Lieutenant Tyrion had left sign of his passing in the traditional way: crucifixion.
The coastal road to Rackvidd was littered with the flesh scarecrows made by his men, one after the next like signposts. Lucius stood looking at them with a scowl and crossed arms. He had to march his troops past them, and he couldn’t tell whether it heartened them to see victory, or beat them down with mortality. The march slowed either way.
He was certain that the combat would delay Lieutenant Tyrion a good deal every time an engagement was found, but the difference in troop quality seemed to make up for the time. Despite this, it seemed that the ailing Lieutenant could still push himself like a draft horse despite his wounds, with the tenacity of a dying man grasping at valor and propped up by loyal soldiers. Which left Lucius unable to catch up with the separated Vassish.
Sammy strolled up to him. The march had gone quite terribly for the young doctor by this point. Frays in the lacing of his clothes had become tears, and his hair no longer obeyed anything resembling fashion. The one thing still proper about him was the slender glasses, and those had a fog of scratches upon them. “This is a good thing, right? Tell me that this is a good thing.”
Lucius shook his head. “It’s not much of anything, I figure. You don’t win a war by killing deserters and stragglers. They only matter as numbers, to embolden the true warriors. You could kill legions of them and still lose the fight that matters.”
Sammy turned to look at the men marching on Lucius’ orders. They weren’t deserters, but they were stragglers. “Then why go to the effort? Do you mean to tell me that Lieutenant Tyrion likes the smell or something?”
The smell had only just begun to begin. The slaughtered Cynizia had all fouled themselves, giving a most unpleasant smell to the seaside air. The Vassish had arrived before rot could set in, before flesh ran like tar across the sands. The decomposing, black bloat that turned bodies into sacks of filth that watered eyes and burned noses. Neither man was a stranger to the stench. Neither wanted to wait long enough to smell it once more.
“I guess he felt a need to make a display. What do you think are the chances that his amputation has gotten infected?”
Sammy closed his eyes and rubbed his chin. “Impaired judgment, rashness, no proper medical treatment… I’d say he at least thinks it’s infected.”
“Perception is all that really matters. We have to catch up with him before Rackvidd. I’ll be damned if he goes charging to his death for a scrap of valor,” Lucius said. That valor was his for the seizing, and the thought of Tyrion taking it made his teeth grit. What he knew of the man’s past though, made his gut sting with the impression of hypocrisy. Both he and the insubordinate lieutenant had been born low and now each could taste martial glory for the taking.
“What impresses me most is that for all his charging, he hasn’t caught the tail of the Cynizia yet,” Sammy said, his gaze westward.
“Like wolves nipping at a herd.”
“Or he’s getting dragged into a trap? Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible. Won’t know till we make it there. Let’s keep moving.” Lucius turned to the line, nearly at the end of it for his musings. The weakest of the lot, those who had gotten cuts and wounds fighting in Puerto Faro or at the Red Spire Monastery, those who had picked up one illness or another while struggling with the desert. They saw him puff his chest up with breath and shouted, “Come on! Let’s see some movement. Are one of you planning to go home and tell your family that you did nothing to crush these betrayers?”
He took off running down the line.
The spurred march did not last long, only a few more miles. Lucius lacked one of the most important parts of an army; the sargeants to keep the men in line, to keep them as part of a whole. There is an art to forceful command, and just as not every man makes a good father, not every soldier makes for a good sergeant. Lieutenant Tyrion had robbed the stragglers of that particular talent. It made them weak in morale. Hunger developed new teeth that bit into their psyches, dragging their feet to a crawl.
With no solution apparent, Lucius could only lead the march from the front.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Respite for the contingent came when they arrived at the most extravagant display yet, left in the wake of the voluntaries. It was the gutted, burned husk of a ship. Lucius called for rest to be taken and descended upon the wreckage with a dozen soldiers. A Vassish face greeted him, eyes wary but hands empty. “Friend! Friend. I am friend,” the old man said as he clambered out of the corpse of the ship.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Abe. I’m just something like a local. Got a wife and kids north o’ here in the mountains,” he said, doing his best to smile and keep his hands where they could be seen.
Lucius exchanged a few looks with his men. “Scavenging?” A common practice the world over.
The man smiled a bit more broadly and shrugged. “If I’m lucky, it’s free money… ain’t it?”
Lucius shook his head. “Tell us what you know of what has happened here,” he ordered.
Under the stern gaze of several armed men, Abe put his hands together and faced Lucius. He cleared his throat and said, “First it was the fleet. A huge mass of the things, ships like an armada. Looked like he had stolen every ship from Puerto Vida all at once. Most weren’t even fit for staying at sea. But all of them, one, two, three, ten, tens of them, all like scarabs running across the sea to get to Rackvidd. I saw that by their lights in the night. I was up in the hills a bit more, trying to trade for a stud sheep(1) when I saw them. Saved my life most like, because what came the next day was mountain men. A whole swarm of them. Two hundred I’d say. Flags like a forest, but the Black Keep was at the front; Erdro Karekale leading them. That’s how I knew it was war of some sort. I stayed the night(2) and yesterday came a hundred or so Vassish men. They marched down the road, chasing after the mountain men. That’s when they caught this ship here. Just a little engagement was all. Some scouts ahead of the Vassish gutted the men and tossed their corpses to the fish. Looked to me like they unloaded some barrels of grain and took it from themselves, then torched this. Big rush they were in… thought they might have left something good.”
The information was more useful than Lucius could have hoped for, but it could do nothing beyond confirming his predictions. He then returned the favor of the man’s words by having him stripped of his ill-gotten goods and sent on his way penniless. The spoils were offered as reward to the first soldier to spot Rackvidd, and Lucius took the lead once more.
Stepping in front of a hundred tired soldiers, he looked them each in the eyes. “The revolt of the Giordanans, the Cynizia, has all come to this battle. They mean to cast out our foothold on their land. They would force Vassermark from Rackvidd and deny us the south sea. It sounds almost diplomatic when I put it that way, doesn’t it? The Giordanan dogs know nothing of diplomacy. They know only of what their right hand possesses. You’ve all seen their handiwork; driven to secrecy by our rule, by our laws, our justice.”
The men he still had at his command got to their feet. On sand worn sandals, with heat weary bodies and hungering stomachs, they gathered to Lucius’ voice. The gloss in their eyes rivaled that of the corpses they passed.
“They’re slavers, and they mean to go back to ancient ways, to the barbarity of the Yellow King even. These are not people who would politely let the civilians of Rackvidd go home. If Medorosa Canta breaks down the walls of Rackvidd, only two fates will await all those of Vassermark at his mercy.”
Lieutenant Tyrion had left an array of props that Lucius put to good use for his speech. He stood directly beneath one of the crucified revolutionaries.
“They will kill; men, women, and children. Or, they will enslave; a confinement to mines and pits, to work as whores or to fight to the death. That would be all the way against Aillesterra if they’re lucky, a gambling pit if they’re not. The Cynizia won’t see anything wrong with it. The way they see it, losing a war means losing your right to life. They see themselves as righteous in taking back independence, so no moral qualm will stop them. Words will not stop them. Steel will stop them. We will stop them.”
“I’ve got family in Rackvidd,” one soldier said, piping up his voice from the second row. “A brother, with a family. They have it good there. It’s a good town. They ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Another, one of the rescued slaves, stepped forward. “I was going to kill myself, end it all, if you hadn’t saved me from that mine. I owe you more than my freedom, I owe you all my life. The last fucking thing I will stand to see is those bastards taking more good people to that hell.”
Lucius stepped over, put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and held up his sword. “Steel will stop them. We will stop them. Come on, let me hear you! For Rackvidd!”
“For Rackvidd!” his soldiers shouted back, their voices wavering.
“Fuck the Cynizia!”
“Fuck the Cynizia!” They shouted, voices aligning; strengthening.
“And to feast as fucking heroes afterwards!” Lucius added, and drew out of them a guttural, gluttonous roar. Once more, they marched down the road with half a stomach of food, half a night of sleep, and chasing at the heels of their foes.
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1. The man, who in later years was quite the town drunk and fond of his encounter with “that theif Solhart”, had been thoroughly unemployed and a known debtor in the area. While his family did own a supply of sheep to shepherd, it barely qualified as subsistence. It seems to me a stud sheep would have done him well, but it was never more than something he ought do, rather than something he did do.
2. His true motive was to sleep with a mistress, unbeknownst to his wife.