The Messenger, part 2
I’m part of the First King Brigade, the chosen ones who were destined to be victorious against the scourge that had taken the smaller neighboring kingdoms in one swift move. ‘We are Syngenia, the land of the Ascended Ones, descendants of Malakir the Great, and we will not fall prey to some bug infestation!’ - King Simon shouted at the Palace Square, before his five brigades and the common folk that managed to gather around to witness them. And his speech was supported by cheering from the crowd and the warrior roar of the fifty thousand soldiers. I shouted too, feeling the battle cry of my mates in my bones, filling me with optimism and lust for victory.
And we marched and galloped towards the northern border, full of determination, full of arrogance, full of the righteous power bestowed by the Ascended Ones. And we were cheered by the farmers, housewives, and the children ran besides us, often reaching up to touch their shiny heroes off to fight against the terrible enemy that threatened life itself.
Only we never reached the border, not even close. The enemy had gone much farther than our intelligence suggested. The disease was much closer to the heart. And suddenly, the bold offensive war turned into a defensive one.
I will never forget the sights from the town’s wall in the past month. The ‘bug infestation’ was a much, much larger than anything we had ever seen in our lives. And much more horrifying, too.
First came the giant hornets, ridden by the scouts of the insectomancers. There were hundreds of them, the buzzing was almost deafening. They were testing our defenses, flying onto the walls fast, rushing their proboscis at the archers stationed there. The archers returned in similar fashion, only their arrows were much less lethal to the giant insects, so instead they targeted the ones riding them. But killing an insectomancer meant the insect would just revert to its instincts, and soon the fight transferred to the city, and once we finally fought them off, mostly driving them off with fire and smoke, we had to go around and dislodge bodies of common folk from the stings of the dead hornets.
Not yet finished with the morbid job, another report came from the walls. Now the enemy army could faintly be seen just at the horizon. Or more correctly, the enemy was the horizon, and the town was separated by ultimate demise just by the lush green and the meandering Kayen. The fields and the villages were all deserted, they fled the same day the hornets came, and although by some miracle most of the people managed to get into the lower districts of the city, a trained eye could see more than a few corpses littering the high grass. There was some movement just beyond the gentle waters of Kayen, too far to be noticed in detail by the naked eye, but not for the telescopes in the towers. The city lookouts reported people, some carrying wood planks, others, adorned in the black robes not unlike the one the hornet riders wore, performing some kind of ritual, and only the Ascended knew what was that about.
We gandered a guess that it had something to do with the blister beetles and the cockroaches, but by that time the horses were all dead and the supplies half-eaten.
It was the start of the fall, but we still failed to recognize it. The town’s veshter proposed a possible defensive plan: just beyond the walls, he suggested we spill oil marking the first defensive perimeter, which in turn could be easily lit by the archers. Further, the veshter had prepared a special oil that would repel, at least in theory, the insects and slow them down a bit, maybe even cause chaos in their ranks. This would give us time for consolidating our defence, and gathering the other armies. As soon as the vastness of the enemy was obvious, messengers were sent to the other brigades. By the calculations we made then, what we thought was worst case scenario was that the messengers will reach their destinations in a week, and then it would take a week and a half for the armies to get back. Two and a half, even three weeks, was enough time to hold up.
When General Jakov asked why, if the fire scared the insects so much, we shouldn’t just go on the offensive with the pyrocriners up front, the veshter answered that we simply don’t know how much of them were out there, and it would take all of the pyrocriners, and for that we would need both him and the two lectrocriners on the front lines. ‘If we lose even one lectrocriner, the pyrocriners will be too much for me and the remaining one, and we will lose control, and that is a far bigger problem than the army before us.’ - the veshter explained.
There was only one veshter in town, and only two lectrocriners in the brigade. Most of the lectrocriners and veshters were sent with the other brigades, alongside the Rotwald, and to the north east, for both the council and the King decided that the other kingdoms needed more help than we did. Oh, how wrong that assessment turned out to be.
So we were left with a veshter and two lectrocriners, barely enough to control the fifty pyrocriners in our ranks. The freaks were kept closed in metal boxes, as they turned catatonic when no stimuli excited them. Once unleashed, they could wreak havoc over all of the city in a matter of minutes. Only their far more intelligent cousins and trained veshters could keep them at bay. They were to be used only in the most dire situation, and it seemed that such time we’ll soon be upon us.
I had never seen a pyrocriner, and I never really understood how happy I was for that until I finally laid my eyes upon one. I thought the lectrocriners were unnerving, but by the Ascended, the hovering gangly emaciated freak was a beauty compared to it.
So the decision fell - we don’t use the pyrocriners, until the army is hundred strides from the city, and until then we stick with the oil traps. Soon night fell, and in the morning the lookouts noticed that the enemy hadn’t slept either. They had created, or were in process of creating some sort of fence, the planks now erect at equal distances, and the lookouts next noticed in horror as giant spiders started weaving webs between them, their hairy ochre bodies glittering in the morning sun.
And we marched and galloped towards the northern border, full of determination, full of arrogance, full of the righteous power bestowed by the Ascended Ones. And we were cheered by the farmers, housewives, and the children ran besides us, often reaching up to touch their shiny heroes off to fight against the terrible enemy that threatened life itself.
Only we never reached the border, not even close. The enemy had gone much farther than our intelligence suggested. The disease was much closer to the heart. And suddenly, the bold offensive war turned into a defensive one.
I will never forget the sights from the town’s wall in the past month. The ‘bug infestation’ was a much, much larger than anything we had ever seen in our lives. And much more horrifying, too.
First came the giant hornets, ridden by the scouts of the insectomancers. There were hundreds of them, the buzzing was almost deafening. They were testing our defenses, flying onto the walls fast, rushing their proboscis at the archers stationed there. The archers returned in similar fashion, only their arrows were much less lethal to the giant insects, so instead they targeted the ones riding them. But killing an insectomancer meant the insect would just revert to its instincts, and soon the fight transferred to the city, and once we finally fought them off, mostly driving them off with fire and smoke, we had to go around and dislodge bodies of common folk from the stings of the dead hornets.
Not yet finished with the morbid job, another report came from the walls. Now the enemy army could faintly be seen just at the horizon. Or more correctly, the enemy was the horizon, and the town was separated by ultimate demise just by the lush green and the meandering Kayen. The fields and the villages were all deserted, they fled the same day the hornets came, and although by some miracle most of the people managed to get into the lower districts of the city, a trained eye could see more than a few corpses littering the high grass. There was some movement just beyond the gentle waters of Kayen, too far to be noticed in detail by the naked eye, but not for the telescopes in the towers. The city lookouts reported people, some carrying wood planks, others, adorned in the black robes not unlike the one the hornet riders wore, performing some kind of ritual, and only the Ascended knew what was that about.
We gandered a guess that it had something to do with the blister beetles and the cockroaches, but by that time the horses were all dead and the supplies half-eaten.
It was the start of the fall, but we still failed to recognize it. The town’s veshter proposed a possible defensive plan: just beyond the walls, he suggested we spill oil marking the first defensive perimeter, which in turn could be easily lit by the archers. Further, the veshter had prepared a special oil that would repel, at least in theory, the insects and slow them down a bit, maybe even cause chaos in their ranks. This would give us time for consolidating our defence, and gathering the other armies. As soon as the vastness of the enemy was obvious, messengers were sent to the other brigades. By the calculations we made then, what we thought was worst case scenario was that the messengers will reach their destinations in a week, and then it would take a week and a half for the armies to get back. Two and a half, even three weeks, was enough time to hold up.
When General Jakov asked why, if the fire scared the insects so much, we shouldn’t just go on the offensive with the pyrocriners up front, the veshter answered that we simply don’t know how much of them were out there, and it would take all of the pyrocriners, and for that we would need both him and the two lectrocriners on the front lines. ‘If we lose even one lectrocriner, the pyrocriners will be too much for me and the remaining one, and we will lose control, and that is a far bigger problem than the army before us.’ - the veshter explained.
There was only one veshter in town, and only two lectrocriners in the brigade. Most of the lectrocriners and veshters were sent with the other brigades, alongside the Rotwald, and to the north east, for both the council and the King decided that the other kingdoms needed more help than we did. Oh, how wrong that assessment turned out to be.
So we were left with a veshter and two lectrocriners, barely enough to control the fifty pyrocriners in our ranks. The freaks were kept closed in metal boxes, as they turned catatonic when no stimuli excited them. Once unleashed, they could wreak havoc over all of the city in a matter of minutes. Only their far more intelligent cousins and trained veshters could keep them at bay. They were to be used only in the most dire situation, and it seemed that such time we’ll soon be upon us.
I had never seen a pyrocriner, and I never really understood how happy I was for that until I finally laid my eyes upon one. I thought the lectrocriners were unnerving, but by the Ascended, the hovering gangly emaciated freak was a beauty compared to it.
So the decision fell - we don’t use the pyrocriners, until the army is hundred strides from the city, and until then we stick with the oil traps. Soon night fell, and in the morning the lookouts noticed that the enemy hadn’t slept either. They had created, or were in process of creating some sort of fence, the planks now erect at equal distances, and the lookouts next noticed in horror as giant spiders started weaving webs between them, their hairy ochre bodies glittering in the morning sun.
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