Neytopia › Part 2: Noon › Chapter 41

The heathen army

They traveled for two more weeks without incidents until they reached a large city at the southwestern outskirts of the northern kingdom. The northern army had captured it only a month ago. Its inhabitants were mostly peasants and craftsmen since most of the northern soldiers stationed there had been mobilized and tasked with finding the raven.

It was a gift from the gods.

The raven flew silently over the city’s gate at night, slid the guards’ throats and opened the gates. The army of the city under the mountain rushed in, killing everyone who opposed them. The few northern army officials there were imprisoned and interrogated, though their zealous faith prevented them from being very useful to the raven. All the soldiers insisted on calling the raven and his army “heathen”, which he took with pride.

Now that the raven controlled the city, he prepared for war. First he set up a meeting with the officials from the city under the mountain. He created an army he baptised the Heathen army, with himself as its supreme commander while recognizing the leader as the legitimate ruler of the new Heathen kingdom, with their recently captured city as its capital. They also agreed that the leader should stay at the capital to manage it and establish a strong supply line to the army.

Before he left, the raven married the already pregnant nurse. Two weeks after taking his first city, the raven was already attacking the next one. The undisciplined northern soldiers, who had been eager to fight at the start of the war, now spent their time whoring and drinking in taverns. The raven took them by surprise one Monday, capturing a city, four towns and two villages in a single night. He specifically chose a Monday because the only useful thing he had learned from interrogating northern soldiers was that they drank themselves into incompetence on Sundays.

The people in the southernmost corners of the continent hated the northern king with all their heart, so they gladly welcomed the raven. In fact, when some of the villages learned that the raven was near, they rose up against the occupying northern soldiers and waited for the raven. The raven offered them a deal: if they provided enough soldiers and supplies, they could keep their land as their own after the war was over. Of course this kind of political decision didn’t sit well with the leader, who sat on the rearguard, out of public sight, while the raven basked in glory.

The leader feared the raven was usurping all his political power, and began to dread even victory. If the raven came back victorious from the war, he could crown himself king and face no opposition. The raven even had a heir in place. Determined to survive, the leader instructed one of his most trusted servants to go serve the raven at the front and, if the raven defeated the northern king, he had to kill him at any cost.

At the front, things were going great: in just a few months, the raven secured a long stripe of land that stretched from the southwestern coasts to the inhospitable northern frozen slopes near the northern coast. The villagers understood that if they didn’t join the raven, his army would drive them out of their lands or kill them. Everything between the western coast and a few hundred kilometers inland was his.

He had never held so much power, and now he only wanted more.

He pushed eastward with his army, conquering more and more land from the northern army. His pincer maneuvers, supply line disruptions and propaganda all proved effective: he routed several divisions losing only a few men. His legend and name spread across the continent. Everybody talked about the raven and his supernatural tactics. And the northern king used this in his favor.

The rumour began to spread in the northern kingdom that the raven ate children and drank men’s blood. The villagers on the East were so scared of him that they immolated their own villages, crops and families when they learned the raven was close. There were no more deals, no more help from the locals. Every citizen and soldier of the northern kingdom had the order to never surrender under any circumstance. Those who disobeyed and returned north, along with some of the northern king’s political enemies, suffered public humiliation in kangaroo trials which inevitably led to slow death by labor camp.

The northern king grew more paranoid as his troops suffered defeat after defeat. The king began to believe that the heathens had infiltrated his lines to sow fear into the hearts of his people. He saw conspiracy everywhere he looked. He had already been shot, poisoned, stabbed, thrown off his own castle before, but he had always survived. He was still alive after centuries because he kept his death at bay through sheer power.

Everyone who spoke against the State was burned at the Stake. He also took the opportunity to label the noblemen that had opposed him as cowardly pacifists. He condemned them on charges of high treason and burned them along with the other political criminals. Even though his army was losing territory, he gave the order to charge into the heathen camps instead of establishing a line of defense. The army left the elderly, the sick and the children to defend the villages. The king calculated that the raven was, after all, a man who cared about how history would look at him and therefore would try to avoid massacres.

Boy, was he wrong.

The raven didn’t hold back on the villagers: he only trampled villages and cities even faster. But the king didn’t change his orders, fearing he would lose his credibility as the only “emmissary of the Greater man”. The heathen army disrupted the northern kingdom’s supply line so efficiently that the northern king decided to just stop sending supplies. He ordered all his forces to retreat back to the capital, convinced the invaders would come for him. The soldiers plundered the villages and cities as they retreated, leaving the inhabitants nothing to fight the raven. Hundreds of thousands died from famine or turned to cannibalism while the northern soldiers enjoyed wine, hot meals and whores in the valleys and plains near the capital.

Still, the raven’s army was outnumbered and spread thinner as he pushed east. The new territories he conquered were devoid of men or supplies. Some of the people in the east did find their way west and joined the raven, escaping the king’s madness. But many were caught trying to flee and suffered a public death used as cautionary tale.

It seemed the war was almost over when the raven’s domains were only a few miles away from the capital. But then the northern king ordered his soldiers to push back. The northern king had managed to keep the real number of soldiers secret from the raven. A special regiment sneaked deep into the West.

The captain who had escaped the ambush at the city under the mountain led this special regiment. The regiment avoided open confrontation with the raven. Instead, the soldiers burned crops, raped women and killed everything on their way. The raven couldn’t go chasing them because the northern king kept the raven’s army busy fighting skirmishes on the cities and towns along the border between the two powers.

The special regiment pushed all the way to the south-western corner, losing men on their way. A few hundred men managed to reach the Heathen capital, where most of the people under the mountain lived. They fought their last battle there, burning down the city and the nearby crops. At the same time, on the border, the raven’s army repelled the northern kingdom’s attack and destroyed most of its forces.

The raven counted on two-hundred and fifty-six tired men when the northern kingdom stopped sending troops. But he knew there were plenty more waiting for him to push north. Corpses littered the ruins of the city where he had been fighting for a week now. There was nobody left with the strength to give them proper burial. Then came the sixteen survivors of the slaughter at the Heathen capital. Their words crushed the morale of the tired men. Every soldier had lost all or most of their families. Half the heathen army defected or went mad with grief.

One of the survivors spoke to the raven, stuttering,

S-sir, I am, uhm, afraid that your…

Yes?

Your wife, sir. She died in the fight. And your son with her.

The raven stared at the ground, unable to assimilate the news.

But our great leader and his son managed to escape.

The raven clenched his teeth and clenched his fists.

That. disgusting. rat.

He retreated to his tent, where he was alone to think. Most of the people who had lived in the city under the mountain were dead. He didn’t have enough soldiers to win. Hundreds of thousands had died during the war, and now it seemed it had been for nothing.

He shook with fear. He laid in his bed, took his hands to his face and for the first time after many years, he cried.