by Dirk Patton
Fadley rose again and I joined him, scouring the greenery for a target. Most of the enemies’ shots impacted against the palisade, chipping off splinters and doing little other harm, but one musket ball zipped past with alarming proximity. My eyes darted from bush to tree to rotten stump and then back to the tree. Movement caught my eye. A rebel crept through the greenery, reloading his rifle as he edged closer, near enough for me to see the necklace of severed and desiccated ears strung around his neck. I fired reflexively and when the smoke cleared, I had missed again. Cursing, I reloaded quickly and fired just before he lined me up in his sights. The bullet struck him in the torso and he collapsed to agonized screams. The pounding boots of Sharpshooters arriving and taking up position along the ramparts had the advancing force withering under the additional fire, and the rebels retreated. The boys let out a ragged cheer at the sight, but a fresh series of crumps and flashes in the gloom cut their celebration short.
“Take cover,” I ordered.
This time the cannons directed their fury at our gatehouse to the north, hurling solid iron shot into the timber at high speed. A cannon ball hit several lengths down the rampart, easily penetrating a rotted section of the palisade and pulverizing the rifleman kneeling behind it. I left Corporal Fadley and a meager crew behind to man the walls and raced headlong into Fort Conviction with the rest of the soldiers.
We reached the ruins of the gatehouse with no time to spare. The blood-slicked arms and legs of defenders protruded from the debris at unnatural angles as rebels swarmed the breach. They nearly doubled our number, but we hit them hard. I fired my rifle from the hip as I ran, discarding it as I drew my saber. A rebel charged, brandishing his rifle like a spear toward my face. I swatted the barrel away with the flat of my sword and the bayonet thrust into the midsection of an unsuspecting Sergeant Coates. The rebel heaved on the stock to free his rifle, but the Sergeant latched on, refusing to relinquish it. He lurched forward as Coates yanked on the barrel in a final act of defiance and I delivered a swift chop to the attacker’s neck. Both men tumbled to the ground; one dying, the other dead.
Sergeant Coates mewled like a babe as blood pumped from his ruptured organs, the roars and shrieks of battle a rising din as my men met the enemy blow for blow – killing with rifles wielded as clubs, bayonets dripping red, knives and bare hands; punching, biting, tearing as they brawled. Movement the other side of the breach, and a rebel had his rifle trained squarely on me. I grabbed for my holstered pistol knowing I would never reach it in time. I watched him squeeze the trigger, bracing myself for the sensation of a round shredding through my chest, but the gunpowder fizzled rather than ignited. Before I could line up the shot, his right eye exploded, and a welter of gore ejected from the rear of his head.
“Cast them from the light! Consign them to the Abyss!” came a welcome voice.
Father Fehervari, rifle in hand, led a contingent of soldiers to relieve us. The reinforcements swung the battle in our favor and the surviving rebels withdrew, leaving behind those too injured to flee. I approached the priest, sheathing my sword and returning my pistol to its holster.
“Well met, Father.”
“Well met Father? Is that all you have to say to me? That son of a bitch was a ball hair’s breadth from severing your mortal thread and I put a bullet through his eye at twenty goddamn meters,” said Father Fehervari.
“That was your doing?”
“Don’t be so impressed, I was aiming for his left eye,” he said with a grin.
Without another word he clapped me on the shoulder, slung his rifle, and began to tend to the wounded, ours and the enemy. To the former he spoke words of comfort, bolstering the spirits of those who would endure a while longer and blessing those who would not. To the latter he granted his own form of mercy via a hooked dagger across the throat. I instructed the men to construct a makeshift barricade from the detritus of the gatehouse. Next, I dispatched couriers to assess the situation around the Fort and to locate Commisar Normann. We had unfinished business to attend to.
Before the couriers could return a burst of rifle shots erupted from the swamp. I rushed into cover, expecting another wave of rebels. Instead, naked men and women, armed with flint-tipped spears and knobby war clubs, hurtled toward us from out of the darkening swamp. They made no sound as they ran, no war cry save the slap of their feet on the yielding soil. A pasty white substance clung to every inch of their skin from the crest of their heads to the tips of their toes. They practically glowed in the moonlight.
It made them ideal targets.
“MIREFOLK! MAKE READY!”
Our first volley, rash and lacking discipline, felled only a handful of the charging beasts. The ashen-skinned barbarians died in silence as they closed the distance rapidly. I bellowed out each step of the reloading procedure to my men, and they sped through in record time. Our rifles spoke with one voice, musket balls punching great craters into the ranks of the mirefolk, fouling ghostly paint with geysers of crimson. Those struck by our fusillade dropped away as the unaffected strove on. Still, they produced no sound. Before we could muster a third volley, they fell upon us.
We met their charge with a line of bayonets and swords, and the battle became a blur of blood and violence – flesh parting bone, the stink of ruptured guts. Father Fehervari rallied the men with a hymn, interspersing the traditional anthem with vulgarities as he tangled with the heathens. He slew the mirefolk with a tempo that belied his age, and that same fervor animated the men on his flanks. Howling with rage, I hacked through the aggressors, carving rents into their unprotected tissue. Two mirefolk advanced on me and I shot the farthest through the heart to even the odds before almost splitting his comrade in half on my keen blade. Paste-smeared bodies covered the ground and draped across the splintered timbers of our bulwark. It wasn’t enough.
For each one we killed two more poured into the Fort, overwhelming us by sheer weight of numbers. I bawled desperately for my soldiers to close ranks, but they surrounded and isolated us before any could heed my command. I clutched tightly to my saber as several of the bastards encircled me, spears poised. So engrossed in the spears, I never saw the swing of the club that bludgeoned me into oblivion.
My faculties did not return in earnest until I found myself wading waist deep in putrid water with a cloud of famished insects harrying my every step. I whipped my head back and forth, unable to swat at the pests with my bound hands. The motion failed to deter the bugs and jostled my already throbbing head. A string of men slogged through the muck ahead of me and more prisoners, I suspected, followed behind. It was difficult to identify men by the backs of their heads, but I thought I spotted Father Fehervari as well as Commissar Normann in the gloom.
Mirefolk ranged ahead in pairs, gliding through the night like ghosts. Rebels flanked the procession with rifles and lanterns. The privileged among them poled along in rafts laden with the same cannons that had cracked open Fort Conviction like a nut. The less fortunate grunted and cursed along beside us as they trudged through the wetlands. One of the irregulars serving guard detail looked oddly familiar.
“Antony? Antony, is that you?” I whispered.
He only glanced my way for a moment, face half obscured by shadow, but that was all I required to confirm my suspicion. Private Antony Lovatt, the first member of the Sharpshooters to abandon post and flee into the swamp was not simply a deserter – he was a bloody turncoat to boot.
“Antony, where are you taking us?” I hissed.
The rebel stared ahead, ignoring my question.
“Look at me you bastard. Where are you taking us?”
A mireman appeared at my side and rammed his war club into my gut. I doubled over and vomited. After several heaves the white-painted man hooked his club under my jaw and tilted my head up. He did not speak but pressed a finger to his lips and held it there. Message received, I nodded vigorously, bouncing my aching brain around to the point I nearly vomited again.
We marched through the fetid
slime for what felt like hours. Whenever a prisoner lagged behind the mirefolk or rebels beat him until his pace increased.
Torchlight suddenly materialized through the vegetation. As we drew nearer the lights, habitation became visible. Thatch-roofed huts jutted out of the bog on stilts. Tethers kept long boats floating together by the docks. Animal skins stretched out to dry over wooden frames decorated narrow walkways connecting individual huts. We halted and three women carrying torches and carved staffs left the village to meet us. They wore little to cause discomfort in the humidity aside from strips of cured hide and intricate blue designs inked across their pale skin. They ignored the rebels entirely and spoke what I assumed to be swamp tongue to the mirefolk warriors who maintained their silence throughout the discussion, communicating solely through hand gestures.
Two of the three women broke away from the conversation and sauntered down the line of prisoners. They poked and prodded each of us in turn, trailing long sharpened nails down skin slick with sweat and riddled with bug bites. Before they reached me the third woman called them back to her side. They exchanged words, and the procession was moving again, though not for long this time. We passed under stilted huts while children called down to us from the aerial bridges in mocking tones. More and more mirefolk congregated around us on the march through to the village center.
We climbed out of the filth and up the shore of the island at the heart of the settlement, where a colossal bonfire raged. More blue-inked women cavorted around the crackling inferno, so close I marveled that their hair did not catch flame and their skin blister from the heat, while a pair of tall silhouettes wearing horned masks honed wickedly curved knives.
“Are the mirefolk cannibals?” whispered one captive over his shoulder to the man walking in front of me.
“Not according to the Royal Anthropological Society,” the man whispered in reply.
“Oh feck, that seals it then. It’s a bloody barbeque for sure,” said the first man loud enough to earn a rifle stock to the side of the head.
A great saurian idol towered over the fire pit. Why the mirefolk had constructed a two-story alligator statue baffled me, but nothing confounded me worse than the question of where they found such large bones to lash together. But it was the pair of shadowed forms in the midst of the dancing that turned my blood to ice. Not human.
They were too tall, too lean. The slender fingers with which they wielded the knives had extra joints, and matted fur clung to their bodies. One of the spindly silhouettes directed its gaze our way and I saw the tapered beak and crown of antlers I presumed to be a mask was indeed a face. The sweat coating my skin felt like frost and I began to shiver uncontrollably. My breath caught in my throat, and hot piss ran down my leg. I clenched my teeth together to prevent them from chattering, as a murmur travelled down the line as my men beheld the creatures.
A kick from behind buckled my knees and sent me sprawling in the soil. I spit the mud from my mouth as a pair of hands hauled me to my knees. To my left and right white-painted warriors coerced the other prisoners into kneeling before the blaze. Father Fehervari was positioned adjacent to me and I took comfort in his presence.
“What are they?” I whispered to him.
“Demons,” he said with casual certainty. “Though if I’m correct the mirefolk are referring to them as ‘stewards’.”
“You speak swamp tongue?”
“Not specifically but a related dialect,” he replied.
A warrior strolled by, dragging the butt of his spear through the dirt, and I held my tongue until he passed. “Have you seen anything like them before?”
“Not in my wildest nightmares,” Father Fehervari whispered.
One of the stewards directed a willowy, claw-tipped digit at one of the kneeling captives further down the line and two inked women went to fetch him. He began to struggle, the men nearest him doing likewise, unwilling to give up their comrade without a fight. The mirefolk warriors pummeled them all into submission and dragged the chosen one, now limp, up to the demons. One of the inhuman creatures plucked the prisoner off the ground and held him up by his ankles with unholy ease while the other hunched over to examine him. A mirewoman stepped forward and addressed the congregation. She spoke forcibly, punctuating her words with precise gesticulations.
“What is she saying?” I asked Father Fehervari. “Are they going to cook and eat us?”
He sighed. “No, I don’t believe so. From what I can interpret, the stewards intend to reanimate their god ‘Potabek’ by offering living flesh to grant him new life.”
“Oh, feck.”
The stewards turned, eyes alight as they licked blackened lips with blackened tongues. Then one slid its blade through their captor’s flesh. I squeezed my eyes shut as the demons butchered the soldier, my heart lurching with every fresh shriek. After a minute I found myself hoping his heart would fail or his lungs would collapse and end the interminable screeching, but it carried on and on and on. Worse than the anguished squeals, I think, was the wet sound of their blades parting flesh.
It wasn’t until the stewards cackled that I opened my eyes to find the soldier’s remarkably intact skin draped over the saurian idol. Flesh and innards dripped from the structure – none of the man’s remains had gone to waste.
Another laugh, and I looked back to find a demon’s extended finger hovering over me, and I prayed harder in that instant than ever in my life that they choose anyone else but me. My prayers were fulfilled. The demon’s finger halted on Father Fehervari. Relief washed over me, followed by crippling shame. Father Fehervari nodded once, stood of his own volition, and strode forward with squared shoulders and raised chin.
“No,” I howled, lurching forward only to be yanked back into line.
“Courage and faith men. Courage and faith,” he called out as the stewards snatched him up, securing him to the altar. “The Lord prepares a place of honor for his martyrs this night.”
“No,” I yelled as they made long, calculated incisions at Father Fehervari’s wrists and ankles, prayer spitting between the man’s gritted teeth.
I lost my damn mind and lunged to my feet, bowling over an unsuspecting warrior. Behind me I heard other captives echoing my cry and engaging the guards as best they could with their hands bound behind their backs.
I locked eyes with Father Fehervari as a blade split him from neck to sternum, and as the warrior I had knocked over got back on his feet, I brought my forehead down on his nose like a war club. The cartilage crunched, exploding in a welter of blood, but he dragged me down into the mud with him.
He beat me until a mire witch interceded. Dragged to my knees, I spat blood, cursing at my captors as they held my head, forcing me to watch the desecration of my friend and mentor. They peeled back the flesh from his limbs in slow, deliberate motions. Each tear summoned a new shriek from Father Fehevari, who locked eyes with me once more. He gave me a smile that was more grimace as the demons began to shuck him from his skin.
I surged to my feet, my roar drowning out Father Fehevari’s shriek as I drove my shoulder into the warrior, lifting him off his feet. The man lay into me with kicks and punches; the witch took her time before intervening. Tears mingled with blood, sweat, and snot upon my swelling cheeks. The inked woman spoke a string of syllables and the warrior hoisted me to my feet and shoved me into motion. Had I any fluid left in my bladder I am sure I would have pissed myself all over again, but instead of guiding me up to the demons and their gleaming blades, the warrior pushed me away from the fire, down the shore, past two dozen of kneeling comrades, through the press of villagers, before slogging out into the shallows.
Every time I cast a look over my shoulder, I received another shove, but I was not the only Sharpshooter being escorted back toward the huts. Mire witches selected a few men who seemed to be causing the most grief and rebel irregulars dragged them off to join us.
“We will save you for last,” taunted the blue-inked woman in heavily-accented-but otherwis
e-perfect Imperial, “so that you may have our undivided attention.”
Father Fehervari’s cries followed me, each one a phantom knife paring away at my soul.
We arrived at a cluster of moored rafts bearing cannons and additional rebel equipment. Prodded with the butt of a spear, I managed to scale the dock without use of arms or hands. The mireman continued jabbing me until I shuffled up the walkway to a round hut.
The hovel was empty apart from some baskets and hides. I sat on the floor without further prompt and he took up post along the wall. I locked eyes with Corporal Fadley and Doc Dunbarr as they entered. Fury and hatred smoldered in the pits of their eyes.
Then Commissar Normann stepped through the door, the turncoat Antony Lovatt at his back. I stifled a laugh at the twist of irony. Lord knows there was little else to find amusing about our situation. Lovatt propelled the Commissar to the floor and made to leave as Father Fehervari’s screams cut off abruptly.
My choler boiled over. “Was it worth it? Was it worth it, you scum-sucking bastard?” I spat at Lovatt.
His demeanor hardened but he remained immobile.
“What did they pay you to spread your legs like a common whore?” I snarled.
He stalked over and delivered a right hook to my head, knocking me sideways.
“Enough,” barked a burly man I pegged for a rebel officer. “The priestess wants them unsullied for the offering.”
“He had it coming, sir,” Lovatt growled.
“I don’t give an adder’s arse. He’ll be dead before sunrise anyway.”
Lovatt lifted me by my bound hands, nearly dislocating my shoulders in the process. My mouth moved to form a few choice expletives, but the words died in my throat when I felt something hard and sharp pressed into my palm. A knapped stone belonging to a spear head or similar cutting tool. My fingers closed around it instinctively. Lovatt cuffed me once more for good measure and vacated the hut without another word. I expected the rebel officer to storm over and confiscate the spear head from me, but he proved oblivious, stroking his beard and then addressing the lone mireman standing by the wall.