by Jeva Singh-Anand

Created on: August 13, 2007

Storming the City of Heaven

by Jeva Singh-Anand

Duke Irkud Carrugin's soldiers searched the village fruitlessly for survivors. The Chaddin, true to their nature, had inflicted gruesome carnage here. There were signs of a fierce battle by the wooden bridge and of smaller, desperate struggles in the wheat fields. Inside the village there were only the marks of slaughter. Corpses of men and animals, savaged by Chaddin claws and teeth, lay in the streets, scattered like dice. Yet even the more seasoned veterans among Carrugin's men were ill-prepared for what they saw when they came upon the small kirk and discovered what these creatures had done to the women and children, the elderly and the sick. Over two hundred human lives had been extinguished, yet not a single Chaddin cadaver was to be found.

How brave their struggle had been! These people had used scythes, shovels and threshing poles to defend their lives and those things that comprised their humble livelihoods: a heap of thatched huts, some livestock, a few fields, and a small creek.
They had not deserved this.

Irkud Carrugin's heavy frame shook with anger. The local garrison commander was a young lieutenant whose body bore not a single scar. He kneeled before him, stripped naked and shackled. He looked at Carrugin with pleading eyes.

"This is the price that has been exacted for your cowardice," Carrugin spoke gravely.

His own countenance was a grotesque array of thickly interwoven scars.

"We only left our position to notify you, my Duke," tears streamed down the lieutenant's face.

"You came with twenty soldiers to do what a single runner could have accomplished?"

"I would have committed my men to certain death."

"Soldiers are paid to die when the need arises," said Carrugin. "It is time for you to earn your wages."

He turned to two sergeants, "Find a sturdy tree and hang this coward before his own men. As far as they are concerned, tell them this: that if they show extraordinary courage in the next battle, I shall be content to give them twenty lashes and withhold from them one month's pay, and I shall call it mercy."

The lieutenant sobbed like a child as the sergeants dragged him through the muddy streets to a place of execution. Carrugin knew nothing about this man. If he had told him his name, he had already forgotten it. Amrikar would have been his age now, would he not? In times less cruel, they might have been friends, this timid creature and his only son and Carrugin would have been well-pleased with this.

His

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