Chapter 23: The Nymph

After the celebratory dance had ended and Commander Saupeckt’s troops had the chance to rest, the militia evacuated the camp at daybreak. Danka was amazed by how completely the place had been stripped when she had the chance to see it in the light. She put on her skirt, but her squad leader ordered her to take it off and hand it to another nymph who had, up until that moment, been naked. Danka already had noticed that one of her companions had been wearing nothing but her boots, but didn’t have time to ask why during the previous day’s fighting. It turned out the newest member of any squad among the Defenders, male or female, had to endure an initiation process which included not wearing any clothing, to symbolically strip the recruit of their previous life and to identify that person to the world as “the newcomer”. Squad leader Oana, irritated that Danka was a slave-owner, did not order Isauria to give up her skirt. Oana justified the decision by telling Danka that, since Isauria was only an apprentice, the initiation rule did not apply to her. It was a humbling experience for Danka to be naked while Isauria stayed dressed, partially intended to force Danka and Isauria to see each other as equals.

Danka did not have much time to think about her nudity. She and Isauria spent the end of August and the first half of September following Oana and the rest of her squad of nymphs, going from one skirmish against the Kingdom’s soldiers to another. There were so many raids that she lost count, all of them seemingly the same. Oana’s squad provided cover for the men during the initial attack, then fell back to a secondary ambush location to launch a quick series of volleys of bolts at the enemy. When the Defenders’ men moved to the next ambush site, the archers fired again to cover their movements, then ran away at full speed through an escape route already selected by their squad leader.

In spite of the initiation requirement, Oana quickly earned the respect of Danka. She knew the countryside in detail and knew how to support the men while minimizing risk to her own squad members. Every day she inspected her subordinates and looked over their bodies and equipment. She conducted frequent drills and target practice; making sure that each of her women knew her role in every operation, how to withdraw from a possible defeat without panicking, and how to maximize cover for not only the men, but also for the other squad members. She knew some forest survival and concealment techniques that Danka had not yet learned.

When Oana discovered that Danka had been a Follower of the Ancients, she interrogated the newcomer about her knowledge of both medicine and foraging, making note of things she did not yet know. She then ordered Danka to share her knowledge with the others. The Defenders seemed more appreciative of Danka’s information than had been the women of Malenkta-Gordnackta, partly because she did not repeat her mistake of trying to impose her religious beliefs on anyone.

The squad members completely accepted Danka as part of their group as soon as she proved herself with her crossbow and her knowledge. She was much more valuable than most recruits and enjoyed the respect of her peers, something she had not experienced since she had been with the Followers of the Ancients. She fit in so much that the others regretted that she had to run around as a naked recruit, but like everyone else, she had to endure the initiation routine and would get her skirt back only when Oana managed to recruit a newer member for her squad.

Commander Saupeckt’s main responsibility was to safeguard the southern approaches to three settlements of Danubian homesteaders who had set up their farms a decade before. The villages were isolated, wretched places, but vital to the well-being of the Danubian militia because of the food they produced. As September passed and the villagers harvested their grain, the Defenders needed to hold off several attacks from the Lord of the Blue Moon. The enemy commanders already knew about the villages and occasionally had made half-hearted attempts to destroy them. Danka’s raid against the logging camp and the follow-up raid on the wagon team were considered provocations, thus making the enemy more determined than ever to attack the villages in retaliation.

Commander Saupeckt normally led a force of 80 raiders. However, the fighters under his command could vary between 40 and 200, depending on what was happening along the border at that moment. As soon as Commander Saupeckt saw the dead loggers, he dispatched messengers to the other area commanders explaining what happened and that the focus of the fighting was about to shift to protecting the settlements against a sustained attack from the south. Within days after Danka’s raid, he had 200 militia members under his command: the 80 troops who were permanently under his control, plus 120 other militia members who had been lent to him by other commanders. Commander Saupeckt’s counterpart, who was guarding the eastern approaches to the villages, also commanded a temporary force of 200 militia members.

The most serious incursion took place during the week of the Fall Equinox, when several companies of foreign musket men marched towards the settlements. The Danubian militia fought with desperation and there were numerous casualties on both sides. The enemy’s advance certainly was slowed, but the column was too large to force back. By September 22, the Blue Moon troops were less than a day’s journey from the settlements. Assuming they took the area and burnt the harvest, the Danubians would have a very hard time campaigning in that region over the following year due to lack of food.

Weather came to the Defenders’ aid that night, in a manner similar to the way it aided the Grand Duke two years before in the hills surrounding the border fortress in Iyoshnyakt-Krepockt. A heavy thunderstorm swept over the area, making the Blue Moons’ muskets almost useless. Commander Saupeckt ordered a full-scale midnight assault in the middle of the storm, which turned into a bloody melee of hand-to-hand clashes. The Defenders sustained heavy casualties, but the situation was completely to their advantage. They knew the area, were used to fighting in the forest, and had trained to fight in the dark. By daybreak the numerical advantage of the Blue Moon troops was greatly reduced.

As soon there was enough light, the Defenders withdrew, trying to take as many of their injured as possible. Still, dozens of Danubians had been taken captive. The prisoners would be impaled if they could not be quickly rescued, so Commander Saupeckt needed to press the next attack. The Danubians launched a follow-up assault with every crossbow they had available. Although the crossbows were less effective in wet conditions, at least they functioned. The return fire from the waterlogged muskets was only sporadic. The continuing rain put the enemy at a huge disadvantage.

Oana led her squad very close to an enemy squad of musketeers. Danka felt the short range was reckless, but her leader wanted to make sure every crossbow found its target. Danka’s doubts seemed vindicated when the woman fighting next her took a fatal musket-ball to the chest. However, the enemy squad was completely wiped out after the second volley of bolts. By mid-morning the commander of the Blue Moon column realized he was not going to be able to continue advancing. In fact, he would be very lucky if he managed to return to the Kingdom of the Moon with his remaining men.

The enemy commander knew enough about the Danubians and their concept of honor that he was able to arrange a retreat. He left some of the Danubian prisoners tied up but alive as his troops pulled back. To abandon prisoners instead of impaling them was considered a humiliation for a commander from the Kingdom of the Moon, but this particular opponent was more worried about having his troops surviving to fight another day than a personal humiliation. As the Blue Moon troops departed further south, they left behind more captives. Over the next two days, the Blue Moon troops continued their slow withdrawal with the Defenders surrounding them, but withholding another attack in anticipation of having more prisoners left behind.

The Danubians were grateful enough for the gesture that they did not launch any further assaults. The enemy soldiers forded the river, with their commander standing on the Danubian bank, watching his men complete their retreat. The five final Danubian prisoners were left on the northern shore with their hands tied. As soon as the last of the defeated troops crossed, the enemy commander concluded the withdrawal by shooting himself in the head. He didn’t have much choice: had he crossed back into the Kingdom of the Moon, it was likely he would have been arrested and impaled as soon as the Lord of the Blue Moon was made aware of the defeat.

Danka did not have the opportunity to see the final part of the battle and the release of the prisoners. There was a second casualty from Oana’s squad, a nymph who had been injured in one of her shoulders by a musket-ball. It was fortunate the ball missed her collarbone, but there was a huge risk of bleeding and infection. Because Oana knew that Danka had medical training, she placed her in charge of the injured woman and allowed her to take Isauria as her messenger and assistant. For the entire day Isauria was frantically scouring the woods for herbs and keeping a pot of boiling water so her mistress could prepare disinfectant. The squad members crowded around as Danka sedated her companion, removed the musket-ball, cleaned out the wound, applied her improvised disinfectant, and did what she could to prevent excessive bleeding. She fed the patient a weird mold solution which, to everyone’s surprise, actually worked. Within three days it was apparent Oana’s squad member would survive, recover, and eventually return to service, although she’d have a nasty scar on her chest for the rest of her existence in the Realm of the Living.

Fall was quickly approaching, which meant the end to fighting for the year. Commander Saupeckt released his temporary troops to their permanent units and the focus of his unit’s activities would be surviving the winter. The majority of the Defenders of the Duchy would pull back from the border and return to their main winter quarters to rest, repair their weapons and build new ones, and train for the following year’s battles.

Before departing from the conflict zone, the Defenders converged on the largest of the three villages to bury their dead, organize captured weapons, feast, and celebrate their victory. The village included a cemetery containing hundreds of recent graves. The question of how such a small settlement could have so many dead was easily answered when Danka saw 77 new graves and 77 corpses ready to fill them. The recent battle had been particularly bloody: a tenth of the Defenders participating in it had been killed and another tenth had been wounded and were recovering. Each squad was responsible for the funeral of its own casualties: there was not enough time for all the Defenders to honor everyone who was being buried.

Oana’s squad had to bury the woman who had been killed in front of Danka. The squad’s newest member had to accept the fact she was indirectly responsible for her death, because it was the attack on the logging camp that provoked the Lord of the Blue Moon’s troops to invade and attempt to destroy the villages. Oana emphasized that point by ordering Danka to place a mirror in the corpse’s hands, which she would hold up before the Creator when facing judgment in the Afterlife.

Danka tried to push aside the guilt by justifying to herself what had happened. Yes, the villages had been attacked, but wasn’t that inevitable anyway? And ... didn’t the Defenders win? Weren’t the settlements even safer than they had been before? And ... hadn’t she been the one to save another of her companions by successfully operating on her? Hadn’t she fought bravely and killed several of the enemy? So ... there was nothing for her to feel guilty about. She had more than redeemed herself. And yet ... as she looked at her dead companion for the last time, a young peasant woman whose time in the Realm of the Living had been cut short, Danka could not completely suppress her feelings of remorse. She didn’t feel any guilt about the Kingdom of the Moon’s troops, but she did feel bad about her Danubian companion.

When Oana’s squad left the cemetery to bathe and indulge themselves in a spiritual cleansing ceremony, they passed the village square, which contained an enormous funeral pyre built to dispose of the Kingdom of the Moon’s casualties. There were more than a hundred enemy corpses piled in the square, plus dozens of severed heads taken from enemy bodies that had been killed too far from the villages to be transported intact.

The respect given to the Danubian dead was totally lacking for the enemy corpses. As the villagers and lower-ranking men among the Defenders prepared the funeral pyre, the local children curiously poked at the heads, jammed sticks into their eyes, and rolled them around in the dirt. No one faulted the children for their disrespect: had the Defenders lost and had those kids been captured, they would have been impaled by the men who were now lying dead, most likely in front of their mothers.

Oana’s squad-members found a safe place to stash their weapons and clothing and, like all of the women among the Defenders, completely stripped in anticipation of the upcoming ceremony. It was the role of the women to dance in honor of the Destroyer while the men stoked the pyre with corpses. It was the first time that Danka fully understood she and her companions were indeed dancing to honor the Destroyer, not the Creator, nor the Ancients. Oana noted the worry and doubt in her recruit’s face concerning doing anything to honor “the Profane One”. Danka had been a Follower of the Ancients, so her hostility towards the Destroyer would be especially intense. Oana took Danka aside while the other women indulged in ale to prepare themselves for the dance.

“Everything you see here ... and everything that we’ve accomplished ... is because the Destroyer helped us. This is war ... and it was the Destroyer who brought war to the Realm of the Living. To honor the Creator for this victory would be like thanking the village potter for a sword given to you by the village blacksmith.”

“But, the Grand Duke, he conducted war, I was with him in Horkustk Ris, Sumy Ris, Iyoshnyakt-Krepockt, and he never honored the Destroyer.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I never met His Majesty. I can only tell you that here - we are honest with ourselves and the spirit who determines our Path in Life. That spirit is the Destroyer.”

“I’m not going to submit to the Profane One. I will not...”

“Oh yes you will. You already have. The Destroyer owns you, just like the Destroyer owns me and everyone else in this campaign. We have to honor the Destroyer and serve the Destroyer. If we don’t, the Destroyer will simply find someone else to serve the cause of destruction, and instead of us destroying the lives of others, we will be destroyed, and if that happens, the Duchy will be destroyed. No one is asking you to love the Destroyer. The Destroyer cannot be loved because the Destroyer will never bring you any joy. But as a nymph and a member of my squad, you must honor the Destroyer. We all must. It is our Path in Life.”

“But, what about when we hold up our mirror before the Creator? How can we justify...”

“We can’t justify any of our actions before the Creator. We will suffer for what we’ve done. I’ve already told you the Destroyer brings no joy, and that will be true many times over after our souls separate from our bodies. But that is our Path in Life. At least we’re being honest about it. Most people spend their time in the Realm of the Living serving the Destroyer simply for their own pleasure, but are not honest about it at all, not even to themselves.”

Danka said nothing more. She and Isauria joined the other naked nymphs as they knelt in front of the funeral pyre. While it was being lit, the poorly dressed Priest gave thanks to the Destroyer. The women responded to each of his lines with a wailing chant. When the burning of the bodies got underway, dozens of women and girls began dancing while the drummers and flutists played in the dark. Nymphs and villagers, young and old, mothers and daughters, danced for hours as the fire illuminated their bare sweaty figures and the sinister drums beat in celebration of death. The destruction of the foreigners’ bodies took hours as the smell of burning flesh permeated the entire area. After all the corpses were burnt, the exhausted Defenders remembered the pile of severed heads and tossed them into the pyre as an afterthought.

The burning, dancing, and chanting continued throughout the night. Danka was disgusted with herself as she joined the others dancing with her uncovered body and singing with her exhausted voice. So, the Destroyer had won after-all. She should have known that it was the Destroyer who had laid out her destiny, her Path in Life. The Destroyer had taken the trouble to visit her and tell her that reality many times over, but she had refused to believe it. The Ancients were nowhere in sight. Like everyone else in the Realm of the Living, the Ancients had forsaken her.

Before departing for the winter headquarters, the Defenders bathed in preparation for the journey that lay ahead. For the women, bathing included cleaning and re-braiding their hair. Normally Danka tasked Isauria with arranging her braids. However, while she and her slave were relaxing in the water, Oana came up to Danka and dismissed the adolescent. Oana would wash and braid her hair with the new recruit, which was an honor considering that Danka had been under her command for only a few weeks.

As they washed each other’s hair, the two women talked about the recent fighting, the squad member who had been killed, and Danka’s medical training. Oana provided Danka with some additional details of the history of the southern border, describing how the Defenders had organized in 1752 in anticipation of the growing conflict in neighboring Horkustk Ris province. As they talked, Danka was able to update and correct some of Oana’s information about the siege of the city and its subsequent destruction.

Eventually the squad leader moved to the topic she needed to discuss with Danka: the fact she owned a slave and that slavery was prohibited among the Defenders of the Duchy. Danka responded by explaining why she had taken ownership of Isauria and that it was not her intention to keep her collared indefinitely.

“Then you should be very happy to hear that we have a blacksmith who knows how to remove slave collars. Your servant cannot keep her collar in the winter camp. Within a day of our return, I expect you to take your girl to the blacksmith and get the collar off her neck. What you decide to tell her about it will be up to you.”

Danka thought about how to explain de-collaring to her servant. Finally she decided the best way to handle Isauria’s situation would be to formally emancipate her.

“I’d like for her to pay me for her slave-owner’s certificate, to purchase her freedom. I’ll take my name off the paper and put hers on it. Then she’ll own herself and no one will be able to challenge the legality of her freedom.”

“Does she have any money?”

“No, of course she doesn’t. Until a month ago, I didn’t have any money. Now I do ... some silver and copper from the loggers.”

“Then here’s a thought. Why don’t you give me the money she’ll need to purchase her certificate? I’ll pay her for her service over the past month plus her wages for next year, and then she can pay you to purchase herself.”

“Pay you, to pay her, to pay me.”

“Yes.”

“But I did spend three-and-a-half gold to buy her. That was my own money. It was all I had, from a property title I sold.”

“And, as I understand, you’ve since earned it back. Or at least most of it. So there’s no problem.”

“No. I suppose there’s no problem.”

“Then give me all your coins. I’ll borrow whatever’s missing from the commander. You’ll have your part of the money returned when you surrender your servant’s paper.”

When Oana finished braiding Danka’s hair, the two women emerged from the water and dried each other’s bodies. Danka then retrieved her coin-purse and emptied out the stash of coins taken from the logging camp. There were 14 silver pieces and 18 copper coins altogether. She handed them to her commander. Thus, she had to give up any hope of somehow recovering part of the gold she had originally invested in Isauria when she purchased her.

For the trip into the mountains, Oana temporarily returned Danka’s donkey to use as a pack animal. Danka and Isauria loaded all of their weapons and campaign supplies onto the beast. Danka decided to allow the girl to ride as well, given that she was not very heavy and there was no point wearing her out unnecessarily. So, the quiet dark-haired servant rode perched on top of the animal while Danka took turns leading him with another member of her squad. As her squad’s new recruit, Danka remained naked, even though the weather no longer was suited for being undressed. Although in the fall it was customary for nymphs to wear capes, Oana and the other squad members remained topless. They did so in solidarity with their newest companion, since by custom Danka would not be able to get dressed until she had arrived at the winter encampment.

Chilly breezes whipped around the long column of Defenders when they left the settlements and traveled upstream towards their seasonal destination. As she walked and shivered in the increasingly cold air, Danka had the consolation of knowing where and how she and Isauria would spend the winter. They would be in a warm, safe place with plenty to eat. However, the independent life she had hoped for would elude her. Her existence would revolve around the needs of Oana and the other nymphs, preparing for the next summer’s campaign ... and, of course, the whims of the Destroyer.

The settlement turned out to be more comfortable than Danka had anticipated. At first glance it appeared to be very little: nothing more than some obscure huts scattered around a wooded hillside. However, the huts were spread over a large area, some of which had hidden passageways in their floors. The tunnels lead to a large natural cave, in which the Defenders kept their weapons, food, supplies, and records. The cave’s temperature was constant throughout the year: it was cold inside but never close to freezing. Best of all, the stream that had formed the cavern provided the Defenders a steady and unlimited supply of pure water. The Defenders did not actually live in the cave, because they knew that too many occupants at a time would spoil the air inside. However, as a place to safeguard their food and belongings, the cavern served the militia much better than any man-made structure.

Danka reported to the squad’s bunkhouse and selected a bunk large enough to accommodate both herself and her ward. There was nothing unusual about the arrangement, since most of the nymphs had a sleeping partner to conserve warmth during cold weather. They would be fairly comfortable over the winter: instead of sharing a cramped bedroll on hard ground, they’d be sleeping on a real mattress with real blankets. Isauria made the bed on the assumption she’d be sharing it with Danka.