Chapter 26: The Witness

The Defenders crossed into the Lord of the Blue Moon’s territory the day before Good Friday, 1758. The force consisted of 2600 mounted raiders, musketeers, nymphs, and even several cannons. Additionally, there were wagon trains bringing along enough supplies to travel as far as a crossroads south of Malenkta-Gordnackta. The Grand Duke promised to dispatch additional supplies from the border town, but the help would not include any regular troops. Danka realized the Sovereign would help the Defenders in case they did, by some miracle, have a chance of taking Sumy Ris, but secretly he did not expect them to win.

On the southern shore of the river that formed the border between the Duchy and the Kingdom, the Defenders celebrated Easter. The dispirited local populace watched from a distance as the Danubians burned four screaming captured priests and their women danced naked around the huge bonfire. The invaders spent the next day passing out loaves of bread and dried river fish to hundreds of starving bystanders, feeding them to mock the story out of the Christian New Testament. An officer who spoke the Kingdom of the Moon’s language shouted:

“The Roman God and his executed son cannot feed you, so it was our Path in Life to give you this meal! Remember, in your prayers, who fed you and who did not!”

The Defenders’ journey to their first objective, the crossroads south of Malenkta-Gordnackta, proved more difficult than the easy ride-through the previous summer. The Lord of the Blue Moon’s army had partially recovered from the previous year’s defeats and was strong enough to engage the Danubians. There were a series of small battles as the Danubians worked their way westward, which resulted in 50 killed and 120 injured. The musketeers and archers were not as affected by injuries as were the cavalrymen. Ominously, the Defenders already had lost a third of their best horsemen even before reaching the rendezvous point. The cannons were not as useful as the commander had anticipated because they took too long to set up. The sling bombs were not being deployed because the commander wanted to hold on to that secret for the final assault on Sumy Ris.

The Defenders were enormously relieved to see the Grand Duke’s supply expedition, after having spent nearly two weeks fighting skirmish after skirmish. The Defenders’ commander ordered all of the wounded to return north with the Grand Duke’s army. After the regular soldiers departed, the invaders rested a day before continuing westward to their objective. Their morale greatly improved when the harassing attacks from the Lord of the Blue Moon’s troops became less frequent. They passed through countryside that was completely depopulated and vacant, the contested zone that had been repeatedly devastated by war and invasions over the past four years.

The Lord of the Blue Moon’s troops fell back, but not because the Defenders were too strong for them. The eastern enemy would shadow the Danubians to see what happened when they entered the Lord of the Red Moon’s territory. Meanwhile, they would wait for supplies and re-enforcements. The Lord of the Blue Moon had learned from his past reckless mistakes and actually had a sound strategy regarding the Danubian invasion. He would wait to see if there was a major battle between the Danubians and the rival faction, then, assuming the victorious army was severely weakened, would attack the winners with his forces intact. The Lord of the Red Moon had decided on the same strategy. He would allow the Danubians to advance, see if the Blue Moon column attacked them, then order his men to assault whoever remained alive. So, the Defenders continued their advance towards Sumy Ris, aware of the two armies following them but mistakenly assuming neither was strong enough to launch an attack.

On May 11th, the Defenders approached a town called Aksheriri Ris. The location was significant because it was inside the Lord of the Red Moon’s territory and was only a day’s journey east of the former Danubian capitol. In fact, from its hilltop it was possible to see the upper part of the watchtower overlooking Sumy Ris.

Commander Saupeckt knew that he had to capture Aksheriri Ris before proceeding to his main objective, to use it as a base of operations if at all possible. Aksheriri Ris was not very large, but its location was much more defensible than the flat farmland surrounding Sumy Ris. It sat on top of a hill and was partially surrounded by a small river that had cut a row of steep cliffs to the south and the west, so it could only be approached from the east or north. The town was much newer than Sumy Ris. During Danubian times it had been the site of a large seminary, but after 1502 the Ottomans tore down the seminary and used the location as a defensible place to store trading goods. There were some solidly-built warehouses around a market, along with a central plaza and a large mosque that was demolished after the Kingdom of the Moon became independent from the Ottoman Empire. The most important structure (apart from the ruined mosque) was an Ottoman-built garrison building, on the far northwest side of the town.

At one time the place must have been attractive, but in 1758 Aksheriri Ris was not in good condition. The town already was damaged from the war of independence and also from a raid the previous year by the Kingdom’s rival faction. Only about half of the houses were occupied and the remaining inhabitants had partially dismantled the others for building supplies. The city had a wall facing the northern and eastern approaches, but the wall had collapsed in several places, leaving large gaps through which an enemy could easily enter. The Lord of the Red Moon’s army had dug some trenches and built cannon emplacements over the past winter, but in May of 1758 there were not enough men to guard them. There were three guarded gates, to the east, northeast, and north that the residents still used out of habit, but there were plenty of other gaps where a person could freely walk into or out of the town.

Aksheriri Ris had a garrison of several hundred troops from the Red Moon army and about half of the civilian population was still living there. The place definitely was not abandoned and would have to be taken by force. When he saw the garrison, Commander Saupeckt suddenly realized how precarious his situation had become because the Danubians would not be able to take Aksheriri Ris without suffering significant losses. They would not be at full strength to assault Sumy Ris and there were two enemy armies of unknown size lurking nearby. Ilmatarkt commented to Danka that he had sat in on some of the commander’s planning sessions and the other officers seemed very aware that capturing and holding onto Sumy Ris with 2500 troops was unrealistic, especially if the Danubians felt it was necessary to hold onto a second town and split their forces.

Under the circumstances the Defenders would have been better off bypassing Aksheriri Ris and trying to flee northward towards the Duchy. However, doing so would have entailed battling in the open with the forces of the Lord of the Red Moon and there was no guarantee the Danubians could hold off a sustained attack. Also, the majority of the Defenders were not yet aware how precarious their situation had become, but they would find out soon enough if they had to withdraw under constant assaults. There was another reason the commander decided not to retreat. During the previous summer he had defeated a force ten times the size of his own with his secret weapon: the sling-bombs. The Kingdom of the Moon factions would face a horrible surprise the first time he deployed them. If he chose the right moment and the Defenders killed enough of the enemy, it was possible the superior numbers of the enemy troops would not matter.

Commander Saupeckt decided a withdrawal was too risky and that if events went his way, it still might be possible to capture Sumy Ris. It would be better to occupy Aksheriri Ris, claim a victory, send word to the Grand Duke that the Defenders had captured a strategic town, and hope the Royal Army would enter the Kingdom to assist with the assault against Sumy Ris. Ilmatarkt and Danka knew that Commander Saupeckt was too caught up is his own fantasies to realize the Grand Duke would fully understand what really was going on: that the Defenders were cornered and faced imminent defeat.

The assault on the town went as well as could be expected under the circumstances. The cannon crews finally proved their usefulness by dueling with the garrison’s cannons and providing cover for the musketeers rushing through the gaps in the wall to enter the town. The Danubians swept into the unmanned trenches and used them for concealment and cover as they advanced on the town. The trenches were deep enough for the Danubian cannon crews to haul in their guns and direct them against the Red Moon troops at very short range. The townsfolk watched in dismay as fortifications they had worked on all winter ended up aiding the Danubians instead of the town’s garrison, by allowing the enemy to easily bypass the outer defenses. With minimal opposition, the Danubians emerged from the trenches and charged through the walls. Danubian musketeers attacked the poorly-organized locals, driving them back while archers entered the houses and took over the upper floors. Families of terrified civilians added to the confusion and greatly complicated the operation.

The Danubians needed to clear out the local population, but did not want to do so by killing them. (The relative goodwill was not just because the Danubians were not accustomed to killing non-combatants: showing mercy towards the locals also would mean having to deal with far fewer rotting bodies once the town was under Danubian control.) When they took over the eastern gate, the militia ordered the nymphs to start chasing the town’s non-combatants towards that exit. Amazed that they weren’t being targeted for killing, thousands of panicky civilians rushed out, directed by strange half-naked women screaming in a foreign language and pointing crossbows at them.

Meanwhile, the city’s garrison fought bravely, but they were badly outnumbered. The two remaining gates fell, followed by the warehouses. The militia turned the cannons around and used them against the Ottoman garrison building. When the building collapsed and the Danubians killed off the remaining enemy troops, the fighting ended. After a full day of chaotic and brutal combat, Aksheriri Ris came under Danubian control, for the first time in 250 years.

The Defenders had taken the town and could set up defensive positions, but it was clear to everyone they were in deep trouble. A fourth of the attackers had been killed or injured, which reduced the number of troops available for combat to 1700. Like their predecessors, they did not have enough men to guard the outer trenches and there was no reason a new group of assailants couldn’t use them exactly in the same way the Danubians had used them. So, Commander Saupeckt ordered the unfortunate civilians who had not managed to evacuate to go outside and fill in holes they had spent all winter digging. Filling in the trenches would clear the field of vision and ensure no one could approach by using them as cover. Dalibora watched the operation with dismay. “We need to be using those defenses, not covering them up.”

The medical staff set up an infirmary in one of the storehouses and spent the next several days operating on dozens of seriously injured patients. The medical team, in spite of being well-prepared, used up all their supplies. Horrid memories of the wounded from the battles of 1754 entered Danka’s thoughts as she worked on dozens of equally hideous injuries in Aksheriri Ris. The mortality rate in the infirmary was very high, because Danka and one of the doctors quietly poisoned any patient they thought would not recover.

At the end of the second day in the captured town, the commander of the squad in charge of the sling-bombs moved his entire stock into a small storeroom inside the infirmary building. His reasoning was that the infirmary was the most defensible building now that the Ottoman garrison fort was ruined and the most likely place the Defenders would make their last stand. The doctors normally would have been very nervous about having high-explosives kept among their patients, but it was true that, because the patients could not easily move, it made sense to keep the most important means of defense in the same location.

Danka and her husband looked at the stacked boxes of sling-bombs, to make sure they were secured and none would fall and set off the others. At that moment the couple realized a horrible fact. The only reason the Defenders were attempting to capture Sumy Ris was because Commander Saupeckt had taken control of the militia and was using it to pursue his own dream instead of protecting the Duchy. The only reason he had taken control over the entire militia was because his unit won an impressive battle the previous summer. The only reason he won that battle was because of the bomb-formula provided by Danka and the design improvement provided by her husband.

Danka looked back at the room full of mutilated patients.

“This is our doing, yours and mine. We’ll have a lot to answer for when we hold up our mirrors.”

Ilmatarkt thought about arguing that only the commander was to blame, but he knew his wife was right. What could he say? They were trying to do the right thing, just trying to help the militia win its battles. How badly their efforts had failed.

“There’s a saying ... from the True Believers. ‘The path to the Domain of Beelzebub is paved with the cobblestones of the kind actions of the righteous.’ I guess the Destroyer understood that.”

It was frightening to hear Ilmatarkt talk like that. He had always been so confident everything had a reasonable explanation and the deities were just the result of wishful thinking. That confidence in his own intellect and his unusual beliefs seemed to have vanished.

While Danka spent her time with the medical staff, events outside were moving quickly. Commander Saupeckt sent out messengers with the cheery news that Aksheriri Ris was firmly under Danubian control and that the Defenders were fully ready to assist the Royal Army in an assault against Sumy Ris. In other words, the hidden meaning of the message was that the militia did not have the strength to take Sumy Ris by themselves and would need back-up.

Historical records from the period indicate the Grand Duke was extremely irritated at the situation and at himself for allowing it to happen. Nevertheless, he did lead an expeditionary force to help the militia. Its purpose would not be to do anything about Sumy Ris, but instead to rescue as many Defenders as possible. The sovereign understood that to do nothing while loyal militia fighters were defeated and slaughtered would make him lose honor among his subjects. However, as soon as everyone returned to the Duchy, the Grand Duke would make the Defenders pay for their folly by disarming and disbanding their units.

Meanwhile, the Lord of the Red Moon decided that allowing the Danubians to continue their occupation of Aksheriri Ris was intolerable. Yes, it would be possible to simply wait and starve them out, but the Lord of the Red Moon was not the type of leader who was willing to wait more than a few weeks. He decided to order his army forward and launch an assault to re-take the town. By the beginning of June he was able to gather 6000 troops for the assault, which was more than three times the number the Danubians had to defend themselves. However, 6000 Red Moon troops in 1758 were not the same impressive fighting force 6000 Red Moon troops would have been in 1754. The Red Moon Army was ragged and disorganized, having lost most of their best troops and officers years before.

When the Red Moon Army pushed forward, they ran into many problems, including getting stuck in the loose dirt of the freshly filled trenches. Still, it appeared they would overwhelm the Defenders by sheer numbers. When the Red Moon troops recaptured the northeast gate, Commander Saupeckt realized he could not wait any longer to use his secret weapon, the sling bombs. The Danubians hurled the explosives at the assailants and killed enough of them to force a chaotic retreat. The gate was back under Danubian control, but the Red Moon Army was not defeated and now they knew the Danubians’ secret. The Red Moon commanders also knew how to defeat that secret, by firing volleys at anyone using a sling or carrying a small wooden box. When their musketeers finally managed to shoot one of the Danubian bomb-throwers, he fell off a rooftop and the explosion from the bomb he was about to throw and extra one he was carrying destroyed the gate along with two cannons and killed dozens of Defenders. As soon as the smoke cleared enough to see what they were doing, the enemy troops surged past the wreckage and entered the town.

Dalibora showed up at the infirmary to order Danka to join the rest of the squad in the defense of the town center. Danka reluctantly left her husband, suspecting it would be the last time she would ever see him. She wanted to kiss him goodbye, but Dalibora was yelling at her to move out.

The nymphs moved about the upper floors of buildings and houses as they hunted and engaged enemy troops who were fighting to get into the city. The women had to expose themselves to enemy fire whenever they tried to jump from one rooftop to the next, but were greatly assisted by smoke from muskets and burning houses, which provided concealment. However, needing to avoid the numerous thatched roofs of shoddily-repaired buildings and avoiding slippery tiles of many others horribly complicated their efforts to move about quickly. The archers aimed at their targets in the streets below and the enemy musket-men fired back, every so often hitting a nymph and sending her tumbling onto the ground. Within an hour both Dalibora and Oana had lost half their squad-members.

The Defenders fell back. Already half of the town was back under the control of the Lord of the Red Moon’s troops and they were setting up to re-capture some of the larger buildings in the town center. The next large round of shooting, however, came from the east, outside the town. The attention of the Red Moon soldiers suddenly shifted to counter a cavalry charge by the rival Blue Moon soldiers as they attacked and raided the cannon crews of the Lord of the Red Moon’s men. The assault was a daring one, meant to silence the Red Moon cannons so the Army of the Lord of the Blue Moon could advance unimpeded towards the town. The civil war reignited as the Red Moon soldiers withdrew from their more advanced positions in town to counter the approaching threat from outside. It turned out the Lord of the Blue Moon’s commanders had decided to advance towards the city, but the rival faction had moved in prematurely, because the Danubians had not yet been defeated. The Defenders took advantage of the dubious respite to consolidate their positions around the mayor’s residence and the town’s armory while the Kingdom’s soldiers fought each other. However, some of the Defenders were not able to withdraw and had to fight in place until they were killed.

The night that followed was the most nightmarish of Danka’s life, a night in which she saw the Destroyer exercise total control over human beings. There was a chaotic three-way battle between the Danubians, the Red Moon faction, and the Blue Moon faction. Inside Aksheriri Ris, most of the fighting was between the Danubians and troops from the Red Moon Army. Outside, along the slope leading away from the town, the fighting was mostly between Red Moon soldiers and the Blue Moon soldiers. The only light was from explosions and burning buildings, so as the night wore on the fighting consisted of increasingly chaotic clashes between squad-sized units battling enemies they could barely see.

The Red Moon faction consolidated its control of the east gate and its cannons. As soon as the unit’s commanders could bring up some cannon crews, the guns fired into the area still held by the Danubians. There were several explosions around the government area of the town. Then Danka saw the infirmary blow up. A cannonball or shell must have hit the room where the sling-bombs were being kept and set them off. Following a massive explosion that sent debris raining over the surrounding area, the building completely collapsed into burning wreckage. If Ilmatarkt was still in there (which was extremely likely) she had just become a widow.

Before Danka had time to mourn her husband, Dalibora’s calf was shattered by a musket-ball and she tumbled to a balcony before falling to the street. Danka and the remaining nymphs had to go down and rescue her, because it was obvious she was still alive and must not be captured. When the women got to her, she was bleeding profusely and it was obvious her leg was badly hurt. Danka tore off her own skirt and ripped it into strips to make a tourniquet. The surviving nymphs, joined by a squad of Danubian musket-men, covered Danka and another squad member as they dragged Dalibora towards a stone house. They laid her on the floor and Danka more closely examined the wound. The bone was shattered. There was no question the leg would have to be amputated, but Danka did not have access to surgery equipment. All she had was a pouch of morphine and some other medicines to sedate injured patients.

Oana showed up, dragging in a member of her squad who had been shot in the chest. Danka cursed herself, because in the past she had successfully operated on a similar injury, but at that moment she did not have the equipment. Without surgery was not likely the second patient would survive very long. Danka’s only option was to sedate her and try to control the bleeding.

The noise of battle continued outside, but Danka was out of the fight. Her quiver was empty and somehow her crossbow had broken. Even if she had crossbow bolts, she wouldn’t have been able to use them. She was naked, having given up her skirt to make the tourniquet for Dalibora. Her husband was most likely dead. Her squad leader would never walk again, even assuming she could be operated on before her wound festered. She was in a wrecked stone house with two dying patients she could not treat, in a ruined town deep inside enemy territory.

For a while nothing happened. She peered outside and saw no living soldiers, but there were several dead men from the Red Moon faction lying on the street. Danka’s heart jumped into her throat. Red Moon soldiers had been fighting right outside the house. Had they taken the city? The noise of battle had subsided, but by dawn break it increased again. From what Danka was able to hear from her location, it seemed the fighting from the east had died down and the new fighting was to the north, and perhaps not even in the city. Then the firing from the east picked up again.

Oana suddenly banged on the door and called out to Danka to let her in. She dragged in another nymph who had a serious head injury. A quick look at the new patient told Danka she was mortally wounded. Dalibora weakly asked what was going on. Oana paused for a moment, as though she were trying to decide whether to tell the truth or a lie. Finally she responded:

“Nothing’s going on. The Red Moons are still in the outer part of the city, but we’ve pushed them back somewhat.” Oana turned to Danka. “Make sure you keep this door barred and don’t go out. No matter what you hear or think you’re hearing, do not open this door and don’t go out. I’ll come back when it’s safer.”

“Can you at least get me a weapon? I don’t have any bolts and my crossbow is broken.”

“That’s your fault. And no, I don’t carry around extra weapons to pass out to dishonored careless fools. Now bar the door and don’t go outside until I come back.”

The battle sounds continued for a while. Danka thought she could hear “DOC-DOC DANUBE! - DOC-DOC DANUBE! - DOC-DOC DANUBE!” in the distance, but figured it must have been her imagination. The shooting from the north stopped, but there seemed to be a lot of shouting and movement outside. Then that stopped as well. There was more shooting from the direction of the wrecked garrison building and muffled screaming. There was a long period of relative silence, occasionally interrupted by a shot or a scream. Later, in the afternoon, there was another round of shooting near the warehouses and marketplace. Several squads of cavalrymen rode by the house. Later, a group of foreigners stopped outside the door and chatted for a bit before moving away. Danka felt sick. The Red Moon army must have retaken Aksheriri Ris. She looked around the house for women’s clothing, but there was nothing. Whatever clothing the owners had they would have taken with them when they evacuated.

She noted a ladder going up to a loft, and another leading to a hatch door in the roof. Maybe she could go up to the roof and observe what was happening in the town. The house was close to the highest point on the hill and its roof stood above the rooftops of the nearby houses, so she had a panoramic view of both the city and the countryside beyond. When she looked to the north, in the distance she saw a large column of troops headed in the direction of the Duchy. She then heard series of horrific screams and some cruel laughter. She looked towards the mayor’s residence and saw that the banner flying over the building was from the Blue Moon faction, not the Red Moon faction. Apparently the Lord of the Blue Moon had taken control of the city.

She looked again at the retreating column. Were they Danubian? Was it possible the Grand Duke’s regular army did show up to evacuate the surviving Defenders? That would have explained the “DOC-DOC DANUBE! - DOC-DOC DANUBE! - DOC-DOC DANUBE!” she had heard earlier. But then, why would Oana not have returned to tell her and the others to leave with everyone else? Was it possible that Oana was killed? Or was it possible that she knew about the evacuation? Danka’s mind went over the last conversation with her. She seemed to be hiding something. She had repeatedly told Danka not to look outside until she came back. The horrible thought came into her consciousness that Oana had deliberately left her and Dalibora behind, but why would she do that?

Dalibora weakly called out to her. Danka descended the ladder. Dalibora was conscious and in a lot of pain. Danka administered some morphine and the squad leader asked what was going on. As best she could, Danka described what she saw from the rooftop. The squad leader agreed there must have been an evacuation, that Oana knew about it, and out of pure spite, did not tell the rescuers about Danka and her three patients.

“Remember, Oana has the Destroyer in her soul. I’m not surprised. Not at all. She hated both of us and blamed us for her squad being taken away last year. She wanted revenge, and now she got it.”

“But, she’d hate us that much, to leave us to be impaled?”

“She hates us that much, Defender Danka. She hates us that much.”

“So what do we do?”

Dalibora thought for a moment before responding. She weakly sat up to look at her leg.

“You know, I’m still your commanding officer.”

“Yes.”

“You are sworn to obey me.”

“Yes, I’m sworn to obey you.”

“Then I am ordering to you poison me. And I’m ordering you to poison the others. I don’t want to be in the Realm of the Living when the foreigners break down that door. As soon as my soul separates from my body, you will escape. Somehow you will sneak out of this cursed town and somehow you will return to the Duchy. When you return, you will find Oana. Those are my last orders.”

“But.”

“I am ordering you to poison me. I am ordering you to separate my soul from my body. What part of that don’t you understand?”

Danka prepared a fatal dose of sedative. There was a barrel of rainwater and a cracked cup with which she could administer it. She held Dalibora’s hand while holding the cup to her mouth. It took about a minute for Dalibora’s eyes to roll up slightly and her grip to loosen. Danka administered another dose to the woman with the chest wound. She looked at the woman with the head injury. She was unconscious and it was clear she was dying, so Danka did not bother trying to poison her. She glanced again at her dead squad leader.

A loud bang on the door made her jump. She heard shouting in the Kingdom’s language and another bang. Dropping her medicine pouch, she rushed up the ladder and pushed open the hatch, just as the main door crashed open. A squad of Blue Moon troops entered the house as Danka exited and moved away from the opening. The course thatch dug into her unprotected skin, but that was the least of her worries. She lay flat as the hatch opened and a man looked both ways to make sure no one was on the roof. Fortunately he did not climb up to check the other side, so Danka stayed hidden. She watched the troops haul out the three corpses and toss them onto the street below.

From her vantage point Danka watched the enemy soldiers leave the house. One soldier marked the door with a piece of chalk to indicate the house had been checked and cleared. Danka crept back towards the hatch. If at all possible, she had to get back inside. She would be spotted on the roof as soon as someone happened to glance in her direction. It turned out all the soldiers had indeed left. She decided to stay in the loft in case anyone came back in and wait for nightfall before attempting to escape.