It was a rear guard maneuver, most dangerous of all. Rodrick had led his army into a bottleneck of his own choosing, but his soldiers saw it as a noose tightening around their throats. Unlike in the foothills of the Ashfall Mountains, the walls that funneled Lucius toward them were not basalt stone, but boot-sucking marsh. A rational mind knew that the stagnant wetlands were home to so much venom and poison that to order a company of soldiers from one strip of dry land to another would be to lose half of them within the month to disease if not outright drowning. It was at best a slow maneuver, whose only protection was the chest-high grass that seemed able to grow from the very air itself as though no soil beneath was needed for roots.
Lucius would have needed a stigmata to move armies through the Serpent’s Marsh as he wished, but that didn’t stop anger from germinating in the hearts of the rebels. After Aurum’s tantrum, the illusion of divine right had shattered. The paladin’s words of equity rang hollow. He had been wholly unable to give up any of the spoils taken by force from the peasants. No, every night the soldiers themselves were forced to make porridge out of it and become accomplices with outright theft when they had stayed to bring justice to their kin.
Naturally, their anger went outward. Very few men have the strength of character to see their own faults, so they pointed daggers of hate toward the man who had led them. Rodrick lost his ability to command his army. Sure, they would break camp or set camp when and how he said. They followed his direction through the wallows because nobody else was giving direction. The chain of command still answered to him because they were personal friends and misgivings take longer to fissure.
But, he had also committed a moral crime by taking Aisha captive and everyone knew that it was his fault the enemy would be enraged. To prevent an ill-fated disaster of some troops trying to make off with her in the night to buy their own freedom, Rodrick had to keep Aisha at his side. Indeed, her account was ultimately the most valuable of this entire battle. She watched it all from mere steps away as the fallen paladin stood at the buried neck of the godling spine, letting his entire army march single-file away from him where old artisans had chiseled steps into the anathema corpse.
The spine arched as a bridge almost clear from one side to the other of the marsh and was without a doubt the fastest way to traverse it. An army could spend weeks trying to circle around the wallows to catch up. By then, the men could have ran to any number of well towns, ruins, holdfasts, or distant cities and lost themselves. They all could see a future for themselves across the bones, but if they had seen Rodrick’s back they would have seen a target.
There were no railings to those steps. One misstep from injury, and there were several during the two days of crossing, and a man would go plunging off the side. His friends would hear a splash and his body would never be found.
Thus, Rodrick had to take responsibility for his actions because nobody else would. The very angel that commanded him to fight had killed his men and abandoned him. Still, he stood at the front line, between his men and Lucius’ advancing army. While others fled, he stood with sword and shield. He stood, or he paced, dredging his feet through the sodden soil and familiarizing himself with the spot that would be his grave. A good warrior can learn a great deal about the ground beneath his feet, and it took his mind off the death of Mihael. To the man’s credit, he was more sad for his friend than for himself. He could accept the consequences of his own decisions but not when friends paid the price.
In time, his other friends left with tears in their eyes because they understood the land was so tight they were unneeded and losing their lives too was not what Rodrick wished. His army turned their backs on him and soon it was only him and Aisha.
“I’m surprised you aren’t trying to bargain with him,” she said, sitting atop the rotted remains of what had once been a workhouse foundation, or possibly even one of the farm houses from before the godling.
With furrowed brow, Rodrick could see the formations of men marching on him. He knew they’d be upon him in moments. “You should have met the cyclops. I brought that idea up to her and she laughed in my face. She said it would be impossible. If he were to bargain with me to save you, it would be him saying that he is weaker than me, that he is at my mercy. Apparently, he would never do that.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” she agreed.
The paladin put his attention on her. “You’re his woman, aren’t you? Doesn’t that hurt you?”
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She smiled. “It means he’s not a fool. Promises between enemies mean nothing. If you were to say to him do this or that, else you’ll harm me, there is nothing he could do by cooperating that would compel you to keep me safe. Only a fool would lay down their sword in exchange for words”
“Men in love are fools.”
“Not all men. Some stalk their prey and funnel them into precisely the kind of trap that would draw you to the front. Some make it so that your rational best interest puts you into the palm of his hand. Did you think he couldn’t catch you sooner than this? Do you think he couldn’t be marching to you faster? He wants your army to flee because he gains nothing by killing them. He’d only lose soldiers that are now veterans from serving under him.”
“Girls in love are fools too. You speak of your man like he is a conquering king.”
Aisha laughed. “He has help. I think you’d be surprised just how much the two of you have in common, Sir Rodrick,” she said, but she did not explain the nature of the raven that sat upon a rotting timber beside her. The pearlescent feathers and golden eyes. The bird had caught up with the rebels the day after the cyclops made her bid to turn Lucius away, and Golden had been keeping silent company with her ever since(1).
“It’s unfortunate, isn’t it?”
“Many things are.”
“Hundreds of men died in the last month and accomplished nothing. We simply set the stage for others to fight. The ones with the real power in the world. Death for nothing.”
“It is unfortunate, Sir Paladin,” Aisha said, venom leaking into her words. “If you hadn’t killed my father, you might have gone down in history as a good man. But I’ll be the one spreading your tale. Perhaps I can’t call you a coward but the whole world will know you as a fool. You obeyed a rotten angel. You were swindled by a foreigner. You won nothing.”
Rodrick nodded. “That’s only fair. I am a fool. But, I’ll see this through to the end. They’re here now. Take a good look, miss. You’ll want to at least remember the valor of those that come to save you as they die.”
And so the vanguard of Lucius’ army marched on to the bone bridge. They passed within bow shot but did not loose a missile. The boy had given orders against it. The fight was to rescue his wife after all. A stray arrow couldn’t be allowed. From a hundred yards away, Lucius stopped the advance. The land bridge was pitifully narrow, churned to mud by the feet of the rebels. The only safe ground ran down the middle, straight to the forsaken paladin.
But it was not Lucius that stepped forward to confront Rodrick. True, he did step in front of his vanguard, but he did not close within even fifty yards. Barely enough to see each others eyes. Instead, he gestured and a motley collection of warriors began to assemble around him. They did not form a shield wall, or even stand shoulder to shoulder. They were a gaggle of brutes with minds of rewards both promised and implicit.
To Rodrick’s amazement, the men stood together before him and drew lots of broken straw clutched in Lucius’ hands. The nominee–it is hard to call him a winner–stepped forward. A tawny giant who thought himself blessed by a stigmata that made him nearly as big as a trollkin, he wielded a two-handed warhammer with a single hand and kept his other clad in a punch-shield. The design was crude, an imitation of barbarian army from centuries past that persisted more out of legend than practicality. Originally it had been fashioned from tortoise shell, but Giordana had hardly even sea turtles. Their blacksmiths made do with bucklers and grafted ill-formed blades to them to look like a blazing star of steel.
The giant said, “My name is Christofer. Veteran of two rebellions now. I’ll be a hero after today,” he said with a toothy grin.
“Many dead men are heroes,” Rodrick said as he stared up at the Giordanan. “I challenge you, Christofer,” he said, and activated his stigmata. The arcane barrier swept around them, reaching well into the marsh on either side. A great wall between the army and the bridge of bone.
Then the paladin killed him. The fight was neither fast nor slow, but a jolting finish. The paladin didn’t charge the Giordanan. In fact, he made no unnecessary moves at all. He waited for Christofer to come to him with a bellowing roar, which took him a good deal of time to work himself up against such an implacable foe. Then Rodrick parried, stepping in through the giant’s right armpit to avoid the spiked shield. One swipe of his sword cleaved through the man’s hamstring. His armor absorbed a wild, back-handed swing of the man’s elbow but there was little force through the crippled leg. The paladin locked his sword like a lance and drove it between chest armor and helmet, ripping open the giant’s throat and spraying blood across the ground.
A moment later, the barrier receded, and the second contender stepped forward. And so on it would go. Fighting one by one to hold the bridge for as long as he possibly could, the paladin stood there and bought time for his army to escape.
And Lucius waited for him to be exhausted, like a patient predator.
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1. To clarify, he was using a puppet the same way I often did. He had a few tricks he could use at a distance with the puppet, but he was still firmly human as far as his body was concerned.