Chapter 31
Work began immediately. Messengers were sent throughout the land, giving gory details of the horrible attack and warning everyone to prepare for war. Over the next several months, thousands of Sodorfians were conscripted. To General Fuhdor’s delight, very few resisted. They were excited to defend their country against this horrible enemy. General Fuhdor was also pleased that of the approximately one hundred thousand recruits conscripted, only around ten thousand failed to meet the strict physical requirements. Most of those rejected were healthy enough that if the situation grew even more desperate they could be called upon later. Thus, the army had been increased in a matter of months from 9,500 Sodorfian regulars and six thousand Hugars to 99,500 Sodorfian regulars and six thousand Hugars.
The Hugars were a different breed of warrior, and none of the Sodorfian regulars would be eligible to join their ranks until they had either spent at least a year as a Sodorfian regular or distinguished themselves exceptionally in combat. The traditional weapon for the Sodorfians was the pike, which they had treasured for centuries. Aside from the Knights of Sodorf, which were heavy cavalry and very effective with lances, long swords, and battle axes, the Sodorfian pikemen were one of the few troop types that had been able to withstand the devastating cavalry charges of the Vechengschaft and Moscorian cavalry. But this wasn’t their only weapon of choice. They also liked to use the long sword and crossbow. Unlike the Vechengschaft and Moscorians, who favored the longbow, the Sodorfians preferred crossbows, and, if they used bows at all, they preferred smaller ones, since it afforded them greater mobility.
General Fuhdor saw to it that discipline was rigorous. All soldiers, including new recruits and those already in the army before the undeclared war broke out, trained from about five in the morning to nine at night. This included classroom training and physical training. Some of the classroom training was dedicated to teaching the military history of the Seven Years War, but most was dedicated to teaching tactics.
Although everyone was expected to know how to fight on foot, not everyone was expected to be able to fight on horseback. After all, the army instructors reasoned, one can always fall off a horse and be forced to fight on foot, but there are very few scenarios in which one would be forced to fight on horseback. That said, all received some training in horseback combat. Although a smaller part of the combat curriculum, they also studied Gicksin: unarmed combat, consisting of locks, throws, strikes, and chokes.
Finally, after about six months of intensive training, General Fuhdor considered all 99,500 Sodorfian regulars trained and ready for combat. He was surprised that during these last six months there had been no attack from Dachwald. After the ambush near the border, he had been nearly certain another attack, probably even larger, was imminent.
(they’re probably just biding their time to catch us off guard again)
He wasn’t sure what they were up to. His spies and scouts had been unable to obtain any detailed information as to what was going on in Dachwald. He assumed that perhaps they were rearming, just waiting for the right moment to strike.
(maybe they know they lost their one and only chance to catch us off guard and are waiting for us to make a move)
If there was ever a time when they would have had a decent chance of wiping them out and taking over, it was right after that ambush. Their army then had been small, demoralized. Especially those who had seen the carnage firsthand. The Dachwaldians must have known launching such an attack would lead to war . . . .
(all that matters is getting the largest damn army this world’s ever seen and sticking a boot so far up their ass the toe comes out their mouth!)
(but what about the lack of Sodorfian refugees? there are several thousand Sodorfians—or were anyway—living in Dachwald; surely SOME of them would have crossed over by now)
Being in a state of war—and likely in a state of racist frenzy and violence as well—many Sodorfians would have wanted to return to Sodorf. The fact that none had crossed the border bothered him. Unless the situation in Dachwald was so peaceful and had changed so little that there hadn’t been any need for Sodorfians to emigrate from Dachwald, that could only mean none had been permitted to leave. Perhaps they were already being dealt with. Dealt with the way they were during the Seven Years War. Getting prepped to have lice and other nasty critters removed from their bodies. Come, come, now; don’t dally. Time for your cleaning. Yes, just walk right in through here; we’ll take good care of those pesky lice. Don’t pay any attention to that burning smell.
(the bastards!)
As this imagery crept into his mind he felt a nearly irresistible urge to attack right away. What was he waiting for after all?
(unless you enter with an army that can actually defeat them, you may as well just stay right the hell here)
This undeniable reality kept him from doing anything rash. By Kasani, he needed to obtain some good intelligence on the current state of affairs in Dachwald. Its political stability, the treatment of Sodorfians there, the strength of the Vechengschaft. His patience was wearing thin like an overused glove. There was a sense of imminent danger throughout Sodorf. Everyone knew this was the calm before the storm. The calm didn’t fool anybody. Not completely anyway. And definitely not General Fuhdor.
An elaborate warning system had been put in place to warn Sodorfians of attack. Lookout posts had been set up throughout all of Sodorf equipped with large bells. In the event of an invasion, these bells would be rung, and whenever a lookout heard a bell being rung, he would in turn ring the bell at his post. So many of these lookout posts had been set up that if the Dachwaldians were to attack Sodorf, within less than an hour most of Sodorf could be alerted in a domino-type effect of alarms being set off. The walls surrounding the City of Sodorf had also been successfully raised. Once a mere twenty feet in height, they now stood a proud forty feet tall. They bristled with ballista towers, merlons, and crenels. As for some of the smaller towns throughout Sodorf, such as Seihdun and Seisphen, there had not been sufficient time to improve them so drastically, but they had been made more secure. Outside of numerous small towns such as these were placed large wooden walls, as well as twenty-foot-high stone walls. Some trebuchets were placed inside each also.
Several days later General Fuhdor was still pondering the wisdom of launching an immediate offensive on Dachwald. His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a messenger.
“General Fuhdor, I have very urgent news! Some Sodorfians were found in the northern regions fleeing for their lives. They are badly battered and bruised. They have been branded, whipped, beaten . . . it’s horrible! Please, you must come and hear what they have to say!” exclaimed the messenger excitedly.
“I’ll kill those responsible—I swear it!!” General Fuhdor shouted angrily, purple veins bulging out of his neck.
(this could be the end of the waiting game!)
He got on his horse and accompanied the messenger to Seihdun, where the Sodorfians were currently resting and trying to recover from their wounds. After about eight hours of hard riding, General Fuhdor and the messenger arrived.
“They’re in here, sir,” the messenger said. General Fuhdor went into the room expecting the worst. He wasn’t disappointed. Emaciated Sodorfians, looking like human skeletons lay on the beds inside the room. Scars from whip marks were visible on their bodies. Large S’s were branded onto their neck. They looked like escapees from a shipwrecked slave ship. Most of them were deeply asleep or staring blankly into space.
“Things have gone insane in Dachwald,” an old Sodorfian said, looking directly into General Fuhdor’s eyes. “They’re butchering all Sodorfian men, women, and children. We were lucky—we escaped.” He began coughing violently.
“How did this happen?!” General Fuhdor asked. “Why didn’t you all flee as soon as the slaughter started so you could alert us?! We would have worked even harder to get an arm
y ready to invade Dachwald had we known for certain that these atrocities were being committed—we would have invaded Dachwald immediately!!”
“Sir, this happened gradually, not overnight. You must understand that many of us have always felt like Dachwaldians first, Sodorfians second. You see, for centuries there have been large numbers of Sodorfians living in Dachwald, and we were often looked down upon because we didn’t have Dachwaldian blood. I know, for example, that as a child, I often had to show excessive patriotism simply not to be looked at as some kind of outsider or enemy. When all the political changes started happening in Dachwald about six months ago, we Sodorfians wanted to do everything we could to not become the targets of Dachwaldian violence, so we tried our best to comply with all of the new changes—”
“Wait a second,” General Fuhdor said, interrupting him; “just what kinds of political changes are you talking about? I mean, King Duchenwald and the senators still rule the country, right?”
The old man chuckled. “Oh no, there have been many changes. The senators and the king were brutally murdered many months ago. General Sivingdon took over. There was a large meeting outside Castle Dachwald, and General Sivingdon explained to the massive crowd present that the reason we were all suffering was because the king and the senators had been too passive to wage war on the Sodorfians after they destroyed all our crops—”
“Wait a minute,” General Fuhdor said, interrupting yet again; “do you mean to tell me that there really was great agricultural destruction in Dachwald?! I thought that was all a complete lie. A vicious, perfidious pretense to go to war with us!”
“No, it indeed was true! We suffered horribly—Dachwaldians and Sodorfians alike. You’d think that we Sodorfians would have left as soon as things started going badly, but we didn’t. The reason we didn’t was because we all thought, ‘this is the chance to show our loyalty. This is the opportunity to show that we really are patriotic towards Dachwald.’ For that reason we all stayed; not a single one of us left. A horrible famine broke out; many starved, and many abominable things happened. There were cases of parents, insane with hunger, killing their own children and cooking them. Even those who did not go to those extremes almost always ate all of their pets. Many people were eating sawdust just to try to alleviate the hunger pains. There were many rumors circulating in Dachwald about the cause. However, the main rumor was that Sodorf wanted to attack Dachwald. We didn’t want to believe it, but the facts appeared to suggest it. For example, there were many Dachwaldians that saw with their own eyes the tracks leading from Sodorf into Dachwald. Now, you speak about an ambush and a massacre near the border. What we were told was that the Sodorfians were so hell-bent on going to war with Dachwald that they had attacked and killed many of their own so that they could frame the Dachwaldians and make it look like a Dachwaldian attack. That way, the Sodorfian government could self-righteously refuse to help the Dachwaldians, refuse to let Dachwaldian trackers into Sodorf to see where the tracks ultimately led to, and refuse to allow Sodorfians into Dachwald to investigate the alleged crop damage—under the pretense that there clearly had been none and that it was too dangerous for Sodorfians to enter Dachwald. It’s important to remember that before all these occurrences Dachwald, just like Sodorf, had been a pacifistic place. The military was neither thought of as being entirely necessary nor extremely important. However, when General Sivingdon made that patriotic speech in front of Castle Dachwald; presented the heads of the incompetent king and his senators, who had been completely unable to do anything about the horrible famine; and then provided us with a lavish feast, patriotic fervor reached a frenzy, and it was made clear the army was going to be greatly increased in size.
“Shortly thereafter, new regulations were passed for all Sodorfians. We had to sew a large S onto all of our clothes. The penalty for a Sodorfian being caught without the patch was typically death. Sometimes there were exceptions if the person had a particularly convincing excuse for not wearing it, but usually the person was publicly hanged. Several months later, we were told that the Sodorfians were needed for a special work project. I know it sounds silly now, but we actually trusted the Dachwaldians. We thought that this was our chance to show them we weren’t enemies of the state, that we weren’t trying to undermine the country and bring defeat and ruin, but that in fact we were also patriots and just wanted equal treatment like everyone else. Many Sodorfians even tried to enlist in the army, but they weren’t allowed. The bastards refused our offer. They told us that we could not be trusted to bear arms for Dachwald but would be allowed to prove our loyalty by working hard in special camps that had been set up for us. Sure enough, these work project camps were actually death camps. Many of our number were roasted alive.”
“Do you happen to know where any of these death camps are located?!” General Fuhdor inquired, entirely unable to conceal his fury. “Their locations would be of intense personal interest to me!”
“No, unfortunately not. My geography is mediocre at best, and besides that we escaped in the middle of the night. There were a small number of people with us, but the main person that guided us all the way out of that hellhole and to the Sodorfian border didn’t make it. He died under a hail of arrows, and the rest of us just barely escaped death. Funny that he should die. Out of all of us, he was the healthiest and had the sharpest wits. Sometimes the gods have a sick sense of humor, I guess.”
“Did anyone else help guide you? If so, I must speak to them so that I can find out where these hellish extermination camps are located!”
“Unfortunately not. Some of the others who escaped might know geography better than I, but right now most of them are in shock and couldn’t even tell you their names. As I said, there was one person in particular who was our leader, who led us out of that horrible camp. His name was—”
“Sir,” General Fuhdor said, interrupting yet again, “you just lie there and try to rest. I know you must be extremely exhausted, and I’m extremely sorry to hear about the trouble that you have gone through. I’ll do my best to avenge your unfortunate friend.”
Having said this, he stormed out of the room like a man with an appointment he didn’t want to miss. He immediately consulted with Achentung, his colonel, and told him to instruct all of his officers to order their subordinates to get moving—they were all heading north! He scribbled out a short note quickly like a doctor writing a prescription and handed it to the messenger to deliver to the nobles: “Dachwald already in the process of exterminating Sodorfians; under military dictatorship; military quickly growing; must attack now.”
That was all that he had the patience to write down. His colonel was already notifying his subordinates, and the message was quickly traveling down the chain of command like loose snow falling quicker and quicker down the side of a mountain forming a thunderous avalanche.
They were going to war.
The End of Rise of Dachwald.
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