Children of Desperation

The sky rained men of Crann Kingdom. Rendered down to fat to rain fire upon their own people, the fallen soldiers soared from a dozen trebuchets. Left in were fragments of skull and bone, no doubt to sow fear in the defenders.

            Danielle had to admit it worked. Fear of being hanged for desertion was an abstract fear for many soldiers who saw the mighty army of the Empire of the Holy Proclamation camped on the Crosston Hills to the north.

            The siege had gone on for a week. Everyone was certain that the enemy would attack that night. They would be given no quarter. Emperor Righteous Cane took no prisoners.

            In the first days of the siege the people of Leonor City had seen the smoke in the sky rising from Crosston beyond the hills. At night they had watched the glow of the fires die in the rain.

            Having sent the whole army to fight Cane’s soldiers, Crann Kingdom only had the city guard and fearful townsfolk with swords they couldn’t wield. Danielle and other more experienced warriors had done their best to give the people beside them on the walls a crash course. Cane’s imperial army seemed content for Leonor to burn while they camped beyond the reach of the archers.

            “There,” said a voice in the dark. “A battering ram.”

            Danielle couldn’t see a battering ram. She saw the rectangular shields of the enemy held up over their heads as they carried siege ladders towards the base of the wall. It had begun.

            Torches moved in the darkness. Hundreds of orange lights marched towards the northern gate. Danielle hoped the city guard would be enough to turn them away.

            “When the ladders come up,” Fabian shouted, let them come close to the top before you push the ladders back. That way they’ll die in the fall.”

            Fabian wore the armour of his dead father. The shimmering armour was straight from a children’s tale. The green Crann Kingdom colours hung over his armour as they did anyone who’d joined up while there were still any left.

            Danielle drew her sword from its scabbard. The blade, reforged by her friend Lupita, was exquisite. The new leather straps around the handle gave her grip but did not cut her hands the way the old rags had.

            As the first ladder hit the wall before her, Danielle let out a breath she had been holding. She waited for the first man to poke his head above the battlements. She’d already forgotten Fabian’s idea in the heat of the moment. She just wanted to hack and slash until the enemy were no more.

            Up came the first head in its helmet with the red plume that was standard for them. Down came Danielle’s sword. The clang was loud. Louder for the man beneath the helmet. He roared anyway and jumped through the crenel of the battlement. Out came a short sword from his side.

            An old man in his rags, armed only with a hunting knife, slit the throat of the invader from behind, and gave Danielle a nod.

            “Keep fighting Sir. We got to keep fighting.”

            “Aye. Damned right,” she said. It was at that moment that Fabian’s idea finally penetrated the helmet and chainmail to her skull. Tip the ladders back.

            “Look out!” yelled the old man.

            Danielle turned and felt the impact of a sword punching into her chainmail. What would have been her back was her side. The chain links held. Danielle cut down hard, severing the arm of her attacker at the wrist. As he screamed, she threw him from the top of the wall down into the city with a barge of her father’s heavy shield. The body turned twice before crashing into a rooftop then the ground.

            There were Y-shaped poles for repelling the ladders. She sheathed her sword and picked up one of the poles. Using the thing she could not name she tried to push back a ladder, but the curved shape of the ladder had hooked the wall.

            Another face came up to meet her. The scream of that man falling into the ditch around the city wall brought Danielle grim satisfaction. Pulling out her sword again she leaned over the wall. She hacked at the wood beneath the metal hooks. As she worked the man at the top of the ladder told someone to shoot her. Arrows pinged off the wall nearby.

            The wooden cracking sound as the first side rail snapped was music to her ears. She had to stop to poke out the eye of a man too close for comfort. In his agony the man dislodged the one below. A cascade catastrophe for the invading climbers allowed Danielle to sever both hooks.

            When she pulled herself straight on the wall top there were more invaders than defenders. The old man was dead.

            “Fuck.”

            An invader cheering on the others on the ladders below noticed her and advanced with his gladius pointed at her throat.

            It was the arsenal of dirty moves learnt from her father that saved her. As the man stared at her face, she swung a kick of her armoured foot at his unprotected ankle. When the man yelped, she ducked his thrust and put the point of her sword through the eye slit in his helmet. A sharp kick sent him down into the embers of northern Leonor.

            She shield-charged the next one off the wall as her father would. Fabian the noble’s lessons were great for one-on-one combat when you had space, but the wall top was four feet wide with no inner banister between them and a thirty-foot drop.

            Gravity was a better weapon than her shield or sword. Those who survived the fall would be in no shape to fight. Imperial armour had the enemy in thin leather shoes and only hard leather skirts studded with metal that might protect their knees if they were lucky.

            Some of the ladders were on fire elsewhere. All Danielle could do was knock them down as they came up. Running back and forwards between a dozen ladders because there was no one else left on her section of wall.

            She was tired. No one in Leonor had slept well that week. The soldiers beyond the wall had rested and eaten food taken from the dead in Crosston. They were well trained and organised. They had marched through three kingdoms before coming for Crann. Eira Mynydd to the northeast beyond the Worldworm River had fallen months before.

            “Righteous Cane.” She heard the chant begin beyond the wall.

            “RIGHTEOUS CANE. RIGHTEOUS CANE. PROPHET OF GODS AND HOLY PAIN.” One had become many. It was the voices of thousands. An army that possibly outnumbered the survivors of Leonor chanted to strike fear into their hearts.

            Her muscles ached. She’d been in chainmail for two days. She’d been carrying the shield since the call of the battering ram was made hours before. Every crash with the shield sent shockwaves through her body. She was slick with sweat beneath her armour. The invaders were fresh from a nap in their camp. They were endless. The bastards were singing.

            She wanted to sing something herself to block out the words of the mocking army.

            “Kingdom of Crann. Kingrom of Crann. If anyone can. No. That doesn’t work.” She used a lull in the invasion to finally push the ladder with the cut hooks out from the wall. The screams of the men who slammed down to their hopeful deaths was the best thing she’d heard in hours.

            “Kingdom of Crann. Kindom of Crann. We’ll kill you all to a man.” It wasn’t poetry but it was Danielle’s best effort.

            “Boo,” yelled an invader. “Infidel’s tripe.”

            “Choke on it.” Danielle cut a line of skin visible at his throat.

            A blow from behind knocked her from her feet to the flagstones. Getting up in the heavy armour was tough. Then a foot pressed down in the small of her back. She let go of her sword and forced herself to roll over.

            An imperial kneeled atop her with his blade held in both hands and thrust down towards her throat. Danielle caught his wrists. If her quivering arms gave way at all she would have a new hole to breathe through. She tried to raise a knee to kick him, but it was no good. He sat too high up her chest and his weight kept her pressed flat.

            He laughed as she looked back desperately. She could barely see through her helmet which came down to the bottom of her nose with a strap across her chin. As he leaned forwards sniggering the blade dipped lower and lower.

            She pushed the gladius towards the loops of her chainmail where it stuck, not cutting. She held down after that, keeping the man stuck there in her grip. He spat down at her. She blinked away the phlegm and tried to wriggle. No luck.

            Her two hands around his began to move down his wrists to his hands. He had leverage but she was stronger. With all her might she crushed his fingers into the handle of his own sword. His face beneath the helm contorted with pain.

            “Crannan Dog. Blasphemer. Just die!” He growled.

            “Dog’s bite moron,” she told him.

            As she crushed his fingers the muscles of his body loosened.

            Danielle managed to pull her legs up and to loop the back of her knee around the man’s chest to pull him backwards. The unexpected attack from behind made him drop his gladius as he tumbled back.

            With his blade in her hand, she sat up and stabbed him as he lunged at her. His wide eyes looked at her in horror as she rolled him off the wall into the city.

            Another man tried to kick her in the face as she struggled to get up. She cut his ankle with the stolen sword then punched him square in the chest as she got to her knee. She saw her sword beneath another soldier in red moving towards her. Darren’s daughter let him stab with his sword, let the thrust go under her left arm then grabbed it as she stabbed back with her right. His arm, caught in hers, was useless.

            Giving the trapped zealot a Crannan Slum smile from ear to ear she threw him back into the man behind. On she fought. On and on.

            From the deep blue of night, the sky was turning purple, hinting at orange. The night had passed in battle. Morning came.

            Danielle looked forwards and back. Men didn’t seem to be coming over the wall anymore. The men were already there. In front and behind the wall top seemed well manned, with enemy soldiers. Not a defender in sight.

            As the sun peeked over the horizon to the east some of the men were climbing back down over the wall and down the ladders. Were they retreating? Was there no one left but her?

            She was shaking from exhaustion. There was no adrenaline left. She couldn’t stop. She picked a direction, east towards the castle, and ran headlong. Every time she crashed into an invader, she pushed them hard to her right with both hands. She had dropped the gladius. Her sword was long lost. She’d forgotten where her shield lay. They fell like chess pieces and pinwheeled down into the ashes of their making.

            Swords nicked her here and there. It was a reckless run. Her legs were leaden. Her shoulders sagged. Before her armed men were ready with their swords facing her. She trusted to the strength of the chainmail and the plate mail on her arms given by Fabian. She hadn’t seen him since the start of the battle.

            “Fabian. FABIAN? WHERE ARE YOU?”

            “Daniel?” came a voice from beyond more men in red.

            On she went shoving the religious zealots to their deaths below.

            Behind the red she saw a hint of green. Green splashed with a lot of red.

            “Fabian? Is that you?”

            “Danielle?” he asked, breaking the lie they kept up that she was the son of her father, not a woman.

            “You’re alive!”

            “Yes. As are you.” He cut a man’s arm off at the elbow then kicked him casually off the edge, then moved towards her. “How is it back there?”

            “Dead, Fabian. Everyone’s dead.”

            “It’s not much better here,” he yelled as his sword peeked through the back of a man then withdrew and the corpse collapsed on the flagstones.

            “They’re retreating!” yelled a city guardsman in red spattered green.

            “Cut them as they run,” Fabian said to those around him. “If they live, they’ll come back.” Fabian had studied war with his father Lorenzo. He was probably right. The thought of the army coming back almost made Danielle want to jump from the battlements and get it over with.

            Hope comes from the strangest places. Through the ashes of the north of the city women and children came bearing food. The queen had ordered the day’s watch to be taken by boys under the age of service as women filled the ranks on the walls. During the week of waiting, she had ordered that the women of the city be trained to fence with sticks and broom handles.

            After eating everything she could, Danielle fell asleep with a young girl tending her wounds. Even the pain of the girl prodding at her cuts couldn’t keep the warrior’s eyes open.

            Buckets were brought to the survivors to relieve themselves on the wall so that it never went unguarded. The invaders tried to keep them awake by chanting again.

            “RIGHTEOUS CANE. RIGHTEOUS CANE. PROPHET OF GODS AND HOLY PAIN.”

            Even that couldn’t keep Danielle awake. Whether she slept or fainted, she was out.

            Danielle was woken by Lupita Smith, whose knowledge of monsters had helped Danielle and Fabian defeat monsters in Leonor Prison months before. As it turned out Lupita had been working with Queen Malin for the week. Working on a secret plan to save Leonor.

            In the week while the army of Righteous Cane besieged the city Lupita had snuck off on a mission to retrieve cuttings from an ancient tree in the Devil’s Wood northeast of Leonor. The Hungry Tree was said to be cursed. Any who bled near it were devoured said the tales.

            According to Lupita the reality was that the Hungry Tree didn’t take a chance on prey bleeding. Its branches were covered with thorns. Its leaves were like razorblades. Trees like it formed a grove in the Devil’s Wood. Queen Malin planned to have her own just like it to encircle the walls of the city.

            Instead of taking them down, Queen Malin of Crann had ordered that Cane’s soldiers be tied to the tops of the ladders and push poles be readied to launch the ladders back towards the ground when the imperial soldiers attacked again that night from Crosston Hills.

            Crossbow bolts had been crafted from branches cut from the Hungry Trees. When the imperials were along the line where the ladders would fall those crossbow bolts would hit the bodies on the ladders or the soldiers outside and turn the fields outside the walls into a ring of cursed death for the empire.

            When the night came again Danielle was not hopeful. On maps of the world the empire could be compared to a banquet table and the Kingdom of Crann a single plate. Queen Malin’s plan was desperate. The people of Crann were desperate.

            On the walls stood the wives, the mothers, the daughters, and the sisters of men who had fought and died fighting the empire. Queen Malin had promised revenge. Their hard faces looked ready to make good on the promise.

            The green of Crann was stained with splashes of blood which had turned brown. The women looked less fearful than the men who had stood by Danielle’s side the first night. They knew what was coming. They had prepared.

            The men the night before had been old or lame. The women by her side were youthful and full of vigour. Typical Leonor women had black hair and wore it in a single plait at the back. Many had high cheekbones and sharp jawlines. Their eyes were as often brown as blue. Their hearts that night were forged steel.

            Danielle was known more as an archer than a sword fighter. Lupita had ensured ten arrows were made for her with the cursed wood behind the tips. A woman waited to push down the ladders in front of her with a dead imperial strapped to each.

            They heard the chant first.

 “RIGHTEOUS CANE. RIGHTEOUS CANE. PROPHET OF GODS AND HOLY PAIN.”

            Danielle’s muscles ached but it felt right to her to fight with a bow instead of a sword. Drawing the string back to her cheek she waited for the imperials with their shields and torches to enter her range.

            A woman by Danielle’s side saw the nod and pushed the ladder before them out away from the wall. It stood vertically for a moment, the body swinging limp. Danielle’s arrow struck the corpse stripped of armour. The ladder fell out towards the invaders as the terrible transformation began.

            It was hard to see in the deepening dark of the coming night, but Danielle’s sharp eyes saw tiny branches break through the body. Dark tendrils reached out into the world.

            At first the imperials just yelped as the trees sprouting from the bodies nipped their exposed ankles. Yelps turned to screams an hour later as the trees grew to the point where they could devour soldiers.

            Men in red died below in the trees. They died on the wall top. In the morning the horn for retreat was blown. Only those in green remained on the wall.