No way would I live through this.
Blizzard’s hooves pounded the soft earth and the wind pulled at my long hair, grown out from beneath the Wilhelm. Branches and bushes tore at our armor. A war cry, more a scream of anger and pain than anything else, rose up out from the depths of me. I wanted blood now, looking for the thing that would end the pain of losing Shela.
Less than a minute passed before I thundered into the camp where their magicians had hidden. I saw twelve of them in long, flowing robes and waist-length, black fetlocks. One of them turned and pointed at me. Without slowing I raised the Sword of War and pointed it back at him, letting him know that I would kill him first. When he released the same energy that he had released at Shela my sword drank it all like wine and hungered for more. My body tingled like ants swarmed it.
Blizzard’s charge bore straight down on the surprised little man and the Sword of War fell like a scythe, reaping the top of his skull. Blizzard’s hooves trampled two more into the ground and another smacked his head on the Dwarfish barding and went down. I wheeled the stallion to the left, mud and turf flying from his hooves, and my sword cleaved down, reaping another of their number. The spatter of hot blood touched my face and drenched my hungry soul. A hastily cast spell destroyed a tree behind me. I licked the brains from my salty lips as those Confluni magicians who hadn’t died panicked and ran right into my advancing lancers. Free Legion warriors skewered them without slowing.
I hauled on Blizzard’s reins and drove him toward the main clearing, through the short remainder of the forest. Here were the armed soldiers. Again, Blizzard’s hooves pounded the soft earth, and again my battle-scream preceded me as we burst out of the murk of the forest into the open air. Blizzard charged through the remains of the CNG archers and the Sword of War drank yet again, carving a red and gruesome path to the back of the advancing Confluni horde. They barely resisted, running from me, unwilling to fight. They were boys, children – warriors not yet ready to hold a sword. Where my weapon didn’t reach them, Blizzard’s steel-shod hooves crushed flesh and bone, swords ringing on his armor as his scream joined mine and we were one, a flurry of white hot death, tears and blood.
I didn’t want this, this wouldn’t help me. I didn’t want to slaughter, I wanted to fight. I wanted to beat my sword on another man’s, best him, crush him, let him know who took him. I wanted to fight and kill until I could take no more.
My bloody hand rose and fell through a crimson haze. I didn’t know where my lancers were and I didn’t care. Had I been thinking I would have rallied them and led slashing attacks on either flank and tried to turn their army away from the Free Legion, allowing our foot soldiers a counter attack. That wouldn’t do it for me, though. Blizzard overtook their advancing army and I engaged them, my sword swinging low. I felt the bodies trampled under Blizzard’s iron-shod hooves as if he were a part of me. CNG were turning to counter this blond on a white menace who invaded their ranks.
They had me surrounded and stabbed at me from every side. The Sword of War sang against their armor, bathed my right arm up to the shoulder and both of my hips in blood and gore. Blizzard’s barding and his iron-shod hooves offered him some protection from those who got past my guard. I realized I had a bloody gash in my thigh, a dagger wedged between the plates of my armor. A troop of pikemen already approached to counter us – I knew I would not be able to keep those weapons from his alabaster hide. My shoulder and back ached and my bicep felt full of wet sand. Blizzard’s sides were scuffed and wounded and the bold stallion had begun to falter.
I will be with you, Shela, I thought, cleaving another skull, readying myself for the pike that would punch through my armor or the sword that would catch Blizzard unawares.
They pressed me and I could not fall back. My enemy stood more than ten ranks deep on every side. I felt Blizzard gather himself beneath me, he would rear and this time there would be no way to protect his underside. One of them would strike and then I would lose the bold stallion. A pikeman threw his weapon and it took me in the face, pushing my head back and making me see stars.
The time had come to die. To be with my family again. I shook my head as another warrior planted the end of his spear against my breast. Blizzard screamed from being wounded.
Faith, I thought, remembering Ancenon’s words. What faith have I? I had faith in Shela, and now she was gone.
With a rumble of thundering hooves, Free Legion lancers crashed headlong into the rear of the Confluni guard like a tidal wave. Later I would learn that my lieutenants, who watched in horror as I threw myself into the Confluni mass, simply decided that I lead by example and followed me suit. Lances killed one, two and three men for every mounted soldier, and then their swords came out and their momentum carried them well past the center of the advancing army, carrying me along in a wave. The pikemen who had pursued me had been caught along their right side and overrun. The Lancers’ victory renewed me and the Sword of War rose and fell again in a crimson wash, reaping a harvest of blood and brains to the insane anthem of screaming, moaning, crying, and calls for mercy. Dilvesh cringed back farther into my mind as I reveled in tribute to the god War. I think back on it now and I can remember a small part of me that saw this in horror and a huge part of me that knew a joy that exceeded orgasm in the physical pleasure it brought to me to kill this many people all at the same time.
“You took my wife,” I finally screamed in Confluni. “I will kill you all, I will kill every last one of you and hunt down your families and kill them, too. You will remember the White Wolf.”
I swung the sword over and over, killing and screaming, closing the distance between my lancers and the Free Legion. Unconsciously I returned to the place where she had died. If the Free Legion tried to stop me, then I would gladly kill every last one of them, too.
Blizzard clambered over the naked mound that was all that remained of the small city’s earth barricade. Men were screaming behind me. My allies parted before me, whether in respect or fear I didn’t know. On a dirty hill she lay on her back, Ancenon at her side.
I dropped my sword point first in the ground and dismounted. I knelt at her side, my gauntlet off and my hand on her breast. For a moment I felt nothing, then that sweet breast rose and fell. Blood fell from my face to spatter her leather harness.
I looked into Ancenon’s ambiguous eyes. They told me everything that I needed to know.
She lived. It had been close. He had gotten to her in time. She would live.
“Thank you,” I said. From rage to sorrow, my eyes misted and my nose filled with a burning, itching mass. I wept unashamed tears both of grief and relief.
“No need, your Grace,” he countered, a hint of a smile on his lips. “The two of you saved us all.”
“The two of us?” I asked, my voice cracking.
He nodded. “Look behind you,” he ordered me.
Trembling and weary, I obeyed. It took everything I had left, but I stood and looked to see a shaking Blizzard, his head down and his front legs splayed, so exhausted that he could barely stand, and bleeding. Next to him my sword had blood sliding from its perfect blade and soaking the ground - a hideous, man-eating plant.
Beyond them I saw the backs of our soldiers in advance, outside of the small city, being led by Arath and Nantar. Of all people, Karl lead my Wolf Soldiers and the Free Legion squads on one side, and the Free Legion fighting heroes’ style on the other, in a classic pincer, pressing the enemy against our mounted swordsmen.
Our troops had crushed our enemies, less than a thousand of them tried to claw their way back to the woods. Between them and their goal, the Free Legion warriors and mounted swordsmen ran slashing attacks under our lieutenants. Dilvesh had freed himself from my mind and had joined them on that big horse of his.
The Confluni had no leadership, no magic and were faced on three sides by what were now superior numbers. They were doomed. We would kill them all, just like Nantar had wanted. Just as I had tried to do myself.
My cheeks were drenched with blood and tears, Ancenon turned away to give me my dignity. Shela lived. Shela who loved me. Let the whole world burn in hell if I could just have that.
There is no stink like the stink of a battlefield. Men die and release their bowels, or get split from shoulder to crotch and dump their entrails on the ground. Birds descend like rain and pick them apart – the rats and other scavengers aren’t far behind them.
We had rebuilt the small city and were treating our men. Half of our warriors were injured somehow, of the two thirds who hadn’t died in the battle.
I had about 30 Wolf Soldiers left, led by Karl. They adored him – he had called up Free Legion support and saved their lives. All of them injured, Karl included with a nasty gash down the side of his arm, I had seen to them being treated before I had sought it for myself. Blizzard and I were both a mass of scratches – a particular nasty gash down the stallion’s whither would keep me off him for a week or more. My thigh burned from a sword wound, my ribs from a dagger, and I would bear a scar under my right eye for the rest of my life – the Mark of the Conqueror.
Which is what our men were calling me – Lupus the Conqueror, the Killer of Conflu. I had no idea how many lives I had ended – more than my share assuredly. Had she been able I am sure that Shela would be cursing a blue streak about the condition of my armor.
Now she lay in my pavilion, guarded by my wounded Wolf Soldiers, unconscious on a cot with me seated on a three-legged wooden stool, holding her hand. Three chests of gold and rare gems were arranged neatly in a corner – the take from the enemy, as yet uncounted.
“She will not die,” Ancenon assured me. I had not heard him enter and I didn’t react to his voice. Yesterday I would have had my sword at his throat before thinking.
“Nor will the child,” D’gattis added.
“Who else is here?” I asked without turning.
“Me,” Dilvesh said. I finally turned and regarded him with sad eyes. I had hurt him badly – his hands and his legs shook but he also would not die.
Dilvesh had a secret and I knew it. In the midst of everything else, I had robbed his very brain. He knew what had happened as well as I did. I had no need to reveal him – that is how it would stand.
“Conflu must retaliate in kind for this embarrassment,” D’gattis told me, coming right to the point. “A troop of no less than 20 left on foot – we cannot both pursue them and protect our assets here. We can expect a force of equal size in the week before we can recover and move our troops from here.”
“Why so long?” I asked. A week seemed like a long recuperation for any army. The Dwarves got up and moved the next day after the Battle of Two Mountains.
“Wounds become septic,” Ancenon told me. “Stitches tear, men move slowly. Better we should be caught here rested than fleeing and wounded.”
“Treat the wounds with alcohol and wrap them, then,” I said, looking back at Shela. Did I have to think of everything? “Then they’ll stay clean.”
“Alcohol?” D’gattis asked. “You would pour wine on an open wound?”
I shook my head. “Distilled alcohol,” I told him. “Fermented from grain – not wood, that’s poisonous. To kill the germs.”
“Germs?” Dilvesh asked. “What are germs?”
“We don’t drink fermented grain,” D’gattis said in his predictably snotty way.
“What are you talking about, Lupus?” Ancenon interrupted both of them.
I sighed, watching Shela sleep peacefully while Ancenon’s spell repaired her. This day just sucked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
High Spirits
Dilvesh devised a spell that could remove the pure alcohol from wine – much to the anger and chagrin of our soldiers.
At least they’d been left alive to complain.
We marched our two thousand, seven hundred remaining soldiers on the next day with no shirts and no wine – just alcohol, bandages and a burning desire not to meet twelve thousand more Confluni.
The female Wolf Soldiers and Legionnaires made for a much more appealing parade. Foveans had never had a renaissance, a “great awakening,” or any of the countless reformations that my world had seen. Their acceptance of women in a military came as perfunctorily as men working in a kitchen. They wore the same armor, they carried the same swords, they fought side to side or they died trying. Most women couldn’t cut it but there were some good ones who did.
And they tended to find their place in the whole unit. We didn’t have a woman wielding a five-foot sword in the second line of my squad of ten, but many of those wielding the pole axes were women. Those weapons were light, and although the women didn’t have the height to arc their weapons over the shields of the first line, they did come out between and alongside the shields, making for a whole new dimension of attack. And they made good archers, embracing the precision and working in unity better than many of the men.
My Wolf Soldiers and the troops that we had annexed from the Free Legion held the van under Karl – the Hero of Tamara. Who cares if he’d never been there? He’d received an intentional scar under his right eye like mine, inflicted with one of Genna’s daggers, our Badge of Honor now among the Wolf Soldiers, to be called The Mark of the Conqueror. We would wear our medals at all times.
Genna’s daggers would have to serve to remind me of her. She had vanished, and D’gattis couldn’t find her, neither could Dilvesh. His last recollection of her came from just before my mad rage. After that she was gone to him. We could only assume that we’d lost her in the confusion of the battle.
We retreated ahead of the garrison from a Confluni stronghold near Tamara. Our scouts under Drekk had marked them the day before, another twelve thousand strong or close to it. I’d have liked to recover her body, but not if we had to fight another battle to do it.
It had taken us ten days to march to the Tamaran glen from Teher. It would take us as many to get back if we marched by the most direct route. We planned no forced marches and no exploring - just beat feet for home. I walked Blizzard and could tell that the stallion would have been happier with me on his back, running like the wind.
Sorry, big guy, I thought to him. Not until that whither is healed. My own thigh burned and I should have been riding, but it made me feel disloyal to Blizzard, and the pain kept my mind off of my wife lying in a wagon.
The scar on my face kept my cheek twitching. I’m not vain but it bothered me. People looked in my face and focused on it now.
Arath predicted that the Confluni would call for relief from another city and send what they could muster to harass us the next day. Thorn’s woodsmen were forming our rearguard and our six hundred fifty remaining horse were supporting them. We were safe from anything but an overwhelming force the likes of which we had just defeated.
We had sent a squad of ten cavalry ahead with Nantar to inform Henekh of the results he had paid for. They carried over ten thousand bloody tabards with them on our plentiful spare horses to adorn his city walls. As far as we were concerned we had earned our money and were just escaping with our victory and our lives.
Surgeons had only recently begun to use alcohol to treat scalpels and sutures on my home world, no one had heard of doing that here. In my history it had begun around the time of WWI; the Civil War had seen the same bloody scalpel used on dozens of different patients and operating tables made of wood and washed off with a pail of water more for the convenience of the surgeon than the health of the patient. In those times more men died after a battle from infection than during combat from the bullet or bayonet.
Our men complained of the pain that the alcohol brought and of the stitches that held their wounds back together, but almost none became septic and we removed fewer limbs than any of our veterans would have thought possible. I remembered from training in Navy triage that alcohol applied directly on a wound would damage the tissue and cause as much harm as it could cure – but used sparingly on bandages with witch hazel applied directly on wounds
(and alcohol on every scalpel and suture needle) it destroyed the germs which would have fought us more insidiously than the Confluni National Guard ever could have. By the second day’s march, when our men weren’t dropping dead with fever, there were many more amazed expressions than there were men and women complaining about having to drink water instead of wine.
“And we can ferment grain for this?” D’gattis asked me, holding a vial of clear alcohol.
“It would be more efficient,” I said. I couldn’t be sure that the alcohol from grapes worked the same as the alcohol from grain, although it appeared to. “I wish that I had told you about the alcohol and witch hazel earlier – think how many lives we would have saved.”
D’gattis shook his head. “Some, perhaps many,” he said, “but don’t blame yourself, Lupus. No one can think of everything. You seemed to believe that we knew this.”
I did. How much had I taken for granted? How much common knowledge could I use to change civilization here? I wished I knew how to refine stainless steel – if you refined stainless steel, that is. I knew from nuclear power that it consisted largely of chromium and nickel – maybe some experimentation might be a good idea. I knew how to make a one or three-phase AC generator, and how to make a boiler and maintain chemistry in a steam plant. With that knowledge I could make a power plant. I did not, however, know how to make a light bulb, a refrigerator, or anything else that used electricity. I would have to look into that, too.
D’gattis looked back over his shoulder, then back at me. Both of our horses had been wounded but he had simply moved to another. I alternately walked next to the wagon that carried my still unconscious Shela, or rode on the back of it. I felt sullen after the battle with the CNG, as if my brain were full of ashes. Miles moved slowly and this talk helped pass the time, nothing more.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 46
