Part 47

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As soon as the army was able to solve the command problem, bad news came from Lipin. The suburbs had been sacked and the city itself was under siege. The Earth Kingdom soldiers, in conjunction with the savages, had collapsed the main bridges and starved Lipin to death, constantly shelling the city on the water and polluting the river. So far, the strong current of the Pona had handled all the filth that the forest dwellers poured into it, but sooner or later such tactics would succeed.

Post falcons flitted between colonies and armies, tearing their wings. The poor birds of prey were relentlessly reporting on the deteriorating situation on the fronts. The garrison of Pohai Fortress had been forced to stay put to defend the western shore, and Prince Airo was still too far away to help. Squads of bandits from the ruins and tribes of savages were spreading throughout the eastern part of the colony, pillaging and killing everyone in their path. Villages, small garrisons, healing centres and spas. Everything around Lipin was devoted to fire.

Reading the short letters of orders, Tse didn't know what to do next. His army was in a dire situation, and there was an urgent need for action. Their original task of guarding the shores of Ten-Ten was still in effect. They needed to entrench themselves, send out patrols, and guard the river from enemy raiders. His mother sent a letter from Lipin asking for help, and Prince Airo urged him to protect the villagers in the suburbs.

Not knowing what to do, the son of the Fire Giant sent a question to his father, to which he received a simple and concise reply.

'You are a soldier, and soldiers follow orders.'

His parent's short answer encouraged the young man that he couldn't make up his mind for a long time. Suppressing any questions or suggestions, Tse gave orders to protect the river, ignoring the letters from the prince, his mother, and the viceroy.

'Right now, Airo is the general, so he can only advise me. Of course, I'll have a lot of problems later, but I'll follow the order of the general staff.' Having decided everything for himself, the young man actively got to work, encouraging his men.

A new battle and new wounds. Yu tiredly held his dislocated shoulder, trying not to move his arm. Looking around, he saw a few soldiers that had survived another ambush by the shrews.

This time there were no conquerors, just ordinary men who had done just as much damage. With slingshots and bows, they pelted their squad with projectiles and disappeared into the nearest forest, which was a dense wall rising above the coastal plain. The living wall of wood created a boundary beyond which the soldiers of the Land of Fire were afraid to venture. No one who ventured into Baru had ever returned. Dense thickets of trees intertwined with vines and tall roots of centuries-old trunks, creating an eerie impassable corridor. Every time Yu looked at Baru, he didn't understand how Iron Fist was going to clear it.

Even the light was afraid to descend into this cursed forest. Komodo and horsestraus refused to approach the forest at all, dropping their riders and scurrying away. A couple of times the maddened animals jumped on the riders just to get away from the forest.

-There's a town out there somewhere.

-Not quite.

A new voice distracted Yu from her thoughts. One of the soldiers from the patrol sat down beside him and grabbed his dislocated arm. Silently asking permission, the guy waited for a nod from the orphan and jerked the limb sharply. With a slight crunch, the arm snapped back into place. Without making a sound during the entire process, Yuu scrutinised the features of the man opposite.

Long black hair was gathered under his helmet. A half-mask revealed the lower part of his face with thin small lips. And the graceful hands with long fingers were very different from the rest of the soldiers.

-And I thought you'd recognise me. -And I thought you'd recognise me. Though I wouldn't expect you to.

The familiar voice cut hard on his ear, triggering many memories in his head. While Yuu tried to catch the fragments lost in his memory, the man opposite took off his helmet. A smooth aristocratic nose and straight cheekbones clearly showed a noble breed, coupled with a straight and sharp chin that would leave no one in doubt that this young man was of blue blood.

With a wry smile, Yuan Shu looked at his friend's surprised face. The comically open mouth and goggle eyes evoked pleasant childhood memories.

-Shu, is it really you?

Placing his hand on his former classmate's shoulder, Yui squeezed it firmly, even causing his companion to wince slightly.

-Yes, let go of my shoulder, big guy, or you'll break it.

-But how? I thought you were going to follow in your father's footsteps in commerce....

-Well, I'm sure I am.

While the shattered patrol gathered their strength and regained consciousness, Yu helped his old friend clean up the soldiers and collect the dead. Their conversation was strange with the recent events, but as it turned out, both of them were used to seeing deaths by now.

Yuan Shu's story turned out to be simple but interesting. Ever since the day Yu left school in Lu-Yang, Shu had been left alone and had to survive on his own. Without a combative neighbour, many kids of similar standing or higher began to slowly crush the little bastard, forcing him to answer harder each time. Eventually things got out of hand and Shu, tormented by the constant attacks, beat up his main bully with a food tray. He maimed the poor bloke so badly that he can't even speak properly.

Without the shadow of the Yuan family looming behind him, he would have been hanged for such a thing. But being the bastard of a very powerful house, Shu managed to escape much of the punishment. The chastisement from his father and brother took a long aura, and his later life took a sharp turn.

The angry parent was, to put it mildly, annoyed by the offspring's behaviour, so he was not stingy with threats and deprivation. Having come to some conclusion of his own, Shu's father sent the lad to an army school with the words:

'Do you like fighting more than talking? See that you don't regret it!'

Three years in the infantry should have knocked the lad's hubris out of him and brought him back under his father's wing. The head of the Yuan family had hoped that his son would realise the wrongness of his actions and come begging for forgiveness, but after watching Yu as a child, the stubborn bastard began training as a field medic and finished his studies. When a call for volunteers went out across the city, Shu scraped together all the money he had saved and paid the recruiter to enlist.

Having learnt to dig through corpses and stitch up screaming men, Shu was rather indifferent to everything that was going on. Three years of training and working in a hospital had knocked out the squeamishness and fear of blood. He looked at dead bodies and gruesome wounds with the interest of a labourer who had been assigned to fix a hole in the wall out of shit and sticks.

-That's how I ended up here. Though I feel that my story is nothing compared to yours.

Nodding at the good armour and expensive weapons, Shu grinned and picked up the soldier's body under his armpits. There was an arrow sticking out of the dead man's throat that prevented the medic from dragging him, so, tired of dodging the shaft, he snapped it at the base and continued on his way.

Watching this scene, Yuu couldn't believe what his quiet and pompous school mate had turned into. Instead of pride and superiority, there was now only weariness and acceptance of reality in his voice. Banal jokes and glossy phrases had given way to pragmatism and curmudgeonly answers.

Shaking his head and rubbing his temples, the earth mage followed Shu as he continued dragging bodies.

All the following days until Iron Fist's recovery merged into a single blink of an eye. When they learnt that Tse's army had established a foothold on the shore and started patrolling, the savages seemed to be off the chain.

Every day, the patrols went into the steppe, as if to the rear of the enemy. Every day the soldiers hoped that the role in the guard force would be filled by another, for the survivors of these groups were becoming fewer every day.

The enemies were not leaving without casualties, but the situation was getting worse for the Fire Nation troops. The hospital was filling up with the wounded, and morale was beginning to show its lowest ebb. Tired warriors wandered around as shadows of their former selves. Stumbling on even ground, they were exhausted by constant fear and sleep deprivation.

Every day, a small squad of shrews came close to the camp underground and threw boulders towards the walls. Because of the distance, the bastards always got away without any trouble, only fraying the nerves of their opponents.

Frustrated by these bogus attacks, the soldiers began to ignore the attacks more often and just stared tiredly at the fleeing enemies. The general veneer of despair and hopelessness undermined attentiveness, so when the real assault came, the army paid dearly for it.

The long plan of the shrews ended in success. One fine summer evening, the entire field hospital and headquarters, where the commanders had gathered in anticipation of Sun Tse, collapsed beneath the ground. A huge column of dust rose at the site of the collapse. Before anyone had time to recover, enemy soldiers and their pets began to emerge from the ground.

Huge armoured tigers jumped out of the holes in the ground. Curled into a ball, the animals rolled around the tents frantically, crushing the soldiers. When there were too many enemies and they lost speed, the beast opened up, standing on all four paws. Nearly two metres at the withers and protected by segments of armour on its sides and back, the huge cats would charge into the ranks of panicked soldiers, tearing them to pieces.

While everyone was distracted by the animals that were collecting the bloody tribute, the savages pelted the army with shells. After firing a few shots, they hid again in the tunnels and whistled for their pets to return.

The whole battle did not take twenty minutes, but the consequences were disastrous. Soldiers lay everywhere, dead and alive. Interspersed with animals and miscellaneous belongings. Rookies and volunteers were crying silently or hysterical, only the staunchest veterans kept their composure.

The camp fell into a frightening silence. Just a few minutes ago, the warriors were on adrenaline, ready to tear the enemy further, but now they were a pitiful sight.

Bent and broken, they were ready to go after anyone to make this nightmare stop. But all the senior commanders were dead, as were most of the medical staff and the wounded. Overnight, the army found itself completely alone, with no way to cope with the problems that were looming.

Wandering among the corpses, Yu stumbled over the bodies of his classmates more and more often. Cursing himself in his head, the young man hoped that his friend was fine and was now recovering somewhere. Tse's body was nowhere to be found, and the closer he got to one of the pits, the more insistent the frightening hunch sounded in his head. Plucked by arrows or stoned to death, the heir's bodyguards lay huddled close to where the main headquarters used to stand. Sun Ce's guards were dead, and the heir himself was missing.