by Matthew X. Gomez
in Issue 125, June 2022
Rodolf stood, leaning hard on his spear, mud sucking at his boots, rain beating a tattoo against his helmet. His fingers ached from the cold, his back hurt from standing at attention and the weight of his mail on his shoulders, and his belly growled. He blinked his eyes, eyes fixed on the horizon. Even through the rain, he could see the black smoke belching from Saarderak’s infernal war machines, and he felt the ground rumble under through his boots.
“Bastard of a night to be keeping watch,” Inga said.
Between his exhaustion, the rain, and his focus on the approaching army, Rodolf had not heard her approach. “Hells woman,” he spat. “Trying to scare me to death?”
Inga laughed, showing the gap in her teeth. “Nah. Wouldn’t want to be doing those bastard’s jobs for them, now would I?” She jutted her chin out into the distance, towards where they knew Saarderak approached. “Captain figures they’ll be positioned come morning. Battle will happen early afternoon.”
Rodolf frowned hard into the darkness and the rain. “Lousy place to have a battle.” He spared a glance back at the town behind them, at its wooden walls and towers. “And we’re going to let them come at us?” He spat, adding his moisture to the water coming down. “Are we sure Hadria knows what she’s about?”
Inga chuckled and pressed something into Rodolf’s free hand. “Here, have a sip of this. It’ll chase those dark thoughts away. Captain says the general knows her business well enough. Not her first dance, so I hear it.”
Rodolf fumbled with the flask, managed to get the cap off. He took a small sip, tasted brandy. Too sweet by far, but it set a small fire in his belly that was more than welcome. The dark thoughts remained.
“How many battles is this then?” he asked.
“What, the general? No idea.”
Rodolf shook his head. “No. You. Us.”
Inga blinked, her eyes taking a faraway look as she gazed into the haze of her memories. “Six summers ago? No, eight. You marching with the rest, sunlight gleaming off your weapons and armor, like legends stepping out of the past. Me, just a country girl looking for a bit of excitement. You lot settled in, on your way to fight… who was it? The great big bloke out of the mountains. Styled himself the Bear King.”
“Gunther? Gunnar? Gundahar! That’s it! Yeah, he and his people had been raiding for a while. Not much more than common bandits, but there were a lot of them, and they knew the land.”
Inga sniffed. “They didn’t give a damn about the common people though, did they? If they had, they might have become a real force to be reckoned with.”
Rodolf nodded, thinking back to that night. Gundahar’s men had been watching them, tracking their progress, not a hard thing to do. A company of a hundred was not meant to be stealthy, especially when traveling with all the necessary supplies. They had snuck into the town, killing the sentries… only they had missed one. The boy, no older than twelve, had run to the main hall where Rodolf and the others had bivouacked. No time to put on armor, time only to grab the weapons at hand.
The fighting that followed was fierce and bloody, going street to street, small groups of fighters engaged against each other. Rodolf still bore a scar on his brow from that night, a blade skipping off the rim of his shield to dip into his skin. He remembered finding himself alone, the man he had been with taking a spear from behind. He would find himself outnumbered, two to one, blood getting into his eyes, limbs burning from effort.
Then Inga was there, a shrieking hellcat, a butcher’s cleaver gripped in both hands. She brought it down on the shoulder of one man, going straight through his gambeson and into the meat beneath. Rodolf’s other opponent jerked sideways, turning to face this new threat, but fatally ignoring Rodolf and his spear.
After, Inga found him back in the great hall. Gundahar’s head sat in the middle of the chief’s table, less impressive now separated from the big man’s body.
“Let me come with you,” she said.
Rodolf shrugged. “Not up to me. Ask the captain.”
She turned to go, but Rodolf grabbed her arm, spun her back to him. He saw her eyes flash, her hand balled into a fist, and he smiled. “Tell him I vouch for you. Tell him Rodolf says you can be taught how to fight.”
Inga jerked her arm free. “I know how to fight. Proved that plenty back there, didn’t I?”
Rodolf shook his head, eyes weary, his whole body aching for sleep’s embrace. “You proved you could kill. We can’t teach that. Fighting’s different though.”
Rodolf blinked, the memory fading. He passed the flask back to Inga. “Better keep that hidden. Captain doesn’t take a find view of drinking before a battle.”
“Yes, well, what the captain doesn’t know can’t hurt us,” she replied with a wink and a smile.
For a brief mad moment, he wanted to cast aside his spear and take her up in his arms. He wanted to kiss her, whisper into her ear to run away with him, to leave the mud and the blood and dying behind them, to find a new life far from this madness. He tried to picture himself as a farmer, up to his elbows in pig shit, her with a babe on each hip. The image wavered and vanished and the impulse went with it. He’d grown up on a farm, knew firsthand what a hard life it was, how it could and would break a person in a hundred little ways. Farming was for sterner folk than him.
He cast another glance back at the town. The sun’s rays peeked over the walls of the town, the clouds overhead breaking up. He turned his head up, caught a mouthful of water. He caught Inga still looking at him out of the corner of her eye, her red hair going gray plastered to the side of her face, one calloused hand gripping the hilt of her sword out of habit. She turned and faced the front of the battle line, scanning the ground of the fight to come. The smoke from the war machines covered the sky, but they could start to make out details of the army, see the rows of pikes stretching toward the sky.
Another soldier stumbled toward them, struggling through the ever-present mud. “Rodolf? Captain says to get some food and sleep.” He squinted out into the distance. “Damn but there’s a lot of them, isn’t there?”
Rodolf searched his brain for the man’s name, but came up empty. He looked like a young Elias… but that could not be right. Elias was dead three winters at least. He remembered stumbling over his body during one fight, sightless eyes staring up at an uncaring sky, his head hanging on to his neck by just a thin strip of gristle.
“Thanks,” he muttered, not wanting to meet the boy’s eyes, not wanting to recognize the boy if he came across his corpse in the coming days.
He passed a fire where a few soldiers were huddled, trading stories in hushed whispers. One thrust a wooden bowl filled with stew into his hand. He ate without talking, without listening to their stories.
He walked into his tent, his eyes drooping and his limbs heavy. He placed his spear on the ground, dropped hard on his camp bed. He tugged his mud-caked boots off with a squelch before tugging his helmet off. He closed his eyes and leaned back, pulling his cloak around his body as a make-shift blanket, and wondered if it would be for the best if he never woke up.
He woke up with a hand on his shoulder and his knife in his hand held against Inga’s throat. She blinked her watery blue eyes at him and offered a nervous smile.
“Bad dreams?” she asked, pulling away gently.
He grunted a response, rubbing the grit out of his eyes, for the moment feeling worse than he did before he went to bed. He stretched, heard his joints pop, and felt his back shift a finger’s width to the left. He placed the knife back in his sheath. Outside he could hear the beat of the drum, the sounding of the war horns. Grimacing he shoved his feet back into his boots, placed his helmet on his head. He wrapped his sword belt around his waist and grabbed his spear and shield.
“You should have woken me up sooner.” His voice came out more like a growl than actual words, and Inga backed away, hands up, palms facing him.
“Captain wanted you to get some more sleep. Grab some food and come on.”
Rodolf stopped by the camp cook. There wasn’t much left from the morning meal, but they managed to find him a heel of bread and some cheese. He washed it down with a bit of beer. Then it was back to the line, the veteran marks on his armor helping him shoulder his way to the front. What he saw across the field sent a ball of ice to his guts and made his brow sweat.
Rank after rank of troops in black armor stretched across the line, their pikes stretching to the sky. Behind them towered the war engines of Saarderak, iron and brass and copper monstrosities that loomed like squat giants, bristling with spears and cannon, small figures waiting on balconies and towers, ready to ride the engines into battle. Not for the first time, Rodolf wondered how you even fought such a thing and hoped General Hadria had some stratagem devised for taking them out of the fight.
A horn sounded in the distance, from the ranks of the enemy. He felt the ground tremble as the enemy strode forward, a terrible forest of gleaming steel advancing.
He checked his shield strap, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. He glanced to his right and left, did not recognize either of the men he was standing next to. No, wait. The Elias look-alike was on his right. He resisted the urge to crane his neck, to look behind him for Inga. She would be there, in the thick of it, he was sure. She would not want to be anywhere else.
As he watched, chunks of masonry flew through the sky toward the enemy line flung by the artillery well to the rear of the front lines. He watched as they hit the ground, bounced, kept going to plow through the enemy. They came on, undaunted, closing ranks to fill in the gaps. Still, it seemed they moved at a snail’s pace, crossing the distance. He wanted them to come on, to get there, to come to arms with him so this sense of impending dread, this terrible anticipation of the battle to come would pass.
A cry went up from behind him for archers to take their places. Rodolf stepped aside to let them stream past. Lightly armored men with arms like tree trunks, they bent back their long bows and sent shafts the length of their arms arcing skyward, so many he could track their progress across the battlefield by the shadow they cast.
Distantly, he could hear the sounds of men shouting and the cries of the dying. He found it reassuring, that the foe was mortal and could be killed.
“Get ready, lads,” he called out, his voice surprisingly calm and clear to his ears. He listened, waiting for the blast of the trumpet to announce the charge.
And then it sounded, and he was running, a battle cry tearing from his throat, joined with his brothers and sisters in battle. He saw when one of Saarderak’s war machines let out a thunderous boom. Smoke billowed from one of the monstrous cannons, part of the town wall reduced to a splintered ruin. More detonations followed. Off to his right, mud exploded, bodies and limbs sent skyward. He struggled on through the mud, legs burning, breath coming in ragged gasps and echoing in his helmet. He stumbled and fell. An arm hooked under his, got him back to his feet. He watched the pikes in front of him lower, and still he went on. He braced his shield, lowered his head. The impact felt like running into a wall. He heard the scrape of metal on metal as the pikes bounced off his shield. He churned forward with the rest, spear held close to his body. He felt resistance, stopped, thrust repeatedly until the point found a gap and sank between the joints in the armor. He pressed forward. Around him, the screams of the wounded and dying reached a terrible cacophony. He felt bile rise in his mouth, and he spat it out. He stepped down on a body, nearly twisted his ankle. A hand grabbed for him, and he stabbed down. Someone wrenched his spear away. A pike punctured his shield, a hairsbreadth from his eye. He tore his sword free, and then was among the pikemen, hacking and slashing, up and down, side to side. This wasn’t fighting, one man against another. There was nothing noble to this, only butcher’s work. Some of the enemy dropped their pikes in favor of axes and maces, their blows raining down on his shield.
A rumble thundered across the battlefield, and a fiery projectile the size of a house tumbled from the sky, smashing into one of the enemy’s war machines – the wizards joining the battle now. As Rodolf watched, it crept forward another few feet, then something inside it detonated, sending shrapnel spinning off. He hit the ground, covered his head with his shield. Someone fell on top of him. He struggled to get the body off, gained his feet, but his sword was gone. He grabbed a half-moon-bladed axe off a corpse, slammed it into the face of another foe. Lighting struck down, three, four, five times, the bolts bouncing off war machines into the massed ranks of the enemies. A new smell joined the rank stench of dying, the smell of cooked meat. Rodolf forced down his sick. He glanced around, saw a few more of his allies, all looking tired, limbs leaden.
“Form up on me!” he bellowed. They came over, locked shields with him, a chance to catch their collective breath.
A dark purple mist rose up from the ground, started drifting towards them. Rodolf watched it envelop another pocket of soldiers, watched them collapse to the ground, fingers grasping at throats. He watched, helpless, as it moved toward them. This was not how he wanted to die. To be fair, he did not want to die at all, though he admitted he wasn’t in the best profession for that choice. A breeze came up, soft, gentle, and smelling of lavender. Then it picked up, a howling gale blowing over the plain. It pushed the cloud back toward the enemies’ line. Embers drifted down from the sky. Where they touched the cloud, small detonations occurred until there was nothing left of it. Rodolf grimaced. He could fight men, but magic? That was beyond his ken.
Another flaming meteor tumbled out of the sky. This one missed its target, instead hitting nearby. Bits of flaming rock hurtled through the sky, some of them landing among Rodolf’s side. This was the other reason he hated magic. Its practitioners didn’t have a care what effect it had on their own side.
In the distance, he heard a trumpet sound.
“We withdraw!” Rodolf shouted. His companions nodded, and step by torturous step they made their way back to their lines. No more magic followed them, only the occasional arrow. As they moved back toward the town, the full scope of the devastation became apparent. Bodies lying twisted on the ground, friend and foe nearly indistinguishable beneath the blood and mud. Men and women crying out, for parents, for water, for mercy, for death, for children, and for friends.
When he returned to the line, a medic ran up to him, checked him over for wounds. He hadn’t escaped unscathed, but he’d only been scraped and bruised, his armor saving him from the worst. He stumbled to a water barrel, barely keeping his feet. He drank deep from the ladle, his eyes and nose still burning from the smoke and stench of battle. A hand clapped him on the back, nearly causing him to fall.
Elias. No. The youth that looked like Elias.
“We did it!” the youth exclaimed, a look of pride and wonder and the joy of being alive lightening his eyes.
Rodolf shook his head, looked back toward the enemy lines. Watched as they reformed. Watched as people scrambled over the wreckage of the war machines.
“We survived a day,” he said. “We do it again tomorrow.”
The youth’s face fell, and Rodolf wondered if he should have stayed silent. He made his way to his tent. Inga was there, sprawled on his bed, gently snoring, a bloody bandage wrapped around her head, sleeping fur covering her body.
He sighed and sat on the ground.
“Hmm?” she rolled over and looked at him.
“You hurt?” he asked.
“Took a blow to the head. Knocked my helmet off, but missed the eye. Lucky I guess.”
Rodolf snorted as he tugged off his helmet. “Yeah, luck.”
“Today went well.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You think?”
She moved over on the bed. She lifted the fur, revealing herself to him. “Still alive aren’t we?” She wrapped the fur back around herself. “I still have a bit left to drink as well.” She moved the furs again, giving him another glimpse of what lay beneath as she offered the flask.
Rodolf stripped his clothes, hating his body, hating every scar that marred it.
Inga grinned at him, and suddenly he did not care.
© June 2022, Matthew X. Gomez
Matthew X. Gomez can be found at mxgomez.wordpress.com as well as on twitter @mxgomez78. His has appeared in KZine, Econoclah Review, Grimdark, and in the anthologies Midnight Abyss and Altered States II. He is also the author of the short fiction collection God in Black Iron and Other Stories and the novel Project Prometheus. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.