The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (70 page)

Until he remembered that paid soldiers were hired for killing.

“I have a new task for you, Captain.”

Doubt washed over the mercenary’s too-honest face. “Your Highness.”

Sergei turned and pointed north. “Princess Sasha is engaged in heavy fighting against the Athesian rebels near Ecol. This is a great opportunity to put your troops to battle and prove once again the renowned fighting skills of the Borei.”

The smile on Captain Speinbate’s face never wavered, but Sergei could see the muscles tensing in his jaw. “War is our profession,” he said almost piously.

Sergei recalled Lisa’s symbolic sacrifice from earlier. Removing the Borei from the countryside might win him favor with the locals. He would have to find a different way to finance the realm, something that did not remind the small folk of their empress’s defeat and humiliation.

“I expect you to march in three days, with full provisions. You will take the entire Borei garrison. A regiment of my men will accompany you.”

The captain raked his hair. At his side, that strange man Blue-eyed Geert was waiting patiently, with a face like a wooden log. “What is our mission?”

Sergei snorted. “That is quite obvious. To bring about a quick defeat of the rebel force. You will gain entrance to Ecol and hold the city. Preferably, you will destroy the enemy troops and take captive both Emperor James and Empress Amalia. Or you will kill them and bring their bodies to me, intact.”
I will not trust Amalia’s death again until I see her corpse
.

The Borei frowned. “So she lives then?”

Sergei sighed. “Yes, it would seem so, Captain.”

Speinbate cheered up. “Well, I am now a noble son of Parus. I will gladly defend my realm.”

Sergei had to force himself to remain civil before the mercenary. “Indeed. Your payment will be in accordance with the expected homage. You are dismissed.”

He remained on the wall, basking in the sun, looking at the world wake from its winter slumber. Spring was a time of hope, of rejuvenation, but all he could see was more death ahead. His conquest never seemed so far from being over.

His head spun with thoughts, Sasha’s warnings, Lisa’s pleas to be courageous and halt the killing, the messages that promised bloodshed and suffering and turmoil. What should he do? He could not rely on the books to tell him what Pyotr had felt or what Emperor Adam had done in his time. That luxury was denied him. There was only one course of action.

He had come to Athesia to avenge his father, to restore pride to his nation. A meaningless task now, but it was the only certainty in his life right now. Perhaps his fate had been shaped in the lashes of his father’s switch against his back all those years ago, and he was only now grasping the truth.

I might never be as fearless and merciful as Adam or Pyotr. I might never win the hearts of the Athesians. They might never love me
. But he was the king of Parus, and he owed everything to his people. The king’s duty was to serve his nation. And that was what he would do.

CHAPTER 52

M
ali made a pained face and rushed into the bushes. A few moments later, there was a loud, squelching, unmistakable sound. She staggered back to her unit, white-faced, sweating, exhausted.

Spring had brought warmth and disease. Soldiers were no longer at risk of losing their limbs to the cold, but bad food, bad water, bad hygiene, and a wave of other maladies that came with the first thawing of snows kept most of the women busy day and night, their commander among them.

She was lucky her case was mild. Some women were bedridden, others vomiting and shitting blood thin as soup. A solid quarter of the force was incapacitated one way or another, but the worst thing was, they could not afford to stop and rest.

They had to fight the nomads.

That meant traveling a few short, ragged miles, then stopping. Units sometimes straggled hours behind the main body. There was little cohesion during the march, women rushing off to the sides of the road to empty their bowels and spit bile into the sodden grass. Then, they would try to chew and swallow a hard bite, because they needed energy, knowing all too well this would send them back to the bushes all too soon.

The big problem was dehydration. Women were dying with their skin shriveled like old fruit. No matter how much they drank, their guts would not keep anything. Corpsman Lydia was brewing maythen teas and giving women nothing but salted water, hoping to keep them alive. Her tricks seemed to work somewhat, but the girls were all frightfully weak.

Mali wiped a sheen of filthy sweat from her brow. She reached into a pouch containing her ration of water biscuits, but then she stopped herself. Carefully, she wiped her hands on the back of her trousers, then fished out a coin-size cracker and nibbled on it. Her stomach rumbled, aching for sustenance, but she knew she had to be careful. The only way for her to keep the food in was to eat slowly, throughout the day.

Her one consolation was that the Namsue seemed to be suffering the same fate. The road they followed was marked with the discarded bodies of dead nomads.

She paused in midswallow as her belly rumbled and roiled and made a burpy, bubbly sound. Her guts clenched, sending a three-fingered spasm down her groin, but then the urge to soil herself silly calmed. Well, she was getting better. She only had to rush into the bushes four or five times a day now, and her fever was almost gone.

The Third Battalion smelled of puke and feces. The yolk-like brown layer of pain was everywhere, in their hair, down the front of their shirts, on their boots. Shame was a distant concept. Mali believed she would never again be embarrassed about anything in her life if she survived this.

Alexa was unaffected, a random toss of random luck. She was glad she could rely on her best friend to take over while she was incapacitated.

They were going to call this the Shit Campaign, she mused.

The Namsue had led them far north, skirting the rich provinces to the east and heading for the Emorok Hills. Mali was not sure why they would go there, and she suspected they did not know either. But they had avoided getting caught in a trap with the Eracians pounding against them from two different directions.

It turned out the nomad force they were chasing was not the only body of enemy troops retreating north. Scouts reported at least another five thousand men from an unknown tribe marching farther west, with another Eracian unit at their heels. Maybe the nomads were not so stupid after all. Their ruse seemed to be working. They were forcing the defenders to pursue them, away from the capital, which meant fewer soldiers who could assist in the siege on Somar. It bought them time and allowed them to fight the Eracians on even terms.

With reinforcements from the Barrin and Elfast counties, Finley had some eleven thousand men and women under his command facing a somewhat smaller body of the tribesmen. They had only sporadically clashed, without any major engagement.

That was before the shitstorm.

Now, the armies were straggling, limping, leaving a wet brown trail behind them, converging toward an uncertain battle with a sizable percentage of the fighting force out of action. The mess could not be described. Discipline and morale no longer existed. The colonel seemed to have lost all control of his regiments, and it was only inertia and musty loyalty that kept the troops marching.

Finley’s men were faring no better than her girls, but men being men, they wailed and complained thrice as much. His entire division was following a whole day behind her battalion. Men rode in the backs of carts, and horses dragged stretchers,
sometimes two or three chained together. Those lucky enough to keep their health had given up their horses to their weaker sick comrades.

Meagan’s cavalry, augmented with Winfred’s stolen steeds, was also being used to lug the ill women, two to a saddle. They could barely afford to send as many girls scouting the road ahead. Fortunately, the enemy did not seem capable of mounting an ambush.

Mali spotted one of the horsewomen returning to formation from farther down the road, one of the animals still used for reconnoitering. The girl was riding a roan with thick, tufty fetlocks smeared in mud. She approached and saluted.

“Enemy scouted ahead, maybe a mile away, no more, sir.”

So close
, Mali mused. “Their entire body?”

The woman shook her head. “No, sir. Maybe two thousand. Looks like rear guard. They are in pretty bad shape, hardly walking.”

Mali closed her eyes, thinking. For more than two months, her force had limped after the nomads, playing hide-and-seek, trying to engage and destroy them in a large battle, without success. Meanwhile, they had passed villages deserted of men, wells spoiled with dead bodies; they had buried small children found rotting in the snowy fields. One in seven girls missed a toe now, taken by the frostbite. Many others had scars on their hands and faces. They had all grown lean on cold, hard food. The only warm lump in their bellies was the seething glow of revenge.

She had no idea what was happening in the south of the realm. Maybe the war had ended already, and she was a fool on a fool’s errand. Maybe Somar was in friendly hands, and people were eating fresh bread and sipping ale in comfy taverns. Or maybe Commander Velten had failed miserably, and the Kataji
were feasting on the charred corpses of dead Eracians. Maybe something else was afoot, something surprisingly pleasant or jarringly awful, but she was isolated in her shit-specked reality.

A month ago, she had still kept receiving news from Lord Karsten, still seen fingers of reinforcements trickling in, merging into their force. But the farther away they went, the more desolate their mission became. They were getting away from central Eracia, heading into the rural areas. The well-paved roads had become narrow, dappled in old, cracked cobbles and sometimes not at all. The few people that saw them pass by scowled and spat. The countryside had become wild and thorny.

Now, she had an opportunity to vent all her anger in one fell swoop.

“We attack,” she said.

Alexa frowned. “Can we mount an attack?”

Mali smiled weakly. “We will do our best. Relay the order. I want every able-bodied woman ready with her weapons. Get Captain Gordon to assemble his skirmishers, too.” She had not seen him much in the past few weeks. They were both too tired to rut.

Alexa sniffed. “All right, sir. We’ll get it done. But you stay here.”

Mali snorted. “Oh no, I am coming too.” She took a deep breath as if to show how healthy she was, ignoring the dizziness tugging at the corners of her eyes. “I will be fine.”

One hour later, a sorry force of maybe seven hundred women and a few odd companies from Finley’s division, who had gotten confused or lost or just found their way amid their female comrades, moved off the main body, marching toward the enemy.

Every rule in the book warned against striking at a superior force. Every sense in her head warned her against leading
women with a bloody flux to combat. But she knew that no matter how experienced or tricky the nomads might be, they would
never
expect the Eracians to attack them this way.

The world was a pleasant mirage if she ignored her guts. The smells, the colors, the rejuvenation of nature, the mild sunshine that warmed the skin. There was a gurgle of frogs in marshy ponds that skirted their road, the croak of birds. The air was thick with the buzz of gnats and other bugs. Well, the insects annoyed her, really.

Soon enough, they stumbled upon the enemy unit. The Namsue had not bothered posting sentries. They seemed to be doing one of their midday rests, the various units just indisposed wherever they had stopped. There was battle gear everywhere, blankets, cooking pots. Some men seemed to be sleeping; others were trying to prepare light meals they hoped to keep down. To the west, toward one of the tributaries of the net of rivers that crisscrossed the land, a whole gang of men were washing their pale, haggard bodies. The sight almost made her gag.

Mali had never imagined she would lead a charge against men rubbing off the trots stains from their trousers and boots, but she did just that. With a ragged scream in their throats, the women rushed forward, over the soft, slippery earth, scattering ducks from their path.

Her view of the battlefield was quite limited, but she had a decent grasp of how the Namsue legion was positioned. They camped along the road, in a narrow column. They would not be able to see and gauge the size of the attacking force. Moreover, the units farther down the road would not immediately understand what was happening, and if they reacted, they would have to push through their own ranks to get to the fighting.

Alexa and Gordon took the left flank. Meagan led her few riders in a wide berth around the nomads, trying to block their retreat. Major Theresa and the newly promoted Major Nolene followed Mali toward the half-naked, shocked soldiers holding bits of soap and wet clothes in their hands.

Eight hundred women against two thousand men. Madness. The Dash of the Runny Bowels. The Crap Charge. She had a dozen funny names rolling in her head, trying to push fear away.