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We were a band of two hundred ragged men and women who had slipped through the night and sacked the town of Torquea while it slept. Five thousand men marched from the city of Icantoka, the Crimson Inquisitor at its head, to put us down. But we were long gone, Torquea looted and burned to ashes. We had lived all our lives on the edge of the marshes. We had learned to exist within them, to hunt and feed and make out shelter there. The soldiers, who rolled down from the plains on their horses, found themselves in hell. The swamp opened up and swallowed them.

Survivors from the first battle had first made this camp three months ago. The chaos of that fight still rang in my memory: Horses screaming, armoured men sucked down into the muddy waters, blood and earth mixing together. Swords scything through flesh, ripping open guts and spraying the long reeds with gore. I saw a horse speared, the legionnaire fall into the swamp, stagger to his feet only to find them encased in mud, and watched him slowly sink and die, while the dirty, ragged imps of men that fought for their freedom speared him again and again. I saw as one of them strayed too close, and, even sunken to his chest in the mire, the half-dead soldier thrust his sword into the man's groin. They died together, one atop the other, their bodies lost forever, their souls returned to the great cycle. The battle lasted for a day, but it was another three before the last of us realised it was lost. One by one, the men around me were killed, or fled, or simply vanished into the swamp. For two months I had been almost alone, shadowing the Inquisitor's army, watching as it fell slowly apart. Each night, I would slip among them, kill a sentry, poison some food or foul their supply of water and watch them die slowly. Sometimes, the cry would go up, as they stumbled by chance upon a small band of refugees. Sometimes I would fight them hard. And sometimes I did nothing, and let the men who fought for me die. And I learned. I learned what it was to command an army, how crucial were so many things I would not have thought of. Like boots and clothes and shelter and food and water, and horses, and what it was doing to these soldiers to be in this toxic place, beset by rot and illness, watching their numbers dwindle by the day and wondering who would be next and when their turn would come. Until the day I lost them in the haze of yet another skirmish, and found my way to this camp.

Three or four hundred of us had found one another, in this most desperate of places where disease and the bites and stings of the swamp took more lives than swords and spears. More than had sacked Torquea. I asked where they had come from, but no one seemed to know. Perhaps they had always been there, refugees from a hundred other villages pillaged by the Inquisitor's raiders. We were pitiful, half-starved, pale, constantly beset by one illness or another, yet I knew the soldiers hunting us fared even worse. As the Inquisitor drew ever closer, guided by some sorcery even I could not perceive, I took bands of scouts to shadow scouts of his own, and saw the state of them. From the proud army that had entered the swamp, they had become the living dead, driven on only by the Inquisitor's will. But still they came, though the swamp whittled and fretted at their numbers. I understood, as I watched them, that I had but one path to victory. I must face the Crimson Inquisitor, and cut off the head, that the body might wither.

Finding the Inquisitor's army was simple enough. They made no effort to conceal their presence, confident in their numbers and their swords and armour. Fires flickered here and there, almost impossible to start in this place, yet burning nonetheless, and I smelled a taint of sorcery to them. With a smile. Let them waste their talents on small comforts. I could have evaded their sentries and their picket line too, in the darkness of a new moon and among the dancing shadows of the reeds, but why, when I could as easily move them on in the great cycle and gift their flesh to the swamp. A dozen I killed, across one side of their camp, and not one saw death approach them. Perhaps because death haunted their every hour. I felt, for a moment, pity for them - a mercy to return them to the cycle - before I remembered my sister, held down by four of the Inquisitors men, while others took their turn with her. I stopped my throat slitting then. Let the swamp take them. Let their death be lingering and slow.

Dressed in their swords and their armour, I moved unseen among them. I heard their snores and their moans, and learned to cast my gaze down at the mud beneath my feet, as they did. Scarcely a one of them lifted their eyes to look upon my face, and even those that did wore a blank mask of fatigue. Only when I approached the Inquisitor's tent, did I feel a watch upon me, the solitary guard placed outside fighting back the weariness of months of fighting to seek some familiarity in my face. I let him, while my stolen sword flew free and found his throat. I'm quite sure he never even saw the movement.

"Careful, my friend," I murmured, as I embraced him and his hot blood flowed over me. "You should not be seen to fall asleep on duty," and I carried him gently inside.

"I have been waiting for you," said a voice, and I felt the power and the command in it. I let the dead man slip from my arms. I couldn't see who spoke in the darkness of the tent, but I knew I had found what I sought.

"Then let us be at it." I took my guard.

"Did you think you could enter my presence without my knowing?" A dim light began to shimmer around me, growing ever brighter. I saw the man I had come to kill, and saw that he was not a man at all, but a woman, with greying hair and glittering eyes. She wore a suit of the finest chain mail I have ever seen, deep red, the colour of a slow-bleeding wound. She wore no weapon I could see, but her face told me she was armed. And believed herself invincibly so. I sensed a static charge of power creep into the room, and felt the beginnings of a compulsion, to stay calm, stand exactly as I was, and await whatever may come.

I brushed it aside with a snort of contempt. "Sorcery will not save you, witch. Steel is always steel." As she blinked, I sprang, blade outstretched to run her through her corrupted heart, so fast she could not hope to see me, and as her eyes opened again, she would be run through and have a second or maybe two to ponder her mistake before ascending to the great cycle. Or so I had in mind.

The blade struck true. Her armour did not yield. She shrieked in pain from the force of my impact and tumbled backwards, and for an instant, I couldn't move. How did she live? What manner of enchanted armour was this?

No matter. She wore no armour to protect her face. I poised to spring again. Yet I had delayed too long. She shimmered, and was gone.

"Let the swamp have you then!" hissed the air she left behind. For the second time, a sorcerer had escaped me. I could do nothing but seethe and vow I would find a way to end their vanishings.

I could claim victory for the destruction of the Inquisitor's army, but I know it was the marsh, not I, that ate them. Yet something had happened. A myth had been born, spawned out of the swamp and the smell of death. The Inquisitor was beaten, driven back in disarray. Five thousand he had led against us, fewer than five hundred returned, and still we were free. While we braced ourselves for the next army, for surely it would come, and prepared our hideouts and defences ever deeper into the marches, whispers began to fly. A month after our so-called victory, two frightened men reached me, close to death from exhaustion. We will fight for you, they breathed. Another came and pledged a hundred men and women of his village, if we would free them from the Inquisitor's grasp. And then another, and then another.

We made ourselves a banner and sallied forth with knives and spears, and issued the cry. Yes, we were free. Yes, we would fight. Yes, we would bring an end to the Inquisitor once and for all. Our cry went out, and men and women rallied to us, in droves it seemed, until our camp extended as far as the eye could see, and at night, out fires gave the stars cause to envy.

Certain of our cause and our inevitable victory, our march on Icantoka began. There were, perhaps, almost two thousand of us, with no armour, and perhaps one sharp sword between three. But it seemed a legion to me.

The content of this page is © copyright Stephen Deas 2003 and is used here with permission.
It may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the permission of the author.