Disclaimer: I don't own Suikoden or any of its characters, and Komani's really not gonna get much out of suing some impoverished college kid like me.
Important Note -Please Read This-: Before I start, I want to define the made-up military structure I'm going to use for the knights. (Yeah, I know it sounds pretentious as hell, but trust me: the story will work a lot better with this system.) The captain is obviously the commander-in-chief. The vice-captain and the strategist are both more or less his assistants that help him command the knights. Below the captain are the senior lieutenants, of which there are four. Each of them commands a regiment consisting of a varying number of companies (usually between 3 and 10). The 100-man companies are led by junior lieutenants. Below that is the 30-man platoons led by senior sergeants, then the 10-man squads led by junior sergeants. And, for dramatic purposes, all the higher ups fight, not just sit around in their warm, safe camps and give out orders like they actually would do if they were real. Hope that helps. Please RR.
Dupa took a deep breath, snorting a bit as he let the air out of the nostrils at the end of his long snout. He had slept very little last night, but was nevertheless anything but tired. The scout party leader now arrived outside his dark chamber, a small cave grotto within the Great Hollow. His two guards standing outside the entrance, each clutching a fearsome gride, stopped the scout from entering. One of the guards came inside Dupa's chamber himself.
"Gorba, left fighter of the reconnaissance team you sent out last night, is back with his report, Master Dupa."
"Send him in immediately," Dupa said in his low raspy voice. He watched the guard return to his post and motion for the other guard to step aside to allow the scout audience with the commander of one of the Lizard army's three Bodies Fighters. The slight-statured but well-built young lizard approached Dupa, bowing his head respectfully.
"Honorable Master Dupa, I, the warrior Gorba of Unit—"
"There is no need for such formalities this early in the morning, Gorba," Dupa stated impatiently. His long tail had involuntarily begun to swing slowly from side to side, as it always did whenever he was anxious. "Let us get straight to business."
"Of course." Gorba cleared his throat. "The unit of knights under siege at the Zexen village of Haysmorth has dwindled down from around thirty to less than twenty after our assault on them yesterday afternoon. We found their mass grave, where we counted eleven fresh bodies that they had not yet buried at the time."
"Yet we have suffered over seventy casualties. That is not a good trade."
"Our warriors were not aware that the village was so heavily booby trapped."
"No, Gorba. We were not." Dupa grunted, his eyes turned to the ground. After a moment, he looked back up. "What of the villagers?"
"Mostly females, the young, and the elderly left, but we could not get a reliable estimate of how many. It could be anywhere from twenty to fifty. We found very few signs of adult males and believe there are now less than half a dozen still alive in the village. Most of the males aided the ironheads in the last three battles, but since they were not skilled warriors, they were largely wiped out."
"What is the status of the village?"
"Complete ruins. Any major building still standing after the first two assaults was successfully burned to the ground last evening." Gorba looked at Dupa's expectant yellow eyes. "Including their main grain reserve warehouse. They have nothing left but burnt rubble. They will not last much longer in the winter like this."
"I see. And did you find out anything about the state of the ironheads' commander, Gorba?"
"He is alive, we know that for sure. The other three scouts and I saw him leading a dozen other ironheads to the grave in the farmlands north of the village at around four this morning. They appeared to be burying their dead then. By his movements, we could detect no signs of serious injury."
"And you are sure it was him? I believe it was still very dark at the time you saw this."
"Yes. We followed them quite closely and heard several of his men address him as 'Lord Borus'." Gorba paused, licking the back of his sharp teeth with his tongue. He appeared to be rather reluctant to speak his next words. "Though he of the Zexen enemy, Master Dupa, I greatly respect his tenacity."
"As do I, Gorba. He is indeed a true warrior, worthy of our highest regards, enemy or not." Dupa hated Zexen and its knights as much as anyone hated their adversaries in war, but he would never dishonor himself by denying respect to those whom he felt truly deserved it. He nodded to the young scout. "That is all I need to know. You have done well. You and your team may rest now, and afterwards you will report to your direct commanding officer for your next assignment."
"Yes, Master Dupa."
"Dismissed, honorable Gorba," Dupa ordered. Gorba bowed again and exited the room. Dupa quietly stood by himself in the chamber, mentally incorporating the information he just received into his prepared recommendations for Chief Zepon concerning their next course of action on the messy issue of Haysmorth. Zepon was expecting him and another commander of one of the three Bodies Fighters, Yelsa, at a strategy meeting at seven o'clock, about an hour from now.
Shiba, the commander of the last of the three Bodies Fighters, had departed south a month ago, leading around 500 troops to aid their Karayan allies in halting the Zexen northward advance toward the Thime River. Before the border disputes between Zexen and Grassland erupted into full-scale war four years ago, the great river had been a boundary between the two lands. Its currents were so strong that even in the coldest of winters, it never froze enough to allow travel directly over it on foot.
Reports from the area indicated that Zexens, consisting of mostly infantry troops with a few companies of knights, had pressed forth with frightening speed. But Shiba and the Karayan chief Lucia had set up formidable defenses at all bridges within the length of the river that stood before the Zexen advance. Bridges were the only crossing points of the Thime during the winter, when huge, dangerous ice floats crashed and grinded against each other as they were swept down the rushing river. Several strategic Karayan villages, rich in resources, lie just miles beyond of the northern bank of the Thime, and Lucia was not about to let them be taken over so easily.
Shiba had been requesting major Lizard Clan reinforcements for quite a while now. However, before his requests could be granted, Haysmorth village and those besieged knights doggedly refusing to give it up needed to be dealt with. Dupa had been involved with Haysmorth since the beginning and had witnessed the transformation of a seemingly trivial nuisance into a nightmare for the Lizard Clan.
The hour before the strategy meeting passed quickly. Dupa's last-minute brainstorming was interrupted only once by Bazba, one of his top officers, who came to give him an official statistic on the casualties sustained in yesterday's battle. Twenty-three confirmed dead, thirty-one unaccounted for and assumed dead, and only nineteen wounded. Those knights at Haysmorth sure didn't seem to like to leave a job half done.
Dupa felt a flush of anger rising up. He shook his head, rattling his red feathered headdress. He resolved himself ever more firmly to prevail in this ongoing struggle, no matter how futile it had become from a strategic standpoint. For the hotheaded lizard commander, Haysmorth had practically become a personal vendetta between himself and the blond knight lieutenant, with his honor itself at stake.
Dupa left for the meeting ten minutes before it started in order to give him enough time to walk through the Great Hollow's twisting tunnels and spacious caverns to the chief's chambers. Like the rest of the Lizard Clan, Dupa's reflective yellow eyes were perfectly well adapted to the dark environment of his damp underground home.
Since the war with Zexen began four years ago, the Great Hollow had been gradually transformed from a clan settlement into more or less a military stronghold, as it was close to where much of the fighting took place. By now, most of the civilian population had relocated, save for a few storeowners, innkeepers, and others who volunteered to contribute to the war effort.
Along his way, Dupa passed the usual sights of wounded fighters lined along the cave walls, since the inns being used for field hospitals were all entirely full. Those that were still able to dutifully hailed Dupa as he walked by, and he nodded back.
Overwhelmed medics were busily tending to the injured, and the corpses of fallen warriors were being carried off to the temporary storage room for the dead. Dupa recalled that just last week, he was told by one of his officers that an additional carcass storeroom would be required soon, as the casualties were really racking up. Also, more personnel needed to be diverted to the task of burying the dead. The smell of rotting flesh, though lessened by the winter's freezing temperatures, was nevertheless becoming unbearable for all in the storeroom's vicinity.
Dupa, like any hardened warrior, had long detached himself from his emotions when dealing with such matters. Such is the price of war, he thought distantly to himself as he walked. And war, especially when fought to defend one's beloved homeland from invaders, is my very purpose for existence.
Dupa reached the Main Hall, by far the largest cavern of the Great Hollow. Its ceiling was so high up that it seemed like the night sky. There, near the entrance to one of the armories, he met up with his fellow commander, the composed, cool-headed Yelsa. Together, they went up the stone ramp to the second level, where Chief Zepon's chamber was. The chief's guards acknowledged the two respectfully and allowed them entry.
Dupa and Yelsa stepped into the chamber, decorated magnificently to fit a Grassland chief. Inside, a round stone table was set up, on which was laid a map. Around the table were three stools. Directly across from the room's entrance, facing the two commanders, was the higher, more ornate stool of the clan chief. Zepon sat upon it, regarding them closely.
Zepon was very old. He had served Grassland with distinction in the Fire Bringer War against Holy Harmonia fifty years ago as a young lizard. Now, he was decades past his prime as a fighter, but his wisdom in leading the clan in both peace and wartime had earned him as much respect as if he was still a great warrior. Dupa was not alone in his fierce loyalty to his chief.
Dupa bowed before Zepon. "Most honorable Chief Zepon, I, the warrior Dupa, Left Fighter of Unit One of the Lizard Clan's Three Bodies Fighters, humbly salute you."
Yelsa's formal greeting followed that his comrade's. "Most honorable Chief Zepon, I, the warrior Yelsa, Left Fighter of Unit Two of the Lizard Clan's Three Bodies Fighters, humbly salute you."
"Greetings, Master Dupa and Master Yelsa," Zepon replied, his gruff voice filled with the wisdom of his age. "Please take your seats." The two commanders sat down at the stone stools placed for them before the table. "As time is of the essence right now," Zepon continued, "I would like to get right down to the issue. First, Dupa, since you had been the left fighter of the troops involved in yesterday's conflict, I would like you to give us a general overview of the situation at hand, as well as the details of last evening's battle and its outcome."
Promptly, Dupa began his account, using the map on the table to his aid. Haysmorth, a Zexen farming village on the Yaza plains northwest of the Great Hollow, was currently completely encircled by Lizard forces, a tiny bubble of resistance behind Grassland lines. A company of knights trapped in the village had lost contact with the rest of the Zexen army for a little over a month now. At their head was a top dog of the Zexen armed forces: Borus Redrum, one of the four senior lieutenants leading the Zexen Knights under Captain Galahad Travers.
Three weeks ago, Zexen had launched a major offensive from the west in an attempt to force a breach in the lines of their enemy and free the besieged village. They failed, managing to form only a narrow salient against Lizard lines after four days of furious fighting, and in the end retreating.
But on the other hand, the Lizard Clan had three times attempted to burst this bubble of resistance, and had three times failed. The phenomenon of an ever-diminishing number of knights holding off three times against hundreds upon hundreds of attacking troops both awed and extremely frustrated the lizards. Diplomatic approaches fared no better. Borus had stubbornly refused to surrender, even after the Lizard Clan offered him a one-chance proposal with relatively favorable terms that included a guarantee not to harm any surviving villagers.
Yesterday's attack on Haysmorth from the south had been the latest failed attempt to take over the utterly devastated village. The knights, with the help of the remaining villagers, had filled practically every square foot of the village and its surrounding area with booby traps, turning the place into a death snare.
When 200 Lizard Clan troops arrived at the village in the mid-afternoon with Dupa in command, the knights were nowhere to be seen. They and the villagers had hidden themselves amidst the rubble and the snow, baited the lizard soldiers to walk into their traps, then ambushed any survivors. The tiny amount of remaining knights never presented themselves for a full-frontal clash with the lizards. After their hit-and-run tactics inflicted staggering loses for the lizard army, Dupa finally retreated late in the evening in defeat.
Dupa concluded his report with the information he received from Gorba earlier that morning. "My scouts, which I have sent out late last night after the battle, have informed me that less than twenty ironheads remain alive in the village. Less than a dozen adult male villagers survive. We had burned all remaining key buildings yesterday, and my scouts have confirmed their complete destruction. Their storehouse for grain reserves is destroyed as well, and as I myself had entered that building before burning it down, I can verify that much of the village's winter food supply was stowed there." Dupa paused briefly. "The commander of the knights, Borus Redrum, is established to be alive and uninjured."
A long moment of silence ensued as Dupa finished. Finally, Zepon broke the stillness with the words Dupa had long expected to hear. "Dupa, I have left the Haysmorth problem to you ever since you first encircled the village a full moon ago. Although I understand that the determination and cunning of the ironheads make them difficult and worthy opponents, I believe that the strength of the Lizard Clan is more than enough to overcome that. I am disappointed in your inability to successfully handle the situation. I expected more from a proven warrior such as you."
Dupa lowered his head. "I have failed my duty to you and to my clan, Chief Zepon. My ineptitude is dishonorable, and I accept my shame. However, I beg for one last chance to redeem myself. I shall take it upon my honor to triumph over the ironheads should you choose to grant me this chance."
Zepon creased the loose, scaly hide of his face. "We will see, Dupa. But first, I would like to hear both your recommendations on our next course of action regarding Haysmorth." He switched his attention over to Dupa's comrade. "Yelsa?"
"Chief Zepon," Yelsa began, his voice calm and collected, as it always was. "I believe it is in our best interests to end the siege as quickly as possible, peacefully, without any further armed conflict. The village may have been sensible to conquer a moon ago. Its strategic location close to the front lines would have made it easier for us to transfer supplies and reinforcements to our warriors at the front. We could have set up a base there and used the village's plentiful food reserves. But none of that matters any longer. There is nothing left of Haysmorth but smoldering ruins and a bunch of starving, freezing villagers and knights. To shed any more blood over it would be an utter waste of time, lives, and resources."
Dupa shook his head. "I disagree, Yelsa." Both the chief and his fellow commander turned towards him, eager to hear his reasoning. "If we give in now, how would that make our clan appear in the eyes of both our Karayan allies and the Zexen enemy? The greatest warrior clan of Grassland could not even crush some petty resistance by what is now a mere twenty ironheads."
"I believe that, by now, those knights have proven their resistance to be anything but petty, Dupa," Yelsa injected.
"But that is not how it will seem to Chief Lucia and the Zexen Council. Besides, admitting defeat to them now will drastically bring down the morale of our warriors at a time when it is greatly needed. Not only that, but it will dishonor those who have already fought and died for that village."
"Dupa, there are greater issues here than honor," Yelsa countered. "Theirs or yours or even our clan's."
"And what could be more important than honor, Yelsa?"
"Perhaps not letting this Haysmorth distraction cost us the war and Grassland along with it, Dupa. Right now, we should be concentrating our troops and resources to the west, where the struggle for the strategic trade town of Minas continues, and to the south, where Shiba and Lucia are desperately trying to hold off the advancing enemy. Instead, we are wasting these troops and resources as we try to settle some completely inconsequential score with a stubborn ironhead commander."
Dupa sighed. He had to admit to himself that Yelsa was right. He had been foolish to pick now as the time to fight out his own private feud, when the stakes elsewhere were so much higher. But even so, he couldn't just let it go like that. "You have convinced me that further attacks against Haysmorth are unwise, Yelsa. But nevertheless, I do not see why ending the siege is necessary. Those ironheads are currently trapped in the dead of winter without lasting food or decent shelter. It will not be long before they all succumb."
"No, but it will still take time. At least a couple of weeks. During this time, I am almost certain that the main Zexen forces will make another attempt to break them free should they learn that the siege still being continued. Such an attack will only further drain our precious resources. We must avoid it if possible."
Yelsa has certainly come more prepared than I have, Dupa confessed to himself, a bit disgruntled. He was ready to accept his fellow commander's terms, except for a final important issue left to be resolved. "Yes, Yelsa. You are right. But there is just one problem."
"What is it?"
"The leader of the ironheads at Haysmorth is none other than Borus Redrum, one of the top commanders of the Zexen Knights. If we can kill or capture him, think of what it would do to the morale of the rest of Zexen forces."
Yelsa thought for a moment. "After all that Master Borus had held up against, killing him would only make him a martyr for the Zexens. It would infuriate them and do the exact opposite of demoralizing them. But on the other hand, it certainly will be to our great benefit in many ways if we manage to take him prisoner. In addition to the matter of morale, he can provide us with valuable information, if we can somehow convince him to do so, and his rank makes him excellent for use in ransom."
Zepon nodded. "Yes, but how do you suggest we go about capturing him without bloodshed, Yelsa?"
A moment of silence fell upon the meeting as Yelsa formulated his plan. Finally, he said, "We should offer to give all his remaining knights and all the surviving villagers a free walk back to behind their own lines. This in exchange for his, and only his, peaceful surrender. If I know a Zexen Knight at all, Master Borus will not refuse this deal."
Zepon raised his head towards Yelsa, not hiding the fact that he was very pleased with the commander. "Very good, Yelsa. I believe that is as favorable a solution as can be achieved at this time. You have done well." He turned to Dupa. "As for you, Dupa, I will grant you your request. You will be the one to settle the score with the commander of the knights. Immediately, you are to depart to Haysmorth with a small convoy. You will lay down your arms and present—"
Suddenly, the sound of scurrying feet was heard right outside the chamber. The meeting was abruptly interrupted by a messenger, who charged into the room. His face was stricken with panic, and his voice was bursting with urgency. "Chief! Chief Zepon! The Zexens are attacking! They're going for Haysmorth again! It's a double-pronged offensive from the west and the southwest!"
After the initial moment of shock, all three Lizard Clan leaders sighed and shook their heads wordlessly in immeasurable frustration. Finally, Chief Zepon spoke up. "If we give up Haysmorth now, we will lose all the conquered territory to the west of it. We cannot afford to relinquish so much of the Yaza Plains over to the Zexens. Dupa, Yelsa, deploy the troops."
Borus Redrum rubbed his chin. Three days without shaving had left quite the stubble there. Better find an object with a sharp edge soon, he thought to himself. A beard was not only unsightly on him, but out in the winter cold with minimal shelter, where it could trap ice and freeze his face, it was also quite dangerous.
The young knight lieutenant was huddled against a cold wall in the dark cellar, lit only by a dim lantern placed upon an empty bookshelf. He wrapped the blanket covering his body ever more tightly around himself. He and the rest of the men had already taken off their armors for the night. All around him were the groans of his injured knights and the comforting, but ultimately futile words spoken to them by their comrades and the assisting villagers.
He felt a drop of water fall upon his dirty, tangled blond hair and looked up. The ceiling of the cellar was leaking, and melting snow was dripping in. The house above the cellar had been completely burned down during one of the attacks by the Lizard Clan against his position at this miserable little village of Haysmorth.
In fact, the third assault of his month-long siege here had just concluded three hours ago with a successful defense of the village, if these smoking piles of rubbles could still be called that. That was the good news.
And then there was the bad news. He was now down to nineteen men out of the original company of 104, only thirteen of whom were still able to fight. And the lizards had finally succeeded in their goal of burning down every single rising structure in the village that could be used for shelter, save for a couple of outhouses. Not to mention that the grain warehouse, where the vast majority of the food reserves was stored, was among these structures. So now, he, his men, and the remaining villagers are facing death by one of three ways: cold, starvation, or another strike by those damned lizards, which they would then truly have no way of defending against.
"No…no! Lord Borus!" one of his knights suddenly called out across the small room. "Nathan… No! It can't be! He's… Oh, merciful Goddess! No!" He broke down into a series of sorrowful, panicked whimpers.
Borus sighed. Make that eighteen men.
He stood up, still wearing the blanket draped about himself. He walked over the nineteen-year-old man kneeling before his dead friend and crouched before him. He looked at the body. He had previously seen the enormous gash inflicted by a lizard gride in Nathan's midsection, with the young man's entrails practically spilling out of it. It was now covered with a blood-soaked piece of cloth ripped from the dress of the female villager who had attempted to bandage the wound, even though there had been no hope from the start that Nathan would live for long. Borus was about to remove the cloth when the woman stopped him with a wave of her hand. Don't do it, her weary eyes told him. It's not a pretty sight.
The woman then stood aside and quietly watched the lieutenant. Borus placed a hand on Nathan's comrade's trembling shoulder. "He'll be buried in the morning with the others, Harris," he said in the most consoling tone he could muster.
"No! No, how could it just happen like this? I…I just promised him we'd get home alive together!"
"There was nothing you could have done, Harris."
"B-but…but," Harris stuttered, as if a right reason could bring his friend back. Borus started to grow a bit irritated and was in the mind to order the kid to straighten up and act like a knight. "But we've been best friends since we were squires!" Harris suddenly blurted out. "We've always fought together, a-and now we'll never…" He trailed off, sobbing.
Percival's image suddenly sprang into Borus's head. He imagined himself kneeling before the dead body of his fellow Zexen Knight senior lieutenant. Not that he'd ever act anything like this kid, but he did immediately feel much more empathy for the distressed young man. I understand, he thought. You can watch hundreds of men die in battle, but it'll still be pretty damn hard to lose a friend like this, won't it? With one arm, he took Harris's shaking head and brought it to rest upon his shoulder. After a while, he looked up at the woman still standing beside him, who nodded back at him. She knelt down, and Borus transferred the sniveling young man over to her.
The blond knight stood up. "Paul!" he called out.
"Yes, my lord?" replied a flat voice from a bald, rather portly middle-aged knight sergeant sitting in the corner.
"Will you help me carry Sir Nathan's body over to the grave?"
"Of course, my lord." Paul stood and walked over to the body of the young man. He lifted up the feet while Borus held up the head. Two other knights quickly ran up the cellar stairs and opened the trapdoors for the two men. A biting chill cut through the cellar as it became exposed to the winter air. The two knights climbed outside and held the trapdoors open for Borus and Paul from there.
Borus and Paul lifted the body out of the cellar. Silently, they carried it across the ashes and ruins toward the northern outskirts of the village, using a small lantern tied to Borus's belt to guide them through dark. They carefully avoiding any booby traps placed for the lizards that were not already set off.
The village seemed dead empty, since all the villagers had by now retired to some cellar or another for the night. Cellars were the only places that could now be used to provide some form of protection against the winter cold. Most of the fires set ablaze during the battle had already died out, save for a few dying flames still burning bright against the dark night over scattered houses. The heat of the fires had melted much of the snow in the village. Bloody lizard corpses that nobody had bothered to clean up lay strewn about everywhere.
The two knights left the village and made their way through a snow-covered field that had been used to plant various crops, but was now barren with winter's freeze. They came to a long ditch running east to west. The ditch had been an irrigation canal dug long before Borus and his knights arrived at Haysmorth. The frozen ground during the winter made it impossible for Borus to dig graves himself for his fallen men, so he made do by placing their bodies in the canals and covering them up with gathered sticks and branches. The bodies of dead villagers were placed into a separate mass grave in the fields to the west of the village. Despite Borus's offer to help, the villagers had insisted on taking care of their dead by themselves.
Other irrigation canals, mostly across the eastern and southern fields that faced the Great Hollow, had been transformed into traps for the lizard army. Thin wooden boards were placed over these ditches, and then covered with a coat of snow so that they blended into the surrounding landscape. Long sharpened wooden spikes were set up beneath the boards, so that when the lizard fighters tripped into the canals, they, with luck, would be impaled upon the spikes.
Borus and Paul walked along the knights' burial canal, long sections of which were already covered with sticks for the men who had died in previous confrontations. They came to the spot where they had neatly laid down the other ten men who had been killed in that day's battle, or had succumbed to their wounds afterwards, as Nathan had done. Borus and Paul gently placed Nathan's body beside the others. They stood back from the ditch, took one last look at the body, and walked away without a word. They would be back in the morning with the rest of the men to gather the sticks and bury the dead.
Borus raised his head up as he walked side by side with the older man. His hand fingered the golden hilt of the faithful longsword that hung loosely at his belt. The night sky was perfectly clear, sparkling with thousands of stars. At least there wouldn't be snow tonight.
The walk back to the village was deathly quiet, as neither man had much to say to the other. In his head, Borus once again ran back over the question of who might have been chosen in his absence to be the substitute commander of the Zexen Knights' Regiment Three.
When they reached the burnt ruins of the village church, Borus looked towards its cellar, where loud raunchy noises, some of them coming from his knights, perforated through the trapdoors. Disgraceful behavior, he thought to himself. "Why don't you go down there and relax a bit tonight yourself, Sergeant?" Borus teased, knowing perfectly well that Paul wouldn't.
"You know I'm a married man, Lord Borus."
"Hey, I won't tell anyone," Borus joked with a weak smile. Paul turned away. He wasn't in the mood for kidding around tonight. Borus quickly fell silent, and they continued on without another word.
When the siege had first been laid upon Haysmorth, some prostitutes in the village had offered up their free services to the knights as a gesture of goodwill. At the time, Borus had absolutely refused to let any of his men take advantage of the offer, claiming such conduct to be inappropriate for a knight and distracting from their duties. But as the days went on and the attacks upon the village began, he realized that the men needed all the morale boosts they could get. At first, he established time limits and made the knights pay for the services with what little they had, but eventually he caved in and stopped caring anymore.
The only time that Borus himself had indulged in the debauchery was Yule night two weeks ago, an experience that he later considered a miserable, drunken Yule gift to himself. It goes without saying that it was the single worst holiday he or any of the men ever had. They had tried to make the best of things. On Yuletide Eve, they decorated a pine tree with colorful pieces of broken glass from the church's shattered stained-glass windows, which sparkled and shined a bit when light was cast upon them. Then they spent some time making little presents for each other out of whatever junk they could find. Borus had tied a bunch of dried grass together to form something that, with a large stretch of the imagination, looked remotely similar to a toy horse.
They exchanged the presents the next day as they wistfully related to each other what they believed their families were presently doing at home so far away. Borus had reminisced to his men about how his own family resided a very far distance to the south, and how, as a senior lieutenant, his duties did not allow him to take that long a furlough away from the front. His previous two Yuletides would have been rather lonesome had Percival not invited him to spend them with his own peasant family at his nearby home village of Iksay.
Borus's men, who were sons of noble birth, as knights almost always were, had asked him rather skeptically about how pleasant it could have possibly been to spend the holidays with commoners. But Borus could hardly remember ever having had a better time. The food was delicious, the company was friendly, and the loose, relaxed atmosphere of the dinners and festivities, so different from what he was used to with his aristocratic background, made the experiences all the more enjoyable. However, as he told and listened to the stories in the damp, drafty building of the ruined village, huddled against his men for warmth, Borus felt as though the jovial tales belonged to another world far removed from the one he was currently living in.
Everything seemed to go rather well that day, as well as it could possibly go for a besieged village. The knights, in an extreme stroke of luck, caught and killed a wounded wild boar roaming about the village outskirts.
"A Yule blessing from Sadie Herself!" one of the knights had exclaimed.
"If Sadie really wanted to give us Her blessing," another had replied cynically, "She'd deliver us from this hell, not send us some fucking pig."
That evening, they had their Yuletide feast around an indoor bonfire in the courthouse. It was the first time in weeks they'd tasted meat, since almost all of the livestock and pets in the village had been looted by the lizards for food during their first assault.
Just as they were singing Yule carols together, the second attack from the Lizard Clan suddenly fell upon village, catching the knights completely off their guards. Borus doubted that they could have held up by themselves if not for the help they received from the villagers. Although they managed to drive off the lizard forces in the end, all the knights' horses had been killed, Borus had lost thirty-five men, and the entire population of adult male villagers, who were untrained in combat but nevertheless fought bravely, had been reduced to all but nothing.
Late that night, or possibly early the next morning, Borus, disheartened by the horrific loses, had drank himself stupid and woke up at noon on a brothel bed. Appalled at his depravity, he resolved to be a better leader and to fully prepare his men for the next inevitable attack. By then, his knights numbered at a measly thirty-four, with nine wounded and five of these that later died. Knowing that they could not withstand another frontal clash, he led his knights and the villagers in setting the village up with booby-traps for the next two weeks. When the lizard attack finally came this afternoon, they were ready and used guerilla tactics to strike a humiliating blow against the enemy.
But as Borus thought about it now, all he really did was prolong the unavoidable end. They had nothing left. No food, no shelter, no hope. All they were waiting for now was death.
At the start of the siege, Borus had been quite certain that the Zexen Knights would come to break them free. A week passed, and sure enough, he and his men heard the distant sounds of clashing metal and battle cries far to the west. But four days came and went and the din of war never did seem to grow any closer.
Borus had contemplated attempting to break through the lizard lines with his men amidst the chaos, but decided against it. If he did so, he would have had to leave the villagers defenseless against the lizards. He had heard rumors of massacres the lizards carried out in captured Zexen villages. Percival had once told him that such tales were usually complete bull made up to incite public outrage, but Borus was not so sure. The stories seemed perfectly plausible to him. After all, these Grasslanders were nothing but a bunch of uncivilized heathens. What did they know about the value of life? He was not about to let the citizens of Haysmorth suffer whatever horrible fate awaited them in the hands of such savages.
By the fifth day, the far-off noises of battle disappeared. Borus knew that his potential rescuers had retreated. Three weeks had passed, and they had not returned. Borus was not getting his hopes up that they would attempt to break the encirclement again. All there was at Haysmorth now was a blackened zone of devastation and a few wretched survivors desperately clinging on to it. There was nothing here that was worth the costs of a major military campaign, which was what was required to take on the resilient lizard lines. Such knowledge was certainly humbling to a man like Borus.
He thought back to the beginning of their current mess, when humble was the last thing he had felt. A month ago, when Haysmorth had still been in Zexen territory, Borus and Percival had been assigned by Captain Galahad as the heads of an important operation to take the eastern half of the Zexen trade town of Minas, southwest of Haysmorth, back from the lizard forces. Brutal, stalemated street fighting between the Zexen infantry and the Lizard Clan fighters had been going on for a month and a half within the town walls.
Salome's strategy had been quite simple. The goal was for the knights to launch a surprise attack against the lizards' left flank at Minas. If successful, the lizards' rear forces would scatter, and the enemy units within the town would be trapped between the infantry and the knights, and then liquidated at will. That was the assignment of Percival, who would sneak two companies into the thick forests south of Minas and would hide them there until it was time to strike.
Borus's role was that of a ruse. He was to lead three companies and parade openly around the Yaza Plains the northeast of Minas, as if about to attack the lizards' right flank. The lizard troops were then supposed to concentrate their rear troops in the right flank, leaving the left vulnerable. That was when Percival was to begin his assault.
All had gone according to plan at first. Percival led his troops on foot into the forest, and the lizard army, as intended, was threatened by the spectacle of Borus's horseback knights to their northeast and had begun to build up their right flank. By the third morning, a scout had informed Borus that the left flank was now weak and exposed. Percival was expected to get the signal to strike anytime now.
But something was wrong. Even by evening, Percival never attacked, and the gathering lizard forces on the right flank appeared to grow bolder. That night, Borus took one company and retired to the village of Haysmorth, which he had made his temporary base. He left his other two companies on the lookout for any signs of Percival's offensive.
Borus was woken in the middle of the night by the sounds of nearby fighting. He immediately rode out with his company, only to find that the lizard's right flank troops at Minas, along with newly arrived reinforcements from the Great Hollow, had attacked his two ill-prepared companies on watch, scattering them northward and westward as they retreated. Where the hell was Percival? Borus wondered, fearing for the worst. But right then, he had his own hide to worry about first.
By the time he arrived, Borus's own escape retreat routes had been blocked. He attempted to break through the enemy lines, but was too far outnumbered. Among others, the junior lieutenant, the second-in-command of the company, was killed. With the surviving eighty-three men, Borus drew back to Haysmorth. There, he found that a new maneuver launched from the Great Hollow was surrounding the village from the east, while the troops from Minas closed in from the west.
The two lizard forces soon completed their encirclement and placed the village under siege. Borus and his men entrenched themselves in the village, ready for an assault, although the first one did not come until almost a week later. Having almost a full company well embedded in a defensive position, Borus was able to fight the lizards off without heavy losses. He had been cocky and self-assured at the time, fully willing to believe that somehow in some way, it would all work out in the end if they continued to hold on to the village.
But now, as Borus stole a glance over at his companion's face, he saw not the defiant, optimistic look as was on the faces of all of his men in those days. He saw on Paul's weary face the empty expression that clearly stated that he had given up all hope. Especially after the last battle, few of the remaining men still had the flame inside them to fight on any longer. They viewed death as inevitable, and did not care to prolong their suffering in these shambles of the village. They didn't even pray to the Goddess anymore. These were men who no longer cared whether they lived or died.
The surviving villagers fared no better. Daily, they had gone about, assisting the knights in whatever needed to be assisted with, rarely complaining. But Borus knew that these people had it much worse than the knights. Not only were their homes destroyed and their livelihoods ruined, but they were also forced to watch their families suffer and die. Yes, the knights were the ones protecting them from the lizard onslaughts, but they were also the reason that the villagers were in this mess in the first place. Although they didn't express it in any way, Borus was very certain that the villagers harbored much resentment for him and his knights.
When the two knights reached the cellar, Paul headed down, but Borus didn't follow him. "Lieutenant?" Paul called up his commander. The winter night was bitter cold, but Borus did not feel like going back into that cellar full of those empty husks of men, even though he knew that he was quickly becoming one himself.
"I think I'd like to hang around out here for a bit," Borus replied. The sergeant closed the trapdoors without another word. Borus walked a little further and came across an ash-covered stone bench beside a street littered with rubble. Sweeping off the ash, he sat down on the bench. He untied the lantern from his belt and set it down beside him.
In the lantern's light, Borus saw a small piece of broken glass at his feet and bent down to pick it up. He touched the sharp edges and thought to himself: This should work well as a razor. He placed it in his shirt pocket underneath the blanket wrapped about himself. He'd shave in the morning when he could find a patch of reflective ice that could be used as a mirror.
As he looked off into the night, Borus finally came to ask himself the big question: what was he going to do now? There was only one other option besides some form of death: surrender, although he had never previously thought of it as any better than death.
Borus suddenly recalled a discussion he had with Percival concerning the subject a while ago. Percival had woken him up from his warm camp bedroll and dragged him along on one of his ridiculously early morning rides across the Yaza Plains in the chilly dawn.
"Really, Percival. We're getting dangerously close the front lines," Borus had protested as he followed Percival to the edge of the existing Zexen boundaries.
"Don't tell me that Sir Swordsman of Rage is scared," Percival replied with a laugh.
"One, stop calling me that. It's not like 'Swordsman of Gale' is any less stupid. And two, where the hell did you get the idea that I'm scared? I just think we should take more caution than you're allowing. I mean, what if a bunch of Grassies see us?"
"What if a bunch of Grassies see us?"
"Percival, we're both senior lieutenants of the Zexen Knights. Just the two of us. All the way out here by ourselves."
Percival eyed him suspiciously and raised an eyebrow. "Hey, man. You'd better not be coming on to me."
"I'm trying to be serious here, all right? This is a huge risk we're taking. Right now, we're prime targets for the enemy. And this close to the border too. What we're doing is irresponsible to the rest of the knights."
"If all you're gonna do is bitch, Borus, this is the last time I'm bringing you along."
"Oh, that's such a shame," Borus stated sarcastically.
"Look, I go on these morning rides all the time. Even if I'm spotted by Grassies, my Svetlana's the fastest horse in all of Zexen," he said as he proudly patted his solid black mare on the neck. "She'll leave them all in her dust in no time." He looked over at Borus's stocky speckled gray stallion. "But on the other hand, your Ghost isn't nearly as streamlined for speed. Just don't expect me to wait up for you."
"Like I really would," Borus muttered.
Percival laughed. "Well, if I were you, my best bet would be to just surrender and pray that my captors are a band of Alma Kinan girls come to take me away to their all-female village to be their love slave."
"Wait a minute! Surrender!" Borus exclaimed angrily, taking personal offense to the use of that word directed at him. "And just what in the name of Saint Loa makes you think I'd do that! Only cowards surrender!"
To Borus's surprise, Percival's expression suddenly grew serious at his words. "You really think so, Borus?"
"Of course! I'd fight to the death before I'd concede defeat like some spineless barbarian!"
Percival slowed his horse down. "That's really not a good mindset for such a high-ranked officer to have."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Well, Borus, let's just say that you're leading so and so number of troops and you get surrounded by the enemy. You're completely outnumbered and there's no way you could break out. Would you surrender or would you selfishly make all your men die for some silly little ideal of yours?"
"It's not a silly little ideal, Percival! It's called honor, and we're all are supposed to have it! No true Zexen Knight would ever surrender when he could still fight."
"I would." Percival musingly looked over at his comrade. "Does that mean I'm not a 'true Zexen Knight'?"
Borus glared crossly back at Percival. "Yeah, then. I guess it does."
Percival sighed and halted his horse. "Well then, Lord Borus. All I can say is that I feel sorry for your men and that I'm damn glad I'm not under your command."
That last sentence rang in Borus's head as he sat on the stone bench that night in Haysmorth. The words now sounded so clear to him, almost as if Percival was right here beside him, saying them himself. For the first time, Borus began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, his friend actually had a point back there.
After the failed Yule assault, the Lizard Clan had proposed to Borus generous conditions of surrender that promised to treat the knights well as prisoners and to leave the surviving villagers unharmed, even help them by assisting to rebuild the village. Borus had promptly rejected the one-chance offer.
Even at the time, he couldn't quite give a clear reason as to why he refused, other than that he just didn't want to surrender. He told himself and his men that it was because he didn't trust those lizard bastards, especially with the villagers. In truth, however, he knew that it was more because he simply couldn't bring himself to give in, to accept defeat, to admit that he, Borus Redrum, had lost in this hopeless struggle.
Back then, he had known that there was no way to break the siege himself, and, after the previous unsuccessful attempt, hopes of rescue were slim. He had no long-term plans, and his only short-term strategy was to simply stay alive and hold on to the village, even though Haysmorth was of entirely no use to Zexen by that point.
As he now thought over his decision, Borus suddenly felt absolutely disgusted with himself. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and lowered his head. Goddess, I'm so arrogant! Damn it! What have I done? I'm so damn selfish and shortsighted that I've consigned everyone around me to a slow, painful death just because I didn't want to hurt my pride! Percival was right. I've already made so many good knights and villagers needlessly die over some silly little ideal of mine.
This needs to end now. It may be more than a little late, and I may have stupidly passed up those favorable terms offered to me two weeks ago, but at least I can still save whatever's left of my knights, and hopefully the villagers as well.
Tomorrow morning, after I bury my men, I'm going to walk right up to the lizard army, drop my sword, and surrender.
End Note: Yes, I know what you're thinking: for a fic that's supposedly about Chris, there sure hasn't been a lot of Chris so far. Just be patient. Of course, the idea of the winter siege was inspired by the Bastogne/Stalingrad sieges of WWII fame. I know it's different in the game, but for this fic, I'm gonna assume that there's more than just one Karayan village and one Lizard village (or whatever you call it) and so forth. Oh, and yes, you do have to ignore the fact that lizards are cold-blooded and won't survive for long out in the winter if you want the story to make sense. Feedback much appreciated.
