The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3)

by Igor Ljubuncic

  But there was nothing else that sounded wise in this remote place.

  The Eracian troops did not need much time preparing. Since arriving at the Emorok Hills, every moment was spent honing the blades, cleaning the muck from the leather and armor, getting ready for the last battle. Her soldiers burned to fight again.

  They moved out. The cavalry rode farther out, scouting. The lightning rippled and forked, striking the distant ground. She thought she could see dust veiling the horizon, but maybe it was rain.

  The enemy was spread on the nearby hills like ants. She thought she could see Eracian bowmen dip their arrows into flames, and soon the slopes were dotted with little sparks. The black stain wriggled and moved to cover additional ridges, reacting to the Eracian advance. Mali liked that. The enemy was breaking up its tight formation.

  The ground started to incline. You would miss it at first, but soon her troops were struggling uphill, through gorse that scratched their boots and snagged their trousers. Women yelped and winced as the thorns pierced their clothes and skin.

  Mali was leading her force down a wide gulch and around the front wrinkle of the Emorok Hills. There was a village at the end of it, and above it, climbing up another stretch of slopes, was a mess of scaffolding. The Namsue were arranged on the lip of the glen, waiting.

  “We push north. We ignore the enemy on our left flank,” she ordered, and her words were carried down the line. The formation veered right, away from the nomads. She could hear a roar of displeasure from the enemy. They were hoping to hail flaming arrows onto the Eracians, but now, their foe was doing the same thing they had practiced in the past months—disengaging from a direct battle. She hoped it was as maddening for them as it had been for her.

  Still, the enemy let loose a thick volley, and it rained on her left flank. There was a deluge of shrieks as the men and women reacted, spreading out, raising their shields, picking up their pace in order to get away from the bows.

  Mali grimaced. The enemy had drawn first blood. Two dozen corpses left in the thicket belonged to her troops.

  Up on the slopes, she could see the Namsue marching hard, heading to intercept. But they had to follow the same terrain as their opponent, and they did not know exactly where the Eracian body was heading. That was Mali’s only consolation as she saw them break like a wave crashing against a rocky shore. The defenders were losing their advantage. With superior numbers, the Eracians ought to prevail.

  Only she was not celebrating the victory just yet.

  They clashed with the enemy soon thereafter. A tide of nomads spilled over the hilltops and gushed toward them in a wild, loud rush. Instead of being the ones to attack a waiting opponent, the Eracians found themselves gritting their teeth and presenting their spears upslope. The Namsue bowled into them with terrible momentum, crushing the first lines.

  Then, it started to rain.

  The sky opened and began weeping thick, fat tears. The day turned even darker, and the dazzling flashes were suddenly overhead and around, turning the world a brilliant black and white. Thunder began to rumble; then the sound grew to a staggering crash that shook the earth.

  Mali raised her sword for an overhead chop and sliced into a wall of rain, heavy and cold. She was drenched in seconds, exhausted in minutes. The Namsue attack faltered, and soon, everyone was slipping, falling on their knees and faces.

  The cloud split again, and an arc of eye-hurting purple whipped the ground not far from where they stood. Everyone was blinded for an instant, seeing a reverse image of their last sight burning inside their eyelids. Mali suddenly realized she did not want to be wearing armor right now.

  The nomads fought fiercely, wildly, and they had the height advantage, but the Eracians presented a wide front, spread across several ridges and low vales, and the enemy had to choose which groups to fight and which ones to let pass. Soon, her countrymen—and women—had the upper ground, chasing the foe downhill, or they were busy sneaking, encircling them. She hoped Alan was doing just as well, if a little worse. She did not fancy shaving her head.

  Her girls won another hillock. Alexa was bulling forward, determined, fierce. The tribesmen were retreating. Meagan was closing in from the other side, her horses trying to maintain a decent pace in the worsening weather. It was hard to see what was happening farther away; the world was misted and blurred.

  Mali paused to rest. The air was so wet it was hard to breathe.

  Gordon stumbled up to her, leaning on his sword, panting. “I am getting too old for this kind of thing,” he rasped.

  “What should I say?” she retorted.

  He straightened up, wheezing. “You shouldn’t be at the front like this.”

  Mali tried to shrug, but her shoulders were rigid with pain. “I don’t have much choice.”

  Gordon balled some phlegm and spat it out; a thread hung to his lip. “Once we win this—”

  “No.” She cut him off. “Not now,” she added more softly. “Later.”

  “Try to stay back,” he pleaded and ran to join his skirmishers, skidding on the wet grass.

  And she went back to killing the enemy. She found no joy, only some relief that, today, the fighting would be over. Maybe then she could let herself ponder on some other things in life.

  Officers should try to avoid getting themselves mauled to death, she knew. But out here, in the Emorok Hills, all the logic of military training and doctrine simply failed her. She was so far away from anything she knew. Her only anchor of sanity was Alexa, who kept reminding her who she was and what she was doing here. Not to escape the reality of her life. To defend her realm. That was it.

  It was hard to judge the time of day, because there was no sign of the sun under those clouds, and the murk remained uniform. But she guessed it was late afternoon. The rain slackened and became a soft drizzle. The growls and roars of thunder passed south, leaving behind a drenched world.

  The fighting was indeed coming to an end. The Namsue seemed to have been defeated. The survivors were being herded into a valley adjacent to a warren of mine shafts. Alan was pushing from northeast, having encircled the enemy. Her own girls were holding the higher ground on the slopes, trying to lob arrows with sodden bows. Finley’s men were cresting the hills to the south, completing the maneuver.

  “Do you think they will surrender, sir?” Nolene asked.

  Mali looked at her new major. “I do not know.” And if they did, so what? They would leave no survivors. She wondered who would claim the victory now, Alan or she? A bloody tie? Was the Namsue chieftain still alive? Or maybe lying low somewhere? It would be very easy to miss a man pretending to be dead among so many corpses strewn in the brush.

  Major Theresa was on the next hill, signaling. There were no more nomads left behind. The battle was almost over.

  “Anyone in those tunnels?” Nolene inquired, pointing.

  Mali squinted at the mines. They looked abandoned. The ground nearby was undisturbed by the passage of feet. It was unlikely the enemy was hiding inside. Still…

  “Sergeant Angelica!” she bellowed as best she could.

  “Sir!” the woman reported. The sergeant had one eye missing and had not bothered with a patch.

  “Get your girls to inspect those shafts. Don’t go too deeply inside. If you see anything wrong, don’t pursue. We’ll collapse the rocks on the openings if needed.”

  Captain Gordon was watching her, she noticed, standing some distance off. They would get to talk later. And fuck. Oh, after this, they would properly fuck for a whole day.

  Colonel Alan was eager to keep his moustache, it seemed. Unlike Finley and her own battalion, he was pushing forward. He intended to finish the nomads quickly. Mali sighed. Pride called that she did the same with her own forces.

  “Let’s get this done with,” she hissed and led downhill.

  Soon, it was finished. A cheer exploded through the Eracian ranks. They had won. They had defeated the Namsue to the last. There was a huge leg of empty roads waiting fo
r them on their return trip toward Somar, but they would accomplish the journey in about one-third of the time now that they did not need to hunt the nomads anymore. And they would visit the Barrin estate for supplies and reinforcements.

  Then Mali realized all her news of the world was outdated by many weeks.

  She did not really know what was happening in the realm.

  Units were already setting camp amid a cluster of mining sheds. Finley had appropriated the two least rickety buildings for the officers. It was not much, but they would not have to sleep in the open. Soldiers were busy trying to scavenge the battlefield, taking weapons and trinkets from the dead. Several men were trying to find lost gems in the excavated mounds of earth.

  The day was going to end soon, she felt. It had to be late afternoon. She was starved.

  Colonel Alan approached her. He did not seem that dirty or weary. “Well done,” he admitted.

  She decided to put aside any bickering that might have existed before the combat. It was time for celebration, and soldiers who survived the battle could always find extra generosity in their hearts. “Likewise, Colonel.”

  His second-in-command handed him a report. He frowned at it and handed it back. “Not now.”

  Mali heard a whistle. She looked behind her. Meagan was still patrolling the hills, searching for survivors and the friendly wounded, although the slopes had fallen quiet. The injured had been taken farther down the valley, their screams shielded by the earth’s creases.

  She could not really see what was happening. There was the whistle again. She believed Meagan was standing in her saddle and waving. Urgently.

  Mali felt her stomach tighten.

  The battle is not over.

  Ignoring the hot pain in her limbs, she started walking. People around her began to pick up on her mood. Their cheerful attitude became one of desperation. For a soldier, there was nothing worse than to believe the fighting was concluded only to discover there was one last push left. They would all be thinking how lucky they had been to live through the last scuffle, and now, each one of them believed their good streak of luck would end.

  A horn sounded from the other side of the valley. No, up on one of the slopes. The note that said, Enemy army approaching.

  Mali scrambled up the slope. It was not a long climb, but it felt like the highest mountain.

  “What is it? Talk to me,” she gasped.

  Meagan’s face was white as chalk. “There, sir. Another force.”

  Mali looked north, beyond the hill’s curve. About five miles away, an army was marching, advancing. That dust earlier, that must have been them, Mali thought.

  It was huge.

  The force stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, a carpet of living black, marching slowly, steadily, emerging from the boil of those bruised clouds like some demon army. The enemy was too far to see little details, but there was no mistaking its size or intent.

  One thing was certain, this was not a nomad horde.

  Then, the first silly question that rose to her head was, Who are they?

  The second was, How could they be coming from the north?

  “Sir, there must be tens of thousands of them,” her noble-born officer said in a thin, trembling voice.

  “Hundreds of thousands,” Mali corrected her. She had spent long enough in the military to be able to judge army size easily. This strange force probably fielded more than all of Eracia could muster in the best of circumstances.

  Alexa joined her on the top of the hill. “What…in the name of bloody Abyss! How? There’s nothing north!”

  Mali leered. “Do you want to wait and ask them? I sure don’t.”

  Her friend was silent for a moment. Then she just nodded.

  “What do we do, sir?” Major Meagan asked.

  Mali began unstrapping her chest plate. “We fucking run. That’s what we do.”

  Soon, the entire Eracian camp was in uproar, horns blaring, officers shouting retreat.

  Mali so would have loved to spend the night in bed with Gordon, but it appeared it would not be. Right now, she just had to escape this alien northern juggernaut. Survive. Warn the others. Muster a defense. Something horrible was afoot, and she had no idea what it was. But in every fiber of her body, she knew she had to put as much distance as she could between this new enemy and her own troops.

  Into the night and south, the exhausted Eracian army fled.

  EPILOGUE

  Bart was sitting in front of the barred room, anxiously tapping one foot. The person protecting the door was not an army soldier, one of the Borei, or one of his personal guards. It was an older woman, with gray hair, and a big mole on her right cheek. Her skin had a papery kind of quality, and she smelled of yeast.

  And she would not let him enter.

  He stood up, spun on his heels, and approached her, for the third time. “Please.”

  She frowned, pursing her thin, bloodless lips into a single pale line. “Are you the father?” she repeated, completely unfazed by his presence.

  Yes, he wanted to say. “No,” he blurted.

  The old woman nodded emphatically. “Then you have no business here, m’lord.”

  Bart took a deep breath to calm his nerves. “And what if I were?” This was a new question.

  She looked at him suspiciously. “Then, m’lord, I would tell you to sit and wait.”

  He gestured in exasperation. “I am the viceroy of the realm! You cannot disobey me!”

  The woman was adamant. “M’lord, you can be the monarch hisself; you still can’t enter.”

  Bart opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought for a moment. “What is your name?”

  “Prunella,” she said, “m’lord.”

  He craned his neck, tried to listen past her unmoving frame, but she was just looking at him as if he were a village simpleton. “Is everything all right in there?” he asked in a small voice.

  Prunella did not twitch a muscle. “When you fight your battles out there against them nomad scum, do you hear me asking you, how’s your war faring, m’lord? I don’t know why you’re here, m’lord, and it’s not my business. But birth is a woman’s affair, and men only get in the way. If I was you, I would be looking for the lad who’s about to become a father and bring him here. It ain’t proper for a young lady to raise a child on her own like that, m’lord.”

  Look for the father, he thought inanely. Irma, Prunella, they were both cruel and unyielding.

  “Good suggestion. Thank you.” He retreated out of the little hut, into the warm morning. Half a dozen men stood watch, trying to keep their faces impassive. They were not stupid; they knew.

  Corporal Kacey stepped over and smiled at him, a quick flash of her teeth. Even her Parusite companion managed a sympathetic face. Major Paul was leaning against a barrel, looking just as worried as Bart was. Junner was there, too, playing a game of twelve lines against Rickey. For all his deft fingers with coins and dice, the corporal was losing.

  Finding midwives had not been difficult. It was just that Bart had the luck of getting the meanest, toughest bunch of old women left in Eracia. Two of them were with Constance inside, and Prunella was guarding the door.

  The fatal moment had come. Soon, he would become a father, with a woman who was not his wife.

  Meanwhile, his wife was alive and well in Somar, just a mile away.

  What was a man to do in such a situation?

  He had read a lot of comedies, old satire, humorous drama, biographies of kings and rich nobles and famous travelers. None of them seemed to have been in a predicament like his. The worst part was, he had delayed his decision, and now it was too late. He would become a father.

  Do I acknowledge the child? he wondered. What would that mean for me, for Eracia, for Caytor?

  Bloody Abyss.

  The waiting, the anticipation did nothing to calm his nerves or focus his thoughts. In fact, he was growing more desperate by the hour. A child would be born soon, to a man who was supp
osedly the most powerful person in Eracia right now. If things went right, and this war was won, he would most likely become the monarch. Constance was going to whelp a possible heir to his realm. She was just a girl who would not tell him of her past in Eybalen. Was she a daughter of some councillor, or a guild master, or just a rich lord? Practically, he didn’t know anything about her.

  She was to be the mother of his newborn.

  The very thought of becoming a father fuddled his brain. He was not sure how to respond to the fragment of reality happening behind the closed door inside the hut. Was he proud? Happy? Elated? Disappointed? Terrified? Perhaps all of that together. He was not sure if he could handle the rush of fear and worry and anxiety that was trying to smother him.

  Then he heard a soft keening noise. It sounded like a baby crying. Too late for thinking.

  Prunella came out. She looked at him hard, as if wondering if she should tell him. “Tell the lad when you find him,” she said with sour emphasis, “that he has a healthy son.” And she retreated into the realm of female business only.

  Bart stood, staring at the hut. He felt pats of congratulations on his back. At the moment, everyone was just happy for him, and the concerns of what would happen later on escaped them. On the other hand, he could only see the colossal complications that this child was going to be in his life.

  I am a father, he thought stupidly. I have a son!

  Then, he imagined Sonya seeing that baby.

  The tiniest trace of happiness that had been coming to life in his confused head vanished entirely.

  Nigella reached for the jute bag of herbs, undid the cord fastening it, and pinched a handful of dried leaves. She let them drop into the kettle of boiling water. The fragrant aroma of lemongrass and spearmint filled her cabin.

  She then reached for a glass jar containing a different kind of herbs, comfrey, fool’s bane, laserwort. Ever since she had begun her profession, she had made sure to drink a cup of tea laced with the extract of these every day, to make sure she would never get another child by accident. In theory, magic gave her some protection, but she could not rely solely on that.