by Lazlo Ferran
Finally, thankfully, the first glimmer of purple light could be seen around the eastern foot of the mountains but this relief was quickly countered by the sight of the battlefield. It was just a sea of bodies. In the dark, one could kid oneself that most of the dark shapes were rocks but not now. Now I could see the flower of my Country’s youth, laying hacked down in front of me, as if a great reaper had gone about gathering his harvest.
I could not understand why Lord Bulya had not reached the walls from the other side, or at least sent some sign of how close he was to winning. Perhaps he wasn’t winning.
At any rate, I thought, we would have to launch one final attack, while there were still enough of us left alive to do so.
There was one other thing left that I had to do first though. I called Lord Abutalip to me.
While he was crawling towards me, I crawled back and we met near the rear of Sabitzan’s lines. We huddled behind our shields. Bald-headed, stocky Abutalip. I looked at that familiar shape and realised he had been a loyal General.
“This is a grave time.” I said.
“Lord Abutalip. I am going to launch another attack, one last one. It may be that I die in this attack but, in any case, I will not retreat.”
“But I order you to put your lieutenant in charge and to stay back yourself with one hundred of your best men.”
“But...”
“Ah. Wait. You must go back and save those left in the Palace. You must take them to our neighbours, somewhere safe. Ask Lord Kospan. He will know what to do. I put into your hands the fate of our country. If you are successful, I am sure you will be able to raise an army to liberate our country. I held his shoulder and squeezed it. I know it is not perhaps the task a soldier would choose but I must trust this duty to somebody.”
“It will be an honour Sire.” He looked at me and held my gaze. I could see it was not a duty he wanted but he would carry it out as best he could.
“That is all. Good luck.”
With that he crawled back to his lines. I thought I would wait half an hour to let him get things organised before attacking.
“It’s a glorious day, Sire! Look at the Sun!” said Lord Sabitzan.
Indeed it was a bright day. There were less clouds than the day before. I looked again at the sky for a sign of my friend but I could not see him.
I looked again at Sabitzan, his hook nose still sticking out beneath his helmet, as it had done all these years, amusing me.
“Well Lord Sabitsan. The time has come for the final charge. This is what we will do. When I give the command, we will march, double pace, towards the breach and then the men with axes will go into the breach first. If there is wood blocking it, which I am sure there will be by now, They will continue to cut through it until there are none left. Other men will be sent in until we get through, or over the obstacle. Ther rest of us will offer defensive fire from a shield wall, in a semi-circle, about ten sachine away.”
“Yes Sire.”
“Good.” I drew a long deep breath. “Pass the word along.”
There was an air of eagerness in our lines, as the time approached. I was surprised by this. Was this the spirit of the wolf living in my people again?
I stood up and raised my arm. Immediately a sheet of arrows sped towards me. I braced myself for their impact but they all flew by me. I looked behind me and saw, in groups and singly, men stand up until we were all standing. The enemy, faced with so many targets did not know where to fire.
I was just about to lower my arm, with the signal to charge when I saw something emerge from the breach. I looked intently at it. I was tired and my eyes were weary from the lack of sleep and affected by the smoke. I could not be sure what I was seeing. The figure, it was a man, raised his arm and then started waving it. The blade was curved. Surely it must be the enemy. Could it be Korim himself? But the wave seemed almost friendly. Suddenly, in a moment that almost tore my heart, as it raced from the bottom of my soul’s domain to the very top, I recognised the headscarf. It was Meth!
“Meth!” I shouted with all my heart “Meth!”
I turned to look at Sabitzan. He was looking at me quizzically.
“It’s Meth, Sabitgzan. He is our ally. You know? The surprise I told you about?”
Sabitzan still look confused.
“To the breach!” I shouted and started running. There was no order. The men followed me in a broad column towards the breach.
Of course, I was stumbling and my leg pain shot through my leg but I kept going, dodging arrows, jumping over bodies, and finally I was there and we were clasping each other.
“Meth!”
“Are you surprised to see me?”
“Yes, yes. Well no, no. Of course not.”
In that moment I realised that Victory was ours. I stood aside and let men pass through, led by Sabitsan. They knew what to do.
“Take the walls first!” I shouted.
Meth and I followed when the last of our men had gone through. Meth’s sons and men lined the sides of the breach and contnued clearing the wreckage of several failed attempts to seal the breach.
“How is Lord Bulya doing?” I asked.
“He is on the approach road in the pass behind the fort, fighting Korim. I don’t think Korim was expecting any trouble from this end.”
We both laughed.
“We must go and help Lord Bulya, as soon as we have cleared things up here. As we emerged from under the parapet running along just below the wall’s top and repeated lower down with a lower platform, I could see the carnage. There were literally piles of bodies lying all along the ground just behind the parapets. Korims men has simply been thrown down and left there. Many of them may have still been alive.”
The heat from the fires still raging, burned our cheeks, and we had to step carefully in between the licking flames, into the charred remains of warehouses near the wall. We walked towards the central thoroughfare.
“Do you have a horse?” I asked Meth. “My leg is killing me.”
“Ah but of course. Wait here a moment.”
I sat on a pile of logs.
“And some water!” I shouted at him as he walked off.
I saw some of my men passing and smiled at them. They smiled back but it was a weak smile, without any conviction. They looked dead-beat.
As I sat there, I felt my heart growing so much lighter. It was as if indeed I was becoming a bird and I felt light again. Now I understood why the bird had seemed like a friend and not a member of my family. It had not been my time to die.
“But it had been, for so many.” a little voice said inside me.
“Yes,” I said out loud. “I know.”
Meth was approaching, holding the reins of a brown mare and a jug of water.
I grasped the jug with both hands and emptied it.
“Haah! I needed that. I haven’t drank or eaten since yesterday morning.”
“Your men are in a bad way.” noted Meth. “But soon they can eat all they want and drink all they want and then sleep.”
“Yes.”
“I must find one of my Generals, one of my two remaining Generals!” I said and then I remembered Geb.
“Geb.”
Where was he? The last time I had seen him had been back in the lines before the second charge, early the previous evening.
Eventually I found Abutalip. He marched right up to me and saluted. “Sire. At least I won’t have to go on that awful mission of yours.”
“Hah! No. Have you seem Geb?”
“Yes. The last time I saw him he was being carried back to the mound, with two arrows sticking out of him! I think that is where you will find him.” He smiled, obviously the wounds weren’t fatal.
“Ah.” That was a relief.
“Let’s go Meth.”
I mounted the horse and shouted to Abutalip. “Get your men together and follow us. Leave orders for Sabitzan to follow when this place is secure.”
And so the last bedraggled soldiers, le
d by me on a horse, wound our way through the compound and out of the rear gates, onto the track that led up and back into the mountains. We rode up a long steep track through grassy meadows and turned a bend between two steep slopes and then we could see the battle ahead. It looked like Korim, with perhaps only three hundred men, was holding position just this side of a wooden bridge over a ravine.
This was the bit, in any battle, which I really hated. I had come to respect Korim. True he was a brutal man but he was young and in dire need of a realm of his own. He was obviously intelligent, determined and resourceful. He might become a good leader one day. Also he was a very proud man. Of course I would try and capture him alive but in reality that was unlikely to happen. He would almost certainly fight to the death. To have to go home, defeated, with his tail between his legs, with his whole army wiped out, was a fate most such proud men would not recover from.
Lord Abutalip rode behind me. I turned to him.
“Spread the men out. Cut off all possible escape routes.”
It was then that Korim’s men saw us. I saw a man on a white horse, larger than most, turn his horse, at the front of their lines. ‘He was a leader who could lead from the front then,’ I thought.
I saw him look this way and that, first to the bridge, judging the strength of the remaining force there which quite considerable, then to us and then to the slopes above us, left and right. I judged Lord Bulya still had most of one of his Battalions, that is, about eight hundred men. Korim might make for the slopes.
“He’s going to go for the slopes. Outflank him!” I ordered but it was too late. He and about twenty other riders were flying towards the slopes to our right. It was impossibly steep there but at first his horses seemed to find foot holds and as we approached, I marveled at their horsemanship. They were forcing their horses to incredible feats of agility up the nearly vertical walls where they now were. But then first one, then another horse lost their footing and fell backwards hitting the rocks lower down and spilling their riders onto the ground.
Korim realised he could not escape this way and turned back.
I spurred my horse and rode flat out for the track just this side of the bridge where he would be in seconds. Abutalip followed me and I could see men running, out of the corner of my eye. Some of Korim’s men were still fighting Bulya’s on the bridge and some of them now turned to join Korim.
We were racing to the bridge, the wind blowing through the mane of my horse and my hair, but then I saw that we would not make it.
Korim reached the track just before us and passed straight over it and to the brink of the ravine on the left. His horse balked at the steep slope but he forced it down and a few horses followed. He would surely die trying that, I thought. The sides of the ravine were just as deep as the walls they had just attempted.
First one horse, then another, lost their footing and slid down and off the walls of the ravine, crashing onto rocks below. There were just three riders left.
Then another slipped, although the rider managed to jump clear and grab hold of a rock as his horse slipped off the ledge.
We stopped and watched as the last two riders attempted to reach the bottom of the ravine and the small foaming stream that crashed through the pass there.
Then the second rider also stopped and waving his arms, his horse slowly slid down the sides, before leaving the ground and falling though air into the ravine.
Only one rider was left. The rider on the white horse. It had to be Korim. His horsemanship was exceptional. I began to think he might make it. He was near the point of the side of the ravine where it became even steeper and from where we were, we could not see if there was any way down. Perhaps he could see one. He jinked his horse this way and that, traversing the rock face, almost as if the horse was a rock climber. ‘He must be very close to that horse,’ I thought. They understand each other completely. Then just before he reached the lip of the ravine, his horse lurched and in slow motion, we watched the horse sliding, all four feet still firmly planted on the ground, towards the edge and then it was off the ground and fell twisting into the abyss.
I shook my head.
After a long while, we turned back to the bridge. Our men had formed a long line across the pass and a few had engaged the last of the enemy riders on the bridge but their leader was holding up his arms in surrender.
They were ordered to dismount. Their hands were bound behind their backs and then they were each bound together to form a long line.
I spurred my horse to the bridge and its hooves clattered as we passed over and came to a stocky and paunchy figure, sitting back in the saddle of a large grey horse. He was holding his bloody hand across his knees and had pushed his helmet back on his head.
“Lord Bulya.”
“Sire.”
“You live!”
He smiled at me.
“I understand we have won?”
“Yes indeed we have. Indeed we have.”
We turned our horses and started back for the Fortress, Bulya’s men falling in behind, ours parting to let us through and then reforming behind us.
“Abulatip. Get some of your men to climb down and gather the bodies of those last men who fell and those on the slopes above. I believe they must have been Korim’s friends. We will bury them here in this meadow.” I said, pointing to the grassy slope opening up as we rode beneath the steep rock walls. “Get one of the engineers to carve a stone for Korim, plain stones for the others. Let it say, ‘Here lies Korim, brave young man.’ That is all.” Then I said, half under my breath, “Korim, you shall have your piece of land.”
Then, to Bulya, “It is sad that so many times, one never has the chance to know your enemy. I would have liked to have known him.”
“Hmm. He was a scoundrel!”
“Ah Atim, you are too harsh. He just wanted a Kingdom of his own.” I looked around as we rode. “It is so pretty here, the flowers are in bloom and the grass gently sways in the breeze. The mountains are so beautiful. I am not sure if it is a good place to die.”
“Of course it is!”
“Ah, maybe it is a better place to live.”
We reached the gates and passed into the Fortress. A soldier was waiting for us, on horseback. He bowed to me.
“Sire! We have found Lord Abdil’khan. He is alive. But...”
“He is alive?”
“Yes Sire but he wants to speak with you. I do not think he will last much longer, Sire.”
“Where? Take us to him.”
We sped through the alleyways of the small settlement and out through the front gates. There, to the right, among a great pile of bodies, several of my men were leaning over a prone figure, in shining armour still, though it was caked with blood.
I dismounted and crouched next to him, leaning forwards so I was inches from his face.
“Janaar. It is me, Vaslav. Can you hear me?” His eyes slowly opened and a faint smile passed across his features, his blue eyes searching for my eyes, but seemingly he did not recognise me.
“King Vaslav? Is that you? Did we win?”
“Yes.” I laughed, despite the situation. “We won.”
“Did you see Korim?”
“Yes I saw him. He is dead now.”
“Was he a great warrior? How did he die?”
“He rode a great white horse and though we caught the last of his men on a bridge, he and a few of his friends tried to escape up the side of the mountain. They could not get away but their horsemanship was superb. They turned back and tried to descend the slopes below and all fell off until only he was left. I have never seen one ride like him. His horse kept its footing well beyond what I thought was possible.”
Abdil’khan smiled. “But he fell?”
“Yes he fell into the abyss.”
“Ahh. He was a great horseman, as were all our ancestors. So he was indeed a great warrior! A worthy opponent. And we beat him! Is the Kingdom safe now?”
“Yes. I think it is. I am going t
o accord you the highest honour I can think of Lord Abdil’khan. I am going to make you Lord of the City of Parat. As the Lord, you will gain all the lands south of the City up to the border. These are some of the most beautiful and productive estates in the land. This is a new Province and shall be awarded, if not to the next in line, to someone showing extreme bravery. Thus the estate shall be associated with Great Deeds and your name shall live for many generations to come. I shall call it Khana.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
“And since you have no children, you must decide who shall inherit it from you, Abdil.”
He stuggled for breath for a moment and I thought he would not speak.
“Hrr. Let each soldier who fought at the Front Gates vote for the Bravest. And then let the four Bravest ride in the Race of Red Feathers.”
“Alright. It shall be so and it will be a great day!”
“Ahh. I see Lord Bulya is here.”
“I am here, Abdil’khan.”
“Was Korim a Great Enemy, Lord Bulya?”
“He was.”
It was rare for Lord Bulya to share in any of the Glory of War, he was usually too preoccupied with Politics these days, and I was touched by his comment.
“It was a great battle and people will write songs about it. I will make sure my minstrels write an epic about you.” I said
He reached for my gloved hand. “Just one…one” But his breath passed beyond his lips for the last time and he was gone.
“God. Such a great man. So many men have died!” The loss of this man, who at first was not trusted, but in the end gave so much and proved himself, was heartrending.
I placed his hand on his chest and held it there for a while. Then I said a brief prayer and sat down beside him. I felt I would not stand ever again if I stayed any longer so I forced myself to.
“We will have a grand State Funeral for all the Generals who have died. But not here. They deserve more than that. We will take them back to Parat City. Carry his body and those of Ydigei, Edil’bai Kazangap and Zhuan’zhuan down to the medical tents.”
Suddenly I was angry and I snapped, “And somebody find my horse!”