The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4)

by Igor Ljubuncic

  So the northerners must be aware of the few Eracians trying to be heroes just behind them. Why would they not take more precaution then? Why leave their baggage train almost unprotected? Why bother loading the barges when the bridge could also be used?

  Mali suspected it was damaged. Some of the pillars stood at funny angles, and maybe the floods and the strain had made sections partially collapse or bend. She wondered if the entire army had crossed the river just there or followed the near bank south to another, more favorable location. But the torrents had washed away the prints, making scouting that much trickier.

  “I sure do not like it,” Alexa admitted at last, and spat.

  “It’s such a succulent prize,” Mali whispered. If she ordered an attack, it would be a slaughter. The enemy would be pinned against the riverside, unable to maneuver, with no cavalry to counterattack. Their precious cargo would be lost. So why did she fear this?

  Ever since leaving the Barrin estate, they had enjoyed great success in combat. A couple of large, even tense skirmishes, a dozen smaller ones, countless interceptions of patrol units and small supply caravans, with few losses. She should feel confident and emboldened. Instead, she was chewing on fear.

  “I really don’t like it,” Alexa insisted.

  Mali nodded. She was still trying to figure out the terrain. But the plains and small, modest hills all looked the same. The heart of the realms was mostly flat, a bad place to get lost in. You had no way of knowing where you really were.

  Theresa wiped her runny nose on her sleeve. The woman was sick, but she refused to relinquish her duty even for a few days. “If we defeat them, that means, what, five or six thousand fewer of these bastards to worry about? And we gain control of the river crossing. So if the enemy needs to get back, they either travel north, all the way to Elfast, or go south to Ecol. With the winter closing in, the Hebane is not going to get any slower or less deep, so it’s a strategic win for us.”

  “Unless it’s a trap.” Mali voiced her suspicion for the tenth time that day.

  “I don’t think we should engage them,” Nolene added. “After all, we’ve long left Eracia. It’s no longer our war. We should go back home.”

  Mali looked at her youngest major. The woman was right, in a way. Fighting this war of sacrifice sometimes felt pointless. Who were they defending really? Their own realm? Their monarch? Who was their monarch?

  “For the time being, the enemy wants to hurry south, but I have a feeling they will circle back to Eracia once they finish whatever they are looking for.” Alexa knelt down. “They have ravaged half our realm already. So it’s coincidence or luck that took them away from Somar, but this isn’t an army to leave an unfinished affair behind them.”

  Like us, Mali thought. She had other reasons to press south. She wanted to get closer to her son. She wanted to meet James. She wanted to help him. And the enemy force was marching south, into his empire, and it would probably not stop until it saw the shores of the Velvet Sea.

  “We haven’t come here just to admire their organizational skills,” Finley chimed in. Mali had almost forgotten the colonel was there. But he and his staff mostly listened, deferring to her.

  “We do our best,” Mali murmured. Or die trying. She had never liked that idiom.

  Alexa grimaced. “This is bad. The earth is wet. Progress will be slow and tiring.”

  “Our food reserves are low,” Mali reminded her. A lithe, fast army could pack only so much salted beef and old cheese. They had a big advantage over the northern enemy, but that also meant the land was nude of anything edible by the time they got there. The abandonment, the rot, the bad weather, and the enemy hunger did their work quite thoroughly. “Those carts look heavy.”

  “A mouse got caught in a trap,” Alexa singsonged.

  Mali sighed. “We need to cross the river. We need to get to Ecol. If the town is empty, I want to salvage whatever we can before the snow. And if there are any Athesians left there, I want them to join our side so we can fight together.”

  Her eyes scanned the crowd around her, seeking doubt and opposition. They lingered on Gordon a moment too long. He had not said anything about her affair with Bjaras, but he knew. If he were hurt or just vexed, he never showed it. He pretended things were as usual, but he lacked his usual gusto, his passion. Perhaps she was a coward, and she had ruined everything, yet again.

  The fight would be a good distraction from her self-loathing, she figured.

  Less than an hour later, the Third Battalion and the Third Division moved forward, side by side, Finley’s heavier body on the east flank. Mali sat on a horse, in the center of her force, surrounded by a small guard. They just plowed on, toward the Hebane.

  The enemy stirred, and soon enough, shrill pipes moaned against the overcast sky. The two fishing villages hugging the bridge came alive. The convoy became a confused centipede, trying to untangle its many legs, but it could hardly move in time before the Eracian contingent slammed into it.

  White-clad soldiers started forming a weak, disarrayed picket line, but it looked pathetic. Hardly professional, with too-wide gaps, a bending front too near the sloping riverbank. Mali did not object to easy victories. They were preferable to hard ones, and to losses.

  Halfway to the enemy lines, she noticed Finley was lagging. That annoyed her. After so much time together, she expected more from her male colleagues. They were supposed to be able to march in discipline, and definitely maintain a unified spearhead.

  “What is he doing?” she remarked loudly, but mostly to herself.

  Alexa shielded her eyes. It was a dreary gray day, but the cloud cover was still quite brilliant, and patches of it shone like white gold, hiding the sun behind them. “Fuck.”

  Mali reined her horse. It fidgeted, displeased to halt in a stream of soldiers. The line parted and flowed around her, girls with grim faces, concentrating on counting their steps and watching their comrades on the left and right.

  Then she saw it, too, and she understood why Finley was lagging.

  No road dust, but she could see a blot of white-clad troops approaching from the north, converging toward Finley’s division. The enemy wedge was huge, and it probably counted just as many souls as the supply train near the river. The odds had just doubled against her.

  But that wasn’t all. The wedge was moving too fast for infantry.

  The enemy had horses, thousands of them, and it seemed to have learned how to ride.

  “Shit,” she heard herself say. Stay calm, composed. You must remain confident. “Keep moving.” Finley would have to fight his own war now. If she stopped, she would just create a choke point, making it impossible for all the troops in the rear to maneuver. Her own battalion might have fewer troops, but with its several detachments, it was a powerful, experienced force, and it could probably defeat the riverside contingent, especially since she had the advantage of terrain and movement.

  Not for long, it seemed.

  The marshy banks burst. But instead of ducks and other angry birds, a flock of enemy troops poured out, dashing onto the dry ground, joining the convoy troops, merging, edging the sharp ends of their spears forward. In unison, they closed ranks and advanced. The haphazardly arranged wagons became excellent defense points.

  “It is an ambush, all right,” Mali admitted.

  Alexa nodded once, slowly. There was nothing they could do now. They had to win the battle and cross the river. At least the far bank looked empty. There did not seem to be any enemy units there, but some might be hiding in the tall grass, or in the small village that dipped its fingers in the murky water.

  Arrows took flight from behind the loaded carts. Early shots, gauging the distance.

  “Spread about! Shields up!” Mali cursed under her breath as she uncinched her large oval wooden shield from the side of the saddle. Holding that thing while riding was a challenge.

  Still more troops, all clad in shades of white and light gray, were coming out of their hiding places, by the
river, from behind small clumps of low, sagging trees, the seemingly abandoned fishing communities, everywhere. A squad here and there, a gang of spearmen joining the press, but it grew like an avalanche, collecting debris, growing fatter and more menacing with each second.

  Groans and screams rippled through her ranks. A few women sagged or knelt down, weighted down by the iron rain, pierced through shoulder or calf. Walking under an arrow shower was a chilling affair. She had always hated it. There was nothing you could do but silently count and thank your luck.

  With bad visibility, she could not see the whole front line. The bridge was there, still looking intact and yet somehow brittle and wounded. Maybe it could not be crossed. Maybe she would have to fight for the barges, but how could she hope to load her girls onto those fidgety rafts under fire?

  She had wondered about the enemy. Well, it had responded finally. With force, precision, and determination. All her illusions were gone.

  Then she remembered something.

  “Major Donal!” she shouted, pushing sideways through the thick press. Arrows clattered all around her.

  The Elfast officer was leading his own regiment on the right flank. He slowed down. His aide raised a small red flag, and the snail behind him bunched and halted.

  “Commander!” His voice came shrill, crisp with terror.

  “Please send a company back. I want them to bring the northerner called Bjaras here. Shield him well. But get him here quick.”

  He saluted, and a handful of his light riders detached and headed back, away from the killing. The noncombat troops, the supply units, and her prisoners waited less than half a mile behind the main force, with their own small protection. Now that she thought about it, the enemy might even try to strike from a third direction, but that was unlikely. Mali had scouts patrolling the area for several miles north and west. They would have warned her.

  Taking a deep breath, she headed back into the mayhem. The arrows kept raining, coming like hail in quick, deadly waves. They didn’t kill many, but they did not need to. It was enough to cause morale to plummet and make everyone’s guts tighten into a hard, cold knot. Soon enough, the line was wavering just as the two nations collided.

  She tried to direct the combat as best as she could, but the fifty paces of distance between her and the bloodshed was like an infinite chasm. Her throat was sore, and she was shouting and waving, but the battle just took its own random course. It was now up to the training and instincts of her subordinates.

  Now and then, she flicked her eyes left, trying to see how Finley was coping. But it was too hard to see. Damn, she had fallen into this trap like an amateur. The enemy had waited for so long before retaliating. Well, they could afford all their losses, it seemed, so they didn’t need to fight back when she wanted them to.

  The Eracians seemed to be doing well, because she found herself nudging her horse over a sprawl of bodies, the human carpet red and muddy. The enemy wagons were right there, bristling with arrows, caked in blood, decorated with unmoving human dolls.

  The soft ground sucked on the hooves and feet, making people and animals struggle. The din was unbearable, one long cough of metal and meat and squishy wetness that was part autumn, part pure, sweaty pain.

  “We need to get to the bridge!” she swore.

  Soldiers pressed against her, keeping her safe, and she crabbed forward, into the enemy mass. The white men fought well, and whatever they lacked in skill, they compensated for in numbers.

  Like Dwick again, she thought. But back then, they had all been green or rusty, or both. Now, she was fighting for her life when she could have just admired the enemy efforts from afar, timing her attack more carefully. Desperation and cockiness would do that to you.

  I won’t get to see my son, she lamented, ducking as splinters of hacked wood flew above her head. Mali was suddenly panicking. Why was she fighting this war? To defend Eracia? Well, she had left her realm long behind. She had defeated the Namsue. Why keep killing? Maybe because she missed this sorry thing called war. Maybe because that was what she was meant to do, rather than waste her life pretending to be a scribe in some shithole, keeping her regrets and mistakes well hidden. This was better. Right?

  A snarling male face stepped into her view. She took a splinter of a second figuring out who it belonged to. Not one of her troops, or Finley’s. She slashed, and the face split in two.

  The fighting wouldn’t end. Now and then, Mali looked up and tried to figure out where the sun might be. It was still behind a gray blanket, but she knew it was afternoon already. Not a good time to still be fighting a desperate battle.

  But her troops held formation and pushed and pushed, slicing into the enemy ranks with efficiency, and the enemy was yielding. All those months of fighting the nomads were paying off, it seemed. She was tired, but there was still fire in her muscles, and she could still swing the blade. The northern force edged away, melting along the riverbank, but not across the span of wooden road laid above the Hebane.

  Air. It was cold and refreshing, and suddenly, there was so much of it. Mali found herself staring at the leaden river surface. From afar, it had looked like a sheet of beaten glass, but up close, it was oily, with silt and vegetation bobbing on the surface. The scattering of dead men drifting south did little to improve the sight. The fighting had killed all the cattails, and the earth was pocked with thousands of footprints. An old willow was watching the battle, swaying, bodies heaped around it as if resting in the shade.

  The bridge was maybe a stone’s throw away. Silent, free of any souls.

  One of the barges had lost its mooring and was drifting away. A handful of soldiers were standing on it, still fighting. The wiser ones jumped into the Hebane and swam back to the shore. Others just kept trying to kill one another, and soon their grunts and shrieks were lost.

  “Commander! Commander!”

  Mali spun around. Dolan’s aide was waving a small light-blue flag. It meant soldiers returning from a mission. She liked the man’s methods. Half a dozen riders pushed through the weary lot of panting men and women and joined her side. Bjaras was holding dearly to one of the armored horsemen, his eyes wide.

  She slid off her saddle. Her troops helped the curly carpenter dismount. He was hunched low, and he looked afraid. He kept looking around him, trying to figure out what was happening.

  “Bjaras! You need to help me. You need to understand me!”

  Of course he did not. He was still a silly, handsome enemy man, and she did not know what lurked inside his head. But she needed his perspective on the combat. She needed to hope he might be able to tell her something, anything.

  “Bjaras, if you see something important, tell me.” She saw Alexa approaching, two junior officers in tow behind her.

  A messenger trotted over, kicking mud. So young, she was barely a woman. “Sir, Corpsman Lydia wants to know if it’s safe to retrieve the wounded.”

  Mali was annoyed by the distraction. “Does it look safe? No. We ought to cross the river. We should.” Should we? “Bjaras, talk to me. Why aren’t your countrymen fleeing there?” Too easy. It was too easy. She held the west bank now, and it seemed most of her battalion and its auxiliaries were there, intact. Her enemy had lost maybe half its troops, and the rest were beating a slow retreat into the soggy fields.

  Way too easy.

  The girl nodded and dashed away. Alexa rushed to replace her. “Well, it seems like we’ve beaten this lot. We help Finley now?”

  The Third Division was still fighting the enemy cavalry some distance to the north. Smartly, the colonel had deployed some of his units to the rear so the bridge contingent could not circle behind him. His main body held good formation, and it did not seem in distress, but it seemed like he would be busy for a while. The evening was gently creeping in, and she did not want to be fighting—or worse, crossing the bridge—at nightfall.

  Mali looked back at the bridge, to the other side. Why didn’t the northerners flee over? It makes sense. They
could hold the other side with a token force. No sign of enemy troops there yet. But maybe she was due some luck after all. Maybe the enemy had not timed all its moves perfectly, and maybe a third force had been delayed, and she had the crossing.

  Or maybe they were smarter than she believed.

  “Get some engineers to inspect the bridge. I want to make sure it’s safe to cross!”

  “What about Finley!” Alexa pressed.

  Mali blew snot on the ground, inhaled sharply. “No. We go across, and he follows. Relay the order. We disengage, and if needs be, we will fight the enemy cavalry on the other side, with our spears lowered at the bridge, not the other way around.”

  Alexa pointed. “You know what will happen if another force turns out to be there!”

  Mali pushed a thumb into her jaw joint, trying to ease the thumping of blood in her ears. “Yes, I know. But I suspect if we stay here, they will soon turn up and block the crossing, and then we will be really buggered. Get Finley to begin his retreat toward the bridge. Order Gordon to move the supplies here. Now.”

  She could not describe the frustration she felt for leaving the Third Division to fight its own battle, but there was no other way. Her girls had to be ready to dash to the far side of the Hebane if they spotted any sign of another ambush force.

  Sappers streamed past and stepped onto the bridge. Like little monkeys, they spread, some going forward, some lowering themselves on ropes to inspect the columns and supports. A small body of crossbowmen hurried forward. Nothing happened, and they crossed to the far side safely.

  One of the engineers whistled and waved. “Get a cart over. We need to test the weight,” their lieutenant translated. He was a short, stocky man, with a huge chunk of hair missing from the side of his skull.

  “What about all these carts?” Alexa asked, still winded.

  Mali sighed. “We leave them here. We have our own wagons.” Shame, but she had not calculated this battle that well.