“They have nothing,” he said, “we should head back to the wall if we don’t want to miss the battle.”
“I agree,” I said.
Móric called to the other men. They had trashed the room, the peasant family’s meager belongings strewn about the filthy farm house. Everyone made for the exit, one of the men stopping next to the wife, putting the edge of his saber to her throat, and slicing. A river of blood gushed from the wound, the woman flopping to her stomach, choking on the blood as I walked back out into the drizzling rain.
The German countryside had a desolation usually reserved for the dead of winter, yet the cool May morning stood silent but for the distant rumble of thunder. My calfskin cavalier boots squished into soft mud as I made my way back toward the road. A division of regular troops marched in the direction of Magdeburg, their pikes sticking up toward the sky like an elongated porcupine.
“Looks like maybe Pappenheim is getting his reinforcements from the count,” Móric said, “that’s too bad. Less loot for the lot of us.”
“If the city had just capitulated a month ago,” one of the others complained, “we wouldn’t have had to waste so much time scavenging these useless peasants.”
The other men voiced their agreement with this sentiment, but Móric looked to me with a raised eyebrow.
“Frigyes,” he said, “your limp’s getting worse every day.”
“It is,” I said, “I think the infection is spreading.”
“Have you been rubbing the liniment on it?”
“I have,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s been working.”
He nodded slowly, “should I be thinking about finding a priest soon?”
I gave Móric a sardonic smile, “maybe not quite yet.”
“That’s good,” he slapped a hand on my shoulder, “it’s always nice to have someone who speaks Martin Luther’s own tongue while we plunder his heretics.”
We continued walking in the direction of Magdeburg, the marching soldiers to our left. The drizzling rain remained our constant companion along with the sound of thousands of feet sloshing over the muddy road. The faint smell of rotting meat and human waste was only intensified by the damp as we drew closer to the city. Cold seemed to probe its way into the infected pike wound in my right thigh, but it at least slowed the spread of corruption.
Aside from the soldier’s feet splashing thickly in the mud, the German countryside stood eerily quiet. Most locals had fled, been killed, or cowed into terror by the besieging army. The war had already been raging off and on for the past thirteen years.
The protestants had been dealt many defeats by the Hapsburgs. But the peasants tended to be more concerned with their own deprivations than any political machinations prolonging the conflict. The arrival of the Swedes the year before, however, had emboldened them. Hence the brashness of Magdeburg. And the bitterness of our soldiers.
“Is that smoke all from the siege camp?” one of our Hajduk irregulars asked.
“No,” Móric said, “that’s…”
“They’ve entered the city,” I said.
“We’re missing it!” someone shouted.
I looked to the marching soldiers in formation to our left. They continued moving in good order. I turned back to Móric.
“We have to hurry,” he said, glancing at my leg.
I nodded, “I’ll catch up.”
He grinned, “don’t worry. I’ll save something for you.”
“No point,” I said, “not if I don’t live much longer.”
“Either way,” he said before looking ahead and barking to the other men to get moving.
The band starting trotting on ahead. I kept walking, moving as fast as the marching soldiers, each step sending stiff pain from my thigh up to my stomach and down to my ankle.
The rain picked up as I moved. Columns of black smoke from the city grew larger, the smell of burning wood and cooking meat mounting. I grit my teeth, one hand on my right thigh the other resting on the hilt of my saber as I walked up the incline.
A commotion stirred to my left. The marching troops grew agitated, knowing they were missing out on the pillage. Voices murmured, footsteps becoming irregular. Commanders shouted, hoping to maintain order, but it was too late. The thirst for plunder was too strong now that the city was coming into view. Men broke ranks, trying to get out ahead. I watched with mild amusement as the march turned into a race, men throwing down their burdensome pikes as they hurried forward.
I stopped at the top of the hill next to what had once been a guard house, now just a pile of stone next to a charred tree. I stood with most of my weight on my left leg, watching the soldiers rush toward the breached city walls a kilometer away. Even though I knew that much of the cooking meat aroma coming from the city had to be from humans burning alive in their houses, it didn’t stop my empty stomach from rumbling.
In the past few months I hadn’t eaten much more than the seeds local farmers needed to plant their crops and the meager potato stews we were sometimes able to haggle from the soldiers. And it had been two days since I had either of those. But the smell reminded me that I couldn’t even remember the last time more than a morsel of gristle pasted my lips.
I have to do something about this pain if I’m going to make it to the city.
I winced, pulling the leggings off and taking my trousers down. The wound on my right thigh had turned greenish-yellow and black, tentacles of corruption stretching away from the seeping cut. I retrieved the liniment from my pack, removing the top.
I gasped, pain burning into my leg as I poured the amber liquid onto the wound. I brought the small flask up to my nose and sniffed, getting the distinct smell of alcohol. I put the mouth of the flask to my lips and drank from it. A deep bitterness accompanied the burn of alcohol, making me gag, spitting the foul liquid out onto the ground. I heaved, almost puking, and then-
Movement. I capped the liniment, putting it in my pack, and pulled up my pants before limping closer to the edge of the busted guard house. I stopped just around the corner and listened. Breathing. Someone was there. I carefully clasped the hilt of my sword and slowly drew it from the scabbard. I took another half step, resting my weight on my left leg, and bent to peer around the corner. I was met with frightened gasps and whimpers. Lowering my saber, I strode around the corner, seeing a woman with her four children – an older girl, two little boys, and an infant.
“P-please,” the woman said in German, “don’t tell anyone we’re here.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I replied in German, limping slowly forward.
The woman hugged the infant close to herself, the other children cowering next to her. Behind her legs was a satchel that she seemed to be trying to hide.
“What’s that?” I asked, signaling to the satchel.
“Please,” she said, “we fled the city. They already killed my husband. We’re no threat.”
“What’s in the damn sack?” I said more forcefully.
“My children need it,” she said, glancing at her cowering offspring.
I lunged forward, the point of my saber piercing the chest of one of her son’s, the blade sliding across hard bone. The boy howled, the rest of his family crying out.
“That’s one less mouth to feed,” I said, watching the boy collapse into the mud when I removed my blade, “now hand over that sack.
The mother cried inconsolably, kneeling down by the bleeding boy. His cries were muffled by the mud gathered around his mouth, the earth reddening with his blood. I stepped closer, reaching down for the satchel when I felt a sharp pain in my side.
Crying out, I shoved the other boy away from me. The handle of a dagger protruded from my side. I pulled the short blade out of my flesh and angrily flailed my saber at him. The edge caught the boys left arm, slicing through the bone. He shrieked, stumbling back, grasping at the gushing stump above his elbow. The older girl charged, running into me. The pain in my leg caused me to reel backwards, falling into the
mud. She continued flailing her arms, trying to hit me in the face. I threw her off, sending the girl sliding in the mud, and thrust my saber toward her. The blade stabbed into her left hip, causing her to squeal in pain.
Scrambling to my hands and knees, I found the mother screaming in panic, clutching the infant to her chest. I hobbled up to my feet, right leg throbbing, covered in blood stained mud.
I staggered forward, grabbing the shrieking infant. The mother tried holding onto him. I pulled at the infant’s legs, feeling the soft bones inside break. The child screeched with renewed anguish as I tore it from its mother’s arms. She lunged at me, falling to her stomach in the pooled blood of her other offspring. I swung the howling infant around by its legs, the head splattering against the rock of the guard house walls. The impact vibrated through the supple flesh of its legs. I dropped the limp little body into the mud next to its wailing mother.
I hobbled over to the satchel, picked it up and opened it. Inside was a tiny block of salted meat. The rest of the world disappeared as I looked upon it, mouth watering. I tottered through the reddened mud past the crying mother, away from the blasted guard house, already biting into the meat. The sour taste of rot that filled my mouth didn’t deter me. That the chunk of meat felt similar to the soft legs of the infant meant nothing to me as I sat down in the muddy grass, feeling the meat slide down my gullet into my empty stomach.
Screams and gunfire echoed from the city as I sat devouring the meat. Heat from the inferno engulfing the large urban center warmed the cold May morning as the rain let up. Pikes littered the ground around the nearby road, all the soldiers already gone to join in the rape and plunder of Magdeburg.
When I went to join in the carnage, I did it with a full stomach.
The weak smile quickly faded from my lips. The irony of my situation, now being the victim of a massacre, was cold comfort. Our captors brought the nobleman’s children into an opening outside the city walls. Piteous cries sounded when the fathers, clad in bloodstained finery and held hostage at the barrels of guns and the blades of swords, saw their heirs being marched before them.
The Manchu invaders who didn’t die of cholera or dysentery after their rape of Yangzhou would go comfortably to their graves telling themselves they were good people. Righteous people. Their lives would be enriched by intimacy with their wives and devotion to their children. But the Ming peoples they were massacring were just as capable of cruelty and bloodlust as their conquerors. It was an endless cycle.
“You have resisted your heavenly rulers,” a voice called in the manju gisun language, barely audible above the screams, shouts, and roaring flames from within the city. Even quieter were the voices of men translating into Mandarin. “You were told explicitly cut the hair and keep the head, keep the hair and cut the head. You disobeyed. Now I shall fulfill that hallowed promise. You were told explicitly to turn over the criminal Shi Kefa. You refused. Now he has been executed, as you shall all be. But first, you will watch as our blades are quenched with the blood of your firstborn sons.”
The nobleman protested in vain as the children screamed. A furious flurry of steel cut down the noble sons. I watched as soldiers slashed their blades into the children with neutral expressions. Blood sprayed onto my face as the boy beside me, no more than six years old, had a sword lodged into his neck. His eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a silent scream as the sword was pulled back and swung again. The child’s head flopped to the side, dangling on a thin strip of muscle and tendon. The executioner stepped forward, now standing behind me.
I watched with grim fascination. The sensation of the impact reverberating through the infant’s soft body climbed through my fingers like an echo from my former body. A life cut down before it had a chance to know the true suffering of the human condition. At this moment, I couldn’t help but envy that child.
The chorus of wailing and crackling fire seemed to die away as I awaited my fate. I closed my eyes, wondering where I would be born next. What horrors might be in store for me in my next life. Whether I would be the herald of those horrors or the victim. I still didn’t know which was worse.
The hot steel buried itself in the flesh of my neck. My muscles tensed, warm blood pouring down onto my shoulder. Screams escaped my mouth, the metallic taste of blood bubbling up from my throat. The sharp sword came again, missing my neck, instead embedding into the muscle of my right shoulder. I instinctively grasped at the wound, finding the blade still there.
The soldier put his foot on my back, prying his sword from my bone, growling in anger. I fell forward onto the bloody ground, feeling my own still gushing from my neck, pouring from my nose and mouth. Shouting swirled around me in a confusing cyclone of terror before the black silence of death once again took me.
Chapter 32
“Director Mitchell proceeded with plans to annex Kansas into the CSA,” the news anchor said as I watched the webcast on my ARs, laying in the Denver hospital, “the CSA military’s begun occupying Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita. Governor Kent has been placed under arrest, his government dissolved, and all local officials told to report to CSA authorities. Mitchell accused the LoC and the PRA of sending agent provocateurs to start the riots. PRA chairman Darrel Gibson rejects these accusations.”
I sighed, looking down at my bandaged right hand. I used my left to grab my cup of ice water, bringing the straw to my mouth and sipping. It had been two nights since getting back to Denver early in the morning following the disaster in Wichita.
“Riots continue across the state,” the anchor continued, “The Brazilian president offered to send aid. Director Mitchell refused the offer, blasting the Brazilian occupation of Mexico as an illegal act of war and a clear sign of aggression against the United States. Similar demonstrations to those in Kansas have cropped up within the CSA itself,” video of crowds marching through streets came up, “most notably in Atlanta, the CSA’s capital. So far, they remain non-violent, but the CSA police have arrested over five hundred protestors in Atlanta for demonstrating without permission.”
I set the cup back down, laying my head back into the pillow. Every movement in my neck seemed to pull at the raw, burned skin on my right shoulder. Jolts of pain spiked into my flesh despite cooling ointment recently rubbed onto it.
“Many of these demonstrations are a response to the dramatic video released online of what is being called the March of Silence, when rioters in Wichita laid the bodies of two of the rescued children at the feet of CSA police,” the anchor said, the shaky AR recorded video coming up on the screen, “the bodies of Regina and Tanya, last names unknown, killed by an explosion, were laid before the police blockade. It’s not known who, but one of the officers opened fire on the marchers, causing them to disperse. The demonstrators are demanding justice for the slain girls, but CSA officials say the explosion that killed them was detonated by an ANTIFA rioter and that the CSA police don’t use explosives of the kind that killed the girls. Most demonstrators are not buying this version of the story.”
Only a few people had come by my room to talk to me, which was fine. They were busy with the confusion that had cropped up after the mission, not the least of which was Sachi’s arrival in the LoC.
“Director Gabriel Mitchell, who is far in the lead for the CSA Director’s race, spoke about the incident in Wichita and had this to say,”, the video changed to Mitchell speaking at a press conference, his suit jacket taken off, sleeves rolled up, face stern. “We’ve arrested four agent provocateurs from the PRA. We’re still determining their purpose for bein’ there, but Chairman Gibson ‘s been silent on why he his government’s sponsored terrorist activities on American soil on this most sacred of American holidays. His regime is the absolute antithesis of what the founding fathers worked so hard to create. Gibson seems only to want to pull the rest of this once great nation down into the pit of tyranny and debauchery that defines his so-called People’s Republic. I suspect it was the Gibson regime that sent this transgenic group that call th
emselves the forty-eights into the state of Kansas to start this trouble. Trouble that was only meant to allow them to free PRA state-sponsored terrorists like Tory Goodwin and agent provocateur Alvin Coolidge. I condemn what these terrorists and affronts to the Lord have done. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. It is despicable. The PRA and the state of Colorado are acting against the constitution of the United States by undermining law and order. I promise that upon my reelection as Director of the southeast regional government, I will bring order to Kansas. I will put a stop the PRA’s state-sponsored terrorists, and I will bring the rogue state of Colorado back into the fold. There will be justice!”
The crowd cheered as I closed the newscast, grabbing my cup and taking another sip.
Darren had visited shortly after I got out of surgery the day after arriving in the hospital, keeping the conversation to how everyone was doing.
“I didn’t git it too bad,” Darren had said, sitting in a wheelchair next to my bed, “busted arm, whiplash, some cuts and bruises.”
“Any word on Laura?” I asked.
“Chopper brought ‘er in and they took ‘er ta surgery,” Darren said gloomily, “I reckon they took ‘er arm. Doc said she hadda lotta internal bleedin’, punctured lung, spleen shredded, bruised liver, concussion, lotta burnt skin,” he shook his head, “Still in critical condition last I heard.”
“How about the others?”
“Tea had a busted femur,” Darren said, “Carmen a banged-up nose and a couple’uh broken fingers. Both girls got mighty bruised up, too. The Major got some cuts ‘n bruises, but I think most’uh her injury’s mental, on accounta the Colonel.” He shook his head. “Ellen got whiplash ‘n some bruised ribs. I just talked ta Mikasi. He just got outta surgery ta take off his arm below the elbow. Says he gonna get fitted with a bionic,” he paused a moment, “that Coolidge fella gotta blown kneecap, otherwise just cuts ‘n bruises.”
I nodded as he listed all of this off. “I’m…glad we didn’t lose any more people.”
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