Chapter Twenty-Two – The Destroyer’s Servant

(Author’s note and advisory: this chapter contains several graphic descriptions of war-related violence.)

The final months of the winter of 1756-57 turned out to be good ones for the Defenders’ encampment. It was a time of peace and rest that passed more quickly than Danka had expected. Commander Saupeckt’s militia was totally cut off from the outside world for several months, but there was plenty of food.

Danka’s life among the nymphs became considerably more pleasant under Dalibora, the new squad leader, than it had been under her predecessor. Oana was brave, tenacious, and competent in battle, but she was too focused on harsh discipline and had a hard time maintaining morale among her women when they were not campaigning. Dalibora was much more gregarious and everyone liked her. She had a quiet charisma that Oana totally lacked, keeping the squad under control though her personality instead of constant threats of the whip. She had a way of talking to her subordinates that made them want to please her. She skillfully and patiently manipulated the other women’s emotions, to the point she exercised absolute control over the squad within a few weeks.

Danka wondered how competent Dalibora would be in battle. Oana’s personal strength manifested itself in a chaotic fight, while Dalibora’s character seemed more suited for keeping bored women under control during peacetime. One detail that troubled Danka was Dalibora’s lack of curiosity about trying new weapons and fighting tactics. It occurred to Danka that perhaps the squad should have two leaders: Oana to lead the women in the field, and Dalibora to lead the women in the encampment. Of course, such an arrangement would not be accepted by anyone: either Oana would have to lead or Dalibora would have to lead.

———-

Danka spent some of her limited free time reviewing her journal and the miscellaneous notes she had collected during her travels. She called upon Isauria to help her transcribe her work; not because she really needed the girl’s help, but to force her to practice writing and penmanship. Isauria was not the best student: she much preferred to be running around with the male apprentices. However, Danka emphasized that her former servant needed to learn how to write to improve her chances of having a decent life in the Duchy. She also had a premonition that Isauria would be more important either to her future, or to the future of the Duchy, than anyone could have imagined at the time. Perhaps, when whatever disaster the Destroyer had hinted at took place, it would be Isauria’s Path in Life to survive it, just as it would be Danka’s path in life to survive. If the girl was indeed to be a witness, she’d have to know how to write well, whether she wanted to or not.

As Danka noted to the bored adolescent:

“You have no life to go back to in the Kingdom. You’ve seen, as much as I have, how the Destroyer has completely wrecked your homeland and killed your people. So, it doesn’t exist anymore. Like it or not, you’re now Danubian. You are a girl of the Duchy. You will marry a Danubian husband and raise Danubian children. That is your Path in Life.”

And, it was true. When Danka saw Isauria running around with the other apprentices, it was obvious there would be no returning “home” for her.

———-

During the snowbound months, there was plenty of work for the militia’s doctors. While it was true there were no war-related wounds, there were injuries from accidents, falls, burns from carelessly handling fire, training mishaps, and frostbite cases. Ilmatarkt was an expert at setting broken bones, while his assistants were competent at sewing shut open cuts and gashes. Danka’s knowledge of alchemy was a valuable addition to the medical staff’s capabilities, contributing the Followers’ knowledge about disinfectant and sedating patients before operations. She asked the cooks to provide her with live animals upon which to practice and gave hands-on demonstrations about the use of anesthesia.

She also shared her university medical diaries with her husband. Ilmatarkt found the readings very interesting, not only for the information they contained, but also because they were all dated 1752-1753. Danka claimed to have been at the university for three years, but the dates on her notes did not support that claim. Ilmatarkt fully understood his wife was hiding something about her past.

Danka may have considered her husband strange for his weird blasphemous ideas, but her mixture of lower and upper-class habits was equally strange to him. Her vocabulary and table manners were typical of a woman from the nobility, but her accent was definitely lower-class. She could kill and butcher any animal with ease and confidence: she was not afraid to dig her hands into a pig’s intestines or pull a chicken’s head off. She knew a lot about farming, hunting, and fishing, but she also knew a lot about music, geography, religion, and literature. She could sew both fine embroidery and thick leather. She knew how to prepare a huge variety of food, from primitive stews to fancy pastries. She knew a lot about politics and guild protocol. She had visited every major town in the western half of the Duchy, along with a few places outside the country’s borders.

Ilmatarkt pondered the bizarre mixture of traits in his wife. He correctly guessed that she was born into the lowest class of laborers, but she had widely traveled and somehow spent enough time with the nobility to pick up many habits unique to the Duchy’s finest citizens. He calculated it would have been between 1753 and 1755 when she learned the traits of a noble-woman. He was curious to know her secret, but he was a patient man and could wait for her to inadvertently drop clues and hints about where she really was and what she really was doing during the two missing years of her life.

Danka’s bucket contained manuscripts that she did not share with her husband. Those included her writings about the battles of Horkustk Ris, Sumy Ris, and Iyoshnyakt-Krepockt, as well as notes on the slave trade and the settlement of Malenkta-Gordnackta. Ilmatarkt saw all those extra notes in the bucket, but decided not to look at them. Danka was smart and would have been perceptive enough to figure out if he was looking at her writings. Ilmatarkt wanted and expected to find out the truth about his wife, but he wanted the clues to come from talking with her, not from digging through her papers.

———-

By the middle of April, the snow had disappeared and the forest was coming back to life. The paths had cleared enough to allow the Defenders to make their way towards the villages to celebrate the Festival of Rejuvenation, which at the time was still carried the Christian name of “Easter”. In the 1750s, the True Believers still associated Easter with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Old Believers had returned the holiday to its more ancient Pagan origins, as a celebration of the Creator’s victory over the Destroyer by returning warmth to the Realm of the Living.

The spring festival was also important for the Defenders and the villagers who hosted them. However, the isolated militia members followed neither the Christian nor the Old Believer traditions when they celebrated. Instead of the flowers of the Old Believers or the crucifixes of the True Believers, the militia celebrated with dancing and midnight bonfires to honor the Destroyer’s triumph over the son of the Roman God.

According to the Defenders’ version of events, the Roman God’s son was simply killed and the Resurrection did not happen. Instead, following the death of the “Son of Man”, the Destroyer triumphed over and over, first by destroying Jerusalem, then by destroying Rome, then by destroying all of Europe through multiple invasions against Christian countries. The Roman God had proven himself weak and incapable of protecting his followers. Only the Destroyer could triumph, only the Destroyer had true power in the Realm of the Living. The Roman God existed as a hapless witness, unable to do anything to prevent the wrath of the Destroyer.

Danka felt sick when she understood how the Defenders celebrated Easter and what the holiday meant to them. She did not want to believe that the Destroyer had such power over everything: she always wanted to hold out hope that somehow the Creator, or the Ancients, or even the Roman God, could combat the “Profane One” and win. She shared her doubts with her husband, but his answer was predictable and did nothing to ease her despair:

“The Realm of the Living is inherently destructive. It has to be, because otherwise there’d be no room for new life. Everything decays and rots. As for the violence, that’s just because we haven’t figured out how to create enough food, so men don’t have to fight over things like farmland. We don’t need fantasies like the Destroyer to explain why people invade each other’s territories when they’re starving. The Defenders are right about the Creator, the Roman God, and the Ancients. They’re helpless to protect us, but it’s not because they’re weak, it’s because they’re imaginary. But so is the Destroyer. It’s all fiction. Imagination.”

———-

Several militia units descended the muddy wooded trails from various winter campgrounds to converge on the largest of the three settlements. They traveled on foot, but fortunately they had mules to carry their supplies. The journey was wet, tiring, and lasted several days. Danka spent the most of her time talking to her husband about the area and some of the Defenders’ previous campaigns. Meanwhile, Isauria walked alongside Dalibora and learned more about the system of trails the militia members used to move about the region.

Before entering the settlement, the nymphs stripped off all their clothing and placed it in a bag guarded by Isauria. Although the weather was still chilly, they gave up everything, even their shoes. The naked militiawomen walked into the settlement in single file and gathered with their village counterparts, who also were completely undressed. To Danka’s dismay, the villagers’ hair was unbraided. The oldest woman among the villagers ordered the nymphs to kneel and close their eyes. A villager took her place behind each nymph. Danka held her breath. Sure enough, she felt a stranger’s fingers undoing her braids. She cringed at the horror of knowing all those men, including her husband, would see her with her hair undone. She was used to being naked in public, but having her hair loose was an unbelievable humiliation, a sacrifice of women’s honor to appease the all-mighty Destroyer.

The purpose of the celebration was to acknowledge the Destroyer’s power over the Realm of the Living. There was a large pile of scrap lumber piled in the village square, surrounded by torches. In the middle of the pile was a sacrificial victim, a captured foreign priest dressed in a purple smock that was supposed to mimic a royal robe. The prisoner represented the son of the Roman God and would be burned to death as an act of defiance against a divine being who supposedly was all-powerful. The Defenders’ priest was un-seemingly cruel to his captured counterpart, taunting him and encouraging him to pray to the Roman God, just to prove his deity was powerless to save him from the true power of the cosmos: the Destroyer.

The naked, sweaty women danced for hours to the beat of sinister-sounding drums and flutes, completely exhausting themselves before midnight. They had to prostrate themselves on the muddy ground while the fire was lit. As the flames consumed the foreigner and separated his soul from his body, the Defenders’ priest called out to the Destroyer to share the power of devastation with the militia so they could have a successful campaign against their enemies. The victim’s screaming seemed to continue for an eternity. Danka later learned the fire had been set up so he would die slowly and suffer.

When the victim’s agonized screaming finally subsided, the militia’s Priest shouted into the air:

“In the end, we all come to you, whether we want to or not!”

———-

The drums continued to beat as the men indulged themselves with ale. The women were dismissed and immediately went to the settlement’s bathhouse to wash off the mud and re-braid their hair. Just like everything else in that village, the bathhouse was a wretched, primitive structure. As she waited for her turn to bathe, Danka thought about the pristine washroom in the Grand Duke’s castle. She had hated her life as a concubine, but at the moment she wouldn’t have minded spending a nice lazy afternoon sitting in comfortable warm water in the Grand Duke’s marble tub.

When she returned to her husband, Danka couldn’t bear to look at him. She was dishonored: he had actually seen her with her hair unbraided!

Ilmatarkt was not scandalized, but he did not have any sympathy with his wife’s distress. He told her not to be ridiculous and that he could not have cared less about her hair. To him, the Danubians’ fixation with braided hair was as idiotic as their belief in the supernatural.

Danka did not reply, but she could not accept his casual dismissal of the most important part of a Danubian woman’s honor. Braids were what defined a Danubian woman’s very identity. How could he not consider braided hair as vital to proper protocol? What was he, a foreigner?

———-

Springtime is normally a time of celebration, a time to be happy about the end of food shortages, confinement, and the physical discomfort of being cold all the time. Danka, however, did not feel any joy as the weather warmed up and the snow melted. Soon enough, the Defenders would return to the border and the battles with the Kingdom of the Moon factions would resume. There would be desperate surgeries on wounded men, of which she could expect only half to be successful. She’d have to endure the guilt of triaging patients and making the decision whether to operate or whether to administer a dose of poison to put a casualty out of his misery. She’d have to kill with her crossbow, yet again, and in doing so would add more suffering to her soul in the Afterlife.

———-

Oana returned to the encampment during the first week of May, with a new squad of nymphs recruited from the Vice-Duchy of Rika Chorna. Whatever faults Oana had with her personality did not interfere with her ability to identify dissatisfied women and talk them into abandoning their lives and responsibilities. The recruits did not really understand what they were getting themselves into, but the promise of a silver piece for every month of service and learning how to handle weapons was a tempting alternative to their drab and oppressive Paths in Life in the Vice-Duchy. At first glance it seemed the new nymphs were as varied a group as Danubian women could possibly be. Some of the women were peasants and some were from the guild class. Their ages ranged from 16 to 37. However, they had one thing in common: they were all fugitives. Some of the older women were fleeing bad marriages, and some of the younger ones were fleeing their fathers. Two were thieves who had spent a humiliating afternoon in the pillory, three were fleeing money lenders, and one was fleeing from a jealous landowner’s wife.

Danka said nothing as she watched her former commander with her new subordinates. She had to hide her lingering hostility; the resentment that she felt from the older woman’s desire to flog her for no good reason. However, like everyone else in the militia, she knew that bringing up old disputes in front of Oana’s new squad would only cause trouble and hurt the morale of the nymphs.

There was no mention from anyone about Oana’s previous command, nor how she lost control of her squad. The new recruits never learned that the women in Dalibora’s unit had been under Oana’s orders just a few months before. What mattered was that Oana had redeemed herself and was ready to train and lead her new squad. Oana was a more experienced fighter than Dalibora and had a better instinct for strategy, so the squad leaders agreed that Oana would be the one to lead movements and attacks. The disadvantage of the situation was that Oana’s squad still needed training and experience, so Dalibora’s veterans would need to be extra careful about providing cover for the newcomers as they maneuvered in the forest.

———-

Danka had to accompany her husband to the smallest of the three villages to assist the birth of the elder’s baby. The birth was uneventful, but Danka noticed several geese running around the village square. She remembered the Followers’ explosive goose-eggs, knowing that her husband’s laboratory had all of the ingredients to make hand-bombs, assuming he could obtain some gunpowder for her. She told Ilmatarkt about the eggs and how Ermin used them so effectively against the True Believers. He was very interested. If only there was a way to preserve the eggs’ shells while allowing the villagers to keep the contents. He pondered the problem for a few minutes before searching through his surgical equipment. Eventually he created a small circular saw that, when properly twisted, would drill a hole in the shell without cracking it. He approached the village elder and explained what he needed: as many empty goose-egg shells as the village could provide. He would leave behind the extractor and pay the villagers a copper coin for every five intact shells they could deliver to the encampment.

The dim-witted settler looked at the doctor with an incredulous expression. A coin for empty egg shells? Yes, but they had to be neatly drilled with no cracks and completely cleaned out. The village elder took the cutter and said nothing. Danka had no doubt she’d receive her egg shells, but there also was no doubt the elder had no intention of sharing Ilmatarkt’s coins with any of his neighbors.

While she waited for the first batch of egg-shells, Danka prepared the chemicals and refined the gunpowder needed to make the hand-bombs. Through her husband, she sent out word that she needed volunteers who know how to use slings. Several male archers showed up, from whom Ilmatarkt selected four, based on their ability to accurately aim their rocks. He explained that the volunteers were about to try out an experimental weapon, which needed to be launched with slings.

When the first batch of eggshells arrived, Danka had all of the ingredients needed to assemble four explosive bombs and two flash bombs. With trembling hands she carefully poured in the first layer of explosives, laid in a layer of melted beeswax to separate the next ingredients, and poured in the accelerant. Another layer of wax, and she put in a detonator that was designed to go off as soon as the seal at the top of the egg was broken. Each bomb was extremely volatile: even being turned upside down was enough to set it off.

As much as she hated doing so, she had to sacrifice one of each type of bomb in a test to make sure it worked. Ilmatarkt and Danka led the four volunteers away from the camp. Danka took charge of the sling and loaded the goose-egg. She took a deep breath, swung the bomb and released it. She screamed at everyone to get down and cover their ears. The deafening explosion blew apart the nearby trees and rattled the entire area. The blast brought dozens of panicky Defenders scrambling towards the crew with drawn crossbows and loaded muskets.

Commander Saupeckt showed up, as dumbfounded by the explosion as everyone else. He was present to witness the flash bomb being tested. Danka was enormously relieved that she had been able to duplicate both types of the Followers’ secret sling-bombs.

Because Danka “belonged” to her husband and thus not allowed to speak for herself, Ilmatarkt was responsible for explaining the goose-egg bombs and how they could be either thrown or used with slings. He gave as much credit to his spouse as protocol would allow, but ultimately he would receive the honor of introducing the new bombs to the unit. Had Danka not been married, she would have been able to claim credit for the innovation.

Danka planned to prepare additional bombs as empty goose-eggs and more beeswax arrived at the encampment. She would have liked to prepare some landmines as well, but mines would have been useless. The mobile nature of the Defenders’ manner of fighting made the positioning of explosive traps unrealistic as a tactic. The sling-tossed bombs were a different matter.

———-

The Defenders moved towards the border at the end of May. The first part of the trip consisted of walking with pack mules along steep hillsides to return to the villages. The settlements took care of the Defenders’ horses over the winter, where they had to be left because the mountains did not have enough forage. The militia exchanged their mules for horses and continued mounted towards the combat zone. The settlers had cleared a series of meadows and had set up ponds to water animals, so the Defenders and their mounts arrived at the border at full strength and in excellent health.

The situation to the south had deteriorated over the winter. The village from which the Lord of the Blue Moon’s troops had been attacking Commander Saupeckt’s section of the border had been raided by troops from the Lord of the Red Moon, precisely because the troops assigned to protect it had launched a raid against Red Moon territory. The scope of the civil war was expanding into previously peaceful areas. The land was burnt and desolate, there was no food, and the surviving population was desperate.

The Danubians decided to further demoralize the foreign towns near the border by riding through the region in a show of force. They could gather a total of 1500 Defenders, which was a force larger than any of the broken Kingdom of the Moon units operating in the eastern section of the country at the time. Commander Saupeckt and his fellow commanders discussed the possibility of permanently occupying some of the southern land, and the ride-through would allow them to see how feasible that idea would be.

The Danubians gathered and forded the small river marking the border at the end of the first week of June. 1500 mounted Danubian militia fighters would not have been a match against the Lord of the Red Moon’s powerful army just three years before, but by 1757 the Kingdom’s armies had been decimated by continuous fighting, movement, and atrocities. At that moment neither faction had an available unit in the area large enough to counter the unexpected invasion from the Duchy.

The Danubian column rode unopposed through the war-torn region for several weeks. They did not attack any civilians as long as the local populace did nothing to impede their procession. When word spread that the Danubians were not as cruel as the Lord of the Red Moon’s men, the locals stopped fleeing. Instead, the wretched, starving foreigners silently stood along the roadways, sullenly staring at the strange invaders. Danka noticed the women and girls paying particular attention to the squads of nymphs, sitting on their horses with crossbows in their hands and satchels of bolts slung over their bare shoulders. It was bizarre and scandalous for the Kingdom’s women to see their Danubian counterparts with their heads and torsos uncovered, with cold hard expressions on their faces and, above everything else, holding weapons they clearly were accustomed to using against male opponents.

Danka remembered her husband’s words from the previous year: “… among the Defenders, your life will have a purpose. And when we go south, and you’re riding your horse with a squad of armed nymphs, the women of the Kingdom of the Moon will look at you with respect and awe. Remember, the Kingdom’s women don’t fight. They don’t do anything other than serve their men. So when they see the infamous Danubian nymphs… women carrying weapons… it makes them wonder about their own Paths in Life. And as far as being part of something much greater than yourself, among us, you will be. We’re defending the Duchy. You, a mere woman, have taken up arms and are defending the Duchy. You can’t be part of anything more important than that.”

There was an important exception to the Danubians’ rule about not attacking non-combatants. Any foreign priests, monks, or other church officials that could be captured were immediately chained and sent northward to the Duchy. They would be held in a forest prison until the Defenders returned from their campaign, to be sacrificed in the Destroyer’s bonfires. The Defenders didn’t just want the foreign clergy as sacrificial victims; they also wanted to demonstrate that the blessing the Roman God and his executed son had supposedly granted the Kingdom of the Moon was a total lie. The Roman deities couldn’t even protect their own clergy, so how could they protect the Kingdom? The local populace only lived because the Danubian militia allowed them to live, not because of any Divine blessing from Rome.

Although the Defenders met very little resistance during their tour through the southern towns, their leaders decided to return to the Duchy at the beginning of July. The main problem was lack of food in the Kingdom. There was not much point in raiding or foraging, because the previous year’s harvest had been destroyed when the Lord of the Red Moon’s troops invaded the region. The Defenders could move into any area they wanted, but they couldn’t stay because there was nothing for them to eat.

The column of militia fighters was both relieved and disappointed when their horses waded the shallow river back into the Duchy’s territory. The fight they had expected did not happen. The fighters were alive to celebrate and feast in the three villages, but they had not fulfilled their Paths in Life as Defenders. The units drifted off towards their assigned protection zones, not having accomplished anything apart from showing off to a bunch of wretched foreigners and exploring some of the enemy’s territory.

———-

The commander ordered Danka and her husband to pick up a supply of empty goose-egg shells from the villagers, return to the laboratory in the winter encampment, and make as many bombs as possible. The couple entered the cave and set up the alchemy equipment. However, before Danka had the chance to mix the ingredients for a new batch of bombs, her husband expressed doubts about the project and a possible improvement. The volatility of the bombs and their extreme fragility troubled him. They were simply too dangerous to carry long distances. He wondered if it was truly necessary use goose-egg shells for the casings. Wouldn’t blown glass make better casing material? What about glazed ceramic? Perhaps that would be even better than glass.

He brought up the alternatives to his wife, but she was skeptical, commenting: “I don’t know, my love. The Followers used goose-eggs for a long time, and I’d imagine it was for a good reason.”

“Well, we need to find out if there really was a good reason. I think the only reason they didn’t try a better casing was because under their circumstances it wasn’t necessary. Our needs are different and I’d like to use a casing that’s more dependable than an eggshell.”

Ilmatarkt worked on a glazed ceramic design for the explosive bombs that looked like a goose egg, but was twice as big. The section dividing the explosive from the accelerant was part of the internal design. There was a hole between the sections that would be sealed with beeswax, but it was much smaller than the area that would need to be sealed inside a goose egg. He also devised a glass casing for the fuse. When she packed in the explosive, Danka had to agree Ilmatarkt’s design was a huge improvement. The test blast from the enhanced bomb was comparable to the power of explosives that would be used in the late 20th century. Not only did it destroy trees; it tore a hole in the ground and shattered the stones on a nearby hillside.

When he saw the destruction from the enhanced bomb, Commander Saupeckt whistled with satisfaction and anticipation. Assuming he could keep them secret until the first time they were used, he knew they would guarantee him a victory. That meant he could be more daring in his efforts to provoke a raid from the Kingdom of the Moon, and that for the first battle he would not have to call upon other militia commanders for help. He pondered the possibility of conducting a full-blown massacre of a large enemy unit, using nothing but his own troops and the new bombs.

———-

After his counterparts departed with their units, Commander Saupeckt came up with a plan to goad one or both of the Kingdom’s factions to make another attempt to attack the Defenders in their home territory. Without consulting the other militia leaders, he ordered three of the captured foreign priests to be brought to the main village to be burned alive. A fire was set up in honor of the Destroyer and the three foreigners were brought to the village square. However, one of the victims’ bonds had been left loose, on purpose. The villagers threw him against a wall while they tied up the other two priests. Realizing he had a chance to escape, the young cleric untied himself and fled. A squad of Commander Saupeckt’s most trusted men chased after him, but their orders were not to capture him. Instead, they were to stay close enough to make the priest believe he was about to be caught, but all the while making sure he headed in the right direction so he could safely cross back into the Kingdom.

The staged escape had a specific purpose; to goad the Kingdom’s factions to attempt a rescue of the remaining captured clergymen. Undoubtedly the escapee would warn his countrymen what was happening to the priests. The Roman God would be quite displeased with the Lords if they allowed the Danubians to sacrifice the Kingdom’s priests to the Duchy’s Beelzebub. It was ironic that in the Kingdom torturing and impaling civilians was perfectly acceptable, but to do anything to a priest was considered an unacceptable outrage. How horrid that the Danubians would leave worthless civilians alive, and instead defile sacred clergy members!

As soon as the Kingdom’s men entered the mountains, Commander Saupeckt would try out his new bombs. His plan was to defeat and annihilate a force much larger than his own with no help from the Defenders’ other militia units. The glory of the victory and all the loot would be reserved solely for him and his unit. More importantly, he hoped to keep the sling-bombs a secret and use them in another surprise attack at some point in the future.

Danka was not really expecting her commander’s plan to work. Surely the Lord of the Blue Moon would not blindly sent troops into the Danubian mountains, given the humiliating defeat from the previous year. Certainly he’d take precautions, and if need be, not be overly worried about the priests. Anyhow, it seemed the Lord of the Blue Moon’s forces were depleted and unable to defend their own territory, let alone launch a cross-border raid.

All of Danka’s doubts about the Blue Moon faction were true. A column of 2000 men did cross into the Duchy on July 17, but their banners were red, not blue. A commander from the Lord of the Red Moon’s Army, hoping to avenge the battles of 1754, came directly from Sumy Ris and led his troops into the forest, completely unaware of the defeat endured the previous year by the Kingdom’s rival faction. The Danubians began their counter-attack predictably enough, with hit-and-run archery raids. The column sustained a few casualties, but the force attacking it was ridiculously small. The foreigners continued advancing against the villages. They had no plans to actually occupy them: they’d simply kill whoever was there, rescue the priests, burn buildings and supplies, and withdraw.

The pathetically small size of the force countering the Red Moon column played into Commander Saupeckt’s plans. The Red Moon troops were overconfident by the time they reached a large meadow that was only a half-day’s march from the villages. The area was completely open: there was no way the guerilla tactics of the Danubians would be of any use in such an area. The foreigners watered their horses and allowed them to graze. The troops set up their encampment well away from the trees and from the deadly bolts of their enemies. A few musket volleys would easily dispatch any Danubians foolhardy enough to appear at the wood line. The final part of the march would be more challenging, but there was no reason to think the villages would not be under the Kingdom’s control by the middle of the next day.

Commander Saupeckt had only 230 fighters under his control. At the last moment he decided to ask his most trusted counterpart for back-up, which increased the force with 110 additional Defenders. The leading commander positioned his own troops at the exit leading back towards the border, while the other unit deployed at the exit that led towards the villages. The Defenders were hopelessly outnumbered, but they knew that Commander Saupeckt would not have deployed in such a manner had he not devised a horrible surprise for the enemy.

The commander had sixteen squad members who knew how to use slings: the four who had trained under the unit’s doctor, and twelve more he had recruited and trained himself. Each sling-bearer carried a wooden box containing four sling bombs: one flash bomb and three explosive bombs. The plan was extremely simple. The men would first sneak past the line of sentries and creep close enough to throw their charges into the encampment, causing chaos with the flash bombs and then injuries with the explosives. The other Defenders then would attack the stunned foreigners. The sentries and outer defense would be attacked first, then the main unit of Defenders would rush the camp and with traditional weapons and kill as many as possible.

The blinding light from sixteen simultaneous flash bombs was truly amazing. The meadow momentarily lit up much brighter than daytime and anyone not covering their eyes during the flash was blinded by the extreme light. Within the invaders’ camp, wild screaming and disorganized shooting began immediately, but it was too late. The bomb throwers did not have to worry about being spotted when they stood up to discharge the second round of bombs: their targets were totally blinded. The men calmly flung their explosives in unison and ducked to avoid the blast. As soon as the noise subsided, they stood up, loaded their slings a third time, twirled their eggs, and let them fly into the camp. There were three sets of horrific explosions that wrecked the entire enemy encampment. Maimed horses and mutilated men scrambled in every direction.

Both militia units charged forward as soon as the final blast went off. They quickly dispatched the stunned sentries before heading into the main cauldron of maniacal horses and mutilated and dying men. Their attack was not going to be a battle; it was going to be a massacre. The archers ran among the injured foreigners and wildly emptied their crossbows at anyone who was still moving, while the men with muskets bayoneted anyone lying on the ground. A handful of invaders were still able to put up a fight, but the biggest danger for Danubian and foreigner alike was the multitude of blinded injured horses running around, tumbling, and crashing into everything in sight. A few tents caught on fire, giving the Defenders enough light to complete their grim task.

Danka moved with Dalibora’s squad, firing bolt after bolt into the agonized men struggling all around her. At the moment she didn’t have time to think about what she was doing: she simply followed orders and acted as a nymph was expected to act. She only stopped when she became separated from the others and ran out of bolts. Then her adrenaline ran out and her fatigued arms went limp. The crossbow fell out of her hands and she collapsed onto a pile of bloody corpses. A couple of the bodies were still somewhat alive.

One dying man pushed up and tried to grab her. She tried to get up, but lost her balance and fell to the ground. A man fleeing from a Defender’s crossbow was hit, staggered, and fell on top of her, completely pinning her. She felt the enemy’s body jerk as the Danubian fired a finishing bolt and his soul separated from his body. The Defender ran off, not noticing in the darkness that his victim had fallen on top of a nymph.

Danka struggled to breathe. The wind was knocked out of her and she remained stuck under the corpse that crushed her chest. For a few minutes she lay quietly, gasping for breath and staring at the stars and smoke. The massacre continued. Danka knew that she had to get up and find more crossbow bolts, but she couldn’t move. She weakly pushed at the corpse, but her exhausted arms could not budge it, any more than a toddler could have moved a dead horse. So that was it. She was out of the fight. She continued staring at the stars and smoke, wondering how long it would be before someone found her.

The stars and smoke disappeared as her world went completely dark.

Oh no. Please. No, not now.

“Danka. Danka. Danka.”

She saw nothing until she turned her head. The unblinking yellow eyes were staring at her. When she tried to turn her head in the other direction, the eyes followed her.

“Don’t try that with me, Danka. You have to answer.”

“Yes. I have to answer. You’re not giving me much choice about it, are you?”

“I’m not giving you any choice at all, Danka Siluckt. When I call, you will answer.”

“And this, this is your work?”

“Ha! Actually, in this instance you bear the responsibility. You’re the one who made this glorious victory possible. You volunteered the knowledge of the bombs. You made the bombs. You showed your companions how to use the bombs. You allowed your husband, the unbelieving fool that he is, to improve the bombs. You placed the bombs in the hands of your commander. The only thing your commander did was put them to good use. The rest of it is your doing, not anyone else’s.”

Danka had no idea how to respond. The eyes vanished, but her world remained completely dark.

Finally the darkness cleared from her brain and she looked up into the predawn light. Two men from her unit, each carrying a bloody sword, spotted her lying under enemy corpses. They pulled off the bodies and helped her up. She was unsteady on her feet. One of the men handed her the crossbow, which she accepted and held limply in her hands.

“Defender Danka. Your husband’s looking for you. There are plenty of injured and you need to report to him immediately.”

“Which way?”

“The doctors took over that tent, the tall one with the banner.”

Danka tried to pull herself together as she walked towards her husband’s surgery area. She was dead tired, but no one cared. A long day of operations lay ahead of her.

———-

The Defenders’ casualties were unusually heavy for a single battle. Those killed outright during the fighting numbered 15 and the total number of seriously wounded was 39. The medical staff spent the day sedating patients so her companions could remove bullets and sew up bayonet slashes. There were several burns and multiple trampling injuries from horses. Some of the wounds were too serious to successfully treat given the level of medical knowledge at the time; of the 39 seriously injured patients only 21 could be saved. Danka quietly poisoned the others to put them out of their misery. Two of Oana’s recruits were among the mortally-wounded patients the medical staff was unable to save.

The day ended and the field surgeons stepped out of the medical tent. In spite of the losses, the victory was significant. As far as anyone knew, not a single man from the Kingdom of the Moon escaped. The uninjured Defenders stood guard over groups of villagers who had been drafted to collect and haul away the enemies’ weapons and clothing. The seized equipment coming out of the battle would be impressive, making Commander Saupeckt’s unit by far the wealthiest and best-provisioned group of Defenders operating along the border. Now Danka understood why he didn’t want other units participating in the attack. Not only was he trying to keep everything secret, but he also did not want to have to share the loot. He would allow the villagers to keep clothing, leather, and whatever food and condiments they found, but all weapons, metal, uninjured horses, and coins had to be turned over to the militia.

The scene was unbelievably horrific. The enemies had been stripped of their uniforms and the exposed mutilated bodies of horses and men already were starting to reek in the hot summer afternoon. Within a few hours the place would become unbearable and would have to be abandoned to the birds and wolves. No one wanted to imagine what that meadow would look like the next day.

By sunset the stench was too bad for the Danubians to stay any longer. Danka could barely lift her crossbow, but she stumbled along with the rest of her squad while her husband and his assistants struggled to help the injured evacuate. The Danubian dead were taken out as well, hauled by the villagers on the backs of mules. They would be buried the following day, adding 33 graves to the ever-growing military cemetery. It was well after nightfall when the Defenders and the settlers arrived at the main village with the casualties and loot. There would be funerals tomorrow, an assessment of the condition of Commander Saupeckt’s unit, and some badly needed rest.

Before going to sleep, Dalibora handed Danka thirteen silver coins, her share of the loot that had been recovered from the coin purses of the invading force. She said nothing, but looked at the money with disdain. Money. What difference did money make? So, after killing 2000 men and dealing with the deaths of several people she knew, that was all? Thirteen silver pieces? She resisted the temptation to toss the money aside. She didn’t want the coins, but forced herself to hold on to them by convincing herself they were partial compensation for the money she had spent on Isauria. Certainly Oana would have made that argument.

———-

The exhausted nymphs watched as the villagers mounted severed heads on poles and placed them around the village square. The heads belonged to the Red Moon commanders. After the funerals, the captured enemy priests would be forced into the square to see the heads and understand there had been a rescue attempt that had failed miserably. They would be encouraged to pray for a miracle, right up to the moment they were burned alive to appease the Destroyer.

Danka tried to push the image of the severed heads out of her thoughts. As the Destroyer had told her, this was her doing. She realized how much damage that she, single-handedly, had inflicted against the Kingdom of the Moon. The Grand Duke’s victory in Horkustk Ris three years earlier was the direct result of the Followers’ explosives recipes. A month later, Sister Silvitya (as she was known at the time) was the one who convinced the Sovereign to pull his troops out of Sumy Ris in time to avoid a defeat. The Defenders’ previous summer’s victory against the Lord of the Blue Moon’s men was partially the result of her actions. This latest victory, against the Red Moon army, was directly the result of her knowledge and actions. As a mere woman, a Royal concubine and the wife of a field surgeon, no one would ever acknowledge her, but the destruction she had unleashed against the Kingdom of the Moon had saved the Duchy, several times over.

How ironic is the Realm of the Living. The Kingdom of the Moon’s worst nemesis was a wandering peasant girl, an anonymous young woman no one would ever know about. Danka wondered how many other times in history the Destroyer had used a completely unknown and unacknowledged person to determine the course of events and obliterate a nation. She felt no pride in what she had done, nor really did she feel any shame. The Destroyer just as easily could have used some unknown girl from the Kingdom, perhaps even Isauria, to ensure the destruction of the Duchy. One kingdom was destined to live and the other destined to die, and it was the Destroyer who made the decision which nation would be spared at the expense of the other.

So, maybe the Defenders were right after-all. Maybe the Destroyer did control everything in the Realm of the Living and was the only deity that needed to be honored. Certainly there was no indication that either the Creator or the Ancients had any control over any of the events Danka had witnessed in her travels.

She looked up at the nearby treetops. An owl, that owl, sat in a branch staring back at her.

———-

Commander Saupeckt’s unit did not participate in any more combat during the remainder of the summer of 1757. A third of his troops had been killed or wounded during the massacre of the Red Moon encampment, so his unit was in no condition for another fight. The injured still had to be cared for and transported away from the unsanitary villages, along with the muskets, ammunition, and other military equipment taken from the battlefield. It was the middle of August before everything and everyone was safely transported back to the winter campground and the new supplies were safely stored away in the caves.

The commander sent several squad leaders and other subordinates to the Vice-Duchy of Rika Chorna and Horkustk Ris Province to augment his command. He planned a dramatic expansion of his unit: from 90 surviving members to over 400. He now had the weapons and ammunition necessary to create three entirely new companies. Like all Defenders, the newcomers would be trained in guerilla tactics, but their main responsibility would be firing muskets in formation. There were enough surviving horses from the Kingdom to establish a small cavalry unit to augment the musket companies.

Commander Saupeckt planned to dramatically change the Defenders’ tactics and strategic goals during the summer of 1758. He hoped to carry the war into the Kingdom of the Moon and establish a permanent Danubian presence in territory that had not been part of the Duchy since 1502. From what he saw during the ride-through during the previous June, there would not be much military opposition if the Danubian unit was large, properly armed, and not spread out. That would present a problem for occupation: the Defenders simply did not have enough to troops to conquer and occupy. They’d have to do one or the other. An even more pressing problem would be having to bring in food. However, the commander figured that having to ship in food could possibly work to the Defenders’ advantage because it could be traded to the locals for equipment and support. Perhaps the commander could even recruit a unit of Blue Moon subjects to fight alongside his men when they attacked the Lord of the Red Moon’s depleted forces. If in 1758 he could inflict a defeat on the Lord of the Red Moon’s forces comparable to the one he had achieved in 1757, there wouldn’t be much standing in the way of his dream of occupying land and turning it over to the Royal Family in exchange for being appointed governor.

The expanded size of his unit would make Commander Saupeckt the most powerful leader among the Defenders, but to pursue his goal of altering the militia’s strategy from defending the Duchy to conquering new territory, he would have to convince the other unit leaders to support him and submit to his command. The militia commanders had mixed feelings about his amazing rout of the Red Moon column. They were impressed with the victory itself and glad that such a large enemy component had been eliminated, but they resented the fact Commander Saupeckt had conducted the operation without anyone’s consent and did so specifically to keep all of the seized weapons and ammunition for his own unit. Still, a victory was a victory and the other commanders had to hide their misgivings about Commander Saupeckt from their troops. To the ordinary Defenders, Commander Saupeckt and his fighters were heroes. It was obvious he was intelligent and brave and had great plans for the future of the Duchy. He deserved everyone’s respect and deserved to be followed.

Between August and October, the Defenders transformed the three villages into a military garrison that rivaled the largest garrisons under the control of the Grand Duke. Recruits flowed in, happy to have the chance to practice with real muskets and be part of the Duchy’s future glory. Other commanders sent some of their troops to train with Commander Saupeckt’s men, so the size of the garrison fluctuated between 1000 and 1500 Defenders at any given time. When the weather became cold the fighters lived in relative comfort, in new cabins heated by ingenious cast-iron stoves that burned cave-charcoal instead of wood. The villagers were put to work mining and hauling the strange black rocks, motivated by the promise of new stoves for their own houses and not having to cut firewood.

———-

During the winter, Danka continued her busy existence. She trained with Dalibora’s squad, learned better how to ride a horse, worked in her husband’s provisional laboratory as he prepared medicines and explosives, cooked for him, and spent as much time as possible trying to educate Isauria.

Isauria stood as tall as Danka by the beginning of 1758. Her menstruations had started and she was very interested in the boys running around the village. Danka insisted she started using the birth-control paste and, sure enough, the girl lost her virginity to one of her fellow apprentices in February. Even though she had prepared for it, Danka was furious that Isauria would start having sex so early in life. However, she decided not to say anything. It seemed that Isauria enjoyed her first experience and was ready for it, unlike Danka, who was much more naive, even at an older age.

At least Isauria won’t have to go through what I went through. For her, there will never be a “graveyard of virtue”, nor will there be a Bagaturckt to damage her soul.

———-

Commander Saupeckt changed over the winter, in a way that worried Danka. Instead of thinking no further than the next battle, he started thinking about the future, of what the Duchy’s new southernmost province would be like once it was secured and he was acting governor. There was happy talk of farms and seized manors, of slaves from the conquered population and new Danubian towns. The militia leader was suffering from the same hubris that afflicted the Grand Duke, of imagining himself as the man who had the glory of conquering Sumy Ris and returning to its rightful place within the Danubian Duchy. He started talking more like a town elder or a land-owner and less like a military commander. Meanwhile, the expanded militia spent the winter training to fight a conventional war in open territory. Commander Saupeckt reorganized the units several times, experimenting with different tactics and maneuvers to see what best fit the needs of his forces.

Danka wondered what it was about Sumy Ris that seemed to make otherwise intelligent Danubian leaders lose their common sense. Yes, the city was the first Christian settlement and the Danubians’ second most important political and religious center throughout the Middle Ages, but that had ended 250 years before. Apart from the cathedral and a few other buildings, very little remained from its Danubian past. Yes, the location was ideal for trade, but it was totally indefensible. As the Defenders became increasingly excited about the glory of re-taking the former southern capitol, Danka became ever more uneasy about the future. She remembered the Destroyer’s words: “You’re my witness. When everyone around you lives no more, you’re the one who will walk away unscathed. You’re the one who will carry the memories.”

Commander Saupeckt spent the early spring corresponding with provincial leaders around the Duchy to obtain food for his troops and money to pay them. At the beginning of April the Grand Duke surprised everyone by responding with a large shipment of silver coins, enough to buy some supplies and pay the entire garrison for three months. When she saw the guarded wagons of Royal silver arrive and the paymaster distribute the pay among the troops, Danka wondered why the Grand Duke would be so trusting of a leader who was not part of the regular army’s chain of command. Later that night, when they both were in bed, she decided to bring up the topic with Ilmatarkt. Her husband responded:

“This whole situation is a huge bargain for the Grand Duke: a single shipment of silver in exchange for an entire army. Commander Saupeckt laid a gift at His Majesty’s feet and he is smart enough to realize it. We supplied our own muskets and just about everything else. He didn’t even have to provide food or horses, just some coins. We are not under his direct control, so we are not his responsibility. We can live or die, we can succeed or fail, with no consequences for the Crown. If we succeed and survive, the Crown claims more land for the Duchy and we are dismissed with some service metals, a certificate of gratitude, and maybe the title to a small farm, nothing more. If we fail, he is not to blame and his army will suffer no losses.”

“I guess that makes sense. Certainly sounds like him. All he ever thought about was turning everyone and everything to his advantage. I remember… ”

Danka caught her breath, regretting that careless statement the instant it was out of her mouth. Ilmatarkt sat up and intensely looked at her in the dim light of the room’s single lantern.

“So, you know His Majesty? Have you met him?”

It was a simple question, perhaps totally innocent, but it forced a difficult decision on her. She did not want her husband to know about her time as a Royal concubine. However, protocol dictated the absolute worst thing a wife could do was tell a direct lie to her husband. It was a terrible sin in Danubian culture, even worse than adultery. In theory, if a man caught his wife lying to him and could prove it, he had the right to kill her. Up until that moment she had insinuated that she had been at the university between 1753 and 1755, but had never openly said that. She looked away.

“Yes, Ilmatarkt. I know His Majesty.”

“How could you know His Majesty? When did you meet him?”

“I met him, four years ago. In the plaza of the Great Temple in the capitol.”

“What about the university?”

“I was a student for a year. Then I left.”

“Interesting, because it confirms something I was wondering about. You showed me your university notes, which I appreciate. However, I did notice that none of those papers were dated after May 1753. No dates from 1754 or 1755. So, I suspected you were somewhere else over the next two years.”

“I was in the capitol.”

“In the Royal Household?”

“Yes, in the Royal Household.”

“Doing what?”

“What do you think I was doing? Why do you think the Grand Duke would keep me in his castle?”

There was a long pause, while Ilmatarkt wondered what to ask next. He did not want to force his wife to openly admit she was lying to him about the two missing years of her life, but he was curious to know more about the Duchy’s ruler. She broke the silence.

“In my bucket I have some sealed packages of parchment. All of the information about my life with His Majesty is in there. My notes can tell you the story better than I can. Then,”

“No. I won’t read your papers. The decision about what you choose to tell me about your past needs to be yours. But, you do understand that you are never again to deceive me with your words, even by omission.”

“I understand that, my love.”

Ilmatarkt ordered Danka to get out of bed and stand against a chair with her legs spread and her bottom sticking out. She worried he might punish her. He rubbed her bottom and ran his hands between her legs. When he became erect, he entered her and thrust hard. She could tell by the rough way he was making love to her that he was still irritated. However, there would be no switching from him. On the surface, the incident was over.

However, she knew the incident was not over at all. Over time she would need to reveal to him the details of her humiliating life with the Grand Duke. It would have been so much easier for him to simply read about it and ask her a few questions, or for him to interrogate her and extract the story in a single tearful night, but he was not about to let her off so easily. She would have to decide what to reveal and when. The conflict between sharing her past and keeping it hidden would weigh on her conscience. Her husband was very much aware that he had pushed a difficult responsibility onto her, which was his way of punishing her for the attempted deception.

She took a deep breath as they got back in bed. She had to start somewhere, so she figured it would be best to start with information that would be useful for the Defenders’ upcoming campaign.

“During the war, the siege, I was in Horkustk Ris with His Majesty. And I was also in Sumy Ris. I saw the battles, and I talked to some of the Royal Protectors about things I didn’t see. So I know, in detail, what happened in both places. I know the layout of Sumy Ris. I saw the old cathedral, and all the newer buildings, the ones built by the Ottomans. It’s different from the old drawings we have. If you borrow one of the commander’s maps and let me write on it, I can update it for you, so there’re no surprises when we go in.”

———-

It was not hard for Danka to anticipate that the incursion into the Kingdom and the effort to capture Sumy Ris was destined to end in disaster. She just hoped the Destroyer was wrong about her own Path in Life and that she wouldn’t survive. She had already seen too much and had no desire to have yet more atrocities added to her collection of memories. However, she suspected any release from her grim life was not to be. Her most recent encounter with the Destroyer was always present in her thoughts as she listened to her fellow nymphs talk about the upcoming campaign. At times she saw them as ghosts: already it seemed the separation of their souls from their bodies was closing in on them. Especially at night, as the nymphs sat around the fire, Danka imagined each of her squad-mates holding her mirror.

I wish I could hold up my mirror instead of them. It is my Path is Life to witness their fates and that is not what I desire. I want to be blissfully dead and buried before the souls of the others separate from their bodies. I don’t want to have to deal with their deaths. I don’t want to have to bury them.

She thought about the two people she most cared about, her husband and her former servant. If the expedition was indeed to end in disaster, there wasn’t much she could do to preserve the life of Ilmatarkt. He had to travel with the commander and that was the end of it. However, Danka was able to come up with an excuse to prevent Isauria from leaving the Duchy. The wife of the village elder who had the baby the previous year was pregnant again and about to deliver. The elder was angry that none of the unit’s doctors could stay behind to help out. To placate him, and to make sure Isauria stayed in a safe location, Danka assigned her to help with the delivery. Dalibora, convinced the apprentice was still too young to accompany the nymphs on a full-scale military campaign, agreed to order her to remain in the village instead of marching south.