Archeologist Warlord: Book 2

by E. M. Hardy

  Martin had no such concerns with his javelins. Even if he exhausted his supply of feathered javelins with metal heads, his dolls could easily create more of the basic ceramic javelins. They were extremely effective in this situation, especially since the ashigaru were so close and packed tightly together. The ceramic javelins may not have the same range and accuracy as their war dart counterparts, but they had enough mass to punch through armor as well as the light shields. Loose a wave of javelins, and disrupt the balance of the enemy with a wave of force to make it easier for the thrown javelins to find their mark.

  The best part was that the ashigaru were no longer able to pull their dead out in time. Martin inhaled their souls by the dozen, feeling power rush through his core. The walkers in the fight moved faster, thrust harder, and took more damage before falling. The bodies that the shayateen possessed, however, created a much more visible effect on the battlefield.

  And after the Rape of Yan Bao, there were many, many shayateen hovering in the air, eager to inflict their unholy vengeance upon the living.

  As the fight intensified, the ashigaru slowly found themselves unable to pull their dead and dying away from the fighting. Dead husks started shambling up in ones and twos, dragging men down with them and taking their attention away from the battle. Martin took advantage of these lapses in concentration, thrusting more aggressively with his own spears. More javelins flew through the air, finding their target and inflicting even more casualties as the ashigaru were too busy fighting the risen dead to hide behind their shield-bearing compatriots in time. Each lowered spear, each flagging arm, opened up opportunities for Martin’s skirmishers to inflict deadly thrusts and stabs.

  A few more minutes of this, and the front line of the Taiyo forces collapsed in full retreat—just as a horn sounded in the distance.

  The samurai loosed one last volley of blood-arrows, guiding the arrows to strike the now-visible line of walkers revealed by the retreating light foot. They then set aside their bows and drew out their blood-blades, shouting their own war cries as they led the way for a second charge. The retreating ashigaru rallied when they saw the elite samurai lead the offensive, followed by another wave of infantry from the reserves. The light foot spread apart, giving way for the samurai and their reinforcements to rush in.

  Martin reformed his lines, reinforcing them with his remaining walkers, and followed the undead shayateen as they rushed after the living. The samurai crashed into the undead, the red-veined steel of their blooded blades flashing in the sunlight. Cuts came, quick as lightning, and the husks of the dead fell—right as Martin’s walkers unleashed a salvo of javelins.

  Unlike the tightly-packed formations of the ashigaru, the samurai were spread out and had sufficient space to move freely as they dealt with the raging mob of undead. The samurai charged ahead, their blood-bound armor diffusing the force wave that should have knocked them down. They reacted quickly to the javelins, stepping aside to avoid the projectiles even as they continued cleaning up the advancing shayateen. Some simply shifted their blades and cut the javelins out of the sky before turning their blades back to the dead. Seeing their elite warriors so easily brush off the attack, the ashigaru rallied even further and charged past the samurai and right into Martin’s walkers. The battle lines formed once more, with Martin’s walkers bracing the butts of their spears into the ground to take the crashing wave of light foot.

  The samurai, however, changed the whole equation. Scattered in between their spear-wielding counterparts, they cut the tips of Martin’s own long spears with their razor-sharp blood-blades. They moved too fast, cut too accurately, for Martin’s walkers to spear them with their pikes. Sections of his line soon found themselves carrying nothing more than short staves, creating gaps for the ashigaru to push deeper in. These gaps turned into holes as the ashigaru charged into them, quickly inserting themselves in between the front line. More light foot reinforced from behind, pouring warm bodies into the lines and enveloping Martin’s beleaguered walkers. Martin would eventually lose the battle, the spear-toting walkers holding for as long as they could while the javelinists skirmished until they ran out of ammo.

  The screening force, however, achieved its objective: buy time for the walkers to prepare their next phase. They also managed to spike three samurai in the chaos of the charge—injuring two and killing one. So many bodies pushing into the gaps, so many broken walkers, that it was easy for a handful of walkers to play dead. A single thrust into the gaps of their armor, and he finally managed to injure the previously-untouchable samurai. One of them took a spear in the chest, ending him in a matter of seconds.

  The roiling ball of red pulsed like a beating heart. It beat once, twice, before Martin inevitably drew it into the walker as the nearby ashigaru finished it off with their spears. Thousands and thousands of miles away, on a highway in the desolate sands of the Bashri, a lone walker giggled—Martin’s sole admission of the ecstasy he felt from the power and knowledge he gained from the soul of the unfortunate samurai. That, and the rush from the thousands of other souls accompanying it.

  ***

  Day 04

  Martin lost another eyeball to a samurai hiding in the woods, causing him to curse as he instructed the other eyeballs to fly higher once again. He felt the collective relief of the eyeballs at being pulled away from the range of their blood-bows, but it meant that he couldn’t see exactly where the Shogunates were marching. The Shogun took advantage of the nearby woods, using the thick foliage to obscure the movement of his troops. You couldn’t really hide thousands of men marching along, but the cover was thick enough to mask their movements.

  What annoyed him the most, however, was the fact that the Shogun’s troops didn’t use the roads. Martin fumed as the elaborate trap he had spent so much time on ended up bypassed altogether. The old traitor-turned-Shogun had made every indication that he would take the roads in a bid to assault as many Imperial cities as soon as possible. Instead, he veered off-course and instructed his troops to march through the dense forest—cutting directly to the city of Wu Er.

  Martin improvised, spreading other walkers out in the forest and burrowing them wherever he could. He could see well enough using the camouflaged walkers, buried in loose soil with their heads covered by foliage. The only problem was that the burrowed walkers couldn’t see much. Their collective vision was narrow, limited, as they remained hidden within their burrows. Martin wanted the first strike to be as devastating as possible, to pour three thousand walkers into one powerful blow that would deal the most damage to a marching column of men. This would have happened if the Shogun had simply stuck to the roads. All Martin could do now was hastily burrow as many walkers as he could and wait for the right time to strike.

  And even that didn’t work out as planned.

  One of the ashigaru relieving himself in a nearby bush didn’t hear the rustle-splash of urine hitting moist dirt. No, he heard the splash-tinkle of urine hitting hardened ceramic. Curious, that light footman jiggled his member, pulled up his pants, tightened his belt, and peered into the bush—right into the faceless mask of a walker.

  The ambush revealed itself as the man scrambled back, screaming out an alarm. The walker exploded from its burrow and ran forward, thrusting a sword into the gut of the shouting soldier. He screamed even louder as his compatriots rushed over, spears lowered and ready to strike. The outnumbered walker ran, chased by other ashigaru. They were so intent on chasing down the lone walker that they barely reacted in time as three other walkers burst forth from their burrows, slashing and thrusting with their ceramic swords. The four walkers managed to kill three times their number before the spearmen organized enough to put them down.

  And then another patrol shouted out an alarm as they found another buried walker, which managed to stick its blade into two other men before innumerable thrusts ended its existence. More shouts of alarm, more small skirmishes. The panicking ashigaru formed up as the samurai spread out and dismou
nted from their horses, blood-blades bared and ready to deal with any more surprises.

  Messengers rode along the clustered circles of nervous footmen, with the keen-eyed samurai monitoring everything around them. The Shogunates tightened their formations as they marched on, squads of ashigaru watching every tree and every shrub with suspicion. They slowed their pace to avoid stumbling into more ambushes, especially since some squads would occasionally shout as they inevitably discovered the hidden walkers.

  Which is exactly what Martin wanted.

  The Shogunates weren’t marching as fast as they could, their eyes firmly settled on pillaging another city for its blood and wealth. No, they were creeping through rough terrain while forward scouts prodded every bush in their way and patrols regularly ranged away from the army to secure its flanks. On hindsight, this may have been even better than the original ambush Martin set up on the roads leading to the cities. Now that he knew what city the Shogun planned to hit, he repositioned the bulk of his walkers to defend Wu Er. The residents of the prosperous inland city should evacuate even faster once he spread word of the Shogun’s next target—especially after they learned of what happened in Yan Bao.

  A disturbingly large number of people, however, refused to believe Martin’s warnings. He found it strange that most of the people in Wu Er left the city in a trickle rather than a torrent. This willful ignorance of reality staring them in the face was inexplicable… at least until the guards started apprehending strangers telling a different story to the people of Wu Er. He sent an eyeball to help with the investigations, but refocused most of his concentration back to dealing with the Shogunates creeping through the forest.

  The Shogunate army set up camp on their first night within the woods, putting up heavy canvas to form light walls. They would barely slow down any attacking force, but they created enough of a barrier to help protect the soldiers as they cooked and rested within. They were also light enough for the supply train to carry around, which Martin would have loved to hit if they weren’t so well-protected by a mass of infantry. Roving patrols of guards and samurai watching from tall platforms would make short work of any raid, intercepting them before they could inflict any real damage. Sure, he could nip at the patrols, but the seeking arrows of the samurai would punish his walkers before they could even reach the sleeping quarters of the troops.

  No, Martin couldn’t hurt the army… at least not right now.

  ***

  Day 07

  Martin watched with glee as the ashigaru patrol assembled into a line, ready to face down the three hundred walkers bearing down on them. The handful of samurai accompanying the patrol loosed their arrows in quick succession, intent on causing as much damage as they could before the melee started.

  Martin prepared, focusing with the walkers on the front. Walkers armed with ceramic blades ran ahead of the skirmishing javelinists. The fragments of Martin’s consciousness controlling the walkers lashed out with their blades. Five walkers lost limbs or crumbled to dust as five arrows slammed into them, none managing to intercept the arrows. Martin took the failure in stride, readying his other bladed walkers to catch the next flight of arrows. One! He managed to slap away one arrow out of five, sending it out to the side and popping the leg of the walker running beside it. One more flight before the walkers closed in with the patrol.

  Two arrows this time. Martin managed to knock one away and slice the other’s shaft before the walkers crashed into the ashigaru.

  This was a patrol of only fifty light foot accompanied by five samurai. The light foot formed a protective semi-circle around the elite warriors, who were desperately releasing as many arrows as they could into the mass of walkers coming at them. The spears of the ashigaru jutted out like a porcupine, tangling up the walkers coming right at them from the front, but they simply weren’t enough to deal with the sheer mass of the walkers coming at them. That, and the waves of force followed up by javelins soon started taking their toll on the beleaguered patrol. Martin snuffed the souls out, drank them in as the bodies twitched—the first signs of possession by the shayateen.

  The samurai finally threw their bows down to the ground and drew their swords. “Death before dishonor!” cried the elite swordsmen in the native tongue of the Taiyo, gripping their weapons and rallying the other men around them for a last stand.

  “Honor?” Martin roared out the words from the hundreds of walkers as they pushed harder into the tightening knot of spearmen. “What honor!? You kill innocents for their blood, AND YOU SPEAK OF HONOR!?” The ashigaru cringed not just at the accusation but at the volume and rage within Martin’s voice.

  Martin’s rage spilled over to his walkers, and they thrust their own spears and javelins into the pressed bodies of the ashigaru. The samurai shared none of the light foot’s hesitations, for they deafened themselves to anything that they didn’t want to hear. In their minds, in their hearts, they were honorable warriors fighting for the liberation of their people and the annihilation of those that would oppress them. There was no room for thinking over the little things like civilian casualties or rules of engagement. The blood of Imperials would fill their blades and armor, fuel their conquest of the rich Renese heartland, and that was all that mattered.

  They would admit to no one, however, that the clay men’s words affected them more than they let on.

  Martin was not exempted from his own outrage, especially since he greedily drank in the souls of the fallen. Perhaps it was fitting that Martin fought these Shogunates, for death strengthened both. Martin liked to believe that he lived by a higher standard, that he could justify his actions… that there was a difference between drinking the souls of the guilty and harvesting the blood of the innocent.

  His rage left him the moment the realization hit him. His core dimmed in its intensity even as he felt elated by the steady influx of souls he consumed. He had no right to criticize the Shogunates, for he himself was just like them—just like the invaders. He too grew from the death of others, and like both Shogunate and invader, he could not give up his ways because of the power it brought him.

  And so the small skirmish raged on until only three of the original five samurai remained. They breathed hard as the walkers surrounded them, positioned themselves to avoid stepping on the slashed bodies of their recently-risen compatriots.

  Martin wanted to finish it all, to be done with this one-sided fight. And yet, his own words haunted him far more than he would admit. He looked at the three remaining samurai, realizing that he ought to do what needed to be done.

  Even if it meant prolonging their suffering.

  The walkers held their spears and javelins low, as others walked up in front of the samurai. Three walkers separated themselves from the group, each bearing finely-honed ceramic blades. The eyes of the samurai widened as the three chosen walkers copied their two-handed stances. Two of the walkers held their blades horizontally, the tips pointed at their respective opponents, while another held its blade up high over its head.

  The walkers launched themselves at the samurai, who reacted instantly with a flash of their red-veined blades. They may have been exhausted to the bone, they may have been butchering bastards that spared none of their victims, but they were still elite warriors that would fight on to their last breath. One simply flashed under the walker’s downward stroke and slashed upwards, severing the shoulder before bringing the blade back down to sever the torso. Another stepped off to the side, faster than the walker could react, and stabbed it in the shoulder before leaning into the blade to slice all the way down to the thigh. The last samurai not only parried the walker’s ceramic blade but sliced it in half as he brought the blade back to cut its head off.

  The three samurai instantly reformed their ranks, gasping for breath as they slammed their backs into one another. Three more walkers separated from the group circling them, bringing their own ceramic blades.

  Martin kept dueling the samurai, learning everything he coul
d from this rare chance. The spark of swordsmanship he had gained from the souls he absorbed lingered within his core, but he needed an opportunity to put that knowledge to use. And this chance quickly slipped away as other walkers began disengaging from the mounted samurai arriving to reinforce the other beleaguered patrols. This was the first patrol to be struck, the last to be reinforced, and the only one where he had brought ceramic blades to hone his skills against the vaunted samurai.

  They were damn good with those blooded blades of theirs, but Martin learned quickly. After all, he had already ‘died’ thirty-eight times while dueling the three samurai—and he learned from every single death.

  The first successful cut came when Martin learned how to loosen his grip on his sword. He was too used to the tight grip required for holding on to long pikes. By releasing his grip on the hilt of his swords, he found that he could more easily pivot his hands and make his cuts less predictable. That, and the loose grip provided less leverage for the sharp blood-blades to bite into his inferior ceramic blades.

  The samurai attempted to break his sword in two, but the walker rolled its hands with the blow. The walker let its blade follow the force of the blood-blade, which in turn caused its wielder to overextend. The edge of the samurai’s blade could not find enough resistance to cut through the smooth surface of the ceramic blade, so it instead slid off the edge. It was still sharp enough to nick the ceramic blade, weakening it, but it was not enough to sever the blade altogether. The ceramic blade was also sharp enough to bite into the vambrace protecting the arm of the samurai. He cried out in pain as he retreated with a counterstroke, which in turn found its target and sliced away the arm of the attacking walker. His compatriots fell in beside him as he let his injured arm dangle to the side, dropping his long blood-blade to draw a shorter model more suitable for fighting one-handed.