Kuanti had heard enough. He stalked over to the stone altar, scooped the relic up into his hardened clay hands and carried it over to the flowing river of mercury and held it perilously over the poisonous substance. “You say that like you have a choice in the matter. You will reanimate or your life force will be extinguished for all eternity.”
The relic once again flared with intensity to deliver a response. “Then I will enter the afterlife with a clear conscience and Mother Nature as an advocate in my final judgment. Do with me as you deem fit and honorable.”
The finality of the statement brought a snarl to Kuanti’s face. There was no more debating; he could either make good on his threat, or let it be shown as a hollow bluff. Either way he stood to lose face, but would the example force others to make the right choice? Or would destroying an innocent relic for sticking to its ideals lead to an insurrection?
Cora must have sensed the same dilemma; she stepped toward the stone altar in her new clay form to address the other relic thus far refusing to reanimate. “I suppose you are equally committed to the moral reservations you have about bringing an inanimate clay body to life with your life force?”
“I am,” the relic declared without a moment of hesitation.
“These two are as worthless in death as they were in life,” Cora stated. “They couldn’t even handle one simple Novi armed with a sword. Let them exist in the dark corners of this chamber to contemplate their failures for all eternity until they chose to end their own existence out of shame.”
For show, Kuanti continued holding the relic over the flowing mercury to appear conflicted with his decision. In reality there was no decision. Cora gave him a way out without looking weak, and he would take it.
“Very well,” Kuanti said and then walked over to Cora and hastily dropped the relic into her hands. “Just be sure to keep these two selfish traitors out of my sight, the very thought of their pathetic existence offends me.”
Cora dutifully carried the relic and its rebellious companion off to the far left corner of the burial chamber. As she moved away Kuanti heard a collective exhale from the two Alpha warriors standing watch at the chamber doorway. He turned to inspect their physical reactions further, but had his attention drawn to the two animated statues strutting through the doorway to deliver a report.
“We have finished relocating the landing craft underground to rest inside the fourth soldier pit,” they reported.
“And it is adequately surrounded by clay statues?” Kuanti asked.
“Yes, hundreds of them.”
Kuanti despised handing out praise, but he simply could not suppress a broad smile from gracing his clay lips. “Excellent. Let it draw the Novi in like moths to a flame.”
Chapter 53: The Weinsburg Example
Word of Tomal’s victorious rescue of the rebellion leaders spread about the surrounding townships causing the ranks of his tiny force to swell from twenty to several hundred. As the force moved to the southwest, every minor estate of the social elite was razed to the ground, sending the aristocracy scrambling for the strongest fortification around - Weinsburg castle.
With forty foot high walls that stood five feet thick and a moat ringing the entire complex, it made for an imposing target. Upon seeing the massive structure a few miles in the distance, Prince Fredrick had misgivings about the endeavor.
“This is not just some sneak attack you are attempting here. This will be the siege of a well defended castle requiring thousands of soldiers with heavy bombardment tools,” the prince protested. “We only have a few hundred lightly armed farmers. This is beyond us.”
While the men rode their horses side by side ahead of the ragtag army, Tomal shook his head in defiance. “No it’s not. Five weeks ago Archbishop Leonhard ordered conscriptions from every local lord and duke to form a single large army to overwhelm the separate rebellions around the region to put them down one at a time.”
“Yes, it was a shrewd move,” the prince admired. “The military maxim to divide and conquer one’s enemy is being put on full display. Our scouts report that the large army is still over a hundred miles to the north mopping up a few lingering hotspots.”
“I find that a little insulting,” Tomal interjected. “Here we are, a sizeable force that managed to conquer a castle and leave a scorching trail of destruction in our wake as we move across the landscape. Yet we still do not merit an immediate recall of that army by the nobles to handle us. Imagine the nerve of them to disregard us like that. Still, it does give us an opportunity.”
“I see,” Prince Fredrick responded. “You think Weinsburg will be too undermanned to put up a fight against us.”
Tomal flashed him a mischievous smile, “The thought did cross my mind.”
The prince looked positively baffled by Tomal’s plan. He pointed toward the massive walls of Weinsburg with an angry index finger. “It doesn’t matter if there are no defenders at all in the castle, we will never make it past those walls. When we show up, I assure you that the Duke and his men will lower their pants and take a piss on us from those walls, and there won’t be a damn thing we can do to stop them. Then perhaps a week from now that combined army from the north will arrive and hand our heads to us.”
“Who do you think is inside those walls?” Tomal insisted.
“The Duke and his family.”
“And?”
“Seventy or more local lords and their families whose homes we burned on our way here,” the prince went on. A raised eyebrow from Tomal prompted him to continue the list. “Probably ten or twenty soldiers.”
“I’d put it more at fifty soldiers, but that is not even the point. Who else is inside those walls at this very moment?” Tomal asked. He was not at all surprised a man of privileged birth did not see the obvious answer, after all, does anyone ever pay attention to the hired help?
A flicker of comprehension graced the prince’s eyes and a broad grin soon followed. “Butchers, bakers, stable hands, servers, cleaners, and the list goes on. With those seventy plus households inside, there must be at least five hundred commoners already within those walls.”
“Now the question is, do you think people earning an impoverished wage and enduring a lifetime of being treated like dirt will align themselves with our cause or that of their oppressors?” Tomal asked.
“Our cause is the reformation of the Catholic Church away from corruption, but to most it is about taxes, wages and social standing,” the prince answered looking ahead at the castle walls that no longer looked so imposing.
When Tomal’s small force set up camp outside the castle walls, the first order of business was to communicate with the commoners inside. Archers shot arrows over the walls with hand written notes attached letting the commoners inside know this was truly their army outside. Their army had arrived to deliver them from the captivity of the antiquated feudal system.
At least one of the notes had an impact; in the early morning hours of the second day, the front gates swung open allowing the castle to fall. It took no time at all to secure the castle since all the hard work was already done by the servants. When Tomal entered the castle, he found the Duke of Helfenstein, along with seventy other noblemen seeking refuge, bound with rope and herded into the central square at sword point.
Tomal could tell immediately that this conquest would not be handled with nearly the same civility as before. Many of the nobles were already badly beaten and wore torn garments. Now the servants hurled rocks, rotten food, and even feces at their one time tormentors. These servants and townspeople had retribution on their minds and would not be denied. A quick look exchanged with Fredrick let Tomal know that the prince saw it too, and moved to be the voice of reason.
“I know, I know,” Prince Fredrick shouted as he walked into the open between the nobles and their captors with his arms raised high. The mob quieted to hear his words. “These men have shown you no mercy ever so they should be shown none in return. However, we shall hit them where it hurts th
e most, in their wealth. We will hold them ransom and drain their family treasuries in exchange for their lives so that this rebellion may go on to even greater conquests.”
“No,” bellowed a burly man covered from head to toe in soot and grime who could only be a blacksmith. He roared forward and grabbed one particular nobleman by the throat and threw him down to the ground next to Prince Fredrick. “This pig forced himself onto my wife and all three daughters whenever he felt the urge. When I tried to resist he would have me thrown in the stocks for a week, sometimes longer.”
The man looked away from Fredrick to stare down the man cowering on the ground. “No amount of coin will be enough to right those wrongs. Even death is too good for you, but it is the best I can do.”
“No it’s not,” another commoner called out before the blacksmith could carry out his murder. “Run him through the gauntlet. Run them all through the gauntlet to make sure our message is heard all across the continent.”
“No. No!” Prince Fredrick demanded, but the mob’s blood was up and there was no reasoning with them. Tomal ran into the fray and pulled the prince away, lest the servants take his nobility as an excuse to kill him as well.
“This is not the Christian thing to do,” Fredrick shouted. “Martin Luther, our spiritual guide, is here among us now. I implore you not to shed the blood of these men in his presence.”
It was no use. Tomal, Prince Fredrick, and their men were herded to the side as the servants made two lines twenty feet apart and nearly a hundred feet long. They all held long pikes with an axe and spear tip combination at the end. The nobles were tied together in a line at the waist and then sent between the pike wielding columns in groups of ten.
“Any who make it through alive will be free to go,” the blacksmith taunted the first group and then swung his sword at the noble who so grievously wronged him and his family. The blow took off the nobles left leg at the knee and sent the entire chain of men running through the gauntlet of pikes for their lives, dragging the one-legged man across the ground as they went.
For over an hour, pikes sliced, stabbed, chopped and bludgeoned the nobles until not a single one drew breath any longer. One particularly speedy nobleman who had the ropes binding his hands cut free actually made it through the gauntlet alive, but collapsed shortly thereafter due to the extreme loss of blood.
While all the commotion was going on outside, Tomal busied himself with the task of locating a specific wagon carrying a particular artifact he needed for the next phase of his plan.
Once Tomal and the rest of his men pilfered anything else useful from the castle, they set fire to the grounds and moved on. A number of servants from the torched castle who felt torturing the nobles took matters a step too far joined them rather than taking part in the despicable spectacle.
After hours of marching, the prince still looked thoroughly disgusted with humanity as he gazed out over the fields with a vacant stare. “That was too far. We should have stopped it. You are a man of God, and having your name associated with that massacre is a travesty.”
“There was nothing our meager numbers could do to stop it,” Tomal answered quietly to match the somber mood. He intended to continue his thoughts, but was interrupted by the arrival of yet another cluster of peasants asking to join their march. For the tenth time that day he agreed and saw yet another few hundred join their numbers.
“As impalpable as that event may have been to you and I, it certainly has served the greater good. Word of our victory is spreading fast. The peasants have something to believe in now and they join us in droves. Now instead of a few hundred, a capable army of ten thousand approaches the culprit of all things evil and wrong with the Catholic Church in this region: Salzburg and the fortress of Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach.
Chapter 54: What’s In a Number?
Under the cover of night, Hastelloy and Gallono quietly rolled their invention into position. They both pushed forward a four foot beam attached to an axle with two wagon wheels on either side. Between the wheels sat a five foot by four foot rectangular wooden box that was two feet thick.
Housed inside the box were four hundred cylinders, each two inches in diameter, arranged in a twenty by twenty pattern. Stuffed inside each cylinder was an arrow adorned with a small tube of gunpowder to serve as propellant. Running down from the back of the box was a single fuse to set the entire contraption off at once.
With one final shove, the two men gently dropped the beam to the ground, causing the arrow box to point skyward at a thirty degree angle. Hastelloy stepped up to rest his chin on the box, then held up his range finder which simply consisted of a lens with predetermined distance and elevation markers drawn on it. He found the burial mound and quickly locked in on the well lit entrance to the tunnel leading back to the burial chamber.
“To the right just a bit,” Hastelloy whispered. They were almost a quarter mile from the well defended entrance, but voices did carry and had the potential to get picked up by the keen ear of an Alpha warrior.
Gallono crouched down and gently nudged the beam until Hastelloy raised a clinched fist. Hastelloy then pointed skyward with his index finger. Dutifully, Gallono added one inch thick boards under the end of the beam until the angle was where Hastelloy desired.
Gallono relocated some bushes and leaves to conceal the device while Hastelloy pulled out a long wax candle. He took out a ruler that converted time into height on the candle. Hastelloy made a mark, cut it down to size and immediately lit the candle, setting it in place next to the fuse leading to the box. The flame was about an inch higher than the fuse at the moment, but in about fifteen minutes would burn down to light the fuse.
“I sure hope you remembered to carry the one in your math calculations,” Gallono said softly as the two men made their way toward the tunnel entrance. “If just one of the twelve batteries we set up is aimed a little off or fires more than a minute or two late, we will be in the line of fire same as our enemy.”
“If you have a better way for two men assaulting a well defended position to seem like thousands, Commander, now is the time,” Hastelloy hissed. He would have gladly performed any number of lewd acts to procure some radio linked timers to kick off this assault, but it was still a few hundred years too early for that technology and he had to make do with what he had.
Before long they reached their arming point. Nestled beneath a sizeable boulder Gallono quietly moved aside some bushes to reveal a set of swords and sledge hammers. From a nearby tree Hastelloy lowered down four hand cannons mounted on top of short spears. Gallono attached two of the destructive firing weapons crisscross across Hastelloy’s back and he reciprocated.
“The barrage should disperse the couple hundred human guards, but we still need to contend with fourteen Alpha who could be either relics, hardened clay or flesh and blood warriors,” Hastelloy said softly while attaching the hand cannons to Gallono’s back.
Gallono let out a chuckle that dripped of gallows humor. “Just once can we have numbers on our side for a change?”
“What’s in a number anyway?” Hastelloy responded while handing Gallono a bow with a full quiver of arrows to attach around his waist. “All hell should break loose in just a couple of minutes.”
Without a sound, the two men made their way to the edge of the tree line and waited. A hundred feet in front of them rested the tent city of an army encampment. Beyond the dozen rows of single man tents stood the tunnel entrance with no fewer than fifty human guards standing watch.
To his left and a quarter mile back Hastelloy heard a faint hiss grow from a barely audible whisper to a roaring gust of wind. He glanced behind to see hundreds of fire trails in the sky descending on the encampment and tunnel entrance. Seconds later another barrage landed from the right side raining fire and death upon the small army. Tents caught fire and men, sleeping or awake, took arrows in multiple places on their bodies.
Hastelloy tried his best to keep track of how many barrages had befallen the e
nemy, but after the first two or three all he saw was an indiscernible firestorm of flaming arrows. A few projectiles fell short of the target and landed in the woods near Gallono and Hastelloy, but they were few and far between. The devastation was all focused on the enemy, and it was time to move.
“Now,” Hastelloy ordered once the falling arrows had thinned out to one or two still randomly dropping.
Hastelloy’s confidence grew as the two encountered no resistance. Every defender was either dead, dying, or too busy cowering beneath a shield to notice two men sprinting for the tunnel entrance. Then it happened – with still another fifty feet to go, a flurry of hisses approached from above, bringing with it the flaming arrows from a contraption who’s ignition candle was cut a skosh too long.
Adding to their peril was a set of Alpha warriors who burst forth from the tree line in a full four-legged sprint in pursuit of Gallono and Hastelloy. The two men had a sizeable lead, but the lightning quick pursuers were closing the gap with every menacing bound.
With thirty feet to go, flaming arrows began landing all around Hastelloy. There was nothing to be done to lessen the danger at this point; it was for fate to decide if an arrow hit them or not.
Hastelloy was the first to reach the protective canopy erected over the descending steps. With arrows and rampaging Alpha on his tail there was no time to take the steps under any sort of control. At the last second, Hastelloy kicked his legs out and twirled to slide backwards on his stomach into the tunnel. Fierce daggers of pain jabbed into his knees, stomach and chest as he bounced his way down half a dozen steps before stopping.
He looked back in time to see Gallono take an arrow to his right shoulder, punching him to the ground just short of the tunnel stairs. Realizing the arrow barrage was reaching its peak, Hastelloy resisted every cell in his body demanding he lay immobile for hours to recover from his injuries to reach up and drag Gallono all the way under the canopy. Behind him, approaching at speeds approaching fifty miles per hour were the two Alpha warriors. One was hit with four arrows at once causing it to crumple to the ground and grind to a stop where three more arrows put it out of its misery.
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