Chapter VII

-CHAPTER VII-

As the horde slowly came within sight of the walls, the French colonel saw that the gates had been barred shut, and men lined the high walls to either side.

Clucking with irritation, he moved ahead of his army, only stopping well within shouting range of those manning the defences illustrating his disregard for the meagre defences before him.

 

‘Good people of Surat.’ he yelled out for all to hear spreading his arms theatrically, ‘my name is Colonel Frances Varlent. Before your walls I have with me forty thousand mounted soldiers,’ it never hurts to exaggerate after all. He paused to let that sink in for a moment. ‘If you do not open the gates and surrender to us within the next hour, we will kill every single man, woman and child within your walls. You will be slaughtered. Your homes will be burnt to the ground. Your churches will be despoiled and destroyed. There will be no mercy. There will be no quarter. Everyone. Will. Die.’ He paused again. ‘You have one hour,’ he reminded, almost amicably.

For good measure, he had an aide bring forward a camp table and chair, and he sat there eating his lunch of roast beef comfortably before the walls. He knew that it would terrify many of them, and hopefully push them to open the gates, not that it mattered of course. Either way, he was going to slaughter the lot of them.

At that moment in time, if he was correct, some five hundreds of his soldiers who had been moving into the city in small groups over the previous months would be converging a half mile from the gate, whereupon they would assault and break it open from the inside.

He almost pitied the poor occupants. They stood not a chance. He smiled, and continued to chew on the rare meat, blood dripping down into his beard.

Anarchy was coming.

~

Tavion galloped across the city in just his trousers as fast as the horse could carry him. Winston followed just behind on his own stolen mount. On all sides, people were running around as if the apocalypse were happening.

He grimaced. It was happening. When he reached the Eastern gate, he asked directions from a white-faced Captain where her Ladyship was. The man pointed a shaking hand North to the great watchtower that stood some sixty feet above the wall.

Within minutes, he was diving from the back of his steed and taking the steps up the tower three at a time. He burst onto the roof to find Cecilia surrounded by officers directing the defence of the city.

When he surmounted the last step and moved across she saw him, letting out a pitiful cry, ‘Oh Tavian, why didn’t I listen to you and Winston. What am I going to do! Tell me, oh help me please!’ she cried into his shoulder.

Her officers looked on in dismay, unnerved by their leader’s complete loss of control.

Tavion puffed out his chest and looked coolly at the officers, one after another. For a minute or more, he thought furiously. ‘What we are going to do is we are going to defend this city. If we don’t do that, then everyone inside is going to die. You need to round up as many of the civilians as you can and either send them out on ships, or take them into the castle.

This enemy is relentless, and he will break through these walls. However, they don’t have cannon. Without artillery, they cannot hope to breach the castle quickly.

So, I want you, you, and you, to send squads throughout the city directing civilians, and I want four volunteers to command units on the walls to hold them as long as possible. Three more of you must be beneath the gate to act as reinforcements and aid in the retreat to the castle. The rest of you, man the castle walls, and prepare it for a siege; take in as many supplies as you are able.

Understood?’

Nods all around from the officers. Taking commands was what they were trained for.

‘Good. Now fall out, and God help us all!’ Tavion saluted them absurdly, and as one, they returned it with a crisp salute of their own.

As they filed down and out of the tower, Cecilia looked up at him with bewilderment on her face, ‘what just happened?’

Tavion deflated somewhat, ‘Ah, I, well, oh. Sorry. Seemed like the right thing to do,’ he stammered with trepidation.

‘No no, that was brilliant. You were so commanding and fierce.’ her eyes smouldered and her cheeks were flushed. ‘Perhaps..’

‘Sir, we need to find the Anarchists. They will be doing something. This is their attack. What would you do if you were them now?’ put in Winston.

‘Blast it all Winston, can’t you see I am busy,’ Tavion replied, looking down at Cecilia with scarcely concealed hunger.

Winston slapped him.

‘Ow! What? Oh. Damn, yes, I suppose you’re right.’ the look he sent Cecilia was that of a drowning man seeing water once more.

Just when they got to the bottom of the stairs, Tavion stopped suddenly and gasped.

‘Christ! It’s a diversion!’

‘What is master?’

‘They’re an army of cavalry! They can’t just batter down the walls. They need the gates opened for them! The Anarchists!’

‘My God. You’re right!’

Tavion sprinted across to the soldiers he’d set as reinforcements below the gate and called to their commander.

‘You! how many soldiers here under your command?’

The soldier snapped to attention, ‘Fifty, sir!’

‘Bring them with me now…Captain?’ he guessed.

‘Sir, I am a sergeant.’

‘Well, now you’re a captain. Follow me.’

‘Yes Sir! Come on boys.’

Fifty trained musketmen chased after Tavion as he led away from the gate down the main thoroughfare toward the warehouses.

 

They had just reached the edge of the complex and Tavion was starting to doubt himself. They had left behind the crowded areas, and now the air was still, and silence smothered then. Perhaps I was wrong about them?

Suddenly, a commotion drew his attention ahead. His uncertainty vanished. Rolling towards them from around a bend was a mass of Bedouin tribesmen, faces covered, and muskets drawn as they strolled in loose formation. At present, they were a good four hundred metres away and they either hadn’t seen them yet or simply didn’t care, but that wouldn’t last

‘Form up in two ranks in the street facing, well, those b******s!’ he roared heroically.

Behind him, his soldiers got into position uncertainly.

‘Scratch that! Twenty of you- on the roofs of the buildings at the side of the road. The rest of you stay with me and block the road as best you can. Immediately!’

It took no further pushing; the soldier’s ran to their work pulling abandoned wagons into a haphazard line to block the street and the twenty he’d directed climbed swiftly to the roof and took cover behind what they could in preparation for what was coming.

 

By the time the enemy had halved the distance; Tavion’s men had made a rough blockade and lined up behind it. The enemy had finally realised the threat before them and were now running flat out towards them, firing wildly. Every now and then, a bullet zipped past his ear, but he ignored them.

He had to appear brave for the soldiers around him to keep their morale up. He had estimated somewhere between four and five hundred tribesmen charging them.

Tavion directed that no one was to fire except under his express command, so behind the barricade was a strange silence apart from the low chant of prayers or curses, depending on the man. He found it an odd juxtaposition between praying and cursing God.

Behind him, back towards the city walls he could hear that Colonel Varment had started his men shooting at the walls, likely to screen the assault by those in front of Tavion. He had to give it to the Frenchman, he was a wily commander. He cursed him for good measure.

The enemy were less than a hundred metres away now and the shots were still erratic from their running but every now and then one came close.

Tavion took a deep, long breath.

‘Make ready,’ he bellowed out in a parade ground voice.

‘Aim.’

‘Hold.’

Eighty metres.

‘Hold!’ Noise was screaming in his ears, and he felt the weight of command buffeting him. This was not his place. He had left all this behind him.

Seventy. He was impressed no one had fired off early. Sixty.

‘FIRE!’

In unison, fifty one muskets belched fire.

‘Reload!’

Ahead of them, the front rank of the enemy disappeared in a haze of red and the charge faltered for a few seconds.

Tavion was counting down from twenty- the time it takes a good musketman to reload.

‘Aim.’

They were good musketmen.

‘FIRE!’

The entire line fired once more. Tavion looked in surprise at Winston, who it turned out could load and fire a musket with some agility as well.

One of his many undiscovered talents it seemed.

‘FIRE!’

The third volley broke the disorganised rabble before them, and they fell back in a disorderly manner into the cover of farther streets, leaving a pile of around seventy dead before them, if Tavion was any judge.

The next charge Tavion knew, they would be organised, and when it came, they had no hope of standing firm.

The first time had been pure luck. The enemy underestimated the force before them, and now while they licked their wounds, they would be thinking only of destroying the puny squad before them.

Tavion looked around him for casualties. Some three of his men were down, and two more wounded; not bad, considering the enemy dead, but it belied the futility of the position.

He walked over and picked up a dead man’s musket and began to reload deftly. As he did so, he called out for the barricade to be reinforced.

The day had just begun.

~

            Neraxes stood not a full kilometre from where Tavion was directing a fierce fire-fight though he knew not. Before him a large group of soldiers were arrayed, intermixed with his men: Rolf, Sven, Varren, Matthew, Terry and Sinc.

            ‘Our primary task gentlemen, is to let those dogs out there in this here sheep den.’ Pointing in the direction of the shooting, he continued ‘over there, a squadron of the local soldiers are pinning our men. We are going to need to spread out, and find a way to open a gay, and signal the dogs of war. I want you to spread out throughout the city, opening any gates you can. Once our men are inside, I relinquish my chains, and lo, I want there to be blood. I want you to rape, I want you to murder, I want this place destroyed. And I want Tavion destroyed!’ At the end, his voice had risen to a fever pitch, spittle flying.

            ‘Go! Go now and do this!’

            Men streamed away from him, spreading out in all directions, barring a select few. Some forty or so soldiers stayed; the leanest, dirtiest, and shiftiest of them. These were his men. His hounds. ‘You are still here, because I picked you. You are the lowest, the worst, and the nastiest fighters I could find. I want you to go with Sinc here and find a way into the castle. Once inside, tear it apart. That is where they will gather, so I want you to make sure it doesn’t hold for long. Some of you may not return from such a difficult task.’ Sinc. I am looking at you, but you know that don’t you. Malice mixed with insanity blended to give a look which cowed even those before him. ´Those that do will be rewarded greatly, and maybe, just maybe, I will give the Lady Cecilia over to you before I execute her. If she survives. I leave that to your discretion...’

            He turned from the men, and begun to stroll across to the nearby skirmish with Tavion’s soldiers still unknowing of the presence of his nemesis. A small urchin darted out from behind a wagon in front of him, then spotting Neraxes, stopped in his tracks. Without pausing in his stride, Neraxes brought up his pistol, cocked it, and shot the child. It is going to be a good day. He continued on, whistling jauntily as he did. Overhead, the sun was just rising above the walls, casting light across the city, bathing it in an illusion of flames.

 

Reviews

[Trigorin]

Well, if you're trying to write generic historical fiction, you've succeeded. Your writing is a little too bland, I think, and your characters don't feel very believable at times. Why does Neraxes shoot the child? What's he feeling when he does so? Why is he so two-dimensional? Answer these questions before you continue.

[C. L. Aemon]

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the time to read my work. I thoroughly appreciate your somewhat candid opinion. Have you read the rest of it, or merely this chapter. As to Neraxes, my intention was to slowly draw his character out. Start off with him as somewhat completely impossible to relate to, but to slowly draw out aspects so as to draw him more to something the reader could comprehend. I believe in progressive characterisation rather than immediately defining all the facets.