by Doug Kelly
While he had dragged the bloody sword toward the boy and watched him die, he had not noticed the enemy begin to retreat behind the walls of their city. He was in a trance. The inner voice that had begged him to run was calling him again. Aton’s conscience pointed an invisible finger at the corpse of the young boy on the ground in front of him and asked what was honorable about the death of a child. The internal voice warned him that he was immersing himself into a grotesque scene and soaking himself in the poisons of war. It told him to look into the child’s dead eyes, glassy, and staring into the unfocused distance, and try to find the reflection of glory. At that moment, he realized that the nostalgic stories of war had deceived him, Hauk had been correct. Aton had only found death, not manhood, on the battlefield. Children did not need to die for the greed of old fat men. What was Aton doing here? Why was he killing for someone that considered him less than a dog? He could feel his temper erupting again, like lava flowing through the cracks of a volcano. His rage was ready to explode. Shocked, repulsed, he gazed with festering anger at the little corpse, contorted in an image of painful death. Aton did not hear Grinald approach and speak behind him, as the warlord pulled the reins to stop his huge horse.
“I said, turn around soldier,” barked Grinald. “Good work today. How many did you kill?”
Aton turned to see what looked like a dusky mountain. The warlord was dressed in dark colored clothes on top of his giant black horse. Its nostrils flared as he pulled back the reins again to steady his mount. Grinald’s eyes seemed to pierce through him as he waited for the answer.
“I don’t know.”
“Too many to count, is it? That’s what I want to hear.”
The warlord had seen the bloody sword in Aton’s hand and thought he had been walking back from the front lines after defeating the enemy. He had no idea of the hateful thoughts in Aton’s mind. At that moment, Aton would have preferred nothing more than to run the sword right through the warlord’s body and let him bleed to death next to the young child.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” asked Grinald. He had turned to look at the dead banner carrier.
Thinking that Grinald intended to be mournful, he agreed with a nod and simply replied, “Yes.”
The warlord pulled the reins to his right, which turned the horse slightly in that direction. His entourage had assembled closer to Kern’s front wall to discuss the initiation of the siege. They were waiting for him and he could see that.
“It’s shameful that this could happen. On your way back to camp, take it with you.”
“It? Do you mean…the body?” asked Aton, with cautious confusion, not wanting to sound like he was questioning a man of such great power, because to do so could mean a trip to the gallows.
Grinald laughed loudly, and then replied, “The boy? No! War orphans are easy to find. I want you to take my banner back to camp and have it washed. It’s a shame to have it lying on the dirt, just a shame.” He tossed a silver coin to Aton and triumphantly galloped his horse toward a group of commanders to make plans for the siege.
With Grinald and his minions as the audience, warriors, mercenary soldiers, and others who desired plunder deliberately set out toward the walled city, advancing up the sloping ground. The camp moved closer and formed a line to watch the impending battle. Black Fang, the emperor of death, was pleased at the advance and seemed to drool with delight. Aton dragged his bloody sword toward other men who were ready to watch what was about to unfold.
Shading his eyes with his hand, Grinald watched a small wave of men advance. Because of their close proximity to the enemy’s walls, they could see the initial skirmish as it happened. When his conscripts had gotten within the distance of the enemy’s longbows, and arrows began to drop among them, they dismounted from their horses and left their mounts with the horses’ attendants, who walked them up and down the field of battle, keeping in constant motion to escape the aim of archers behind the walls of Kern. After drawing their swords, the soldiers, who were in full battle gear, marched at a steady pace to the front wall. With their large shields before them, they were not bothered by the small arrows, or even by the spears that poured on them when they came within range. There was no moat around the walls, so they easily pushed forward and were quickly at the base. They reached it so easily that Aton almost thought the city had surrendered and that the war was completely finished. Then he saw blocks of stone, more arrows, and flaming beams of wood thrown at them from the ramparts.
Not yet discouraged, the soldiers set up their ladders and held them by sheer force against the palisade. The captive citizens behind the barricade tried to knock the ladders away, and chopped at the rungs with their axes, but they were clad with metal. Aton saw the soldiers slowly reach the parapet and slash at the enemy with their swords. The gleam of steel was distinctly visible as the blades rose and fell with flashes of reflected sunlight. The enemy thrust at them with long pikes, but seemed to retreat from closer combat, and a moment afterwards, the gallant warriors stood on the top of the wall. The audience, including Grinald and his entourage, saw the outlines of their bodies, dressed for battle, distinctly against the blue sky. Their battle slaves and servants swarmed up the ladders behind them, and some appeared to descend on the other side. A shout rose from the warlord’s battle camp and echoed over the woods.
While the soldiers stood on the front wall, they did not know what to do next because they could see that reinforcements were not on the way. At least a dozen enemy men dressed for battle appeared, running along the top of the barrier toward them. Afterwards, Aton understood that the ease with which they had climbed the wall was because there were no trained and experienced soldiers there at that moment. Those who had collected to repulse the assault were citizens, servants, slaves, anyone who had been nearby, because the town’s real warriors were still gathering from their retreat on the field of combat. When they saw Kern’s real soldiers approach from the left side of the wall, Grinald’s forces were hushed, and every eye strained on the combatants.
Approaching from one side, the warlord’s men on the wall could not meet their assailants at once because the top was only wide enough for two to fight, shoulder to shoulder. Others from the opposite side of the wall quickly joined the skirmish, and because more men advanced the other way, they fought back to back, two facing one way, and the other two in the opposite direction. The swords rose and fell. Aton saw a flash of light fly up into the air. It was the point of a broken sword. At the foot of the wall, the servants and slaves struggled to assist their masters by stabbing upwards with their spears.
Suddenly, the opposing forces of Kern hurled two of Grinald’s soldiers from the wall. Comrades of the brave warriors, who had so fearlessly climbed the wall to initiate the attack, caught one of them near the outside of the barricade as he fell; the other landed solidly on the ground. While they were fighting the enemy face to face, others within the walled city had come with spears and thrust them upwards at the intruders. The other two still fought back to back for a moment, then finding themselves overwhelmed, they jumped down among their friends.
When the first two fell, the horses’ caretakers ran toward the wall. Despite the rain of arrows from the parapet, Aton saw several warriors placed on their steeds. Only one could sit upright unassisted; two were supported in their saddles, and the last was carried. They retreated without further injury because the enemy on the wall crowded so closely together that it interfered with the aim of their arrows, which fell short. There was a dark mass beneath the barrier, where at least a dozen slaves, who did not have battle gear, not even a shield, had been slain or disabled.
The men of Kern did not follow the retreating party because they had lost the battle and were getting ready for the siege of their city. The injured slowly returned to the camp. Suddenly, a new group of the enemy appeared from behind the parapet. An instant afterwards, several servants dropped, as if struck by lightning. Sling stones, whirled with great force by skilled men, had hit t
hem. The round rocks came with such power that they could stun from a greater distance than a thrown spear. The aim was difficult, but when directed at a crowd they were sure to strike someone. Continuing, leaving the fallen men where they lay, the rest were quickly out of range, and came safely back to their own line of men. Everyone ran to meet them, the warlord included, and as Grinald passed in the crowd, Aton heard him remark about their bravery, but he had not even lifted a finger to reinforce the brave soldiers who had initiated what could have been a successful attack. From Aton’s perspective, it was as if Grinald was indifferent as to the outcome of the offensive, as if he were there to watch the suffering caused by human cruelty, only for the purpose entertainment. If that were true, which it certainly appeared to be, Grinald had witnessed plenty of it. Since he had delayed the final offensive, the conflict would be prolonged, rather than come to a swift end. In the meantime, the inaction had denied his forces their plunder and the end to the campaign.
Only one of the soldiers was severely injured. The hurt warrior had fallen on a large stone and broken two ribs. The rest suffered from bruises, but had no wounds. Several of the group were missing, probably prisoners. They had leaped down from the wall into the town to impress their masters. The townspeople had killed several servants and slaves, or maybe they deserted or were prisoners, but no one seemed concerned or cared about them. As for the men knocked over by the sling stones, they had lain there until they recovered their senses, and then crawled back. That additional incident cooled Aton's passion for the fight even more, because he thought that if he were injured, they would leave him, too. The devotion of the slaves to support and rescue their masters was almost heroic. The privileged warriors thought no more of their men than of a dog slashed by a boar's tusk during the hunt. Aton was through with war.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aton tried to make sense of the battle that he had just survived, and while doing so, tried to understand it from Grinald’s perspective. The warlord had a long experience with war, and he knew its extreme uncertainties. The outcome of an individual battle or an entire war was often the result of a single, sometimes unexpected event. He had already seen many walls taken, and lost. Within Kern’s barriers, the enemy had the advantage of narrow, winding streets. Each house would become a fortress from which they could repulse the attack. To risk such an event would be madness before the town had been disheartened and discouraged by the continuance of the siege, the lack of provisions, or the fall of their chief leaders in the minor daily combats that took place, which tested the city’s resolve to continue fighting.
Grinald’s congregation of allied forces lacked professional discipline. It consisted mostly of opportunistic men, hungry for plunder. Loyalty was fragile and the bond to the battle at hand was much like the attachment of the slave to his master, only held in place on the part of the slave by the dread of punishment. There were no distinct ranks, no organized troops, just social stratifications. The slaves obeyed their masters, the masters acted as warriors, the warriors followed the commanders, the commanders followed the clan leaders, the clan leaders were subjects of their warlord, and the warlord ruled over all of them.
Aton acknowledged those things to himself, but he was filled with admiration for the bravery of the soldiers and the men who had supported the first attack on the walls of Kern. On their behalf, he became completely full of resentment for Grinald and his callous disregard for human life, and Aton uttered his seditious views too freely. The thought of the dying child on the battlefield had seared a gruesome image into his mind, and burned it deep into his soul. The sound of the warlord laughing, while he considered a dirty banner a tragedy as it lay next to the cooling corpse of someone’s son, just a young and innocent child, sickened Aton. All of that made him speak too freely about his growing resentment of Grinald’s ethics, strategy, and competence. His friends in camp cautioned him. Aton’s hot temper had returned, and he freely gave way to his subversive feelings and opinions, entirely without restraint. To laugh at the warlord’s weaknesses, his gluttony, or foolishness, was one thing. To criticize his military conduct was something entirely different. The former was merely banter, and Grinald might have laughed had he heard it. The latter was treason, and likely to annoy a ruler faced with the delicate matter of military reputation, loss of control, and possible rebellion. Discontent among the troops could be like a cancer, and Grinald would have to cut it out at any expense.
A few days later, while Aton took his commander’s horse to water it at the stream, he was still thinking about recent events that occurred during the first day of the siege, and he became even more contemptuous and furious with indignation. How could Grinald watch and do nothing, while brave warriors had initiated a successful attack against the wall? How could he casually look on, but not send a strong detachment, or move his whole army, to finish the enemy when men loyal to him had needed help? If he had not intended to advance and conquer, then why had he permitted an attack in vain that could only result in the loss of brave men? When he had seen his soldiers thrown from Kern’s front wall, why did he not send a squadron to cover their retreat? Aton concluded that Grinald considered it as a mere display for his amusement when it was actually barbarous and cruel in the extreme. Aton worked himself up into a state of anger that rendered him even less cautious than usual in expressing his opinions of Black Fang’s competence. When he thought about the dead flag boy again, the talons of his anger extended, and he completely threw his restraint to the wind.
His friends in camp had tried to protect him, but the head guard rudely arrested him early the next day. Guards bound him with ropes, and placed him in a stone hut that they had built to hold condemned men. At the same time, they ordered another man, a suspected accomplice to Aton’s sedition, to remain within his tent, and the head guard assigned a sentry to watch that man, too.
When Aton suddenly found himself this near to the executioner, the little hope he had left in his heart died. He had seen so many butchered without just cause that he had good reason to feel anguish. Toward sunset, he felt sure that they would drag him out and hang him on the oak tree used as a gallows. The morbid tree stood near where the long road from Acadia joined the camp. That most probably would have been his doom if the allegations of treason were entirely against one person, but because of that simple twist of fate, having an accomplice suspected of the same treasonous actions, he was able to escape a miserable and sudden death. The delay in judgment of the prisoners was due to an investigation of the allegations to determine the extent of possible collusion, a measurement of discontent among the ranks. Still, all the agony of being on the path to death, and his awareness of that fact, brought him as much suffering as if the noose had already constricted around his neck.
His heart swelled with bitterness. Overwhelming fury filled him. His whole being rebelled against his careless tongue and the events that had thrown him into the jaws of death. After a short time passed, he thought that they would probably give him some chance to speak for himself, but there would not be any trial. Why would anybody waste time with such an insignificant wretch? If he could have an opportunity to speak, he committed himself to plead for his life and mind his wicked tongue while he did, because he was full of anger, and he knew himself too well. He knew that his tongue, a weapon that grew sharper from constant use, could lash as fast and fiercely as any sword, to his own detriment. In his heart, he knew that he could vindicate himself before they executed him, and he tried to collect his thoughts and put them into order. Every moment, as he lay with wrists tightly bound together on the floor of the stone hut, the wise face of his father seemed to look upon him, lovingly and mournfully. In his imagination, he also saw the dusty and distorted features of the slave corpse that he had seen drawn by a horse through the camp. He wondered if his tongue would also hang out and lick the dirt after his execution. He suffered those shrill agonies that impelled the condemned to grieve mentally, before their physical anguish and execution.
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