In response, the opposite side of the field challenged the drums with their own ordered beats. The footmen in blue advanced. Slowly at first, then their pace picked up, eating away the distance of the field.
The king’s drums pealed out again. His footmen getting anxious as the cavalry behind continued to remain motionless. Finally, with the last beat, the footmen began their march.
To battle.
The men marched towards each other, the crisp morning sun clearing the fog. Golfrey noticed every detail of the battlefield now. The men closing on each other. Stoic men ready for their chance at glory. He was surprised to see the trepidation in a few, and others with outright fear broadcasting from their faces.
The drumbeats picked up, and the walk moved to a slow run. With three quick taps off the rim of the drum, Golfrey readied his arrow and aimed for a long arc.
The usurpers horsemen began to advance, and Golfrey couldn’t help but look at the king’s own cavalry still motionless. While he was no tactician, it would seem the footmen would feel more confident knowing they had support. Even twenty mounted men could wreak havoc to the line.
“RELEASE!” the command came from behind him.
Golfrey let fly his arrow and nocked another. No point in trying to keep track of whether his aim was sure.
A glint of light hit his eye. He looked to see where the distraction came. On the left, past the trees, two hills met. He hadn’t noticed the small earthen depression between the two until now, but every few seconds, a sharp glint of sun on metal caught his eye. He looked harder, trying to get more detail. Men on horseback flitted behind the small crease of earth quickly, as if galloping.
The usurpers true cavalry!
Golfrey looked back onto the battlefield as he let his next arrow fly on command. The screams below ringing in his ears now. Still twenty horsemen barreling down on the king’s men. The opposing army had split down the middle, allowing the riders through. Behind the advancing armies, the battlefield already was littered with fallen men, pierced with a rain of steel and wood.
The usurper outplayed the king. If even half of his cavalry outflanked the men, the results could be catastrophic.
“Sir!” Golfrey yelled.
“Quiet on the line”
Stupid line sergeant.
“But, sir!” Golfrey needed to get his attention.
The fist on the back of his head sent him to the ground. Golfrey looked up to see Trenton. His line sergeant glowering at him.
“Shut your hole, ya’ worthless string,” Trenton ordered. His hand resting on his sword.
Golfrey scrambled to his feet and bolted, trying to get to the tree line.
“Get back here, you tit-sucker! Cowardice is punishable by death!”
Golfrey didn’t care. If no one was going to listen to him, he needed to do something. If Trenton followed him to kill him, at least he would know about the cavalry riding down behind the king. He could see the other line sergeants drawing their swords. He dashed to the left to avoid the first swing, but that only brought another sword in range of his stomach. A sharp pain deep through his left side. Golfrey cried out in pain.
He kept moving. He was clear.
Holding his left side, he could feel his life leaking out of him, sticky and warm. The tree line gave him cover and shade, but still he moved, ignoring the pulls of brambles and underbrush. Up ahead, a clearing of sun let him know he was nearing the edge of the small island of trees.
On the grass below, the cavalry came. Golfrey grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow. He pulled back. The pain on his left screamed as his finger touched his cheek. Where to aim?
His fingers let the string slide from the crook. He felt the slap against his armguard as he pulled another arrow. While he drew back again, he noticed a horse go down, his rider catapulted into the air in front of him. The cavalry behind did not have time to pull back before the horses behind trampled over the screaming man.
Another arrow gone.
This one missing the mark as it flew over the formation of riders.
Another arrow left his bow. This one managed to hit a rider in the side. Golfrey pulled another, but his hand waivered as he saw the formation turn in one fluid motion. Like birds in flight, the men moved their mounts towards the trees.
The nocked arrow fumbled on his resting hand. He could see large clods of earth pulled up under the weight of man and horse as they charged towards him. He felt a wave of dizziness come over him, and the bile in his stomach approach the back of his throat.
He needed to concentrate. Was that a red and gold lion coming at him from the corner of his eye? Concentrate.
He let fly again, but there was no strength in it. His arrow skittered along the ground before the oncoming death. He dropped his bow and reached for his sword.
Before the blade left its sheath, he felt the impact. The rider did not even bother trying to kill him with a blade. The earth spun. A red flash blasted through his eyes as pain racked his body. He didn’t feel the impact of the tree behind him.
He tried to breathe. He tried to move. His chest groaned as he felt shattered bones grind against each other. He needed to breathe. The red foam bubbling from his mouth fell against his pink tunic. He NEEDED to breathe. The spasm is his chest pulled him onto his side, contracting and forcing splinters of his ribs through his lungs. Just one breath. Just one…
Duke Welton sat astride his horse, Ironhoof, next to the king and looked down upon the havoc this day had wrought. Men had fought tooth and nail to survive down there. The line had held fast against the first charge of cavalry, and Lord Edmond should be proud. The command of the footmen was on him today, and his sacrifice would not be forgotten. The initial surge and energy of battle never lasted long, and the slugfest down there became a matter of endurance over rage. The numbers had favored the king.
The odor of blood and excrement hit him in the face.
King Menschel had acquiesced to letting the cavalry held in reserve to finish the battle.
Still, the king’s lack of commitment had done its part to turn the battle. When the tree line on his left behind the archers erupted, the fact the horsemen were not already engaged allowed him to split his forces. As the cavalry in blue tore into the bowmen like a scythe through a wheat field, he gave Earl Graysmith the order to clean up what was left on the battlefield. The rest of his men went in to engage the flanking horsemen. If they had been able to get to the defenseless backside of the footmen, the mass of men would collapse and run, fearing their position had been overwhelmed.
Why go through the trees there? Had they continued to ride around, they could have taken King Menschel and his cavalry by surprise. The day would have been lost, and the usurper would have had his throne. With his men able to charge on the oncoming surprise attack instead, the clever strategy was evaded.
He rode around the area where his bowmen were ground down. All of them slaughtered save one, a line sergeant named Trenton.
“How did you manage to survive when all your men sacrificed themselves for their king?” the Duke asked.
Trenton kneeled. “I’m sorry, m’Lord. I wasn’t around when my men were attacked. I was chasing a coward name Golfrey who ran. I was in the wood line when the assault occurred. In chasing him, I was able to see the flanking cavalry. After my sword took care of the coward, I used his bow to draw the charge towards me. They must have thought there was more than just me in the woods. They rode past me too fast for me to kill any more. They didn’t even avoid riding over the coward I killed.”
Duke Welton stared at his line sergeant in disbelief. “You have no idea what you have done. A lesser man would have just hidden in the trees until he was out of danger.”
The duke didn’t even bother with trying to ease Trenton as he stammered. A common man standing in front of a nobleman often became overwhelmed.
“You have saved the day, young man!” the duke said, trying to put his heroic sergeant at ease. “I will take you before th
e king and let him decide how best to reward a man with such bravery. I expect nothing less than a title and your own land to protect for his majesty.”
Trenton stopped, looking up at the duke with a smile.
Duke Welton dismounted.
“As my personal thanks, I would like you to have my horse, which helped carry us to victory today, just as you did.”
He took this amazing man and allowed him to mount Ironhoof, grabbed the reins, and began walking towards the king’s tent.
Sacred Semantics
Nicholas Eames
Before leaping to his death from the edge of a steep bluff, Neph decided to offer a quick prayer to the Spider Goddess because a lot of devout men had died this morning, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to introduce himself.
“Hi, Goddess. It’s me, Neph.” He belatedly remembered to take off his cap. There was mud all over it, which he tried in vain to brush off before clutching it to his heart and peering skyward. “It looks like we’re done for. The six-leggers have us surrounded, trapped on this blasted hill, which the colonel said was impregnable, except it seems awfully…um, impregnated now.”
He heard men shouting in the smoke behind him, followed by the whapwhapwhap of spinneret gun unloading in staccato bursts, then silence.
“I don’t get it,” Neph complained. “We did what the priests asked of us. We said the prayers, made the sacrifices—cut eight men into eight pieces and burned them in eight separate fires—and still the Sixers beat us. How? Why? Is there a lesson we’re supposed to learn?”
Something exploded in his periphery, forcing Neph to squint against the glare. He sank to his knees at the bluff’s edge. Smoke churned like soiled bathwater over the battlefield below.
“Maybe the heathens are right!” he cried. “Maybe you do only have six legs, and we eight-leggers are the ones who’ve got it all backwards. Or maybe you’ve got seven legs and we’re all wrong, in which case we’re fighting this Holy War for nothing!” He shook his head, despairing. “No. Never mind. That’s insane. You’re a Spider Goddess, and spiders have eight legs. We’re right, they’re wrong, and we need to kill them until they understand. Until they see the truth.”
Neph startled as a man on fire lurched past him and went screaming into the swirling abyss. Hopefully, the poor soldier had said his prayers before being lit up like a torch.
“Anyway—” the boy replaced his hat, “I’m gonna jump off this cliff. Kill myself. It might seem like a coward’s way out, but if the Sixers take me alive, they’ll torture me. Or worse, they’ll recondition me. Strap me to a table and tell me a spider’s only got six legs until I actually start believing them. And after that, they’ll blind me, hobble me, and send me home, another false prophet doomed to starve on the streets, shunned by my own people.” He spat over the brink. “Well, thanks but no thanks! I don’t—”
A tickling sensation drew Neph’s eye to his hand. Incredulous, he saw a tiny red spider skittering over his thumb. Was this a sign from the Goddess? A message of some sort? He’d been about to kill himself. Was this her way of telling him not to? He sure hoped so, because although death was preferable to capture, life was a great deal more preferable than death.
He brought his hand to his face. “Hey, little fella. What are—”
Whapwhapwhap—a spinneret gun went off right behind him. Bolts of searing white metal whizzed over his shoulder, so close Neph could feel the heat on his face. He yelped and scrambled to his feet, except one foot slipped on the mud-slick scree, and he went pitching over the edge.
He’d barely summoned the breath to scream when he hit the sloping face of the cliff. The impact forced the air from his lungs, but he managed a pained gasp as his plummet continued. The fog seemed to grasp at him as he fell, chilling and sticky, and then he was through it, watching the ground rush up to meet him. Except it wasn’t ground. It was—
Water?
Neph went into the river, and river went into him. It filled his mouth, clogged his throat, and flooded his mind with the animal panic of drowning. Disoriented, he rolled and squirmed, unsure of which way was up, aware that the river was bearing him sluggishly along.
Was this some sort of joke? A cruel punishment for his sins? Had the Goddess—blessed be all eight of her legs—spared him from death-by-falling only to drown him?
Finally, his head broke the surface. He sputtered, gasped, flailed, and went under again. When he surfaced next, he made a concerted effort to swim (or something like it) toward the bank. A log bobbed past him, and Neph latched onto it, paddling with his legs until he ran aground.
Still clinging to his log, he gagged up a mouthful of mud and water. His tongue tasted like a copper shil fished out of a shit-trench, and he wondered what had fouled the river so thoroughly.
The answer was right in front of him. He was hugging a corpse.
After frantically kicking it away, Neph screamed for a bit, sobbed for a bit, then retched what remained in his stomach into the mud. As he lie there panting, he noticed several other bodies scattered along the bank, bloating and pale, many of them missing arms or legs or a combination of the two.
“What are you doing?” a woman’s voice called.
Neph froze. Was it a friend? An enemy? There was no way to know since the heathens spoke the same language as those who worshipped the true faith. Hells, they even dressed the same. A Sixer’s uniform was greyish-blue, while the one worn by Neph and his fellow Eights was bluish-grey. They’d looked distinct enough from across the battlefield this morning, but once they were doused in rain, or mud, or blood there was no telling the difference.
Why hadn’t someone higher up thought to differentiate their own troops from the enemy? We’re nothing like the Sixers, he fumed, so why do we dress like them? Why aren’t we wearing orange or something? Well, maybe not orange, but—
“Aran!” shouted the woman. “Quick mucking about, will ya? There’s Eights in trees over there. And a few left fighting on the hill!”
An enemy, then. A Sixer. Neph’s skin crawled in revulsion.
“I’m just making sure this lot is dead!” said a boy’s voice, disconcertingly close.
Through the bleary veil of half-closed eyes, Neph saw a pair of boots trudge into view and halt beside one of the corpses farther along the bank. Not content with simply inspecting the body, the boy—Aran, the woman had called him—stabbed it in the throat with his tarsus.
Neph might have yelped out loud because the boots suddenly turned and stalked slowly in his direction.
Oh, Goddess, he prayed, what have I done to deserve such torment?
He flinched as Aran’s sword skewered another corpse.
Must you toy with me so? Am I nothing but a fly, doomed to wriggle and suffer for your cruel amusement?
The boots stamped toward Neph. Blood dripped thick as molasses from the point of his tarsus.
“Aran! Let’s go!”
The boots paused.
Neph’s heart leapt. Thank you, Goddess. Bless you forever. I swear, I’ll never—
“Just one more!” Aran shouted.
Eight Hells! Seriously?
The boots stopped right in front of him, and Neph, seeing no other recourse aside from waiting to be stabbed to death, open his eyes and screamed.
The Sixer screamed back.
When both boys finished giving vent to their terror, instinct kicked in. Aran raised his sword to strike. Neph rolled as the point gouged the ground behind him. He kicked at the boy’s knee and felt it snap. The Sixer collapsed on top of him, and Neph, with uncharacteristic ferociousness, grappled Aran’s neck with one arm and squeezed with all his strength. His free hand groped at the boy’s face, nails digging into flesh, clawing like an animal for no good reason except to cause pain to someone who’d been about to kill him a moment ago.
Aran bit him.
Neph howled in anguish, tightened his grip on the boy’s throat. His enemy kicked and thrashed. He was bigger than Neph, who was weary from pulling himse
lf to shore. Any second now, he might squirm loose, and then…
Without thinking, Neph buried his fingers in the boy’s eyes. He felt the rubbery orbs burst into pulp as he burrowed into the Sixer’s skull. The Sixer tried to scream, but Neph’s arm tightened around his throat.
At last, after a final racking convulsion, the Sixer went still.
Dead. Neph’s mind floundered, mired in fear and dawning horror. He’s dead. I’m alive. I’m still alive.
Because you gouged his fucking eyes out, some unhelpful aspect of himself chimed in.
Neph rolled out from under the corpse. On his knees in the mud, he wiped his shaking hands off on the kid’s uniform. The gooey remnants of Aran’s eyeball clung to his fingers like the innards of a harvest pumpkin.
“Aran?”
Goddess, he’d forgotten about the woman! Frantic, Neph pried the boy’s sword from his grip. There was a mandible pistol in a leather holster, which he grabbed as well. His eye snagged on the six-legged spider in tarnished silver pinned to the corpse’s chest. He set his pilfered weapons down and unclasped it (no easy task for trembling hands), then tore off his own eight-legged sigil. He was busy fastening the heathen’s pin over his heart when the squelch of footsteps sounded behind him.
“Aran, I—” the woman trailed off as Neph glanced over his shoulder. “What in the Six Hells is… Oh, Goddess, no. Aran!” She aimed the point of her tarsus at Neph. “Who are you? What happened here.”
“I…uh…” It took an effort to pull his gaze from the Sixer pin on her chest. “I found him like this.”
“You found him like this?” The woman looked deeply skeptical. She glanced at the boy and, judging by the expression on her face, just now noticed the gory mess Neph had made of his eyes. “What the actual fuck? Who did this? I swear on the Six Legs of—”
Neph shot her. The pistol kicked violently, and was so suddenly hot that it scalded his palm. He fumbled the gun, cursed under his breath as it plopped into the river, and shook his hand to cool it. He’d never fired a mandible pistol before—he’d certainly never shot anyone—and finally understood why the soldiers who used them wore leather gloves on their left hands.
Art of War Page 25