Act Four: the Ghost Dance
Word of the ascension of General Dok and rumors of the establishment of a rebel stronghold in the southern outskirts were the talk of the neighboring hamlets, who communicated their desire to join the resistance. “What resistance?” the men and the two lords were wondering. Was there any truth to the rumors?
~~~
“What experience have you in combat, seer?” Marshal Koen asked Dao Rong as he leaned on his halberd to walk.
“I’ve been chased by men on horses- with maces!” he sheepishly replied.
“Ah, so you are light on your feet and can carry on for long distances!” he interpreted. “I’ll spare you an old dirk and see if you can hold your ground against me…” Koen suggested.
“I can’t fight!” Dao protested. “I can barely stand as it is!”
“Seeing as how you are technically a captive, a foreign captive no less, we have no real obligation to keep you safe- to keep you alive, moreover!” but even Koen realized the cruelty of that sentence. “Here is your chance at a better otherwise: best me in a duel and you will be spared. Lose this duel and consider it your execution for the crimes of espionage and trespassing on a military camp.”
“You can’t do this to me…” Dao Rong’s voice warbled. “I revealed to the general his father’s fate, I saved him from the assassin…” he reasoned.
“Tis’ really not my choice to make boy…” Koen sighed, pulling a piece of scrap parchment from his breastplate: “we need all the muscle the men here can spare to pull this off, and in turn need to cut off as much of the fat as possible. General Dok asked a favor of me, and that is why I brought you here…”
For a seer, Dao Rong was rather unobservant. As they were walking, he looked around and realized they were already a way’s away from the village: in a clearing that would serve as either his final resting place or first battlefield. Suddenly, a thud fell before of him. It was Sir Koen’s dirk dagger, with strap and scabbard. He took it and looked back at Sir Koen as he drew his own dirk.
A cadence that held firm like dogma animated the way the old marshal moved. His wobbling, creaking gait suddenly flowed into a graceful, yet disciplined movement. Decades of marching to this same beat- in and out of war- had imprinted itself into his bones. And so even as he danced this martial dance that was the nimble footing required to fight with a dagger, this rigid, yet graceful military cadence sang in every step he took. The old marshal said nothing, but his eyes met with Dao Rong’s and he understood: follow my feet. Dao Rong looked him in the eye, then followed suite.
Then a specter, as if the old man had died by his hand and came back to haunt him, lunged forward at him. His lunge landed, but Dao Rong fell back anyways. Then all of a sudden-
“Smashing footwork, old bean!” the marshal congratulated. Dao Rong however, stood confused.
It was as if Dao Rong was seeing double: a specter of the marshal struck him, but then the marshal himself- the real marshal- had in reality, missed! He then noticed the rattling silvers in his pocket. Every time they moved around as he did, the movements of others where telegraphed- as if by an illusory specter or mirror perfect copy.
Dao Rong raised his dirk towards the marshal. “have… have at you…” the first streaks of confidence broke through his cowardly warble. The marshal’s whiskers perked up, and the old overweight man dashed with the speed of a kingfisher in mid-dive towards Dao- or at least his specter did.
Dao Rong kept on his feet, to keep the silvers in his pocket moving and revealing the specter that would betray the marshal’s next move. But even with this newfound power, the marshal was demonically quick. Each lunge and dash were followed by a clap of thunder, with venom at the end of every slash and jab of his imperial dirk. But he feigned how fast he really could’ve been: rubbing joints and faking aches and pains where there were none.
Even with his specter foretelling each move, all under the gaze of the untrained Dao Rong, it was clear to him that the marshal had been missing on purpose. The marshal had no intent to kill, but to teach Dao Rong: “The ghost dance!” the marshal proclaimed. “Weave through two opponents: the enemy you face now and the enemy your enemy chooses to become with his next move: know which is which, and you’ll have a dead man!” he talked as he spoke, and as he finished the sentence, he lurched away from Dao Rong- exposing his side to him. The specter betrayed the marshal’s next move to Dao Rong, and the marshal soon followed suite. He went in to strike…
Then, a stinging pain. Dao Rong fell from the shock, but after a few seconds, felt it not to be but a slight graze on the back. “You’ve a good eye in reading moves, but I make fools with my foils any day, old bean!” the marshal chuckled. He showed his side to bait him, then pivoted sharply to strike Dao Rong’s overextended and overexposed back. “Beat some oil into water and apply it upon the wound.” The marshal approached Dao Rong. “We’ll need you in good enough shape to finally crush those pathetic mercenaries…” he said, retrieving the parchment he had in breastplate earlier and handing it to Dao Rong:
“Congratulations on your enlistment!”
~~~
The night of the counter-assault came: the men stood in line, having finished a rushed course on the most basic of tactics. They wielded polearms of quality and strength comparable to their wielders. To the men with wives and families, they donned gambesons of cotton- quilted linens and blankets sown together to form a stiff vest against oncoming attack. It does little against the broad side of a good sword, but it was something at least. The men with no wives, no children, no family- to them went nothing. And yet they stood as bravely before the looming threat as did those men who did had wives, children, and families. They had none of these things behind them to defend, but they had all of themselves before them to prove. These are the goats.
Im front of them- way ahead of them- was a party of men. They were lead, or more fittingly whipped from behind in order goad them to go further, by magistrate Bo. The last of the polearms made were given to them. They were of even poorer quality than the former, and two of them were just sharpened hazel poles. These are the sheep…
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“Onward, you blithering bastards!” Bo cruelly mocked the quivering contingent, marching on with them, a faint gallop going off in the distance. “give well to brave this night tonight, or relieve your community of a great many burden and give your lives up on the fray!” Bo limped like Koen but got around with a cane- the same cane he used to catch a retreating sheep who thought he could slip away. He was the anti-shepherd, pushing the sheep deeper unto the wolves’ den.
They soon came upon the camp, not a mere hundred or so meters away from the closest active guard, his eyes fluttering and his head bobbing back and forth from lack of rest. Bo examined not the camp nor its goings on but consulted the stars above his head. When he was satisfied by what he read in their celestial glow, he kicked one of the sheep who had with him the crossbow they’d pilfered from General Dok’s would-be assassin. He was the least shaky of the lot and the most trigger-happy. The crickets had not finished their harp when the dozing guard threw himself to the ground.
“To arms!” Bo ordered. From the rushes and greenery, the sheep jumped out and revealed themselves, hand to arms in martials stance. “Arms- ready and steaaaddyyy.” There was not point saying this, Bo thought to himself. The spears shook along with the cowards and made the formation look like a row of flowing reeds. Still, the formation looked large enough to fool the enemy into thinking they had been spotted and were under attack. Alarms within went off and a general ruckus exploded amidst the panic. The galloping sound behind them grew louder.
Soon enough, they coalesced into a shambling mass and began the counter. “Lord Bo, they’re coming…” an eye-patched sheep yelped. “…w-what are we to do?” the galloping grew louder before it ceased.
“Ready?” General Dok asked as he and his horse arrived behind Bo. “Looks like we hooked a big one!” he said, commenting at the horde that was currently rushing towards them. Bo climbed on to Dok’s horse and in response to that one sheep’s inquiry, he merely turned to him and replied:
“Try and keep up.”
The initial instruction was that eight men meet them head on, the remaining seven fall back. Skirmish for no longer than a blink of an eye, and whatever of the eight survived, fall back with the seven.
“What’s the scenery like back der?” Dok chimed as he raced through the mountain pass.
“By some miracle, all of the sheep are alive and are running for their bloody lives…” Bo humorously observed. “If this goes well, we might sweep them clean and lose no men of our own?”
“You consider those men?” Dok guffawed. Bo looked back at the once trembling and cowardly Dao Rong- eye patch flapping in the wind- as he ran like it and called for his comrades to ‘try and keep up’ themselves.
“He’s getting there…” Bo replied. “…not a bad shot with the crossbow, too.”
The camp was near empty, save for a few reserves: most of the marauders pursued the sheep contingent as they fled. With no time to fortify or barricade themselves in, chasing down potential aggressors that could betray their position was the only way.
As the mountain pass neared the end, thicket as tall as small saplings blanketed the open clearing and the sheep contingent had nowhere to run. It was nothing but a dozen poorly armed, cowering men; their crippled commanding major; and a handsomely decorated general ripe for the picking. They downed but did not drop their spears. They inched back as if clutching at straws, praying they be spared by the barbarian horde:
“If this doesn’t work, we’re screwed…” Dao looked towards Bo. “and we’ve you to blame for it!”
“Impossible, this is one of Koenjung’s hair-brained schemes:” Bo retorted. “Somehow they always seem to work…” he looked to Dao as if he had forgotten something. The mere gaze was enough to remind him.
“Oh yes, of course…” he looked to the west of the grassy field and eye something between the reeds that eyed him back. He struck the sky above him with his spear and waved.
“so we are getting a fight out of you lot after all…” a raspy voice boomed from the horde. “you know I was starting to wonder if our initial strike didn’t bit off as much as first,” be bellowed, the dark, filthy hair contrasting the bleached white tunic and thick wool cloak. “but to see the great general’s son whittled down to the point where he’s playing chess with the dregs? This is going to be but mere training with dummies-” he looked to his men, all slobbering and savage, drawing their swords and spears. “have at it, boys…”
But before they could encroach, the wind once again blew. It blew over Dao’s face, but unlike last night, the wind blew straight and true: Dismas had gone, and the sky shone without his light. The tall grass bended ever so slightly to the passing breeze, revealing the contingent of militia men who emerged from their concealment and towards the horde- a pack of wolves circling their prey. It was not until the wind blew again that the neigh and clop of horsemen was betrayed, but by then, they had already sneaked up behind the horde, blocking off their escape into their camp- mountain lions ready for the pounce.
No stare, no wait, no moment to savor the confrontation. As soon as the belligerents saw each other, no one knew who said it first- all of them simply went: “to war!”
Iron threw itself against iron, flesh against flesh for some of them. In the bedlam of war, the distance between ranks fall- footmen find themselves exchanging blows with generals, colonels brandish their metal against militia. Koen’s strategy worked perfectly, they were beating the horde down from front, while the cavalry charged to whittle them down further from behind. But they were no ordinary contingent of traitors: they were the vile black hands of the Wojewode, Dolgoroj.
“Tell your wojewode that I’ll nail his balls to the wood of his grand door!” the short and stocky Koen taunted before lunging his halberd and launching a poor blackhand into the air.
“Quite a harsh…” Bo’s sentence was cut short as he turned to cut through someone who intended to cut him. “Quite a harsh fate for family, isn’t it wojewode?” he taunted the fuming Koen in the heat of battle, for no other reason that to wind him up and see him rip through the enemy ranks.
“Can it, Bohrjia…” he shot back. “Tonight, we water this field with the blood of lowly traitors, and tomorrow I shall mop the floors with my bastard brother’s disemboweled guts! Waaarrrhhggg!” the wind up worked: by the end of his charge, he had three men lined up at the end of his halberd, basically skewering the weapon through them.
Meanwhile, the ugly white-clad lad who taunted them before found his sword against a certain lowly halberd. “You and your allies will die here,” he mocked the ragged recruit. “and you’ll be next too…”
“Save your dialogue for the few who can bear your grinding voice!” Dao cut him off before landing a clean strike into his neck with the not-too-dull side of his meat cleaver halberd. The two fired broadsides, the untrained and critically weak Dao Rong keeping fair pace with the much stronger ugly commander. The commander too bore a specter, the same one Koen bore. He was strong, but sloppy, each move heralding the next. But fast on his feet he was, and if Dao hadn’t moved a second before the specter of his foe did, his would have found himself before the jagged edge of his falchion.
“You won’t live to speak that way to me ever again, mutt!” he roared before dodging a clumsy jab by Dao and weaving through the pole to strike his face. The blade cut close, close enough- but still no cigar. Dao felt his eyepatch flutter away as he stared his soon to be killer dead in the eye.
And there, the ugly commander’s stance fell, and his posture dropped. That eye. That single eye. It was enough to pierce straight through him and immobilize him for a mere a second. It was all Dao Rong needed to escape before his falchion fell before him, hand still gripping it. Dao was forcefully grabbed by the collar of his shirt and dropped on the back of General Dok’s horse as he looked behind him, the ugly commander groveling in pain as a hand pulls him back and he disappears into the rapidly dissipating horde. Amidst the retreating horde though, a specter like that of Koen and the ugly commander stood. It didn’t look like either of them. And it stared straight into Dao with one eye…
“Good job, soldier!” General Dok roared, shaking Dao from his stupor.. “You kept that blabbering preener so well distracting, he forgot to command his own troops!” he let out a victorious laugh. “Look around you lad, we fought them off! And father is well and truly avenged!”
The night was finally won…