30. Terror
Terror
One of the worst parts about fighting without true rest, even when rotating off the field, was that your body had no chance to recover.
The stimulants kept us upright and our reflexes at peak, and the painkillers in the slurry we were fed kept the burning agony of overtaxed muscles from reaching our thinking minds, but that didn’t mean that our bodies were functioning well.
We all got slower and weaker as our muscles and ligaments accumulated damage—the fae especially.
I started dreading rotation. At least when I was fighting, the focus of battle kept me from paying attention to the growing sense of my body’s slow failure, but rotating out meant retreating far enough to be in the rear, then plodding across rough ground while consuming enough nutrition and drugs to get me through the next hour.
If I got the chance to sit or piss—and that was a big if—I also had to deal with getting in and out of my armor and the horror of getting back to my swollen feet and moving back into battle.
We lost more people as the sheer physical drain of fighting for days accumulated.
The shakiness lurked just out of the range of actual sensation, a trembling sense of dread that filled my whole body.
It was like I could feel the ghost of what I was doing to myself.
Given that the other options were surrendering my Court to oblivion or certain death, though, functioning now and paying the toll later seemed like the better choice.
Alluin was doing a good job taking into account our diminishing physical resources in addition to the changes on the battlefield from Dain’s continued combat with the constructs.
We started moving in almost a see-saw fashion instead of lockstep retreats, with front-line squads halting and holding ground against the single dead while their neighbors fell back and shored up, then retreating backwards through the new ‘front line’ and getting a tiny rest before it was their turn to fight again.
It worked great, right up until a construct got past Dain and slammed into the saw-toothed line.
The horrific thing came out of nowhere, a humped, heaving shape that swung the front of its body through the lines, staggering in a half-circle that cut my two squads off from the main body of the army.
I recognized the construct. It had survived several attempts by Dain to bring it down, its skeleton of young trees badly damaged but the structure still visible, that of a many-limbed monstrosity with broken branches jutting out of the rotting torsos that made up its forelimbs.
Arms along those limbs twitched and reached like the tentacles of an anemone.
The meaty mass of its core dripped reeking fluids.
The newly-dead bodies of soldiers picked themselves up off the ground in its wake, armored and with weapons held in their still-warm hands despite broken backs and caved-in skulls.
We were too close to rotation for our neighboring squads to have the strength to surge forward and cut through the dead surrounding us.
Dain was deep in the dead army, half-buried under corpses as he tore a construct to shreds.
The hilly terrain meant that the only people who would be able to reach us in time were the two cavalry squads assigned to the high command, and they were sworn to stay with Alluin in the rear.
We’re going to die.
I set that knowledge aside, along with the sorrow and exhaustion and pain. Death was the long companion of all soldiers. We walked alongside her until the day when her arms wrapped around us and we sank into the drowning deep. I wasn’t afraid of death. I knew her well.
It was the regret I couldn’t bear.
My hoarse voice barked out commands: Circle to the rear. Shields up. Wedge formation. Retreat east. Move. Move!
I’m so sorry, Lu. I should have told you how much I love you, I thought to Alluin, my sword rising and falling as I cut my way through rotting bodies, seeing the construct moving towards us in my peripheral vision. Just close your eyes. Please don’t watch me die.
At least he wouldn’t feel it. At least it wouldn’t leave a gaping wound in his soul.
At least one of us would see Droesh again.
I didn’t turn to face the construct. It would kill me whether or not I looked at it.
I put everything I had left into carving a route parallel to the army, towards the beleaguered squads battling towards us, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to save my soldiers and yet unwilling to do anything other than give it my all.
I was going to die, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Wasn’t going to give up before death had me firmly in her grasp.
The shadow of the construct fell over me. Ravens cawed and rotting flesh made sucking, wet sounds, the monstrosity rearing up, limbs cracking and dripping as they swung down to sweep the battlefield bare—
Cavalry hit the construct like a warhammer.
I barely had time to react. They were just there, warhorses plowing through living and dead alike, heavy steel-cored ropes biting into the weight-bearing legs of the construct in a maneuver that reminded me of how the First Army took down behemoths and zarateen.
For one harrowing moment, I could only stare stupefied as the construct staggered— Put its weight down wrong— Snapped the wooden core of its leg and half-collapsed onto the attacking soldiers.
Horses screamed. Bones in the construct snapped like twigs, a horrific wet cacophony.
The cavalry line turned like a flock of birds, moving around a central core, around a lightly-armored man on an unsaddled deer, his dark, short-shorn hair whipped by the wind of his movement, his teeth bared as he drew back his war-bow to shoot a guyline over one of the construct’s limbs—
Alluin.
That was Alluin.
I moved before the thought fully registered, roaring out commands to my soldiers, wheeling us around to take advantage of the chaos, to get away from the construct, to get Alluin away from the construct—
Its shadow passed over me. Foul wind rushed past as the heavy, tree-boned limb slammed into the ground between me and Alluin.
It smeared across the stone and struck the deer he was riding.
The animal shrieked in terror as dead hands clawed at it, bucking and flailing, flinging Alluin off its back and onto the ground. His bow skittered away.
I fought my way towards him with terror lending me impossible strength. He shoved himself up as dead soldiers closed on him, moving too slowly, clearly stunned from the impact.
Neither of us saw the second limb dropping from the sky.
Thousands of pounds of rotting flesh and broken wood hit Alluin like a flyswatter smacking into a particularly annoying insect.
Agony seared through my throat. I slashed my way towards my shield-love like a madman as if I could do anything to save him—as if there was anything to be done.
My soldiers came with me, loyal to the end, but all I could think of was Alluin, fallen; Alluin, crushed; Alluin, gone—
The construct shifted. Light blazed out from under its dead flesh. The talisman spells on Alluin’s arms were burning so brightly I could smell his cooked skin, keeping him from being crushed by the weight of the construct. For less than the space of a heartbeat, I met his terrified gaze.
Lu, I breathed, and then the construct heaved itself up—and took Alluin with it.
I moved before I had a chance to fully process the sight of the wooden spar jutting through Alluin’s gut. I just moved, dropping my sword like a piece of garbage and snatching a war-axe out of my soldier’s hands as I flung myself at the construct.
I hit the thing’s limb a fraction of a second before it would have been out of range.
Clad in plate armor and weakened by days of fighting, I would never have been able to hold on in ordinary circumstances, but the construct itself grabbed me, the hideous, rotting limbs clinging onto me.
With a snarl of rage, I heaved myself up onto it, smashing my foot through a ribcage and using the bone as an anchor to balance.
The limb swung through the air, raising up for another strike, one that would surely kill me and Alluin both. I kept my knees bent, riding it like a trick-rider standing on horseback, and swung the axe down with all my might.
Bone and wood splintered. My blood roared in my ears. I did it again, again, again, hacking through dead flesh and the trunk of a slender tree, bits flying.
Wood cracked. The limb under my left foot sagged. I had enough time to bury the axe in the half of the limb that held Alluin impaled and to grab onto a vertical branch before we fell.
Wind whistled past my ears. Alluin was underneath me—would die this time if it landed on him; couldn’t survive it again.
I flung myself into open air, throwing my weight against the branch I held, holding on with everything I had.
The limb turned, just enough, Alluin and I parallel to the ground, falling on opposite sides of the construct.
We hit the ground hard. Bits of rotting corpses sprayed.
I skidded across the ground and threw myself to my feet before my vision cleared, staggering back to where Alluin lay sprawled, unconscious, his face too pale and blood pooling underneath him.
Soldiers surged forwards from one side and the dead from the other.
The war-axe was still in the construct’s limb.
I grabbed it and ripped it out of the wood as the limb bucked and squelched.
The fetid thing was still moving, but it had impaled itself into the ground, keeping it trapped.
I turned, took measure, and swung the axe down at Alluin with every dram of strength I had left.