Chapter 30
“I want to find out what happened here!” General Fuhdor shouted to his men as soon as the Dachwaldian emissary and his bodyguards turned around and left.
“I see a tree, and I see a knot attached to a piece of steel pounded into a tree, but how in Uchinvweld did this measly piece of wood smash and destroy hundreds of Sodorfian soldiers?!! Start figuring it out!!” he shouted.
He himself couldn’t figure out exactly what had happened. One thing he suspected rather quickly, however, was that both ends of the tree had had some sort of contraption hammered into them that was removed after the ambush. As he looked more carefully, he noticed many of the dead Sodorfians had holes through their bodies but no arrows.
(they must have drilled spikes into it)
“This will likely mean war,” he said to one of his officers standing next to him, surveying the carnage. “Eight hundred and thirty years of peace, and now Dachwald thinks she will rise again. It won’t be she who rises. It’ll be us. And when we rise this time, we’ll crush the Dachwaldians so thoroughly and so utterly they’ll never even consider attacking us again. I’m going to go and speak with the nobles. Clean up this carnage and give these men a proper burial. They’ve earned it. I also want you to continue trying to figure out just how in the world they rigged this lethal device. I want scouting parties scouring not only this area, but also the border itself. If there are any other Dachwaldians in Sodorf, I want to know about it. If you encounter any, slaughter them.”
“Yes, General,” the officer responded.
General Fuhdor got on his horse and headed straight back to the City of Sodorf. Despite the fact the journey took forty-eight hours, he didn’t stop to rest.
When he finally arrived in the city it was early morning. He considered stopping for a brief nap, but decided against it. This was too important. He walked into the temple and began ringing the huge bell. About a half hour later the nobles began pouring into the temple sleepy-eyed and exhausted. But he could tell by their lack of complaining they weren’t really surprised to be having an emergency meeting. It wasn’t every day that 524 soldiers were turned into mincemeat.
He waited until all four hundred nobles were in the room. It was obvious to all he didn’t bear good tidings.
“It’s true,” he said soberly. “All of it. Ruksin wasn’t lying about a thing. He does indeed seem to have been the sole survivor. By the time I left that scene of utter carnage and destruction, my men had already accounted for most of the bodies, but there were so many scattered throughout the forest it’ll be difficult to find all of them. Some were even flung into the trees. It also didn’t make counting the dead any easier that so few of them were still in one piece. Many of our countrymen were sawed in half or bashed into pieces. The Dachwaldians used some kind of booby trap . . . a tree . . . it must have been covered with spikes and blades . . . that came swinging down from above. The expertise behind this attack is what frightens me the most. They picked excellent ground. A sunken, muddy road. There just wasn’t time to get the hell out of that damn trap’s way.
“What’s particularly unsettling is how they seemed to know exactly where we were going to march. Exactly where. After all, there are other paths that go to the northern border. How did they know we wouldn’t use one of those? Were they just guessing? If I had that kind of luck, I’d play cards for a living. No, it wasn’t luck. It wasn’t chance. It was a well-planned, well-organized ambush. Face it, gentlemen. We’re already at war, like it or not. A war that will determine the future of this nation and the survival of our race.
“Our ancestors were far too easy on them at the end of the Seven Years War. They should have knocked their castle to the ground and publicly executed all their leaders. We can’t go into this war with the idea of accepting a conditional surrender. There are only two options: annihilate or be annihilated!”
Applause broke out. There had been a drastic change in the nobles over the last several days. Reality had come and bitten them right on the nose. There wasn’t a pacifist among them. The utter reality of these events made it impossible for them to retain any illusions about this conflict. Their minds had been on the horrors of the Seven Years War. Thousands of Sodorfians being executed in cold blood by the Dachwaldians. The only people taken as prisoners, Sodorfian males strong enough to work as slaves in mines looking for pheorite and other substances to make weapons. When the Knights of Sodorf had crushed the Moscorians and the Vechengschaft at the battle of Dachwaldendomel and proceeded farther north into Dachwald, they were appalled at what they found. Entire camps that had been set up for the extermination of Sodorfians.
The few survivors told the grisly tale. They had been led in small groups into a room surrounded by thick stone walls. Soundproof walls. Once inside, they found out, all too late, what the real purpose of the room was. The floor of the room was moveable, and in an adjacent room several Moscorians would turn a wheel that caused the floor to roll backwards. As it did so, it revealed a blazing, fiery pit below, into which the Sodorfians fell. To attempt to describe the horror the Sodorfian men, women, and children went through in those last final moments would be in vain. As the floor slowly started opening up like the jaws of some horrible monster, everyone in the room began rushing away from the edge of the receding floor. Quickly, however, they ran out of space. As they ran out of room, there was nothing to stop them from falling. As they fell, many of them desperately grabbed onto the other people that were farther away from the opening pit to try to prevent themselves from falling.
Unfortunately, not only did this not save them, it simply dragged other people into the pit with them. Furthermore, any attempt to survive at best delayed the inevitable, as the entire floor itself eventually receded leaving no escape from the hungry flames below. The pit itself was about sixty feet deep, and the flames were about forty feet tall. There was a passage from an adjacent building that led underneath this house of death, and below, enslaved Sodorfians worked there, shoveling fresh coal into the furnace from which came the flames. They were told if they assisted in shoveling the coal into the furnace, their lives would be spared. Hence, they assisted in stoking the flames to which their fellow countrymen were fed in exchange for their own safety.
The Knights of Sodorf had ordered a very thorough investigation of all these atrocities. After discovering the undeniable culpability of hundreds of Sodorfians in assisting the Moscorians in liquidating Sodorfians, all such Sodorfians were executed. To their credit, they accepted their execution bravely and honorably. Before being hanged, they gave tearful apologies to their fellow Sodorfians and explained that they were simply frightened to death and were extremely sorry for what they had done. Only a few objected to being executed. In fact, most were happy at having the opportunity to vindicate themselves as far as was possible under such circumstances. Nonetheless, the complicity of Sodorfians in the wholesale murder of their fellow countrymen left a black mark so foul upon the legacy of Sodorf that it was rarely discussed in polite company and history books gave it terse treatment.
One might indeed wonder why the Sodorfians so blindly walked into this house of death. The sanitary conditions in these extermination camps were deplorable. Outbreaks of lice were common, as were many diseases. The pretext for them going inside the fateful room was to have a special powder put on them that would kill the lice and other undesirable creatures.
This troubling imagery was vividly present in the minds of the Sodorfian nobles today.
Finally, Bundor spoke up: “General Fuhdor, as many people in this room likely know, I am definitely one of those guilty of causing the decline in the quality and quantity of the Sodorfian army. After all, I have numerous times called for military spending cuts, and, unfortunately, many times I was successful. Also, I called for fewer full-time soldiers, arguing all we really needed was a reserve army. Well, that’s all in th
e past now; I am more than willing to give my full support to the military. But, the problem still remains: how are we going to get an army large enough to go take on the Vechengschaft? After all, over five hundred of our Sodorfians were wiped out in a single battle, and all of the evidence thus far appears to indicate we didn’t even inflict a single casualty on the Dachwaldians! This is certainly not the sign of having an army that is ready for war. Right now we’d be doing well to simply survive the next couple of weeks—that is, if the Dachwaldians plan on making any more attacks on us in the near future, especially if they are executed as ingeniously as this last one! We need to be looking towards our defenses. Yes, maybe conquering them eventually can be seriously considered. Right now, offense would be suicide.”
“Sir Bundor, I can’t deny the veracity of your comments,” said General Fuhdor, “and I also want to say I appreciate your willingness to admit your anti-military stance in the past has not been helpful. However, seeing you are willing to move on and correct that position, I’ll try to look past that and look towards the future, and to do so with a spirit of unity, not finger-pointing. As to your logistical concerns, I don’t deny that attempting to attack now would indeed be insanity. Offensive action is something we won’t be able to take for quite some time. For starters, I propose we immediately conscript every Sodorfian between the age of fifteen and forty-nine, the standard age group for conscription in times of national emergency. If we conscript every man between those ages, it should give us an extra one hundred thousand men.
“We currently have about 9,500 Sodorfian regulars and six thousand Hugars. I have many excellent instructors in my army, and I assure you that, within several months, we can make good soldiers out of the greenest recruits. As for money, well we are going to have to immediately begin a special military tax; that is a given. Having an army of this size is going to require sacrifices. While we gather this large army, there are many other things that our country can do to defend itself. First of all, we can start having regular patrols along the northern border to alert us to the first sign of any hostility from Dachwald. Secondly, we can begin building larger walls around the city. We have no castle in this country that can even be remotely compared to Castle Dachwald. The twenty-foot walls that surround this city do offer some refuge, but they offer very little protection against a disciplined army. We will need to begin building booby traps around the city, raising the height of the walls, and building more trebuchets to put inside the city to hurl missiles at any oncoming enemy. Although my engineers don’t know how to build anything quite as crafty and deadly as that monstrous instrument of death that destroyed those brave Sodorfian regulars, my engineers are certainly capable of making very high-quality trebuchets and can begin doing so immediately.”
The nobles immediately began clapping, expressing their satisfaction.
Fritzer spoke up, “I agree with General Fuhdor, and as emergency leader, I decree we will increase taxes to the extent General Fuhdor sees fit, begin military conscription for all males aged fifteen through forty-nine, and begin increasing the height of our city’s walls and adding trebuchets inside. I grant General Fuhdor authority to implement whatever he feels necessary to accomplish these ends.”
Every noble immediately voiced his agreement with Fritzer’s decision.