Kingdom's Fall

Chapter 28, Part 1

The road south was awash with bodies. Old, young, those who had fallen out exhaustion or hunger, they lined the road as silent audience to the group that travelled south. Aiden did his best to ignore it, but there was no getting past the sheer number of them. They camped well clear of the road when they could, to take a break from the smell and the relentless, heartbreaking sight of all those corpses, but there was little respite to be found.

Two days south of Greenhaugh, Kara tugged at Aiden's arm and pointed to a body hung from a tree. The man had been strung up and his belly slashed diagonally. In amongst the purple-brown mess of his guts, Aiden could see something green hanging there.

"What is it?" Kara said. "What did they do to him?"

"It's coward's grass," Aiden said. "A very old punishment."

"Coward's grass?"

"Sometimes soldiers would feign illness to get out of having to fight. Eating grass from the roadside was an easy way to bring on cramps without it causing permanent damage. Didn't take long for their commanders to catch on. Anyone who felt too ill to fight was given something to make them sick. If grass came up, they were punished." He waved at the corpse. "The punishment was to fill their belly with it and cut the cowardice out."

"That's horrible."

"Horrible, but effective. Once they saw how well it worked, they didn't even stop to check if the men were faking. Soldiers would get off their deathbeds to fight for fear of being strung up and gutted. Being branded a coward not only lost you your life, but it often cost your family's too. Your shame would see them cast out."

Kara looked away from the body. "I can't believe anyone would do that."

"Believe it," Aiden said. "Marching thousands of people against their will towards a war they don't want to fight, we're likely to see worse before we even reach the queen."

As they made their way south, the bodies, and the mutilations, were as Aiden had predicted. The demon had driven the Kingdom forces hard, far harder than human endurance could take, and the brutality she had shown to make them do it was writ large in the bodies they left behind. Erlend stopped at a supply cart that had been left at the roadside, its axle broken, the driver slain beside it. He sniffed dubiously at the contents.

"No grass here, Aiden," he said. "This reeks of rot."

Aiden joined him. The food on the cart was spoiled, black with rot and heavy with spores. For the army to have left it spoke volumes about the condition it had been in when the axle had given way. "She marches our people on empty stomachs and kills them when they complain of it." He shook his head. "I wonder if there will even be an army to meet the Carelians."

It took two more days for them to reach the battle lines. The Carelians had pushed hard in their march northward, and the Kingdom forces were folding against their advance, crumpling back so far that they were tripping over what was left of their supplies. The Carelian advance had stalled only because they had overreached themselves. Heartened by how poorly-armed their opponents were and keen for the slaughter, the Carelian vanguard had strung itself out. Cavalry and infantry had surged ahead of the artillery train and committed to the attack. The Kingdom force - if it could be called that - outnumbered them to a massive degree. Too exhausted to retreat uphill, they had rallied and swarmed forward, all pretence of strategy gone. The Carelians were split up on the field, small pockets of men fighting fiercely to try and join up with one another, but the press of bodies was too much for them to overcome.

The Kingdom's command stood on a hill overlooking the site of the battle, a blister of royal red that stood proud and apart as though ignorant of the bloody churn that was occurring below. The evidence of several Carelian sorties against it - soldiers, horses, corpses all - lay scattered and broken at the approach. An honour guard of Kingdom soldiers stood guard, and had turned away from watching the battle to watch Aiden and his companions approaching.