Enlightened Empire

Chapter 396: Invincible No More

Once, Taki had thought that the armies of the southern kingdom were as invincible as their miracle king. Once, he had thought they were unbeatable. Now, he knew better.

Sure, their enemies had come faster than they had thought. Of course, their defenses had been insufficiently prepared. Still, a lack of preparation alone wasn’t enough to explain their failure. No, the persistence of their enemies had come as a shock even more so, to the point of disbelief.

Why won’t they retreat?

In abject horror, Taki watched the wave of red-armored demons charge towards his position. Maybe that was the image these old armors were trying to convey: Inhuman creatures, with skin and will made of steel, reddened from the blood of their enemies. It was certainly working on Taki.

His shivering fingers somehow managed to fill another paper cartridge into his rifle. Yet by the time he looked back up again, the red figures were twice as large as they had been before. The warriors charged ahead without fear, their shields and armored shoulders pushed forward to protect their bodies.

Shocked, he raised his gun once more at the figure closest to him. A pulled trigger, and the vicious looking old warrior fell to the ground. Yet none of those behind him stopped, not even in the slightest. None of the demons looked fazed in the slightest, as if they had completely forgotten the emotion called fear.

Again Taki looked down to reload his gun. He fumbled at the bag with the cartridges inside, but his fingers just wouldn’t get into the opening. He fumbled, and somehow, he managed to loosen the bag’s strings. With ever widening eyes, he watched as all his powder and shot just fell into the snow, wet and useless. Head empty, Taki looked up front for guidance.

“Hold!” Qhatuq shouted. For this battle, the veteran scout had picked up a halberd and taken the responsibility to hold off the brunt of the enemy charge right in front of Taki’s line of musketeers. So far though, the enemies had only made contact to their left and right. On both flanks, the fighting was already heavy. With concern, the veteran looked to the right, where their lines seemed to buckle just for a moment, but Taki was more concerned with their own survival.

“Careful, in front!” he shouted and pushed Qhatuq’s back with his empty gun. When the veteran looked back up, the old warrior was already close.

I’m sure I hit him. Why isn’t he dead?

Frozen solid from shock, and confusion, and cold, Taki watched as the warrior charged into their lines. Immediately, four halberds stretched out of their formation, to break the beast’s charge. Yet his sturdy frame, shoulders and elbows simply brushed aside all the weapons like they were mere toys. The children who held those toys were bowled out of the way. One was given the hit from an axe, as a gift goodbye.

It would be the last of his life, Taki was sure. Unlike these monsters, normal people wouldn’t survive from a wound like this.

The worst had happened.

Their formation broke.

Only Qhatuq alone somehow managed to hold on to his position. In the struggle, he had managed to lodge the space between his halberd’s axe head and spear point against his enemy’s neck armor.

Like the monster he was, the old warrior didn’t seem to care that his most vulnerable point was being attacked. Now that he finally stood still, Taki could see the manic grin in the creature’s face. While he swung his axe left and right to hold off the other soldiers around him, he simply pushed forward, against the halberd that was still lodged against his neck. Yet despite his poor position and ridiculous actions, he pushed Qhatuq back step by step.

Have to do something.

Taki looked back down, at his useless, empty weapon. His paralyzed body just stood there, without any action. At last, a hard and cold piece of metal bumped against his thigh, and reminded him of the something he could do. With manic speed he picked the bayonet off his belt. A scream from Qhatuq’s direction made his hands shake even worse, but he still continued on.

Come on, fit.

Somehow, despite his condition, he managed to fumble the bayonet into the muzzle after what felt like an eternity.

Yes!

Once more armed with a weapon, Taki looked back up at last, to rejoin the fight. While he had been busy with his own things, everyone seemed to have waited for him. The old warrior had only taken a few extra steps forward, nothing more. Responsible for his halt was Qhatuq, who still held on to the warrior with his halberd. By now, the weapon’s stock and the veteran’s feet were both buried deep into the snow, stemmed against the ground to withstand the warrior’s raw power.

The halberd’s sturdy hardwood handle was bent like a twig, about to break at any moment, and Qhatuq himself was on one knee, while his other leg was leveraged against the ground at an unnatural angle. It was a miracle that he had withstood the force until now.

Yet the warrior still looked relaxed, with the same manic grin on his face as before, still with a halberd pressed against the armor around his throat. He still swung his axe at anyone who would dare approach. Of course by now, no one dared anymore. Who would dare close in on such an inhuman beast? Who would be dumb enough to join the three soldiers who already lay at the monster’s feet, struck down by the vicious blows from the beast’s axe?

While Qhatuq wouldn’t hold out much longer, the warrior was just playing with him. Clearly, the beast could have just taken a step back to free himself from the halberd and then end the veteran scout’s life any time he wanted. The beast was just toying with them, confident in his superiority. Pure strength overwhelmed skill and determination. It was just a matter of time until the beast would get bored and end Qhatuq’s life.

Someone needs to do something.

Yet the soldiers around were either busy with the other warriors charging their lines, or were too intimidated by the old warrior’s ferocity to get close.

Damn it, I really am an idiot, Taki thought, before he screamed a broken, high-pitched scream and charged his enemy with his improvised spear.

Maybe it was fear, or maybe the cold air blowing in his face, but Taki could not even keep his eyes open to face the beast. He squinted and screamed and ran, until his blurred vision was entirely filled with the red of the warrior’s armor. Then all he did was thrust forward, and pray.

Please just hit something.

Somewhere, someone must have heard his prayers, of that he was sure. Somehow, miraculously, his spear didn’t simply bounce off the thick armor, and somehow, impossibly, Taki wasn’t hit by a swing from the warrior’s axe. Maybe the Divines had smiled upon the rookie, or maybe the warrior had been busy holding off someone else at the exact right moment. Either way, Taki could feel some resistance, and then his bayonet slid through soft flesh.

When he opened his eyes again, he was face to face with the old warrior. The grin on his face was finally gone, replaced by a shocked, wide-eyed stare. The wrinkly, weary face of the old man didn’t look like he was in pain. Rather, he seemed to be confused. Taki looked down and realized the state the warrior was in. Even as a monster, he could still bleed it seemed.

Two small holes in the man’s armor were clearly from previous gunshots. One had hit him in his chest, and another in his shoulder. Taki wondered which one had been his as he stared at the wounds that were gushing red blood like mountain springs. The only reason they hadn’t seen the blood was the blood-red armor. The color had covered up the injury and had made the old man look invincible.

Still, even with all that damage, he was able to fight off ten of them by himself, without slowing down at all. The wound that had finally done the old warrior in was Taki’s bayonet that was stuck under his elbow. The bayonet had penetrated the weak armor at the joint and gone straight through. Taki didn’t know if he had hit the heart, the lungs or whatever else, but it had clearly worked. Even so, despite everything, the warrior still wasn’t dead somehow.

The old man lifted the axe in his right hand, like an immortal ready to pass judgment. Fear turned Taki’s limbs to lead. A reflexive jerk somehow let him drop his rifle. He fell back into the snow out of pure terror, but it saved his life. The old man’s weakened swing missed the scout by a hair, before a shove from Qhatuq’s halberd – still on the warrior’s neck – pushed the monster over. The immortal had turned into a simple beast again, one that was on the verge of death. The injured creature tumbled back down the hill and disappeared into the snow. This time for good, Taki hoped.

If this guy came back again after all that, he may really have been an immortal. Taki knew he wouldn’t have the strength to face the monster a second time. He didn’t even know how he had managed the first time. While Taki was still taking greedy breaths of icy air to calm his banging heart, Qhatuq was much calmer.

“Hey, are you alive?” he asked in a strained voice.

Taki looked over at the veteran scout, who leaned on his weapon, one leg dragged behind him through the bloody snow.

“I think so,” he said. “What about your leg?”

“Broken or dislocated. It won’t kill me quite yet.” Qhatuq frowned. Unlike the worrisome frown on his colleague’s face, Taki felt liberated.

He looked at the front line of the battlefield, or what was left of it. The warriors had driven into their ranks and disrupted their clean lines, but now, their momentum seemed spent.

After Taki’s charge, maybe inspired by his own heroism, many of their musketeers had installed their bayonets and charged to reinforce the lines. By now, it looked like they had just barely held, and caused heavy losses to the monsters that had attacked them with reckless abandon.

From here, Taki could see over a dozen pieces of red armor lying in the snow.

“Looks like we did it.” In the end, Taki laughed. With his muscles shivering from exhaustion, and with the smell of blood in his nose and several dead comrades around him, he still had to laugh for some reason.

All tension left his body when he realized that the battle was over. They had done it. They had survived the worst of it. However, he cursed his excellent ears when he heard Qhatuq mutter under his breath.

“Heavens, no.”

Taki looked back up to his comrade, who was looking towards the west, away from the river. When Taki’s eyes followed, he saw red once more. It was the same red armor that had just become sparse on their front line. They had just stabilized against the beasts attacking them, and now even more of them had appeared across the horizon.

“It’s a flank.” Immediately, Taki understood and thought, what happened to the men we sent to protect our side?

While he was still shocked by this new development, Qhatuq had already reacted.

“Retreat!” he screamed in a full voice, in spite of his injuries. Finally, Taki understood what a real battle was, and he was frankly glad for any excuse to get away from it. Although the defeat stung, at least they could get out alive. However, as he left to organize his unit of musketeers behind the front line for a planned retreat, he suddenly remembered something.

“What about you?” he looked back at Qhatuq and asked a question he dreaded the answer for.

“Me and a few others will stay here for now. Anyone in front, and anyone too heavily injured to retreat safely, will stay to cover your retreat. We’ll hold them off until you are safe.”

“No way! You-”

“Follow your orders, soldier, remember?” Qhatuq gave a miserable smile. “I can’t get away anyways, not with that leg. Now you go back to camp and report what happened here. Bring more reinforcements and retake the hill immediately. We can’t waste any time. Keeping the hill and preventing the dam here is more important than anything, more than any of our lives. Now go! And never forget what happened here!”

For a second, Taki wanted to respond again, but he saw the red in the distance draw closer, and then Taki’s leg that dragged behind his body, and he knew that his insistence would only get everyone killed. He couldn’t have said anything anyways, his throat choked as it was. Thus, Taki turned and led about half their troops south, down the hill and back towards their camp.

The charge up the nameless hill that would later carry the name ‘cannon hill’ is widely considered the first military defeat of the southern kingdom’s line infantry against warriors in Medala’s history. By the end of the engagement, only 297 soldiers made it back to the camp to report on their defeat. Although the engagement was small and of minimal strategic value, the defeat broke the myth of the southern kingdom’s invincible army.