Vanian Year 1105

 

Marianne sat on the side of the hill, watching the demon encampment bellow in flames across the valley.

 

She could see the shadowy figures of demons running for their lives like ants, their forms illuminated by the fires at their backs. Roving bands of cavalry thundered across the plains, hunting them down as if for sport - all the accumulated anger and resentment festering in the human army being unleashed in a single blow of euphoric deliverance. 

 

Already, the battle fought nary a few days prior was already coming to be known as the Battle of Jabal Bayk. And their so-called victory had left an incredibly bitter taste in their mouths, for nearly seven-thousand good men laid dead on the field, along with half of their commanders. Veteran commanders, irreplaceable commanders.

 

Sir Leyen, who had led the reichsritter on the left flank, was dead. Lord Herwig and his entire retinue was dead, having been targeted by demon troops in the centre. Robert Lesparre was dead, along with Little Meschin - for they had bravely led their men to plug the breach created by the absence of the knights on the left. Nearly half of all the Quraysh were dead, including almost all five-hundred cavalry led by as-Saffah. 

 

Saintess Elisabeth was gravely wounded, though no one doubted that she would live, for her patrons wouldn’t let her fall so easily. Nevertheless, the saintess has been unconscious for the better part of three days, with no sign of waking. Without her leadership, the combined army was in disarray, like a headless chicken. Every faction that made up the Solar Alliance had come to a different conclusion on how to progress, and no headway was being made.

 

All the while, the demons licked their wounds in their encampment, preparing for the next round. For just as the combined army had won by default, they were in no position to fight another field battle. On the other hand, the demons had only suffered minimal casualties, and after recovering their morale and choosing a new leader, they would surely deploy once more.

 

The combined army found itself trammeled between a rock and a river - a most ironic outcome, Marianne thought humorlessly. If they held their ground, the next battle would be a complete defeat - and there would be no miracle saving them again. If they retreated, the demon army would sense blood in the water and hound their steps like sharks. 

 

With these two terrible outcomes in mind, Lord Antoine - the highest ranking officer left within their ranks - had demanded that the combined army be deployed for battle once again, and press the attack. The idea was to launch a final assault on the demon encampment with everything they had left, and shatter them before they could recover. 

 

Not a single person had any better ideas, not even Old Talbart.

 

Under the cover of darkness, Lord Antoine marched south with all the footmen with the intent of marching around Jabal Bayk and attacking the enemy encampment from the rear, which would be less defended. To Marianne’s surprise, the old lord had given her full command of the remaining cavalry and ordered her to hold down the fort. And strangely, nobody seemed to argue.

 

Nevertheless, Marianne ordered the hearths to burn all night, and for regular patrols around their encampment to keep the illusion that nothing had changed. 

 

The next morning, they were greeted by the acrid smell of smoke, and distant screaming. Lord Antoine’s audacious stratagem had succeeded most magnificently, and with their camp in overrun and in flames, the demons had fled in the very direction they wanted - down the hill, straight towards Marianne’s waiting cavalry.

 

The tide of demons trampled over each other in their desperation to escape, tripping over the rotting bodies in the valley left from the battle days prior. So consumed by their panic, the demons didn’t even notice the flying banners of a thousand horsemen right in front of them.

 

Marianne stood up, dusted off her tassets and stretched her back. She turned around to see her banners arranged in formation behind her - a patchwork collection of surviving Carolines, Reichers, and Quraysh. Normally at each other's throats, even in the same alliance, now they were all united in their hatred of the enemy.

 

She climbed onto her horse and raised a hand, “Bugler, sound the charge. All of you, light your torches, and good hunting!”

 

The morningtide rose over a field of blood. Marianne rode down into the valley at the head of her retinue, greeting the troops of soldiers milling about burning the corpses of demons. They were forced to proceed slowly, because the sheer amount of bodies on the battlefield restricted the gait of their steeds, forcing them to step carefully lest they lose their balance. 

 

In the distance, the River Sirhan flowed in a faded pink, transporting carrion down to the sea.

 

Trapped between Lord Antoine’s and Marianne’s banners, the demons were thoroughly shattered. She even daresay there wasn’t even a single organised unit of them left, considering the amount of bloodshed this battlefield had witnessed.

 

Suddenly, her horse slipped, and Marianne nearly tumbled out of her saddle - to the alarmed cries of her retinue. Thankfully, her mount swiftly caught its step, and Marianne glanced over to see that the Wadi al-Dahl had been transformed into a channel of running blood flowing down towards the River Sirhan. Her mount had lost its footing on wet sludge that made up the rivulet’s banks, and they were forced to dismount and manually lead their horses through the river of blood by foot. 

 

It took everything within her to hold her breakfast as the reek of rot and iron invaded her nostrils. She couldn’t even dare imagine what she was stepping on, for the nauseating squelch of whatever was in the blackened blood sickened her to the bone. This place is a festering ground for the demonic plague, she distracted herself with her thoughts, and though the amount of plague victims have decreased drastically over the course of the war, Marianne had absolutely no intention of lingering for long.

 

The demon encampment was a still smouldering husk when they arrived, the skeletal remains of blackened stockades and abatises rising over long ditches filled to the brim with corpses. The gate was ruined, torn out from the inside, and entering the ruins they found trampled demons killed in their sleep buried under tattered tents. Despite only having recovered from the long march and fight, human soldiers were energetically looting the vast encampment. She could see men loading jewel-encrusted armour and weapons onto ox-drawn wagons, auditing vast boxes of gold bars, and gambling over spoils of war.

 

In the centre of the encampment - right before an empty ground where the demon general’s pavilion used to be before it was pulled down - was a tall pike at least three men high. The blood-marked red-and-yellow banner hung limply from it like a tattered rag - an on-the-nose mockery of an army standard - topped with the general’s charred, rotting head impaled on the pike head.

 

A crow perched atop the skull and pecked at its eyes, only for an armsman to shoot it down with a bow. The bird’s corpse tumbled to the earth, where it fell into a pile of similar bird corpses that shared the same fate. 

 

“What a useless precaution,” she remarked.

 

“Keep the men busy, my lady,” Arwin replied, “Also soothes their minds, if only a little.”

 

Many feared that the demonic plague could be spread by animals and birds, which was why there was only one way to eliminate the threat - burning the corpses. In truth, however, there was simply no possible way to burn so many corpses, especially with demon blood already soaking into the earth and spilling into the waterways.

 

Thus the strange so-called precautions was in substance just an artifice to keep the men appeased, and assuage their fears of the plague. Even if it was practically useless, morale was good enough a reason to let the practice continue.

 

“A glorious victory, don’t ye’ think?” a voice called.

 

Marianne turned around, breaking into a smile, “Karl One-Eye now, is it not? Looks like the battle did a number on you.”

 

The man had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head under his barbute, covering one eye, along with his left arm carried in a sling. 

 

“Oh yes,” he agreed, “Spread the epithet myself, see? That way you don’t have to fear getting a worse tag to your name.”

 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said as she dismounted, “Maybe one day I’ll get my own.”

 

“You do yourself too little,” the captain patted her with his free hand, “Word of your commands are already spreading. I’ll admit, I only obeyed because you were an Edelhardt, and I had no well ideas - but it worked. Lord Antoine gave you command because of that, you know?”

 

“If it weren’t such a simple task, I would’ve considered it a foolish decision,” she replied, “I was half-mad when I thought up that one stratagem, and the bloody stars had to align for it to go as well as it did. There was no counting on the demons to flee just because their general fell.”

 

Karl released a long, thoughtful hum, before beckoning her to follow him. Marianne ordered her retinue to aid the soldiers before joining the man on his amble through the demon encampment. She spotted Eitel deep in conversation with al-Menfir, the two men having grown closer after the former saved the latter’s life in the previous battle. Eitel’s eyes drifted and noticed her walking past, so she raised a hand to greet them.

 

The mercenary saluted her back with a smile, but to her surprise al-Menfir bowed upon seeing her, a hand touching his forehead in a foreign gesture she did not recognise.

 

“You raise a well and true point, Maria,” Karl told her, “But you do not see the full picture. Our officers are dying like flies, faster than we can replace them. Vania is no stranger to war, and at the beginning we had no small number of already veteran lords and generals to command us. Of them all, how many are left, truly?”

 

Marianne starkly realised she hadn’t seen many aged men or women in Castle Edelhardt’s great hall - and of them all, the ones she knew the names of could be counted on one hand.

 

“The Caroline kings did not abandon us for no reason, Maria,” Karl One-Eye sighed, “Too many of their lords and sons have fallen, hundreds of leagues from home. And of all the lords who hailed from Joyeuse, only Lord Antoine remains - the rest have been replaced by their sons and nephews. Talbart can no longer lead from the front, and the Old Lion is the last of his kind - the man no longer has the strength to even leave his castle. I myself command a free company, but I am the sixth to do so in a decade.”

 

“This war…” she murmured, “We are losing. We can win a hundred battles and destroy a hundred armies, but we will still fail in the end if we run out of men before the demons do.”

 

“The scholars call it a war of attrition,” Karl confirmed, “They say the demons don’t have to win battles, so long as they bleed us dry for every single one we have to fight. We had a hundred-thousand men on this front once, now we have less than a third of that. All the officers know this, but the soldiers don’t, nor do the people - and it’s our job to ensure they never come to the realisation.”

 

Marianne recognised the hidden meaning in his words; she was an officer now, for she knew the truth. She now had a responsibility for the men that would be assigned under her banner, just as she would have a responsibility to raise a mummer’s act before them and keep them ignorant as sheep. 

 

A peculiar sight caught her eye - demons, hundreds of them, being bound and herded into makeshift wooden pens like animals. Marianne unconsciously drifted away from Karl and gravitated towards the sight, realising that all the demons were female - similar enough to humans that they had vaguely feminine faces and curvaceous bodies. Marianne would even daresay many would be considered beautiful, if it weren’t for their ghastly black skin.

 

They’re camp followers, she realised distantly, so even demons needed prostitutes? Marianne humorlessly supposed that some things never changed. Even then, the soldiers supervising them only bore disgust and resentment in their eyes. Starkly, she realised that she did not know what was to be done with them.

 

With these thoughts stirring in her head, she purposefully strode up to the armsmen.

 

“Pardon me, but could you clear me of my ignorance?” she asked, “What is to be done with these prisoners?”

 

“Who-?” the soldier swivelled around with a scowl upon his lips, only for his eyes to widen upon seeing her, “Ah, my lady! My apologies. All these demons are headed for the stakes, they are to be burned to death.”

 

“Burned to death?” she questioned.

 

Wasn’t that a little cruel, even for demons? Marianne stared into the wooden pen, meeting the terrified gazes of all the demons squirming in the muddy ground. Their fear was tangible, and she even saw some holding each other close for comfort. She supposed burning them was sensible, considering fears of the plague, but couldn’t they at least be killed first?

 

“Why don’t you-”

 

“Because there are thousands of them, my lady,” the man interrupted with a face that told her he had heard the same question countless times before, “For every marching host, over half the number are camp followers. Cooks, laundresses, housekeepers, surgeons, physicians, whores, weaponsmiths, farriers, all of them come along. There are seven-hundred here, but altogether we have gathered several thousand of them - even after killing the vast majority of them in the assault.”

 

Marianne’s eyes were wide open as she listened to the man’s explanation. Inwardly, she felt quite ashamed for believing in her false preconceptions of what camp followers were. She hadn’t any idea that they were so integral to an army’s structure, beyond offering relief and pleasure. Marianne decided she ought to look more into it, once she returned to Castle Edelhardt. Tactics and strategies were all well and good, but they fell flat without a keen understanding of how an army operates. She resolved to do better.

 

“Then why doesn’t our own army have any followers beyond prostitutes?” she asked.

 

“You can thank the Old Lion, my lady. Our supplies are already strained, and having excessively large hosts is no help. Every man in our army has long learned how to cook and launder for themselves - and besides, we never stray far from Nordenstein anyways,” he explained, “If we killed them all mercifully first, we would have to blunt a thousand good swords. Might as well skip the step and feed them all to the Red Lady directly. Appeases the desertfolk too.”

 

The Red Lady was how the Divine Sitri was known in Sarawat, Marianne recalled. The Lady of the Red Land, the Lady of the Burning Pyre, the All-Devouring. Almost all Qurasyh universally hail her as their patron divine.

 

“I see, I thank you…” she drifted off.

 

“Walter Dorfmann,” the man saluted, “A logistics officer… and the person who has to figure out the logistics of burning this group of demons alive.”

 

The man smiled dryly, which Marianne returned humourlessly.

 

“Well, now you don’t,” she replied.

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“An order from me,” Marianne clarified, “You are to keep these demons here… until I return and give you more orders. Who’s your orderly?”

 

“Lord Antoine, my lady.”

 

“I’ll bring it up with him,” she took one last glance at the female demons, “Until then, just ensure they don’t cause any trouble.”

 

“Verstanden, meine Dame,” the officer saluted.

 

Marianne nodded with satisfaction, before departing to find Lord Antoine. She met Karl’s eyes and beckoned him to join her with a nod of her head.

 

“Have you seen the Lord Antoine?”

 

“The pavilion, my lady,” the captain replied, “Something interesting?”

 

“Of a manner.”

 

Lord Antoine’s banner was difficult to miss, once you were looking in the right direction. Eight pieces of azure and argent, crowned with a golden leopard on red - the heraldry of the Duchy of Montargis. She found him under his standard, speaking animatedly with several supply officers. The man was no warrior, with a slender build and thin arms - but his tactical acumen was unparalleled among them.

 

“My lord,” she hailed, “I have a matter I must speak to you about.”

 

“Lady Edelhardt,” he greeted, waving the officers away, “What do you require?”

 

“All the demon prisoners about to be executed,” Marianne started, “Don’t you believe it a waste? They could be put to much better work.”

 

Lord Antoine de Montargis beheld her with a discerning eye, “Perhaps, from a rational expectation. But our men are not rational. These demons cannot be used as labourers, for fear of the plague.”

 

“Then what of information?” she asked, “I haven’t seen a single demon be interrogated. Even if they are all camp followers, soldiers are known to have loose lips after a pleasurable night - something all races are due to.”

 

A great plume of fire surged into the sky further back, followed by a tide of agonising screaming that rose in pitch until the voices grew hoarse. Male voices, Marianne noted, the soldiers must be being burnt first. 

 

“I beg your pardon, my lady?” Lord Antoine seemed to pay no heed to the screaming, “I suppose it is understandable you are ignorant of this.”

 

“I suppose I am,” she agreed.

 

“We have tried to interrogate them before,” the lord explained, “It was all in vain. Demons are hardy beasts, and they do not speak lightly. Nor could we understand them even if they do, and neither could they understand us anyway, I imagine.”

 

“Pardon?” she questioned, aghast, “Nearly two decades, and not a single man has tried to learn the plague-bearer tongue?”

 

Lord Antoine barked a laugh, “Who in their right mind would, girl? Who would willingly curse themselves by learning the demon tongue? And who would teach them anyway? No, keeping prisoners is useless - the Crescent Alliance won’t negotiate an exchange either - best we just sacrifice them to the Lady of the Red Land.”

 

Marianne found herself at a loss for words. Intelligence was integral to a successful campaign, and now she is learning that they have made not even the slightest attempt to obtain any? Divines’ sake, even the demons are learning how the Solar Alliance operates its armies, considering they had magnificently played the combined army like a bloody fiddle in the Battle of Jabal Bayk.

 

“Pardon… pardon me my lord,” she started slowly, “But do we even know the capital of the Crescent Alliance?”

 

Lord Antoine looked at her strangely, and Marianne could distinctly feel Karl’s stare boring into the back of her head, “No, my lady. I am afraid we do not. In fact, the so-called Crescent Alliance is a term we created to counter our own Solar Alliance. It is difficult to admit, but we have utterly no idea of how the demons operate.”

 

“H-Have you heard of Babel?”

 

“No, my lady,” the lord released an exasperated sigh, “I hear you have ventured into the demon continent before, I imagine there is nothing we know that you do not.”

 

Marianne wetted her lips anxiously, and her throat felt as parched as the desertfolk homeland.

 

“I… I see,” she marshalled her expression, and forced out a polite smile, “In that case, I hereby request that the supervision over all demon prisoners be granted to me.”

 

“And for what reason?” Lord Antoine raised an eyebrow.

 

“I know someone who can speak the demon tongue,” she said.

 

“...Pardon?”

 

“I know someone who can understand the demon tongue,” Marianne repeated slowly, “If you allow me to bring the prisoners back to Nordenstein, I can begin interrogating them. If we have intelligence, we can change the tide of the war.”

 

“You do not have to tell me that, girl!” Lord Antoine nearly shouted, rubbing his forehead, “Are you certain they can understand-”

 

“Absolutely certain, my lord,” she interrupted, “They were a slave, and has lived on the demon continent for over a decade.”

 

“I see… I see,” the lord started to pace, “But this will raise tensions in Nordenstein, if we are to bring in so many plague-bearers. The dungeons under the city do not have the capacity for so many demons either…”

 

“We can create a penal settlement outside the walls, my lord,” Marianne suggested, “And should the people grow weary of their food being fed to demons, then I can procure my own grain from my household.”

 

“And who will do that?” 

 

Marianne hastily glanced at Karl One-Eye behind her, sending him an expectant look.

 

“...Bloody hell,” he muttered, before clearing his throat, “I would volunteer my banners to the task, my lord. Maria- Lady Edelhardt boasts a sharp mind, I am certain my men wouldn’t be averse to trusting this design of hers.”

 

Lord Antoine stopped pacing.

 

“Very well, I grant you full oversight over the demon prisoners - but I want results as soon as possible,” the lord ordered, “And should they cause any trouble at all, then be it on your head.”

 

“Thank you, my lord,” Marianne bowed.

 

Lord Antoine dismissed her with a flick of his wrist, as she wandered away, Marianne found her mind awash with distressed musings. The foul stench of death permeated in the hot summer air.

 

“Your orders, my lady?” Karl One-Eye asked.

 

“...Round up all the prisoners and vet them, I want them separated into males, females, and children,” she told him, “And bring me your fastest rider. I will pen a letter that must reach Schönau as soon as possible.”

 

“Understood!” he saluted, but just before he left to carry out her charge, Karl muttered- “And I do dearly hope you know what you are doing, my lady.”