WARNING: This chapter is more graphic than my typical chapters. If you are sensitive to gore, trauma, or amputation I caution against reading.
I have never seen such carnage.
Banners flapped and standards waved. It was a shockingly beautiful day for early winter in the Saderan heartland.
Prince Diabo observed the distant Bluecoat formations from his position atop the hill on their battleline's right flank. Next to him was his sister, Princess Pina. She was here as commander of her Rose-Order, theoretically only a parade unit but now one of the few professional forces left in the Empire.
His brother, Prince Zorzal, was also beside him. He had made himself prince regent and thus technically had seniority over the entire Imperial force. Realistically, he only commanded his professional legions; the militiamen were loyal to Diabo. Behind them, various Imperial generals, legates, and other sycophants were gathered.
They were all watching how cleanly the Bluecoats formed their battleline. Just that morning, a herald had arrived at their camp and demanded that the Imperial forces either evacuate the gate or face Marshal Ney in battle. Only Diabo's intervention had prevented the man's execution.
"I still think we would be better behind the walls of Sadera," Zorzal sneered.
"He challenged us," Diabo said. He was armored head to toe in shining steel plate, a stark contrast to Zorzal's burgundy and gold armor.
"If we destroyed the gate, he would be forced to wear himself out on our walls," Zorzal said, with a certain whine.
"He challenged us," Diabo said again.
"I don't think that-"
Diabo turned his helmeted head. Zorzal never wore a helmet, and as such Diabo appeared to tower over him. "Brother, you make me regret being of the same bloodline as you. I am a prince of the Empire. The Empire's continued honor and glory is all I have ever sought. Marshal Ney has challenged us to battle."
"And I say-"
"Silence." Diabo spoke sharply, and his brother flinched. No one had ever told him to be silent in all his life.
Diabo turned to face Zorzal fully. "You think I am a fool who believes in an outdated notion of honor. You think we should demolish the gate and cower behind our city's walls, burn a swathe through our own countryside to deprive the Bluecoats of food and goad them into throwing themselves at our fortifications and earthworks. I tell you, brother, that you are the fool, and that if we do that, we will find ourselves surrounded by a thousand enemies, none of them contemptible. We lack the strength to hold the Empire together even if we had no foe in the field against us. Our vassal states openly dismiss our authority, Rory Mercury is stirring trouble in the west, Proptor has been made a republic, the provinces are on the edge of rebellion, and even Sadera itself squirms under your tyranny. The only chance for the Empire's survival is to restore our image of unquestioned strength with a final victory here. The Marshal's challenge is just, but even if it were unjust, we would be fools to do as you say. Do you understand me?"
Zorzal was red in the face. He struggled to come up with a retort. Finally, he turned his horse, collected his sycophants, and rode away.
Pina looked over to Diabo. "Well said, brother." Her gaze returned to the Bluecoat line which had just halted with professional discipline. "Do you really believe we can win here?"
Diabo bit his lip and said, "My military knowledge is limited to one catastrophic failure and a few centuries old books." He sighed. "We have a strong position, and the Bluecoats are the ones who have to attack us. We outnumber them fivefold but only because most of our men are militiamen who have fled from the Bluecoats before. We lack arcane support because Rondel's academy refuses to cooperate while Zorzal is regent. We lack monsters because Zorzal squandered them on Italica."
"We should have kept our peace commitments," Pina murmured.
"Zorzal left us no choice. If father hadn't fallen ill…"
"Do you honestly still believe father is merely ill?"
Diabo felt his soul go out from him. He had suspected it, but the truth hit him hard regardless.
"You command most of the army," Pina said cautiously. "If you confront Zorzal now, they will side with you."
Diabo shook his head. "We can't risk such an action when our enemy is about to engage us."
"Why fight? I've spoken with Marshal Ney before. He would be willing to resolve this peacefully."
"We have to fight," Diabo insisted. "If we don't, the Empire will never recover." He glanced around to ensure no one was listening in. "After the battle, win or lose, Zorzal must be deposed. If I don't survive, the responsibility will be with you. Do you understand?"
"You can't die," Pina whispered. "I don't have your influence. It won't work."
"Try regardless." Diabo demanded. "The army is already growing tired of him; the battle may shift their loyalty even further. He cannot be allowed to take the throne. Promise me you will try."
Pina closed her eyes for a brief moment. "I promise."
The French wasted no time forming up. Two divisions of fusiliers, more than ten thousand men, marched straight up the legion-built road. They halted roughly a mile from the Imperials, divided into brigades and regiments, and then formed a battleline opposite the legionaries and militiamen.
The fusiliers had General Rousseau and General Messier commanding them. They flew their golden Imperial Eagle standards with pride, each at the head of a regiment, though half the regiments were missing their eagles. To the sound of drumming, each battalion marched to their place in the line then halted. When the last battalion was in position, they waited in silence.
The auxiliaries formed to the left of the fusiliers. Their formations created a forest of pikes above them, and it rattled as they reached their part of the battleline. General Brunelle was in command here. His men were opposite the hill that anchored the Saderan flank.
The artillery, thirty-six guns under Colonel Delon, moved to create a grande batterie at the gap between the auxiliaries and the fusiliers.
The cavalry was positioned in the reserve, much to Colonel Feraud's chagrin. The same was true for the Imperial Guard, which was composed of only a single company, and a battalion of grenadiers, who were detached from their regular battalions to form an elite reserve under Captain Duclos.
When the lines were formed, it was clear that the Imperial line overlapped the French line on both flanks. Despite that, it was the French who were on the offensive. It was late morning by the time they finished, and the Imperials still were adamant on merely holding their ground.
Marshal Ney watched the Imperial line and shook his head. "There goes that hope; Zorzal isn't as hot headed as he was before. Looks like we're going to have to attack him after all."
General Courbet raised an eyebrow. "You used to be hot headed as well," he said.
"Circumstances change a man," Ney retorted. "Christ, I think I preferred it when all I had to do was listen to the Emperor."
Captain Barbier rode over to them. He saluted smartly and said, "Sirs, Colonel Delon reports that his battery is in range on the Saderan line. He asks if he has permission to open fire."
Ney shook his head. "Tell him to hold fire until he receives further orders. We need to conserve ammunition until the right moment."
Captain Barbier saluted again and rode off to his staff. Shortly after, a courier began galloping to Colonel Delon's battery.
"I like your aide," General Courbet commented. "He's more polite than I was."
Ney shrugged. "He's young and still awed by the position," he replied. Ney sighed. "I suppose it's time to get started."
"Any changes to the plan?"
Ney looked back to the Saderan battleline. There were tens of thousands of Saderan militiamen stretched across the field with formations of legionaries dotted between them. On the Saderan left, their flank was covered by a fortified farmhouse. On the Saderan right, their line ended atop the hill there.
Ney squinted. Just as the day before, the hill still wasn't well fortified. He didn't feel Zorzal had placed enough men there to hold it against a serious assault. One strong push and…
"No changes," Ney snapped. "Send Brunelle with the auxiliaries to seize the hill. The rest of the line will send skirmishers to tie down Zorzal's line. Once it's secure, Delon will reposition his battery there and we'll enfilade the whole Imperial army. That's the battle won."
General Courbet nodded. "Nice and simple, just as it should be. I'll go tell Barbier."
"Everyone ready to march!" Captain Kapsner demanded in Saderan. He strode out in front of the company and glared at his men. "General's coming! Straighten up!"
Gallio cursed and tried to get his sword untangled from between his legs. His sword belt was cheap and liked to jump up at the slightest nudge. It always seemed to do that when something important happened. Beside him, Placus and Gallio straightened their pikes and quietly snickered at his misfortune.
"Heartless bastards," Gallio muttered. He got his sword untangled just as Captain Kapsner was moving to his end of the formation.
"Orders are that we seize that hill!" Captain Kapsner bellowed. "That's all we have to do for the day. One hill, and we're done. So let's make it good!"
Behind the captain, General Brunelle rode by on a white horse. He rode all the way to the center of the auxiliary line then dismounted. Gallio could see him through the cracks in their neighboring formation. An aide took the general's horse.
"Soldiers!" the general yelled in obviously practiced Saderan. "Let's go kill them all!"
The auxiliaries cheered him in three languages.
Then the drums started beating.
Gallio spat and began marching. All at once, the blocks of pikemen slid forward like cards over a table. Gallio's feet moved roughly in sync with Placus and Marcus to either side of him. Packed together with pikes shouldered, the company became one organism which itself was part of the greater organism that was their battalion. Their battalion naturally joined to form their regiment which was part of their brigade and their brigade formed their division. So on and so forth, all the way up to the highest level that was Marshal Ney's army…
Which, of course, was merely a corps of some greater army on the other side of the gate.
There was a whole world of wonder that the French had come from, and Gallio intended to live to see it. He wondered if they would be given blue coats when they arrived in France. The thought was somewhat appealing. But first he had to survive this battle.
Gallio saw Imperial legionaries watching them from the top of the hill. There weren't that many of them, and it was beyond evident that the Imperial's professionals were thinly stretched. Most of the Saderan line was made up of militia. But there were a lot of them.
"Think they'll roll over?" he murmured.
"Like a hot knife through butter," Placus asserted.
Marcus rolled his eyes. "Just keep them at the end of our pikes and we'll do fine."
The auxiliaries passed by a solitary tree that was roughly halfway between where they'd started and the Imperial occupied hill. By then, the cool morning air was just heating up, and everything started to smell like the sweat of the men around him.
To their right, the French fusiliers halted their battleline. Detachments of skirmishers split off from the main body, moving forward in a loosely scattered line. Pairs of men went together ahead of larger groupings.
Ahead, Gallio saw the legionaries doing… something. They were running back and forth, some with wooden boxes. Many had dropped their spears and shields. He squinted, but he couldn't decipher what it was they were doing.
General Brunelle was still leading from the center on foot. He drew his sword and shouted, "En avant! En avant!"
Captain Kapsner likewise drew his own sword. "Forward!"
The drummers began to beat a faster pace and Gallio's marching picked up. The company lurched forward, each man matching the drummers' beat. Men growled, eager for the fight.
The line continued to advance.
A glint of bronze caught Gallio's eye. He could see now that some of the men on the hill were not legionaries at all. They were guild craftsmen, wearing aprons with hands blackened from their work. On one of them, Gallio thought he could just barely make out the dirtied patch of the Italican smiths' guild.
And they were placing down bronze tubes mounted on wooden tripods.
The air suddenly thundered. Bright flashes followed by plumes of smoke erupted from the hill.
A man in the first rank abruptly exploded into red mist, as did two men behind him. A fourth man dropped to the ground, his leg suddenly a bloody ruin, and shrieked at the top of his lungs. In the company to their left, two blood soaked paths were carved open as if by Emroy's scythe. All around them, men screamed.
Gallio blinked then blinked again. The company was still marching forward, and he stepped over a ruined corpse with the instinct drilled into him by constant marching. Someone's blood was splattered across his face.
"W-what the fuck was that?" Marcus stuttered.
"Oh gods above… gods above…"
Gallio's shaking hand tried to wipe the blood from his face, and it smeared.
"Christ save us," Placus repeated over and over. "Christ save us."
"I don't want to die," someone sobbed.
"Cannons," Gallio finally managed to choke out. "They have cannons…"
"Keep marching!" Captain Kapsner roared. "Close up the ranks! Close up and march!"
Men began to hunch. They ducked their heads like men in a rainstorm, stepping over corpses and pools of blood.
"Close up!" came the chorus of a dozen Elban sergeants and German officers. "Close up!"
The thunder erupted again. Six men in Gallio's company were torn apart by iron balls moving faster than they could see. Their corpses instantly became mangled carcasses, and their blood coated the men around them. The unlucky ones survived the initial blast and went to the ground screaming in pain or crying for salvation.
"One step after another!" Captain Kapsner yelled over the sounds of dying men. "Eyes on the enemy!"
Gallio grit his teeth and kept his pike shouldered. His breathing was fast, and he could feel his heart pounding. He flinched every time one of the Saderans on the hill moved near their cannons.
"Where did they get cannons?" someone shuddered.
"Those are Italicans up there," Marcus trembled. "They're using traitors."
The screaming didn't stop. Somewhere else on the battlefield, the French skirmishers entered into range with their Saderan counterparts and began blasting away with a steady stream of musket fire. The ripple of musketry added to the sounds of screaming, shouting, and cannons to create a cacophony of hell that drowned out all other noises.
Near the center of the auxiliary line, Gallio saw General Brunelle shouting at one of his aides. The aide saluted, hunched over as he was, and sprinted back from the auxiliary line.
"Close up!" came Kapsner's call again. "Close up, damn you!"
Men shifted together. They didn't form ranks, because that was impossible in their state of distress. Instead, they huddled into clumps like frightened children. The drummers ceased drumming and huddled as well. The auxiliaries moved forward but only at a cautious stumble.
Another barrage hit them, and men died horribly.
Gallio was watching General Brunelle when the general was hit by a cannonball. It tore through his leg in an instant, sending Brunelle toppling to the ground face first. His aides immediately lifted him from the ground and began carrying him off the field.
The auxiliaries at the front saw it happen, and any resolve they'd managed to hold onto shattered on the spot.
All at once, the clumps of men scattered. Gallio dropped his pike as soon as men started to run. Placus was already running, but Marcus was too stunned to understand, and Gallio had to drag him until he moved on his own accord.
They left their wounded behind when they retreated. There wasn't much to save, anyway. Men torn apart by cannonballs were either dead or crippled for life. Those who could stand had their own lives to save.
So the auxiliaries fled. They wanted to live.
Ney watched the fleeing auxiliaries and felt himself fill with helpless rage.
"I'm guessing those are Chaucer's swivel guns?" Courbet asked, also watching the rout. "Probably his gunners as well."
Ney nodded, his fists tight. "Was it too much to hope that he'd spiked his guns before losing Italica?" He shook his head and sighed. "At least they don't have proper cannons."
Captain Barbier approached at a run. He saluted before reporting, "Sir, General Brunelle has been critically wounded. He's with the surgeons as we speak."
"Damn it all," Ney cursed.
He looked over to Courbet. "Get over there and rally the auxiliaries. We need that hill, and we need to handle those guns. I want you to drive the Saderans off it. Delon will try and suppress their gunners while you advance. Feraud will support your flank. If you can't hold the hill, at least spike the guns before you fall back. Understood?"
Courbet nodded and saluted. "It's been an honor, sir."
Ney narrowed his eyes. "Don't talk like that. You're not allowed to die yet."
By the time General Courbet arrived to reform the auxiliaries, Gallio's hands had just stopped shaking. The terror was finally out of him. He was still afraid, of course, but the all encompassing terror of thunderous death had diminished to the point where he could think. Now he was just tired.
General Courbet managed to get them together quickly. In truth, the auxiliaries had not been fully routed. Their organization was still intact, and only a few officers had been killed by the cannonfire. The men had not been pursued, so instead of running off the field, they had stopped as soon as the Saderan cannons were out of range.
"Form ranks!" Captain Kapsner ordered. "No more huddles! Trust your training, and trust the march!" He found a company drummer and quietly spat, "If you stop drumming again, I swear by all your heathen gods I'll have you hanged."
Most of the auxiliaries had dropped their pikes when they retreated, so instead of pike blocks, they formed into rough columns of men wielding swords and bucklers. It was an odd feeling being formed up without anything at Gallio's shoulder. There was no forest of pikes overhead to block the sun.
General Courbet dismounted his horse at the center of the auxiliary line just as General Brunelle had done before him. He drew his sword immediately and turned to face the men.
"Ready everyone?" he shouted. His Saderan was better than Brunelle's, but it lacked the same practiced tenor.
To their far left, Colonel Feraud began to arrange his cavalrymen into a line that covered the auxiliary flank.
"When they start shooting, we go fast," Courbet announced. "Fast as you can to the top. No stopping, no slowing. This is it."
A dozen deep booms sounded at once as French cannons opened fire. Their opening salvo tore into the Saderan gunners on top of the hill. Seconds later, two dozen more booms ripped through the air.
Then the order came.
"En avant!"
"Vorwärts!"
"Forwards!"
The line stumbled forward.
Gallio felt the pit in his stomach grow as he inched toward the Saderan gunners. He could see the bloody corpses of those who'd already fallen. To his right, French skirmishers continued to keep up a rattle of musketry on their end of the line. To his left, Franco-Saderan cavalry kept a steady pace on their flank. Behind him, French artillery constantly barraged the hill ahead.
He wondered if this was what war was like in their world. Metal tubes pounding each other with iron balls while scores of men died in between.
Suddenly they were past the halfway-tree, and Gallio's head turned in bewilderment. He could have sworn they'd only been moving for…
The Saderan hill erupted in thunder and smoke.
An iron ball flew past Gallio's head. He felt its power going by. It struck a man two ranks behind him, smashed through his skull, and buried itself in the chest of a man in the next rank.
"Close up!" Captain Kapsner began roaring again.
Screaming rose in the air.
Somewhere down the line, General Courbet gave an inaudible order, and the drums increased their pace.
The line shot forward, nearly running. Their ranks became cluttered, unable to stay together at such a quick pace. It was all Gallio could do not to stab the man in front of him in all the commotion. Marcus stumbled next to him. Placus practically sprinted.
"For what we are about to receive…" Placus said.
The Saderan cannons erupted again.
Two iron balls ripped through nine men in their company. They dropped, instantly dead or screaming in incredible pain.
"...may the Lord make us truly grateful."
They were now only about five hundred paces from the hill.
French cannons retorted against the Saderans. Gallio watched cannonballs streak overhead all the way to the hill. One bounced against the ground then tumbled into a crew of craftsmen, tearing them apart.
To their side, the cavalry peeled off from their flank. Gallio couldn't see why.
The Saderan cannons thundered.
Men died.
Four hundred paces.
Up on the hill, the gunners suddenly started running down its reverse slope, leaving behind their cannons. French artillery ceased firing, suddenly deprived of targets.
Three hundred paces.
A rose banner crested the hill. In moments, a thousand mounted Imperial knights appeared at the top of it. At their head, three hundred women in shining armor formed a wedge directly facing the auxiliary line.
The red haired woman at their head gave a great shout and pointed her lance at them.
The ground shook as they charged.
"Halt!" came the screaming of officers everywhere. "Halt and reorder!"
The auxiliaries desperately tried to reform their ranks. But the Imperial knights were moving quickly. And the auxiliaries didn't have their pikes.
French artillery opened fire. Most missed the charging mass, but a few blew gaps in the wedge of knights. It was too little to stop them.
The knights slapped down their visors and roared, "The Rose-Order!" Even those not part of the order roared it. A thousand lance tips came down at once.
The moment of impact was an explosion of flesh. Horses tumbled to the ground, even as lances punched through gambesons. Captain Kapsner died with a lance through his heart. A generation of former Italican thugs, slaves, and street rats died in the front ranks, sent to Hardy in a single instant of collision.
The survivors broke. Imperial knights dropped their shattered lances and drew longswords. Their blades swept up and down, reaping even more of the auxiliaries. The tip of the Rose-Order wedge burst out the back of the rapidly collapsing auxiliary line.
Gallio was knocked off his feet by a charging horse. For a moment, it was dark. Then he jolted, and he realized he was face first in the dirt.
He stumbled to his feet. His sword was still in his hand. His buckler was lost.
His body hurt. Around him was… chaos. They weren't winning here.
But he had to find Placus and Marcus. He couldn't flee without his friends.
Against his best instincts, he went deeper into the chaos.
Some men were still fighting. They huddled together with their backs to each other while the knights cut at them from their horses. Others were trying to flee but were hunted by the knights.
Gallio ran past them all. Ducked a knight's swing, and crawled between the legs of the knight's horse. He came out the otherside, sword ripping through the underbelly of the horse. He didn't wait for the unhorsed knight to rise. Gallio stumbled forward, desperate to find his friends.
Chaos, screams, death.
He found Placus in a huddle and pulled him out of it. "Where's Marcus?!" he shouted over the sound of battle.
"There!" Placus pointed. Marcus had a leg trapped by a fallen horse and was struggling to get free.
Together they lifted the horse long enough for Marcus to scramble away. His leg wasn't broken, thank the gods, and he could stand fine.
Gallio embraced the former slave. "Come on," he said, "time to cut and run."
The Imperials continued to slaughter indiscriminately. Their full attention was now on ending the auxiliaries once and for all. Knights on horses broke apart the pockets of resistance, forcing them to flee over open ground where they were easy targets.
Gallio, Placus, and Marcus had just cleared the corpse-carpeted ground when a knight came after them. She was one of the Rose-Order knights, and she was mounted on a massive horse. Her helmet was gone, revealing short purple hair.
She flicked a salute at them with her sword and charged.
A look came over Placus's face. He ran at her, and Gallio wasn't fast enough to stop him.
They collided in an instant. The knight's horse knocked him flat, cracking several of his bones as it did. Placus was on the ground, moaning from the impact. But his sword was buried up to the hilt in the horse's chest.
The horse collapsed all at once, and the knight jumped from the saddle to avoid being trapped under it. She landed next to Placus. He coughed blood, unable to get up.
In one motion, her sword slit Placus's throat.
Gallio screamed his fury, already surging forward.
He struck at her with his sword, a heavy overhand blow with a hammerfist grip. There was no thought in it. He just wanted her dead.
The knight parried Gallio effortlessly, flicking his blade aside.
Then Marcus tackled her.
Immediately the fight changed. Marcus took her to the ground and pinned her beneath him. But the knight was an experienced grappler, and she brought an armored knee up between his legs, striking him and then rolling on top.
Gallio came up behind her and tried to pin back her arms. She flailed against him. Her steel clad arms battered against his body, forcing one arm free. At the same time, Marcus grabbed at her legs.
They all tumbled down together. The knight reached for a dagger at her belt, and Gallio grabbed at her arm to stop her. Marcus had her legs but received a knee to his mouth and fell back, stunned. He stumbled back over, just as the knight managed to use her other arm to pull free her dagger, and she wildly stabbed at Marcus with her left hand while fighting Gallio with her right.
The dagger pierced through the side of Marcus's knee. He fell with a cry.
Gallio finally managed to pin the knight's right arm with his knee. He restrained her left arm with both hands and pried the dagger from her iron fist.
The knight cried out, "Wait…wait… wait! Don't-"
He thrust down into her face. The knight thrashed frantically, screaming as it pushed deep through her nose. Then, like a puppet with its strings cut, she went still.
Exhaustion immediately swept over Gallio. He slumped to the ground.
In the distance, he saw the Imperial knights retreating. Colonel Feraud's cavalrymen were coming in from the left and sweeping through the scattered knights who were too occupied with their pursuit of the auxiliaries to resist.
Imperial knights found themselves outnumbered and without order. Feraud's horsemen rolled through them effortlessly. A horn blew and blew again, but the knights were already in a headlong retreat.
Franco-Saderan cavalry chased the Imperials all the way up the hill and then abruptly stopped. Men pulled hammers and what looked like long nails from their saddlebags. They started hammering the nails into Saderan cannons on the hill.
An ugly thought came to Gallio. Colonel Feraud had used the auxiliaries as bait.
Beside him, Marcus groaned.
Gallio crawled over and saw blood gushing from Marcus's knee. The dagger wound had gone through both sides and must have gotten twisted on the way out. Marcus himself was clutching it weakly, his head drooping. There was a lot of blood.
"Shit… shit…" Gallio muttered. He ripped a long piece of linen from the dead knight's body and tied it around the wound as tightly as he could. It quickly became a splotchy red.
"How… is… it?" Marcus grunted.
Gallio tied more linen around the wound. "You'll be fine. We just need to get you to the surgeons. Can you walk?"
Marcus shook his head.
"Right. Stay still then."
Gallio grabbed Marcus by the leg and then pulled him over his shoulders. He shifted the man's weight a little then started moving toward the field hospital, far to the rear of Marshal Ney's army.
"Placus?" Marcus asked from his shoulder.
Gallio shook his head. "Dead. We'll get his body later; I'm going to get you to a doctor."
Marcus muttered something unintelligible.
In spite of horrific losses and having been routed twice, the auxiliaries were yet again being rallied. General Courbet was gathering men back near the artillery battery, and they were slowly forming once more into ranks. Many officers had been killed in the charge, so it became the responsibility of sergeants and corporals to reform their companies. Small groups and individuals slowly trickled in. A line started to materialize.
Gallio ran as quickly as he could with Marcus draped over his shoulders. He passed the reconstituted line, ignoring the shouts of an Elban sergeant.
Behind them, Imperial legionaries made a concerted charge up the hill with Northern cavalry supporting their flank. Colonel Feraud didn't bother trying to hold the hill. His cavalrymen withdrew immediately.
All that for nothing, Gallio thought bitterly.
The field hospital was three massive tents and a series of covered wagons that served as ambulances. Outside, dozens of men were laying in stretchers, some moaning and some dead. Men and women moved between the tents with bloody bandages and medical instruments.
"Surgeon!" Gallio called, bursting into one of the tents. "Surgeon!" he repeated in Elban-German.
Wounded men were everywhere inside. Two women, Elbans enlisted from Janku, held down an auxiliary while a third stitched his arm close. In the corner, a surgeon was extracting an arrow from a Bluecoat's leg. Another man screamed, held by an Elban woman, as a different surgeon cut into his wound with a knife.
The surgeon in the corner finished pulling the arrow, and one of the women took over with honey soaked bandages. He came over to Gallio. His blue uniform was covered by a bloodstained apron.
"Lay him here," the surgeon said in Elban-German. "What's his wound?"
Gallio carefully set Marcus on a wooden table. There was dried blood on it. There was dried blood everywhere.
"He was stabbed with a dagger. Through the knee, there."
The surgeon leaned down to Marcus's knee and examined it for a few seconds, removing the makeshift bandage. Then he turned to a nurse. "Bone saw and tourniquet," he ordered.
Marcus heard the surgeon and abruptly tried to sit up. Even in his weakened state, he called, "W-what's going on?"
Gallio gripped his hand. "You're going to be ok," he promised.
"I-I don't want to lose my leg." He looked around him frantically. "Please don't take it. Please!"
"Hold him!" the surgeon demanded.
Gallio looked between the surgeon and Marcus's pleading face. He bit his lip then pinned Marcus's torso against the table.
The nurse returned with a saw and tourniquet. She began to apply the tourniquet to Marcus's leg.
Marcus looked up at Gallio with wild eyes. "Don't let them take my leg," he begged, tears forming. "Promise me you won't let them! Promise me! Don't-"
The surgeon forced a piece of wood covered in leather into his mouth. Marcus began to breathe very quickly.
The surgeon picked up a knife and began to cut while the nurse took up a position opposite to Gallio and helped hold Marcus down. Marcus let out a gagged cry. His whole body trembled.
Then the surgeon picked up the saw.
Marcus looked up and shook his head desperately. Gallio closed his eyes. There was so much blood and… He couldn't watch the betrayal in his friend's eyes.
Marcus screamed. He screamed and screamed.
Finally he stopped, and Gallio opened his eyes.
"It's done," the surgeon stated. He was already wiping the saw.
"Will he live?" Gallio asked.
The surgeon shook his head. "He's already dead. Shock killed him. It happens."
Gallio twisted his head and saw Marcus's unmoving body. He shook him but nothing happened. He shook him again. Tears filled his eyes.
Someone came and carried the corpse from the table. The nurse quietly led him out of the tent.
For two long minutes, he stood at the entrance blinking away tears. People came and went, but he didn't notice them.
Then he walked.
He just walked.
War is terrible. It always has been, and the trauma involved has always affected soldiers. War was not better in the past, nor was it less horrific for those involved.
Throughout this story, I have attempted to create a somewhat realistic depiction of war as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. That includes both heroism and horror. I don't always get it right, but I try my best. With that in mind, the last scene of this chapter is something I struggled with for some time. Early 19th century medicine was primitive and brutal with many soldiers losing their limbs due to a lack of ways to treat infection or bodily trauma. Including this scene I believe adds to the authenticity of my work. However, I am also aware that many people have sensitivities to subject matters like this due to a number of completely legitimate factors, and I was uncertain about the scene's inclusion for fear of alienating readers. Ultimately, I decided to go for authenticity, but I included a warning at the beginning of this chapter so that people could avoid it if they wished. I apologize to any readers who were affected by this scene.
With that said, this is the first of a few chapters that will cover the Battle for the Gate. Each should be shorter than my usual chapters, so they should come out quicker. However, I am eternally busy and cannot promise anything. Thank you for reading and sticking with this story.
