“I look forward to finding out, Captain. I think we’d all like the chance to cut the head from his scrawny neck.”
“If he lives, we’ll lose, Binks,” I replied. “But we might get the chance sooner than you think.”
Fire is not a beast that can be easily controlled. Sometimes it might sweep across a town as quickly as a man can run. Other times, it might remain in place as it slowly consumes the buildings around it. In Gold, with its mixture of wood and stone houses, the fire progressed quickly. It didn’t reach the place where we hid, but I didn’t want us to sit on our hands, meekly waiting until we were forced out. The moon was almost full and we could see that smoke rose from dozens of places and the fire cast an orange glow, vivid against the night sky. Smoke reached us, alternatively thick and acrid, or thin and almost pleasing to the nostrils. The wind blew and swirled, fanning the flames and sending them in all directions.
The streets were busy now, with townsfolk spilling from their houses and refuges. They looked up at their homes with confusion and fear, realising that the fire was spreading too quickly for it to be extinguished.
We formed a column, three men wide at the front, six men in length. With our shields in front of us, we pushed through the main streets, looking for a route that was less crowded. We hadn’t seen an enemy soldier in almost an hour of searching and it soon become apparent why that was. We were close to the river at this point, where the crowds were thinner. The fires wouldn’t reach here tonight, but they still brought people onto the streets.
We heard the enemy first, but even so would not have been quick enough to escape them had we not already been in the shadows of a narrow lane. Their soldiers marched past us in a column, wide and long.
“Hundreds of them,” said Chant.
“They’re going to kill them, aren’t they?” asked Binks.
I didn’t have to answer. We all knew what the plan was now. Bonecruncher had tried it once in an area of Graster where the local resistance had thwarted him for months. I could remember his words even now. “Burn them out and kill them,” he’d said.
The central streets of Gold were laid straight and once this first column of men had gone by, I saw a second, a few streets over. This was followed by another behind. With all of these soldiers on the street, I wondered if Leerfar had received some reinforcements that we’d not been aware of, or if she’d simply denied them their sleep for this one big push on the town.
“Where’s she going to keep her men now?” asked Twist.
“I don’t think she cares,” I said. “She can probably even set up a camp outside the town if she’s burned down her own barracks.”
There was a rolling boom from elsewhere in the town and then two more. I couldn’t be sure if they came from the same place and if they were close or far.
“Another sorcerer?” said Gurney.
“Sounds like two. Or a good one to fire them off so fast.”
“Let’s get after them,” I said without much relish. I liked a fight, but I didn’t fancy our chances here.
We ran at full pelt along some of the minor streets and alleys that we’d learned during our time in Gold. I knew those columns of men would need to fragment as they got deeper into the south side of town, at least if they were doing what I thought they were doing. Screams reached us ahead and around a corner. We didn’t slow and raised our shields as we emerged from our side street, spreading into the widest line we could make. By the time we realised that we faced vastly greater numbers it, we were already committed. Sometimes you’ve just got to go for it, whatever the consequences.
The street was already bloody when we arrived. Against the flickering orange backdrop of a terrace in flames, the enemy’s swords and maces rose and fell. The people of the town had little hope of defending themselves against the viciousness of the attack and I saw at least a dozen fall in seconds. My fears had been realised – Leerfar’s patience had run thin.
We crashed into their flank, holding our shields to one side in order that we could swing our swords more easily. In front of me, an arm was raised with a mace in the hand. The man holding it was so lost in his bloodthirst that he didn’t even look at me. I cut his arm off above the elbow and the mace flew somewhere away. So gone to the world was the man I’d hit, that his half-arm descended as if he still thought his hand was attached. The young girl he’d hoped to murder didn’t freeze like many would and she darted away from us. I didn’t stop to wonder if she’d survive the night and thundered a head butt against the soldier’s unprotected face, using my momentum to crush the bones of his skull. He dropped to the ground, to be trampled quickly by the feet of my men and his own comrades.
The anger which had been building within me came forth and I crashed another blow through the helmet of the next enemy, crushing his skull and knocking him dead to the ground. I could sense the same in my squad – vast wells of untapped anger at the Duke’s slaughter of these people. These were meant to be under the Saviour’s protection and our inaction would have been a failure.
The ferocity of our attack, combined with the surprise, saw a pile of the enemy at our feet, hardly before they had raised the alarm. The street was wide, but not enough that they could encircle us and our grim butchery brought fear into their ranks.
“Kill them all!” I shouted above the tumult.
I blocked a mace swing with my shield and drove my sword into the man’s belly. The fight between a maceman and a swordsman is never a long one. I pushed him away to die on the ground and parried two more blows aimed at me. Chant killed one, but then had to focus on his own survival when a sword poked past his defences and into his breastplate. He didn’t fall and I couldn’t tell how badly injured he’d been.
Three men along, I saw that Sense had lost his shield, or discarded it, in order that he could take advantage of his own rage. His rune sword cut into the neck of one foe, but I had to watch my own defence and did not see any more. A sword point came towards me and I deflected it with the edge of my own blade, smashing my opponent’s steel and leaving him with the jagged remains.
Now that the first few moments had passed, I saw how great were the numbers against us. We’d engaged a column of at least two hundred and the fear we’d engendered hadn’t reached the farthest men away from us. I think that their front three rows would have happily fled, but their fellows behind didn’t permit it and pushed them forward. It gave us many easy kills, but I thought that we’d be overwhelmed if we failed to panic them. There were side streets leading away from here and I was certain that the enemy soldiers would be splitting from their rear in order to circle behind us.
I shouted in fury at the enemy soldiers before me, trying to force them to obey my primal command for them to run. Those closest to me faltered and cowered away from my unending blows, but they had no room to turn tail and run. The wind gusted suddenly and brought with it a thick darkness, as smoke covered us, stinging our eyes. Our lungs were immune and we fought through the black swirls, as the fire which consumed the terrace increased in its intensity with the wind. I felt the heat of it scald my skin and hated it for what it did to our lady’s town.
Just as I thought that our determination would win us the day, my battle awareness told me of a shift. No longer did we face two hundred, but many more besides. They came at us from the street behind, drawn to the sound of battle.
“Square!” I shouted at once. We lacked the weight and the numbers to form an effective one, but nevertheless we changed our formation in the street. I gave thanks that the first group we’d attacked were too slow to respond and strike at us when we fell back. I was sure that many in their front rows gave their own thanks that we had done so.
“A good day to die, Captain?” asked Gurney through the chaos – a soldier’s old refrain.
“We’re not dying today, friend,” I responded.
I spoke too soon, and saw Twist go down under a series of clubbing blows. I was dimly aware that his shield had been knocked away not long
after the fighting had started – it wasn’t easy to keep a shield on your forearm when your hand was missing. The men who’d struck him trod on his body as they piled forward to meet us but I saw Twist’s last defiance, as he stabbed upwards with his dagger, before his body succumbed to the damage and he lay still.
Our shields held for a time. The enemy feinted and surged, but they were not able to put sufficient numbers against us to completely overwhelm our guard and hack us to pieces. We looked outwards at them from the fragile safety of our shield wall, meeting their eyes with our own, letting them know that our deaths would cost them many of their own. I felt a strange connection between us. What I saw in those men wasn’t hatred for us. There was fear in part, but they also had their own strength and their own determination. They wanted to return to their wives, their children, their families and they would fight with every ounce of their being to accomplish it. Not one man wanted to die here on the streets of Gold.
It is strange how the mind picks the oddest of moments to reach its conclusions. For a few seconds, time seemed to be frozen. It didn’t slow down as I sometimes experienced in the heat of a battle; I felt as though it had stopped entirely, simply in order that I could hear what my brain wanted me to hear. I thought to myself what fools we all were to be fighting amongst ourselves, while in his keep an old man whose life should have expired two hundred years before laughed with glee at the men, women and children who died to keep him in power. I could have felt drained and lost by this realisation, as though my life had been wasted, but I did not. All I knew was that I’d taken another step forwards on the long road to redemption.
The passage of time resumed and we all stared at each other for a moment longer, before our lines clashed again. Against the tiny period of peaceful serenity I had experienced, the sounds were jarring and harsh. A sword struck my shield with a sharp crack and another struck me on the top of my helmet as I crouched. I straightened and responded with my own assault. The connection I’d felt with the men of the enemy was gone, replaced by a certainty that I would kill each and every one of them, rather than sacrifice myself in order that they could return home. I slew two in quick succession and thrust my shield into a third, knocking the man from his feet. Bastard fell to half a dozen mace blows to his head and his shield was pulled away. We tried to close up, but our formation was becoming ragged now that we were attacked from all sides.
I heard a roar in the near distance and wondered if more of the Duke’s men had come to see our last stand. I thought that I might be uncaring in the face of my own final journey but I discovered that I was not. There was no fear, but the thought that I might have failed in my duties was more than I could bear.
Tigs fell nearby with a sword protruding from his chest and his helmet missing. He didn’t utter a sound, though I caught sight of his eyes just before they dimmed and I thought there was recognition in them. I saw no judgement, nor pain. The only word that I could use to describe his look was that it was one of peace.
All at once, the pressure against us lessened, just when it seemed as though we would be overrun and destroyed. The men who had arrived to our rear started to cast looks over their shoulders, rather than press on with their advantage. My squad didn’t slow and we turned our desperate defence into offense, nicking away a few limbs and killing some in their front ranks. I was able to stand taller and could see that our enemies had been attacked at their rear in the same way that they had attacked ours. Whoever had taken them by surprise was cutting them down by the scores and where the street had once been crowded, there was now a thinning out. Our allies poured into the opening and I saw swords raised high, which descended time and again into the confused throng of the enemy.
The bulk of their men, whom we had initially attacked, kept at us, but we were able to defend better now that the pressure from behind had reduced. A sword went into my leg, cutting away a flap of skin and I hunkered down once more, to reduce my vulnerability to another thrust.
“They’re going to run, Captain,” said Binks.
“Don’t go thinking it’s time for a rest,” I told him. “There’re plenty more of them the other way.”
“Yeah. Not the best odds, is it?”
As it happened, the odds had begun to swing in our favour. Our allies scattered the enemy who had appeared behind us, mowing them down like threshed wheat. I knew who had come to our aid now – I’d heard his voice above the clatter of battle, a voice louder than any I knew.
Lieutenant Sinnar came. His shield was gone, though I didn’t know if he’d brought one with him. His helmet was dented and scoured with deep scars. His sword whirled around, cutting down the enemy where they stood, with none capable of resisting his fury. Sinnar’s eyes were wild but focused as his battle lust carried him along. To Warmont’s men he’d have seemed as unstoppable as Xoj-Fal had to us of the First Cohort.
To his rear, there were other men of our lady’s army. I saw a few of my own men and many others I only faintly recognized. As my squad huddled in our square, these new men flew by us and around our sides as they fearlessly charged our opponents. The enemy were dismayed by the ferocity of these new attackers and fell into their own defensive stances, holding up their shields and pointing their weapons forward in the hope that it might keep them safe. Their hopes were in vain and Sinnar’s men dashed them to the left and right, forcing them aside and pushing many towards the flames of the burning terrace. Screams rose and I watched at least two perish to the agony of burning.
My own squad took heart when we saw our imminent defeat receding before us. We joined in with the slaughter, turning the tables on those who would have shortly overrun us. They tried to run, of course, but so maddened were we by that point that we had no mercy left within us. We killed and we killed, though I felt emptiness at the deaths of these men.
“Well met, Lieutenant Sinnar,” I told him, once the butchery had ended. He had almost a dozen wounds scattered over his body. They’d wear him out eventually.
He looked at me for a few moments as though he didn’t recognize me and I worried that he might have become lost in his mind. The man was stronger than that and with a shudder I saw him drag himself back to our reality.
“They’ll be licking their wounds for a while after that,” he said with a sense of satisfaction.
“How go things?” I asked, aware of the shortness of time.
“Every cut they make against us, they get two back,” he said. “It’s just a shame there’s so bloody many of them.”
“I think they’ve had reinforcements from somewhere,” I said. “Either that or Leerfar’s driving them until they drop.”
“Leerfar’s here? I should have guessed. I keep finding men who’ve been cut to ribbons.”
“That’s her. Always did like the hunt - when it’s in her favour, at least.”
“What’s the plan, Captain? I’ve got over a hundred of the Gold lads with me now. We met up in bits and pieces as their squads got broken up. Nearly forty of our Cohort men too.”
My own squad had hardly seen any sign of a resistance since I’d split up our troops. At times, it had almost felt as though we were alone in an alien city infested with troops hunting for us and us alone. It had just been our bad luck, I supposed - Lieutenant Sinnar hadn’t had a problem joining with others of our lady’s army.
“Any idea how many we’ve got left?” I asked.
“Under half. Far under half, I think,” said Sinnar. I wasn’t shocked.
“Not going to be much of the place left for our lady to come back to, is there?”
“I think they’ll burn the north if they can’t flush us out of here,” he said. “Shame, I was just starting to get to like the place.”
“I’m not sure I feel the same way, Lieutenant. Give me a muddy field to freeze my balls off in and I’ll be a happy man.”
He laughed at that. “We all hanker for what we can’t have,” he said. Never a truer word was spoken.
“We’ll join up,”
I said. “Not that I’ve got too many remaining. Six of us gone.”
“You’ve done better than most, Captain,” he said ominously.
We joined forces. Sinnar’s one hundred and fifty, with our fifteen on top. The streets were awash with blood and gore, the tragedy of it illuminated by the fierce flames from the burning terrace. As we left the street behind, I heard a rumbling crash and we all looked back to see that the front of the row had collapsed, sending hot rubble and burning wood all across the street where we had recently fought.
“Good luck for us, Captain,” Sinnar told me. “Glad I wasn’t under that when it came down.”
I shook myself out of the gloom that had descended upon me for reasons I didn’t know, refusing to let myself wallow when we’d just escaped our own certain destruction. “Good luck indeed, Lieutenant. And bad luck for Warmont’s men. Let’s find some more wood to chop.”
We were off again on a night filled with death and flame. We kept close to the outskirts of town at first. Leerfar had sent thousands of men out, but the further from the centre they were, the more they had to split in order to search each street. We saw countless dead civilians. Many had been killed cleanly, but others had suffered the cruel whims of angry men. There were women, stripped naked and mutilated, and men with their genitals cut off. I had seen before what frustrated soldiers could do and I wasn’t surprised that they had descended into this after the turmoil of the conflict so far. I had no sympathy for their actions, but I had seen it before.
Where we came upon the enemy units, we slew them efficiently, never pausing for long in one place. We saw signs that other groups like ours operated along with us. On three occasions, we came upon groups of dead soldiers, though there were also signs that the enemy were not all easy targets.
“That’s Jonty there,” said Lieutenant Sinnar, pointing to a body on a rough stone road. The dead man lay on his back with his eyes staring at the flame-lit sky. He’d been stabbed twice and his throat had been cut for good measure. “And that’s Trinter next to him. Can’t recall the names of those other three, but I’ve seen their faces.”
Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1) Page 31