“Sir, this happened gradually, not overnight. You must understand that many of us have always felt like Dachwaldians first, Sodorfians second. You see, for centuries there have been large numbers of Sodorfians living in Dachwald, and we were often looked down upon because we didn’t have Dachwaldian blood. I know, for example, that as a child, I often had to show excessive patriotism simply not to be looked at as some kind of outsider or enemy. When all the political changes started happening in Dachwald about six months ago, we Sodorfians wanted to do everything we could to not become the targets of Dachwaldian violence, so we tried our best to comply with all of the new changes—”
“Wait a second,” General Fuhdor said, interrupting him; “just what kinds of political changes are you talking about? I mean, King Duchenwald and the senators still rule the country, right?”
The old man chuckled. “Oh no, there have been many changes. The senators and the king were brutally murdered many months ago. General Sivingdon took over. There was a large meeting outside Castle Dachwald, and General Sivingdon explained to the massive crowd present that the reason we were all suffering was because the king and the senators had been too passive to wage war on the Sodorfians after they destroyed all our crops—”
“Wait a minute,” General Fuhdor said, interrupting yet again; “do you mean to tell me that there really was great agricultural destruction in Dachwald?! I thought that was all a complete lie. A vicious, perfidious pretense to go to war with us!”
“No, it indeed was true! We suffered horribly—Dachwaldians and Sodorfians alike. You’d think that we Sodorfians would have left as soon as things started going badly, but we didn’t. The reason we didn’t was because we all thought, ‘this is the chance to show our loyalty. This is the opportunity to show that we really are patriotic towards Dachwald.’ For that reason we all stayed; not a single one of us left. A horrible famine broke out; many starved, and many abominable things happened. There were cases of parents, insane with hunger, killing their own children and cooking them. Even those who did not go to those extremes almost always ate all of their pets. Many people were eating sawdust just to try to alleviate the hunger pains. There were many rumors circulating in Dachwald about the cause. However, the main rumor was that Sodorf wanted to attack Dachwald. We didn’t want to believe it, but the facts appeared to suggest it. For example, there were many Dachwaldians that saw with their own eyes the tracks leading from Sodorf into Dachwald. Now, you speak about an ambush and a massacre near the border. What we were told was that the Sodorfians were so hell-bent on going to war with Dachwald that they had attacked and killed many of their own so that they could frame the Dachwaldians and make it look like a Dachwaldian attack. That way, the Sodorfian government could self-righteously refuse to help the Dachwaldians, refuse to let Dachwaldian trackers into Sodorf to see where the tracks ultimately led to, and refuse to allow Sodorfians into Dachwald to investigate the alleged crop damage—under the pretense that there clearly had been none and that it was too dangerous for Sodorfians to enter Dachwald. It’s important to remember that before all these occurrences Dachwald, just like Sodorf, had been a pacifistic place. The military was neither thought of as being entirely necessary nor extremely important. However, when General Sivingdon made that patriotic speech in front of Castle Dachwald; presented the heads of the incompetent king and his senators, who had been completely unable to do anything about the horrible famine; and then provided us with a lavish feast, patriotic fervor reached a frenzy, and it was made clear the army was going to be greatly increased in size.
“Shortly thereafter, new regulations were passed for all Sodorfians. We had to sew a large S onto all of our clothes. The penalty for a Sodorfian being caught without the patch was typically death. Sometimes there were exceptions if the person had a particularly convincing excuse for not wearing it, but usually the person was publicly hanged. Several months later, we were told that the Sodorfians were needed for a special work project. I know it sounds silly now, but we actually trusted the Dachwaldians. We thought that this was our chance to show them we weren’t enemies of the state, that we weren’t trying to undermine the country and bring defeat and ruin, but that in fact we were also patriots and just wanted equal treatment like everyone else. Many Sodorfians even tried to enlist in the army, but they weren’t allowed. The bastards refused our offer. They told us that we could not be trusted to bear arms for Dachwald but would be allowed to prove our loyalty by working hard in special camps that had been set up for us. Sure enough, these work project camps were actually death camps. Many of our number were roasted alive.”
“Do you happen to know where any of these death camps are located?!” General Fuhdor inquired, entirely unable to conceal his fury. “Their locations would be of intense personal interest to me!”
“No, unfortunately not. My geography is mediocre at best, and besides that we escaped in the middle of the night. There were a small number of people with us, but the main person that guided us all the way out of that hellhole and to the Sodorfian border didn’t make it. He died under a hail of arrows, and the rest of us just barely escaped death. Funny that he should die. Out of all of us, he was the healthiest and had the sharpest wits. Sometimes the gods have a sick sense of humor, I guess.”
“Did anyone else help guide you? If so, I must speak to them so that I can find out where these hellish extermination camps are located!”
“Unfortunately not. Some of the others who escaped might know geography better than I, but right now most of them are in shock and couldn’t even tell you their names. As I said, there was one person in particular who was our leader, who led us out of that horrible camp. His name was—”
“Sir,” General Fuhdor said, interrupting yet again, “you just lie there and try to rest. I know you must be extremely exhausted, and I’m extremely sorry to hear about the trouble that you have gone through. I’ll do my best to avenge your unfortunate friend.”
Having said this, he stormed out of the room like a man with an appointment he didn’t want to miss. He immediately consulted with Achentung, his colonel, and told him to instruct all of his officers to order their subordinates to get moving—they were all heading north! He scribbled out a short note quickly like a doctor writing a prescription and handed it to the messenger to deliver to the nobles: “Dachwald already in the process of exterminating Sodorfians; under military dictatorship; military quickly growing; must attack now.”
That was all that he had the patience to write down. His colonel was already notifying his subordinates, and the message was quickly traveling down the chain of command like loose snow falling quicker and quicker down the side of a mountain forming a thunderous avalanche.
They were going to war.
The End of Book 1
This book is a work of fiction. All names and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
RISE OF DACHWALD – BOOK II
Chapter 1
Most of the Sodorfians were excited. They reckoned if they were going to have to train hour after hour, they may as well finally get the chance to see some action and test their skills. Within an hour, nearly all of the Sodorfian army was heading north. Ten thousand were left stationed at the City of Sodorf; another ten thousand would be stationed at Seihdun; but the rest were going into Dachwald. About eight hours later they reached the border.
A strange feeling swept over General Fuhdor as his horse exited the forest that demarcated the boundary between Sodorf and Dachwald. His heart beat faster. It all seemed surreal. He had spent most of his life reading military history, dreaming about one day becoming a conqueror, and now it appeared he just might have the opportunity to be the heroic conqueror he had always dreamt of. And what could be more heroic than defeating the ancient enemy of the Sodorfians and saving thousands of Sodorfians from a fiery death? Those kinds of bragging rights never expired. Accomplish that, he thought, and you can retire peacefully knowing you’ve earned a perman
ent spot in the history books.
Taking a deep breath, almost as if expecting some invisible wall to be present there, his mind still unable to completely grasp the enormity of his next step, he nudged his horse with his knees, signaling it to proceed forward. As his horse’s hoof touched Dachwaldian soil, he confronted no invisible wall but found that his heart was galloping in his chest in stark contrast to the calm gait of his horse. As if every step further reinforced the reality of what he was doing. His expression, however, remained so stoic not even the shrewdest of observers would have sensed the powerful emotions running through his mind.
As they continued deeper into Dachwald, General Fuhdor expected there would indeed be enemy lookouts, but he expected he wouldn’t run into any large forces of Dachwaldians until he reached Castle Dachwald. After all, it would only make sense for the Vechengschaft to force the Sodorfians to fight them there. It was their best strategic position. They could hold out there until the sun ran out of gas. And behind the safety of their walls, Fuhdor knew they would pummel the oncoming Sodorfians to pieces with rocks like a snapping turtle devouring its prey while safe underneath its large, hard shell.
This was the kind of fight they wanted, but he was going to have none of it. If they wanted to hide behind their shell, he would just have to crush the damn thing into pieces and then eat out the soft underbelly. He’d be damned if he was going to allow them to fight the way a turtle fights. Turtles—he’d hated them ever since boyhood. Ever since his big brother Sidgon, the biggest toughest kid in the whole wide world had been bitten by one when they were playing in the creek when they were kids, and he was only three, and they were hunting crawdads, and they were having a wonderful time, and then Sidgon was screaming and blood was going everywhere, and Fuhdor didn’t know what to do, but his Big Brother told him to run quick and get Daddy, and Sidgon’s toe had been torn clean off by a snapping turtle the size of a well-fed pig, and Daddy had gone after the turtle saying he was going to kill it and he was sure Daddy was going to get his toe eaten off too just like his Big Brother, or maybe even his whole leg, but Daddy was faster than the turtle; he ran around it, turned it upside down and then stabbed its soft underbelly repeatedly until the big mean turtle stopped trying to bite.
The clarity of the memory astonished him and sent a chill down his spine, as he felt the same sensations he had on that day so many years ago. It may as well have happened yesterday; he’d have known the details just as closely. After patching up his older brother’s toe, his father, a widely admired general, had sat both of them down and told them he had something very important to tell them. “Boys, some things in life are just too strong to attack head-on. They’re tough and hard like the shell of that turtle. But everything, everything, has a soft spot, and that’s what you have to do. Find the soft spot, expose it, attack it, kill it.”
It had left an indelible mark on his psyche. Castle Dachwald’s soft spot was how far it could shoot its projectiles. Outside that projectile range, his army was safe and sound, and the Dachwaldians wouldn’t dare come out, not if they wanted to stay within their protective shell. With his new trebuchets—over one hundred feet tall and capable of launching objects twice the distance as a normal trebuchet—he was going to stay outside of their range and hit, hit, hit the castle until its shell was all gone. Then, only underbelly would be left. Soft, slimy, ornery, righteous-punishment-deserving underbelly, and his troops would cut that underbelly into so many pieces the gods themselves wouldn’t be able to sort them out.
All the same. They’re damned anyway.
The pieces for the trebuchets were carried in wagons. They would be assembled immediately upon arrival. However, these wagons couldn’t travel as fast as the rest of his army, so they were all moving at a slower pace in order to stay together. The trebuchet equipment had to be protected at all costs. He calculated the reduction in speed would probably delay their arrival to Castle Dachwald by at least two days. Nonetheless, he was confident they could be productive during that time. In fact, he was hopeful they would run into some Vechengschaft before reaching the castle so that his men, who would no doubt greatly outnumber them, could have a taste of combat. Get their feet wet.
As they tread across Dachwald, General Fuhdor could not help being a bit struck by the sight of what was clearly immense agricultural damage. It looked like a cloud of locusts or something of that nature had gone through and just destroyed everything, yet everything besides the crops seemed perfectly okay. He found this interesting, but it still didn’t convince him there was any chance of the Dachwaldians not being at fault in this whole conflict. Five hundred and twenty-four smashed and sliced Sodorfians were proof of that.
They’re going to pay.
As they continued walking, he noticed how scared many of the Dachwaldians were to see their lands being invaded. Women screamed and went running inside their homes seeking refuge. He also noticed that, in spite of the fact that he saw many Dachwaldians as they continued to ride north, he had yet to see a single Dachwaldian male, except for young boys and old men.
(all fighting-age Dachwaldians must have been conscripted; you might be up against a lot more troops than you think)
They continued traveling north until they could finally see Castle Dachwald off in the distance. He looked at the small towns dotting the landscape around the castle walls. If they get hit by my projectiles, he told himself, too bad, so sad. The castle was still far off in the distance. He decided he better not get too close for comfort. After all, it would be at least a couple more days before his engineers arrived and began assembling their trebuchets.
“Set up camp!!” he ordered in a loud voice. His troops began doing so. They all slept uneasily that night.
They had been trained well, but still many of them had an innate fear of Dachwald. To a certain extent all of the propaganda and military history they had been taught over the last six months sapped their confidence rather than increased it. After all, it may indeed be true, they reasoned, that the Dachwaldians were horrible monsters, but this wasn’t a popularity contest—this was war. And being so monstrous might not be so bad in this business, they further reasoned. However, despite these fears that were gnawing away at their confidence, they also had hatred. And a desire for revenge. This hatred and desire for revenge were currently at war with the fear and trepidation they were experiencing. A war in and of itself raging inside their heads like an invisible maelstrom.
Many of them hoped for a chance to kill a Dachwaldian right up close. Before entering Dachwald, General Fuhdor had ordered that as many as possible stop by to see what the Sodorfians that had recently escaped from Dachwald had been through. The sight of emaciated bodies, whip marks, brandings, and other physical punishments did the trick. Just like General Fuhdor wanted, they all became nearly blind with rage. Revenge was on their mind as they slept. They kept about three hundred sentries awake to watch out for an ambush. Each sentry had to be on the lookout for about two hours, and then rotated with another Sodorfian.
Suddenly, a Sodorfian messenger came to General Fuhdor, and said, urgently, “General, I have very important news for you!”
“What news do you have?”
“General, one of the Sodorfians that escaped believes he knows where at least one of the death camps is—the one that they all escaped from! He was still in shock when you visited the escapees, but he began showing signs of recovery yesterday and said he was pretty sure of the location. I showed him a map, and he pointed to it!”
“Where is it?! I must know immediately; we must act immediately!”
The messenger produced a map and handed it over to General Fuhdor. “Here you go, sir,” he said. “As you can see, it appears to be located just northwest of here . . . perhaps about four miles away.”
General Fuhdor scanned the map carefully, his blood boiling.
“I’m gonna show those bastards what happens to people who try to annihilate Sodorfians. Bugler, sound the alarm; get everyone ready for ba
ttle. We’re heading northwest!”
After the first bugler sounded the signal, all the higher-ranking officers came to General Fuhdor to receive their orders. They knew as soon as they heard the sound of the bugle this was no joking matter. About fifty high- and middle-ranking officers came to General Fuhdor. They comprised captains, lieutenants, colonels, majors, and a few of the most experienced sergeants.
General Fuhdor brought them into his tent.
Inside was a large map of Dachwald older than time itself. It was based upon work cartographers had done centuries ago, even before the Seven Years War. After the Seven Years War, the treaty allowed the Sodorfians to go into Dachwald whenever they pleased with the best cartographers available and make up-to-date maps. But, they shortsightedly saw no benefit in doing so. Granted, Dachwald’s physical geography was not vastly different, but there were differences in the areas of human and commercial geography.
The map would have to do.
There was a village called Ichsendarg, just south of where the extermination camp apparently lay. It was about a three-mile march. General Fuhdor addressed the officers: “Gentlemen, we don’t have time for fancy strategies. Our fellow Sodorfians are being slaughtered as we speak. We must act; we have every reason to believe we have great numerical superiority. Let history not say that thousands of Sodorfians roasted in flames while we, with a far superior force, sat on our laurels and argued about strategy!”
“How much of the army shall we take with us?” asked Colonel Osinduhr.
“I propose we take a force of nearly eighty thousand men. I don’t want to risk all of our elite Hugars, so I think an adequate arrangement would be 77,500 Sodorfian regulars and two thousand Hugars. That will preserve four thousand Hugars and two thousand Sodorfian regulars to watch our rear flank. We must use overwhelming force to attack these bastards, and our chances will be much better if we make one decisive strike!!” he said, pounding the table in front of him for emphasis.
Rise of Dachwald (Boxed Set, Books 1 through 2) Page 22