Chapter 25: The Destroyer’s Servant

The final months of the winter of 1756-57 turned out to be good ones for the Defenders’ encampment. It was a time of peace and rest that passed more quickly than Danka had expected. Commander Saupeckt’s militia was totally cut off from the outside world for several months, but there was plenty of food.

Danka’s life among the nymphs became considerably more pleasant under Dalibora, the new squad leader, than it had been under her predecessor. Oana was brave, tenacious, and competent in battle, but she was too focused on harsh discipline and had a hard time maintaining morale among her women when they were not campaigning. Dalibora was much more gregarious and everyone liked her. She had a quiet charisma that Oana totally lacked, keeping the squad under control though her personality instead of constant threats of the whip. She had a way of talking to her subordinates that made them want to please her. She skillfully and patiently manipulated the other women’s emotions, to the point she exercised absolute control over the squad within a few weeks.

Danka wondered how competent Dalibora would be in battle. Oana’s personal strength manifested itself in a chaotic fight, while Dalibora’s character seemed more suited for keeping bored women under control during peacetime. One detail that troubled Danka was Dalibora’s lack of curiosity about trying new weapons and fighting tactics. It occurred to Danka that perhaps the squad should have two leaders: Oana to lead the women in the field, and Dalibora to lead the women in the encampment. Of course, such an arrangement would not be accepted by anyone: either Oana would have to lead or Dalibora would have to lead.

Danka spent some of her limited free time reviewing her journal and the miscellaneous notes she had collected during her travels. She called upon Isauria to help her transcribe her work; not because she really needed the girl’s help, but to force her to practice writing and penmanship. Isauria was not the best student: she much preferred to be running around with the male apprentices. However, Danka emphasized that her former servant needed to learn how to write to improve her chances of having a decent life in the Duchy. She also had a premonition that Isauria would be more important either to her future, or to the future of the Duchy, than anyone could have imagined at the time. Perhaps, when whatever disaster the Destroyer had hinted at took place, it would be Isauria’s Path in Life to survive it, just as it would be Danka’s path in life to survive. If the girl was indeed to be a witness, she’d have to know how to write well, whether she wanted to or not.

As Danka noted to the bored adolescent:

“You have no life to go back to in the Kingdom. You’ve seen, as much as I have, how the Destroyer has completely wrecked your homeland and killed your people. So, it doesn’t exist anymore. Like it or not, you’re now Danubian. You are a girl of the Duchy. You will marry a Danubian husband and raise Danubian children. That is your Path in Life.”

And, it was true. When Danka saw Isauria running around with the other apprentices, it was obvious there would be no returning “home” for her.

During the snowbound months, there was plenty of work for the militia’s doctors. While it was true there were no war-related wounds, there were injuries from accidents, falls, burns from carelessly handling fire, training mishaps, and frostbite cases. Ilmatarkt was an expert at setting broken bones, while his assistants were competent at sewing shut open cuts and gashes. Danka’s knowledge of alchemy was a valuable addition to the medical staff’s capabilities, contributing the Followers’ knowledge about disinfectant and sedating patients before operations. She asked the cooks to provide her with live animals upon which to practice and gave hands-on demonstrations about the use of anesthesia.

She also shared her university medical diaries with her husband. Ilmatarkt found the readings very interesting, not only for the information they contained, but also because they were all dated 1752-1753. Danka claimed to have been at the university for three years, but the dates on her notes did not support that claim. Ilmatarkt fully understood his wife was hiding something about her past.

Danka may have considered her husband strange for his weird blasphemous ideas, but her mixture of lower and upper-class habits was equally strange to him. Her vocabulary and table manners were typical of a woman from the nobility, but her accent was definitely lower-class. She could kill and butcher any animal with ease and confidence: she was not afraid to dig her hands into a pig’s intestines or pull a chicken’s head off. She knew a lot about farming, hunting, and fishing, but she also knew a lot about music, geography, religion, and literature. She could sew both fine embroidery and thick leather. She knew how to prepare a huge variety of food, from primitive stews to fancy pastries. She knew a lot about politics and guild protocol. She had visited every major town in the western half of the Duchy, along with a few places outside the country’s borders.

Ilmatarkt pondered the bizarre mixture of traits in his wife. He correctly guessed that she was born into the lowest class of laborers, but she had widely traveled and somehow spent enough time with the nobility to pick up many habits unique to the Duchy’s finest citizens. He calculated it would have been between 1753 and 1755 when she learned the traits of a noble-woman. He was curious to know her secret, but he was a patient man and could wait for her to inadvertently drop clues and hints about where she really was and what she really was doing during the two missing years of her life.

Danka’s bucket contained manuscripts that she did not share with her husband. Those included her writings about the battles of Horkustk Ris, Sumy Ris, and Iyoshnyakt-Krepockt, as well as notes on the slave trade and the settlement of Malenkta-Gordnackta. Ilmatarkt saw all those extra notes in the bucket, but decided not to look at them. Danka was smart and would have been perceptive enough to figure out if he was looking at her writings. Ilmatarkt wanted and expected to find out the truth about his wife, but he wanted the clues to come from talking with her, not from digging through her papers.

By the middle of April, the snow had disappeared and the forest was coming back to life. The paths had cleared enough to allow the Defenders to make their way towards the villages to celebrate the Festival of Rejuvenation, which at the time was still carried the Christian name of “Easter”. In the 1750s, the True Believers still associated Easter with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Old Believers had returned the holiday to its more ancient Pagan origins, as a celebration of the Creator’s victory over the Destroyer by returning warmth to the Realm of the Living.

The spring festival was also important for the Defenders and the villagers who hosted them. However, the isolated militia members followed neither the Christian nor the Old Believer traditions when they celebrated. Instead of the flowers of the Old Believers or the crucifixes of the True Believers, the militia celebrated with dancing and midnight bonfires to honor the Destroyer’s triumph over the son of the Roman God.

According to the Defenders’ version of events, the Roman God’s son was simply killed and the Resurrection did not happen. Instead, following the death of the “Son of Man”, the Destroyer triumphed over and over, first by destroying Jerusalem, then by destroying Rome, then by destroying all of Europe through multiple invasions against Christian countries. The Roman God had proven himself weak and incapable of protecting his followers. Only the Destroyer could triumph, only the Destroyer had true power in the Realm of the Living. The Roman God existed as a hapless witness, unable to do anything to prevent the wrath of the Destroyer.

Danka felt sick when she understood how the Defenders celebrated Easter and what the holiday meant to them. She did not want to believe that the Destroyer had such power over everything: she always wanted to hold out hope that somehow the Creator, or the Ancients, or even the Roman God, could combat the “Profane One” and win. She shared her doubts with her husband, but his answer was predictable and did nothing to ease her despair:

“The Realm of the Living is inherently destructive. It has to be, because otherwise there’d be no room for new life. Everything decays and rots. As for the violence, that’s just because we haven’t figured out how to create enough food, so men don’t have to fight over things like farmland. We don’t need fantasies like the Destroyer to explain why people invade each other’s territories when they’re starving. The Defenders are right about the Creator, the Roman God, and the Ancients. They’re helpless to protect us, but it’s not because they’re weak, it’s because they’re imaginary. But so is the Destroyer. It’s all fiction. Imagination.”

Several militia units descended the muddy wooded trails from various winter campgrounds to converge on the largest of the three settlements. They traveled on foot, but fortunately they had mules to carry their supplies. The journey was wet, tiring, and lasted several days. Danka spent the most of her time talking to her husband about the area and some of the Defenders’ previous campaigns. Meanwhile, Isauria walked alongside Dalibora and learned more about the system of trails the militia members used to move about the region.

Before entering the settlement, the nymphs stripped off all their clothing and placed it in a bag guarded by Isauria. Although the weather was still chilly, they gave up everything, even their shoes. The naked militiawomen walked into the settlement in single file and gathered with their village counterparts, who also were completely undressed. To Danka’s dismay, the villagers’ hair was unbraided. The oldest woman among the villagers ordered the nymphs to kneel and close their eyes. A villager took her place behind each nymph. Danka held her breath. Sure enough, she felt a stranger’s fingers undoing her braids. She cringed at the horror of knowing all those men, including her husband, would see her with her hair undone. She was used to being naked in public, but having her hair loose was an unbelievable humiliation, a sacrifice of women’s honor to appease the all-mighty Destroyer.

The purpose of the celebration was to acknowledge the Destroyer’s power over the Realm of the Living. There was a large pile of scrap lumber piled in the village square, surrounded by torches. In the middle of the pile was a sacrificial victim, a captured foreign priest dressed in a purple smock that was supposed to mimic a royal robe. The prisoner represented the son of the Roman God and would be burned to death as an act of defiance against a divine being who supposedly was all-powerful. The Defenders’ priest was un-seemingly cruel to his captured counterpart, taunting him and encouraging him to pray to the Roman God, just to prove his deity was powerless to save him from the true power of the cosmos: the Destroyer.

The naked, sweaty women danced for hours to the beat of sinister-sounding drums and flutes, completely exhausting themselves before midnight. They had to prostrate themselves on the muddy ground while the fire was lit. As the flames consumed the foreigner and separated his soul from his body, the Defenders’ priest called out to the Destroyer to share the power of devastation with the militia so they could have a successful campaign against their enemies. The victim’s screaming seemed to continue for an eternity. Danka later learned the fire had been set up so he would die slowly and suffer.

When the victim’s agonized screaming finally subsided, the militia’s Priest shouted into the air:

“In the end, we all come to you, whether we want to or not!”

The drums continued to beat as the men indulged themselves with ale. The women were dismissed and immediately went to the settlement’s bathhouse to wash off the mud and re-braid their hair. Just like everything else in that village, the bathhouse was a wretched, primitive structure. As she waited for her turn to bathe, Danka thought about the pristine washroom in the Grand Duke’s castle. She had hated her life as a concubine, but at the moment she wouldn’t have minded spending a nice lazy afternoon sitting in comfortable warm water in the Grand Duke’s marble tub.

When she returned to her husband, Danka couldn’t bear to look at him. She was dishonored: he had actually seen her with her hair unbraided!

Ilmatarkt was not scandalized, but he did not have any sympathy with his wife’s distress. He told her not to be ridiculous and that he could not have cared less about her hair. To him, the Danubians’ fixation with braided hair was as idiotic as their belief in the supernatural.

Danka did not reply, but she could not accept his casual dismissal of the most important part of a Danubian woman’s honor. Braids were what defined a Danubian woman’s very identity. How could he not consider braided hair as vital to proper protocol? What was he, a foreigner?

Springtime is normally a time of celebration, a time to be happy about the end of food shortages, confinement, and the physical discomfort of being cold all the time. Danka, however, did not feel any joy as the weather warmed up and the snow melted. Soon enough, the Defenders would return to the border and the battles with the Kingdom of the Moon factions would resume. There would be desperate surgeries on wounded men, of which she could expect only half to be successful. She’d have to endure the guilt of triaging patients and making the decision whether to operate or whether to administer a dose of poison to put a casualty out of his misery. She’d have to kill with her crossbow, yet again, and in doing so would add more suffering to her soul in the Afterlife.

Oana returned to the encampment during the first week of May, with a new squad of nymphs recruited from the Vice-Duchy of Rika Chorna. Whatever faults Oana had with her personality did not interfere with her ability to identify dissatisfied women and talk them into abandoning their lives and responsibilities. The recruits did not really understand what they were getting themselves into, but the promise of a silver piece for every month of service and learning how to handle weapons was a tempting alternative to their drab and oppressive Paths in Life in the Vice-Duchy. At first glance it seemed the new nymphs were as varied a group as Danubian women could possibly be. Some of the women were peasants and some were from the guild class. Their ages ranged from 16 to 37. However, they had one thing in common: they were all fugitives. Some of the older women were fleeing bad marriages, and some of the younger ones were fleeing their fathers. Two were thieves who had spent a humiliating afternoon in the pillory, three were fleeing money lenders, and one was fleeing from a jealous landowner’s wife.

Danka said nothing as she watched her former commander with her new subordinates. She had to hide her lingering hostility; the resentment that she felt from the older woman’s desire to flog her for no good reason. However, like everyone else in the militia, she knew that bringing up old disputes in front of Oana’s new squad would only cause trouble and hurt the morale of the nymphs.

There was no mention from anyone about Oana’s previous command, nor how she lost control of her squad. The new recruits never learned that the women in Dalibora’s unit had been under Oana’s orders just a few months before. What mattered was that Oana had redeemed herself and was ready to train and lead her new squad. Oana was a more experienced fighter than Dalibora and had a better instinct for strategy, so the squad leaders agreed that Oana would be the one to lead movements and attacks. The disadvantage of the situation was that Oana’s squad still needed training and experience, so Dalibora’s veterans would need to be extra careful about providing cover for the newcomers as they maneuvered in the forest.

Danka had to accompany her husband to the smallest of the three villages to assist the birth of the elder’s baby. The birth was uneventful, but Danka noticed several geese running around the village square. She remembered the Followers’ explosive goose-eggs, knowing that her husband’s laboratory had all of the ingredients to make hand-bombs, assuming he could obtain some gunpowder for her. She told Ilmatarkt about the eggs and how Ermin used them so effectively against the True Believers. He was very interested. If only there was a way to preserve the eggs’ shells while allowing the villagers to keep the contents. He pondered the problem for a few minutes before searching through his surgical equipment. Eventually he created a small circular saw that, when properly twisted, would drill a hole in the shell without cracking it. He approached the village elder and explained what he needed: as many empty goose-egg shells as the village could provide. He would leave behind the extractor and pay the villagers a copper coin for every five intact shells they could deliver to the encampment.

The dim-witted settler looked at the doctor with an incredulous expression. A coin for empty egg shells? Yes, but they had to be neatly drilled with no cracks and completely cleaned out. The village elder took the cutter and said nothing. Danka had no doubt she’d receive her egg shells, but there also was no doubt the elder had no intention of sharing Ilmatarkt’s coins with any of his neighbors.

While she waited for the first batch of egg-shells, Danka prepared the chemicals and refined the gunpowder needed to make the hand-bombs. Through her husband, she sent out word that she needed volunteers who know how to use slings. Several male archers showed up, from whom Ilmatarkt selected four, based on their ability to accurately aim their rocks. He explained that the volunteers were about to try out an experimental weapon, which needed to be launched with slings.

When the first batch of eggshells arrived, Danka had all of the ingredients needed to assemble four explosive bombs and two flash bombs. With trembling hands she carefully poured in the first layer of explosives, laid in a layer of melted beeswax to separate the next ingredients, and poured in the accelerant. Another layer of wax, and she put in a detonator that was designed to go off as soon as the seal at the top of the egg was broken. Each bomb was extremely volatile: even being turned upside down was enough to set it off.

As much as she hated doing so, she had to sacrifice one of each type of bomb in a test to make sure it worked. Ilmatarkt and Danka led the four volunteers away from the camp. Danka took charge of the sling and loaded the goose-egg. She took a deep breath, swung the bomb and released it. She screamed at everyone to get down and cover their ears. The deafening explosion blew apart the nearby trees and rattled the entire area. The blast brought dozens of panicky Defenders scrambling towards the crew with drawn crossbows and loaded muskets.

Commander Saupeckt showed up, as dumbfounded by the explosion as everyone else. He was present to witness the flash bomb being tested. Danka was enormously relieved that she had been able to duplicate both types of the Followers’ secret sling-bombs.

Because Danka “belonged” to her husband and thus not allowed to speak for herself, Ilmatarkt was responsible for explaining the goose-egg bombs and how they could be either thrown or used with slings. He gave as much credit to his spouse as protocol would allow, but ultimately he would receive the honor of introducing the new bombs to the unit. Had Danka not been married, she would have been able to claim credit for the innovation.

Danka planned to prepare additional bombs as empty goose-eggs and more beeswax arrived at the encampment. She would have liked to prepare some landmines as well, but mines would have been useless. The mobile nature of the Defenders’ manner of fighting made the positioning of explosive traps unrealistic as a tactic. The sling-tossed bombs were a different matter.

The Defenders moved towards the border at the end of May. The first part of the trip consisted of walking with pack mules along steep hillsides to return to the villages. The settlements took care of the Defenders’ horses over the winter, where they had to be left because the mountains did not have enough forage. The militia exchanged their mules for horses and continued mounted towards the combat zone. The settlers had cleared a series of meadows and had set up ponds to water animals, so the Defenders and their mounts arrived at the border at full strength and in excellent health.

The situation to the south had deteriorated over the winter. The village from which the Lord of the Blue Moon’s troops had been attacking Commander Saupeckt’s section of the border had been raided by troops from the Lord of the Red Moon, precisely because the troops assigned to protect it had launched a raid against Red Moon territory. The scope of the civil war was expanding into previously peaceful areas. The land was burnt and desolate, there was no food, and the surviving population was desperate.

The Danubians decided to further demoralize the foreign towns near the border by riding through the region in a show of force. They could gather a total of 1500 Defenders, which was a force larger than any of the broken Kingdom of the Moon units operating in the eastern section of the country at the time. Commander Saupeckt and his fellow commanders discussed the possibility of permanently occupying some of the southern land, and the ride-through would allow them to see how feasible that idea would be.

The Danubians gathered and forded the small river marking the border at the end of the first week of June. 1500 mounted Danubian militia fighters would not have been a match against the Lord of the Red Moon’s powerful army just three years before, but by 1757 the Kingdom’s armies had been decimated by continuous fighting, movement, and atrocities. At that moment neither faction had an available unit in the area large enough to counter the unexpected invasion from the Duchy.

The Danubian column rode unopposed through the war-torn region for several weeks. They did not attack any civilians as long as the local populace did nothing to impede their procession. When word spread that the Danubians were not as cruel as the Lord of the Red Moon’s men, the locals stopped fleeing. Instead, the wretched, starving foreigners silently stood along the roadways, sullenly staring at the strange invaders. Danka noticed the women and girls paying particular attention to the squads of nymphs, sitting on their horses with crossbows in their hands and satchels of bolts slung over their bare shoulders. It was bizarre and scandalous for the Kingdom’s women to see their Danubian counterparts with their heads and torsos uncovered, with cold hard expressions on their faces and, above everything else, holding weapons they clearly were accustomed to using against male opponents.

Danka remembered her husband’s words from the previous year: “ ... among the Defenders, your life will have a purpose. And when we go south, and you’re riding your horse with a squad of armed nymphs, the women of the Kingdom of the Moon will look at you with respect and awe. Remember, the Kingdom’s women don’t fight. They don’t do anything other than serve their men. So when they see the infamous Danubian nymphs ... women carrying weapons ... it makes them wonder about their own Paths in Life. And as far as being part of something much greater than yourself, among us, you will be. We’re defending the Duchy. You, a mere woman, have taken up arms and are defending the Duchy. You can’t be part of anything more important than that.”

There was an important exception to the Danubians’ rule about not attacking non-combatants. Any foreign priests, monks, or other church officials that could be captured were immediately chained and sent northward to the Duchy. They would be held in a forest prison until the Defenders returned from their campaign, to be sacrificed in the Destroyer’s bonfires. The Defenders didn’t just want the foreign clergy as sacrificial victims; they also wanted to demonstrate that the blessing the Roman God and his executed son had supposedly granted the Kingdom of the Moon was a total lie. The Roman deities couldn’t even protect their own clergy, so how could they protect the Kingdom? The local populace only lived because the Danubian militia allowed them to live, not because of any Divine blessing from Rome.

Although the Defenders met very little resistance during their tour through the southern towns, their leaders decided to return to the Duchy at the beginning of July. The main problem was lack of food in the Kingdom. There was not much point in raiding or foraging, because the previous year’s harvest had been destroyed when the Lord of the Red Moon’s troops invaded the region. The Defenders could move into any area they wanted, but they couldn’t stay because there was nothing for them to eat.

The column of militia fighters was both relieved and disappointed when their horses waded the shallow river back into the Duchy’s territory. The fight they had expected did not happen. The fighters were alive to celebrate and feast in the three villages, but they had not fulfilled their Paths in Life as Defenders. The units drifted off towards their assigned protection zones, not having accomplished anything apart from showing off to a bunch of wretched foreigners and exploring some of the enemy’s territory.

The commander ordered Danka and her husband to pick up a supply of empty goose-egg shells from the villagers, return to the laboratory in the winter encampment, and make as many bombs as possible. The couple entered the cave and set up the alchemy equipment. However, before Danka had the chance to mix the ingredients for a new batch of bombs, her husband expressed doubts about the project and a possible improvement. The volatility of the bombs and their extreme fragility troubled him. They were simply too dangerous to carry long distances. He wondered if it was truly necessary use goose-egg shells for the casings. Wouldn’t blown glass make better casing material? What about glazed ceramic? Perhaps that would be even better than glass.

He brought up the alternatives to his wife, but she was skeptical, commenting: “I don’t know, my love. The Followers used goose-eggs for a long time, and I’d imagine it was for a good reason.”

“Well, we need to find out if there really was a good reason. I think the only reason they didn’t try a better casing was because under their circumstances it wasn’t necessary. Our needs are different and I’d like to use a casing that’s more dependable than an eggshell.”

Ilmatarkt worked on a glazed ceramic design for the explosive bombs that looked like a goose egg, but was twice as big. The section dividing the explosive from the accelerant was part of the internal design. There was a hole between the sections that would be sealed with beeswax, but it was much smaller than the area that would need to be sealed inside a goose egg. He also devised a glass casing for the fuse. When she packed in the explosive, Danka had to agree Ilmatarkt’s design was a huge improvement. The test blast from the enhanced bomb was comparable to the power of explosives that would be used in the late 20th century. Not only did it destroy trees; it tore a hole in the ground and shattered the stones on a nearby hillside.

When he saw the destruction from the enhanced bomb, Commander Saupeckt whistled with satisfaction and anticipation. Assuming he could keep them secret until the first time they were used, he knew they would guarantee him a victory. That meant he could be more daring in his efforts to provoke a raid from the Kingdom of the Moon, and that for the first battle he would not have to call upon other militia commanders for help. He pondered the possibility of conducting a full-blown massacre of a large enemy unit, using nothing but his own troops and the new bombs.

After his counterparts departed with their units, Commander Saupeckt came up with a plan to goad one or both of the Kingdom’s factions to make another attempt to attack the Defenders in their home territory. Without consulting the other militia leaders, he ordered three of the captured foreign priests to be brought to the main village to be burned alive. A fire was set up in honor of the Destroyer and the three foreigners were brought to the village square. However, one of the victims’ bonds had been left loose, on purpose. The villagers threw him against a wall while they tied up the other two priests. Realizing he had a chance to escape, the young cleric untied himself and fled. A squad of Commander Saupeckt’s most trusted men chased after him, but their orders were not to capture him. Instead, they were to stay close enough to make the priest believe he was about to be caught, but all the while making sure he headed in the right direction so he could safely cross back into the Kingdom.

The staged escape had a specific purpose; to goad the Kingdom’s factions to attempt a rescue of the remaining captured clergymen. Undoubtedly the escapee would warn his countrymen what was happening to the priests. The Roman God would be quite displeased with the Lords if they allowed the Danubians to sacrifice the Kingdom’s priests to the Duchy’s Beelzebub. It was ironic that in the Kingdom torturing and impaling civilians was perfectly acceptable, but to do anything to a priest was considered an unacceptable outrage. How horrid that the Danubians would leave worthless civilians alive, and instead defile sacred clergy members!