The Great Siege of Radasanth (FQ Main thread)

[Shinsou Vaan Osiris]

The sodden area that the Brotherhood’s other half had chosen for camp was tactically abysmal, but the pursuing Imperials had given Shinsou Vaan Osiris no choice.

Corone’s armies were resolved to stop him at any cost, and had finally clipped his heels on the way up from Scara Brae. It was a perfectly crafted ambush that had killed many of his men on the road north and the resulting retreat channeled them too far to the west to rendezvous with Storm Veritas. The Telgradian, fighting with everything he had, had ridden away with a hundred and ten Castigar vanguard but the hunters had become the hunted. The others had died. They had died for the cause which the survivors now carried on their sleeves and banners, through a churned Coronian countryside; a place still bearing the scars of their recent work. Mud thickened in the fields and even when the rain relented it only came in the form of a momentary pause. Before long, the droplets would hammer and pound until the terrain became frustratingly difficult to navigate. Hunger, too, threatened to decimate the vanguard. In the worst of the it, the survivors sheltered in foxholes.

In a nightmare trek across the worst parts of Corone, he had twisted and turned to avoid his pursuers without joy.

Now, ten miles west of Storm Veritas’s legion, a tired but resilient Shinsou crouched in the dirt. The man barely looked like a leader of the Brotherhood anymore, nor a revolutionary in waiting. He was swathed in a cloak made from common sacking. His face, boots and hands were wrapped in rags, stolen from a farm after a small skirmish with yet more of the endless stream of militiamen from Radasanth. He lay at the gully’s rim and stared into the valley through a long barrelled telescope.

He stared at the enemy.

Brown cloaks hid the pale green cloaks of the Imperial Dragoons. These bastards had followed him every inch of his bitter journey but, while he struggled in the highlands, they rode in the valleys where there were roads, food and shelter, all the while evading the attention of Storm Veritas’s counterparts. On some days the weather would stop the Coronians and Shinsou would dare to hope that he had lost them, but whenever the rain eased for a few hours, the dreaded shapes would always appear again. Now, lying in the shivering wind, the Telgradian could see the enemy horsemen unsaddling in a small village. They would have fires and food in there. Their horses would have shelter and hay. All the while, his own men starved and suffered at the hands of the weather and the lack of food, albeit silently.

Arius, Shinsou’s trusted advisor and right hand man, paced to his friend and knelt his wiry frame down low, borrowing the lens. Driven precipitation blurred the view, but he could see the splash of the scarlet pelisse hanging from the Colonel’s right shoulder.

“Why doesn’t he wear a cloak?” Arius grumbled.

“He’s showing how tough he is,” Shinsou said curtly, “Fucking show off.”

Arius shifted the glass to see yet more Dragoons coming to the village. Some of the Coronian company led limping horses, and all carried heavy duty sabres and flintlock rifles. “I thought we’d lost them.” he said sadly.

“The only way we’ll lose them is when we bury the last one with our own hands.” Shinsou slid down from the skyline. He had a face hardened by sun and wind, but saved from coarseness by the dark eyes that could spark with humour and understanding. Now, watching his men shiver in the narrow gully, those eyes were rimmed with red. “How much food is left?”

“Enough for two days, maybe.”

“That should be enough, as long as we can get a rider to Storm and Hayate today,” Shinsou’s voice was scarcely audible above the wind’s noise as he thought about his friend, “We’ve already sent two and heard nothing back, so I hope they’ve had better luck.”

Arius said nothing. A gust of wind snatched water from the air and whirled it into a glittering billow above their heads. The Coronians below, he thought bitterly, would be helping themselves to food, firewood and bedding in that town. Children would be pointing them to the hills. The men in the village would be interrogated to reveal whether or not they had seen a tattered band of men. They would truthfully deny any such sighting, but the man in the black coat and white boots knew the vanguard would still be in the area. What the men missed, the children playing in the street had seen with their own eyes.

Arius closed his eyes. He had not known what it was to hate until this uprising had began, and now he didn’t know if he could ever root the hate out of his soul for these Imperials. The same people whose ancestors had carved through his people with their bloodied swords, who had destroyed the original dream of a united and peaceful Althanas under one unifying banner.

“We’ll separate.” Shinsou said suddenly,"and you will wait here with the other men. When we’re gone, and when the Imperials are gone, you will cross as much ground as possible east to reach where Storm should be. You will not move until you are sure the valley is empty. That Colonel is clever, and he may have already guessed what I am thinking. So wait until you are certain. Do you understand?”

The wily commander nodded. “I understand.”

Shinsou, despite his agonizing tiredness and the hunger that leached into his stomach, found some enthusiasm to invest his words with hope.

“Go to Storm, Arius, and tell him we’re okay. Tell him I’ll approach the west of Radasanth with whatever I have, establish a foothold and that I will find him there. Our numbers may have been hurt, but I am still here. There is still no greater security than that.”

Arius nodded. There was an obvious question to ask, but he could not bring himself to speak. Shinsou understood anyway.

"If the bastards get me, " he said bleakly, "then you will know. They will trumpet it across Corone. Throw me a decent funeral.”

Arius shivered beneath his ragged cloaks. "If you go, you may find help from the Lily?"

Shinsou sighed to show his opinion of the Guilded Lily.

"They would help you?" Arius insisted.

"They follow Philomel, and that ship has sailed. So, no, sadly. We will have to deal with them too, most likely.”

With that, Shinsou eased himself to the crest once more and stared down at the village. The next morning, he and his men carried their weight to the west. Arius watched as the Imperial Dragoons saddled their horses and abandoned a village that had been plundered for resources and from which smoke funnelled into the sky from chimneys below. The Dragooons might not have known where Shinsou was, but the man in the black coat and white boots knew precisely where he was going.

And, so, the company forced their horses to the west.

Arius waited a full day; then, in a downpour of rain that turned the mud into slush, he went southeast. The hunters and the hunted were moving again, inching their intricate paths across a sodden land, and the hunted were seeking the miracle that might yet save their campaign.