The Girl with No Name Ch. 17

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Silvítya did not see the Grand Duke leave, because she was still working with the wounded in the cathedral. While most of the Danubians were still setting up for the second battle, the wagon handlers entered the church to move the injured to a safer location in the castle. They only moved the men who had been operated on. There was no point in trying to move the ones who were dying.

As night fell and the last of the salvageable men had been evacuated, Silvítya looked around at the broken windows and smashed roof of what was once a very nice church. She sadly contemplated the horror of all those dying men who remained. Outside, the city was burning and stank of thousands of rotting enemy corpses. If the Duke's plan worked, there would be another several thousand corpses added, and if the plan did not work, the Danubians would all die.

Silvítya was beyond exhausted. She had seen plenty of death and misery before, but the worst of her past experiences were nothing compared to this. She took a drink from a blood-covered bottle of vodka. She looked up at a hole in the church roof. Sure enough, the owl, that owl, was there. The bright yellows eyes glared at her through the dimly lit ruins.

"Profane One, why? Why are you following me? I'm not worth it! I'm really not worth following! I'm nobody! Why can't you follow someone more important?"

"I follow you because it is my pleasure. Pity yourself, if you wish, because there is nothing you can do about it."

Silvítya's consciousness returned to the Realm of the Living. She was trembling and gasping for breath. Her companions were staring at her. She said nothing. The matter was between her and the Destroyer. She took another drink, passed the bottle to one of the military wives, and ordered the women to follow her to the castle.

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The Grand Duke, the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Upper Danubia, rode inconspicuously among his horsemen, having turned over the leadership to a man with more cavalry experience, and more importantly, one who could speak the enemy's language without an accent. His heart pounded and sweat formed under his wig as the squad of Danubians approached the much larger column of Red Moon cavalry. The Grand Duke had good reason to be worried, because his tiny group was approaching some of the best-trained and best equipped cavalry in all of central Europe. The men were the elite of the Kingdom of the Moon, attacking and killing under the nickname "The Beautiful Savages". They had never suffered a significant defeat.

Without any hesitation, the Duke's appointed leader rode up to the Red Moon cavalry: "HAIL! HAIL! Wonderful news, Your Excellency! We've taken Hórkustk Ris!"

The enemy troops started cheering, even though they had no doubt the Danubian city would fall the moment it was attacked. The disguised squad leader handed over several Danubian flags and a city banner as proof the place really was under the control of the Red Moon Army.

"Come celebrate with us! The city's castle is full of wine! And vodka! And we've taken a lot of the women! Then we'll go to Danubia and hunt!"

The enemy commander thought about the invitation. He wished his men had not heard the part about the wine, vodka, and captive Danubian women. They'd want to celebrate, drink, and enjoy the female prisoners, which would entail a wasted day. Still, the cavalry commander was curious to see the fallen Danubian city and what condition the victorious Red Moon Army was in. It seemed that Hórkustk Ris had been an easy affair. While Danúbikt Móskt would certainly be a more difficult target, it would make sense to put it under siege as quickly as possible, while the Danubians were still trying to recover from their most recent defeat.

The commander decided to send the captured flags south to his Lord with the message that Hórkustk Ris had fallen and the road to Danúbikt Móskt was clear. Meanwhile, he would take his force to the conquered city to see for himself what actually happened. Then he would spend the next few days clearing the countryside while waiting for the final order to proceed northward.

As they rode towards their deaths, the Red Moon elite cavalry looked totally impressive. They were a proud and feared force of vicious fighting men, riding powerful specially-bred black horses and carrying an array of specialized muskets and lances. Throughout its existence the unit had killed tens of thousands of infantrymen and annihilated the cavalry units of several other nations. The unit's reputation was as important as its fighting skill: half the each battle already was won when the opposing men trembled at the sight of the infamous black horses and banners.

The Grand Duke and his men nervously rode with the huge contingent of enemies following close behind. Yes, he was scared, but he also was eagerly anticipating the upcoming ruse and impending battle. If his men could vanquish and break this unit, the devastating news of its defeat undoubtedly would break the spirit of the House of the Red Moon and hopefully force an end to their plans to usurp Danubian territory.

When the Red Moon commander saw the condition of the city, he was surprised at the extent of the damage to the walls and what he could see of the destruction inside. It appeared the city had been harder to conquer than the Lord of Red Moon had anticipated. Still, there was no doubt it had fallen. Danubian corpses littered the ground and dead Duchy soldiers decorated the walls. The black banners and uniformed men standing at the gate offered assurance of a warm welcome.

On a moment's inspiration, the Duke's appointed leader shouted:

"My Lord! We are honored to have you among us! We would be honored to see you come in with a gallop!"

"You heard him, men! Let's charge this city! Let's show those land-walkers how real fighters bring the Lord's greetings!"

The Duke's unit charged the open gate, cheering with their leader as he yelled: "Hail-Hail! The Lord's cavalry is entering!"

As the disguised Danubians along the wall cheered them on, the Duke's squad galloped as fast as they could through the gate and through the main street leading to the central plaza. They had to clear the kill zone before the mines, cannons, and muskets opened up on the enemy. The Duke's men sped past a battery of cannons, just as the crews were lighting the fuses. Too late, the Red Moon cavalrymen in the vanguard realized what was about to happen.

"DOC-DOC DANUBE!...DOC-DOC DANUBE!...DOC-DOC DANUBE!..DOC-DOC DANUBE!"

The avenue between the western gate and the city plaza exploded with noise. Danubian sharpshooters fired volley after volley at the enclosed horsemen. The horses panicked and screamed, throwing many of their riders. Many of the Red Moon horsemen tried to escape along the side streets, only to run into the squads of musketeers and traps the Danubians had set up for their horses. The only Red Moon troops to survive the initial assault were the ones who dismounted and fought the Danubians hand to hand.

About a third of the Red Moon cavalrymen were still outside the city when the bombs and muskets that wiped out their comrades went off. Danubian archers and musketeers positioned on the walls and in the gatehouses fired viciously at the startled enemy, while the Danubian cavalry emerged from its hiding place and charged them from the outside. Outside the city there was a real battle between two sides that were evenly matched. However, the Danubians had the advantage of receiving cover fire from the walls. After taking heavy initial casualties, the Duke's horsemen gained the upper hand. For the first time in its existence, the elite Red Moon cavalry unit was about to suffer a devastating defeat.

In the previous battle the Red Moon soldiers had set the city's houses on fire, but during the second battle, it was the Duke's soldiers who started the blazes. The surviving Red Moon cavalrymen and their horses found themselves surrounded by fire. They were unable to push forward because of the pile of corpses left created by the Danubian cannon crews blocking their path. They couldn't go out the gate, because the Danubian cavalry was blocking that exit. They couldn't escape along the side streets because squads of musketeers and archers blocked those routes. When several burning houses fell into the packed avenue, all hope of escape ended and the ambush turned into another massacre.

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The Grand Duke had the foresight to order his men to evacuate the ruins of Hórkustk Ris as soon as the battle was over. The place already stunk horribly from the corpses of the first round of fighting, and now the west side of the city had not only 4,000 additional human bodies, but an equal number of dead horses. There was no way to remove all that rotting flesh from the city, even had the Duke's army been at full strength, which they were not. There were more injuries to attend to and the men were totally exhausted from having gone three days with almost no sleep. They needed to get away from Hórkustk Ris, rest and re-group, and above all eat, before the Grand Duke could make his next move against the enemy.

Still, the Grand Duke and his troops were in very high spirits. They had not just defeated, but exterminated a much larger and better equipped force. After listening to additional reports from his scouts, the Danubian Duke understood that the Red Moon Army had no other significant contingent of soldiers north of the border. However, there were numerous enemy garrisons that still had to be dealt with. There would be more fighting, and it would be best to finish off the garrisons quickly, before news of the massacre in Hórkustk Ris got out.

The Danubian Army set up a new headquarters in a large village after chasing out the inhabitants. The injured were moved and the Duke's medics set up a new field hospital. Silvítya and her companions were forced to attend to a new group of wounded, but at least now the infernal stench of rotting corpses was not a concern.

Meanwhile, the Grand Duke's commanders rounded up several hundred foreign villagers and herded them back to Hórkustk Ris. The wrecked city was still full of weapons and supplies that had to be taken out. The Duke was worried about cholera and other diseases affecting his soldiers and Danubian civilians, but the villagers were expendable. Gagging and trying to cover their faces against the horrific stench of the corpses, the wretched prisoners searched the ruins for weapons and anything else the Danubians could use to continue their campaign. They hauled out the cannons that the Danubians had used to kill the Red Moon cavalry and brought out hundreds of muskets, saddles, horseshoes, and travel packs. They also took down the Red Moon Army's impalement hooks, which the Danubians carried around to justify the treatment of their captives.

The clean-up of Hórkustk Ris started with the simple removal of useable items, but then the Grand Duke decided to force his captives to haul out and bury the rotting enemy corpses. The conditions among the ruins were horrible and most of the prisoners did not last long. Silvítya watched with dismay as the Duke's men herded group after group of enslaved villagers towards the ruins of Hórkustk Ris. Perhaps those people were foreigners who had usurped the Duchy's land and destroyed its southern forest, but they also were people very much like Silvítya's own family. She couldn't see them as the enemy; she could only see them as fellow peasants.

All nations have selective memories. The Grand Duchy of Upper Danubia is no exception. The nation celebrated the Grand Duke's risky campaign and hard fought victory at Hórkustk Ris, but chose to forget what happened afterwards. The Duke's soldiers also chose to forget. In the years following the war they would spend hours describing, in gory detail, the valiant fighting in the streets against a much larger army to their children and grandchildren. However there would be no mention of shooting a captive cholera-stricken foreign villager struggling to obey an order to drag a rotting corpse out of some ruins three weeks later.

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Note: Looking at the former site of Hórkustk Ris today, it is hard to imagine that the Grand Duchy of Upper Danubia's fourth largest city was once located there. Apart from the cathedral's walls, very little remains of the city's ruins. Even most of the foundations of the city wall are missing. The castle survived the battle intact, as did some houses located in the district between the castle and the partially ruined church. However, the stench of corpses and the unsanitary conditions within the walls made re-settlement impossible between 1754 and 1756. During that two-year period the remaining buildings fell into disrepair. By 1756 Hórkustk Ris had become a rock quarry for nearby villages. Danubian civilians forced to re-settle in the area visited the ruins to collect stones and bricks. The Grand Duke sent in Royal Guards, not to protect the city, but to make sure that no man or armed group would try to charge villagers for taking out building supplies. Most of the houses had been completely dismantled by 1770. The final structures were the remains of the cathedral, the castle, and the city wall. The Grand Duke considered re-building the castle to house a garrison, but decided the location was too far north to be useful for guarding the border. To prevent the castle from being used by anyone else, he allowed settlers to tear down the structure on the condition they hauled away the stones. Most of the larger blocks remaining from the city wall were carted off to build two bridges during the 1780s. The cathedral's ruins were never looted, so the church site remains as a silent reminder of Hórkustk Ris and its unhappy fate .

- Maritza Ortskt-Dukovna -