That evening, after leaving behind the many yards they’d covered during three weeks on the march, the army camped on the very gorge which Hadjar had noticed when he’d been perusing the maps. He wasn’t the only one who had studied the scrolls. Apparently, General Leen had come to the same conclusion. That made him respect her even more than he already did. She didn’t have the computational capabilities of the neuronet to fall back on. Only her experience.
The tired, sleepy soldiers set up tents and duly fell asleep.
In the morning, before he’d had a chance to wash up, Hadjar looked up and noticed a soldier running toward him with what appeared to be a report in his hand. Having received the news from the soldier that an urgent War Council was being convened, Hadjar found himself slightly surprised. As far as he could remember, an urgent War Council had never been called before.
After quickly getting dressed, the officer hurried over to the General’s tent.
Along the way, Hadjar paid close attention to the fact that several thousand riders were standing at the gorge. Their gray, light armor and heavy bows were a little like the nomads’. Balium and the steppes were nearby, and there was always a need to show force.
At the tent, in addition to the usual bodyguards, there were several warriors from Balium. They looked completely calm, even though they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of potential foes.
After entering, Hadjar saw the most unusual scene that he could’ve imagined laid out before him. Besides all the commanders of the Moon army, a tall man was also present. He was wearing red armor, and his long, black hair was tied back in a taut ponytail. He was hugging Leen tightly.
Not like a lover, but more like a friend.
“I’m glad to see you again, Leen,” he said.
“I’m happy to see you as well, my old friend.”
“I beg your pardon.” Hadjar coughed.
“Senior Officer Hadjar.” Leen smiled, sitting back at the table. “As always, you’ve arrived last.”
“My squad’s camp is the farthest away, my General.” Hadjar saluted and sat in the chair left open for his arrival.
“Ah, the famous Hadjar of the bear squad,” the man greeted him. “I’ve heard about your courageous deeds in the recent battle at the ridge.”
“I haven’t had the honor...”
“General Deren,” the man introduced himself. “Commander of the Third Army of the Balium Kingdom.”
“Otherwise known as Dragon Tooth,” Lian, the commander of the archers, whispered into Hadjar’s ear.
Name
Dragon Tooth
Level of cultivation
???
Strength
???
Dexterity
???
Physique
???
Energy points
???
Hadjar raised an eyebrow in bewilderment, and the archer nodded toward the far corner. There was a heavy sword there—a mixture of a halberd and a blade. The size of an adult man, it must’ve weighed about four hundred pounds. Only the strongest practitioners could ever hope to lift it, let alone effectively fight with it.
The crossguard of that sword must’ve been heavier than the blade of ‘Moon Beam’. And the ‘Beam’ wasn’t a light sword, by any stretch of the imagination.
“He’s an old friend of General Leen’s,” Lian continued to whisper. “The same Master taught both of them. They say that, once, when they lived in the city near the frontier, they were lovers.”
“Near the frontier?”
“With the Sea of Sand.” Lian nodded. “There are many different towns there. The Kingdoms aren’t interested in them, so they are individually ruled by the Lords.”
Hadjar once again looked at the Generals, who were talking sweetly with each other. They were clearly recalling something from their past. They were laughing, smiling, and even keeping silent for a while, casting warm glances at each other.
What was it like to sit with an old friend and, possibly, a lover, knowing that, very soon, they would have to fight each other?
Damn Primus.
Damn the Imperials.
They sat there for hours—drinking wine, talking, and paying attention neither to the war nor to the nervous commanders seated around them.
“Will you do what I ask, Deren?” Leen inquired after a moment of heavy silence.
She looked surprisingly refreshed and somehow younger, but during all of it, she had awkwardly hidden her wooden prosthesis behind her back.
Dragon Tooth glanced at it.
“Leen, you know that…”
“You owe me, Deren,” the Moon General said with a newly regained steel in her voice. Now she was ‘iron’ again, as she’d used to be. “Or have you forgotten that?”
The General of Balium became serious as well.
“I don’t forget my debts, Moon General.”
“Then you’ll do as I ask.”
The severity once again vanished from Deren’s eyes as soon as he glanced at the wooden prosthesis.
“But…”
“I have only seven hundred thousand soldiers, General. Over half of them are no more than green recruits. How many have you brought with you? Three, four million?”
“Almost five,” Deren admitted.
Hadjar didn’t understand what was going on, but he could tell it wasn’t something good.
“They will all die.”
“If you surrender…”
Dragon Tooth didn’t get to finish his sentence because Leen struck the table so heavily that it almost broke in half.
“I never surrender!” she growled.
She rose to her feet, grabbed her spear, and looked at the General sitting opposite her. Now all she could see was an enemy, not her old friend.
“According to the old custom, I suggest we do this at dawn. Tomorrow.”
Dragon Tooth stood up. His face showed only sadness.
“Tomorrow. At dawn.” He nodded, turned, and then left the tent.
Leen sat back down and then drank the rest of the wine in the jar in one long gulp. The commanders looked as if they had seen a ghost.
“The old custom?” Hadjar asked Lian.
“Tomorrow, at dawn, the Moon General and Dragon Tooth will duel. The army of the General that loses the duel will surrender and go back across the border, returning home.”
Hadjar looked at Leen.
She was going to sacrifice herself.
For all of them.
Dammit!
Chapter 90
Hadjar didn’t attempt to persuade the General to abandon her self-destructive decision. He understood her perfectly, like only a warrior could understand another warrior. Their army would be destroyed if they fought. There was only one way for the vast majority of them to survive. It wouldn’t lead to a victory, but it was an opportunity to avoid them all ending up dead in this cold, northern land.
Naked to the waist, Hadjar swung his blade, trying to get rid of his gloomy thoughts: that he was still too weak to help anyone, just as weak as he’d been then, many years ago, back in the Palace. If he had been any stronger at the time, then maybe his mother...
“Come on.” He felt a hand gently rest itself on his shoulder.
Serra and Nero stood behind him. This time, the caster wore a black cape and an emerald skirt. Nero had put on his armor and helmet.
Hadjar put on his old, shabby clothes and placed his sword in its scabbard. Together, they moved slowly toward the gorge.
Two armies faced each other from opposite sides of the pass. One army was cheerful and hooting, and the second army was heavy and dark, like a thundercloud before the storm.
They stood at the front and waited, at first patiently, but as time passed, they began to grow restless.
The rocks rose like the palms of ancient giants. They tore at the distant sky like the fangs of gigantic animals killed in battle. The East wind was blowing, creating whirlwinds of sand that flitted between them as
they stood and waited.
The sun hid behind the clouds, only occasionally casting its bright rays.
The whole of the Moon General’s army maintained a deathly silence. Few people were brave enough to look at anything but their own shoes.
Dragon Tooth was warming up among the sand and stones ahead. He waved his titanic blade and raised waves of sand as he swung it around. His strong muscles rolled like glacial boulders, his veins swelled like taut ropes, and his bronze skin literally glowed as the brief flashes of sunlight hit it.
His sword, the size of an adult man, didn’t look like an improbable showpiece when wielded by this warrior—it was simply an insanely powerful weapon that could make the surrounding rocks bend to his will.
The Balium General plunged the blade into the ground with such force that Hadjar felt his feet shake as the ground trembled, and several deep cracks spread out from the point of impact.
The Moon General wasn’t scared a bit by all this posturing. She was going through the ranks of her soldiers. Every time she passed by a private or officer, she looked at their faces. Some wiped away unsolicited tears, and others showed fierce determination and something akin to anger.
She nodded at them, and they immediately straightened up and saluted with such force that they were almost pushing through their own steel breastplates with their fists.
Hadjar saluted too.
He struck his chest, not for the sake of Leen’s fame, but because such concepts like dignity and honor still existed within the Kingdom. And while people like the Moon General still lived within its borders, Lidus might still have hope.
When the General came to stand in front of her enemy, the gorge plunged into silence for a moment.
Nero hit his shield first. He was standing at the head of the army and he started the rhythm. Then others joined in, and soon enough, hundreds of thousands of people began to hit metal against metal, seeing their General off to battle.
Leen tied her golden hair back with blue silk ribbons, using only her teeth and her one remaining hand.
The sun came out, and her steel breastplate, which was adorned with the pattern of a bird spreading its wings, sparkled. Her steel ‘skirt’ brushed against the ground and sometimes rang when it gently struck her silver spear. Her steel battle prosthesis swayed with her movements.
Leen knew that today’s fight would be her last.
“I beg you,” Deren, standing in front of her, implored. “Please. Don’t do this…”
She remembered the day when they’d stolen bread together at the fair, and she remembered how she’d nearly bitten off the guard’s finger when he had caught Deren and threatened to cut off his hand.
Then the Master accepted them as students. They trained hard, shedding blood, sweat, and tears every day, year after year, until they could use the spear and sword better than their own limbs.
She remembered all the holidays, all the wine they’d drunk, and their shared laughter and joy.
She remembered how the recruiters from Balium’s army had come. She didn’t want to go to war, but Deren... he’d always been searching for the kind of glory one could only win in battle. To have songs composed in his honor, to have the name ‘Dragon Tooth’ remembered by the people a thousand years after his death...
She remembered their last night together... the next morning, she’d woken up alone, and a year later, she’d gone to Lidus. They hadn’t seen each other since.
Leen tried not to think about her old... friend. Because all she wanted to do was drink wine and dream about better times after these recollections. The General took her spear in one hand and twisted it over her head, kicking up a tornado of sand and dust. She moved her prosthesis behind her back and the tornado immediately dissipated, but not before a long crack spread before the feet of her enemy. One wave of her real hand had been enough to leave a deep gouge in the ground thirty steps away from her current position.
“So, you did manage to reach the level of ‘One with the World’ after all.” Deren sighed sorrowfully for the last time.
When he raised his sword, he no longer saw the woman he’d once loved in front of him. Instead, the General of an enemy army, one that was about to invade his Kingdom, was standing in front of him.
He swung his blade.
Stones rained down from the cliffs after that single, solitary attack. Soldiers who’d been standing about a hundred paces from the battle felt like a wall of pure wind had struck them forcefully. Some stepped back, trying to keep their balance.
Deren grabbed the amulet hanging around his neck. As he did so, plates of yellow metal began to appear from a small, blue sphere. They formed a breastplate, heavy pauldrons, and a set of massive steel gauntlets.
The plates covered him, protecting both his waist and legs. By the end of the process, the artifact metal armor had covered Dragon Tooth’s entire body.
The runes on his giant blade flashed. They resembled the rays of the sun and the solar disk itself. Their brightness was strong enough to penetrate through the clouds.
Hadjar swore. Well, it was to be expected that the army which had enjoyed the support of the sect for thousands of years had armor and weapons similar to the sect’s own.
Leen remained unfazed. She truly was as calm as the moon itself.
She kicked off from the ground and soared into the air like a bird. The spear flashed blue in her hand, and the moon rain fell on Deren. He raised his sword above his head, enveloping himself in a golden, almost sieve-like dome, forming a tight circle around himself with a diameter of about thirty-three feet. The holes in the dome were no more than the length of an arm, with a width that was perhaps the size of a coin.
There was more and more moon rain falling, and then, finally, Dragon Tooth found himself on a small island among a deep ravine.
Leen landed, and at the same time, her enemy took a tight grip of his sword with both hands and swung it, slashing at her with all his might.
The rocks seemed to tremble and the sky screamed with the force of his strike. A golden sword formed in the air above Leen’s head. It fell down on her like the executioner's axe, leaving behind a white trail of split air.
It didn’t leave a simple fissure behind, but rather, it tore a deep cleft no less than sixty-six feet wide in the ground. However, it hadn’t even touched Leen. She had already moved toward Deren.
She flew up into the air again and landed behind Dragon Tooth. Hadjar clenched his fists—she was going to win! The enemy had clearly underestimated her. She was still the Moon General, even with only one hand!
Her spear flashed, moonlight shooting out of it. The tip, aimed at Deren’s neck, cut through the air…
But there was no fountain of blood, nor the noise of a gigantic blade falling to the sand.
Deren was still standing in place. He was gripping the spear in his left hand, holding the tip close to his own neck.
He read the unspoken farewell in Leen’s beautiful blue eyes. Deren nodded and swung his blade. Leen screamed as cold metal passed through her armor and body. Her legs gave way, but, even while holding her guts in and having to lean on her spear, she remained standing.
The army of Balium shouted triumphantly; General Dragon Tooth just stood there, motionless.
Blood was running down his blade; however, there were no tears on his cheeks. His heart had practically turned to stone during the seemingly endless years of fighting.
The army of the Moon General stopped hitting their weapons against their shields and armor. They only watched as the General waivered. She took her ceremonial sword from her belt, plunged it into the ground, and then leaned heavily on it. Doing the same with her spare, she looked across at her soldiers.
“Senior Officer Hadjar!’ Her voice sounded weak.
Hadjar, swallowing, took a single step forward, before all people could see was a black raven’s wing, and then he was standing beside the General. He’d covered dozens of yards in an instant.
Leen looked ev
en worse up close than from a distance. The palm-sized wound in her stomach gaped. Blood spurted, pouring over her damaged armor and turning the golden sand into a crimson mess at her feet.
The Moon General looked at her commander. She didn’t see the beast with blue eyes, but rather, his indomitable will, ready to crush even the heavens themselves. She had made a good choice in sending him to Dogar that day.
She took the General’s medallion off her neck, and with a trembling hand, she handed it to the officer.
“Take it,” she whispered. “The army is yours now.”
Hadjar took the medallion he’d coveted so much before today. Right now, it felt heavier than all the surrounding mountains.
“Help me,” the General croaked out.
Hadjar helped Leen pull the sword out. He took her to the center of the pass and stepped back. Somehow, using all her remaining strength, she remained standing, looking down at the sword. She imagined herself in a meadow, amongst the grass and the bodies of her companions. The Fort burned behind her, and the Blue Wind Ridge was somewhere in the distance, beyond the smoke and fog.
Her chest rose one last time and then stilled forever.
The Moon General went to meet her friends and companions. She went to a house where she would await the man who’d finally forgotten about his giant sword and glory in battle. Where her children could laugh and wouldn’t have to go to war.
Stupid, disembodied dreams…
Hadjar gripped the General’s medallion so hard that it punctured his skin. His palms were bleeding, but he took no notice of it.
He turned to his army. It looked like a malnourished, battered, whining group of stray dogs.
Suddenly, a wild, bestial roar sounded in the gorge.
Deren, who was already leaving the field, stopped and turned around. He saw a man drawing a sword. Whirlwinds of power lashed the air around him, and the stones near him split from the force of this man’s will alone.
Dragon Heart: Iron Will. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 2 Page 10
