Forester's Stand Part 1
*****
_My dear Lord Jacobson,
In regards to your request regarding the truth of the matter surrounding the July 17 action at Guylian's Pass, I find that a comprehensive account of this event must, by necessity, begin with the events two days prior at Minyaree Creek. As you are, by this time, no doubt aware, that this ill-advised action was a direct result of Lord General Haverson's decision to move his troops into Remeeri territory without Her Majesty's authorization. As the valiant Lord Haverson is now, sadly, not among the living, we can only speculate as to his reasons for doing so, although (given his lordship's character), one may safely assume that it was motivated more by a sincere desire to do Her Majesty's bidding in this dangrous foreign land, not by any mere aspirations of self-aggrandizement.
What is clear, however, is the end result: out of 1,500 men and 100 officers, over 1,300 were killed, taken prisoner, or wounded. Given that our brave men, with their modern firearms and superior training, were able to inflict three times that number in casualties upon the savage feline-folk, this may, at worst, be considered a pyrrhic victory for the enemy. Even so, it must be remembered that no matter the damage inflicted upon the enemy, that day marked the loss of over nine-tenths of our men in that region of Remeeriland. If things had gone differently, subsequent events could have resulted in a total rout of our forces in that savage continent, instead of a localized insurrection.
As you know, things went quite differently, and the reason for that difference can, perhaps, be traced to one man: Lieutenant Richard Bernard Forester, of the Albionese Regular Infantry. As to this man's personal background, the following information should suffice: that he enlisted at a young age in the infantry as a private, that he fought several campaigns, rose through the ranks, and received a field commission for valor from Lord General Horatio Harrington himself, and was subsequently assigned to Her Majesty's Remeeri Expeditionary Force as a minor officer in the forts protecting our colonies in that savage land. Following the events of Minyaree Pass, Lieutenant Forester and a small group of survivors who escaped that field of carnage attempted to return to Guylian's Pass to warn the garrison there. In doing so, they were forced to travel for three days and nights through hostile territory, surrounded by Remeeri. It was a treacherous journey, one that claimed the lives of several companions. . ._
*****
Benjamin Kinneson was a good boy, a farmer's son who'd joined the army seeking adventure and glory. Forester had liked the young private, with his round moon-face and his big brown eyes and his earnest smile and his childlike aspirations of heroism. He'd wanted to serve his time, become a hero, find a lovely wife, go home and return to his father's farm, raise fat children and spend his twilight years drinking beer in the tavern and telling old war stories.
He wasn't aspiring towards much more than surviving now. He was inching across the blood-soaked battlefield, blood dripping into his eyes from a graze on his temple, lurching across the smoke-and blood-soaked grass, stumbling over the bodies of dead Albionese and R'Myrri alike. His rifle, with its bloody bayonet and its broken buttstock, served as a makeshift cane. He wasn't quite sure where he was going, but he had a feeling that if he went far enough, he could get away from this madness.
The only warning he had was a soft, dangerous purr. He turned to see a trio of R'Myrri (catlike humanoids, about six feet tall, with powerful muscular bodies, speckled fur coats, and cruelly curved claws), stalking him from the bloody grass. They pounced, powerful leg muscles propelling them nearly five feet into the air, their hardened-hide shields and savage, long-bladed spears flashing in the blood-red setting sun. Private Kinneson desperately raised his rifle, tripped over a dead Albionese soldier, fell on his back with a dismayed cry. His shot passed bare inches from one of the R'Myrri's heads (so close it carried away one of the beads in his ceremonial headdress in the process), flew into the distance uselessly.
Then the spears came down.
From his position several hundred yards away, lying down at the top of a ridge, Lieutenant Forester shook his head grimly as he saw the catfolk warriors strike, heard the screaming of the young private. "Come on," he said. "Let's get going, nothing more we can do here."
"You're just. . . you're just going to leave Benny in the hands of those savages!?" Sergeant Harkness complained. He was a big man, standing head-and-shoulders over his lieutenant, and built like a barrel. His sand-colored hair was loose and blood-stained, and the old scar on his cheek twisted his face into a permanent sneer, making him look perpetually angry, which, in fact, he usually was. "How the hell can you do that!?"
"Sir," Lieutenant Forester corrected. "'You're just going to leave Benny in the hands of those savages?' sir. I've earned these damn bars, you can at least do me the honor of remembering that they're there."
"Pardon me," Harkness said stiffly. "Sir, you are just going to leave poor, helpless Benny in the hands of those vicious savages, sir, to be slaughtered like a dog, lieutenant sir, hip hip hoorah?"
"Yes, I am," Forester said sharply, "Because we've got no choice." The lieutenant flinched at the savage yowls of the catfolk, the screams of terror followed by the meaty thuds of spears upon flesh, the screams that turned into a dying gurgle and the crack of breaking bone. He did not turn around as he walked down from the ridge. He didn't have to. He had seen the R'Myrri death ritual enough times to know what the fierce feline warriors would do: it was called "binding the soul in the cage of bone," and involved breaking the ribs and using them to form a cage around the heart before ceremonially devouring the viscera. It was a ritual performed by R'Myrri warriors to bind the soul of a particularly hated enemy by eating a portion of their flesh like a prey animal, thus refusing them entrance to the next life where only warriors could go.
He doubted that Private Kinneson particularly cared about that part.
Lieutenant Forester faced the tiny, bedraggled group of men huddled together by the creek. There were barely a dozen of them left, and he was surprised that even so paltry a number had survived the carnage. Over 30,000 R'Myrri warriors had descended upon the regiment without warning, screaming their savage warcries, hacking away with their short glaives and long spears and wicked whip-swords. He shuddered at the memory of the yellow-eyed beasts tearing through the front ranks as the officers struggled and failed to mount some modicum of a defense, utter panic spreading through the men like a disease as it became readily apparent that their leaders had no idea what to do. It had been a massacre. Even Albionese soldiers couldn't stand against 200 to 1 odds in the best circumstances, and this had been anything but.
He allowed himself a moment to wonder if that idiot Lord Haverson had survived, then put the thought out of his mind. What was done was done. His duty now was to the small group of men who had survived. "We need to get back to Fort Guylian," Forester said. "The garrison needs to be warned that the cats are in open rebellion now."
"It's three days back to the fort," Harkness pointed out. "The men are tired, and many are wounded. We're short on food, water, ammunition, and there are Remeeri all throughout the area between here and the pass. We'll never make it."
"It's better than lying down here and waiting for the R'Myrri to kill us all," Forester replied, pronouncing the word with the proper gutturals, rolling the "r's", and applying that slight accent to the second syllable. "And by the way, this is not open for discussion. Get the men ready to move out. If there are any wounded too injured to travel, leave them some food, water, and ammunition and leave them in as good a hiding place as we can find. We can't afford to be slowed down. Time is of the essence."
"That's idiocy!" Harkness shouted. "Three days across Remeeri territory with the cats chasing us the whole way. . . we'll never make it! No, what we have to do is go to ground and hide here. There are caves to the East, we can reach them in half a day. We can hide there for a couple of days and wait for the cats to pass by. . ."
"Pass by on the way to Fort Guylian!" Forester pointed out. "And that's the last line between the R'Myrri and Veronicasburg. There are civilians in Veronicasburg, Harkness. Women and children. You really want to see what R'Myrri will do to women and children? Do you?"
"Good god, man, give it up! Fort Guylian's not going to stand even if we do warn them! You saw how many cats there were out there, they'll walk right over the defenders! Those girls and kids are dead already, they just don't know it!"
"I was not aware," Forester said coldly, "that the laws and regulations of Her Majesty's Armed Forces had been revised to allow sergeants to give orders to lieutenants."
Harkness' mouth snapped shut like a steel trap, and he glowered at the taller man for a very long time. Lieutenant Forester was not nearly as large as his sergeant, but he was lean and lanky, with whipcord-tight muscles and short, black hair and narrow, calculating grey eyes. He'd lost his uniform jacket in the fighting: a huge rent had been torn in it by a catfolk spear, and he'd had to throw it away because it kept flapping around and hindering his movements, so he was dressed in his shirtsleeves, trousers, and suspenders. It looked rather ridiculous, but it also made him look fierce, wild, like a man possessed by an inner demon, a warrior.
But Harkness knew what the men did not: Forester was no warrior. Forester was a clerk, a scholar, a prissy mortarboard-wearing nobleman, an adjutant to Lord Haverson, assigned to the General's tent as translator and "cultural expert" on the Remeerii. A schoolteacher. Harkness had been in several meetings of the senior staff as Captain Jacobson's senior sergeant (a good fighting officer, now dead out there on that killing plain) listening to this wiry lieutenant wax philosophical about Remeeri language and culture - absolute idiocy, when the only Remeeri "culture" that was of any import was the "culture" the Remeeri shared at the points of their spears. He laid a hand on the hilt of his sword-bayonet, glanced behind him at the men. If any of them showed any signs of having the same idea he did. . .
None of them did. They were all just tired and battle-weary, watching the two men with dispassionate disinterest.
Harkness removed his hand from the hilt of his sword. "Forgive me, Lieutenant, sir," he said, in an exaggeratedly crisp tone. "The lieutenant, sir, is of course, sir, the ranking officer in charge of this unit, lieutenant, sir, and is, of course, entitled to give whatever damnfool orders he damn well pleases, lieutenant sir, long live the Queen."
"Good," Forester said, ignoring Harkness' insubordinate tone. "Then the sergeant will get the men kitted out and ready to march. We leave in ten minutes. We need to get as far as we can before night falls, and then hunker down and wait for the dawn."
"Forgive me, sir, but would it not perhaps be better to march all night, lieutenant, sir, if we're to make it to the fort as quickly as possible, lieutenant, sir, hip hip hoorah long live the Queen?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Forester said mildly. "We can't see in the dark, and the cats can. Ten minutes, sergeant. Get the men ready."