The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2) (51 page)

A thunder of noise exploded into the night. The Parusites were waking up. Armor jangled. Weapons clanked. A horn screamed into the night, howling. Drums started beating, the heart of a slow, lumbering beast. Streaming through the West Gate was a contingent of two thousand Athesian spearmen, packed tightly, shields raised above their heads against arrow fire, moving toward the Red Caps. Now
that
was the real diversion.

The spear force was going to try to break through the siege lines west, drawing the bulk of Princess Sasha’s troops there. A similar detachment was going to try to destroy the siege engines being assembled in the south camp. Once finished with their work, they would retreat into Roalas, covered by archers and catapults from the battlements.

Gerald’s force was going on the real mission that night. A thousand men total, divided into two groups. The west group was comprised entirely of criminals, the scum of Roalas, the filth that floated in gutters. They had been given a very simple choice: die at the gallows or try to fight their way to freedom through the Parusite lines. If they survived the night, they would be pardoned and forgotten. If they somehow miraculously survived, came back into the city and joined the army, they would even be honored and given rewards. It was a desperate measure, but Gerald had no other choice. The criminals would try to kill and rape the Red Caps while he carried out the second part.

That was another lesson he remembered from Emperor Adam.

On the far east flank, his force of six hundred men was going to try to kill Commander General Driscoll, formerly of the Athesian Ninth Legion. A traitor.

The man had surrendered to the Parusites less than a week after the initial attack. Rather than trying to relieve the city, he had led his force into the Red Caps camp, waving a flag of truce, and bent knee to King Sergei’s sister. Now, the Ninth Legion fought under the Parusite banners. It could not be tolerated. The man had to die. Gerald intended to murder him personally and present the coward’s head to the wife he had left in Roalas.

The commander of the City Guard could not see beyond the siege walls toward the west and south to see what was happening. The only sign of commotion was a fresh salvo of severed heads, tracing a hundred orange lines into the velvet night. The act would infuriate the Parusites. So keen on religion, they viewed the desecration of bodies as blasphemy. Perhaps their wrath would make them reckless.

The rolling cacophony of sound intensified, thousands getting ready to die. Unseen in the frenzy, his force skulked toward the Red Caps’ picket line. They all wore padded armor and gray-green leathers, no mail or no plate. They had to be quick and quiet. Even their faces were smeared in soot and grease, to make them a part of the night.

Only fifty paces away, they could see the Parusite sentries, swords drawn, staring into the night. Behind them, small fires burned, illuminating the soldiers in an unholy halo. The first line of Athesians stopped, knelt, raised their crossbows, and fired. A dozen guards went down.

Each man was armed with two crossbows, plus either a sword, a hammer, or an ax. No pole-arms, no bulky, ungainly weapons. Their goal was to inflict maximum damage to the enemy—hamstring any horse they found, burn any supply cart they saw, behead any officer, be they man or woman. They would cripple the Red Caps as much as they could. No talking, no negotiations, no mercy, no prisoners.

A lone guard dog was barking at them, running ahead of the advancing force, but not quite approaching them. One of the soldiers tried to kill it, but he missed. The bolt slammed between its paws. Growling and whining at the same time, the dog ran away. The enemy tents were only paces away.

Gerald slowed down and raised his crossbow. “Steady, boy,” Lieutenant Clive, a grizzled, stooped soldier from his father’s time, whispered. The man was wheezing, out of breath, but he kept pace with the youngsters.

Gerald had not expected his first kill of that night to be a beautiful woman. She emerged from her tent, half dressed, trying to don her helmet. The bolt struck her in the neck. The blow of the shot made her spin once before she toppled like a lifeless doll.

“You did well, boy,” the old man hissed.

The captain of Roalas blinked.
I just killed a girl
, he thought stupidly. He tossed his crossbow away and drew his sword. His palms were clammy with cold sweat; his grip almost slipped.

Cries of alarm erupted around them as the enemy camp woke to yet another attack. The Athesians, silent and grim, their jaws locked with determination and primal terror, surged forward, cutting women down. Those who hesitated in front of a freckled face or a slim figure died. Within seconds, no Athesian men held any illusions about who they faced. Fighting women was cruel, but it had to be done. The Athesian female soldiers had no such worries; they never once showed the mercy or reluctance of their male comrades.

Real war was nothing like training. In the past three weeks, the veterans had tried to prepare them for combat, making them rub their skin in offal and drink cow blood and spar with real weapons. But it was the indifference, the cold, detached indifference that shocked Gerald. You fought like a puppet, with no discernible emotions, your limbs moving of their own volition, survival taking over. You did not waste time thinking. It was lethal. He was—

He parried just in time, stumbling over a tent line. Another veteran stepped just in time to save him from being impaled, using the big ax to hack the woman’s arm off. She shrieked and fainted almost immediately. The soldier finished her, then turned toward Gerald.

“Foolish, man.”

Gerald wiped the hot spray of blood from his face. He could not be distracted. No. He shook his head. He followed the horde.

They moved as a tight pack, covering one another’s flanks, two or three men working as a group, one attacking, the other two probing for openings and protecting the front man. It was quite effective. They wormed through the enemy camp, deeper and deeper.

His eyes flicked left and right, trying to spot surprise attacks. Blood pounded in his ears, making him almost deaf to the external world. Breathing was hard. The air was thick and reeked of hot blood. He gagged. Then, he saw a Red Cap crawling away from the frenzy, clutching her entrails, dragging them over dirt. He vomited.

“Breathe, son! Breathe!” Clive was shouting, holding his shoulders. “You two, close the gap. Cover the commander. Support fire, now.”

Two dozen Athesians detached from the main force and knelt down, arming their crossbows. Confused, disoriented, Gerald reached behind his back for the second unit, only to realize he had lost it in the fray.

“Focus, lad!” Clive was cursing. The man slapped him. An arrow slammed into the old man’s side. He grunted and folded. “Bugger. Fuck me.” He spat. They dragged him away, despite his protests. “Break the shaft. Break the…aaargh. Fuck me!” he howled through a rag as an inexperienced squad healer tried to dislodge the arrow from the wound. Clive slapped him, pushing him away. With his own knife, he cut the cloth and leather around the entry point. It was a lucky flesh wound, through the fat slab at his side. Screaming defiance, the old man sliced through the tissue and yanked the arrow out.

Sergeant Keith knelt by Gerald’s side. Bows twanged. A wave of Red Caps went down. “Are you all right, Commander?” he moaned, gulping air in panicked gasps.

Gerald nodded mutely. He rose. He felt weak and drained. He wiped the bile from his mouth and nose.

“Move, move,” Clive was barking, a visage of fury and resoluteness.

Their progress slowed as they hurled into a press of Parusites. The second echelon of enemy troops had had enough time to regroup. They fought with frenzy and skill, easily matching the Athesians. Within minutes, a hundred of his soldiers were dead or dying. Desperate men fired their crossbows at point-blank range, discharging weapons into friend and foe alike.

“We must keep going,” Gerald shouted, sanity coming back to him. He was becoming a real soldier. “Form up. Form, you whores!” he hollered at the top of his lungs.

At a snail’s pace, the force sobered up and pulled back, shoulder to shoulder, an impregnable wall. They veered away from the main section of the camp, heading toward the flanks, ever toward the flanks. Wary of a counterattack, the Parusites did not follow.

As soon as they were free, the Athesians broke into canter, rushing toward the exposed north side of the enemy garrison. Commander Driscoll was out there somewhere.

Gerald could sense everything around him. See, hear, smell. His mind was empty of any rational thoughts. And when they came, they came as filthy froth on an angry wave, deep, simple, primitive. He could smell blood, and it did not repulse him. He could hear screams, and they sounded hollow. The grisly scene was just a blur of colors and shapes. And then he saw one of his privates lag behind, dragging a corpse in her wake, pulling it by its hair.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

The woman looked at him as if he were mad. “Spoils of war,” she said stupidly.

“Soldier, let’s go,” he barked. She nodded, dropped her prize, and joined the main body.

More fighting. It was becoming easier now, but he was dead tired. Excitement was fading, being replaced with bone-deep fatigue. But he no longer thought about what would happen. He just felt he would live through this night somehow. More fighting. More death. Most of the victims were the green troops.

The survivors of the Sixth and Third fought with tears in their eyes. They hacked at their enemies long after they had died. Men collected noses and ears and breasts. It made such perfect sense there and then.

And suddenly, there was nothing, just the empty night. They had broken through the enemy ranks. A weak cheer broke among the survivors. But then, just as quickly, it died. In their frenzy, they had strayed too far from the center of the Red Caps garrison. They needed to go back and complete their task.

“We need to go back,” Gerald whispered. His throat was hoarse. He realized he was kneeling, breathing in big, hungry gasps, recovering from the mad dash. Around him, men and women lay on the ground, gasping for air, retching drily. No one attacked them. They were given a moment of respite.

In a blessed heartbeat of eerie silence, they were in the eye of the storm. In the darkness around them, death was rampaging, cackling madly. Fires were raging, whipping at the ebony sky. Red Caps soldiers were running around like ants, trying to tame the chaos. North of the camp, seen through the flicker of blaze and smoke, a swarm of riders was milling, preparing for a counterattack. The Parusites were finally coming to their senses. It would not be long before they fully recovered from the surprise attack and launched their own offensive.

Gerald stared. Some of the riders were male, wearing Athesian uniforms, haphazardly emblazoned with new coats of arms. Traitors. They came in small groups, conferred with the enemy, and then rode back into the night. Gerald looked farther north. There was another camp lurking in the gloom, coming to life, with a thousand pale yellow eyes.

Not a hundred paces away, one of the Athesian renegades dismounted. He had not seen the attackers. They were hidden from sight by the grass and thorny bushes and loose rock.

“Commander Edgar demands to know what’s going on,” he said.

A Parusite officer turned toward him. She was trying to coordinate her soldiers. “Tell him to get the fuck here! Stop masturbating in your fucking tents and come to help us.”

The Athesian just nodded, mounted, and rode away.

Gerald drank a trickle of water from a tiny skin at his waist. Edgar? Major Edgar? He was now the commander of the Fifth Legion? Had they turned coat, too? Two complete Athesian legions? It was a disaster. This meant there were no friendly forces left in Ecol or Bassac.

Lieutenant Clive crawled toward him. The old man was bleeding from a nasty gash above his ear. “Son, we don’t have much time. We gotta get moving.”

Gerald nodded. Within seconds, two squads of men left the force, heading north. Their goal was to break through the last of the enemy lines and try to reach any surviving Athesian forces. They would try to unite the pockets of resistance and march back to relieve the capital. But Gerald had not expected the Fifth to surrender to the enemy. His men would have to forge a path through yet another camp. He hoped they would make it.

Two legions turned bad, another lost in Caytor. Three other legions decimated. Two-thirds of the Athesian standing army were gone. And he had a bunch of defeated men and city watchmen who had never signed up for this kind of war.

“Commander, we need to move,” Clive pleaded. The man was nursing his side, but he would not give up. In fact, the longer they fought, the tougher the man became, it seemed. He didn’t have much strength to begin with, but he scraped his lot like a beggar child scooping honey from a jar.

“I’m going after Driscoll,” Gerald said.

“We’re done here, sir. We need to go back before they close ranks.”

They were down to just half their strength, many wounded, every one of them exhausted. But he could not give up.

“We march into the heart of the enemy camp and finish what we started here. Kill that traitor Driscoll. Anyone feels like quitting? You can crawl back to Roalas. I won’t hold it against you. You’ve done well here.”

It took some time before the whisper of his grim speech trickled to the rest of them. They were all staring at him with adoration and wonder. No one moved. They waited.

Old Beno had told him stories of war, but they paled compared to this moment of brotherhood. Deep in their hearts, they knew, if they survived this night, there would be no other memory as intimate as this, not family, not marriage or children, not even wild lovemaking. The entire philosophy of life tapered to pure survival, and it depended on the person standing next to you. It didn’t matter if you knew him or her; it didn’t matter if you hated one another in peacetime. Out here, alone, drowning in death, the man next to you was your hope, your savior, the focus of your strength. Nothing you did tonight would shame you. Neither tears, nor cries of anguish from your cracked lips, nor the shit in your pants. Whatever happened, your pain, your valor, your life would be remembered by those around you.