The Vile

‘So what’s next?’

‘We’re to get to Ballaston.’ The Captain stated. ‘Quickly.’

‘So that’s it. The contract is to just get to this city. Quickly?’ questioned Buckle. Knuckles shook his head, Faint standing behind Buckle and to his right rolled her eyes dramatically. Operation orders were dispersed at a need to know basis and as far as they were from Ballaston almost no one needed to know yet. They had a task ahead of them just in getting there.

‘Don’t we have someone from around here?’ Knuckles asked. Everyone paused to run through their rosters, half the members of the troop would never have come forward with where they were from, the other half never shut up about it.

Tapper spoke up, ‘Isn’t Bets from around here Sickles?’ She grunted, ‘Maybe’ and turned then stomped off towards the tents to gather Bets. Not one to waste time doing nothing when he could be complaining Buckle’s mouth opened but before he could get a intelligible word out Faint had jabbed two of her meaty finger into his back, the poke had startled him and what came out was a sad sort of squawk. The Captain fixed him with her best ‘grind bones to dust’ look and Buckle used the remainder of his time to kick dirt around while staring at his shoes.

They heard Bets approaching before they could see her, the clattering of a small horde of loose coin preceded her.  Sickle followed, hands on her pommels.

‘Think you make enough noise soldier,’ The Captain asked in her flat disapproval voice.

Bets was one of those soldiers that Knuckles had always admired, with not enough sense to be afraid of the officers, Knuckles did not think he could have found the courage to do what Bets did with ease. She just smiled at the Captain and responded, ‘Not, all of us are the stealthy type Cap.’ And then she winked. Knuckles mouth would have fallen open if he had not been grinning so hard. Faint hid hers behind a hand.

‘Soldier. You’re from around here. How would you get to Ballaston. Quickly.’

‘The quickest way to tell you Cap would be to go up the Dominion highway.’

‘No solider, what’s the way you would take to the city if you wanted to get there quickly.’ There was a hard edge to the Captain’s quickly.

‘Oh, well I would tell you to go up the Dominion highway, Cap.’ Bets answered. A laugh escaped form several of the sergeants. The Captain looked to Sickles, Sickles shrugged. Knuckles thought that Frosty was not good enough with people to understand she was being toyed with, Bets was just a having a little foot soldiers fun. The Captain moved to start again and Knuckles through up his hand, she looked relieved that he was willing to take over the interrogation.

‘Bets. Lets presume that officers are all intelligent enough to deduce that a well marked and traveled highway is likely to be the fastest way to get from one place to another.’ Knuckles began.

‘Soldiers know better than to presume the officers to be intelligent, Sir.’ Bets interjected, with another wink. Knuckles laughed, though most the other staff scowled. If you spent enough time amongst the staff you often forgot the irreverence that the soldiers held for their leadership. It was not specific, individually each of the solders tended to like their officers. It was most of a general disdain for leadership that was not real or authentic but still very omni present amongst the troops. Knuckles thought perhaps it was a necessary barrier built to protect them the seemingly un-ignorable danger of placing their lives in the decision making skills of others.

‘Fair enough, but we have considered it and to put it plainly we can’t take the highway. Could we cut our way across the plains?’

‘No sir, impossible.’ Bets answered

‘Impossible?’ the Captain echoed implying that she was going to need a bit more convincing that the whole half a second Bets took to consider the option. There was something in her voice that rattled Bets a little and she stammered when she began again.

‘Ye-yes, Captain. Impossible,’ She turned to face the plains. ‘Sure, it looks inviting enough. All pretty and all with the green everywhere but Captain let me assure you for all intents and purposes that sea of green you’re looking at is basically the largest desert you’ve ever seen. Oh, there are water holes scattered all over it. But if you don’t know where they are we could all die of thirst trying to make it from one to the other.’ She turned back to face the officers and could tell that everyone of them had begun the process of furrowing their brows to the problem.

‘But that’s not all. Scattered through the plains are the plains tribes. As vicious and territorial a people as you’ll ever come across. They only in the last fifty years or so agreed to terms with the Dominion in regards to the highway, and even still people have been known to disappear between the stations’

‘I wonder what the terms were?’ Some voice asked from the huddle of sergeants.

‘I suspect it was something along the lines of: if you step off the highway we kill you and leave your bones for the crows’ Bets answered. She turned to the Captain directly now and said, ‘Now, Captain I am gonna presume that when you said quickly you meant also without being noticed.’ Frosty nodded ‘Well, we're a mean group of sons-of-bitches so I am sure we could take the plains people. But not without loses and surely not quietly.’ To this Frosty, still completely in her Captain’s posture, nodded again.

‘Thank you soldier.’ Knuckles offered and Bets turned to go, then stopped.

‘Actually serge I just thought of something,’ everyone’s head popped up. ‘We could cut the length of the river and march up the Vile. Won’t be any troops or plainsmen that way. I don’t know maps so I don’t know how close it runs to Balleston but I remember as a kid, when the winds were good and strong that we could smell it from Balleston so it can’t be too far. Still would have a water issue but I’ll leave that for the officers to figure out. Being that you all are the intelligent ones.’ Another wink and she turned to leave, jingling as she went without even waiting for a formal dismissal.

             

*                          *                           *                           *

Ferin was caught off guard by Knuckles, ‘Alright lads’ his voice booming to rouse their collective attentions. Each of them was doing their mindless waiting activity that kept them sane while the officers tried to decide what was next. For most the soldiers it was either a simple housekeeping sort of activity or it was sleeping. Valon had been sleeping and being awoken by the Sergeants voice was a sure fire way to wake up grumpy, he wore it on his face as he blinked hard.

‘What’s the plan Sarge?’

‘We’re going to make our way to Balleston by following the Vile, and then cutting across to the city proper.’ He answered

‘What the hell is ‘the Vile’?’ Valon asked.

‘A river.’

The answer caught Ferin off guard. She would have expected just about any other response than the one she had heard. ‘Why would they call a river ‘the Vile’?’

Before Knuckles could respond, Tapper did ‘Because it’s poisoned.’

‘Its poisoned?’ Echoed Valon.

‘Poisoned’ Tapper repeated.

‘How does one poison a river?’ Valon asked incredulously.

‘Wrong question my friend.’ Tapper responded, ‘The Vile has been poisoned long enough for it to get a name based on being poisoned and while it is perhaps seemingly most pertinent to ask how one poisons a river there is an even more interesting question that ought to be asked’ his voice tailed off

‘How does one poison a river for that long of a time’ Ferin put out Tapper’s obvious question. He nodded his head in confirmation.

‘How long has it been?’ Valon asked. Tapper shrugged. Knuckles answered, ‘Bets says its been poisonous, death to anyone who drinks it for at least a thousand years.’

Valon shook his head in disbelief. ‘A thousand years?’

‘Magic then,’ Ferin offered up. Tapper nodded again to this, and added to her statement, ‘Old magic. Terrifying old magic. I can not imagine a magic user who could do such a thing, he must have been incredibly powerful.’

‘She was.’ Ghost spoke so rarely, his voice strong and melodic that when he did the entire world seemed to pause. As it was all eleven of them turned to give him their attention, Ferin imagined that all their faces were mirrors of her own- stunned surprise. Ghost must have realized then that a barrage of questions were coming and so before anyone could get one out started in again. ‘She was powerful. Her name was Rahulasheen and she ruled these plains were the authority of a god. She was called Blackwind, Dark Whisper, the Hidden One. But she was not a god, but a skareen, maybe the last of them. The people of the open sky. Still after ten thousand years the power she amassed was more than most gods could ever hope to have at their disposal.’

Ferin had so many questions should could not order them in a way that would let her get one out. Valon, who never seemed to be able to think of more than one thing at a time, did not have that problem.

‘Why did she poison the river.’

There was something in Ghost’s voice Ferin could hear, that confused her. She could not tell if he were speaking or singing and the sound of it drew her in. ‘She cursed the river, to curse the river god Vashun who had seduced her only son, Olarasheen. Olasaheen who had broken a thousand spears on his shield, Olarasheen who wore his wild red hair unbraided and counted coup a countless number of times. Olar, the fire, the laughing one, who was beloved by all and not least of all by his mother Rahulasheen. Vashun seduced Olar and took Olar with him to the place of his power, deep in the river where he could feed on the thanks and adoration of every living thing that drew from the river of which he was god. The skareen like all of the first people were stronger, faster, and more powerful and any of the people of this world today but he was not immortal and in the cold dark depths of Vashun’s realm he drowned.’

‘Surely, Olin, would have known that would happen.’ Valon said.

‘Olar, would have. But Gods are not without their own powers. Vashun’s power was rooted in the power of rivers themselves and just as a river’s will can not be resisted forever so too was Vashun’s will. All he had to do was turn that will to something and eventually he would have it. Still, there were others even in the sadness of Olar’s passing that professed that his love for Vashun was true and that he was not persuaded. That he went to the depths of his own accord, unwilling to spend the rest of his days so far from the man he loved.’ Ghost’s eyes narrowed and his voice lowered, ‘When a being becomes as powerful as Rahulasheen had become they were always a danger, what is the slightest emotion in a normal person in a being of that strength becomes an avalanche. She demanded Vashun return her son to her, and Vashun in the hubris that gods only seem to be able to have, laughed at her. How unaware he was of the danger. But how could he know? After all Rahulasheen was just a mortal, a powerful and long lived one, but a mortal just the same. And he was Vashun, god of the Golden River, a river who had supported and nourished life for a hundred thousand years. When Rahulasheen waded out into the river she brought with her magic large flat black stone on which for her to stand and from that stone she unleashed all her rage and grief on the river. She deposited her emotion supported with the incomprehensible magnitude of her power. into the river. The letting out of that power destroyed her but it was not that great power the poisoned the river and killed the river god.  Grief is a natural thing, every living thing feels it. The river is poisoned with her grief, and any who drink of it die for the grief in it is too much for any living thing to bear. If you would marvel at how any being could poison a river then marvel at the grief Rahulasheen felt from losing her son. And if you would marvel at how any being could sustain such a poisoning then you should marvel at the rage at which Rahulasheen felt, it is after these tens of thousands of years, what sustains the curse.’

Valon

'No one believes they are born at the end of the Empire.'
Valon turned and looked at Corum, he could not remember what he had asked the old man to prompt him to say such a thing. Corum had been his master long after Valon had outranked him, the bond between teacher and student was a hard one to sever. Four hundred years the Golden Empire had dominated the Sapphire Bay and now before him all that was left of it was aflame. Somewhere behind the smoke the summer sun was pouring down, though one would be hard pressed to believe it given the pall that fallen over the city.
It was quiet. There were sounds of course, the incessant sound of burning buildings and the occasional crying out of some accosted female voice but sound of battle, the clamor of resistance had vanished. The battle had been lost decisively by mid morning. Even as Valon watched it unfold from the outer walls the only surprise had been how unsurprised he had felt. Then again, they had been systematically beat back the crescent length of the massive Sapphire Bay all spring. The outcome outside the walls seemed less inevitable and more befitting than he could ever fare to voice out loud.
He could not recall when such thoughts began, they were not a soldiers thoughts he was sure and not at all befitting of the Captain of the Emperor's Guards. 
The first resounding thud of impact against the doors of the Inner Walls brought him back into the now as if someone had shook him back awake. Corum was staring at him, stroking the lengths of him mustache that fell well beyond his clean shaven chin, a look that had gone out of fashion when Valon had a boy.
The following sound was several times louder than the first.
'How long do you think? Minutes?' Valon asked. The old man knew these walls far better than he did.
'More like moments I suspect'. The noise was rhythmic.
Valon walked the length of the parapet of the cathedral towards the stairs, Corum his chosen second, following behind. They walked away from the pounding sound of their deaths.
The stairs circled down fifty feet or more and opened to the cathedral's belly. Sitting or leaning around the steps that lead up to the throne, empty, were the other eighteen members of the Emperor's sworn guards. They made up the twenty finest individual swordsmen in the Empire. Each of them looked haggard, paled from lack of sleep. The younger ones, proven in combat but inexperienced for the most part in war, looked outright afraid.
For almost a hundred years the Empire had not faced any real threats, the one pounding on the bronze double doors of the Inner Walls had not been expecting. Only one guard had died to the blade in the last fifty years. All of them had taken vows to serve unto death, Valon expect most of them had never expect to have to keep that vow.
Emperor Flasson II arrived suddenly, out the door way that lead toward the kitchens. He looked every day of his seventeen years, his eyes wide in a boys panic, his lips and left breast side of his doublet stained faintly purple. Valon did not think he was a bad Emperor, in truth he had only had a handful of years to even be one but he was weak, a personality flaw not one brought on by his youth. His skin was pale, an unusual trait that had spurned all sorts of rumors upon his arrival into the world, and his hands and flesh, while thin, were so obviously soft. But more than that there was simply something about how he carried himself, more than any one particular moment or act, that had given inspiration to his nickname, amongst the Empire's dissidents, Emperor Flaccid.
Still, panic stricken as he was, Valon could not bring himself to think of him as a bad Emperor. He tried to remember the last great Emperor. Garret his childhood tutor would have been ashamed of him from struggling to remember, Corum would have been ashamed too, but for another reason. Flasson's father had been fair, admittedly no more fit for combat than his son, but at least had the appearance of virility and strength that a life of recreational hunting at least created. Valon could not recall Flasson's grandfather and namesake, he had been a child when he had died.
'How long will the doors hold?' Flasson asked, his voice exposing everything that was obvious in his eyes.
'Moments, my lord.' Valon answered. His voice flatter than even he had expected it.
'What do we do Corum?' Flasson asked panicky. In the months before, despite his love for his old sword master, the question would have infuritated Valon. He had been Captain now for three years. But Corum had been his father's Captain and in truth, Valon could not seem to summon up the energy to be offended by the circumvention of his authority.
'We are at the end, my lord.' Corum responded, there was such softness there in his voice. Those who had been sitting stood, those who had been leaning righted themselves. There was no enthusiasm in the movements but Valon was proud of them all the same.
Flasson scurried up the steps leading to the throne, golden like the empire it would preside over for a few more minutes. He sat and straightened himself and would have looked composed to any onlooker except for the desperate way in which he gripped the armrest, each carved to resemble a lion.

Knuckles v.II

4th Year after the Arrival

You lie to the dying. Knuckles prided himself on telling the truth but his sergeant had told him, what seemed like a hundred years ago You lie to the dying.

So when Teeth asked him to watch after Wisp Knuckles promised he would. Knuckles had come across her before finding Teeth, a footman's hatchet embedded in her skull. Her face frozen in a look of surprise, her eyes wide- he closed them gently, a well practiced act, and made a note to come back to her.
Teeth's face broke into strained grin, blood spilling out from between the large gap in the front of his mouth, when Knuckles promised. People were funny. To the best of Knuckle's knowledge there had never been even one moment where Wisp had ever shown any affection towards Teeth and yet in his last moments. Something on the horizon caught Knuckle's eye, he tried to peer through the smoke to see it but it was gone lost into the haze.

He felt Teeth's hand go limp. He looked down at his face one last time, stared hard- to try to remember it -but knew all the same that eventually he wouldn't be able to. He closed Teeth's eyes just like he had closed Wisp's and thought then that perhaps that the only real intimate connection between the two was his hand closing their eyes.

Knuckles worked over Teeth's gear. His hauberk was in tatters but his boots were in good shape. Knuckles pulled them off and unstrapped the vambraces from Teeth's arms, Teeth had taken them from a corpse himself half a dozen years ago. A few coins and a woman's ring from a pouch at his belt and a long knife. Knuckles cut the dead man's belt off and pulled the knife and its scabbard free of the corpse.
A sad collection, but despite the fact their work always brought in coin, no one would ever be able to recover much more than that from any of their remains. 

A mercenary's life dangled a few delusional hopes before them, longevity wasn't one of them. 

Knuckles returned to where Wisp lay, knelt to harvest what he could. Her pockets produced only a few valueless sentimental keepsakes. He pulled her leather breastplate off and left them - a string tied to a feather, a ceramic coin without markings, a thin silk chord with a pewter figuring attached to it- laying there across her chest.

As he stood Tapper knelt, dirt trapped in the heavy creases of his forehead, sweat had carried the grime off his completely bald pate. Tapper held a syringe in his claw like hands and looked up at him as if to ask permission. Knuckles had liked Wisp but she wasn't anything to him, and after all the dead were dead. He shrugged and left Tapper to his business.

He trudged towards the cart, the terrain a mess of blood and mud. He threw what he had found, except the coins, onto the dishearteningly large pile and sat on the cart's edge. 

He was tired. That was to be expected, the fight-doomed from the start- had taken the whole morning. The days preceding it had been riddled with skirmishes and preparations and little sleep. He imagined that everyone was as tired as he was. Everyone who wasn't dead.
One by one the sergeants started to collect near the cart. A few leaned on the cart, a few sat, unbothered, in the mud. Almost as a rule they only fought when they had to, despite the job description of being soldiers for hire. At the end of any major engagement, which was not exactly their specialty, they did the Count. So they gathered slowly to number the dead. Knuckles felt sure that number would be high.
He was rubbing his palms into to his eyes while Mule and Faint approached. Faint sat down beside him, the cart creaking under her weight and Mule stayed standing.
'How many did you lose?' Faint asked. Knuckles answered with two fingers. Mule cursed in wonder, Knuckles knew his loses would be fewer than the others - they almost always were.
'You always were a lucky bastard' Faint said, then spat, mostly blood. Knuckles knew better though. Some part of it was the training, another part was his constant conscious efforts to keep his unit alive. But the last part, the undeniable part for anyone who had been in enough to battles, wasn't some divine luck, it was just stupid chance.
'Who?' Faint asked. His unit and hers had worked together frequently in the last few weeks.
'Teeth, Wisp,' Knuckles answered. Mule cursed again, this one of another tone. Wisp was well liked, but Knuckles suspected Mule cursed for Teeth, who had been around for more than a decade. A long life even in a company as careful as theirs.
'Did you tell him about Wisp?' Faint followed. Knuckles shook as his head. 'Good. Stupid fool. Stupid fool with that ridiculous gap.' Knuckles could tell she was upset as well.
'Never made much sense to me.' Mule said unprompted. Faint gave him an inquisitive look. 'His name. We don't usual do that, name someone ironically.' Teeth front two teeth had been missing, it had been as Faint had suggested, a ridiculous gap. Faint grunted in agreement.
'It wasn't ironic,' Knuckles started, he didn't know why. He didn't often feel the need to talk about the dead, it was one thing to remember their faces, but in general he didn't much care to talk about them. 'When Teeth first signed up, he had these two huge horse teeth.' Knuckles motioned in front of his face with his hand to size them up dramatically. 'They were these pearly white shovel sized.'
'That explains the gap,' Faint interjected
'Yeah,' Knuckles continued, 'Got his name for them and then got them knocked both out of his head the first scuffle he ever saw. By then.' Knuckles shrugged.'You get your name, its your name'.
Both Mule and Faint shook their heads. It was that slow head shake people only ever seemed to make when remembering the dead.  Knuckles couldn't quite think of why he had decided to share that story. There was no purpose in defending Teeth. But then, for a moment he thought perhaps he was just defending the company once again.
That sat there in the silence for awhile.
After some time, two lieutenants arrived. One, his, female tall and lean, the other Squats - short,  seemed to be almost as wide as he was tall, his eye was swollen shut and there were fingers missing from his left hand, both things were new.
Knuckles stood, and with his rising so did too the other sergeants.
"Hammer?" Mule asked after the missing lieutenant. Squats shook his head. Mule cursed, he and Hammer had been friends. One would assume that brothers-in-arms would be close, but forced company fostered true friends with no more frequency than did circumstance in a normal life. Mule had few friends, Hammer had had only one.
Knuckles asked though he already knew the answer, about waiting for the Captain. Frosty gave him the hand signal for 'negative', Knuckles answered her with a head nod.  Knuckles had known and still it stung. He hadn't liked the Captain, the position did not foster intimate connections but in the twenty years Knuckles had been with the company he had only known two Captains. Continuity bred its own sort of affection.
Whaler spoke next, the thumbs of his huge ham sized fists, tucked into his belt, 'Well, we should settle that issue first.' He postured for a fight. Knuckles groaned internally. Plenty of elections had ended in fights according the stories that made up their history, he could not imagine though mustering up the energy to do so at the moment. He suspected that was what Whaler was counting on, exhausted disinterest.
'No, let's do the count first.' Ribbons spoke up, which was unusual- Sickles, hand on her namesake weapons, inched up behind her, which was not. Ribbons must have picked up on Whaler's intentions. Knuckles suspect most of the sergeants were too exhausted to notice, or too dumb- Mule for one had not received his name because of his robust intellect.
'Makes no sense to do the Count if there isn't somebody to decide what to do with the number,' injected Faint, though her voice sounded bitter to concede the point to Whaler. He was not a favourite. Knuckles echoed his agreement.
'Fine.' Ribbons submitted, backed up a step but not into Sickles, who had felt the tide shift before Ribbons concession and anticipated her retreat. The company did not have strict rules on succession. It had a history and precedents but no rules. Generally sergeants nominated, nominees accepted or decline, sergeants, lieutenants, mages, and the historian voted. All the mages were absent, tending the wounded. Several sergeants were dead. Knuckles hadn't seen the historian. The vote would go ahead, there were no rules to dictate otherwise.
'I nominate Whaler,' Buckle started, though Whaler might has well as just said it himself. Buckle was his longtime companion.
'Accepted'. Whaler responded. The informality of the nomination process caused a lull. No one spoke. Knuckles realized that more than three quarters of the staff had never partaken in the process before, they knew of it only through story. An unease passed through the soldiers. Knuckles was sure he could feel Whaler grinning.
'I nominate Knuckles,' Faint finally broke the silence. Knuckles could hear the relief, saw Ribbons and Sickle shuffle their frames in non-verbal support.
'Declined.' Knuckles answer. Ribbons face was one of disbelief, Faint just shook her head- Knuckles could tell in her reaction that she had expected nothing else.
'I nominate Frosty.' Knuckles countered. Frosty shot him daggers with her eyes, her perfect face featuring identical vertical ritual scars up both cheeks showed nothing. She was every bit her namesake. He had worked with her for years, she was capable, analytical and had the necessary viciousness that he felt their last captain had lacked. She did not want the position, he wasn't sure anyone ever wanted to be Captain, he could tell as she stared back at him. After a few lingering seconds she signaled her hands 'confirmation'. Knuckles felt himself unintentionally smile as he conceded to himself that her social skills would need some work.
He surveyed the crowd. They were obviously processing. Frosty was not particularly beloved, nor did she have any enemies, other than the one she had just made in Whaler. While not everyone had worked with her, she was a lieutenant and Whaler was only a sergeant. Rank always seemed to suggest capability to the newer sergeants. Those who had been around for a while knew that the correlation between leadership and aptitude was not always absolute, being good at one thing did not always translate at being good at another.
Across the divide Faint give him a begrudged smile. Knuckles knew she had always been trying to devise a way for the issue to be settled without conflict. Knuckles had provided her that. There was no foreseeable scenario where Whaler would choose to settle the debate through violence now. Frosty was one of the most terrifyingly dangerous people Knuckles had ever fought with.
Again, there was a lull after waiting through Knuckles question if it was time to vote. Grunts and shoulder shrugs, and he remembered again that most of them had never done this before.
'We'll vote by show of hands.' Faint offered up, then turned to Knuckles, 'Do the candidates vote?' Knuckles told her he had no idea.
'Of course we do,' Whaler huffed. Fainted turned to Frosty, she shrugged coolly.
'Okay, sergeants, lieutenants, we got any mages here?' She looked around. From that back Tapper squawked. 'Is Book here?' Everyone looked around. Some how he had snuck up on them, and was perched like some over-sized crow on the railing of the cart. The historian's yellow skin framed his smile, that looked always a little crazed. He held out his hands, coated in blood to the elbow and responded, 'I abstain, I'm done participating today.'
Whaler glared at him. Book's grin grew wider. 'The word abstain means I'm not voting.'
While Knuckles was sure more than a few people there didn't know the word, the comment was for Whaler, who reddened with anger.
'Fine. Sergeants, lieutenants, and Tapper, who will have to vote for all the mages I suppose...' Faint's voice trailed off. She was worried that they might need the votes. She looked to him, he shrugged at her. It was going to be what it was going to be.
'For Whaler?' A few hands went up immediately, Whalers was one of them, he glared into the crowd. Two more hands raised reluctantly under his gaze.
'For Frosty?' Somehow Tapper had moved his way through the front of the crowd. His hand shot up before Faint could finish her words. Knuckles was not surprised that he, as he suspect the other mages, would much prefer Frosty. Squats' arm raised nearly as quickly and Knuckles was unsure if he was as assured over her qualifications, also disinclined to have Whaler as his superior, or just grateful that Frosty had accepted the nominate, had she declined as Knuckles had, likely he would have been nominated next. Knuckles, Faint, Ribbons, Sickles, Mule raised theirs was well. A few other sergeants followed suit. Frosty stood there, arms crossed.
Knuckles could see Whaler counting, slowly, and on his face well before Faint confirmed it, he saw the outcome. Faint announced it. No one grumbled, though Whaler glowered.
'Who will take your spot as lieutenant?' Whaler perked up and asked, realizing there were still opportunities to be had. Faint audibly groaned.
The Captain spoke immediately, 'I will be re-organizing the units. I will organize them and promote or demote as I see necessary.' Whaler's head sunk. 'Right now we will deal with the count. Sergeants stand at attention and straighten out in a line.' The Captains voice was cold and hard but rather than shirking away from it Knuckles found himself grinning, he had guessed right. The Captain pointed at Tapper. 'You are dismissed. Check in with the other Talents. Returned me with expectations of imminent loss of life and estimations on when we can get out of this hell hole.' Tapper scurried off.
'Report fatalities and your name' the Captain order before they could start. 'You're keeping records i assume?' That was directed at Book. His audible gulp was his acknowledgement. She turned to the staff of sergeants who we none to glad to be standing at attention but none yet found the voice to complain.
'8, Faint' started. Every unit had a sergeant and ten soldiers.
'7, Mule"
'8 Sickles'
'7 Ribbons'
'5 Whaler'
'9 Buckle'
'2 Knuckles'. Again, under-breathes he heard a few curses. Nine more voices reported their loses none too different than the counts offered by other voices, and then four spoke again to inform for sergeants that had not survive. Knuckles stared off in the distance after a few reports. Seven out of every ten men and women he had known this morning were dead. He could recall no story about the company having ever suffered such loses.
The smell of smoke was in his nose, he blew it twice but could not shake it. It would linger for a few days he suspected, which was a better smell than would take these fields in a day. Nothing smelled so awful as a battlefield. The Captain spoke again, and Knuckles refocused.
'Fallow,' she used the former Captain's name, Knuckles would not have guessed she had known it, ' and Hammer's regiment are dead. All.' A few people gasped, even Knuckles felt himself involuntarily flinch.
'How?' someone asked.
'They were assigned to watch our contract's collection of magic users. Everyone in the area of them was killed in the struggle, where they stood.' Half a dozen of the sergeants spat on the ground, no soldier liked to hear of one of their own dying without getting to defend themselves.
'Do we go on?' there was a broken uncertainty in Whaler's voice that seemed impossible to expect a few minutes before. It was an impossible suggestion, that they might quit, Knuckles knew what the answer would be but he saw in the faces of some of those officers a level of doubt he could not have predicted.
'Of course.' The Captain's voice was so flat one could serve dinner on it. 'Gather you soldiers. We'll reorganize later. Pack supplies on carts, put the injured who can't walk on top. I don't care what Tapper reports. We're leaving. Move.' The last word snaped like a whip. A few spines straightened and as if they had been taken orders from her forever everyone turned to leave with purpose.
'Knuckles. A moment.'
He stopped in his tracks. Turned around and approached her. 'Walk with me sergeant to the hill.'
They had fought on the plain outside March. The hill they walked up was a little thing but it would allow them to look over the doomed field. The plain was not the where their former captain would have preferred to have fought but their company was just one of many, and having taken the contract, they followed orders and died there.
'It was a shitty contract.' she said, almost as if she read his mind. He was not sure how to respond, so he didn't. Once she became aware he was not going to she spoke again, 'When we are away from the others you may speak freely with me Knuckles.'
He couldn't recall ever seeing anyone speak freely with the other Captain and while he could not imagine that she would care, it did then occur to him that being Captain was lonely position.
'It's easier to say in hindsight. Outcomes, despite what Rats says, aren't always obvious.' Rats was their resident would-be seer, his powers at divination were a point of humor in the company.
'Of course, no one ever knows the outcome, can predict the cost.' she spoke as they crested. 'The problem wasn't the outcome, it was the contract itself.'
'The pay?'
'No, the role.' He didn't quite get what she meant. He forgot to question her as he stopped to take in the battlefield. He could see over the expanse across the area of the battle they had not fought on. The ground seemed to move slightly, the field was littered almost completely with bodies, and while many were dead, many more were simply dying- a process that would taken many of them days to complete. It was impossible to distinguish the dying from the dead not because the distance but because of the quantity.
A horn blew. On the far ridge there was movement. He fished into the pocket at his belt, retrieved the individual parts of his spyglass. Through it he looked to the movement. A stream of figures moved out into the field, they were uniform in appearance- their faces concealed by red sallet helmets wearing matching robes, they moved in pairs; some carrying a thurible which swung back and forth as they walked, the others carried silver spears that seemed impractically thin. Though armed nothing about their movements or the way they carried themselves convey to him that they were militarily trained. Each pair pausing whenever they found one of the dying only long enough for the spear wielder to kill them.
When he pulled the spyglass from his eye he found the Captains hand waiting patiently for it. She surveyed the scene then handed it back to him.
'Lets get out this shit hole now.' She turned and walked backed the way they came.
While he repacked his spyglass Knuckles watched as the red robed figures moved over the plain, working over it like a slow wave. Many years later some poet or historian would write about this battle, about the valor of the vanquished and courage of the conqueror and would tell some lie about how the king of March surrendered his sword in defeat amongst a sea of streaming flags. Knuckles had heard stories and songs his whole life about battles but he knew the truth about conquest, that it always ended the same way, with slaughter.

*                                                             *                                                     *

Knuckles v.I

You lie to the dying. Knuckles prided himself on telling the truth but his sergeant had told him, what seemed like a hundred years ago 'You lie to the dying.'

So when Teeth asked him to watch after Wisp Knuckles promised he would. Knuckles had come across her before finding Teeth, a footman's hatchet embedded in her skull. Her face had been frozen in a look of surprise, her eyes wide- he closed them gently, a well practiced act, and made a note to come back to her.
Teeth's broke into strained grin, blood spilling out, when Knuckles promised. People were funny, to the best of Knuckle's knowledge there had never been one moment where Wisp had ever shown any affection towards Teeth and yet in his last moments... Something on the horizon caught Knuckle's eye, he tried to peer through the smoke to see it

He felt Teeth's hand go limp. He looked down at his face one last time, stared hard- to try to remember it but knew all the same that he wouldn't be able to eventually, closed Teeth's eyes just like he had closed Wisp's and thought to himself for a moment that the only real intimate bond between the two was that act.

Knuckles worked over Teeth's gear. His hauberk was in tatters but his boots were in good shape. Knuckles pulled them off and unstrapped the vambraces from Teeth's arms, Teeth had taken them from a corpse himself half a dozen years ago. A few coins and a woman's ring from a pouch at his belt and a long knife. Knuckles cut the dead man's belt off and pulled the knife and its scabbard free of the corpse.
A sad collection, but despite the fact their work always brought in coin, no one would ever be able to recover much more than that from any of their remains. 

A mercenary's life dangled a few delusional hopes before them, longevity wasn't one of them. 

Knuckles returned to where Wisp lay, knelt to harvest what he could. Her pockets produced only a few valueless sentimental keepsakes. He pulled her leather breastplate off and left them laying there across her chest.

As he stood Tapper knelt, dirt trapped in the heavy creases of his forehead, sweat had carried the grime off his completely bald pate. Tapper held a syringe in his claw like hands and looked up at him as if to ask permission. Knuckles had liked Wisp but she wasn't anything to him, and after all the dead were dead. He shrugged and left Tapper to his business.

He trudged towards the cart, the terrain a mess of blood and mud. He threw what he had found, except the coins, onto the dishearteningly large pile and sat on the cart's edge. 

He was tired. That was to be expected, the fight-doomed from the get go- had taken the whole morning. The days preceding it had been riddled with skirmishes and preparations and little sleep. He imagined that everyone was as tired as he was. Everyone who wasn't dead.
One by one the sergeants started to collect near the cart. A few leaned on the cart, a few sat, unbothered, in the mud. Almost as a rule the mercenaries only fought when they had to, despite the job description of being soldiers for hire. At the end of any major engagement, which was not exactly their specialty, they did the Tally. Number the dead. Knuckles felt the number would be high.
After some time, two lieutenants arrived. One, his, the female tall and lean, the other Squats - short, and seemed to be almost as wide as he was tall, his eye was swollen shut and there were fingers missing from his left hand, both things were new.
Knuckles stood, and with his rising so did too the other sergeants.
"Hammer?" Mule asked after the missing lieutenant. Squats shook his head. Mule cursed, he and Hammer had been friends. One would assume that brothers-in-arms would be close, but forced company fostered true friends with no more frequency than did circumstance in a normal life. Mule had few friends, Hammer had had only one.
Knuckles asked though he already knew the answer, about waiting for the Captain. Frosty gave him the hand signal for 'negative', Knuckles answered her with a head nod.  Knuckles had known and still it stung. He hadn't liked the Captain, the position did not foster intimate connections but in the twenty years Knuckles had been with the company he had only known two Captains. Continuity bred its own sort of affection.
Whaler spoke next, the thumbs of his huge ham sized fists, tucked into his belt, 'Well, we should settle that issue first.' He postured for a fight. Knuckles groaned internally. Plenty of elections had ended in fights according the stories that made up their history, he could not imagine though mustering up the energy to do so at the moment. He suspected that was what Whaler was counting on, exhausted disinterest.
'No, let's do the count first.' Ribbons spoke up, which was unusual- Sickles, hand on her namesake weapons, inched up behind her, which was not. 

4.15.18 (Ferin)

The colour was gone now from Braz. The fever that had possessed her had whittled away her weight first, and stolen her colour second. She was still brown, but the life and vibrancy was gone from her. The girl confined to the bed paled and shriveled was not someone those men and boys from the village would have recognized.

            It was almost over. Braz had not regained consciousness in over three days and as Ferin stood beside her, the sunlight cutting into to illuminate the bed, she thought of the last words Braz had said to her. Ferin had been using a damp rag against Braz’s forehead when unexpectedly her eyes had opened. It was not the sleepy, slow opening of eyes like when one awakes from a dream but as if Braz had been jolted awake. Her eyes were wild and panicked. Braz half rolled and lunged at Ferin, the grip she took on Ferin’s forearm surprised her, she would not have thought that she would have been able to muster such strength. Braz said only one word, ‘Run.’

            Ferin loved her even more in that moment, that she had somehow summoned herself back from death’s gates to try and save her. Ferin had never lied to Braz before but she could not bring herself to tell her the truth, that it was already too late. Instead she nodded mutely to Braz and her grip lessened, she slipped back into indention her body had made over the weeks in the straw mattress. Her eyes seemed calmed, and once more before they closed for the last time, she summoned the strength to repeat the word. Ferin responded without thinking, ‘I will.’

            Standing there in the morning sun though she was not sure she could. She had never ventured far from the stead, only to the village and that would not be nearly far enough. It was not some sense of responsibility towards her brothers, at twelve and nine they were usually to busy working in the rows often enough that they did not need much looking after, that made her hesitate. It was not even the practical concern that outside of a little bit of weaving and trapping she had no real skills in order to gain work.

            It was fear. Not that she would be caught and dragged back- but unexplicable fear of a world of which, as she considered keeping her promise to her sister, she knew nothing about.

*                      *                      *

            It was the way they laid her in the ground that decided it for her. Her brothers had dug the hole the next morning with an indifference that did not for some reason surprise her. When Ferin suggest that they bury her on the ridge where Braz used to go to watch the Kethin birds, she was met with blank stares. They dug the hole out behind the house.

            Ferin made her brother carry Braz out wrapped in a blanket. Even at twelve he was tall and strong enough to carry her, though not strong enough to lower her into the hole. He placed her on the ground next to it, where Braz waited for her father to say some last words. He did not. He peered and Ferin and shook his head, knelt and unrolled Braz from the blanket. Ferin realized then that he would not ‘waste’ a good blanket on his dead daughter.

            And that is when she knew she was leaving. They buried her without ceremony, but after they left Ferin sang to the All-Mother for her, pulled a wooden carved horse from her skirt pocket and pushed it deep, to the elbow, into the  wet, cool dirt that now entombed her sister.

            She prepared her roll while her father and the boys ate dinner. The flint she had stolen from the kitchen, she had wrapped her mother’s treasured coins in a scarf and then placed them in a small bag where she hoped they would make no noise. The hardest part of the preparation was stealing a pair of her brother’s pants, they each had only one pair but the youngest had not yet grown into these, they were stored in a chest in the main room of the house, she had snatched them when she sent them away to gather water. She took Braz’s clothes and a copper bracelet a man had once given Braz during a fair after dancing with her. She lowered these things in a blanket, quietly out the window where she hoped it would lay undiscovered until that evening.

            She was almost caught in the final stage of her rushedly conceived plan.

            

4.6.2018 (Ferin)

Death was not unfamiliar to Ferin. Things died around her all the time. When she was young the animals on her family’s stead would be alive one day and then dead the next. By the time she had her sixth name year her father had decided that she was old enough to watch the piglets she had named, fed, and played with for the whole year be slain. In the horrible winter of her fifteenth year she made her way through the snow to the barn and killed her favourite goat, Hedges, herself. Somewhere between those two firsts her mother had died by a means never truly revealed to her. And while the losing of these things pigs and goats and mothers were hard Ferin understood death as a suddenness and as a finality.

            She had opened the shutters to the window in her sister’s room to let the warm light in. Their room was the only windowed room in their home, which made winters often times miserable. But Braz loved the light, and being the elder of the two of them most often got her way. Ferin could almost taste the pollen on the air. She could hear the chucking, chop like sound of her younger brothers out in the rows, already their father had them at the earth with their spades preparing it for a tilling once he could convince one of the men from town to loan him their ox or horse. Through the window, dots of green budding adorned every branch or limb. Spring had come and returned the whole world to life, the whole world except for her sister.

            Ferin had no idea what illness had befallen Braz at the onset of winter and when she had asked her father for money to hike to town through the first snow to get a healer she had been met with a firm rebuke. They had no money for such things he had said, and  Ferin had not argued for they had never had money for much of anything. By the time Braz had shared with Ferin the secret of the cache of small coins their mother, and later Braz, had some how squirreled away, the first heavy snow had fallen and the pass between their stead in the foothills, and the town that sat quietly against a small river had been blocked. Once so, it would remain so till the first thaw. By that time even Ferin, who knew nothing of medicine but enough about death, knew it was too late.

            Ferin and Braz had their mother’s skin, a warm caramel colour, that set them apart from their father and brothers, who were more fair. Braz had always been the most beautiful girl at any fair, the attention she garnered from both men and boys was proof of it, in those moments Ferin felt she fit quite well invisible in her shadow. The boys would whistle which neither she nor Braz ever seemed to find that annoying but there was something about the way the older men licked their lips and occasionally clicked their tongues that set their nerves on edge. It was the beautiful shade of brown of Braz’s skin that Ferin was sure drew their attention when they were young, later when they were older a comment had been muttered louder than the rest and Ferin became aware that it was more than her sister’s colour that drew their attention.

            The colour was gone now from Braz. The fever that had possessed her had whittled away her weight first, and stolen her colour second. She was still brown, but the life and vibrancy was gone from her. The girl confined to the bed paled and shriveled was not someone those men and boys from the village would have recognized.