I was roused from the peculiar state between a light doze and dreamless unconsciousness by grunted curses and the muffled sounds of violence. Someone was being beaten just over the hill. I barely touched the men at my sides and they snapped into motion, bodies moving without conscious thought.
"Do you hear that?" I whispered.
"I do."
"Me too. You two check it out. I'll get the squad ready."
We were all moving before I'd even thought to correct the man's impertinence. Between the thin clouds and the faintest suggestion of moonlight above, we were all indistinguishable. In the dark, kneeling in our trenches we were brothers in arms rather than men of the line and their commanding officer.
I crested the rise with my fellow, peering down at a thrashing mass in the gloom. I saw a monster with triangular horns pistoning back in on itself and were it not for the distinctly human noises of men throwing blows, I'd have shot the thing. My fellow and I charged in, tackling a monstrous limb that transformed into a man as we bore him to the ground.
The melee devolved into a brawl as another group of men threw themselves into the fray mere seconds behind us. That so many growls and grunts could find their way past gritted teeth without causing alarm seemed inconceivable. Any moment now someone was going to put a bullet into the free-for-all if order was not restored. I caught a savage kick to the ribs that sent me rolling down the hill. A man came tumbling after me, and then another. I managed to catch my breath while those two grappled and with that breath I remembered that I was not only a brother in arms but also an officer.
"Kook Company! Stand fast!" I roared in a whisper that rasped my throat raw. Order resumed within seconds. "What is the meaning of this! Sound off by name and rank."
The brawlers obeyed. Twenty men, my own bloody men, had been caught up in the moment, hammering blows on their brothers to break up the melee. There was but a single outlier, the cause of such pointless mayhem. He was one of the Kobryn men and the instigators among my ranks insisted this was his fault and not theirs. I sent the men back to their trenches save for the thugs among my own and their victim.
"I should have the lot of you whipped for this." I said once we were behind our line and out of earshot from the rest of the company. "This is no way to treat our allies!"
"Go on! Tell 'im what we caught you doing you slimy cur." One of my men protested.
Their captive remained silent save for his wheezing breaths. I had the troublemakers form a blind then struck a match to look over their victim. He seemed a mess, though I saw nothing that wouldn't mend with time.
"Trooper. My name is Captain Adams. Whatever it is that you've done, I give you my personal guarantee you will be treated fair and justly. Cooperation is your best course of action. Do that, and you will be returned to your detachment-"
"No I won't. They're gone," he interrupted. "We got our orders at dusk. We're done fighting your war."
"That's- No. We're allies." I mumbled before composing myself. "What were your orders exactly, Trooper?"
"We're to march home, immediately. We have our own borders to mind and it's obvious that this is a losing fight. We've spilt enough of our blood for your war."
"He was looting when we caught him, Sir. Stealing through what his friends left behind when they ran off tails between their legs. They're gone Sir. All of 'em. The cowards must have snuck off just a few hours ago around dark."
I couldn't believe it. I couldn't call my men liars either. I struggled to picture it. 600 men had fought with us yesterday. I didn't know how many had made it back to the third line, though word was that the Kobryn Irregulars had been fiercely mauled by the day's fighting but still that meant a few hundred men had stolen off in the night! Come the dawn a vast portion of our defenses would be unmanned, an opening practically begging to be exploited which would seal our fate. We were betrayed and I was sorely tempted to thrash the man myself! The cowardice of our 'allies' would cement our demise.
"Men, bring him to the command center. I'll brief the Colonel and meet you there." No sooner had the words left my mouth, I took off at a dead sprint.
It was a short briefing. The Colonel already knew of the Kobryn desertion and our previous order of battle was thrown out the window. Losing a quarter of your army overnight tended to render the best laid plans moot. There was too much ground and not enough men. Cooks and clerks and mechanics were pulled from the rear but it wasn't enough. Nowhere near enough. The lines were thin, platoons spread wide, reserves diminished to single squads.
There was a single sliver of light in these dark developments. Coalition forces were engaged on all fronts and while most were battling to a draw, the Canzuk 4th Division was actively repelling the enemy along the plains. I knew little about our neighbors far to the distant west save that they were a noble lot of militant peacekeepers— though peace enforcers may have been more a apt description. They were a bit like reverse-warmongers, always eager to fight for the sake of ending the fighting, it was all terribly paradoxical. At the news of our dire situation and urgent requests for reinforcements, Col MacHarper was breaking off 1500 hardened career soldiers to relieve us. At best speed, they would be with us in two days; three at worst. We just needed to be here when they arrived…
Our strategy shifted from defense to delay which changed remarkably little. Our sister battalion were pulled from supporting the second line back to the third, leaving the Hanover Ferrous Guard with an impossible mission. 400 men had to hold a line 2000-meters long, or one man to cover every five meters of the line against God-only-knows how many. The mercenaries pushed forward to support them but it was a token gesture. Those men were being told to sell their lives for ours. To die on foreign soil for a cause not their own. They would have been well within their rights to refuse these new orders, to give more ground to the enemy and join us on the third line of defense.
To my eternal gratitude the men of Hanover accepted their orders with grim determination. So long as they could hold their weapons, they would delay the enemy. I dearly wished it would not come to that, though I knew in my heart those were not empty words.
The sun came up like it always does, only this time I wasn't looking forward to the dawn. It was still beautiful though; fitting, seeing as how it might be the last sunrise I ever saw. There was something remarkable about how bright the gloomy day seemed after how utterly dark the hours prior. I couldn't quite put my finger upon it, perhaps it was the contrast between the two, or maybe it was merely the way I drank in the light much like a chilled lizard would the warmth of a heat lamp. Who knows? Certainly not I.
While our forces had dwindled overnight, a quarter of our strength vanished like the morning dew, the enemy had gathered. It was impossible to see them through the wooded distance yet I heard them. From so many kilometers' distance I could hear the enemy. All that remained now was the waiting and I found no disquieting peace in it this time. These were not precious moments before the coming storm but rather the ominous lull found in the storm's eye.
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The damned fine men of Hanover held until supper— not that there was any supper to be had. No man could stomach more than a few crackers all day. There was no appetite for meat among my lads. The shattered remnants of the Guard trickled out of the wood just as dusk was threatening. The first man to brave the meadow was an unlucky soul, more than a few itchy fingers snapped their triggers at the sight of him running our way as if all the devils in Hell were clawing at his heels. The unlucky soul reached our line, reported that the enemy was close at hand, and promptly died of the wounds we'd given him.
How right he was.
That night swiftly became a nightmare. Cannons thundered, pausing only to cool glowing barrels between firing. Flares that seemed to be falling stars illuminated the ghastly meadow with an unnaturally flat light that threw long shadows from the shortest bushes. The enemy came, sometimes in suicidal charges of insane bravery and others crawling like predators stalking prey. Wretched metallic hawks warred in the sky with the mercenaries' damned cicada-buzzing helicopters, incidentally killing men on both sides of the battle from stray fire as much as from crashing in fiery explosions. And then there were the mercenaries themselves…
They were armed like some macabre machinist's manic dream. Giants of steel, of closer resemblance to a lumbering ape than a man. They warred with a brutal efficiency, the culmination of unlimited discretionary spending, technological innovation and the singular aim of pure lethal momentum honed by truly extraordinary warriors. I saw little of the mercenaries in the night and what little I saw could have been snipped from a scarfaced movie. I watched one literally tearing apart a whole squad of men like a gore-smeared red devil. Those people were not soldiers, they were living weapons that killed and killed and killed. They were gods of the battlefield and they were also monsters reveling in the carnage.
By dawn the forest edge and its tranquil meadow at the foot of our hill were blasted badlands littered with the maimed and wounded far surpassing the dead. Somehow that part got left out of the stories I'd heard detailing the glory of war. They always mentioned how heroes rose while men fell, but never how the fallen lingered there at death's door. In the quiet times between assaults, when the fighting slid elsewhere down the line of battle, I could hear them out there. Pleading, Howling, Wailing like the souls of the lost and the damned. If the end came for me today or fifty years hence, that sound would still be haunting me.
I might have stolen naps in those brief lulls between attacks, though I wasn't certain. The shelling could barely wake me anymore, yet every utterance of 'They're coming' sent a bolt of action coursing through me. I didn't truly wake during these engagements. I fought in a curious, functional stupor.
I ceased being a soldier upon the battlefield and instead became a sleepwalker operating his station. Kook Company was my well-oiled machine and it would run smoothly up until another key component got ripped out of it or smashed apart or burned into uselessness or buried alive or shot full of holes. I made my corrections, issued my orders and kept working. This was my job and no matter how my machine protested under the strain, I must keep working until I was told I could stop. I found myself thinking that should have happened by now. It was an hour past noon. Why hadn't I gotten any new orders? I was constantly being pestered for instructions by squeaky wheels that didn't belong in my machine. Who was this man with his arm degloved of skin and burns across his face?
"Identify yourself man." I ordered, regaining a semblance of presence I hadn't realized had left me.
"Lieutenant Victor, acting CO of Loyal Company." He answered.
"What happened to Captain Wall-" I started.
"Dead, along with the rest of Brigade HQ. Shell got 'em all two hours back. Near as I can tell there's not a man alive above the rank of Captain excepting maybe the gunnery major. The battalion is yours, Adams. What are your orders?"
My mind was racing full tilt before I could blink. That things had come to this- No! I couldn't allow myself to succumb to despair. Not in front of the men! The situation was too volatile to stop and think it out. Now was the time for action and there was only one course of action worth taking.
"We're falling back to the final defensive line." I ordered. "Retreat by company, squad by squad if you have to! Just get off this hill before the covering barrage hits!"
Victor saluted me with his skinless arm and ran off to rejoin his company. I didn't dare imagine how many men would reach the camp outskirts for our final defensive action. The enemy was coming and the battalion—what remained of it anyway—needed a leader. I found a radio and gave my orders. We had a ten minute head start before the cannons that had been shelling the enemy night and day turned their aim dangerously close on our positions and began the covering barrage. We ran, sacrificing three more kilometers of ground for a few more minutes. We didn't need to win. We just had to hold. Minute by minute, hour by hour, we just needed a little more time.
Men staggered and stumbled to their positions along the outskirts of town. The battalion—my men—numbered around 200 at a quick estimate. The medics had evacuated some throughout the days but I had no idea how many others were dead or abandoned or captured. All I knew was the battalion had had some 520 men a week ago, and now under my command it had a little under 200. I looked on my troops now, all of them, in a fatherly sort of way. They were good lads, they didn't deserve this.
No one deserved this.
One of the mercenaries stomped past in their hulking ironclad warsuit and beckoned I follow. The metal colossus was battered and beaten and blackened by the ravages of war yet still the sight of the armor alone was inspiring to behold. It had endured and it was unbroken. In that moment, such a thing seemed superhuman to me.
"You should surrender." The mercenary said, shattering any grander I'd experienced.
"Beg pardon?" I asked.
"You can't win this fight-"
"One battle seldom determines the course of a war!"
"Exactly. Surrender. Keep these men alive. And no, before you accuse me of it, I'm not trying to save my own skin. I've fought a dozen of these pointless territorial wars and nine times out of ten it's nothing but a change of flags and some new taxes. Why does it matter to you if you live in a state or a republic or a protectorate? Is that worth spending your lives on?"
"I should have expected a mercenary wouldn't understand what duty means!" I scoffed, the embers of patriotism stoked once more into a mighty blaze. "These men are fighting for more than that 'flag' you're so quick to dismiss. It's our way of life. Our home that's at stake! We will fight and if needs be we are willing to die for that. Now return to your post and make ready to receive the enemy, Mercenary."
I stormed off from the ironclad warmonger, blood boiling in my veins. To surrender now when we'd already sacrificed so much would be inconceivable! I would not betray the men who'd made the ultimate sacrifice for home and hearth. We would fight on, anything less was an insult.
I sighted upon a radio and seized it from the bloodied corporal manning it amidst the remnants of his platoon.
"Would that I could speak to each of you more personally…" I said, addressing not just the radio at my lips but the men gathered around me too. "I'm afraid that circumstances aren't so permitting presently. Some of you I know but most I've never had the privilege of speaking with directly. I'm talking to you now both as your fellow soldier in this hell and as the ranking military officer on the front lines. Today we've had a great deal of hard bargaining with the enemy, with those who can't tolerate our way of life as a city, a state, or a community. I regret that you men have been forced to pay the brunt of such bargaining on this field of battle. You have each proven your conviction and valor in such abundance that they will never be questioned. For decades to come, the men of Brunswick will look upon you veterans blooded in the noble battle, and they shall stand in awe of your accomplishments.
"Since the desertion of the Kobryn traitors, some of you may have lost faith in our allies, in the coalition forces who had sworn to stand at our side. Make no mistake, we will never forgive those who have forsaken their vows of brotherhood but we must not forget those who honored their oaths. Think of the men of Hanover who sold their lives dearly for our own! Even now, Colonel Harper is fighting our foes while 1500 of his men march to our aid with all haste. We shall be delivered from this place. Help is coming. To those of you who can still hear this, I have your final order. Let us still be here fighting when it arrives. We will survive this place because we are not alone in this war. Remember that, men of Brunswick. Captain Adams, Out."