Stone Will

by Kirill Klevanski

  A rather narrow street led to the gate. It had absorbed all the other streets so that there was only one way out of the city. The army had taken care to ensure it and had closed all the other approaches over the past month.

  “They mustn't get by us,” Hadjar grumbled, taking a fighting stance.

  And once again, they were standing together against a whole army. Their swords gleamed and war cries erupted from their throats.

  Hadjar caught an arrow as he fought and thrust it into the eye socket of a very young savage. He was fifteen winters old at most, maybe even younger. Hadjar threw his body toward the other attackers.

  Nero did the same.

  Less than a minute later, a ‘barricade’ had formed, made up of the bodies of their enemies. The incoming foes had to climb over it, and sharp swords awaited them on the other side.

  Hadjar literally split a savage falling from the barrier in half, right down the middle. The young officer threw the two halves of the body at the foundation of the ‘barricade’, strengthening the ‘wall’. Both Hadjar and Nero slashed, chopped and hacked relentlessly. They took someone’s life with every swing.

  The wall of bodies was growing and getting stronger, but there was no end in sight to the attackers’ forces.

  At some point, Hadjar felt the earth shaking.

  He and Nero only had time to glance at each other, and the very next second a huge, armored beast broke through the barrier.

  “Damn it!” Nero cried out.

  The beast easily scattered the bodies and kept going forward. The jubilant horde was gleefully hooting behind it, hoping for an easy victory and a rich harvest. They could already see themselves riding their dashing horses across the expanses of peasant fields. See themselves burning villages, raping, killing. Taking the enemy’s goods, stealing their money, and then bringing hundreds of thousands of beautiful women and handsome men back with them to be their slaves...

  Hadjar stood in the way of the oncoming beast. Archers sat on its back, in a huge saddle. They launched dozens of arrows and darts at him, but they were all diverted thanks to the prince’s blade.

  “Calm Wind,” Hadjar said dispassionately and assumed the second stance of the ‘Light Breeze’ Technique.

  He waved his sword so smoothly and effortlessly it was as if he were checking its balance or just having some fun. And yet, the beast, even going all out, crashed not into Hadjar, but into the barrier of wind that had arisen.

  The creature’s speed had been so great, and the resistance so tough that its head immediately plowed into the ground. Its neck broke with a loud bang, and its hind legs flopped upward, nearly rolling over its own head.

  The savages fell from the saddle and Nero's sword was already waiting for them. He killed them all and threw them under the feet of the charging horde. This made them freeze up slightly. The nomads were not particularly bold and when they saw that a situation was not going their way, they usually fled.

  And they’d just witnessed a thin soldier in torn, red robes overcoming a gigantic beast with just one slash of his sword.

  Suddenly, white lightning flashed in the sky for the third time.

  “Demons!” Nero and Hadjar breathed out in unison.

  They turned to look at the only way out of the city. There were already far fewer people there, but the crowd was still trying to squeeze through the arch. And after the third signal, they were doing it in a far more insane and desperate manner.

  There wasn’t a single chance that they would be able to break through to the outside. Neither of them had what it took to carve a path through their own comrades.

  “I have an idea!”

  Nero cut the creature’s armored belly open with one slash and pointed at it. Hadjar nodded and sent a whirlwind of cutting wind and blades toward the horde. It turned about a dozen nomads into something resembling minced meat.

  After buying themselves some time, they pulled out the monster's insides and... holding their breath, crawled inside. It was ugly and hot in there, but safe.

  And after a few heartbeats, everything around them shook. It didn't simply ‘shake’, either. It was as if the sky, earth, and the universe itself had all collapsed simultaneously.

  The carcass of the monster, in which the two madmen had hid, was lifted like a light feather and then dragged ten yards across the ground.

  Nero and Hadjar got out, groaning in pain as they did so.

  One of them pressed his hand to his side. Something white protruded from his bleeding forearm. It seemed Nero had an open fracture.

  Hadjar tried to put some dirt on the hissing fluid which had coated his right thigh. Alas, it didn't help much, and the monster's boiling gastric juice still scalded his leg severely. Not to the bone, but enough that his flesh and muscles were visible.

  “In any case, we’re better off than the rest,” Nero nodded toward the Fort.

  Or rather, where the fort had once been. There wasn’t even a single pair of stones left. Only a black ravine. Blood rained down and charred pieces of bodies, tiles, stones, and iron joined it, making for a truly macabre downpour.

  Nero and Hadjar had been thrown far enough back to avoid the danger of being ‘killed by the sky’. And, smiling widely, they watched the horde scamper back toward the forest.

  Leaving behind their weapons and wounded soldiers alike, the savages ran away from the battlefield, screaming in horror all the while.

  “It seems like the General’s plan worked,” Nero sat on the grass.

  Hadjar, hissing in pain, collapsed nearby.

  “Did you doubt it would?”

  “That we can lure the horde into the fort, and then blow it up? No, I didn't doubt that for a second.”

  “What, then?”

  Nero looked at the sky. Among other things, large flakes of black ash were falling from it. Stone dust mixed with flesh.

  “The fact that you and I would survive.”

  Hadjar laughed.

  Nero joined him.

  And so they lay, sprawled out on the grass and laughing, and then they wept from the pain wracking their entire bodies. And even parts they could’ve sworn hadn’t existed before today. In any case, Hadjar had never thought that even his hair could ache. He’d been proven wrong.

  And yet, they were glad that they’d lived to see the end of the war.

  “I wonder where our camp is now…”

  “What?” Hadjar asked.

  “I mean… Where do we go?”

  Hadjar thought about it for a while and then swore.

  Chapter 71

  As it turned out, the camp wasn't that far from where the animal carcass had recently landed. The doctors had noticed the anomaly flying through the air and had hurried over to inspect it.

  They hadn't been planning to try and save the creature and hadn't known that it might have soldiers inside it... they’d just hoped to get some meat from it. Because what the wounded soldiers needed most was food. And the army didn’t have much left, to say the least.

  Alas, along with the carcass, they ended up having to drag two more soldiers over to the new camp. The soldiers were either crying or laughing hysterically - it was hard to tell.

  Hadjar and Nero were literally thrown on some mats spread on the ground. The young men were smeared with something fragrant, drank something smelly, and were then wrapped in bandages, covered with white blankets, and left for the gods to pass judgment on. If they survived, that would be good. If they didn't - it'd be very bad, but nothing could be done about it.

  Soon, thousands of gravely wounded soldiers and tens of thousands that had sustained minor injuries were brought to the camp. The biggest problem was all the burns. People with those kinds of injuries were the most prevalent.

  Soon enough, there was no place left in the meadow where they could lay down a new mat, which meant the ‘healthiest’ had to be asked to ‘give up their mat for comrades in need’. Hadjar and Nero were also asked to leave the meadow at some point.

&n
bsp; Nero's protruding bone had been set, he’d been given a few pills, and then put in a shoddy splint. He and Hadjar had to redo the splint. Fortunately, they were able to find a few of the more high-quality, metallic splints that the local orderlies used to fix a broken arm and had replaced the first splint with those.

  Hadjar's burn had been slathered in ointment and then bandaged. Trying to help his recovery along, he found a doctor from Dogar's detachment and took some of the famous potion from him. The wound could at least heal a little faster with the help of that medicine, even if it wouldn’t completely erase it.

  Hadjar and Nero also heard some not exactly cheerful news from the doctor.

  Dogar's detachment no longer existed. According to initial information, only the two of them had survived. And whether that was true could easily be checked with the help of the medallions that they wore around their necks. The devices didn't just watch their actions and award them points accordingly, but also determined whether they were alive or were already dead.

  Yes, the information might’ve been inaccurate. The medallion could’ve come off, been lost in the heat of battle or something else, but still...

  “The commander?” Hadjar asked while fixing the bandage on his leg.

  The healer shook his head sadly.

  “Damn it!” Nero kicked the ground.

  Hadjar sighed and looked at the sky that had begun to brighten.

  The mighty Bear Dogar had been a warrior among warriors. The person who’d made him, Hadjar, much stronger, and not just physically. Dogar had strengthened his will, his heart… the commander had taught him to truly take responsibility for himself and his actions.

  And now that man was gone.

  Hadjar touched his heart and saluted.

  “Live free,” he repeated Dogar's favorite saying. “Die worthy.”

  Nero kicked the ground once again and then calmed down.

  “Hey, you two,” one of the passing orderlies cried out. “Do you have any strength left?”

  “A little!”

  “Then follow us – we need help getting the wounded soldiers back from the field.”

  Despite their wounds, and the day full of fighting, and the fact that they had barely enough strength left to breathe, Nero and Hadjar followed after the healers.

  Passing through the camp, they looked around. There were mats with moaning, crying and screaming soldiers lying on them everywhere. Many of them clutched at stumps that had once been legs or arms. The orderlies, right there on the ground, would insert sticks into the soldiers' mouths and amputate their limbs.

  Despite their victory, the camp looked like a small subsection of hell where the demons had already begun to torment poor, damned souls.

  The new army camp, or what was left of it, was behind a small copse. Passing through it, Hadjar and Nero froze for a moment.

  “Finish off the enemy,” the commander of the medicinal corps ordered. “As for our soldiers, the ones who can’t be carried back to camp or... won't survive even if we carry them back... should also be given mercy.”

  The orderly he was talking to turned away too abruptly and went to the field.

  Hadjar could not take a single step further. The whole area, as far as the eye could see, was littered with bodies.

  Dead, moaning, wounded, dying, impaled on a spear, torn to pieces, burned, broken people… were everywhere.

  The once beautiful plain was covered in bodies, all the way to the horizon.

  Hadjar looked at his feet - they were buried in blood up to the ankle.

  “Damn it,” Nero hissed. “Damn it... Damn it!”

  “Let's go,” Hadjar said softly.

  Overcoming their fatigue, they kept dragging the bodies back to camp until nightfall. Only when they themselves had almost collapsed on the battlefield from exhaustion were they replaced by the lightly wounded soldiers. As well as by those warriors who’d come out of this monstrous meat grinder with no more than a couple of cuts or bruises. Those people must have been cared for by God since their birth.

  The hard, brutal days stretched on.

  Hadjar and Nero set up their tents a small distance away from the general camp out of habit. But no one else was there with them, at the site Dogar's detachment had used to occupy. Only Healer. But after a couple of days, even he withdrew from the spot and went to stay where his fellow doctors were encamped.

  And so, they stayed together.

  Serra came one night. Not to Hadjar - but to Nero.

  Hadjar figured that it would be good to take a walk around the camp. After all, he wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon, not with the throaty groans of those two filling the night air.

  He wandered through the camp. But there was no dancing, no guilt, only sad, old songs. The soldiers sang them around the fires, peering into the flames as if they were looking for answers.

  “Officer Hadjar,” one of the soldiers saluted.

  Hadjar was surprised, but nodded in reply.

  “Officer,” came from the other side.

  “Officer Hadjar.”

  “Officer!”

  The words were said by many soldiers, officers, and even senior officers. They saluted him, and Hadjar was surprised at the fact they knew his name.

  Why was he walking around the camp? It looked more like a graveyard, only filled with the living dead. Expressionless faces, dead eyes, nothing more…

  Maybe he’d hoped that he would find a familiar face among the soldiers. The indestructible giant would get up, stretch out his hand and say,

  “That was a glorious battle, assistant... Be ready for training tomorrow!”

  But there was only wind, blowing through the treetops, instead. It produced a sad, hopeless rustling of leaves.

  “Officer Hadjar,” a young soldier saluted him. “Join us.”

  Several dozen officers, soldiers, and even commanders were huddled together on some fallen logs by a small fire. Hadjar nodded a greeting to Helion, who was pressing a hand against the bandage that covered his left eye.

  After a battle, every warrior, regardless of rank, would try to find comfort in their comrades. That way, they could believe that they were alive, and the reality surrounding them wasn’t simply their last dream.

  Hadjar nodded and sat down beside the young soldier.

  He leaned on someone as well, seeking support.

  His soul calmed.

  Grabbing an old lute, one of the soldiers began to sing. He was shortly joined by the rest of the warriors sitting by the fire. A light tune caressed the flames and fields stretching out all around them.

  I bravely fell in that last fight,

  In battle I proved my might!

  Now take a step toward the light,

  Life is no longer your plight.

  Each and every soldier put on their armor on the third day. Some were groaning in pain and others were gritting their teeth. But everyone who could stand on their feet, even if only with someone’s support, put on their armor.

  They stood around the huge funeral pyres in orderly rows.

  Less than three hundred thousand had survived of the two million that had gone into battle.

  I will lie beneath the wall,

  I will lie beneath the sod,

  Please, come visit, by God…

  General Leen stood among the warriors. She was barely managing to stay upright, leaning on a wooden crutch, and the sleeve of her simple, canvas clothes dangled in the wind instead of her left hand. She was pale and looked aged, but she’d also come to pay her respects to the soldiers who’d died in the fight.

  Nero was standing next to Hadjar. Serra was somewhere nearby.

  They peered into the huge bonfires. Perhaps they would see their commander's face somewhere in the depths of the orange flashes.

  That morning, I held on like a fool,

  I kissed your lips, I stroked your hair,

  Your name repeated like a prayer -

  Losing you was my nightmare…


  But the reality is far more cruel…

  The general, whose beautiful face now had several terrible scars, lifted her spear. She hit it hard against the ground and the soldiers once again felt the earth shake under their feet.

  They grabbed their weapons and struck them against their shields and armor.

  I lie beneath the stone.

  I lie beneath the glade.

  The path to me is overgrown,

  Covered with rust my blade.

  They all continued to tirelessly make noise, trying to drown out the crackle of the fires. They said farewell to their fellows, their commanders, their friends… who were now on their last journey. They said farewell to the warriors who’d shed their last drop of blood for their native land. Those who’d died so that other people might live.

  They said farewell to the heroes. They sent them off with war cries and the sound of weapons striking armor.

  I don’t know what to say,

  My Mom and Dad…

  Both still wait up and pray…

  Well, there'd always be new battles, new deaths, and the ash and smoke of funeral pyres would once more fly into the night sky. But people would continue to sing songs about the Moon General and the Battle at the Blue Wind Ridge for hundreds of years to come.

  Songs about how two million people had destroyed five million savages. Of how’d they fought against the flying creatures, of how they’d blown up the Fort. Of how they’d done everything in their power to preserve their homeland.

  They continued to beat their weapons against anything they could, and the general steadfastly continued to slam her spear against the ground.

  Their friends were leaving.

  I am...

  Beneath the wall.

  Love me,

  Forget me,

  I'm not with you now

  My love…

  Chapter 72

  The army of the Moon General Leen had been stationed at Spring Town for three months now. It was licking its wounds and recruiting new privates and officers. Hadjar had been in charge of the exam a couple of times. Alas, it had always ended badly. For some reason, when he was the examiner, he would often get swarmed by the women.