Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1)

by M. R. Anthony

  By the time the night was almost through, we were running out of easy pickings for our ambushes. It seemed as though almost every building was burning fiercely, such that night had almost become day down at street level. The slum buildings on the outskirts had not escaped - in fact they burned brighter and more readily than did the others.

  “More wood in them ones,” remarked a soldier near to me. “The poor build with wood, the rich build with stone. I came from there myself,” he said with rancour. “Never wanted to see it burn down though. It might be for the best though.”

  His words seemed odd to me at first – that he could see a positive side to these homes being destroyed. Then I remembered the despair and hopelessness I’d found in the towns’ outskirts, where even our lady’s radiance couldn’t illuminate the souls of the people. Whatever happened to them after this, perhaps they would build it back new and their efforts might give them skills and pride to become more than they had been before we arrived.

  Just as we all thought that we’d had an easy night of it, we found the caster. Or at least, he found us. We had decided to make one last foray into the town, closer to the river than we’d dared up till then. The thought of taking a few dozen final scalps was more than we could resist and soldiers are always at their most vulnerable when they think a shift is coming to an end. We weren’t so bold that we’d planned to assault one of the larger columns, but a group of fifty would make a good, easy target for us. Such groups proved to be elusive and I’d started to weigh up the option of going for something bigger. With fifty of the First Cohort amongst us, we could easily overwhelm a hundred of the enemy without significant casualties of our own, I reckoned.

  Just as I was thinking this, a figure stepped out into the road a hundred yards ahead of us, as if he’d been waiting there for us all along. Even in the light of the flames he seemed shrouded in smoke, as if it swirled around him to make him harder to see. He raised a hand and fire exploded amongst us, a great ball of it detonating in our midst and expanding at devastating speed. I closed my eyes and instinctively dropped into a crouch, pulling my shield in to my body. The force of the blast threw me outwards and upwards into the air. I felt objects collide with me as I flew. Even in the confusion I felt the warm, comforting glow of my wards as they protected me from the magical fire. I struck a nearby wall shield-first, though it was more through luck than any judgement on my part.

  I tumbled several feet to the ground with a crash and then rolled to my feet again, searching ahead for the figure who’d attacked us. The smell of burning flesh reached my nostrils and I realised that some of it was my own, though the pain was of little concern. The figure was still ahead of us, unmoved and silent. His flames had ripped through our men and I saw charred corpses everywhere, their bodies blackened as if they had been dropped into a blacksmith’s forge. It only took a glance for me to realise that all of the Gold men had perished in the attack. A number of my own men were also burned and I hoped that none had been killed.

  Across the street, Lieutenant Sinnar saw me. His face was black down one side, but he grinned at me, his teeth starkly white against his flesh.

  “I fucking hate sorcerers,” he said. “Let’s show this one that the First Cohort won’t burn easily.”

  I nodded at him and raised a hand to my men, beckoning them to drop behind their shields. My hand had scarcely reached into the air when another blast struck us, this one much hotter and more powerful than the first. Again we were thrown about like chaff, and this time not every one of my men climbed so easily to their feet.

  “Scatter!” I shouted and ran towards the sorcerer without looking to see where my men were. Sinnar ran alongside me, his shield covering his face. His armour had partially melted and where his flesh was exposed it was black in places.

  “I wonder if Warmont’s got himself a sixth,” he called to me as we ran.

  We didn’t reach the sorcerer and this time I didn’t even see his gesture, but the walls to either side of us fell inwards. They didn’t topple slowly and gradually, rather they collapsed upon us as if they’d been pushed by a wave of powerful force. I couldn’t avoid the rubble and it covered me with a great weight. I saw Sinnar go down too. Just when I thought that I’d escaped without serious harm, the weight atop me doubled and I felt a number of my ribs snap.

  I lay in the darkness for a time, my body broken but not so much that I travelled my last journey. The pressure over me was suddenly released and I rolled over carefully to look upwards. I didn’t know how he’d removed the rubble that covered me, but the sorcerer stood there, looking downwards at me. I could see his face now – ruined and old, his nose rotted away to leave two holes in his face. He spoke quietly.

  “The Emperor has enjoyed your games, Tyrus Charing. He might be of a mind to see where your road takes you, but you know that his patience is short and he may soon lose interest.”

  “Why has he sent you?” I asked.

  “I’m here to make you aware that the Emperor is watching. He always liked you, Captain Charing, but he is not a man to disappoint.”

  With that, the figure turned to leave. With a great effort, I pushed aside some of the rubble that covered my body and staggered to my feet. I looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of the sorcerer. Where the walls had collapsed, there was a pile of rubble, strewn across the street and in a heap. Here and there I saw it stir and I struggled over to the closest movement. I felt a weakness that I had never felt before and the bones in my rib cage flexed and scraped against each other. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be close to death.

  I braced my legs and pulled aside three or four of the larger sections of shattered wall. A shoulder and arm became visible and it joined in with my efforts, pushing away at the smaller bricks and stones. It was Lieutenant Sinnar and I had never been so relieved to see him alive as I was then. He didn’t say anything and we got to work, pulling away the rubble from atop our men. A few others had already freed themselves and after twenty minutes, we had rescued those who would be able to fight on. Twelve of us we left behind, their bodies burned and crushed until they had nothing left to give.

  “There’ll be fuck-all of us left at this rate, Captain,” said Sinnar.

  “Our time is well overdue, Lieutenant. All we can do is try and tip the scales in our favour, so that when the last of us succumbs we can die contented that we have not wasted our time or our chances. Come on, let’s find somewhere to stay for a while, before Warmont’s soldiers find us.”

  “What about that sorcerer, Captain?” asked Beamer.

  “I don’t think he’s coming back,” I said. “At least not for now.”

  “Was it who I think it was?” asked Sinnar.

  “One of his Death Sorcerers,” I said. “Now I know why the town has burned so easily.”

  “The Pyromancer,” Sinnar replied.

  “It looks as though the Emperor is enjoying the Duke’s discomfort. He’ll get bored with us soon enough,” I told him.

  “The Emperor always liked you, Captain.”

  “Malleus has no favourites, Lieutenant. He’s ancient and he’s bored. We’re nothing but a distraction for him.”

  “We should do our best to keep him interested, then, eh?” asked Chant. “See where it takes us.”

  I didn’t reply. We’d left the Emperor’s service long ago. His last and only favour to me. I’d hoped never to see him again.

  It took longer than I’d wanted, but we found somewhere to hole up – the cellar of another tavern, that had been protected from the flames ravaging the town above. Gurney must have had the nose of a hound and he said that he’d sniffed out the ale beneath a charred wooden trapdoor, deep in the ruins. I personally thought he’d just got lucky enough to stumble upon the opening, but I didn’t let him know that.

  We hid below the surface for a time, away from the flame, the smoke and the killing. There were barrels here and our morale was boosted enormously when we found that they contained a quant
ity of ale. There was no food, but I think that most of us had given up the pretence of needing to eat. I experimented by imagining the sights and smells of a beautifully-prepared steak, but no matter how vivid was the image that my mind conjured up, my mouth steadfastly refused to water.

  “What’s the plan, Captain?” asked Waxer, after we’d waited for what seemed like an age.

  “There is no plan, soldier,” I said. “Other than we’re going to wait for our lady to return and then we’re going to come out and we’re going to fight again until Warmont has no one left in Gold. Even if it means we have to flatten every single building in the north to get them out.”

  Twenty-Seven

  I stuck to my plan. There seemed to be little point in risking any more of my men to the surface. I hadn’t conceded defeat, so much as come to realise that there was little benefit to continuing the fight for now. We’d delayed Warmont as much as we could, for as long as we’d been able, but I preferred that we’d be able to contribute to the war in the future, rather than spending ourselves now. I knew when it was time to fight and when it was time to withdraw and I didn’t get an argument from Lieutenant Sinnar or any of the other men. For a time, I considered pulling us out of the town and making a camp in the high hills a few miles outside of the town. Sleeping beneath the stars would have been preferable to where we were, but I was too proud to leave. I thought there was still a chance we might have some value.

  So, we remained where we were. Our wounds closed up with unnatural speed and I felt my broken bones knit and bond. We still made forays out to the surface, mostly at night. We took great care to ensure that we were not seen as we emerged, but our faces and armour were so blackened by smoke that we were almost invisible in the darkness. None of us bothered to clean ourselves up – it was not a time to think about our appearance.

  Each time we ventured out, it was to gather information, rather than with the specific purpose of killing the enemy. After a few days, the fires had mostly burned down, but the stench remained. We’d all become used to it, almost fond of the pungent, acrid odour. The enemy didn’t come to the south side of town in any great numbers – I assumed that they considered their mission complete here. In fact, there was little sign of any life at all. We came across a few people – children hiding in the ruins, men and women hurrying away in the distance. Whatever life there had been in this half of Gold had been effectively expunged by the Pyromancer’s flames and the swords of the enemy.

  “They think they’ve won,” said Lieutenant Sinnar on one occasion.

  “They have won, Lieutenant. We can only hope that it is a temporary state of affairs and that we’ve weakened them sufficiently so our lady can take back what remains of the town.”

  “I don’t like the feeling, Captain. After what we’ve done. I put everything I had into killing these bastards, but it was never enough. There was always more of them just around the corner, and more after that.”

  “We’ve grown too used to winning, Lieutenant. That’s what happens when you fight for the strongest side for too long. It’s made us forget what defeat tastes like. We need to learn from it. Get used to it. We will come out from this test stronger than we were before.”

  “It’s not something I want to get used to, Captain. Losing is not something I can contemplate.”

  “Nor me, Sinnar. The war is still ours to win, and when I see Warmont’s body fall, I am going to be close enough to drive my sword into his grinning face.”

  “He’ll look good in our trophy cabinet, at least.”

  I laughed at that, feeling some of my burdens lessen. A man should never stand alone and I drew strength from the others.

  It would have been easy to lose track of the days again, had I allowed myself to fall into that trap. Time progresses regardless of whether or not we are aware of it, but I liked to know where my place was in its endless stream. The passing years seemed to make time even more important, rather than less. I did not know if age would ever cripple me, but I somehow felt that my future was shorter than my past and that with each passing day, the uncertainty grew and my continued existence became less sure.

  We spent thirteen days in our cellar and it became a joke amongst us as each new day arrived that we’d not lost another of our number. To feed their bleak humour, they started betting amongst themselves who would be the next to be killed, with Sense emerging as the clear favourite.

  “Two cracks to the head and a knife in the throat already. There must be something about him that makes him seem like a good target,” said Gurney.

  “Yeah,” said Beamer. “And if he so much as looks at a horse shit he’s going to fall down dead, without so much as a gurgle.”

  Sense took it all in good spirits. He’d always been quite happy to go along with the banter and was well able to stick up for himself if he thought things had gone too far. He didn’t even seem especially bothered that he could no longer speak. I didn’t think it would cause him any problems in combat, as long as he wasn’t put in a position where he needed to use his voice for something.

  On the fourteenth day, things changed. I was out during the early morning with five others. We were scouting and not really looking for trouble as we picked our way carefully along by the river, warily looking across for the signs of enemy soldiers. Grunt saw it first.

  “Smoke, Captain.” He was a man of few words.

  I stared at it for a few moments, trying to make sense of what my eyes saw. Something was alight over the river and on the north side of the town – something big. I was just about to lead us over the water to see if I could find out what had caused it when we saw more smoke rising, from elsewhere in the town.

  “Think they’re burning that side down as well?” asked Waxer. “Maybe a few of the lads have been up to mischief and set a few fires for them. We can’t be the last ones, eh?”

  “No, we’ll not be the last ones, Waxer,” I said, fervently hoping that I was right.

  There was the sound of an explosion far away. At this distance it reached us as something between a bang and a roar. We all looked at each other.

  “Ploster!” said Lamper. “I’d recognize that bastard’s signature from a dozen miles away.”

  “We need to get the others,” I said, struggling to keep the excitement from my voice.

  There was another sound – a grumbling, low, stomach-churning thump, loud even from a distance.

  “That ain’t Ploster,” someone said.

  “Maybe it’s the Pyromancer come back,” said another, uncertainly.

  “Back, now! I commanded. That’s not the Pyromancer.”

  We returned to the ruins of the tavern at a fast run, heedless of the dangers, but still ready to fight if we came across the unexpected. I hurled open the hatch to the cellar where the rest of us hid. A few men looked up, eyes white in blackened faces.

  “Out, quick!” I commanded. “Our lady is back.”

  We formed up in the street, all forty-two of us that remained after our encounter with the Pyromancer. With our shields held in position and our weapons ready, we made haste along the street towards the river. I didn’t want to make an error in my eagerness and boldness, so I had us cross the river further down towards the outskirts. The cold water washed over our legs, but the soot was so ingrained in our skin that it remained even after we emerged from the other side.

  The buildings here had not been touched by the flames and I saw signs of life – there were not many of the townsfolk on the streets, but the fact that there were some told me that the slaughter had been confined to the southern part of the town.

  “Looks like they only had the numbers to hold one half,” observed Sinnar. “And felt confident enough that they could leave the people here alive.”

  It seemed plausible enough. I was sure there had been killings aplenty over here too, but I knew that if Leerfar had saturated the streets with enough of her men, the citizens would have come to heel quickly enough. The people were bakers and blacksmiths, not
soldiers.

  “They’d have burned the rest of it down if they needed to, Lieutenant. Let’s hope that our lady has returned and that we can defeat Warmont’s army before the rest of Gold is left in ruins.”

  I remembered the road that we had taken into the town when we had first visited the place with our scouting party and the Saviour. It was the most natural way from the perimeter to the centre and we ran until we reached it, encountering no resistance on the way, nor seeing any sign of their soldiers.

  “This way,” I commanded when we reached the main road. It led away from us, back towards the river we’d crossed some minutes before.

  “On guard,” said Lieutenant Sinnar.

  We marched along the road in a column four by ten, watchful for the enemy. I heard a sharp crack somewhere over the rooftops – Ploster again – and then the first sounds of fighting reached us. We took a side street which would take us closer to the sounds and immediately came across a contingent of Leerfar’s men coming the other way. Many of them were looking over their shoulders, so it came as a surprise to them when we cut them into pieces, hardly even breaking our stride or pausing to finish off their wounded. We left over twenty of them in our wake, a few of them groaning in agony from the wounds we’d left them with.

  Suddenly we found ourselves in the plaza which had once been the Farmer’s market. I say once, because now there was no sign of trade. Whatever stalls had once been here were now gone. There were soldiers, however and they were plentiful in number.

  “Not all Leerfar’s,” said Sinnar reducing the sentence to three concise words.

  There were thousands of men here, slugging it out over pavements soaked in blood. War is never pretty, but there is an occasional beauty to be seen in a perfect formation, or in the execution of a surprise move. Here there was none of that and the two sides chopped at each other as if they were youths on a training field. There was too much chaos, but I did not want to hesitate. We hammered into the flanks of one of Leerfar’s lines, cutting through their numbers as we surged onwards.