Sample Chapter: Pax Humana, Book Two; "The God King Crushes The Slave Revolt"
Jefari walked into the tent, swaggering a bit to cover the pain in his legs and back from riding so far, so fast. He acknowledged all of his generals with a glance, went right up to the table with the map of the region in one-fiftieth scale. He knocked his knuckles hard down on the center of the map.
“Hulne Pass. That’s where we trap them. Send riders out to all the towns north and west of there, have them coordinate their attacks and drive them down into it. We’ll approach from the south, place holding forces here,” he indicated the far side of the pass, where the cliffs broke into hills, and a small dense forest formed the edge of a clearing suitable for troop maneuvers. “Advance until you make contact,” he was starting to sound bored, convinced that everyone now saw the obviousness of the plan, “the cavalry sweeps around the rear. Plugs the bottle.” He waved his hand over the map and began designating chunks of troops.
"Two hundred, three hundred, five hundred, five hundred." He'd put the two largest groups up against the cliff and in front of the hills.
"Group one, two, three, and four." He tapped them starting with the first of five hundred. "Reconnaissance in force, hold the furthest position. Send a message back from there. Don't get too far ahead of each other."
"Anor, you're leading the holding force on the right. A word of advice: there's caves in those hills." He turned to the next man.
"Emril, you are...in the hot spot. You're commanding group two, which is covering the area where we’re anticipating the most contact with the enemy. Expect an attack. I'm not worried about you; I've seen you in action. You are a fine battle commander. You lead your men and fight with them, and now you fight for the honor and glory of the empire. Group one will be there with backup, if they clear their area quickly enough. So set up a reliable messenger system between you two."
He looked at the commanders of the other two army groups. "You guys are pretty secure, just hold your positions, we control the area around there, more or less. There will be stragglers fleeing the battle, don’t let them get through. Swamp lands, and a forest. What could be easier." He turned away to leave, but then stopped and faced the men.
"This fighting will get tough," he said, nodding plainly. "Some of us are going to die. But we are going to win. We are going to do this, together."
"And where will you be, Divine King?" Jefari winced at being addressed so formally in his war council. It was Tohalis’ son, in a slightly sneering voice. His father fixed upon him a look of severe admonition. Jefari regarded him calmly.
"I will lead the cavalry charge on the rear of the force. Do you see here?" He stepped forward to the table again. "We are trapping them in the narrow passage through the hills. We will wait for the forward column to pass through, then attack, driving them back into the hills. The cavalry cuts around to block them in from the other end, and, it's a slaughterhouse in there, between those hills and the woods. I have two legions hidden close by, they'll move in after the initial charge. Besides, someone's got to detain the other fifty thousand of them." He turned curtly and strode from the room.
Ranir sat atop his turuk with the group of others who had mounts, watching the throng trickling through the rocky passage between the hills. It was going slowly. He looked up at the sun overhead; it was before mid day, and a quarter of them were on the other side, but he was sure it would be well after dark before they all got through. He had sent out scouts, both forward and around the hills, to maintain communication with the front of the column during this hours long maneuver. The ones coming back through the hills would be arriving soon. The riders sent around the hills should have been back by now, but weren’t to be seen.
He checked the faces of the other mounted men. They were a pitiful cavalry; just a few hundred riders on stolen turuk, some learning the ways of reins and heels as they went along. Equipped resplendently, almost comically, in armor that did not fit them taken from human officers they had killed. Some had spears; others had swords. But their unfamiliarity with the weapons was evident in the nicks along the flanks of their mounts. Ranir held his long spear carefully, always up or forward, and his forearm was beginning to ache with the strain of that specific exercise.
The spear was long enough so he planted the butt of it in the soft ground, eased off his grip, and just sat there for a moment, taking in the scene. Before him, thousands upon thousands of men, women and children were being herded unhappily in a vast body. The din was terrific. Pack animals and scavenger mongrels, families of scuttling birds hurrying to keep up with the menagerie, all shepherded by individuals responsible for a portion of the mayhem each. They carried switches made of palm fronds, and kept the fear-crazed mothers and indifferent playing children moving along. The whole slave army had been travelling for two days, mostly without even pausing for a rest. They were still stinging from casualties taken in several minor skirmishes, and everyone was exhausted and near to breaking into madness. Ranir himself felt it, but what kept him from giving over was the picture in his head of that madness sweeping over those thousands and tens of thousands out there, what that would look like. He kept his head down and said as little as possible.
Other weapons were to be glimpsed here and there amongst the “army;” perhaps every three in a hundred men had some purloined sword, and patches of random armor strapped on to his body, but mostly the force was unarmed. They held sticks with stones tied to them and wooden pitchforks and gardening tools.
The heat of mid day was on them. Ranir wiped sweat from his brow, took his waterskin from his saddle bag and drank, more deeply than he should have. He felt the need to urinate, started to dismount, but something off in the distance caught his eye.
For so long, the aggregate crush of prosien bodies moving in one direction had been in his vision, that now even a slight disturbance of its flow stood out starkly. People were coming back. Running back, the other way, from the hills.
‘The scouts?’ he thought hopefully.
A scream echoed out from one of the running figures, picked up by others nearby and passed along in a swell of fearful noises. Ranir spurred his turuk and galloped off toward the source of the disturbance.
He pulled up on one of the runners, reining up right in front of him, stopping him with the body of his turuk.
“Stop! Tell me what is going on!”
“We’re being attacked from the other side.”
Ranir froze in his saddle, jerked around by the swaying motion of his mount. He snapped out of it, forcing his mind to function.
“Are they pursuing us through the hills?”
“No. They are just holding us at the other side. But they’ve killed hundreds.” Ranir locked eyes with the man for a long moment, then dug in his heels and galloped off again.
He sped furiously back toward his cavalry, who saw him coming and met him halfway. But he kept going past, full speed, down to about three quarters of the way from the end of the column. He stood up in his stirrups, straining to see beyond the cloud of dust rising up from the multitudes of wheels and feet. The wagons carrying the wounded and most of their supplies were just coming in to view. His cavalry reached him, drawing up breathless and wondering loudly what was going on. He waited. They caught his tension, and keened their necks to see whatever he was trying to see. A long moment of nameless fear. Then, there it was. A new cloud of dust being thrown up by a concentrated force in the near distance.
Ranir looked to the others. “It’s their cavalry,” he said plainly. They watched as the block of riders formed into a great wedge, coming to smash their migration into disarray with the momentum of their charge. The wagon train had sped up in panic and was colliding with the walking wounded and the general crowd beyond. He turned his head toward this new chaos, seeing the people fleeing from the hills running into the people fleeing from the cavalry, and he saw the trap, dead and undeniable and inescapable. Then as the front of the cavalry wedge got close enough to pick out individual riders, he saw that the foremost man was in shining armor, plumed helmet, had a standard bearer by his side and a bodyguard around him.
“It’s the god king.” Ranir stared open mouthed across the battlefield. Sounds of despair issued from his comrades behind him.
“He’s here, he’s leading them.” At that moment all hope left him, and he flung himself into combat with the grim abandon of one already dead.
The muscles in Ranir’s hand burned, but his fingers were locked around the shaft of his spear. He thought that if he ever got to set it down, or if it was broken, he would have to pry his hand open, wrenching the muscles back into place. He had stabbed over and over again, the simple motion of raising the spear tip to find some bit of exposed flesh or check a shield becoming a dreadful chore, an impossible task to just stab one more time, then another, as the god king’s elite cavalry ripped into the terrified mass of people. They had gouged deeply into the great column, gotten mired down by sheer numbers, for a wall of prosien women and children will stop even an armed human on turuk; called themselves together at a signal of blowing horns, and cut their way back out to ride free of the melee and regroup.
This was when Ranir had seen his fighting, in the desperate effort to assemble the people with weapons into a semblance of order, to counter attack the cavalry. He had managed to form several attack groups, and they had killed at least five of the god king’s knights, but when the armored turuk started busting out of the morass, it had become a more personal fight, individual riders testing each other with their lances. Ranir was wounded, twice, at least those were the ones he was counting as serious. One over his right breast, and one on his left side, toward his stomach. Each could have been equally fatal.
The god king himself had passed through the column in a bloody massacre, not stopping, not getting caught up in the crush of bodies like the others. He rode ahead of his bodyguard, only his standard bearer keeping pace with his fury, and he seemed to pass through the battlefield like the wind. Ranir was left like many others in the wake of this devastating assault, trying to free himself from the carnage. He took a moment orienting himself, then steered his bleeding turuk to a place outside the tumultuous aftermath of the opening engagement, to where he could better see what was happening on the enemy lines. His mount picked a path step by step around bodies, some cleaved open with their innards strewn out. His turuk’s unshod hooves slipped on the guts of people still alive, screaming in pain, reaching out with stumps. Ranir soothed the beast, leaning in close over its neck, stroking its head and speaking softly into its ear. The brave beast calmed, walked straight on through the stench of mass defecation and blood already curdling in the noonday sun.
He finally made it out of the crowd, leaving behind the destruction, forcing himself to not look back, not react to those pitiful victims begging for help. He hardly needed to spur his turuk into a gallop; the poor creature wanted to get away into fresh air. It leaped into a sprint; Ranir saw others joining him, breaking out of the battlefield on their mounts. The air whipped past him as he let the turuk run, catching up to his brothers in arms, knowing the coolness on the turuk’s body was easing the pain of its wounds. It eased his pain, too; and as he looked around him with the other riders forming together amongst the mayhem, chasing it seemed the god king’s cavalry, he burst out a ridiculous laugh and forgot all about his fear.
The sickness soon reappeared in his stomach as the exhilaration faded, and he saw what was happening up ahead. Two uniform lines of infantry had appeared from the dust, blocking the tail end of the slave army into the trap zone. They were a five-man deep row of shields and javelins; one man indistinguishable from the next, just grim faces under helmets. Ranir reigned up hard, felt the others come up behind him. The god king’s cavalry was coursing around the edges of the battlefield, in two great streams like a flock of birds. They turned wide to ride around the backs of the infantry formations, cut across each other, and began a second charge on the opposite side. He stared ahead, seeing and understanding this next part of the ambush. The people of the migration were already grouping together in panic, seeing the turuk and the blades coming for a second time, and they were forming into blocks of flesh for the approaching infantry to cut down.
Ranir stared in fascination as a cloud of javelins flew up from the soldiers, peaked, and fell down into the ranks of his army. Those with shields found them impaled, weighed down by a bristle of bent shafts. Now useless for defense, they were cast aside. Those without shields were pieced here and there about their bodies by the plunging tips of the weapons, some in the feet or shoulders, some in the back as they fled; some stuck through the stomach or neck, and then they were out of the fight.
A great massed roar rose up from the infantry, and they started running forward, drawing their swords from their right hips. Terror broke out amongst the army; flailing arms and weapons and animals tangling and fighting with each other in disarray. The infantry reached them and smashed into the throng with a crash of bronze on meat.
The initial attack happened so fast, Ranir didn’t have time to think. Within seconds people were dropping up and down the line. The soldiers stepped forward, raised their shields, and stabbed again. Another ripple of casualties fell. Ranir looked around to his cavalry, scanned their faces for the fear he felt. They were surveying the damage, seeing what he was seeing. Some of them were stricken, glancing about, close to fleeing. But some of them were gripping their weapons more tightly and cursing. These gave him confidence and he raised his voice up above the screams of the battlefield.
“We’ve got to get around the side of those soldiers, attack them from behind!” He saw his message was being passed down the group. He made a quick visual tally: about two hundred men had survived the onslaught. “Stay together!” He spurred his turuk and started off. He made himself wait to see how many had come with him, but when at last he turned his head, he smiled to see every man had followed him. He slowed to match their pace. Riding toward the front line, they passed close to the secondary column of the god king’s cavalry coming back the other way. Hundreds of mounted men flashed past, close enough to see their faces, to catch glares, but not one of the riders broke from formation to engage them. Ranir admired his men for not breaking either. Their little cluster of turuk passed along the inside curve of the column like a leaf in a storm. Ranir and his men were getting dangerously close to running into the infantry head on. The tail of the cavalry charge ended just in time, and they turned wide to flank the legion.
Individual troops were now visible, and troop movements; Ranir could see that the infantry were switching out front line fighters by transferring them to the back of their row, while the next one up stepped forward to take his place. They had already left a gory path behind them, and could seemingly do this all day. Some of the troops on the outside of the formation turned their heads to follow the turuk charging madly for their rear, aware they were about to be attacked, knowing there was nothing they could do about it. They held their places in line. The rear of the soldiers finally became exposed. Ranir yelled something, heard it answered from behind. They dug in their heels and sped up, lowering their spears and tightening their grips on their mounts.
The last two rows turned a moment before they collided, holding up their shields, but it was not enough. Ranir and his cavalry broke into the legion’s ranks, the furious charge devolving into a slow frenzy of stabbing. He saw many turuk go down, bellies opened by a thicket of sword blades. The mad animals flailed their hooves, hot blood spraying out of their wounds, kicking at the soldiers in their dying rage. Their riders were caught in the orgy of violence.
Ranir wheeled about, looking for an opening. He dug his heels in and drove out of the fray, blocking swords with the butt of his spear. Again the squadron regrouped outside the battle, again fewer than before they’d engaged. He looked around at the others, desperately counting. One third of their force had made it out.
“Hit them again!” He screamed, more in hatred than command. They were all with him now; resigned to death, the battle fury on them, nothing else in the world besides killing. They grouped together like a flake of foam on a wave, surrounded by the inevitably overwhelming tide of the battle around them. They swung left as the enemy’s cavalry charge came back, having cut through the frenzied mob once again. This time the column that the god king was leading was on their side.
Ranir saw this, as they all did, hoping that the column would pass them by as before. But as they began their loop back into an attack against the infantry, he watched with dread the god king, his bodyguard, and the point of the formation detach from the column and ride out to challenge them. He glanced toward the soldiers, at the block of upraised swords there. He looked back at the god king, appearing alone on the battlefield as he outpaced his bodyguard.
“Onward!” He called, not turning to see who had heard him. “Onward!” He called again, and they turned as one away from their attack, diverting their momentum to this new threat. Ranir stared at the god king. The sounds of the tumult died away as he focused all of his attention on that one person. His divine person got closer, riding almost casually, not even straining in the saddle. His bronze armor was covered with blood, no longer shining in the afternoon sunlight. His high helm with feathered plume made him appear taller. He looked to be a man, just like the many others he had killed that day. Ranir did not see his companions sweep out from behind him, expanding to meet the oncoming charge. His eyes were locked straight ahead. The god king’s turuk had metal plates flapping with streamers stained with blood. He appeared not to notice as melee broke out around him, Ranir’s cavalry contacting his bodyguard. His long-bladed lance dipped into killing position. They were so close to each other now, features of his face were visible. Ranir was shocked to see that the god king was not furious, or afraid, or even angry. He had no expression at all. His eyes were vacant, emotionless.
Ranir hefted his spear, and at the last instant before they collided threw it with all the strength left in his arm. The god king ducked in a flash of movement and Ranir was knocked back off his turuk, landing hard on his back, and all the breath left his lungs in an excruciating whoosh. He tried to suck air in but found there was a blade sticking out of his chest, high on his right breast. He dropped his head back and stared at the sky. It had turned out to be a beautiful day, really. If not for the horrific violence happening all around, this would be a nice place to die. The sounds of the battle grew sharper for a moment, then faded, becoming meaningless. Darkness began to creep in around the blue. A tall shadow fell over his vision. Ranir closed his eyes, meeting the darkness with a smile.
