Even Gods Must Fall - Christian Warren Freed Page 0,33
dying in the first place. Most of Piper’s casualties were already removed from the battlefield. The dead were cataloged and carted off for burial while medics and surgeons filtered through the wounded. It was grim business, but one most of the soldiers had grown insensitive to. Limbs were hacked off. Buckets of blood slopped in corners when no one was looking. Piper always found the cries unsettling. It was no easy thing for a professional soldier to cry in fear of his life. Some wounds left little alternative.
Pushing thoughts of the triaged area away before he became sickened, Piper began slapping the odd soldier on the back or offering encouraging words to veterans who continued to prove themselves after nearly a year of unyielding warfare. His pride swelled at the pleasure in their faces. Not that they enjoyed killing or even fighting, it was his praise they sought. The knowledge that they had fulfilled their commander’s orders and managed to live through the horrors of combat was all any soldier really needed. Of course, seeing their buddy still standing next to them at the end, in perhaps slightly worse shape than the beginning, didn’t hurt either.
“When are we to the next one, Commander?”
“Showed them rebels, sir!”
Piper faked his grin. “Aye, that you did, lads. That you did. I was thinking of giving you louts a day off and letting the rest of the infantry take a crack at the next fort. They’ve been malingering in the mountains for a little too long if you ask me.”
Rousing laughter circled the immediate area. The vanguard was never expected to become engaged in prolonged battles. Their job was to flood the front lines and either force the defense to flee or buy enough time for the heavy infantry battalions to get online and attack. Unfortunately plans didn’t always go according to what was scribbled down on parchment. Piper’s vanguard, now bolstered with soldiers from Rogscroft and the Pell Darga, had forced more decisive engagements over the course of the winter war than in the Wolfsreik’s long history. A fact he was immeasurably proud of. Secretly he worried that Rolnir might have been correct when he guessed Piper would get killed long before his time was due.
“Sharpen your weapons, fix your armor, and I’ll see about getting some hot chow,” Piper continued. He looked around at the partially burned wood surrounding them. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to get too cold tonight. You’ve earned your rest, lads. Enjoy it. We’re finally home.”
They saluted as he stalked off. His mind was already wandering over the thousand tasks a battlefield commander was responsible for long before their arms dropped. The prisoners bothered him immensely for reasons he still wasn’t sure of. Worse, without any enemy commander, there was simply no way of knowing how strong the garrison had been. There was no telling how many, if any, people slipped away to warn the rest of Harnin’s defensive line when the attack began. That old feeling of guilt and remorse started creeping back into Piper’s conscience.
“This was a messy affair.”
Piper immediately felt some of the tension leave. Vajna had started out a fervent enemy, but their alliance forged bonds of comradeship only soldiers understood. Piper had come to rely on the Rogscroft general’s experience and opinions more as the campaign lengthened. He might even go so far as to say they were becoming friends. Men in their position seldom found the opportunity or desire to make friends. Friends die too easily over the course of a war.
“Tell me about it. I didn’t expect the reservists to put up such resistance,” Piper admitted. “It shouldn’t have been this hard, Vajna.”
“Makes you wonder just how bad taking all of the other forts is going to be, eh?”
Piper wasn’t ready to broach that subject just yet. He’d had his fill trying to sack the first one. Casualties were relatively light. He figured no more than twenty-five dead with another three times that wounded. Not that bad considering. Of course those numbers would be significantly smaller if he’d had artillery support. His memory danced back to the initial explosion though technically it was more of a collapse. The engineers had snuck in under cover of darkness and weakened a large portion of the wall while infantry and skirmishers crept as close to the fort as possible. The noise of so many logs and mortar collapsing in on itself was deafening. It was certainly loud enough to shake the garrison out of