The quill stabbed through the parchment. Ink spread like blood over the sheet, advancing toward Jak’s scribbled words. Perhaps my last, he thought with a sigh, dabbing the page with his sleeve.
My dear Martha,
I write you this letter as we head toward the alien city of Miscara. The king has laid siege to the place, and we are set to be part of the assault. From what I have heard from my comrades, the defenders are fierce and stubborn and will not go down easily. It is hard for me to express in words how I feel right now. I am afraid, for I do not want to die. I want to see your smiling eyes once more. I want to hold you in my arms and feel the warmth of your body, smell the scent of your hair. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of the sound of your laughter, or the expressions on your face when I surprise you with nice things. It is these moments I live for, yearn for, and, I fear, will have to kill for in order to experience again. If these are my final words, know this, my dear Martha: you are my heart. You are all I live for, and I will do all I can to survive this day so I may see you again.
Yours forever,
Jak
Jak looked up from the sheet, blinking away tears.
“Hurry up, Rook, or I’ll shove that quill up your arse,” his squad leader, Tiny, shouted over the thrum of marching feet. Jak picked up his things from the tree stump, shoved the letter behind his gambeson and hurried on, weaving through the press to get back to his place. He’d never thought the scrawled letters Father Jorin had forced him to learn would be good for anything but copying out hymn sheets. Now, every crooked line to Martha felt like a lifeline. He kept his head down as he rejoined his comrades. Ten in all. Following them round was a cloud of rancid smells: unwashed bodies and loose bowels. His comrades audibly added to the cocktail.
“Get it all out, lads,” a man named Barty said. Despite being just twenty-two summers old, he had the air of a man thrice his age, and a fast receding hairline to match. “If there’s ever a time to let one rip, it’s right before a battle.”
“Aye, just make sure nothing else comes out with it. It ain’t fun for whoever’s behind ya when you start climbing the ladder,” Tiny said. She was always one to draw a laugh from the group, and she did so again now. The name was ironic: she towered over them all and had arms thicker than a ram’s neck. The intricate tattoo covering her shaven head added to the intimidation factor. She was one of the first to extend a welcome to Jak. She introduced him to the others, involved him in conversations, and soon ingratiated him into the group.
“Writing more love letters, Rook?” Jon sniped from behind him. He had a dark moustache to match his hair, fringe cut in a neat line with the help of a bowl. It looked ridiculous, but many in the army had it. They shaved everyone’s heads when they first arrived to reduce the chance of lice infesting the camp, they said. They let people grow it back, but not longer than their ears, hence the bowl cut. Jak had thick red hair when he’d first joined. Red like the sunset, Martha said. He liked it long and lamented when they sheared him clean with the steady hand of a drunkard—he’d been left with more than a few cuts to his scalp.
Jak shrugged. He didn’t like to give Jon anything to work with.
“Dunno how you can write all that crap when we’re heading into a battle,” Jon said anyway. “There should only be one thing on your mind now—killing the ugly bastards on those walls.”
“Not even a bit of you thinking about home?” Jak asked him.
“Got a voice after all, hey,” Jon cackled. “I ain’t got no one at home. I’m here for me; I fight for me.” He pointed his thumb at himself. “The aim of the game is to stay alive ‘cos I wonna stuff a few more whores before I kick it.” He grinned, looking around, expecting laughs, but mustering only a smirk from his idiot sidekick, Ralk, who had a toothless mouth too big for his face.
“I do it for the money,” Tiny said. She was a volunteer, unlike Jak, who was conscripted. Back home, all they’d heard was how well the war was going, that soon the Grengins would fall, and peace would reign. But next thing Jak knew, there were notices hammered up around town calling for those seeking glory in “defence of the realm” to sign up and become heroes. There was no mention of ladders or walls, or what the Grengins even looked like. It seemed like only a week later, the order for conscription came—the eldest-born son of each family. Jak was about to finish his apprenticeship in carpentry when the conscript officers stormed into the workshop. He’d had a chance to say goodbye to Martha, but it was brief. He hated them for that, and by extension, hated the army for it. He hated their callous ways. He hated the fact that there was a war in the first place, and one so far from home. What threat could people so far removed even pose? To him, fighting was a waste of time. The thing you did when drunk or when you couldn’t think of any other options. It was the weak man’s choice, a line his Pa had repeated whenever Jak had come home bloody and bruised from another round with the bullies. He’d grown up in a permanent state of anxiety, always looking around the town for threats and hiding whenever he felt they could develop into something more painful. One time, he’d hidden in a shed behind the tannery where they kept the skinned animals. For hours, he hid there, nose pinched, eyes closed. He’d spewed more than a few times, but it had taught him resilience—it was proof he could endure horrendous things and come through them. And there was another important thing that he’d learned—that on the other side, better things awaited, like Martha.
“I’m with Rook. I’m doing it for my folks,” Barty said. “I ain’t got a love, but I got my Ma and Pa and my sister Becca. I earn more in a week doing this job than what they get combined in a month. It helps them. A lot. And that makes me feel proud.”
A chorus of ayes rang out.
“Back home, they said the Grengins were getting ready to invade us, but we’ve marched through half the kingdom without seeing a soul,” Jak said.
“We’re not paid to think. We’re paid to kill,” Jon said as if Jak had said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
Barty piped up. “We’re killing them for the simple reason that they ain’t us. They don’t look like us, they don’t talk like us, they don’t think like us. Even the trees here look weird.” He tapped his temple with his finger and pointed at the gnarled and twisted trees around them, lush with a mix of green and blue leaves.
“Lucky them,” Tiny said.
“Ain’t you heard how they treat their women, Tiny? It’s sickening.” Barty spat on the floor.
Tiny laughed. “I’ll believe it when I see a Grengin man whip his wife with my own eyes. It’s not a good idea to eat everything the bosses feed us. A weird kind of shit starts spewing out of you.”
“If you wanna know the real reason we’re here,” Samis said. “It’s all the Grengin gold they want. Diamonds too. The little green bastards don’t use or spend it. Just hoard it all in honour of their stupid snake god.”
That was a rumour that Jak had heard in camp too, and the one that made the most sense to him. All he had to do was look at how excited his comrades became at the talk of gold. Imagine the king and his cronies discussing it—the ones who’d actually lay their fingers on it.
“I was wondering why you’ve been so keen, Sam,” Ralk said.
Samis grinned, revealing a row of broken and missing teeth. “First into the city, first to fill your pockets, first to paint your weapon red.”
A few people laughed at that. For Jak, it triggered a question he’d wanted to ask since joining the army, but never had the mettle to.
“What’s it like to, you know, paint your weapon red?”
A dozen heads turned to face him. The mirth left their faces. A couple nodded with enthusiasm. Most gave a single nod of confirmation—no pride there. Some didn’t react at all and continued marching onward.
“Shut the fuck up, hey, Rook?” Tiny said.
Laughter rippled, and Jak’s cheeks flashed with heat. He took out his letter as they marched, read over the letter a final time, then folded it up and pocketed it. He found it interesting that the red tabard with the black “X” across it sparked no loyalty in his comrades. Not one of them said they were here to fight for king and country. Just themselves, or maybe a loved one. Jak took heart in the fact that nobody else wanted to fight this war either.
Lush forest passed them by, the road firm and dusty with the hot, dry weather. This land was far warmer than back home, the breeze sparse, the air humid and suffocating. Jak’s back was sodden with sweat. His hair clung to his forehead. He wanted to be free of all this armour, but taking it off was a death sentence, especially where he was about to venture.
Jak dreaded to think of what lay ahead, beyond the looming ridge line they headed toward. He could hear the sounds that drifted toward them. The beat of war drums, the drone of horns, louder with each step. His heart began to beat a tune of its own against his ribcage. He wiped his sweaty brow for the final time and put on his conical helm, polished and shining, and fixed the strap. He checked the straps on his roundshield. It was bigger and heavier than standard shields, designed to provide cover and protection when climbing siege ladders, and once on the wall and ramparts, they could block a mass of blows. It’d taken Jak months of relentless training to build up the strength to use it. On his hip hung his axe. He was used to chopping wood, and when he had the choice of arms, the axe felt the natural option. Block and hack. Block and hack. That was what they had trained him to do. Get onto that wall and block and hack. Give the others time to climb up. Block. Hack. And what they’d left out: kill.
“Looks like we’re here. Ready up, everyone,” Tiny said as they reached the top of the hill. Jak took in the sight before him.
All Jak had heard was how brutish and unsophisticated the Grengins were, how they spent their days praying to and worshipping their snake god, how they communicated in grunts and mumbled words and had no written language. They were inferior people, mindless in their thinking, and prone to terrible violence. Jak couldn’t square those assertions with what he saw before him.
“So much for them being mindless brutes,” Jak muttered to those around him. “That wall looks better made than any of ours.”
The wall encircling the vast city was made of great blocks of sandstone, the skill and craft clear to see, even from here. The crenellations had an artistic flair, crafted in the shape of leaves. The portcullis before the looming gate was also handsomely wrought, the iron twisted and woven to look like the trees, vines and bushes of a dense forest. The stone towers on either side of the gate were hewn and shaped as if twisted by the hands of giants. If the Grengins had built Miscara, they were no brutes, but artists and master craftsmen in their own right.
Chunks of crenellations had been destroyed in parts by the batteries of trebuchets and catapults upon the nearby hill. Siege towers with their great wheels stood poised and ready to advance across the grassy meadow that stood before the wall.
“Oi!” The voice belonged to Commander Kinzo. A simple point of his finger and the sternness of his eyes told them all they needed to know. They hurried down the hillside and formed up in position before him. He began to recite their orders. But Jak knew his job. Knew what was expected of him. It was all that had been drilled into him for months on end. It was one thing practising, but with the reality before him, his bowels turned watery, his legs like jelly. Still, he managed to form up in line behind Samis. Judging from the smell of sweat and crap emanating from his body, he was just as nervous. I’m not alone.
They began to march forward. Jak couldn’t see much past Samis’s broad shoulders, and his visor blocked out much of his wider vision. The drums pounded a louder beat, steady and repetitive, designed to disturb the defenders and those living within Miscara. Jak found it equally unsettling. At least he knew it worked. If anything could give them the edge right now and increase his chances of getting through the day, he’d take it.
“Ladder time,” Tiny said, loud enough for them all to hear. ‘They put the strongest and the stupidest on ladders,’ Tiny had said on his first day. ‘Strong enough to lift the bloody things, stupid enough to climb them.’
On three, the group of ten soldiers grabbed hold of the ladder and hefted it up to waist height. For Jak, even that was a strain. To make sure the ladders could hold the weight of scores of men and their heavy armour, the wood had to be thick. The upside was that heavier ladders meant they were harder for the defenders to push off.
Jak started forward. He closed his eyes, focused on slowing his breathing, resisting panicked thoughts which sought to send him fleeing. A deep blast of a horn sounded behind him. More horns answered it, followed by cries of warning. Jak heard the groan of wood, the snap of rope, and watched as the trebuchets hurled their stony loads at the walls of Miscara. Those flying rocks seemed to hover like birds of prey before plummeting down onto the ramparts and beyond. A chunk of sandstone broke away and sank to the base of the wall.
“Watch your head for those falling rocks. Our engines won’t let up even after we start climbing,” Tiny shouted over her shoulder. Jak glanced back at the siege engines. He didn’t fancy getting crushed to death by his comrades. What would Martha think?
Just ahead and to their right, the siege towers began to roll forward, pushed by a horde of men and pulled by another horde who worked beneath wooden frames covered in sodden hides to repel fiery projectiles.
The trebuchets released another volley. Rocks smashed into the wall and the city once again. Jak could see people scrambling on the parapets. Others stood ominously still, awaiting the full assault. It was those who unsettled Jak the most. They’ll be the ones waiting for him at the top of the ladder, prepared to die defending their homes, defending their loved ones. Just like me and my Martha. He wondered if the Grengins were steeling themselves to kill, too. Whether glory or money was on their mind, or maybe love.
Jak didn’t care much for politics, nor the lives of kings and queens, and yet here he was fighting their war. Deprived of his liberty, forced to fight, forced to kill, forced to die. But through his anger and despair, one vision kept shining through: Martha—smiling and happy and waiting for him to come home. Will I see you again? He wanted to flee, to be in her arms again, but there was no turning back now. All he’d get was an arrow in the back and a cut across his throat.
The siege towers slogged onwards through the mud, crossing the field before the wall. It triggered the first volley of arrows from the defenders, blue feathers filling the sky and peppering the stout towers. A couple of men screamed out in pain, but the towers continued to roll forward. Though it had a tall and thick curtain wall, Miscara had no moat, no trenches, nor embankments ringing it, as if they’d built the walls without any knowledge of the siege weapons used by their mysterious and distant neighbours in the west.
Up ahead, a siege tower rocked to one side as one of its wheels fell into a ditch. More shouts sounded from the walls, and a few moments later, a barrage of stones from Grengin catapults rose up and fell upon the tower, punching holes and killing and maiming the soldiers waiting inside.
“That’s why I hate siege towers,” Barty said behind him.
The catapults of the defenders let loose again. Pale, jagged boulders shattered the upper part of the tower. Mangled screams filled the air, but there was nothing Jak or anyone could do to help them. Eyes focused on the wall, he passed those broken and bloody bodies, crawling and crying out for help and mercy.
“Shields at the ready,” Tiny shouted over the dying.
Jak lifted his shield over his head and couldn’t have done so at a better time. A brace of arrows sank into the thick wood. Killer shots, both of them. He crouched lower, making himself a smaller target, and redoubled his grip on the ladder. His forearm burned, his fingers and hand ached, but he would not let go—he’d endured too many painful drills to do anything but.
Someone yelled up ahead. Ralk. The momentum of the ladder faltered. Jak came close to stumbling over, and only the armoured back of the person before him kept him from doing so.
“Leave him,” Tiny ordered. Harsh, but she was right. If they didn’t move fast, they’d end up with more spikes in them than a hedgehog. Jak looked at Ralk as he passed; his face was pale, bunched in pain, and he clung to his thigh where a blue-feathered arrow had sunk in deep. Part of Jak wanted to help, though Ralk had acted like nothing but a prick toward him. He called out to Jon, to his other comrades, but everyone kept marching. Some said there was no coming back from a Grengin arrow, that they laced their arrowheads with a poison that sent a person psychotic enough to kill his own comrades.
The wall loomed before him now. Jak could see the peculiar zig-zag emblems on the Grengin flags that snapped in the wind, could hear them shouting in their alien tongue. A horn rang out to his right. He chanced a glance and saw that one of the siege towers on the far side was close. The defenders rained down fire arrows, but the sodden hides covering the tower doused most of them. The bridge at the top of the tower dropped, great metal hooks clanging and gripping onto the crenellations. A wave of his comrades streamed forward into a wall of spears and pikes.
“Ready to lift,” Tiny shouted as more arrows hammered down around them. With each beat of Jak’s heart, another person around him cried out in pain. Besides the orders and shouts from officers, it was all he could hear. He didn’t know how he hadn’t been hit yet, but damn it if he had a moment to think about it. They hefted the ladder up, jamming its feet into the loose ground before shoving the thick frame against the wall. Metal hooks at the top swung forward and dug into the rock of the ramparts. Jak breathed deep.
“Up, up, up!” more than one person shouted. Tiny stood at the base of the ladder, waving her arms and ushering them up. One by one, they clambered forward, and Jak joined the line. He hid behind his shield, panic rising in his chest. All his months of training. The reason he’d been conscripted in the first place. To climb this ladder and take this wall. To kill if he had to. For Martha. The vision of her smile melted away his doubts. He was next in line. Tiny slapped his arse, and he moved his shield over his back and head and began to climb with one hand. The ladder was angled, the rungs smooth, which made it easier. What didn’t help was a Grengin falling off the wall, slamming into his head and bouncing off his shield. Jak swung to the right, holding on with his protesting fingertips. He found enough purchase to pull himself back level. He glanced down and watched as the Grengin hit the ground. Jak looked up, and the sight filled him with fear. He could see blood-stained spearheads, alien faces pointing bows at him. Their shouts of malice and murder hit him like a barrage from the trebuchets. How could he possibly overcome them all?
His grip went weak, and if not for the conical helm of Barty poking him up the backside, he’d have stayed right there. He focused on one thing—making it to the next rung. All the while, he hoped that whoever was before him could fight and kill well.
The clangs and cries of fighting grew louder inside his helm. The thuds against his shield came with more frequency—who knew how many arrows stuck out from it now. On and on he climbed. The smell of blood and bowels hit him like stepping into a butcher’s shop. He could see the blue tabards of the defenders between the crenellations, their arms moving furiously, and he saw Samis and Mykel, heroes both, holding off a mass of them with their shields and short swords.
Jak’s free hand touched the cold rock of the wall, and he pushed himself up and over, drawing his axe as he leapt. He swung it into the side of a Grengin soldier, busy attacking Mykel, and cut a deep gash which forced him to drop his pike. Jak struck out at the Grengin beside him, hacking at his exposed arm like cutting one of Martha’s cakes.
Onrushing shouts to his right caused Jak to turn. His foot slipped on blood, but he swung his shield around in time to block the savage blow from an axe. A current of blue tabards followed behind that blow and forced him back several steps, toward Samis, battling away still. Jak couldn’t hold them back, couldn’t find any grip on the slippery ground. If he stopped, they’d bowl him over. Numbness gripped his arm, each thud against the shield deadening it further. And now he was beginning to see light through it. He glanced back to check his position, didn’t see a dead Grengin, and fell back.
Visions of Martha filled his mind. He knew this was his end—an axe to the face, the stampede of angry feet. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to see her again.
The axe never fell. Mykel leapt to his aid, his stout frame pushing back the wave of defenders, sending one of them over the parapets and into the city below. Swords and axes flashed with fury. Flecks of blood sprayed through the air. Mykel took who knew how many blows to the back and shoulders before the life in him faded.
There was nothing Jak could do. On his feet again, he was all that stood between the defenders and the ladder. Behind him, he could hear Samis somehow still fighting on, the blows ringing out against his hefty shield and his grunts of exertion as he hacked and lunged.
The Grengins shouted and pointed at the ladder. Another one uttered a battle cry. Others picked it up, and together they surged forward, just as Barty hopped over the crenellations. The big man hurled his shield side-on at the onrushing defenders and sent the first Grengin to the ground. A couple behind stumbled over him. He took out the big axe on his back and released a fearsome battle cry of his own.
Another face appeared over the wall—one he was most glad to see—Tiny.
“Good work, Rook,” she said with a grin. “Go help Samis, we’ve got these.”
Jak ran to the big man’s aid.
“Well held, lad,” Samis growled as he threw his shoulder behind his heavy shield, pushing back another surge from the defenders. “Hack the bastards, will you?”
Jak did as he was told. He got around the side of Samis’s shield and hacked with fury. He felt connections, heard cries and bodies melted away. But there was no end to them. For every swing, the defenders seemed to swell in size, and they were pushing back Samis. The big man groaned with the strain, veins bulging in his neck. Axes and blades hammered down over the top and around the side of the beast of a shield, clattering against his helmet and pauldrons. Samis cried out, though he bit it back.
“You ready to take this over from me?” he asked.
Another blow from a sword found its way into his body again. The big man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. As he fell, Jak brought up his shield and, spurred on by the anger at losing his comrade, charged forward, pushing back the Grengins a good few paces. When he could go no further, he began to hack around the edge of his shield.
The ripostes came a heartbeat later, with fury. The ground he’d gained he soon lost, and he found himself with a foot against Samis’s body, trying to push back. He needed help. He stole a glance at Barty and Tiny. The axeman fought on, but like a wounded bull. A javelin stuck out of his chest, and the blue tabards of the Grengins closed in.
Tiny was in much better shape, batting away the attacks of her foes with her shield and hammering down death with her blade. The ladder still stood, but no one else emerged. Where were they? They were desperate for reinforcements, even a rat like Jon. As he pushed off another blow with his broken shield, Jak saw a sight that filled his heart with joy.
Behind the Grengins attacking him rolled a siege tower. A troupe of archers emerged from the peak and unleashed a volley into the Grengins. The bridge dropped. Iron claws scraped the stone as they locked into place. Scores of Jak’s comrades flooded forward, an eruption of red tabards that swept over the blue on the wall and toward his position. The soldiers fighting Jak couldn’t help but turn and look at the furious commotion, and Jak seized his chance, hacking with everything he had left in his arm. He roared with all his exertion, and bodies fell before him until all who stood ahead were his own.
Jak turned, looking for Tiny and Barty. Nobody stood on that side of the wall. Further on, he could see blue tabards running down stairs and descending ladders. Grengin horns sounded from within the city. The commands rang out to fall back.
But pursuing the enemy into the city was not his job. Jak’s job was to take the wall. And somehow they’d done it. But where were Tiny and the others?
His shaky legs carried him to the spot not far from the ladder where Tiny had held a throng of Grengins at bay. He looked around, seeking a red tabard, but seeing only blood and gore. There, he saw a strand of blonde hair beneath a pair of Grengins. He hauled them aside, exposing gaping wounds wrought by Tiny’s axe, and there she lay, still, peaceful. Blood ebbed out of scores of wounds that somehow she’d managed to resist, and the largest one of all in her chest.
Jak collapsed onto the ground beside his fallen sergeant. He wasn’t sure why, perhaps some act of comfort when surrounded by so much death, but he picked up her hand, held it in his, and allowed tears to flow.
Most of his comrades had entered the city now. The gates had been flung open, and the smoke from fires rose from homes and buildings. The screams of women and children rang out with the barks of dogs. He didn’t want to watch, but where could he look? Blood everywhere. Gore everywhere. Innards, limbs and bones. The smell was fierce, and he fought the urge to spew. He turned back to Tiny. On her face, he saw a patch unblemished by blood. A spot so pure, and it reminded him of Martha. He would see her again soon.
The rattle of steel armour took his gaze away from Tiny’s face. It was an officer. Jak didn’t know his name, but he tried to rise and salute as he’d been drilled to do whenever he saw a superior.
“At ease, soldier. You’ve done more than enough. Anyone from your squadron still alive?”
Jak shook his head, unable to find the words. It was then that he noticed just how dry his mouth was.
“Just you then. One of your comrades tried to run instead of climb. A weaselly-looking fella with a moustache. I put an arrow in his back. Here, have a swig of this. You’ve earned it.”
He tossed Jak a skin, the finish soft and velvety, the opposite of the blood covering his hands. He drank deep and coughed.
“Wine,” he stammered, handing it back.
“Aye. Plenty more of it down there, too, once the looting starts. The Grengins make good wine, for all their heinous ways. Might as well find yourself a woman or two as well. Some of them don’t look half bad. But the real prize is all that gold they’ve got stashed here.” He looked off into the city as if seeking it out from his vantage point.
“It’s hard to think of gold,” Jak said.
The officer scowled at him. “Hard to think of gold? Did you take a blow to the head?” He nodded toward the city. “Get your damn wits together and get down into that city. Fill your purse now, and you won’t have to climb another bloody ladder in your life.” The officer snatched back his wine skin and gave him a look as if to say he wasn’t worthy.
“Why here? Why this city? It can’t just be for gold?” Jak asked.
The officer barked a laugh, already turning away. “Ask a priest, lad. I just make sure I’m on the winning side.”
The gods look at me with shame, Jak thought to himself as he watched the officer descend the steps toward the chaos, stepping over bodies while swigging his wine, sword still in its scabbard, metal armour gleaming amid the layers of blood coating the floor and walls.
At some point, Jak awoke to the screams and shouts of the people of Miscara. He couldn’t face it. He climbed down the siege tower and found his tent in the now quiet camp and slept.
The next morning, he woke with an urge to scrub his skin clean and write. Drying himself before the fire, he took out quill, ink and parchment.
My Beloved Martha
I survived.
It was all it took to break the dam he had somehow held in place since the battle. The parchment became unusable with all his tears. He didn’t know how to tell her about what had happened, what he had seen and experienced. What he did for her. How could he speak of his brave deeds of scaling the ladder and fighting an impossible fight upon the walls, only to kill those who were defending their homes and loved ones? Their own Marthas. It was hard to find any pride in that. How could he burden her with the horrors he had endured? They should not be shared. They should be locked away and taken to the grave, where no one would have to suffer their pain. Martha was too sweet, too innocent and pure to know such things. It was his job to shield her from it.
Jak wiped his sniffling nose, then the tears from his eyes, and took a deep breath. He pulled out a fresh page and started over.
My Beloved Martha
I survived. And I cannot wait to see your smile again.
END.
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Richie Billing’s short stories have previously been featured in Kzine, The Markaz Review, and Bewildering Stories, with one story adapted for BBC Radio.
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