, the salty heat of a thousand bodies pressed together, jostling, groaning. None of that here.
She could hear feet sploshing through shallow puddles; she could hear the mosquitoes whining all around. There was an odd clang of steel, the muddy sigh of earth and grass, the thud of bodies landing on soft ground. Her women streamed around her, the initial formation lost and broken. They pushed and clawed deeper into the enemy ranks, cut the men down, and marched toward their main camp.
Mali half led, half followed, searching for nomads to kill, trying to vent out the two and a half months of cold and frustration and blisters, the cracked, bloody lips, the taste of stale potatoes, the lashing of the wind on her cheeks. She remembered the endless march, the failed ambushes, the deserted villages.
The Namsue were coming to their senses, but they behaved like drunken men. The few survivors in the rushes were fighting bare-handed or trying to find a sword dropped by one of their comrades. But few had come to clean their clothes armed with anything but coarse brushes and lumps of soap.
Mali bowled into a large nomad, but he went down like a soldier half his size. She pierced him through the side, and syrup-like blood bubbled around her sword. A freckled woman with a sharp aquiline nose elbowed another man in the face, then slit his throat with a knife. To the left, another soldier of the Third Independent Battalion was checking her latest kill, poking the still body with her spear.
One of the tribesmen came forward holding a hatchet. He swung wide and lost his footing. The freckled woman stabbed him in the chest, once, twice in quick succession. She spat at his limp form even before it hit the muddy soil.
Then, they joined Alexa’s girls in the charge against the main force. The ground turned solid, less slippery; the thigh-high rushes became wild spring grass, moist and fragrant, but her nostrils were full of different smells.
There was more shouting and cheering and cursing now. The Namsue were trying to mount a counterattack, but they were reacting slowly, as she had predicted. The nearby lines were reaching for their spears and bows, clustering into defensive knots, but farther down the road, men still sprawled sick; others walked stupidly, confused by the noise.
Meagan’s troops crashed into the enemy flank, driving a wedge like a greedy orphan’s hand swiping off a fat slice of cake. The air was full of mud, and the enemy unit melted back, bloodied. The horses nickered, restless around so many ill, uncoordinated warriors.
Mali stepped over a groaning Namsue, finished off a wounded one. Some of Gordon’s men were there, and it took her a moment to spot the differences between friend and foe.
“Watch out, girls. Mind our boys,” she croaked, but she was not sure if anyone had heard her.
A javelin flew, quivering as it rotated. Then it slammed into the chest of a nomad soldier, breaking his rib cage with a loud snap. Another was in the air, but it landed in the grass. Several more, and the skirmishers retreated, trotting farther down the road to harry another group.
Dying was not restricted to the nomads only. Mali saw her women falter and fall, wounded, spent, making silly mistakes that healthy, rested soldiers never would. But she was pleased to see most of the dead were the invaders.
She hamstrung a nomad facing the other way, then left him for the troops in her wake. She saw an enemy archer taking aim, kneeling, forgotten in the chaos. She stepped toward him, almost calmly, and poked him in the skull. The sword jarred against the bone, then sunk in.
And then she felt bile rising in her throat, and she knew she had to retch. Only a string of orange spit came out, but she found herself kneeling by the dead archer, panting, her stomach heaving dryly. She could have died in that moment, completely helpless. Luckily, her girls watched over her.
Mali took a moment to rest, then moved on. There were a lot of Namsue left to kill.
Later, she found herself nibbling on a cracker, her third since that morning. The food felt wonderful, and her belly was blessedly calm. Maybe she had healed.
Or maybe she was just too dazed to notice. Her heart was fluttering, the beat pounding in her ears, refusing to settle down.
Well, the battle was over, and they had won.
To the best of her understanding, no nomad soldier had escaped. They had gotten them all and killed them all, to the very last. No one had even considered taking any prisoners.
Three hundred girls had died, but they had butchered almost ten times as many. The stuff of legends, the fabric of wild, heroic stories, the weave of songs. She had no doubt the tale of today’s battle would spread, strengthened by a hundred epithets. She wondered if the flux part would endure.
There were already verses flying.
Other than coarsely singing, the healthy women were busy piling enemy corpses in neat lines in the marshes, birds watching them curiously, probably wondering if the dead bodies were worth a nibble. They would be burying their own, though, and it would take a lot of time. Well, they had time. Mali had ordered a whole day of rest. Camping on the same blood-drenched ground where they had just fought seemed crazy, but it was the only decent spot for her force, and no one had any strength to travel another pace.
She was wondering what Colonel Finley would think when his division arrived the next day. At the back of her mind, there was a bud of fear. The remainder of the enemy army was still out there, and they just might backtrack, seeking their missing rear force. Mali was not sure the Third Battalion would manage to win another battle so easily. She had pushed them hard, and now they were spent. There was nothing left.
Lydia came over with a large, steaming pewter cup in her hands. She handed it over. “Sir, drink.”
Mali did not argue. She carefully sipped the potion. It was bitter, with just a trace of honey. One of those teas that were supposed to make her feel better, but she usually retched afterward. Still, she tried to set an example, knowing her soldiers would refuse the drinks if she did.
Alexa came over nursing a bruised shoulder. Meagan was limping, having fallen off her horse from sheer exhaustion. The fight had lasted almost four hours. Mali realized she was looking for Gordon and felt a pang of silly girlishness; her captain was busy keeping a watch higher up the road to make sure there would be no enemy surprises. Someone had to do it. His men would rest much later.
The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) Page 52