Chapter Thirty Five
Organized chaos reigned before the gate. With the removal of the smog her forces had been able to start pushing the enemy back and archers had been able to get above the gate to fire down. With the destruction of the tool they’d intended to destroy the gate with, the enemy forces had begun to widen the breach in the gate with hand axes and weapons. It was slow going but gradually they’d been able to fit more soldiers through at once.
Ravin and Adenji had held the pincer and were gaining ground but casualties were making a steady stream off the field. Dahlia saw explosions of ice and fire where soldiers with elemental abilities clashed. She sensed Arreal leading her barrack, holding the center as she’d instructed.
Dahlia felt energy coursing through her as she stalked into the midst of the fight. She released some of it in a sharp blast to the first enemy she encountered. He went down and a soldier from Dahlia’s force ran him through. Fidelity, Sabir, and Soa spread out beside her and they began moving towards the front line of the battle. Dahlia caught another sword strike between her axes, threw it down to one side and kicked out the soldier’s knee. Off balance and broken, he fell in front of her and she swept her ax under his chin before stalking her next opponent.
This one seemed more skilled than the majority and he tried to circle her. She felt a rumble as the ground started to roll beneath her feet. She laughed at him, leapt, and sent one of her axes shooting out, the chain wrapped tight around her wrist. He dodged to one side and she caught him with a blast from her focusing band as she landed and whipped the ax back into her hand. He stumbled and the ground stopped moving. She closed the distance between them and brought a blade down through his skull.
To her right she saw Soa’s blade flash as he smoothly opened a soldier’s stomach with his sword, catching the opponent’s strike on a barrier he held like an invisible shield. He shifted seamlessly to catch the next opponent’s strike and stab through the man’s leather vest.
As she moved forward with the three soldiers and grew closer to the front she saw the enemy being pushed back. Near Arreal’s she could sense Ravin’s presence front and center, the predatory exhilaration she was so familiar with radiated from him. She could feel herself drawn towards it.
There is something seriously wrong with me, she thought.
Despite her self-chastisement her heart beat as if in sync with the rhythm of combat and she felt her body flow with the thrum of battle around her. She dodged and attacked as if in a choreographed dance with death as she moved closer to the center of the fight.
Ravin was closing in on the gate when she caught up to him. He was grinning as he cut down the enemy between him and his goal and blood ran down his bare chest. He caught ahold of a blade as it swung at him and jerked it to the side. The soldier holding it was forced to release it or be pulled along with it. Ravin flipped it around and ran the man through with his own sword before catching another blade with his own.
Fidelity bounded by Dahlia towards the other barrack members and swept her hammer up and into a man’s chest. The unfortunate soldier tried to counter her with a two-handed parry but he hadn’t expected her to have the strength to lift him. Her hammer connected with his thick blade and pushed it back into his chest. Fidelity followed through with her swing and he was thrown backwards into the men behind him.
A man flung out his hand and Dahlia dropped to the ground, sending her ax flying out to cut through his leg. Razor sharp blades buzzed over her head but the man dropped as her ax connected with him. She pulled it back and flipped the second one over and arced it down to cut clean through his collar bone.
With the smog lifted, multiple captains on the front line, and a barrage of projectiles raining down over them the flow of attackers was finally stemmed. Within another ten minutes Dahlia could count the number of soldiers between her and the gate. In twenty the last of the enemy soldiers were defeated and men from her force were able to push and hold a constructed barrier against the hole while it was secured in place. Archers at the top of the wall turned to discourage anyone thinking of continuing the battle by attempting to scale the wall. Men bearing construction tools descended once the breach was fully sealed and began to reinforce it with enormous stones and metal beams.
Sabir’s wrap had held but Dahlia was still bleeding. There weren’t enough infirmary members to deal with wounds that weren’t life threatening so she needed to think about attending to her wound herself before much longer.
First she checked in with Arreal who had kept her barrack mostly together. She kept her emotions tightly in check as he reported injuries and casualties her barrack had suffered.
“Thank you, Arreal, for leading in my absence. Let’s locate Ravin and the barrack members who are still able to fight can remain with you where needed. Anyone with injuries that need attention but are not life threatening can return to the barrack with me. Sabir needs a number of stitches before his blood loss becomes serious as well.”
She found Ravin directing the soldiers still available.
“Captain Ravin, Arreal is staying with my soldiers that can still fight. I need to sew my arm up and see to a couple other soldiers before I can rejoin.”
Ravin’s flat, black eyes fell on her and she felt the intensity of the predator that had pushed to the top during the battle. His voice was a low growl, “Ok, we can use archers on the wall and everyone else to the perimeter in Barrack Three.” Then he turned back to the other soldiers.
“Alright,” Dahlia said. She wasn’t sure why but she was disappointed not to hear more from him. She blamed it on blood loss and the overdose of adrenaline she’d been running on since the blaring announcement had woken her.
“Captain Ravin,” another soldier approached him, “our injured men are being transported to the infirmary, our dead to the mountain pass to await burial. What should we do with the dead and injured enemy soldiers.”
“What do I care?” Ravin growled out. “Throw their casualties over the wall and let their men deal with it. Unless they’re commanders, they’re worthless.”
Dahlia started in distaste but held her tongue. Ravin was right, she told herself, they didn’t have the resources to treat injured enemy soldiers. Compassion was a luxury they couldn’t afford. The image of the broken bodies piling at their gate made her stomach turn. The bodies wouldn’t be dealt with because the archers wouldn’t allow anyone to approach. Ravin’s order was a tactic meant to induce fear, plain and simple. They would lie there as a warning and gruesome monument to the failed attack.
Trying to shake off the feeling she reminded herself that war was a gruesome business. It was not a clean fight between two skilled combatants. It was not a hunt through the forest. It was simply slaughter, piling bodies until one side broke. It was the remorseless destruction of your enemies. And Ravin was a master of it. She did not need to be looking for compassion or tenderness from this man. She’d do well to remember that.
She turned away from him back to her barrack. “Anyone with a wound that won’t stop bleeding with a simple wrap come with me,” she instructed them. “I don’t need anyone playing the hero and passing out in a fight.”
She left the rest with Ravin and Arreal and headed back to her barrack with Sabir and a handful of other members. She kept a needle from the infirmary along with some of the thread they used for closing wounds in her office. She pulled it out and then, one at a time, she had her soldiers sit and drop their shields so she could hold back the pain as she cleaned and stitched each wound shut.
Last was Sabir who had taken numerous cuts preventing the soldiers from getting to Fidelity. His skin had held up well but some of the soldiers had either had the ability or the muscle to cut through his hide. Forcing the needle through his skin took some work. She then allowed him to unwrap her arm. Blood still oozed from the wound, creating sticky trails over the hardened areas. Dahlia gritted her teeth and cleaned and stitched herself up, numbing the pain just enough to get the needle through without strain. Sabir stayed to help her knot the stitches and rewrap with fresh bandages.
She had each soldier go to put on more substantial clothes once she’d finished with him. Many of them were wearing ripped and torn sleepwear like she and Sabir were. She left for her room as well, slipping out of her destroyed tunic and shorts and replacing them with black leggings, tunic, and captain’s jacket. Then she slowly loosened the energy holding back her exhaustion just to gauge how much further she could push herself.
The weight of her body’s demand for rest washed over her and she fell to her knees as tears trickled from her eyes. Images of the soldiers in her barrack who she hadn’t been able to protect swam through her mind. This had been the first major battle she’d assisted with command in. She’d imagined she’d do better, would have stayed with her soldiers, seen them all emerge triumphant. She’d known it was foolish. In a battle soldiers die, they were not special just because they were hers. She’d just never been able to wipe the illusion away until now.
In the past she had lost friends and fellow soldiers, but never lives that had been placed under her protection. She should have been closer, should have been with them. The weight of her grief and just how damn tired she was threatened to drown her.
This is not the time for self pity.
The thought cut through the flood of emotions like a scythe. No, this was doing no one any good. And people were still dying while she wallowed in grief over soldiers who should have expected honor for sacrifices gladly given. She had trained Arreal to lead when she could not. It was an insult to him to assume she would have done any better. Even worse was sitting here in self-pity because she was tired. So what? She was a soldier, a captain, she could not afford to be weak.
Dahlia stood up, wiped away the embarrassing tears, and went to her cold container to pull out a special concentrate she’d made. She took a shot of it and the intensely bitter flavor poured over her like a bucket of cold water to her system. She felt the brew combating the tiredness in her limbs and she once again hunted down the source of her weakness and shoved it aside so that she could give everything she had to the next fight.
She strode out of her room, over to Sabir’s, and knocked. Her first lieutenant slid the door open and joined her in the corridor.
“I’m going to the battle site in Barrack Three. I’d like to leave the others here so their wounds have a chance to fully close but I know you’d be annoyed if I left without you.”
“If you’re in fit enough condition to go, how could I do otherwise?” He asked her.
She nodded and they took off at a jog towards the western section of the perimeter. Behind them the first rays of dawn began to creep through the sky, pushing back the shadows of the night. It turned a strange color as the light fell on the air above the gate to the south. Bits of debris suspended in the air along with the last lingering parts of the smog turned it a sickly amber.
As they closed in on the edge of Barrack Three the sun had risen behind them and Dahlia was able to see a similar haze of smog and debris hanging above the trees. She shuddered at the thought of a second mass of casualties from the poison and headed in the direction of the haze.
As they neared, she reached out her senses for familiar presences and found Borreal slightly to her right and closer to the wall. Ravin was in even closer towards the wall where she felt Genji, Arreal, and Traedon as well.
She opted for Borreal and headed in his direction. She found her former captain standing on a slight hill overlooking a semi-circle of destruction. Trees had fallen in different directions and the ground was broken with jagged splits and peaks littering the site. Strangest of all was what was happening to the wall.
She came to a halt as her mouth dropped open. “Wha...what is that?”
Borreal turned to her. The normally neat man was filthy and bloody with one arm in a makeshift sling. “Captain DeMorra, I’m glad to see you are doing well. Captain Ravin let me know you’d been successful defending the main gate and I am happy to have assistance with this. I’m not much use with just one arm.”
“Happy to help, Captain, but if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is going on?”
Borreal smiled, “Breaking a stalemate. When I got here they’d lobbed some poison gas at us and started up some construct that tunneled faster than I would have believed. I heard you had trouble with the gas as well. Luckily Captain Horan was close by and able to clear it out fast enough. We were able to counter before they finished digging and attempted to collapse the wall. We broke their machine which was a boon since it seems to have been designed to drill upwards to destabilize and collapse the wall as well as dig under it.”
He looked pleased with himself when he mentioned breaking the machine. It reminded her oddly of Genji. He continued, “They’ve been trying to re-capture it to fix it but we’ve been able to hold them off. We haven’t been able to move forward or push them back any further though. The soldiers that we encountered in the tunnel were overall more capable than the first bunch we encountered outside the gate. So then they moved to collapse the wall by collapsing the tunnel but Captain Jenue’s team is holding it up. I wish they could fill the tunnel but they couldn’t hold up the earth under the wall and fill in the tunnel. And that’s brought us to stalemate.”
“And that is?” Dahlia asked, waving towards the wall.
“My shot at ending the stalemate. We have a metal beam running across the wall and it’s bolted at close intervals. Then we are supporting it with pretty much anything we can find: tree trunks, wooden beams, metal beams. Once it’s in place we’ll let them collapse the tunnel and pray the reinforcement holds.”
“Guess I better go help the metal workers,” Sabir said after a moment.
“Yes,” Dahlia agreed, “this is quite an undertaking.”
Borreal looked rather pleased, “Yes, I had one of the best engineers in the city pulled out of bed for some emergency consulting.”
Dahlia looked even more stunned, “You didn’t...how did you even think to do that?”
“When faced with an urgent problem, the more expert options you can get the better. You should have heard what the stonemason suggested.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“It involved burying them in a lot of sand. The man really was surprisingly bloodthirsty. It was a good idea but we would have had to dump it in from the side of the wall they are on and I assumed they’d be able to block us.”
“How much longer til this is done?”
“Shouldn’t be long now. I’m glad Sabir came with you, his unique talent coupled with his strength will help finish the metal beam faster. Fidelity is helping with the supporting beams. It really is just mind boggling to watch her picking one up all alone. The rest of your barrack that arrived with Captain Ravin is working on the wall except Genji and Lieutenant Arreal who joined Lieutenant Traedon in holding the tunnel. Their ability to fight well in the dark will be an asset. We opted to shut down any lights. It’s part of what makes it hard for either side to make progress, only a few soldiers were able to see much. As you can see, I wasn’t very successful.”
“I’ll go as well,” Dahlia said as she set her jaw. “I can move well in the dark and I won’t be much use lifting right now, my stitches are likely to open again.”
“Good luck, then. Be prepared to retreat when the call goes out,” Borreal warned her. “We’re going to try and keep it subtle so they try to follow and we trap as many in there as possible.”
Dahlia nodded and made her way towards the center of the activity. She saw one injured man being pulled out of the tunnel but luckily it seemed that the fight below ground had been restricted to skill in the dark rather than whole scale slaughter. If the enemy had marched men below ground like they had through the gate then they might have pushed back the more skilled soldiers who had the ability to fight in darkness. They would have had to crawl over layers of corpses to do it though.
She took a breath and descended into the pitch black pit.