The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2) (52 page)

The Athesians regrouped, forming up into a tight knot, moving back into the seething mass of death. But it was easier now. You no longer paid attention to clobbered brains or spilled guts. You searched for your foes, and you killed them. It was as simple as that.

On the plains to their left, the Athesian diversion force was retreating, pursued by a massive wave of Red Caps. The enemy was racing the defenders to the half-open gates, trying to beat them to them and gain a foothold inside Roalas. No one had expected the ambush to turn into a victory, but now that they smelled it, they were incensed. From the walls, fiery hail and burning arrows poured on the Parusites, trying to slow them down. The Athesians dispersed into small groups and slithered into the rubble like snakes. The tidal force of the invaders slammed into the Inferno, crashing impotently. The attack was too big, too cumbersome.

More and more Parusites were visible, forming up into their organic units. Soon, they would notice the gnat amidst their ranks and swat it bloody. But Gerald lived the heartbeats of chance and cared nothing for his flesh. He just knew he would not die tonight.

Cavalry thundered ahead of them, streamers tied to lances, whipping in all colors. Parusites and Athesians mixed alike, forming up their divisions. The Ninth and the Fifth, they were all there. Group after group, they poured west, hurling into combat.

Gerald’s men waded into a forest of tents, hunting. Crossbows sang. Hammers thudded. It was a massacre. They killed men and women now, both the foreigners and their fellow countrymen. It made no difference. If you wore the Parusite colors, you died.

“Keep the right wing safe,” Lieutenant Clive ordered. The Fifth could attack them from the flank.

Big tents, officers’ tents. Gerald could smell the traitors. Driscoll.

Battle exploded in a sudden flutter of cries of dismay and surprise. Men and women cursed as they stumbled into their enemies. In the dark, it was hard to tell. But Gerald had only a handful of friends and a ton of foes. The Parusites had to be more careful.

He swung hard, slicing a man’s throat. With a mute groan, the traitor fell. He crouched, trying to avoid a spear. His leg gave way. He fell down. The spear raked his ribs. He kicked wildly at his attacker. She was fat and stubborn. Her head exploded like a trodden pear. The spatter blinded him. The crazy private from before leaned over him, panting.

“Can I take her?” she asked.

Gerald rose. His head swam.

“We need to retreat, sir!” someone shouted.
Clive?
It did not matter. He had to kill Driscoll. Arrows whizzed. Something hissed near his ear. He did not even flinch. He stumbled again and tasted hot, bloody mud in his mouth and nose.

Someone was dragging him to safety, away from the seething mob of Parusites. Spears stabbed at him like scorpion stings, many, angry, erratic. A squad of soldiers was leaning above him, protecting him, firing their crossbows.

“Get up, get up, get up!”

“You’re wounded, sir,” Sergeant Liam croaked.

Gerald gently touched his face. His fingers felt like clay. He wiped the gore from his skin. “I’m fine. Not mine. Where’s my sword?”

He had lost his father’s sword! But there was no emotion. It made no difference. Liam handed over his own weapon. Then, he picked an ax from a dead comrade and followed the commander.

Suddenly, General Driscoll was there in front of him, issuing orders to his captains. They seemed unaware of the bloodied pack of vengeful Athesians in their midst. Like vomit through broken teeth, the city defenders gushed into the clearing, screaming like animals.

Gerald was the first man to reach the traitor. Driscoll only scowled once before the sword hit him in the chest, weakly. He yelped in protest and fell down. The commander of the City Guard was on top of him, wheezing.

Driscoll stabbed Gerald in the side with a small dagger, once, twice. He pushed the attacker and wriggled away. A trickle of blood was oozing from a tiny rent in his armor.

“What the fuck? Gerald?”

“Fuck you,” Gerald moaned and collapsed.

Driscoll unsheathed his sword. And then, his head detached and rolled off his shoulders. The ungainly body folded unceremoniously. Lieutenant Clive collected the head and stuffed it in his backpack.

“C’mon, sir. With all due respect, we need to get the fuck out of here
now
!”

Gerald blinked hard. He was losing consciousness. “But Princess Sasha. We need to…”

The old man hoisted him up onto his shoulders. “Not tonight. Lads, protect the commander,” he growled. “Around me. Form a ring. We retreat. Fuck that shit. Come here.”

The clearing between the officers’ tents was swelling with Athesians. But the traitors did not seem eager to fight their countrymen. They shouted and waved their swords, but no one wanted to be the first man into the fray. The soldiers of the Ninth had just seen their leader’s head roll.

“We’ll get back to take you all,” Clive snarled. Gerald vomited down his nape.

“Let go of me,” he moaned.

“Shut up, son!” Clive was trotting now.

“I can’t breathe.”

The lieutenant let him slide off. Gerald ripped his mangled coat open, gasping for breath.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

“You’ll live if you stop fretting like a little whore.” The old man sagged to his knees. Young men lifted them both up, half carrying, half dragging them away. There was more blood and more death, and the Parusite camp seemed endless. Line after line of tents. Fires burning. Gerald watched it upside down, blood dripping into his eyes. The world was narrowing. Black fog was curling up, swallowing everything.

They could no longer see Roalas behind them. They lost direction. More men died. They were down to a hundred men. Fifty men.

“I won’t die tonight,” Gerald swore. And then, it was total, absolute darkness.

CHAPTER 32

U
p on the battlements, amidst shards of rubble, buckets of tar, and running, sweating men, Empress Amalia and her mother stood and watched the battle unfold. A cool wind buffeted the merlons in sudden gusts, wheezing like an old man. Whenever a gust sneaked under her wig and caressed her short-cropped skull, Amalia shivered.

The waiting had been the hardest, the long hours of almost complete silence where the only sounds were the chirps of insects, the crunch of boots on gravel, and the distant buzz of the siege camps. She stood by her soldiers, staring into the darkness, guessing the location and strength of her forces. Someone coughed. Someone else sneezed. A few men exchanged a quick nervous joke.

Then, the Fuckers fired.

The salvo startled her, and she almost stumbled, but Lieutenant Edwin was there to keep her safe. His callused hand grabbed her forearm, steadying her. He flashed a brief smile and was gone. Into the night, streamers of fire and smoke rose high, white and deadly. She could not hear them crash, but she saw the heads scatter and roll like sparks under a smith’s hammer. And then, it was chaos.

Amalia stood on the south side, looking toward the king’s camp. She wanted to see those big, lumbering siege machines burn. The gate chains rattled as the portcullis was raised. A unified cry of fear and courage exploded as the mass of two thousand brave defenders ran into the night, against an enemy fifty times stronger. They rushed into the scorched remnants of the city outskirts, groping blindly. The only illumination was the weak glow of the incendiary artillery.

The empress felt tears well in the corners of her eyes, so she blinked hard, suppressing them. She had just sent five thousand men to their deaths. The fact they had all volunteered made the feeling no easier.

The empress-mother just watched, her face impassive. War was an old, bitter friend.

“Mom?” Amalia whispered as a soldier shuffled by, muttering apologies.

“Yes, dear?” Lisa stepped forward so she would not get in the way. Her daughter had insisted they watch the attack from the battlements, but Lisa felt they were just interfering. Soldiers were too busy bobbing and bowing and not swearing instead of focusing on their line of work. But Amalia had insisted. Maybe also because she had nearly met her death not far from here.

Her daughter was exhausted, with big black pockets under her eyes, thin and weak from the drugs and healing, but she would not cower in her chambers.

“Am I doing the right thing?”

The empress-mother looked around. No one was within earshot. The three female bodyguards lingered nearby, backs turned toward the fields so they would not get distracted, but they were too far to hear the conversation.

Lisa sighed. “I don’t know, dear. How does it feel?”

Amalia was silent for a moment. It pained her. The decision to approve this attack pained her. But she feared the alternative. Feared the surrender to her enemies, feared giving in to their demands, their slow war of attrition. If only she had the bloodstaff, or the book. Her father’s secrets mocked her from his grave.

But the worst part was the anger she felt toward Gerald. The man had defied her and volunteered for this suicidal mission. She had called him a fool. And then he was gone and the words could not be undone, and there was only regret and the sad memory of a kiss.

“I wish it were easier. Does it get easier?”

“It never gets easier,” Lisa said.

The Fuckers thrummed again. Amalia winced.

Soldiers scurried left and right, carrying buckets of tar and bales of straw and lugging sacks full of severed heads. There was no shortage of those. You just had to go outside the city walls, wander into the burned suburbs, and cut the heads off corpses garbed in the Parusite colors.

Lieutenant Edwin and City Engineer Reese stood by one of the contraptions. The squat black thing looked like a midget cart with teeth. The two men were gesturing wildly, making arc-like motions. One of the soldiers was holding a tablet and scratching down numbers.

In the field below, the sound of battle intensified. The opposing forces clashed, hidden by the darkness. Only those fighting and dying knew friend from foe. Above, on top of the wall, it was just different shades of black and the endless cries of death.

“Get those heads to Unit Fifteen!” Edwin shouted. “Quick, now!”

Near Edwin, an old man with receding gray hair and a walking cane stood and watched the battle unfold. His name was Terry, a retired sergeant, one of her father’s soldiers. Instead of watching the field below, he was staring at her intently.

He fought by my father
, Amalia thought and beckoned the man closer. His kind were her most precious weapon now. They might not all be able to fight anymore, but they could teach war. They had what no book or war manual or even days of training could ever give a young new recruit. It was the personal knowledge of combat.

They spared the men the long lessons of formation and discipline and focused on one thing, getting the men ready for their first kill, the shock of it, the pain of it, the thrill of it. The terror and the elation and the mind-numbing questions and regret and everything else that clouded your mind and made you vulnerable.

All of her father’s veterans had pushed for the night attack. It was risky, almost crazy, but it was the only way to really protect Roalas. They could not just stand back and let the city rot while its enemies made their siege engines and tightened the perimeter even more.

Terry’s wound made him a cripple. But his mind was sharp. “Your Highness?”

“Yes, Sergeant, speak,” she said, anxious to hear his thoughts.

“Do not let the pain choke you,” he mumbled, almost intimately, hobbling by, the clack of his cane rising above the thrum and groan of wood and bowstrings, the rush of fire and the roar of a thousand sore throats. “You’re doing a good thing.”

“People are dying,” she said and hated herself for that. She sounded childish and petty.

“For every one that lives, three will die today, and trust me, they will die. However, you will get battle-hardened men worth ten times their number. Your dear father, praised be his memory, knew this lesson. When he sent us to fight, we knew we would be dying for something grand and noble. And it wasn’t speeches, Your Highness, or empty promises. It was one simple thing, our brothers-in-arms.”

“Let’s try this one,” Reese said loudly. Groaning, soldiers loaded a hide-wrapped bundle onto one of the Fuckers. The engineer hovered above them, inspecting the load. Something black and sticky dripped from the seams of the bundle.

Amalia looked at the old soldier again. He was just one step away. He saw her frightened and confused and weak, but he did not judge her. His eyes were clear, his face relaxed. All he saw was Adam’s blood, and that was good enough for him.

I must be like Father
, she promised.
Just and hard and fearless
.

“There’s your perfect killer right there,” Terry continued, pointing at one of the soldiers. “That man. See the fervor in his eyes? That man doesn’t fear death. You want that man promoted after the battle and given a squad command. You want the best killers for your leaders. This is where you weed out cowards and fools and forge heroes. And see that lad there? He’s pissed himself wet.”