Forgotten Soldiers

by Joshua P. Simon

  A sudden fear pushed aside most of my drunkenness.

  My left arm grabbed the bar, which I used to steady myself as I spun around, right hand moving to the hilt of my sword. The entire room had cleared out. Six men approached, passing between the empty tables in the common area. Four carried clubs of various shapes and sizes. Two others held old swords.

  Not a good sign of things to come.

  They slowed when I faced them, coming to a stop four strides away. It would be tricky trying to draw my sword in such a tight space while inebriated. Still, I openly left my hand on the hilt. They didn’t need to know my concerns.

  “Is there someone you’re looking for,” I asked, putting as much grit into my voice as I could manage given the ale sloshing around in my gut. I learned a long time ago that a confident man can bluff his way out of a lot of situations he might find himself in. Unfortunately, I never had put that theory to the test when facing six-to-one odds.

  “You,” said the man in front. I took him for the leader in part because he spoke first, but also because he carried himself like a man in charge. I guessed him to be a few inches over six feet, which meant he had me by at least three. What he had over me in height he lacked in weight. A decade of marching, digging, chopping, and fighting kept me in better shape than most.

  “Me? I don’t know you.” I made an exaggerated effort to scan the faces of the others behind him. “Or your friends.”

  “Well, we know you, or at least your type.”

  “I doubt that. Because if you did, you’d turn back around and hit the streets.”

  The man laughed. “You’re pretty cocky for a drunk.”

  “Especially for one without any friends,” said another in the back.

  Everyone but me found that funny. I kept wondering what was taking Dekar so long to get downstairs.

  “My friends should be back any moment,” I said, hoping that was the case.

  A series of loud crashes intermingled with the screams of women came from upstairs. Sounds of wood splintering preceded glass shattering. Three heavy thuds outside followed.

  The leader of the six chuckled. “Not anymore. That would be your friends taking a trip out of the third story windows.”

  I chose not to respond so as not to betray my emotions. Inwardly, I cursed every god I could think of on the inside. When I finished with that, I began cursing myself for drinking so much.

  Even sober, taking down all six would have been a heck of a challenge, but with luck, possible. Drunk? No way.

  My jaw clenched. I knew better than to let my guard down so completely. Since I was back in Turine, I had allowed myself to get comfortable because I was back on Turine soil.

  The leader started to take a step forward when footsteps pounded the stairs to my right. Dekar came running down, sword drawn. Hamath followed, half-dressed. Ira brought up the rear, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. They all breathed heavily, looking as though they had been in a fight.

  Hamath spat. “Told you there were likely more.”

  I took advantage of the distraction and drew my sword. Armed and with three friends at my side, I liked the odds much better.

  “Count ’em out, Ty.” said Ira. “Idiots woke me up.”

  A strategy we often employed in certain situations was numbering each of the individuals standing against us, always starting from the left. A person, usually me, assigned who should take which numbered men. The tactic gave everyone a good starting point on the fly.

  “Wait.” I looked at the leader of the six, who appeared less sure of himself. Something the man said earlier nagged at me. I took a chance to see if he’d talk. “You said you knew my type. What does that mean?”

  “We heard the war is over.”

  “So?”

  “So, that means soldiers who haven’t been around for years are going to come home and try to take our jobs.”

  “We aren’t settling here. We’re just passing through.”

  “Maybe so, but there’ll be others who think they can just pick up the lives they once had before like nothing has changed. Well, a lot has changed and we don’t want people like you screwing up what we’ve got. We’ve heard all the stories about the war.”

  The men behind him grunted and nodded in agreement.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but decided not to take the conversation in that direction. I chose to come at him from a different angle, hoping he might see things from our perspective.

  “You know, most of us didn’t volunteer for the army. The king pressed us into service. And now that the war is over all we want is to get back home.”

  “And disrupt everyone’s lives by pushing yourself back into them.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I don’t care what’s fair. Just like I don’t care if you volunteered or not. Makes no difference to me how you joined,” said the man shrugging.

  “You pieces of garbage,” Hamath muttered.

  “Count ’em out, Ty,” said Ira, louder than before.

  I swore. “Dekar, one and two. Hamath, four. Ira, five and six. I got three.”

  “You sure about three?” asked Dekar. “I can take three and two, and give you one.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. Three, meant I’d be taking the leader. Sober, Dekar wouldn’t have asked me if I was sure about him. He didn’t know how focused I had become in spite of the alcohol.

  The group had the same reaction as most did when I counted. Pure confusion followed by sudden realization that things were about to get ugly. The leader picked things up first. He raised his sword with both hands, yelled, and charged right at me.

  He closed the distance between us faster than I had expected him to. He swung wildly, but with plenty force. Chaos erupted all around me. A chair sailed across my vision. Somewhere, the distinct sound of a table breaking resonated. Groans, moans, and whimpers followed as bones crunched.

  I parried several of my opponent’s blows while turning him away from the others and giving me more room to maneuver.

  Clear of the fallen stools at my feet, I made my move. Rather than parry his next clumsy strike, I side-stepped it. My sword came up against his unprotected lower arms, cutting into the flesh and stopping at bone. He let out a wail and lost his sword. Blood spurted from his forearms. He fell to his knees, tendons severed and hands unable to put pressure on the pulsing wounds. I shook my head, angry that the idiot had forced me to act. The man collapsed to the floor, losing consciousness from loss of blood. He’d be dead within moments.

  I swore, killing my own countrymen had not been on the list of things I expected after being discharged.

  The room had grown quiet with the exception of heavy breathing and a gurgling whimper. A sword silenced the whimper. I looked up as Ira withdrew his blade.

  “Everyone all right?” I asked.

  “I’m good,” said Ira.

  “Fine,” said Dekar.

  “Idiot got lucky and sliced my arm, but I’ll live,” said Hamath, tying a makeshift bandage around his upper arm.

  “Based on some of the looks we got coming in, we’re probably not the only ones who were attacked,” said Dekar as he helped Hamath with the bandage.

  “Probably not,” I admitted, staring down at the man who had charged me. Blood spilled from his arms, pooling on the floor. “A city this big has got to have more than these idiots in it.”

  Ira said a few choice words. “So much for a night of fun.”

  As if on cue, angry shouts erupted from the streets. I recognized several of the voices.

  “Molak be cursed,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  We rushed outside. Steel upon steel rang out.

  Pandemonium had hit the streets.

  Over a hundred of Damanhur’s citizens had armed themselves with anything they could find, blunt or sharp. Not the whole city by any means, but a mob nonetheless.

  It appeared the soldiers not caught literally with their pants down by the locals had already come to
gether, coalescing as a unit at the entrance of a narrow alley. Many held overturned tabletops like shields to push against the frothing mass.

  Smart man, whoever had made that decision.

  Pitchforks stabbed like spears, branding irons swung like swords, and cast-iron skillets clubbed like maces. The Damanhur citizens attacked with such ferocity, many of their own fell injured by the carelessness of the person next to them.

  “Well, we’re not flanking that with only four of us,” said Hamath.

  “We could just head back to the wagons while no one’s paying attention,” offered Ira.

  He spoke with such calmness it made me realize how empty the rest of the street had become.

  Dekar cuffed him.

  “I was only joking,” muttered Ira.

  “We need to draw them away from the alley,” I said.

  “And what would be the point of that?” asked Hamath.

  “To have them chase us. It’s far easier for four people to evade a mob than several dozen.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Ira. “Besides, there ain’t no way we could get enough of them to come after us so everyone else can escape.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Dekar, calling out from back inside the bar. He had slipped inside a moment before. Glass shattered over and over.

  “What in the name of Xank are you doing in there?” asked Ira.

  Dekar appeared in the doorway, carrying three lit oil lamps. “Creating a diversion. And getting them good and mad so they’ll come after us.”

  He threw one of the lamps down, busting it open. The lit flame ignited the spilled oil, then crawled along the floor. Streams of fire spread across the common area, especially by the bar. Within seconds the entire lower floor was in flames.

  “Weren’t there people still upstairs?” I asked, taking a step back from the heat.

  Prostitutes came running out a side entrance on the right of the building, fleeing down an alley.

  “Not anymore,” Ira snorted.

  “Uh, Tyrus?”

  I turned to Hamath. “Yeah?”

  “I believe Dekar’s idea worked.”

  I followed his gaze to the mob still at the alley mouth. People in the back had noticed the rising flames and were making it known to the rest of the group. Within a matter of moments, over a hundred angry faces stared in our direction.

  “We should probably start running,” I said.

  “Yep,” Hamath said.

  The crowd came screaming toward us.

  We set off in a sprint, but not before Dekar took the last two oil lamps and threw them through a window of the adjacent building. I spared a glance back long enough to see the window dressing ignite.

  A smile crawled across my face as some of the mob regained enough of their senses to stop their pursuit in an effort to put out the fires. Those not blessed with common sense came at us more angered than before.

  I lasted a full block before I vomited a couple mugs of ale. The rest came up half a block later. Though I stank worse than ever, the trade-off was worth it as we began to distance ourselves from the mob.

  A thought struck me and I called out. “Hamath, slow down a bit.”

  He looked back, “Come again?”

  “Slow down. They’re getting tired. We don’t want to lose them yet,” I huffed.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re just going to go back and find the others.”

  He grunted. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “You peel off and get back to the wagons. Make sure Captain Nehab wasn’t targeted. If he was, then meet us by that lake we passed on the way to the city. If he’s all right, help him get the wagons hitched and out of the city to that same lake. Direct others who make it out of the city over to that point. We’ll try to buy you some more time.”

  “All right.”

  He took the first right and disappeared. Ira moved up and took his spot. I tried to focus on the pace he kept rather than the burning in my legs. It was disheartening that just after a short time on the road, I already felt out of shape.

  Dragging or not, we all had to keep moving. Ira made sure of that as we weaved in and out of alleys and side streets that cut through several more commonly traveled roads. Twice we had run-ins with small groups of citizens trying to box off our escape. Twice we survived, leaving dead and dying in our wake.

  The swarming mob had begun to catch up to us for a third time, pushing our path farther west of the city center. Ira led us down another trash-filled, grime-covered, death-smelling, alley. The alley banked right, hiding the fact that it ended in a dead end with the brick walls of buildings all around us.

  Ira swore.

  “Turn around. Hurry,” I huffed.

  We wheeled quickly, Dekar leading as we retraced our steps. We only made it back as far as the bend before Dekar pulled up. A small horde of citizens pushed their way into the mouth of the narrow pass, stopping as they realized they had us.

  “Xank be damned,” said Ira behind me.

  I counted fifteen men, which were at least ten too many, and fifteen more than I preferred. They held their position hunched over and huffing for air. Thankfully, they were in far worse shape than we were and that was after a night of drinking. I wasn’t going to let that advantage slip by.

  My eyes scanned the dark alley, seeing for the first time a ledge above our heads jutting out from the building to the right. It was only about two feet wide and looked to be of no use other than adding an architectural touch to the structure. It would have to do. Another eight feet above the ledge, closer to the alley’s entrance, rested a small balcony that hung off a third story window.

  “Tyrus?” asked Dekar.

  “Up the ledge, then to the balcony. Quick,” I hissed.

  “That ledge has gotta be nine feet, Ty. I ain’t no frog,” said Ira.

  “Better become one,” I muttered. Having recovered enough from their jaunt through the city, Damanhur’s citizens started coming forward.

  Someone from the mob shouted. “Why don’t you boys come along now? We can end this nonsense and take you to the watch for questioning.”

  “Under what charges?” I hollered.

  “Arson. Assault. Murder.”

  “All done in self-defense,” I said. “What about the charges against you for attacking us?”

  The man said nothing more. I took that to mean that our conversation was over.

  I whispered. “Dekar give your brother a boost and then get up afterward. I’ll buy some time.”

  Sword in hand, I strode toward fifteen men like a legend of old, ready to take them all down in a single blow. At least that’s how I hoped I appeared. The lingering effects of the alcohol gave me a false bravado, even if the spots of vomit on my shirt worked against the image.

  Grunting sounded behind me as the brothers worked on getting up to the ledge. The mob saw their efforts, called out, and picked up their pace. I ran ahead six steps to a stack of old crates, stopping where the alley narrowed. I figured that the four men running abreast would narrow down to two or three once blades started swinging. Odds were still in their favor, but I could at least hold out for a little while against that number. Hopefully, Dekar or Ira would figure out a way to get me to safety in the meantime.

  At the last minute, I kicked over the crates. The three men in the lead stumbled over the debris and themselves while crashing in a heap. Most of the men behind them got tangled up in the mess, slowing their attack further. I killed the two closest to me as they struggled to right themselves.

  A young man, probably twenty at best, broke free first with the bright idea of leaping over the others in order to reach me. It was a dumb move. I rammed my sword into his chest before he landed. Wide eyes hinted that in his last moments he likely agreed with my assessment of his decision.

  The next two attacked together, immediately putting me on the defensive. I blocked the first wild cut, and then ducked under the next, sword clanging against brick to my left. Af
ter a few more quick sweeps of their blades, I managed to slip my sword into the armpit of one. Someone took his place before I could take advantage and dispose of my other opponent. The newcomer carried a pitchfork.

  Given the weapon’s reach, I found myself giving ground, swearing the whole way.

  I deflected a stab of the pitchfork and tried to move in close where the weapon would be useless. It worked, for a moment anyway. I sliced the man’s unprotected arm. He staggered. However, the man beside him used the opening I gave him to drive his sword through a weak spot in my boiled leather, piercing the flesh below my collarbone. I pulled away before it went deep, but that didn’t stop the thing from hurting.

  “Back up, Tyrus!”

  I jumped backward without thinking, reacting to the sound of Dekar’s voice.

  Stone rained down on the men in the alley, felling many as heads and limbs were struck. Dust took to the air, blinding most others. I waved the cloud from my face and seized on the moment. I pounced at the closest swordsman with a stab through the gut, then finished off the man with the pitchfork.

  “C’mon, Ty. Hurry up.”

  I looked up. Ira and Dekar waited for me next to a hole in the wall. I wondered how they managed to knock so much stone loose, but that would be a question for another day. I sheathed my weapon, took two quick steps, and jumped, grabbing onto the ledge. Ira reached down and helped me up while holding onto Dekar with his other hand. I managed to get up just before those in the alley recovered.

  “The balcony,” I gestured.

  We climbed up to the balcony and eventually to the roof as the men below pelted us with the rock Dekar had toppled on them. We took a few welts and earned several bruises, but made it up alive.

  Taking the high ground we continued our trek through the city, jumping from roof to roof, no easy task in any circumstance.

  We lost our pursuers after a couple of blocks.

  Eventually, we made it to Damanhur’s outer walls.

  * * *

  Many of our group had lucked out.

  Unfortunately, some others had not.