The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (46 page)

Sophie’s column was wading through, pushing. The water churned up to their necks. Women walked with swords and spears lifted, trying to get to the other side, faltering, dying. Such an unnecessary blunder. Those struggling up onto the far bank slipped in the mud and fell and rolled, and their comrades stepped on their arms and legs. Opposite, the nomads yelled their battle cries and hurled forward, chopping, stabbing. Sheets of ice turned pink before they cracked with the weight of dead women.

Big-boned female soldiers with axes were sapping at the tower bases, trying to cut one of the posts. Their friends stood nearby, holding shields up, protecting against the archers. Her fighters jostled, trying to get onto the crowded bridge, trying to cross that narrow span of killing.

Off to the right side, the skirmishers were keeping to the neutral ground, protecting the exposed right flank. The second bridge stood unharmed, and the Ram’arush were massing
there, too. Stupid Winfred’s stupid soldiers had left the right side open, attacking too far west. She could not see Gordon.

No sight of Meagan either, but she must be busy cleaning the farms farther upriver.

Mali felt an arrow hiss by her side. She spat a phlegmy curse, her chest burning from too much cold air. There was a cheer ahead. She snapped her head up and saw the left tower post snap and then the rest of the structure toppling, timber crashing, splinters flying. The girls rushed to escape the debris.

The tower was supposed to go prone against the bank, but nature’s misfortune took it the other way. The platform bounced into the bridge, cracked like an egg, then shattered into the Marock. The women crossing the river, over and through, could only gape with horror as the tower collapsed on their heads. A ragged ripple of screams erupted, wood groaning and popping. The last row of women on the bridge was a mangle of red pulp. The bridge sagged. More soldiers slipped and fell into the black, icy water.

Mali had to wait. There was nothing else to do. She jabbed a finger into the shoulder of one of the runners, a lithe, homely girl with hair on her upper lip. “Tell Meagan to get ready. Find her! She must cross right after Theresa and Abigail.”

The woman nodded and ran off as fast as she could through the snowy mud.

Sophie’s soldiers had secured a foothold on the other side and were holding—barely. Mali jabbed another scout. “Inform Captain Gordon that I want his men here. Now!”

Mali hunkered behind a screen of shields, trying to watch as best as she could. Assessing war from hip high was a tricky business. She always wished she were a bird in these kinds of situations. But Dwick had only the stench of pigs and flat fields as a meager offering.

The skirmishers jogged close, knelt by the river, and aimed; they had short bows mostly, but at such close distance, it really did not matter. They loosed a volley into the crowd of nomads. Then, another one, quickly, hardly aiming. You did not have to aim into a press of people perhaps thirty paces away.

The defenders faltered and fell back. Theresa’s company crossed. Good. Abigail’s girls followed. Soon, Sophie’s girls were rescued. Meagan’s troops followed, thundering over the damaged bridge, riding toward the town. There were tribesmen lurking around the farms, preparing to counterattack. The horsewomen slammed into them, swinging their swords. The random honking and grunting of the penned animals became a long squeal of abject terror. Even the animals could feel the panic.

Gordon’s men arrived and held position while Mali rushed past. She was worried about the second bridge and no one engaging the defenders there. But it was better to fight on the other side than here. As she rushed across, she gazed down. There were corpses piled like dead leaves near the bank, crumpled in the rushes, red and wet and already freezing. Too many.

Dwick, the pig town. The smell was quite potent, the cold and snow notwithstanding. Her battalion regrouped and hammered against the eastern district. There were not that many nomads here now. They lurked in narrow alleys, behind stacked crates and wagons, slithering through the smoky muck of the sties, but too few to stop the advance.

Mali could not hear anything above the pig cries. The animals moved as if they were on fire, ramming against the wooden fences, trying to get out. Soldiers walked past, boots sloshing in piss and shit and gravelly mud. Hoarse breaths, whimpers of pain. Here and there, a yelp of surprise, a gurgle of agony.

Mali was watching left and right, trying to figure out the best route deeper into the town. Once inside Dwick, she was
not quite sure where to go. Every little pen looked the same, the low roof, the boiling mass of pigs, the miasma of rotten food and squelchy chill. More screams.

Her troops reached the slaughterhouses and tanneries, low, long buildings, with deep channels for blood grooved through the earth, converging into the Marock just south. Here, the nomads waited for them, a big, thick mass of men in furs and leathers, armed with long swords and axes.

Alexa grunted. Her cheeks were flushed, almost two blobs of red. She spun her sword, feeling its balance. “Keep back, sir,” she said.

Mali wanted to smile. Being in the thick of the killing was no place for an army commander. But those times were gone. This was no longer some silly skirmish. This was the defense of the realm. She could not indulge in pleasantries.

Commanders were supposed to coordinate the movement of troops so things did not get out of control too much. But that kind of luxury worked when you had trained forces well practiced in taking new orders in the heat of the battle. With her rookies, she had to be there; she had to fight alongside them.

“Messenger!” she hollered. A man showed his face. Instinctively, she almost punched him, but she realized he was one of those soldiers Royce had given her. She could not recall the boy’s name. He stood there, panting, waiting. “Where the fuck is Major Meagan?”

He shrugged stupidly. Alexa pointed behind the last row of abattoirs. The cavalry was engaged with another body of nomads and could not charge this lot from the flank. Mali glanced behind her. She thought she could see Gordon’s men holding the bridge, but it was hard to tell.

Then Mali realized the battle was not going well. Her forces were being pushed back.

She frowned. Then she cursed and threw her sword down.

She retreated toward the nearby pigsty and jumped up onto its low roof, scrabbling with her hands, trying to get a hold of anything. Her fist closed around a broken spar, and she yanked herself over the lip, onto the boarded slope. Gently, she knelt. It would not be a good thing if the boards broke right then. Not only would she land in well-churned hog shit, the frightened animals might actually try to bite her.

Not a very tall vantage point, but good enough.

“What are you doing? Get down!” Alexa yelled.

Mali ignored her. It seemed half the Ram’arush forces were concentrated here. She could not see beyond the next line of buildings, but the absence of solid combat noise told her Winfred’s men had probably kept going farther and farther west, away from her.

A horn sounded. That was Gordon, signaling an enemy flanking motion. She gritted her teeth. If they stayed here, the nomads would get behind them. Then, they would have to fight across the bridge one more time, exhausted and with what seemed like a thousand tribesmen chasing them.

She looked down at Adala, her bugler. “Sound a retreat now!”

The girl puffed her cheeks and blew a long, sad note. The rear ranks of the troops turned, confused. Mali waved her arms.
Back, back across the river
, she gestured. An arrow clattered into the boards by her side.

“Get down, or I will beat you bloody,” Alexa growled.

Mali lay on her belly and slithered backward, hoping she would not slip and bang her chin against the edge. Then, she swung and her legs and brushed the backs of the pigs inside the pen. Finally, the momentum carried her back, and she hopped down, boots sinking in mud.

“We go back, now!” She picked up her sword.

And so, the Third Independent Battalion suffered its first defeat. First battle, first humiliation. They managed to get across the river without breaking rank and took position about a quarter of a mile from the bridge, Gordon’s men covering the retreat. By then, most of the women were walking like drunkards, dead tired, vomiting through their noses and mouths, crawling through snow.

Mali watched the last soldiers reach safety and then allowed herself a slow breath of relief, ignoring her fury for now. There would be time for anger later. The forlorn notes of bugles told her the other two divisions were also retreating.

She realized she could not see Sophie anywhere. “Where’s Sophie?”

“Drowned,” some nameless face offered.

Mali kept breathing through her nose, trying to stay calm. Snot whistled in and out of her nostrils, sticky, refusing to come off. She wiped it on her glove, down the leg of her trousers.

“I want a full report,” she said vaguely. “How many killed, wounded.”

Theresa limped over. There was no blood on her uniform, only specks of gray mud. “Sir, what was that?”

Mali stabbed the tip of her weapon into the ground. “That was a fuckup,” she said.

Gordon showed up then, too, his face lit with emotion. Silly bastard. But to his credit, he went away just as quickly, looking grim and professional.

“Major Abigail’s wounded, sir. Took a wood splinter in her shoulder. Looks nasty,” someone was saying.

“Where’s Meagan?” she asked again. The girl just kept disappearing.

“We don’t know, sir,” an apologetic voice panted in reply.

“She’s left behind?” Mali snarled. “We don’t leave troops behind.”

“I’m here! I’m here!” Meagan was shouting. She had dismounted and was trying to push through toward her commander. Mali smiled weakly when she saw her whole and unbruised. Only her legs were spattered in blood and filth; it looked like a new set of boots.

Thus, the battle ended for Mali.

She had her officers all accounted for in some way, she had left no soldiers at the enemy’s mercy, and she had more or less rescued her sorry force intact, barring some deadly beginners’ mistakes. But that was war. Oh, how her memory had fooled her.

“What do we do now?” Alexa was holding a skin of water for her. Mali took it and sucked slowly, trying to breathe in between swallows. “We stay here?”

Mali nodded. “We stay here, and we wait for Finley and Winfred.”

Alexa grabbed the skin from her hands and drank herself. “I’ll set up a pair of fires and get all the women with wet uniforms to change. We don’t want any more deaths, do we?”

Mali sighed. This was only the start. The winter had hardly begun. “No, we do not.”

CHAPTER 34

F
or a brief moment, Sergei wondered if anyone of great importance had ever sat in this very chair he occupied; then he steered his mind back to the matters at hand. Two letters.

The first one was good news. From back home.

Not until he had glimpsed his wife’s beautiful script did he remember how much he really missed his family, and how this dreadful war had dehumanized him.

Gosha’s feet had healed well, and now he was learning to walk, rather well. Galina had tamed her third falcon, and had become the envy of all the young ladies at the court. Boris was reading fluently, and Patriarch Yaroslav was thinking the boy should join the clergy. Baby Gerassim was turning into a plucky little boy. His teeth nagged him, so he was biting his brothers and sister all the time. They called him Gera the Biter.

His son’s widow was also faring well, and so was the child who would never see his father. Princess Natasha had named him in honor of her own father, Duke Rolan. Sergei would have preferred a name from his own lineage, but that hardly mattered now. Gosha would be the king after he died, it seemed.

Sergei hoped the boy’s legs would serve him well enough. A hobbled ruler was not the best example for his people,
especially not a proud and hard nation like Parus. But he might become a striking figure in a saddle, as a mounted knight.

Vera missed him a lot. She was sad on her own, and she constantly worried about him. Vasiliy was doing fairly well, managing the realm after the war. All in all, his homeland was quiet and prosperous. His nobles had gone back to their provinces drunk on the glory of their victory against the unbelievers, the peasants were peaceful, the taxes kept flowing, and the second harvest had turned out bountiful. At least he did not have to spare too much thought to any trouble in Sigurd. He could focus on the tragedy and misery that Athesia was.

The second letter was less friendly, far grimmer.

It was not so much a letter as a formal protest by the patriarchs and matriarchs of the realm against his obvious neglect of faith. Signed by the leading priesthood in the capital, the document outlined all the failings since his conquest. He had not provided sufficient building materials, labor, and money for the restoration of holy places across Athesia. He was being too lenient toward the unbelievers. He was not erecting new shrines and temples as fast as they wanted. He was not shipping enough workers and gold to the Safe Territories to support the faith. Some of the holy places were still abandoned ruins, with ghosts and birds the only inhabitants since the Feoran scourge.