by Dragon Lance
Vinas stared in amazement at the crumpled man. Courage meanwhile kicked the body one last time, just for spite. Vinas turned, seeing a similar thornbush on a ledge up the opposite cliff. Nocking an arrow, he let fly. The shaft flashed into the bush, which shuddered and transformed into a gasping female archer. The woman clutched an arrow in her chest and leaned back to die against the black stone.
Vinas glanced down the valley, where arrows leapt from similar thistles.
“Aim for the bushes!” Vinas shouted to his men. “They’re hiding in the bushes!”
His command was shouted down the line, and shafts rose from the ground in thick swarms, more than answering those that rained down from above. Now they were slumping, falling, thrashing – those damned archers. Vinas himself drilled four in the next moments, letting one of his victims gasp a long while in agony before he plugged her a second time through the skull.
“And all because of Courage,” he told himself, spitting grit from his mouth. He determined he would tend to his beloved mount as soon as the battle was won.
The end was not long in coming. Arrows flew up the sides of the canyon, nicking white scars into the black rock. The enemies left long streaks of red as they plunged down the cliff face or clung and bled to death.
Vinas emerged from the cleft in the cliff wall. The scene of carnage was disturbing: twenty-three soldiers and four horses down in the first three seconds, and since then two more soldiers. Twenty-five casualties to Vinas’s three thousand men – a paltry loss.
Worse for the ambushers. Every last one of their two hundred were dead or wounded. Many of the wounded were even now being finished off by casual fire from below.
“Surrender, and live,” shouted Vinas to the few that clung defiantly to their perches.
One of the archers, a young man whose leg was pinned to a twisted stump of tree, called out, “We cannot. We have orders to fight to the death.” His voice had not yet matured, and he spoke each statement like an inflected question. A Daltigoth east-ender.
“Orders from whom?” called out the commander. “Find Colonel Hellas’s body. He’s the one with the note.”
Hellas, thought Vinas with irritation. Old Hellas of the Solanthian troubles. He had been restationed to Caergoth. These two companies must have marched with him from there.
“It’s a note for you, Commander Solamnus,” supplied the young archer.
For me? Vinas thought.
While his troops went after the rest of the men, Vinas shouted up to the young archer, “I’ll find his body more easily with your help. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the old bastard. His face might have gotten ruined in the fall.” He grabbed a goggle-eyed priest, rushing back and forth between the wounded, and asked the man to find Titus to heal Courage. Then, Vinas climbed up the sloped face of the cliff, using rocky crevices as handholds. “I’m coming up, son.”
“I’m not your son, Commander,” the youth shouted back. His red hair stood stiff and glossy around his head, like a halo in copper. “And I haven’t given up yet, either. I’ll shoot you if you come closer,” he warned.
“No, you won’t,” said Vinas confidently, gaining a low shelf of stone and sidling along it to the next level. “You’re too young to die, and you know it. If you even try to shoot me, one of my war wizards will make your head leap off of your body.”
“I have orders not to surrender,” the youth said. “I have orders to fight to the death.”
Vinas had almost reached the lad, and saw a frecklefaced young man, white with pain and terror, and gingerly wiggling a bloody shaft in his leg. The boy indeed did not look more than thirteen. “Since when do the orders of a colonel take precedence over the orders of the imperial high commander?”
“They’re not from Colonel Hellas,” the lad said, at last losing his resolve. He arched his back, pulling frantically at the arrow. “They’re from the empress, herself.”
Vinas climbed onto the ledge. He studied the boy’s wound, and then said, “I’ll get that arrow out if you take me to Hellas.”
A teary nod was all the youngster could muster.
*
The young man, whose name was Barnabas, perked up considerably when Anistas, a beautiful priestess, knelt down to tend his arrow wound. Vinas left them to their idle talk – the same youthful dialect that he and Luccia had once spoken – and went over to the body of Hellas.
The commander stood above the dirty and misshapen form, which lay facedown atop a broken shaft. He remembered what the captain had looked like on that blizzard night so many years ago, and had little interest in seeing what the ravages of time had done to him. Still, he wanted that note from Hellas’s pocket.
An iron-edged toe hooked beneath the man’s bloody shoulder. Vinas flipped him over. It was a good thing Barnabas could identify Hellas – the captain had left the better half of his face on the cliff side. Not looking too closely, Vinas reached into the tabard and pulled forth the note. He broke the wax seal, unfolded the page, and read:
High Commander Solamnus:
How cruel of you to prune these last two hundred red roses. They are dead because of you. Now the bush cannot help going wild, ending all in thorns and brambles.
Expect worse, here on out.
Your Beloved,
Empress Phrygia
He looked up from the note, which trembled ever so slightly in his hand. Vinas would not reveal the note to the emperor. It implicated him in a liaison. Such a note could easily have been forged; how much simpler to believe in the treachery of a career-stalled colonel than that of an empress.
“Wicked woman,” Vinas whispered to himself. “Wicked, wicked woman.”
*
Three Days Hence, 10 Argon, 1199 Age of Light
Twenty-five biers accompanied the procession of soldiers that reached a nighttime Caergoth. The biers bore the honored dead of Ergoth. The dishonored dead were present only in the shale dust and blood caked beneath the fingernails of the living.
It had taken an army of three thousand the worse part of two days to pile up and sanctify the cairns of two hundred rebels. Not rebels – men following imperial orders, against other men following imperial orders.
Barnabas, the injured young archer and the only survivor among the ambushers, rode in bleak-faced silence beside Anistas. He needed no armed escort. There were just short of three thousand warriors to run him down should he try to flee. He looked a natural enough partner to the young cleric woman, and their silence was companionable, if uncomfortable.
“Those weren’t the only orders from the empress,” he had said ominously. He had seen other packets given to various colonels stationed at Caergoth. As to what was in them, he didn’t know.
Yes, the ambush in the gorge had been a horrible surprise. But a worse one waited in Caergoth.
Something dreadful had happened here. Empress Phrygia’s letter guaranteed it. The darkness of the ramparts and palisades confirmed it. Whatever it was, it had happened after Vinas’s advanced scouts had passed here, days before.
When they had first arrived and seen the darkness of the place, Vinas had sent the griffon riders out to fly over Caergoth. He had ordered them not to land, not to spring whatever trap was set. Now, as the army waited within a few hundred yards of the gates, the griffon squad returned with the news.
A black form fluttered down from the deepening darkness. It was Luccia, astride her griffon – what was his name? Tear along?
Courage, injured and walking beside Commander Solamnus, started and snorted, but let Vinas’s tight grip on the reins hold him to ground.
Luccia dismounted calmly instead of leaping from the saddle with her typical aplomb. Her face was grave as she approached her commander.
“Greetings, Luce,” Vinas said. His voice was casual, tired. “What have you to report?”
“Hello, Commander,” she replied. “None of us could see much. The fortress looked deserted. The village nearby, too. Not a candle lit anywhere. No one moving ab
out the street. No one. The place stinks of death.”
“What of the troop levy? What about the thousand reinforcements?” Vinas asked. “Any sign of them?”
At last, Luccia’s eyes came to bear on him. “They might be hiding inside, waiting to ambush.”
“Judging from their compatriots, that is a definite possibility.” Vinas cast an angry look at the young archer silently sitting astride his horse.
Luccia said, “There’s no sign of military movement in the hundred square leagues around the fortress.”
Vinas nodded. “Gaias, come here, please.”
Gaias quickly obliged.
“Gaias, pass word among the soldiers to take extra caution. Tell them to anticipate taking up a defensive pattern if we come under attack from the fortification.”
“Yes, Commander,” said Gaias, turning to go.
“And, Gaias,” Vinas added, “ask Titus and his acolytes to pray.”
*
Gaias pulled back from the doorway of the hovel. His eyes were watering, and not from just the stench.
The young soldier beside him pushed the door closed. “Three in there,” he reported. “Throats cut. Soldiers’ footprints. Just like the others.”
The old colonel nodded, sketching a shaky X over the house on the hand-drawn map. That left only two shacks without X’s.
“Oh, gods! Oh Kiri-Jolith of the sword, why?” came a call from the soldier at the door of one of the two remaining shacks. A similar call came from the direction of the other. Without waiting for particulars, Gaias marked X’s on the last two huts. He stared for a moment at the page, then wadded the thing and dropped it to the ground.
“Gather up,” he said quietly. The young soldier beside him cupped hands to relay the order.
Gaias led his men back toward the main corps that waited in hushed uneasiness in the dark clearing beyond the village. Gaias’s weary and sickened soldiers staggered behind him. The sentries ahead, posted at the edge of the army, raised their bows.
“It’s us,” the colonel called out. “It’s no walking dead.”
That terse explanation sent a ripple of nervous laughter through the distant ranks.
To help his men shake off their terror, and to help keep it from spreading to the others, Gaias called out, “Double time.” He and his troops started a jog back to the others. Some of the younger soldiers, apparently spooked by the dead darkness, broke into a sprint to rejoin their living comrades.
Let them go, thought Gaias. This isn’t running from battle. This is running from butchery.
Gaias reached the commander, paused to catch his breath, and began his report. “All dead. Throats slit.”
Vinas winced. “Plainsmen?”
“Soldiers,” Gaias replied. “It was orderly, as if soldiers went house by house, knocked politely and were let in the door, then slit the peasants’ throats.”
Vinas spat as he looked away into the forest gloom. He shook his head. “Where do they think the armies come from? From the people, that’s where.”
Gaias watched his commander, those last words echoing meaninglessly in his mind. “What should we do?”
“What else?” replied Vinas with sudden anger. “On to the fortress. We won’t solve this riddle without more atrocities. I can see that now. The wicked woman has made sure of that.”
Still uncertain, Gaias nodded. “I’ll give the order, and tell my men to keep mum about what they saw. No need to spook everyone.”
“You do that,” said Vinas cursorily.
There came a rushing motion in the darkness. The commander had mounted his black charger. He turned the beast and moved off, leaving his shadowy army behind.
Gaias issued orders to his lieutenants, then mounted up and cried, “Move out! Double time!”
He led the army in the wake of its commander. The din of horse hooves and iron-shod men filled the blackness.
The fortress, a palisade of sharpened log ends and jointed wood towers, loomed in front of the commander. Soon, its darkness swallowed him up. Still, the thunder of Courage sounded on the plain. Vinas rode forward.
A distant thud like the kick of a boot, and the lightless, unhinged gate swung inward. For a moment Vinas, astride his steed, was dimly silhouetted in the moonlit gate. Then he was gone.
Gaias’s first duty was to the men who served him. But Commander Solamnus was not merely a superior; he was a friend.
“Follow, at best speed!” Gaias commanded. He spurred his horse toward the gateway where Vinas had disappeared.
Gaias’s mount ate up ground. He crouched low over the beast’s tossing mane. The old colonel held the reins loosely, letting the horse find its way through the blackness.
“Commander,” Gaias called into the ghost-gray yard beyond. He awaited no response, drawing his sword and thrusting the door back from the path. It swung inward, nearly out of the way, before catching on some heavy, soft bulk. Gaias gritted his teeth and urged the horse forward, muscling through the gap. He kicked at the door. There came a dead groan from behind it, putrid air from rotting lungs.
The horse tried to wheel. Gaias held it steady and drove it on through.
The inner bailey, a wide stockaded fort with several outposts and a central lookout, was a charnel house. In the gray of night, five gibbeted bodies swayed with the unmistakable motion of stiff weight. They hung in clear dry air beneath a fat timber, like drying meat. So had death come to the five colonels.
The soldiers were less well disposed of. Some squatted in shambled rot beside posts or in comers. Others lay in lines and arrays, as though the dead from one execution were not even dragged away before the next batch were lined up. There were hundreds of bodies, yes, but certainly not thousands.
And no sign of Commander Solamnus.
Gaias rode forward through a swarm of flies that were buzzing even though it was night.
The door to the command bunker hung open. Vinas would have gone there. Yes, Courage stood beside the door, his black tail flashing.
Gaias edged his mount across the yard of death. He let the horse find its footing. The bunker was a low-lying redoubt roofed in beams as thick as the gibbet. Halfway there, Gaias saw a faint light. The light seemed to flicker, and then swell radiantly. It revealed a cellar doorway. Its twin covers were drawn upward like wings. Glowing stairs led down the bunker’s throat.
Flies shimmered in the air before him. A small kick sent his horse prancing gingerly over the last bodies. Gaias leapt from the saddle, letting his horse trot to Courage and nuzzle the beast.
The old colonel virtually flung himself down the stairs. He had almost reached the bottom when a feeble call came from within. “Gaias. I need you.”
He entered the subterranean chamber. It was a military command post with a map table illuminated by a single lantern. The walls had been done up with tapestries, and the floor was thick with rugs. The chamber was ringed with fat chairs. In one sat a man who cradled a crossbow in his arms. He appeared at first to be surprised by Gaias’s arrival, his mouth wide open and his eyes staring in disbelief. Then Gaias saw a fly crawling across one of those open eyes. The butt end of a quarrel stuck like a serpent’s tongue from the man’s mouth.
“Over here,” came the voice.
The commander was slumped in a similar position. In place of the crossbow, there was a much-tattered, hand-oiled book, lying open.
“You have fought a hundred wars. Tell me how to fight one such as this,” the commander said. He wearily handed over the book.
Gaias took it, looking for a moment into the despairing eyes of his friend. Then, leaning toward the light, he squinted and began to read.
Meus Pater
Father, I am glad to be away from that place of death. We have marched a mile north of Caergoth, off the main road and upwind. It is a dreary night. I have ordered great bonfires and doubled the ration of wine. I have even given a speech for courage.
Such things do little to banish the atrocities we’ve seen.
> This book – the log of General Fineas Tragarus, commander of the fortress – tells it all:
27 Corij, 1199
The emperor has sent orders that I play host to Commander Vinas Solamnus and his half-division on the evening of 9 Bran. Solamnus will be taking away with him a levy of five hundred men to help fight in Vingaard.
The imperial missive also orders that I send a unit of two hundred men back to Daltigoth. Apparently, since the departure of Solamnus, the empress has grown hysterical with worry about assassins.
I will send Hellas’s unit. With their departure, the loss of five hundred more men to Solanthus in the east, and Solamnus’s own levy, I will be reduced to seven hundred fifty men. My forces will not match those of Commander Solamnus when he arrives.
Argon, 1199
This afternoon, word came of a great atrocity. In some communal madness, a company of men sneaked into Caergate and slew every man, woman, and child. While I was out, searching through the carnage, Colonel Desidras discovered his own men, bloody to the elbows, and bragging of the murders. With the aid of his six colonel comrades, Desidras marshaled his company. He took twenty-five men at a time, lined them up against the wall, and brought them down with bow fire.
Upon returning from the village, I was amazed to learn of this slaughter. Though he had ordered the execution of his men, Desidras was undone by it. He took the murders on himself, said he himself had slain them all, even the villagers. The other colonels told me of the blood on Desidras’s men, and how they bragged about what they had done.
I got Desidras good and drunk in hopes he would sleep... and in fear that he might decide to take his own life. Late this night – the next morning, really – he was found dead in a pool of bloody vomit.
Argon, 1199