Children of Revenge

Being one of those useless soldiers that couldn’t ride a horse, Danielle had to sit by the driver of the wagon. The cargo behind her stunk to high heaven. The enemy dead were two days from life. Breezes blowing south were a blessing to Danielle as they kept the stench from her nose most of the way.

            From the south of Leonor City where their journey began the wagon rolled slowly through streets passed women and children picking up the pieces of their lives after the siege which had lasted more than a week and two nights of battle.

            Once the city had bustled with life. The market district was a shambles of empty stalls. Wounded defenders lay on stretchers here and there. Bodies gathered flies, waiting for a family to claim them. Though grief was on its way the sense Danielle got from the city was numbness.

            Though the defenders had driven off the army of Righteous Cane’s empire the world as they knew it had ended. The cart rolled on over cobbles washed with blood and filth. Families picked through the ruins of the northern city. In a cruel irony it had been the men of Crann’s army who had burnt the buildings below the castle. Crann’s army which had faced the empire at Worldworm’s Bridge had been rendered into flammable fuel and flung back into their city.

            The cart rolled past a battering ram that had been pushed into the moat outside the north gate. Looking west, Danielle swallowed down the acid taste of vomit. Dark trees stood on the hills ahead where none had been just days before.

            Rain fell again as it had for days. Clouds hid Crann Kingdom from the blue skies above. What had been the northern road was just a mess of muddy footprints with grass on either side. Before long Danielle had to jump down and pull the cart along through the mire.

            The trees on Crosston Hill brought the taste of sick back up her throat. The procession of almost a hundred warriors said nothing as they passed the hilltop where the enemy had camped for nine nights and been slaughtered on the ninth morning. Some spat on the ground looking at the trees which had devoured the enemy.

            Crann had forever been despoiled by those cursed trees. The eastern half of the hills had no trees, just the tattered remnants of the camp where the enemy had been slaughtered. Leonor city had blood on its cobbles. Crosston Hills had soil and detritus in its blood. Huge swarms of corpse flies hovered over the camp and the stink brought most of the party to the point of vomiting as they passed.

            The horses and ponies that carried the warriors of Leonor City snorted, farted, and dropped their dung as they walked. They could sense the evil in the air. They whinnied and tried to turn back to the city. Riders had to soothe them with soft words or keep them in line with hard tones.

            After Crosston Hills was the town of Crosston itself. There Danielle saw the crimes of the invaders everywhere. The crops in the fields were wilting from the salt poured on the soil. The fires had burnt out. Bodies hung from blackened beams. Danielle heard the party sniffing, gasping, swearing. A pack of wild dogs had to be driven off with swords as they tore at putrid forms tied with rope.

            Danielle had fought literal monsters, beasts who ate human flesh. The men responsible for the children impaled on fenceposts were infinitely worse. There was a calculated cruelty to the horror of Crosston. The invaders had taken their time, had their fun with the locals.

            Personal possessions lay scattered across the main road. Every home had been ransacked and stripped of value before it was put to the torch.

            An imperial flag stood upright in the centre of the crossroads the town was named for. A skull picked clean of flesh sat atop the flagpole with a crow atop it. The flagpole was torn down, pissed on, and stamped into the mud.

            On they went. The catalogue of horrors was comprehensive. Headless bodies were stacked on top of each other in a garden and the heads mounted on the fenceposts. Imperial slogans had been scrawled on the walls of a stone building.

            Just one sign of resistance was found. A single imperial helm lay in the mud of a garden with a hole in it. For the crime of fighting for their life that warrior was presumably the one quartered in the weeds of their home. Leonor’s warriors saluted the fighter who had given his best against an overwhelming foe.

            Danielle was glad to see she was not the only one brought to tears by the sight of a baby. All the guilt she had felt for slaughtering the men in the camp on Crosston Hills was gone.

            “They’re still here?” asked the foremost riders as they turned the last corner on the road to Worldworm’s Bridge.

            Danielle fitted an arrow to her bow and stood as best she could by the driver of the cart to better see a dozen imperial soldiers in their red armour. Those men were laughing until they saw the ragtag collection of archers with their bows drawn.

            “To arms brothers,” yelled one of the soldiers.

            Their chest armour was the best in the world, one solid plate for the front and one for the back. Their helmets only protected the upper portion of their heads with a nose guard. Their metal studded leather skirts left their lower legs open to attack which was why they carried huge rectangular shields.

            With their lengthy spears the men had more range than the swords of Crann’s soldiers. Against a hundred angry bowmen mounted on horses that were slowly circling the dozen men, the imperials would not fare so well. The men in red raised their shields and aimed their lances as the chests of the horses.

            “Are you lost?” Guinevere asked. She had risen to Queen Malin’s second in command during the siege of Leonor. “This is Crann Kingdom. You are not welcome here.”

            The men in red looked from horse to horse, from grieving soldier to the bows with arrows ready to fly.

            “We’ll leave. Let us leave madame. Please. We swear we had nothing to do with the invasion. We just got here.” His voice was desperate. His words rushed out, tripping over each other to pacify the archers who had their eyes narrowed.

            “You didn’t burn the houses?” Guinevere was a wiry woman with straw coloured hair that stuck out amongst the brunettes Crann was known for. Like Danielle, Guinevere’s hair had been cut short to be out of her way. It was a common sign of mourning in Crann. Most of the women holding bows had their hair cut short.

            “No madame.”

            “You didn’t kill men?” Guinevere’s blue eyes were glassy orbs of cold hatred.

            “No madame.”

            Horses snorted as if they wanted the archers to let fly. The men in a circle of shields shifted.

            “You didn’t rape the women here?” Her accent was high pitched, her intonation was clear and crisp, the hallmark of a privileged life.

            “No madame, I swear,” he gasped in the drawl of the north.

            “You didn’t butcher innocent children for sport?”

            “No. We never. We crossed the river today. First time we set foot in Crann.”

            “Do you approve of what was done here?” Guinevere asked, looking back at the ruins of Crosston.

            “I’m sorry?” asked the man whose face had ducked behind his shield.

            “Do you think it was just of your imperial soldiers to annihilate our people?” Guinevere clearly wanted to savour the fear of the imperials.

            “No. Course not madame,” his voice was pleading. If there was a tone that conveyed a man pissing himself, that was it.

            “Then you can leave. Drop your weapons and go.”

            “I’m sorry?”

            “What for scum?” She asked in a mockingly casual tone.

            “I can’t drop my weapon madame.”

            “Then my soldiers can rip it from your corpse.”

            “NO. We’ll put them down. You promise we can go in peace?”

            “Of course. What do you take us for? Killers? Rapists? Monsters?” Hammered steel could not compare to the hard anger in the woman’s voice.

            “Drop your weapons men,” said the soldier in red who had been talking the whole time.

            “Let’s make sure they find their way safely off our land. Hold your arrows.”

            The imperials dropped their lances and shields and began walking with a small army trailing behind them. The men looked back constantly, jumping every time a horse snorted.

            Worldworm’s Bridge was a mighty construction of stone wide enough for two carts to cross side by side. It forded a river greater than anything Danielle had ever seen. White water rolled and foamed over rocks almost to the horizon, capped by the Worldworm Mountains on the far side.

            “One more thing.” Guinevere announced as if she’d just remembered. The man without a shield or lance turned, flinching as he looked at the woman in Crann green and chainmail. “We have your dead on the cart here to show that if your empire stays across the river, we won’t kill any more of your people.”

            The soldiers in red exchanged bewildered looks. Guinevere signalled with her finger for Danielle and the driver to get off the cart.

            “Take the cart to Worm’s Mount Castle. Your soldiers can be taken back to their homeland for burial. Call it a sign of goodwill.”

            “But-”

            “I was not asking, filth. Drive the cart or ride in the back with an arrow in your eye.”

            The talkative imperial shook his head in disbelief. He hauled himself up into the driver’s seat and snapped the reigns to get the horses moving. On the collective rode. Men in red walked with their heads twisted back to look at archers on horseback.

            The river roared either side of them. Looking at the mountains, Danielle couldn’t help being distracted by the raw beauty of the scenery. Snow-capped mountaintops far away downriver topped the eastern horizon.

            Before them the imposing shadow of Worm’s Mount Castle hung over open ground on the other side of the bridge. Danielle walked right behind the cart. Her arrow was back in the quiver. The cursed arrows they had with them were too dangerous to risk pricking herself with.

            Imperial soldiers stood guard at the other end of the bridge. When the Crann Kingdom warriors were a stone’s throw away Guinevere held up her hand. It was the signal to stop.

            “Give our warmest regards to the empire,” shouted the dirty blonde. She turned to her archers. “Fire.”

            Taking aim at the liar on the cart who had turned back to look, Danielle released her arrow. It hit him in the eye. A wall of a hundred arrows hit the soldiers guarding the far end of the bridge and the bodies in the cart.

            Somewhere on the battlements of the castle a horn was blown.

            “Reload. It looks like we’re about to be given more targets,” Guinevere said casually, notching another arrow in her bow.

            The bodies in the cart were convulsing. Branches burst forth from the dead as the curse fed upon their flesh. The men who had run from the cart had been hit in the back of the legs where imperial uniforms offered no protection. They screamed agonised screams and crawled as they were devoured from the inside by cursed saplings.

            The portcullis of the castle gate rose. A red mass of shields advanced at a jog with their lances held out before them. They emerged in rows of ten, one behind the other. As the rows behind caught up with those in front they created the lid of a box to protect themselves from the arrows. Someone said it was called the turtle defence. Danielle didn’t know what a turtle was. Someone else said it was a crab shell. That metaphor made sense to her. The people of Fisher’s Gasp where she had grown up caught freshwater crabs at times.

            “Wait,” Guinevere commanded, holding up her hand again. “Back up a little.”

            The people of Crann pulled their horses back.

            “What’s the matter scum? Scared of a few trees?” Guinevere mocked. Some laughed, not Danielle. “Where is the other thing? The explosive?”

            An attendant brought Guinevere a different arrow. It had a pouch where the arrowhead should have been. She fussed for someone to bring her a flame. A rider brought a torch from their saddle bag and took their time fumbling to light it.

            “Wait.” Guinevere called out to the archers to be ready and to fire when she gave the word. Danielle notched an arrow and waited. She watched the fire spread to the pouch on the arrow and without a moment’s pause the queen’s right hand pulled back the string and fired, barely taking the time to aim.

            “FIRE!” she roared. A volley of arrows sailed through the air behind the flaming sack of something on an arrow.

            Guinevere’s arrow thudded anticlimactically against the shields of the imperial ‘turtle’ but did nothing for a moment. It was on fire, but Danielle wondered if it was a dud. Then the little bag made an almighty bang that had every horse on the bridge rearing up on its back legs in fright.

            The horses weren’t the only ones who winced at the sound. Danielle’s heart felt as though it had stopped.

            “Reload!”

            The soldier’s holding their shields in perfect unity flinched, dropped the shields, or fell over. Some brave souls managed to keep their place despite the shock of the bang. For nought. Arrows hit flesh beneath the shields and the groans of being hit were soon the panicked screams of men being eaten alive.

            Somehow oblivious, the front line of the turtle reformed as those behind trampled each other to be away from the nightmare that was ripping through their unit. Shields tumbled to the ground as men ran for their lives back to the open gate of the castle.

            “Fire.”

            Many of the arrows missed, most hit shields or armour and bounced off. Some hit the men fleeing. Of those who were running, some managed to cross the threshold of the castle with arrows in their arms because they were running so fast.

            “Perfect.” Guinevere nodded to herself. “Again.”

            As the cursed branches grew ever higher from the bodies on the wagon it became hard to see what was happening beyond. Danielle, feeling it was a waste of arrows to fire blindly, watched Lady Guinevere on her horse.

            Though the monstrous trees sprouting from the cart took up the western half of the bridge that was the problem. It was only half. Beams from burnt homes were found in Crosston and used to knock the rear right wheel off. The cart tipped, spilling the still morphing corpses across the bridge as they became unrecognisable.

            The warriors of Crann watched in horrified fascination as years of growth happened in less than an hour. They were soaked to the skin, but the summer air was hot. After two hours the trees were of a size to attack men actively as they had during the second night of the siege at Leonor.

            Queen Malin had ordered that a flag fly where no archers could hit it, so the warriors built a cairn of stones on the bridge with a standard of Crann Kingdom and beneath that the flag of Leonor City.

            The Worldworm River covered hundreds of miles across several kingdoms. It was the natural northern border of Crann. To the east a string of treacherous mountains said to be teaming with monsters protected the kingdom from invasion. The next bridge across the river was three hundred miles away.

            To get back to Crann the armies of Righteous Cane would have to march through two other kingdoms along the way, either conquering them or by forging alliances. Diplomacy was a notoriously slow process.

            In short, the kingdom was safe, for the year at least Danielle presumed.

            “You’ll need a ride back Sir Longbow,” Guinevere said, looking at her directly.

            “Me?” Danielle asked, shocked that the woman knew her name.

            “Know any other Danielle Longbow’s from Fisher’s Gasp around here?”

            “Why would a lady like you want to talk to me?”

            The noblewoman laughed. Danielle flushed. “Because you fascinate me.” She reached out and held Danielle’s arm to swing her up into the saddle. “I knew your father.”

            “Oh.” The bastard daughter of a drunken philanderer could think of nothing good about her father Darren the Disgraced being remembered well.

            “Yes indeed. He was quite the talker when he was drunk.” Guinevere had a warm giggle in her voice.

            “He was never sober.”

            “Well exactly. He spoke his mind. It was fascinating at banquets. Scandalous. I always enjoyed your father’s visits to court during the tournaments. It livened up the whole affair quite nicely.”

            Danielle felt the flush of embarrassment spreading from her cheeks to her neck and down her chest. She had her arms around the lady instinctively because she had yet to learn to ride and the experience combined with the mental dissection Guinevere had initiated was harrowing.

            “You know I’m not a knight, don’t you? I’m no sir,” the embarrassed daughter said, trying to change the subject.

            “We’ll soon see about that. Fighting monsters in the prison. Defending the wall during the siege. Slaughtering the enemy camp. And now this. Queen Malin is sure to look kindly upon you. I’ve no doubt of it.” The queen’s right-hand lady said it with certainty.

            Though life was awful, though she was wracked with endless variations of grief and guilt, it was her dream to be a knight. A dream now somehow in reach.