Chapter XL: The Second Battle of Zrimash

 

It was three more days before we saw the outline of Zrimash on the horizon. The moment we could, everything came to a halt and a deathly silence fell over the entire column, partially out of fear that we might be heard, and partially out of the grim awareness that not all of us were going to make it out of this alive. Last-minute weapons and ammunition were distributed, and the commanders all secluded themselves to make absolutely sure that they all knew what they were doing. I knew already where I was going, and I was fairly sure that nothing the enemy had could kill me, so I was mostly focused on what I was going to have to do: fight and kill. The most unnerving part was just how…okay I was with that.

And then the word went out, spreading across the camp like an invisible ripple in a pond, and we were off. All of the tents and food and other supplies stayed behind, with only the most token rearguard; if we didn’t take the town, there wasn’t much point in retreating. 

The army, if you could call it that, split into two groups. Most of the Blueroser contingent, plus all of our faltry, went under Lady Burnardor’s command and moved directly toward Zrimash. The rest, including myself, about twenty Bluerosers under Halflance’s command, the surviving Durkahn guards, and the Yazthaan militia, swung out at a wide angle so that we’d instead arrive at the Zrimash river a couple of miles downstream from the town itself. 

The plan was relatively simple, but it would require some serious coordination to pull it off. The enemy outnumbered us nine hundred to four hundred, the majority of their forces arranged in a ring of trenches around Zrimash and the stonewose camp where the treaty grounds had once been, with a slightly greater concentration around the camp. That was where the smaller group was going; their objective was to attack the defenses head-on and inflict enough damage to get their attention. They weren’t going to be able to win that fight, of course, not outnumbered two-to-one by an enemy with automatic weapons. But they stood a decent chance of surviving long enough for the second group to land the deathblow, if they were smart.

There was a place where the Zrimash river became broad, slow, and shallow. The Durkahns who were most familiar with the territory took the front of Sarnai’s group, and led us unerringly to that gentle ford. Shallow water here meant that I was only soaked up to my stomach, not over my head. Still, the fording went about as well as could be expected for getting two hundred and fifty soldiers across a river, and we continued making good time as we turned north and began to stalk along the riverbank toward the town itself.

The hard part about attacking a prepared defensive position isn’t just taking out the enemy directly in front of you. It’s also the fact that unless you can attack the entire line at once, all of the enemies who aren’t fighting you at that exact moment can very easily just shift up the line to attack you from either side. Like a boxer rolling with the punches, the bad guys get stronger wherever you hit them. What you’d really like to be able to do is make it so that the enemy can’t reposition themselves before you wipe out the local group, then do that again and again up the line.

We spread out into a thin line, three or four fighters deep, and approached to within about five hundred feet of the stonewose. The tall grass meant they didn’t see us even at that range. But we held back the attack and waited patiently for the sound of gunfire to arrive. That’s the thing about the feint-and-strike maneuver, is that it’s all dependent on careful and precise timing: the gap between the feint and the real attack has to be long enough for the target to be properly distracted, but not so long that they can completely deal with the feint before the real attack starts. The smaller group knew that it would take us much longer to get into position than they would, and knew to delay; but how long that delay was was an open question. So we stared out across no-man’s-land, and waited.

If it weren’t for the black metal rifles resting across their knees or slung from their shoulders, I’d almost say that the stonewose looked unthreatening. Knots of stonewose were engaged in bored conversation, while others milled about and kicked at stones. There were probably at least eighty of them, maybe more, spread out across the line, though the sandbags, ammunition crates, and other such detritus of war made it hard to get an exact count. There was a tall wooden flagpole holding a green pennant, right around the center of the line. Once I noticed it, I quickly shifted through the line in order to place it directly across from me, where Lady Halflance was already standing watch.

When the gunfire started, you could see every woman in the line tense up and get ready to charge, to the point where I was momentarily worried that the attack would begin prematurely. The stonewose were immediately knocked from boredom to confusion, some arguing amongst themselves, others running off to join the fighting, yet more running up to the line of sandbags. Halflance started silently counting down to the exact right moment. Time slowed to a stop, and I felt like I had to hold my breath until the fight started.

One of the classic ways of making it so that the enemy line can’t respond to an attack on one section is, of course, the flanking maneuver. Normally, it’s impossible to flank a ring of defenses. Unless, of course, there happens to be a river cutting directly through the circle which is both too deep to cross and too wide to shoot across effectively, thus meaning that the section of the line closest to the river is essentially pinned. The river was close enough to my right side that I could hear it rushing even over the distant gunfire.

“For the Blue Rose!” Halflance roared. The time had come.

I burst out from the line before the rest of the soldiers were even finished letting out their own battle cries, and in a moment I was running full-tilt toward the enemy defenses. Five hundred feet; for me, that’s less than fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds is substantially less time than it takes for a stonewose to realize anything about what’s about to hit her. The thunderous noise of the infantry charge behind me faded compared to the rush of wind in my ears and the determination to do what I needed to do. 

Just before running into the line of sandbags, I broke into a long jump, my strength and momentum sending me almost thirty feet, well over the trench, and within reach of the flagpole. It was only wood, and small enough that you could wrap your hands around it. This was a very good thing for me, because it was less than a second after my feet hit the ground before I rammed into the flagpole at full speed. Wood cracked, the pole tilted and gave; but it didn’t fall. Once I’d taken a moment to recover from the post-impact daze, I grabbed the pole and heaved against it with all my strength. For a few seconds, my feet scraped uselessly on the ground. Just when the sound of approaching footsteps was starting to worry me, the splintered wood gave out all at once, and the flagpole fell under its own gravity. I turned at once, drawing my revolver in one hand and my cutlass in the other. Four stonewose surrounded me, brandishing hatchets and knives. Behind them, the two armies were still several seconds away from clashing. I lowered my blade, cocked the pistol, and charged into the fight.

I don’t take any pleasure in killing. This is good, because it means that I’m still human instead of being some kind of serial killer. But I did kill them. I’d still get flashbacks, sometimes, if there was too much blood or if they died screaming, but they were gone in the blink of an eye, never more than the slightest stutter in my form. And without that holding me back, the stonewose didn’t stand a chance. I was fast enough to attack twice for every time they attacked once, and tough enough to stay fighting while healing from wounds that would force them to the floor, and not even their advantage in strength and size meant much against that. It was scarcely a minute before two of the four who’d attacked me were dead, and the other two ran away with blood streaming from their many wounds. Even though it jeopardized our element of surprise, I couldn’t bring myself to chase them down. 

And then I lost track of myself in the swirling melee. The stonewose couldn’t use their clockwork rifles at close range without risking friendly fire, so everyone closed into melee as soon as possible, hacking at each other with bayonets and sabers and hatchets and makeshift clubs in a chaos of battle. With the flagpole knocked down, the members of this group had no way of signaling their distress to the neighboring detachments, and with their lines collapsing they had little time to send a messenger. Every human and Durkahn fought with the totality of their ferocity, knowing that they needed to defeat the immediate foe and move on as quickly as possible.

And I fought as well. My regeneration served me well, especially when I jumped in the way of a stonewose who had decided to risk firing a bullet, or when dueling three huge, sinewy warrior women at once left me covered in small cuts. Even with my blood being pulled into my wounds, my clothes quickly became stained with it. Not all of it was mine, of course, but blood is blood, be it human, ghoul, or Durkahn.

The battle only lasted a couple of minutes before the white-hot maelstrom of melee burned itself out, leaving a pile of dead and dying stonewose in its wake. Those stonewose that hadn’t died yet didn’t last long. The wounded on our side, of which there were only a handful, stayed behind. The rest of us carried on, once again splitting into two roughly even groups. One group stayed outside of the city, moving methodically up to the next inhabited section of trenches, while the group that I joined swerved around and entered the streets of Zrimash itself. 

The city had not taken well to Cassandran occupation, with the damage of the first battle still going unrepaired, and the haggard inhabitants looking almost glad to see us arrive. As we moved to flank the next segment of the defensive line, we also caught a few ghouls patrolling the city in small squads. They didn’t last long. As I was the fastest, I usually found them first; but I couldn’t bring myself to kill them, not when they posed no threat to me. My usual fallback was to wrench their weapons out of their hands, inflict wounds that I knew a stonewose could heal from, and ask the nearest sympathetic humans or Durkahns to keep an eye on them until the battle was over. It wasn’t as easy or as effective as just running them through… but they were people, too, so sparing their lives still felt like the better option.

By the time we reached the second segment of the defensive line, they were just entering battle with the first group. I took out the signal flag in a similar way to how I had the first, then we descended on them, pinning the stonewose between two armies. The second group was an easier victory than the first, and once they were dealt with, we repeated the plan. 

And that was how, over the course of the better part of an hour, our force of two hundred and fifty utterly annihilated a quantity of ghouls almost twice our number, while taking only around forty dead or wounded. The enemy line rolled up like a carpet, so quickly that it couldn’t react to our movements. Some of the lines of trench we reached were already half-abandoned, the ghouls having fallen for the distraction group and fled. At the same time, though, even as we were winning, there was always one thought crouching in the back of my mind: something would have to go wrong.

We were circling around for what must have been the sixth or seventh pincer maneuver when we suddenly ran into a pack of stonewose at an intersection. This wasn’t like the previous fights, patrols of no more than a handful, but a proper platoon of nearly fifty. They charged us immediately, their desperation boiling over in a frenzy of violence. By this point even I was beginning to grow exhausted, and I was getting the feeling that it was only a shell of professional determination keeping the other soldiers going. Still, I gritted my teeth, slipped one extra shell into my revolver, and charged in. It was brutal fighting, the kind that played well to the stonewose’s superhuman strength and durability. The kind of fighting that made me fall back on instinct, to meet brutality with brutality, to use my cutlass like a butcher’s knife. I made myself sick with it, the gore and the pervasive smell, until I couldn’t take any more of it. 

Holding my breakfast down as best as I could, I retreated from the center of the fighting. Only after I’d taken a moment to clear my head did I realize that I had no idea what these stonewose were doing away from the trenches, and knowing why would probably be a very good thing. I sheathed my sword, then waited for the right moment. The right moment came not long after, when one of the stonewose peeled off from the group and tried to flee. She didn’t make it very far, because I saw what she was doing, and I was faster.

So I tackled her to the ground. “Where are you going?” I said in Rochathan, figuring that the Cassandran language would be the one most likely to be understood.

“Please don’t kill me!” she shrieked. 

“I won’t if you just answer my questions,” I said. “I swear it.”

“You, you won’t?” the ghoul looked earnestly terrified, an unexpected expression on a pale-skinned cannibalistic mutant.

“I won’t. Now, where is your group going? Why did you leave the trenches?”

“That, that, that was the order from the humans,” she said, stumbling over her words. Rochathan wasn’t her first language. “Fighting’s gone bad over by the camp, so we’re pulling back to a better position.”

“And what position would that be?” I asked.

The ghoul started frantically looking around, uncertain. “Everywhere? The… the buildings, around the pyramid. Using them like bunkers.”

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself. If the entire line was pulling back like that, we wouldn’t stand a chance of pulling off a proper encirclement. Our defeat-in-detail plan was done for, and even after the hundreds of losses we’d inflicted and whatever dead there were on the eastern side, the stonewose still had a substantial numerical and technological advantage. Conventional tactics, even clever ones, had failed. But immortal women are not conventional tactics. 

“Who leads you?” I said, drawing my sword as a bluff.

“The big one!” The ghoul said, her voice shrill with panic. “With the steel shell.”

I got the feeling that she wasn’t going to remain coherent for much longer. “Who else?” She stuttered, seemingly unsure of what I was asking for. “Who gives you orders?” I said, moving the blade just an inch closer to her throat.

“The Captain!”

“And who gives her orders?”

“The Captain of Captains,” the ghoul said with a frantic nod. “And she only takes orders from the big steel human.”

“Right. Last question. Where is the Captain-of-Captains?”

“She’s in the main camp! Her tent is the biggest one, and it has this huge sculpture in front of it, you’ll know exactly where it is. Now you’re going to let me go?”

I sheathed my sword and stood up silently, dragging her to her feet with one arm placed firmly on her shoulder. The fight was more or less over, aside from a few stragglers. Dragging the ghoul along with me, I searched through the group until I found Sarnai.

“Emma!” she said. “There you are. We need to move now.”

I shook my head. “It’s too late. We scared them, and they’re pulling back to the shelter of the city in mass. Also, I have a captive.” I shoved the ghoul over to Sarnai. “Do whatever you want to.”

Sarnai caught her before she could run away, only to then register what I’d said. I had heard enough Durkahn by that point to recognize what she said next as a stream of profanity. “What are we going to do?”

“You can link up with Halflance’s group and tell them about what’s happening,” I said. “Prepare for a siege, I’d imagine. You know more about warfare than I do. But I won’t be with you; I have an idea that might… fix this, without needing any more fighting.”

Sarnai didn’t hesitate. She trusted me to take care of my part in this to the same degree that I trusted her to to take care of hers. “Good luck, Emma,” she said, before turning around and shouting orders at the troops.

“I’ll need it,” I said, though she wasn’t listening to me at that point.

Sarnai and the soldiers went off west to link up with the remainder of the group. I went east. The facts of the situation were simple: both flanks of the battle were now in a stalemate, and if it came down to a war of attrition, the Cassandran stonewose were going to win. We were out of tricks. But there are other ways to win than by killing enough bad guys, and that was what I was betting it all on. 

I was terrified, obviously. The rush of battle wore off as I moved through the narrow streets of Zrimash, leaving fear behind, and disgust as well, the nauseating memory of all the stonewose I’d killed during the heat of battle. It wasn’t incapacitating the way it would have been before, but it wasn’t pleasant either. I took solace in that fact. Still human, more or less. 

With most of the fighting having concentrated along two lines of battle, there was relatively little to interfere with my progress. The surviving Durkahns and Blueroser servants had all left their homes, either fleeing to friendly lines or else being forced to shelter with the stonewose. Whenever someone did cross my path, I did my best to avoid them, usually climbing up the nearest structure, or pulling out a burst of speed to vanish from sight. I crossed all of Zrimash like that, moving as effortlessly as the wind and terrified out of my mind.

Things changed once I’d swam across the river and entered the former treaty grounds; the battle became utterly present. Not only were the sounds of gunfire closer, but there were far more stonewose around as well, bustling back and forth from the front with armloads of bullets and bandages, or else carrying the wounded in on stretchers. That only confirmed what I’d expected, that the attack was doomed to failure. Unless, that is, I did something, and the knowledge that it was more or less all up to me only brought more determination. 

Even with more eyes around, I was able to stay hidden by staying high, crossing from rooftop to rooftop. At last, I found the Captain-of-Captain’s tent. There was, indeed, a sculpture set up in front of it, an abstract wooden framework that suggested flame or perhaps some kind of predatory animal. They must have carried it with them from place to place as they traveled. I waited a minute or so for the right opportunity, then dropped down and slipped in through the tent flap. 

The inside looked like a proper warlord’s chambers, full of trophies of war and commissioned art objects, a huge silk-decorated bed in the back, separated from the long dinner table by a retractible scrim. It was both decadent and practical, lavish yet clearly designed to be mobile for someone with access to a good deal of womanpower. There was only one person in that tent with me.

The Captain of Captains was a tall, powerfully built ghoul, nearly seven feet in height and rippling with muscles. Her milk-pale skin was decorated with steel piercings and the subtlest hints of powdered makeup, to match her ostentatious outfit. It was modeled after a Cassandran coat, complete with the green color, but made from leather instead of wool, and pinned with an eclectic mixture of Durkahn and stonewose pins. Her hat, a blood-red tricorne, bore the bars of a Lieutenant in the Bluerose army.

The Captain-of-Captains had been in the middle of reading some kind of written report. She heard me entering and wheeled around at once. “Who are you?”

“My name is Emma Marcus Farrier; I’m Lady Halflance’s ward.” At her look of non-recognition, I added, “Your boss calls me the Alraune.”

The Captain-of-Captains scowled, reaching for a steel-bladed sword-spear leaning against the dining table. “So you’re here to end this, then?”

I drew my cutlass, holding it outstretched. “Yeah. I am.”