The Alchemist*
Red Bridge | the Mother of all Thunders
Part Three (IIIB)
Act II
-Let Uher’s fire sort them out Falco-
‘There are no gods,’ Rosier Rosman had told them, looking at the mixture through the magnifying lenses. Young Luna, his sister’s daughter, the sober-faced Benedict Stam and the aloof Wim Luikens. ‘Just powerful creatures elevated above others with the help of magic. Their existence fueled by peoples worship. The more of it, the more powerful they become, but it’s mostly in people’s minds. What can be otherwise explained, baptized a magic act, or a miracle. We can change the essence of metals and create value out of junk, make a ‘fireball’ appear as destructive as the real thing, without using any spells. Just knowledge and a lot of trials.’
The rancid fumes rising from the blazing main camp filled the air, making it hard to catch a breath. Although the mask blocked some of the stench, it offered little relief. Wim's wounded hand throbbed painfully, and the stitches oozed blood, where the construct had pierced him.
An artificial person. Bones and flesh sewn together and sparked to existence anew. The mind wiped for the most part, because the saved information couldn’t survive the transfer to a new warehouse after the initial host’s demise. Magic used as medium to preserve vital parts and as fuel to get the construct going again.
It’s just a formula, Wim decided waiting for the last of the Deliverers to be brought forward. Hmm. Why, that’s it then.
Naught but a clear set of instructions on what elements to use, in what order, the correct ingredients and the process each component should undergo. The final synthesis, or fusion into a single construct, also needs a certain order to be correct and primed, before the final product is tested in the field.
Which is exactly what we’re doing here!
Ha-ha!
The Aken Bonemancers are just engineers and scientists like us!
Just in a different field.
A pleased at the breakthrough Wim glanced at Luna Rosman (Luna Winkel formerly, but she had reverted to her maiden name right after her husband had poisoned himself with alcohol) and then at Benedict Stam. Now Benedict was a tall lanky guy, but stood thinner than Luikens and with a full set of white hair. He carried a shortsword around these days, but it was doubtful whether Benedict knew how to use it.
Luikens had made a concerted effort to hire Rosman’s old pupils into the Archive, as assistant Archivists working for him. It wasn’t easy, but Flucht had seen the value of them working together for the common good. They were under a tight leash of course, even if they appeared to be unhampered, or of elevated status, since the Archmagister could have them killed with a simple nod.
So they remained vigilant and suspicious of any new developments inside the church.
“Gudo Ulsen wants to halt for the day,” Benedict told him and they both stared at Luna inspecting the crew of machine number four, carving a log into smaller cylindrical pieces. “He barely has enough people to run six machines. The men drop from exhaustion or just plain deserting.”
“We need the other two brought forward. We have much better results with volleys,” Wim said unconcerned with such trivial details and turned to watch Marcel Flucht’s interaction with Sir Milo Kirstein and Sir Aryan Verhagen, the two knights he immediately recognized. Sir Kosters was missing and also all the Inquisitors big names, like Vellers and De Hove. Even Merkel wasn’t there.
It offered Wim a little leeway to be bolder.
But not too much, unless the situation permitted it.
Courage is overrated.
“I don’t like this summer heat,” Benedict said with a shrug at Wim’s words. “The crystalized nitro-paste breaks down and reverts to liquefaction. This is a finer oily fluid. It seeps through hemp bags and leather sacks. Paper carton is better, but doesn’t last. Wood is the best material, or metal. Best out of bad options. Both are very dangerous, plus metal can produce sparks via friction.”
“Wagon eleven we’ve set aside, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but fourteen and nine have their floorboards soaked also,” Benedict explained and Wim nodded. “We moved the sticks to the mules.”
“How many mules are still loaded?” Wim asked him and grimaced seeing Flucht approach, with Brother Dumont murmuring in his ear.
“Just the one,” Benedict replied. “I’ll go and help Luna.”
“Yes,” Wim said nervously and removed his glasses to clean them with a cloth. “Master Flucht,” he greeted the troubled fellow Archivist. “We have made good progress.”
“Are you serious?” Flucht grunted and Luikens blinked almost dropping his glasses. He quickly put them back on with a shaking hand. “Dumont reports that an army of over five thousand is blocking the road to Mid Bridge! They might move on us any minute now!”
“Well, mister Dumont should make every effort to prevent them from reaching the machines,” and our persons, Wim said and then cleared his throat, having decided to add the last part aloud. “We can use the time to retreat all critical personnel—”
“Luikens,” Flucht growled getting in his face. “We are here to take control of the bridge! You are supposed to help!”
I’m not. Who cares about the bridge? Wim licked his bitter-tasting lips, apparently it’s a problem. Oh, well, he thought and took a moment before replying. “Can I see for myself?”
“Give him the field glasses,” a frustrated Flucht grunted at Dumont.
Luikens lowered the spyglass. Something was off. Then again, these are a lot of people to deal with at this junction. Hmm. They are also nicely packed together. A blob really. Would an uncontrolled blast amidst a crowd disperse in a circular manner? “Sergeant Gudo Ulsen can bombard them in less than five minutes. Clear them out in a tidy fashion. Fortunately for us, most Deliverers are already loaded. There’s your solution Flucht.”
“By the time you find the range,” Sir Verhagen rustled. “You’ll have given up our positions.”
The smoke might clear if a stronger breeze blows, what then? They’ll spot us for sure.
“You think it’s a reinforcing army?” Flucht queried. “Anyone has news on the battle?”
“Nothing recent yer holiness,” Dumont replied.
“We’ll know very soon,” Sir Kirstein said. “Magister De Hove will contact the High Regent from Rita’s Inn.”
Ah.
“We’ll fire a non-threatening projectile to gauge the range,” Luikens elucidated and the others turned to look at him. “But Dumont’s men should do their duty just in case.”
He paused to consider the distance. The huge gathering of people was just over four hundred meters away, directly after the main camp, but went on for over a kilometer almost to Mid Bridge.
Then turned to Benedict. “Fire the log,” he told the Alchemist. “Use the spyglass to locate where it lands. Get it right the first time Ben.”
“A new Khan army?” Luna Rosman asked him a minute later cleaning her dirty hands with a towel. “It is convenient we still have ammunition. Not easy to find a crowd willing to take one for science. Especially in government.”
Hah.
Luna had a lovely sense of humor. She wasn’t that pretty of a woman, despite her efforts. As a matter of fact, Wim found her even more flavorless and unappealing now, than what he did in the past.
In the time in between, Wim had met much prettier women.
None as dangerous as Rosman’s kin. “Winkler was a tax collector no?”
“Sure, but he wasn’t willing,” Luna retorted frostily.
Benedict was certain Winkler had been poisoned with a touch of hydrargyrum in his cup of wine.
Not that far away Flucht and Verhagen were considering their options. Dumont had already ordered his soldiers to prepare for an enemy attack, but had dispatched a number of scouts forward in order to scrutinize the great army’s disposition and true numbers.
Too many Issirs in there, Wim thought. But you never know.
“Mayhap the Reserve Army made it back from Colle milord?” Falco offered.
Highly unlikely.
“Let Uher’s fire sort them out Falco,” Luikens replied and then paused hearing the Deliverer’s twang. They both stared at the projectile disappear inside the smoke clouds covering the road. Benedict looking through the field glasses raised his left arm a moment later.
“Did we hit anything?” Gudo asked Luna who had rushed near the machine to help the crew reload it.
“I wasn’t looking mister Gudo,” Luna replied.
“Raise it two degrees,” Benedict said and lowered the spyglass with a frown. “It fell more to the edge of the crowd. I didn’t see any Cofols Wim.”
“What was that?” Gudo queried. The sergeant of engineers had approached to receive instructions.
“Not easy to see anything in this chaos Ben,” Luikens retorted readily. “Our eyes are tired.”
“Right,” Gudo Ulsen grunted and went to turn the knob that gyrated the machine’s trunnion with the help of a heavy spanner wrench.
Falco shivered. “Shaped or not that was a heavy log.”
“Mmm. Bring the machines two meters forward mister Gudo,” Benedict ordered. “We’ll fire at the Assayer’s discretion.”
Wim narrowed his eyes, conscious of the commotion happening in front of the row of eight Deliverers preparing to open fire and their crews. The scouts had returned to the lines of Golden Spears soldiers. Well, not that many of them were left by now. Luikens guessed around sixty and two dozens of knights. Perhaps forty knights and Templars. Mayhap another hundred injured could help out on the morrow, but not right now.
“What?” Dumont gasped listening to the two Issir scouts words. “Are you certain?”
“Two minutes!” Gudo announced loudly.
“Hurry it up Benedict,” Wim urged the fellow Alchemist. Brother Dumont was marching towards Flucht looking troubled.
“Sergeant?” Flucht asked.
Motherfucker.
“Dumont get back to your position!” Luikens snapped before Dumont could answer. “We might be attacked at any moment now!”
“Your grace!” Dumont protested.
“God damn it sergeant! We are about to be overrun here!” Luikens grunted and Flucht grimaced seeing him so invested.
“Clear!” Gudo barked right behind them and to the right of Luikens, another man rushing close to Verhagen and Flucht from the turn of the road, this one wearing priestly robes.
“Loose the packages,” Wim ordered nervously. The wind had picked up and the smoke had started dispersing.
“Up and away!” Benedict boomed with excitement, as he loved watching their machines at work in the field.
“Wait. Halt the machines!” A staggered Flucht barked upon hearing what the scout had to say, but the Deliverers fired one after the other before he could get all the words out.
-
Some kilometers away near the junction connecting the river road with the main road out of the capital –the latter running through Crimson Forest’s plains- Luikens and the Church’s forces came upon Hamadi and the two large clusters of slaves clashing. Hamadi had attacked to relieve the smaller Bridge guards force from Sonnenfeld, but got attacked in turn by slaves coming out of the main camp. The slavers found themselves basically surrounded from all sides and despite being better equipped to fight, faced total elimination. Besa Nafi was brutally killed, his body turned into a pulp by the enraged crowd that used blades, clubs, tools and even stones on the Khan’s advisor. Some of the slaves hadn’t made it out of the main camp -those located near the east side buildings- as Luikens had bombarded it upon arriving there killing friends and foes, but close to three thousand Issirs had already broken out of the west side.
When the Golden Spears entered the main camp and encountered no resistance, the engineers stopped and advanced the Deliverers closer to the junction. Either due to low visibility –a pitiful excuse as the distance between the embattled Issir slaves and Hamadi’s slavers was less than half a kilometer at most so it wouldn’t have been difficult to discern what they were facing, out of plain panic, or perhaps pure callousness, Luikens ordered the crews to bombard the two opposing parties.
Those across Chinos River and in the capital that heard the explosions described the great rumbling sounds like thunders. The ground shook, windows rattled and animals panicked. Uher’s Light fell upon Sonnenfeld’s and Hamadi’s men and killed people in droves. It was a violent, sudden death this, very destructive. Bodies disintegrated and at the snap of one’s fingers a great many people ceased to exist. With the first volley landing almost at the center of the unruly packed crowd, Hamadi’s slavers –encircled there- and the man himself, got incinerated instantly. With three volleys and inside ten minutes, Luikens’ machines obliterated around seven hundred people.
Those they didn’t kill outright, they maimed, blinded and deafened. Scores of miserable Issir citizens were set alight and turned to walking torches. Paul Sonnenfeld escaped the blasts and retreated in disarray towards the west camp, away from the main road. Many run south towards the bridges clogging down the Khanate’s supply wagons and reinforcements. They met a gruesome fate there. Others headed north to escape the unleashed hell and many stumbled east towards the junction and the Church’s positions. Their appearance shocked the Order’s soldiers that were preparing to defend the river road from a counterattack.
-
A smoldering man came out of the clouds of smoke. The echoes of the explosions that had reverberated across the plains had ceased, the ground had stopped shaking, but their memory remained. Gudo signaled they had run out of ammunition for the Deliverers and the walking corpse’s dangling arms detached one after the other. His right leg crumbled and the man collapsed in the middle of the road, ten meters from Sergeant Dumont’s position.
“You son of a bitch,” Flucht cursed Luikens, who stood back unsure whether such an aggressive tone was warranted given his contributions to the Church.
“More are coming!” Someone yelled from the lines of soldiers.
“Lower spears!” Dumont was heard and Wim turned to Benedict, who still had the spyglass.
“Anything?”
“Nah, I can’t see through the raised smoke,” Benedict replied, as the yells and cries of surprise from the Church’s soldiers increased. A whole lot of staggering figures trickling towards them from the junction.
“Help them out!” Dumont ordered. “Get them out of the road!”
Sir Brack rode near them on his stallion. He dragged another horse behind him. The bulky knight dismounted and walked to the Master Templar Aryan Verhagen, who stood near Marcel Flucht. The latter stunned at the condition of the survivors making their way towards them.
“Gudo is out,” Luna informed them, just as the Sergeant-at-arms of the Knights of the Chain, spoke to Sir Verhagen.
“Uher’s mercy. Are you certain of this?” Verhagen rustled and then stared at the people helped out of the road. “Our own people?”
“We might need to use your nitro-paste sticks Wim,” Benedict told the distracted Luikens. “We still have a pack mule and whatever we salvaged from that wagon.”
“Umm,” Luikens murmured and watched the pale as death Flucht almost drop to his knees at the news, but the two knights helped him stand upright. “Do it.”
“We got it out of an accountant,” Sir Brack explained, the commotion and noise from the soldiers rising. “He’d no skin left on his back.”
“Luikens!” Flucht growled and marched his way furious. “You heard that?”
“The man is clearly confused,” Luikens argued and Flucht ogled his eyes.
“Look at them!” He blasted the unruffled alchemist and Grand Archivist.
“You need to calm down Flucht,” Luikens replied austerely and Flucht almost had a stroke listening to his reply. “The road to the bridges is cleared. Have Dumont move forward.”
“Why you murderous… did you hear…?” A sick-looking Flucht stuttered and took a step back in disgust. Verhagen, who had just received another scout’s report, turned his head and interrupted the rattled priest.
“He’s right. We need to move before the Khan’s men respond,” Verhagen said soberly.
“Falco,” Luikens said returning near the machines, while a pale Dumont issued curt orders for the Golden Spears men to advance towards the main road. “Bring that mule tied to the wagon here.”
“The one with the long rope?” Falco asked suspiciously. He kept staring at the scores of miserable, malnourished Issir civilians pass them by, a lot of them injured or barely able to walk. An armless, half-burned woman asking for her daughter, who she’d lost inside the main camp, during Gudo’s first bombardment.
“Yes,” Luikens told him with a grimace of concern at the plummeting mood afflicting the Golden Spears soldiers and the machine crews, even the hardened knights were affected, as more and more civilians reached them. This might turn ugly for me, he thought worried.
“Yeah, I don’t want to get involved with the pack mules no more, milord,” Falco argued. “This sucker might explode at any moment.”
“That’s true,” Luikens agreed sucking at his cheeks thoughtfully. “Now go and bring that mule here. Use the rope.”
“Will it help?” Falco asked not fully convinced.
“It’s supposed to,” Luikens replied vaguely.
A murmuring Falco walked away to approach the laden animal, taking extra precautions the closer he got.
“We salvaged some of the liquid nitro in the bottles,” Benedict informed the concerned Assayer.
“We might have trouble soon,” Luikens interrupted him.
“Ahm, yes… so we can use them on the bridge. It worked before,” Benedict continued.
“They are going to try to pin this whole mess on us,” Luikens snapped.
“Pin what mess?”
“Eh,” Luikens made a vague gesture with his hand encompassing the nearby burning main camp and some of the many survivors of the shelling.
Benedict scratched his head with a dirty finger thinking about it. “So, what are we going to do?”
“Keep the smaller vials separately,” Luikens ordered. “We’ll use the sticks on whatever they send over the bridge and keep the rest for self-defense.”
“The sticks need a fuse Wim.”
“I’m aware,” Luikens replied tensely. “Check the mule for any seepage. God darn heat,” he cursed and then breathed out. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and stared at the frowned at his reactions Benedict. “Just be ready. We might have killed a lot of Issirs back there.”
“So?” The other alchemist asked a little perturbed. “We have to, else how are we to investigate the nitro-paste’s properties? They wanted a weapon to kill people, not excavate a church’s foundations or dig a tunnel. What was a weapon supposed to do? Everyone must sacrifice something for science. Right?”
“I agree Ben,” Wim told Rosman’s old pupil moved. “But people might not see it this way old friend.”
-
At the epicenter of the bombarded area many small craters had appeared, even on the cobblestone road and thick smoke clouds concealed much of the carnage left behind. It was probably less than what is reported due to the destructive power of the Assayer’s concoction. One can’t truthfully attest to ‘heads and limbs lodged on nearby trees or walls’, ‘or fingers dug out the disturbed soil and pavement days later.’
Still, due to the many hundreds of confirmed casualties enough burning corpses, or mutilated remains were left scattered behind for the arriving Golden Spears to discover. It vindicated the survivors’ words of a ‘great Issir revolt’ that had attempted to overwhelm the Khan’s guards and slavers. Sir Kirstein, acting as Albert Kosters 2nd in command, ordered riders to locate the retreating civilians under Paul Sonnenfeld. Kosters had been injured and was at the rear receiving medical assistance.
With most of the Inquisitors also near the destroyed buildings of Rita’s Inn, –Maas Vellers had been killed hours prior and under mysterious circumstances in the attempt to expel Rumu’s mercenaries’ from the buildings- their forces thoroughly decimated, and now under new leadership, Kirstein and Verhagen, along Marcel Flucht and Wim Luikens, assumed full command of the remnants of the Church’s army that had reached Mid Bridge.
Dumont was ordered to secure Mid Bridge and the pontoons initially, but upon spotting Khanate cavalry and infantry on the three bridges, they realized they didn’t have sufficient numbers to do it. Blocking the main road appeared to be the only other avenue, but standing amidst the destruction of the recently bombarded terrain had an adverse effect to the Golden Spears soldiers’ morale. While this author understands the need to humanize part of the force –they had performed heroically up until this point going above and beyond- and shift the blame of the catastrophic blunder to Wim Luikens, it must be noted here that the widely reported collapse in morale shouldn’t have been unexpected. The Golden Spears had been on the road for forty eight hours without any sleep and more than half that time had been spent in fighting one enemy after the other.
The men were at their breaking point already. The sight of so many of their countrymen’s destroyed bodies –some relatives surely amongst them- was just the last drop. Fearing an open mutiny or a mass desertion, Dumont ordered the men to advance nearer to the Mid Bridge and on ‘better’ ground, a bit outside the kill zone, but this action alerted the Khanate to their presence. The Horselords were busy trying to contain the panic and chaos caused by the slave revolt –it had stripped the bridges from their guard details- and control the supply wagons that had been ordered to stop earlier to avoid falling into enemy hands, an instruction that had blocked the way for Senet’s reinforcements.
-
A Golden Spear’s soldier that stood in the shieldwall, dropped his weapon and collapsed on the ground with a thud, whilst the one next to him stooped to puke his guts out on the ground. Men cursed or prayed, with the officers having trouble dressing up their thin lines. Many citizens had returned to locate their missing families and friends to their rear, and their cries and desperate calls of their beloved names made the gloomy scene even more surreal. The usually stoic Sir Verhagen appeared as affected as the rest of the Church’s leadership, who were anxious to come up with a plan to stop the Horselords from pouring out of the bridges in force. Everyone appeared greatly shook by what they had discovered.
Or otherwise interested.
“Look,” Benedict told the nervous Luikens, and pointed at a bloody torso burrowed in the cobblestone. “The flesh is peeled off, no internal organs and the ribs are all cracked. The spine just ripped out of the body when the head detached.”
“Thirty meters,” Luna informed them carefully measuring the distance from the crater. “Everything inside the radius either pulverized thoroughly or was expelled with force.”
“I saw Duncan running here with my boys,” a burned citizen was trying to explain to a grimacing Golden Spear’s sergeant nearby. The man’s blackened face missing all facial hair and the skin at the top of his bloody bald head peeled off. “Then the last volley came and it blew me off the street. I just woke up.”
“The concentrated stable product is much more powerful,” Benedict continued, forcing Wim to turn his attention on him again. “As we thought. Still quantity matters and we have a delivery problem boss.”
“Eh,” Luikens grunted and pressed his burning eyes closed, afore opening them again. The hellish landscape still visible and the putrid gasses still reaching his nostrils. He felt sick. “We use as powerful coils as we can build.”
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“How many bodies inside the radius Luna?” Benedict asked narrowing his eyes as if something had just occurred to him.
“At the more packed areas, probably fifty,” Luna replied and stooped to pick up a blackened forearm from the ground but it came apart in her hand. “It blew everyone in there out. This is a mess. We need to wear proper coats Ben.”
“Say sixty kilos, eh… make it seventy for every person,” Benedict murmured making the calculations in his head. He paused and took a piece of scroll Luna brought him, and then scribbled down the numbers.
Luikens watched the distant stone bridge apprehensively for a moment, not listening to their conversation. Then looked at the double row of Golden Spears manning the shield-wall and furrowed his brows. He glanced at another group gathered around the distraught Marcel Flucht, arguing about their lack of cavalry.
“We’re going to get brushed aside,” he grunted to the other two alchemists/part-time archivists. “This is the worst place to stand when the Khan’s army charges out of the bridges.”
“That’s four thousand kilos of material. Four tons easily tossed away,” Benedict murmured not paying attention to the worried Luikens. “Wim, the force released is much more powerful than whatever any spring or torsion system can produce.”
Luikens went to admonish his colleague and wake him up to the danger, but paused at his words and grabbed the scroll from Benedict’s hand. He read it quickly with a grimace, paused for a moment to clean his glasses on the front of his robes and resumed reading the alchemist’s scribblings carefully.
“Too spread out,” Luikens muttered to himself, whilst Benedict and Luna stooped to listen to his words. “Then again,” hmm… Wim knelt down and quickly sketched something on the scroll, using his knee as support. “If you contain it… um, contain the blast and direct it only one way. Yes,” why this is a groundbreaking thought, he decided seeing the mechanism forming in his head. “You’ll need a long, very-sturdy, tube. Not out of wood obviously.”
“Ceramic?” Benedict chanced.
“Too brittle,” Luna argued as she had realized what Luikens was talking about. “Brass is better, or iron.”
“Eh,” Luikens grunted, after running all the calculations in his head and crumbled the scroll to toss it away. An aloof Benedict went to gather it from the ground. “It won’t work. Even a contained, directed one way, explosion might trigger the nitro-paste. You can’t hermetically enclose it, since you need it to explode on impact. The trapped gasses and increased temperature will probably make the device detonate inside the tube, afore it propels it outside. It’s a good idea, but I can’t—”
“What if we don’t use an explosive payload?” Benedict asked checking on the drawing Luikens had made on the crumbled paper. “Will it send a stone further than a catapult?”
“A stone that fits inside a tube?” Luikens asked.
“Does it have to be a stone?” Luna offered with a pleased smirk.
Actually, no… it doesn’t.
“Luikens!” Flucht yelled getting up from the ground and walked towards him irate. “What are we going to do now? You callous son of a bitch! I told you not to fire afore confirmation!”
“Give me a moment,” a distracted Luikens grunted and a flushed Flucht lunged his way, both the priest’s hands grabbing at the Assayer’s throat.
Shit.
“Stop him!” Luikens yelled, sounding strangled because he was. “He’s trying to murder me!”
“Stop me?” An irate Flucht yelled in his face, spittle landing on Luikens’ thick glasses. “You killed all those people!”
“Let them charge,” Luikens croaked, on the verge of fainting.
“Eh?” Flucht growled, gawking at the red-faced Assayer.
“We’ll do the same we did to Kmet’s chariots,” Luikens replied hoarsely, now forced to give up on his remaining vials. “It will break up their charge.”
“You said we were fresh out!” Flucht rustled and shoved him away. Luikens stumbled to his feet, blinked once and then breathed out, speaking in a soothing voice to those watching the scene, in order to calm down the rising tensions.
“We discovered more.”
Flucht pressed his mouth. “Where?”
“Mister Falco!” Luikens barked, smiling tensed at the end of it.
“DARN MULE AIN’T MOVING BOSS!” A disturbed Falco yelled from somewhere at the back. “That’s as far as I can drag it. The rope ain’t much help!”
“We don’t need the mule,” Luikens assured those present that stared his way confused. “Just the load.”
-
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-
Senet of Yin Xi-Yan had arrived in the capital a day before the battle had started and while he was at first relieved from duty due to an infected wound, he asked to participate in order to avenge Cataphract leader Hespu. His half-brother had been killed some weeks prior. The sullen Burzin initially didn’t want to hear from any of them, but during the second day, Senet visited the Cataphract main quarters on the south bank of Chinos River and the Khan’s messengers informed him of Ota-Kmet’s predicament. Senet with several Cataphracts and riders from the Reserve army that had made it back from fighting Lord Ruud De Weer –Ramses and Masud Rum were also with their group, but were too-sick to participate- petitioned the Khan to allow for reinforcements to cross the bridges.
Burzin had learned of Tyfon’s attack at the Issir’s army center, and since Sonnenfeld’s slave revolt had blocked the road hesitated to commit Senet too-soon against ‘slave rubble’ believing Hamadi would deal with them. ‘These are not Gladiators of the blasted arena! By the Spirits! Slaves don’t fight!’ Well, these were fresher slaves, so the Khan was wrong in that.
On top of that fallacy, nobody believed Ota-Kmet and Rumu had lost the battle against Luikens force to their east flank. They thought Senet’s ‘fresher’ horses would be better used against Lord Anker’s infantry in the plains and sweeping up the Issirs after Tyfon finished his attack. Perhaps, the delay was for more practical reasons, like for example the clogged up with supply wagons bridges and the Horselords unwillingness to bring their horses near elephants.
Whatever the case may have been, Hamadi’s slavers got destroyed alongside a great many number of rebelling civilians/slaves and after the shock of the nearby bombardment ended, Luikens slow-moving machines rolled down the smoking road to park three hundred meters from the Mid Bridge. Senet, who had cantered ahead of the Khan to watch the bridge, immediately dispatched forty riders (mostly medium cavalry) to smash the Issir crews manning the machines. The latter rode over rear area crews, slaves and supply wagons personnel, reached the stone bridge and charged at the thin lines of the Golden Spears.
With less than a hundred soldiers available -as many injured were scattered between Chinos Turn and Rita’s Inn- Dumont’s force didn’t appear too-intimidating. At least thirty men-at-arms must have been present at that time, but they were too-spread out to be noticed by the Horselords.
They didn’t have time to intervene anyway.
Luikens crews, now freed from working the seven or eight remaining Deliverers, –which unbeknownst to the Khan had run out of ammo and were used as props by the Church- hurled small glass vials filled with Uher’s Light to the charging horses. The explosions mostly happened too-far from the Horselords, but the blinded horses panicked, riders were hurled from the saddles and trampled under hooves, and the charge was broken up with almost no Issir casualties. Half the Horselords were killed as a matter of fact with a single Issir engineer losing his life.
The hapless engineer tripped up –or stepped on a severed leg- in his attempt to hurl the vial as far away as he could, went down with a soul-crashing yelp and the vial –it had slipped from his nervous fingers in the tumble- landed right next to his head. In the loud explosion that came after the spectacular fall –and right after the series of booms that had ravaged the charging lancers- three Golden Spears soldiers standing twenty meters away went down from the startle –and the blinding light- whereas a fourth soiled himself. He had to leave the line to clean up in the chaos that followed.
-
“The heathens retreat!” Sir Brack boomed from atop his horse and the sober Sir Verhagen signaled for his squire to bring him the Order’s greatsword from a spare horse.
“Ha-ha! They think the Deliverers are still working!” Falco guffawed, greatly relieved with the aftermath and all but blowing out Luikens eardrums. The Assayer had just removed the protective wax earbuds and was caught unawares. As for his grinning bodyguard, well… Falco had been spared from joining the vial-throwers crew by citing a last minute arm injury caused from dragging the stubborn pack mule around. It was a lousy excuse, but Luikens -an exceptional coward himself- respected Falco for it.
“Brother Dumont! March the men forward!” Sir Kirstein ordered the Golden Spears infantry officer, riding his horse near the frontline.
“Tell Gudo to get the machines closer,” Luikens told Benedict Stam and Rosman’s old pupil went to order the jubilant crews to get the Deliverers moving again. Not an easy thing, as each heavy machine needed the help of oxen and they had to set them up properly earlier, as if they were ready to fire on the Horselords, in order to be believable.
“No, get the infantry going first!” Flucht barked hoarsely and turned to glare at Luikens, who was still working on Benedict’s idea in his mind. Expanding on it more like. “What if they sniff out our bluff?”
“They won’t risk it.”
We are fighting primitive brutes.
“What if they do?” Flucht insisted. “We can’t cover all three bridges. That’s all the men we have damn it.”
Not if you bring the civilians back here to use as fodder.
It was too soon to go there obviously.
“Place most of the infantry and a Deliverer before the pontoon bridges, the rest near Mid Bridge’s exit,” Luikens offered and pursed his mouth.
“That’s not what I asked darn you!”
It appeared to Luikens that Flucht had lost his mind after they had discovered the mayhem Gudo’s machines had caused.
“We don’t have any more direct explosives,” Luikens replied and breathed out to get some of the tension out.
“What about… the other thing?” Flucht’s family was always somewhat intimate with their ancestor’s work even through all the red tape and secrecy imposed to them by the church. Then again a Flucht always worked for the Archive. “Will your fuse work reliably?”
No, it won’t.
“Ah. It might,” Luikens puffed out, his throat irritated by the fresh stench of burning flesh and putrid smokes coming from the newly created crater, the stern-faced marching soldiers looked to avoid, as they redeployed less than a hundred meters from Mid Bridge. He could even see the Horselords, looking tiny on their precious horses or on foot, watching them from the other side of the river. The four hundred meters long stone bridge was wide enough for three carriages to move over it side by side, but it would be a tight squeeze. The pontoon bridges, all made out of timber boards secured over floating ramps, were wider but less stable. Each was located a hundred meters on each side of the larger bridge and made use of a couple of dirt-roads that connected with the main cobblestone road.
“The sixth page is not about gold Marcel,” he finally told the fuming archivist. “It is, but not only. A word play laced with truth. Eelco Flucht used fulminate literally, I believe. Purification, through explosion. Another word for a chemical reaction. All of his saved pages talked about explosives. The strange charcoal powder phrase on page three, a formula to create better fuses.”
“What in Uher’s name are you talking about?” Flucht grunted.
“The Tustarol Rotse of the Alafern and the crazy tales of Fadius Dresden. If you use old Imperial then it translates to explosive pipes, or tubes. Carried by a forgotten realm’s armies in an even more distant past.”
“Luikens, we’re in the middle of a crucial battle,” Flucht snarled. “And you’ll bring up ancient history and dubious blasted theories?”
“Fadius is a Lorian name,” Luikens replied calmly. “Dresden a non Issir surname. It means ‘a place inside a forest’, and it’s a dwarfish word, if I’m not mistaken. You know all that, because all your life you’ve spent reading old texts and histories. Retracing your ancestor’s journey and achievements. But they weren’t his really, nor mine. We went from an educated race of peoples to whatever Reinut was. Shaped in the image of an uncouth brute that couldn’t pronounce Kaletha properly.”
“What’s this talk? What’s your darn point?” Flucht grunted taking a step back.
“A construct tried to kill me. An artificial human.”
“So what if he did?”
“Fadius’ treasure wasn’t gold. He really did see the cities of the Alafern and stole their ancient secrets in a sense. They were a dead race back then, seven hundred years ago, more so now hopefully, but they weren’t always dead,” Luikens continued with a grimace at the ungodly noise produced by the screeching wheels of the Deliverers moving past them. “Eelco stole them from Sessi’s old Library and the story of the seven diary pages is just that. A story, told to disguise the truth of his theft. He wasn’t a scientist. Just an imposter that killed a lot of people doing Reinut’s bidding. Willingly. Am I right?”
Unlike me you son of a bitch!
Marcel Flucht lodged his tongue behind his lower lip and pursed his mouth tightly.
“The fabled blast tubes were real. Uher has nothing to do with any of this,” Luikens told the thoughtful Flucht and grimaced. “Your ancestor just never managed to recreate them.”
Because he was a criminal. A pirate scum.
Neither a devout man like these fools, nor a scientist.
“Can you?” Flucht queried and Wim sighed, another similar query almost a decade ago had brought him to this place eventually, standing between two armies, well over a thousand mutilated corpses rotting nearby and probably about to be hated by a lot of people with passion.
They are going to crucify me for this knowledge and they have their excuse.
Even if we win.
So he told Marcel what he wanted to hear.
“Nay, I cannot,” Luikens replied calmly. “But I know how to prevent the Khan’s army from crossing over.”
-
Brother Falco
Early evening of the 28th
The Bridge over Chinos River
“They lobbed arrows!” An engineer yelled and everyone rushed to take cover behind the carriage or just recoiled, if he wasn’t quick enough. A man got hit by an arrow midstride, yelped and grabbed at the shaft to pull it out of his sides, but reached the edge of the bridge and plummeted down with a drawn out scream.
“Bring the pickaxe!” Flucht yelled at Falco. “I need to loosen another stone joint!”
“Ah,” Falco grunted and stood up to run near the archivist again. The Horselords kept creeping up closer, as if daring the crews manning the machines and watching them from the north entrance of the bridge, about a hundred and fifty meters away, to fire their shot.
The Khanate cavalry gathered at the other edge of the bridge –the south- ready to charge across while they started the long process of reloading. There was nothing to reload the machines with, every explosive Wim Luikens had available they had carried to the bridge.
So the scouts and rangers, even light infantry kept creeping up closer nervously. The closer they got to the working on securing the explosives Issirs –placed in small barrels- the easier to hit them with arrows.
Some javelins were surely to come at us at any point now.
“Brother Carlson was a good guy, bless his soul,” Falco told the working to connect the sticks inside the barrels with their fuses Flucht.
“Aha,” Flucht murmured, not paying attention to Falco. The high-ranking archivist had volunteered to help Benedict and that creepy lass Luna, given that Master Luikens’ injured hand had flared up and he couldn’t use it.
Well, he could, but the chief was like that.
Falco would have done the same in his place.
He sighed, still very hot despite the bridge’s humid atmosphere.
He wouldn’t have killed all those people though.
Or Carlson.
Falco raised his head to glance over the carriage and spotted three Horselords not a meter away. They had approached plastered to the short wooden barriers of the bridge and used the arrow volleys and the semi-darkness, the sun had almost disappeared to the west, to avoid detection.
“Watch out!” Falco barked and stood up. The scout immediately turned his javelin on him and heaved it with one hand. Falco ducked under the carriage, the point hit the sides and went through the planks.
Falco cursed and unsheathed his arming sword, stood up again, but the Horselord had jumped on the deck and leaped on him. The two men rolled on the bridge’s paved deck, sounds of alarm and screams erupting from those nearby.
The Horselord bit his cheek in the attempt to head-butt him, an accident, but the cut stung Falco something fierce. He moved his arm, sawing the sword’s edge on the man’s neck, opening up the flesh and the scout rolled away from him. Falco got up, raised the sword to hack at the cursing Horselord, missed, the blade clanged on the stone tiles and then it bounced upwards at him. It almost chopped the spastically jerking aside Issir’s own nose off.
“Shite!” Falco grunted fully panicked, when another Horselord leaped over the carriage, more of them rounding it, as this was a concerted effort to attack and dislodge the crew working the Issir edge of the bridge. They were understandably worried about what their opponents were doing, and Falco couldn’t begrudge them that.
Falco attacked with a slash that opened a gash on the scout’s shoulder, the flesh parting to show the broken clavicle. The man went down with a groan of agony and another took his place, the scrap turning serious in the bridge’s narrow confines. Falco did the same thing again, but the new opponent was smarter and got out of the way. The grimacing Falco made to turn and attack him again, but a tall dude wearing a chainmail shirt blocked his blade with a scimitar.
Falco jerked back, as the armoured dude’s next move was an attempt to run him through. The Horselord missed, Falco hacked in retaliation, and got him on the right shoulder, which staggered the enemy soldier back.
And probably made him angrier.
“You smelly black mongrel,” the Horselord cursed, as if an insult could rattle Falco more than his blade, but before he could offer a proper response, an even taller figure got between them.
Falco heard a strange whoosh and then half of the Horselord’s face disappeared with a burst of gore. The greatsword angled as it returned, Sir Verhagen’s free hand shoved Falco out of its path and the blade caught the nimble scout from afore right in the sternum.
Slashed him open like a trout at the fish market.
“Get at them!” The Templar boomed and stepped out from the behind the carriage, greatsword resting on his right shoulder like a spear, as the large group of Horselords that had approached them attacked all at once.
-
Fearing the approaching Deliverers catastrophic payload, Senet ordered his riders to stay away from the bridge and dispatched a mixed group of soldiers to harass Luikens’ Issirs. The latter had decided to destroy the bridge, and used the fear of the machines to keep the Horselords away. This enraged Burzin, who approached on his horse the Cataphract leader to berate him for his perceived inaction.
The Horselords made another attempt with darkness slowly falling over the Chinos River’s banks, while sending a decent sized infantry force to attempt to either flank the Issirs using the east pontoon bridge, or draw their attention away from their cavalry. The earlier costly fail had rattled the Horselords, as they couldn’t understand what they were up against.
This second attempt turned into a bloody scrap on the Mid Bridge itself and more Issirs were sent there to prevent Senet’s soldiers from reaching the engineers setting up the explosive concoction. Uher’s Light came in many variations, some fanciful and even bordering the absurd with their religious undertones, but has physical form, or one its forms is something that resembles a plain ceramic stick. Also described as a paper rod, or even ‘stinky shaft’ for its putrid smell.
While the Khanate’s attack failed with the participation of Sir Verhagen and even some of Dumont’s soldiers, the failure was closely watched by Burzin and Senet from across the bridge, along many other Horselord officers that were present. They realized that whatever the Issirs were doing, they weren’t going to attempt to cross the bridge firstly, else they would have done it already, and they also wouldn’t use their machines for whatever reason.
As one of Burzin’s keen-eyed advisors commented. ‘It appears they are out of ammo, oh great Vizier.’
Without hesitation Senet ordered his riders to attack in two groups. The first was to cross the bridge and brush aside the defenders, whilst the second was to go beyond it, and this time reach the Deliverers.
‘Don’t destroy the accursed machines and save some of the crew,’ a suddenly revitalized Burzin ordered Senet. ‘We’ll learn their secrets and then use their own devilry against them.’
-
The Templar downed the huge sword diagonally and hacked off both of the charging horse’s forelegs at the joints. With a gut-wrenching neigh the warhorse plunged forward, catapulted its screaming rider over the bridge and after it slid uncontrollably on its own bloody stubs for three meters, crashed on the wagon’s sides toppling it over.
Hallowed fuck! Falco thought horrified seeing the launched wagon spilling out the small barrels, breaking the wooden rails and then dropping in the river. The small barrels bounced about merrily, with some stopping near the holes they had dug into the bridge’s deck, or near already placed barrels. Others rolled across, or between fighting opponents –with each bounce eliciting a collective gasp of horror from the Issirs and complete indifference from their oblivious opponents- to finally stop at the barriers on the other side of the bridge.
The Issirs paused in shock while this was happening fearing the pregnant with explosives barrels would go off, but somehow they didn’t. The pause though helped the Horselords take the upper hand in the vicious scrap, downing several Golden Spears members. In the chaos Sir Verhagen had gone down as well.
Falco ducked under a spear slash and chopped at the man’s foot using the sword as a cleaver. The Horselord groaned in agony a moment afore the now standing Falco’s heavy blow with the sword’s guard ripped most of the teeth out of his upper jaw and turned the whimper into a gurgle.
How about that? Falco thought breathing out.
“Falco! Don’t just stand doing nothing! Get another torch man, for the love of Uher!” A frantic engineer yelled from somewhere, the day caught between the setting crimson sun and that eerie half-light or half-darkness had crept up on them. Somewhere beyond the river, a series of tiny sparkling lights had appeared, the not so distant Issir’s Eagle waiting to learn the outcome of the battle.
A heavy-breathing Falco hurried to the edge of the bridge, grabbed a torch from the mule and dipped its clothed tip in the oil barrel. He then quickly placed it on the sword’s blade and run the blade on the paved deck. The fat sparks ignited the torch. Without hesitation Falco rushed back, at least two more Issirs doing the same with lit torches. He slid on human entrails in his fretfulness, felt the jolt in his knee and screamed in agony, but clenched his jaw to power through the sixty meters distance to reach near Marcel Flucht’s position over the fourth arc. The latter had attempted to retrieve Verhagen’s body near the broken rails, but failed.
The reason for it were a group of riders that had galloped nearer to the Issir positions and were now at the bridge’s midpoint or between the seventh and eighth arc. Without the wagon they were terribly exposed to a direct charge and Falco spotted three Cataphracts amongst the riders. Several foot archers squeezing by on both sides of the horses to reinforce their friends. Bodies were piled on top of each other in the few hotly contested square meters.
He also saw the previous two Issirs that had attempted to reach the interconnected with cords painted barrel laying dead quite a distance from it. The latter had stopped its merry roll near the bridge’s left side barriers –the east side- spilling coils of cord resembling snakes out of its bowels. The engineers –now turned into bloody corpses- had almost reached it, but now lay shot-up with arrows and their still burning torches illuminated the deck’s stone tiles, some of the nearby unconnected fuse cords already smoking.
“Give up this foolishness,” the imposing mounted Cataphract barked with a muffled roar, the smiling mask staring at the Issirs still defending their part of the bridge and Dumont’s soldiers that had moved following Falco’s back and forth dash to reinforce them. “The jig is up!”
“Suck on Uher’s holy dick!” A partly devout, partly blasphemous Issir roared back getting a mixed reaction from his colleagues.
“All linked fuses are joined up in there,” a grim-faced Flucht explained taking the torch from him. “To the placed barrels. They must go off.”
“Why didn’t they go off?” Falco asked unsure and a little peeved.
Does no one have a straight plaguing answer?
This is important stuff darn it!
“The mixture has cooled off some, it hardened,” Flucht replied and reached inside his robes’ pockets to get a small vial out. Falco took a step back recognizing the concoction in its more unstable form. “The rest is Uher’s scale that finds our souls lacking and what’s left, old science we still know very little about.”
Falco had no idea what the priest and archivist meant. Another Issir carrying a shield rushed to reach the barrels but made it only a couple of steps in the semi-darkness, before a bolt clanged on his helm, punched inside his cranium and dropped the hapless man without another sound. Behind the group of riders and archers less than twenty meters in front of them, more horses were heard trotting their way.
“We might have to retreat priest,” Falco said, nervously watching as the Horselords reloaded their crossbows and the archers turned their bows towards them.
“I brought this here in a sense,” Flucht said hoarsely and pursed his mouth. The priest’s tired eyes had hollowed out on his gaunt face, when he turned them on Falco apologetically. “Can’t leave it for the heathens to use.”
“Luikens can make more,” Falco argued, as the seven meters to the fuse-barrel were not something he wanted to navigate while being shot up from every slanted-eye cretin watching them.
“Luikens is too much of a coward to stick around and face the piper,” Marcel Flucht said and stood up. “He’s already gone lad. Find me a way to the barrel brother Falco.”
Falco breathed out in an attempt to gather some courage and failed, because you can’t just find the stuff laying about, with a nervous spasm marring the lower part of his dirty face. Just do it, he thought pensively and dashed for the dropped shield with a curt gesture for Flucht to follow right after him. He zigged and zagged to give himself a chance, boots thudding on the tiles and heart beating wildly in his chest.
Bam and boom.
Falco stooped to pick up the discarded shield, arrows whistling over his head or breaking on the bridge’s deck. A bolt punched through the top part of the heater shield and ripped half his ear off of his head, the sharp jolt of pain making him howl like a wolf burned with the hot iron in the gonads. They reached two meters from the painted red, still upturned barrel and with people yelling at them, after what Falco believed was a full hour, but it was only a breath’s time. Horselords cursing and Issirs cheering in a buzz that reached his ringing ears.
Flucht burst out from behind the cover provided by the shield and his body, with Falco dashing the other way to draw the Horselords attention. It succeeded in a sense, as most of the arrows went after the grimacing Falco. Bolts and arrowheads smacking at the weakened shield. The wood cracking, a bolt going through wood and Falco’s left palm, right under ring and mid-finger.
Falco twirled around, changing direction as he’d heard the horses moving against them and saw Flucht stagger back shot in the chest with an arrow. The archivist took another step and dropped the lit torch inside the barrel. With a puff of black smoke all the fuses caught fire, just as Falco’s shield came apart. A piece of it still nailed on his left hand with the help of that bolt.
He dropped to a knee, managed to get up with a half-turn and watched as the Cataphract lunged at the now wounded from another two arrows Flucht. Eh, make it three, with the last one punching Marcel just below the wobbling knee joint. The Cataphract’s armoured horse trotted near the smoking barrel, snorted when the Horselord sharply pulled at the reins and kicked out with both of his forelegs.
Well, should have bedded that Asturia whore, a stunned Falco thought.
Praised be Uher.
The double kick connected with the smoking red barrel, ripped most of the cords out of it and sent it flying over the rails, straight for the bottom of the river. Then the Horselord proceeded to expertly lead his trained horse around in a semi-circle, the iron hooves crashing the still smoking fuses one after the other.
Oh, no! Come on darn it! A snarling Falco thought leaping over two corpses and glancing back when he landed with an oomph.
“You can’t win with cowardly tricks Issir,” the Cataphract told Flucht, who had dropped to his knees in the meantime. The archivist’s robes and white beard soaked in blood. The Horselord nocked the bolt on the crossbow he rested on his left forearm and raised his right high over his head to signal something to the archers watching him.
Which was good for the now sneaking away stooped Falco, but bad overall for their plan, he supposed. The archers waved several torches over their own heads and in response from the darkened south part of the bridge, a series of torches lit up one after the other, revealing at least fifty more riders that had approached whilst everyone was distracted and with the help of the increased dark.
“Most of your soldiers have rushed to defend the pontoon path,” the Cataphract rustled, voice muffled behind the smiling mask and half-lost in the racket produced by two hundred iron hooves thudding on the stone bridge’s deck that galloped their way.
“Go back to the dark hole you crawled out of, forever shamed in the knowledge of your failure Issir,” the Cataphract added and aimed the crossbow low towards the heavy-breathing Marcel Flucht. The latter had raised his bloody hand to make Uher’s sign over his sweaty face, but his arm lacked strength and halfway through it dropped to his sides. His fist loosened and the freed small vial rolled out the archivist’s fingers.
It caught a bit of light from the torches as it bounced once on the stone tiles, a sparkle that briefly made it shine alike a real jewel, or a dragon's tear.
You darn fanatic!
Run fool!
Falco, who was now racing away from the unfolding scene, pumping both arms up and down energetically, teeth gritted in a maniacal expression and tired thighs burning whatever energy reserves he’d left in the tank, blinked half-blinded, when the darkness disappeared momentarily. Knowing what was coming the member of the Golden Spears leaped with a drawn out howl, the bright white light spreading out from the center of the bridge and spilling over both Chinos’ River’s banks.
-
It came and went five times in quick succession. High and wide enough to be seen from the Issirs still living inside the capital, blind the elated Khan that had stood on his horse’s stirrups when Senet’s lieutenant gave them the all-clear to cross the bridge and his riders charged ahead. Got noticed by Magister Sande De Hove’s Inquisitors, then in the process to reach the Pines Road, and even startled Sir Hendrik Grote’s charging the Khanate’s machines cavalry, several kilometers away. The Horse-Archer leader Sakir, who had ridden to the sound of the earlier explosions after he changed horses and replenished his empty quivers, decided to stop his devastating attacks on Paul Sonnenfeld’s Issir rebels and retreat.
A series of rapid explosions followed right after the strange phenomenon. Parts of the bridge’s supports buckled and crumbled into the river. The blast caused a huge tidal wave to erupt outwards from the shaking and collapsing Mid Bridge, the swelling waters sweeping over the two pontoon bridges. On the heavily-laden east pontoon bridge the floating raft-like platforms came loose and the timber deck broke out from under the Khanate guards that were attacking Dumont’s Golden Spears. At the time of the pontoon’s collapse, the Horselords had taken control of the north bank’s path, outnumbering the Issirs locally four to one.
Such was the volume produced from the blasts, so greatly cacophonous the clamor, ominous and earth-moving, those that heard it that early evening described as otherworldly. And because we tend as creatures to label even that we don’t understand, the moniker ‘Mother of all Thunders’ was attached to the battle. While no one was killed near the Red Bridge, the intact bridge over Balworth River also gave its name to the conflict, since naming the battle –and victory- after a structure that had turned into a useless ruin located inside a still disputed zone and near a boneyard, was deemed rather prickly for propaganda reasons.
Almost two hundred guards disappeared under the waters and most of them got drown with very few survivors washing out on both sides of the river days later. Senet’s cavalry got caught crossing the bridge and just vanished. Marcel Flucht was possibly killed on the bridge as well, alongside Mater Templar Sir Aryan Verhagen, and many of Wim Luikens engineers and pupils. It is disputed, whether the Assayer himself, or the two remaining and more prominent pupils of known Alchemist Rosier Rosman, Benedict Stam and Luna Rosman, survived the blast.
Disputed, but very likely.
Infamous Wim Luikens’ rampage through the Crimson Forest ended the early morning of the 29th, but the battle wasn’t fully over yet. The Grand Archivist and his minions had managed to kill almost a thousand five hundred Horselords, Lorians and Cofols by themselves in two days. They were also responsible for the brutal and unjustified massacre of over three thousand civilians both at the main road and at the two camps he so callously bombarded.
29th very early morning
-
Three weeks later
The initial shockwave from the explosion had caught Falco mid-leap, flipped him over several times ever rising to the heavens and then everything went dark. When he regained consciousness three weeks later inside a tent that pretended to be a hospital, Falco realized that he had no recollection of the events that had unfolded during the last six months of his life.
Eventually sometime later, he remembered.
Nevertheless and rather curiously, the first question a sober Magister De Hove had asked the bandaged Falco when he opened his swollen eyes that first day was not about the injured Golden Spear’s member own condition.
“Where is Wim Luikens? You must have heard something,” Magister Sande De Hove had asked, now the Inquisitors de facto leader.
But Falco had no idea what he was talking about.