Hope is a powerful force in the movements of men and war, for without hope there is no life. The young leader spoke again and said, “Do you remember how often I have killed the circling crows?”
“Yes, my lord, everyday,” was the answer that came.
“Do you remember when I am by far the happiest at this grim task?”
The reply came without pause, “When you impale two birds with one arrow.”
The young leader smiled and nodded.
“Gather me eight of the finest and stealthiest. I will need skillful bowmen and men who are prepared to kill in silence and up close.”
Eight of the best remaining men were assembled within the tower, along with the rebel, their company numbered nine. By any standard the strongest here would be the weakest anywhere else, but now strength was a measure of the mind. The leader knew all eight; six were seasoned veterans and two had barely reached manhood.
The rebel was comfortable with six but questioned his second-in-command's choice of the young ones. His second spoke from the heart, “They are boys no doubt, but war makes men at an early age, my lord. These two are brothers. At our arrival they were civilians and worked diligently on the mining of the field. They toiled together, while one dug the other sharpened and planted spikes.”
There was no argument that the knowing of the field hazards was useful but the leader was still hesitant. “These boys are farmers not soldiers,” the rebel said. His second passed a youth his dagger; scanning the room for an instant, the youth hurled it full force into an apple-sized knot in a door at the room's far end. “Point taken,” was all the leader said.
The raiding party entered the once empty livery. It was now a hive of activity, as more than a hundred men toiled at their task. The straw with cord and twine was being shaped into the form of men, and these straw men were being clothed in the lightest of armor. The youths and the veterans alike looked to this task with confusion, but asked no questions.
The second in charge fielded the unspoken question. “Pay these efforts no heed, your purpose will occupy you fully. Killing a man when you are close does not have the filter of distance.” This he directed to the young boys who fidgeted in discomfort and stared to the floor. The response from the seasoned was only a smile.
The rest of the afternoon was spent training for their mission. They had assembled a reasonable copy of the armor worn by the imperial sentries. They discussed in broad terms its strengths, but focused in detail on its weaknesses. The lifting of the body scales by dagger point just before thrust was mentioned and discarded; death must come quicker and quieter.
In the end the oldest and most experienced would have the final say. The grizzled one taunted the youngest and said, “Scream for your life when first you feel me, and for now just march with awareness back and forth here before me.” The youth looked around the room reluctant to be the victim. The old soldier chuckled at this and urged, “Come on son, don't disappoint an old man.”
So there it was; the complete reversal of the timeless natural order. It was now the oldest that had challenged the youngest. The grizzled soldier sat, tightly securing a filthy blindfold around his already feeble eyes. Emboldened by the blindfold, the youth complied and marched back and forth in front of the sightless soldier who for now just listened. In his mind the youth was already preparing to scream.
On his third pass the old one flew, catching the youth on the half step. The offbeat is the no man's land of movement's rhythm, the place after a step is launched, and before it has landed. The soldier with a gift of this rhythm does well in combat; and this man's age was no accident. The young scream did not escape; instead it was trapped and silenced by the old right hand that did three things simultaneously and in an instant.
His jaw was held firmly shut by hand heel from below; the pushing up of jaw turned the youth's face to the ceiling, and the palm sealed the mouth, as the thumb and fingers had already closed the air from the nostrils. As the ceiling passed before his eyes, so did his entire life. The flash of the left hand and the cold feeling of steel passing roughly across his throat was the last thing he remembered before the blackness.
As they revived the young man who may have wet himself slightly, the old one removed the grimy cloth from around his eyes. He helped the shaken young man to his feet. Graciously, this time he had used only the dull side of his blade. The old soldier now held the floor and the attention of his eight comrades. He spoke well and demonstrated better. His two arms showed the motion which was as simple as tying a knot. “Two arms, one motion, and death is served in silence,” he said.
Making contact now with the eyes of his peers he continued, “The skill of its application lies in the secret of the off-beat rhythm, and this is best learned from the ears and not the eyes, for in the dark only those that must see are truly blind.” This lesson they practiced well into the night within the barn and beside the army of straw that was now taking shape. The last preparation was the study of the field and enemy encampment. The rebel had scratched its detailed image upon the brown dirt floor.
The fort was a thick-walled square, which sat upon a huge open square plain. Where the plain ended the dense forest began on all four sides. Positioned as close to the forest and as far from the fortress as possible sat the huge ring of enemy encampment, four tents thick. Beyond this in the four corners where the ring of tents pulls away from the square of forest, were positioned the war machines. With the combined help of the two youngest, they marked out every hidden trap upon the open field. Their starvation was all but forgotten as a hunger of a different kind now took over.
All remembered the trebuchets and the screams that answered the diplomatic entreaty, one more wrong that would on this night, finally be avenged.
It was the walls of their city fortress that set it apart from all others and kept it safe. Their method of building had been lost to time, and many say that this method has never been surpassed. A northern outpost of the First Emperor, it had already stood its ground for more than a thousand years. The rebel stronghold is protected by both an inner and outer wall. It is the outer wall that is the most imposing. Along its top, soldiers once rode chariots, and the men that had died in its construction were buried within it.
Legend says that this is the reason it could never be destroyed in war, but the very thickness and slope of its base is probably the more accurate explanation. The defending army could move anywhere along the top providing they pass through the corner towers. From these same towers any attacking army could expect withering arrow fire launched from its upper murder holes.
As the men stood on these timeless walls and looked out in each of the four directions from this great height, their mission became focused in their minds. From each of the four high walls they would depart, and with good fortune they would return to their starting point. The rebel pondered this circle; even as he surveyed the distant ring of the enemy's surrounding tents.
They were divided into three groups of two and one group of three, and each group took their place in the middle of each great wall. The leader was with the two young brothers for their safety and to his peril. To each was given a large bundle of oil-soaked straw, a bow, and six fire arrows that were also charged with oil and straw, and finally to each a dagger of the finest forging. Each man, blackened, hunched beneath a cloak of shimmering white. In snow or in darkness, they were prepared to blend.
Quickly and smoothly they descended over the walls, lowered from above by ropes. His second in command embraced the rebel just before the descent. With wet eyes and a voice wracked with emotion, he said quietly, “Stay safe, my lord, and bring these boys home unscathed.” The rebel looked at him steadily before replying with a smile, “You are indeed a woman.” With a curt nod, “Point taken,” was all that his friend said.
All four parties reached the ground simultaneously and moved silently off in each of the four directions. The moon favored their task and stayed hidden behind the clouds. They crawled like lizards across the wide, snowy field and lay still under the white cloak when the need arose. They crossed the open plain and then between and through the four rows of enemy tents undetected.
Upon reaching the cover of the forest, they removed the white cloaks and used them to bundle the oiled straw. Black shadows shifted through the moonless night, silently they moved through the woods to the resting siege weapons. The silent killing began at each war machine, and indeed it was easier than expected, most of the sentries were asleep or drunk or both.
Proudly the youths took the sentries that were upright and moving on the half step. They planted the straw well and then moved on to the next target repeating the process throughout the night. The work went well and no alarm was sounded. All the parties returned and hunkered near the fort once more.
Their position on each of the four fields was chosen to gain the best advantage from the hidden traps and the cleanest line of fire to their straw-mined targets. They carried all of the remaining ammunition, fifty-five arrows in total, six to each of the nine, and one fitted to the string of the rebel in command. He sat now resting from the night's ordeal as his two young allies lit a tiny smokeless fire upon the field. This act was done on each of the four fronts.
The benevolent moon emerged from behind its white cloak to light the targets. The distant machines of war and destruction glowed in its cold pale light. He dipped the straw-packed arrow to the flame, lay back, and fired straight up.
Thus the signal was given in much the same way as the manner of killing crows.
The commander had fallen into the steady routine of idle nights and wasted days. He enjoyed both the visibility and invisibility that the robe of bear hide afforded. To his men he was a grotesque annoyance. He barked useless orders at stupid times; their only purpose was to show clearly that he was still very much in charge.
His appearance was a wound that gnawed at his soul like a parasitic worm, boring its way slowly and steadily out towards open light. It would never heal; it would constantly and increasingly fester. The only expression that escaped his tattered face was hatred.
The siege had turned into a slow death by strangulation. This would not be an epic or heroic battle, but there was no cause for concern, the outcome already written. They were almost four thousand strong. His biggest adversaries were boredom, dissension, and desertion. Any slackness was dealt with quickly and harshly, cruel attention paid only to the military discipline of others.
The end of the campaign was now almost within sight, the night excursions that had secured the freedom of so many in the early days of the siege had long since ended. From all sides they could see the circling of the crows; and all knew that these were the harbingers of the final outcome. The oracle had spoken true.
The rate of the dying within the fortress was always hard to estimate. If intelligence was right it was now between twelve and fifteen each day. That number would increase over time, and the four hundred left could hold out perhaps three more weeks. The complexities of siege warfare in these final stages had been distilled down to basic mathematics.
The commander should have been elated, but he was not. As the number of rebels within the fort dwindled, the pain of soul and face increased. This battle had done little to quench his thirst for blood. With nothing else to distract him, he would attempt once again to obliterate the memory of the monk, with strong drink and a stronger whore.
On this night it seemed he could not drink enough to forget, and got even less satisfaction from the company of the whore. Eventually, however, he managed poorly to do both, and fell asleep across the rancid skin that had come to be his blanket as well as his cape. Even in sleep he knew that the slut had not performed well or earned her money. He had seen revulsion spoken by her eyes.
He knew as he had finished and fallen into a sleep-like stupor that she had found both his appearance and the act in particular to be disgusting. Even the poorest of actors could have better cloaked their abhorrence, and even the stupidest of whores should have known well to do so. At this thought the commander decided to teach her a lesson, and in a drunken fog with leg and with arm he spun the sleeping woman to him once again, breathing his stale alcohol stench closely into her face.
With effort he focused his eyes for close sight and began to blindly thrust his loins, it was not the whore, however, that he stared at, but the old and wizened oracle. She was toothless and smiling as she wrapped him in her withered legs, and then laughing as his screams reached a crescendo and mingled with those of his men outside the damp, cold tent. With a groan of great relief he crashed through the tent flaps and stumbled out into the cold, smoke-filled air.
The eerie flicker of flames reached skyward like grasping fingers, and he was knocked to the ground by men running each a different way. They scattered like blind bats emerging from the cavern's mouth at nature's dimming twilight. But this was no natural flight, for these creatures were men and they flew on the wings of panic and confusion.
This blind and directionless human flight was the uncontrolled flight of mindless terror.
The commander fought with the alcohol and the sightless scattering of his men to regain his footing in the mud and snow. He saw the flames licking skyward from the siege engines. He saw the dark smoke rising and the grey smoke migrating over the encampment. He could hear the screams and the panic of his soldiers.
Looking upward toward the sailing embers that danced now like burning stars on velvet sky, he saw the flight of the flaming arrows hit their mark. They were coming from the open plain near the fortress. “Arms,” he shouted above the din, “To arms.” Going back inside his tent he hurriedly strapped on his armor. He looked nervously to the whore and was relieved now to see that she was just a whore, and sent her flying as he ripped away the hide and threw it over his shoulders.