Tell the Princess that

her red soldiers are boys,

stupid, arrogant boys,

boys who can kill men.

DUTY

The group of red-coated men stood shoulder to shoulder, their leather boots soaking in the stomped mango, their breaths evaporating into the cold tunnel.

Yjennka was tasked with picking out the best warriors for the distraction force. He knew the elder, the more experienced, but that was about it. Without a long list of documents that he usually handled in officer academy, he couldn’t tell who was supposed to be the veterans. To him, they all looked like veterans. Skeptical, eyebrow-raising veterans.

Perhaps it was the equipment? Yjennka inspected each soldier’s gear one by one. Then, he paused at a soldier with a graying beard and a cracked shield. The man noticed Yjennka’s curious stare and held his gaze.

“My son’s shield,” the man said, looking down at the crack himself. “Took a hit in an old battle. Couldn’t save him.”

Yjennka’s mouth gaped. Up to now, he’s been detaching himself from what he’s seeing – comrades die. The numbers add up. Corpses are just cleanup work. Everything is okay.

So, to come face to face with the fact that he’s dealing with human lives, real people with families and stories – how could he ask them, men with stories he barely knew, to risk their lives? His gaze drifted to the other soldiers. They weren’t just steel helmets. They were faces worn by too many battles.

“You’re frozen,” the grizzled man smiled, “but you’ll make the right decisions, boy. Trust me.”

He stepped forward, perhaps in a kind gesture, perhaps because he had nothing left to lose, but the look of professionalism glinted in his calm eyes.

Another veteran stepped forward. There were three names and ranks etched into this man’s shoulder plates. Brothers who have fallen in battle, perhaps?

“We know what needs to be done,” the warrior said. “There are many worse hells out there.”

Yjennka’s throat tightened. Before he knew it, a group of battle-hungry men had gathered before him, expecting and longing for the worst of the worst. And he was about to drag them through it all.

“You’re our lieutenant now,” someone muttered, “to hell and back, sir.”

A feeling of warmth burnt in Yjennka’s chest, a warmth like a hearth, like a breath of assurance blown into his heart. ‘They are my men.’

‘And if I’m walking into hell, they’re gonna be right by me.’

He positioned the front force right behind the large entrance barricade. They’ll pull it down once the plan is set into motion, but for now… Preparations. The other men were stashed away in the library and the café, ready to attack when Yjennka called for it.

Blades were wiped, shields were rubbed, some checked their coin purses – must be doing it for the money, perhaps – but these men have gone all in. The damp stench, the muffled crowd’s curses that echoed as you drew closer, the shuffling of the men’s boots, as if there were a hundred instead of fifty, Yjennka was ready. He was terrified, but he was ready.

‘So many lives in my hands. Fifty? That could make up twelve families. An entire town’s street. I may fail.’

Hadel approached from within the tunnel, a thumbs up held out. “The men are all set in the ambush spot. How holds the front?”

Yjennka flinched, as if expecting something to jump out at him.

“Er… We are ready. Care to join us, Hadel?”

Hadel’s eyes flicked. His lips parted, about to joke around. But his thumbs up drooped, his small smile curling into a frown.

“The front of a tunnel? I’d rather sit in the back… Lost more than a battle in places like this.”

Before any questions were raised, Hadel slithered back with the ambush group, the less experienced men.

‘They will need the expertise anyway,’ Yjennka figured, still hesitant to exert his authority over people like Hadel. ‘He knows far better than I do.’

He drew his longsword and tapped it against his crimson shield, trying to fit into the role of officer, as if breaking in a new boot. ‘These men are my men, they are under my command,’ he tried to convince himself.

“Muster, muster, raise your shields and prepare for battle.” A shield wall rose, every man convinced that they are immovable. And that was what mattered the most – superior confidence. Yjennka gave a quick nod, and a few soldiers pulled back the large stand that blocked the tunnel.

Immediately, the crowd surged, rumbling like a flood against a dam, crashing upon the shields. Yjennka’s uncomfortably cold skin flashed red hot once again, his mind spinning like a wind wheel in a storm. He watched from the side, how the first line of peasants were cut down – how the veterans timed the opening and closing of their shields, striking their blades perfectly.

“Okay, pace back! Give them some more space!” he ordered.

The soldiers took the fight deeper inside. Boots rumbled as the walls did, debris and dust falling from the ceiling. The mangoes blackened with mud.

The first minute was crucial, and Yjennka had to be the one who controlled the tempo. His sword, like a conductor’s baton, swept through the air from command to command. But the men took every order with grace – after all, their lieutenant was willing to risk his life alongside them.

The first man fell. Yjennka barely noticed, if not for the rioters suddenly slowing down and cheering at their first little victory. A chill ran down his spine as the roar of the cheers raised a crescendo of fear in the air.

Push, hold, give space, he alternated between the three modes of attack, trying to feel the unit as one giant organism, one big, breathing, fighting block. ‘Like coffee, sugar, and milk, he thought, it must be proportionate. Sometimes there’s more milk than coffee, sometimes there’s more sugar than milk.’

His mind raced as much as his heart did, pumping thought after thought like a heartbeat. He filtered his worries, searching for the most urgent questions. ‘How many are we losing? How many have we defeated? Who has the initiative? When should I fall back?’

Yjennka spotted the fallen warrior trampled under the crowd. The first death to be celebrated in this horrific situation.

‘He’s got a gray beard.’

He swallowed, trying to push down the bitter taste of sympathy that seemed to well up in his chest and overflow into his throat like a boiling kettle. He stared hard at the body, disappearing underneath the mob’s feet, desperate for answers he couldn’t find. ‘Why? Why join your son in following the same fate?’

Like a loosened fence that failed to hold, three more soldiers fell, their helmets clanking against the stone floor, their souls claimed by the ravaging crowd. The rioters erupted in cheer once more, Yjennka’s face growing ugly with dread and worry.

“Down to twenty one,” Yjennka snapped, almost biting his tongue. The soldier next to him flinched, as if the information was thrown at him, his face growing pale at what he’s hearing.

“Lieutenant, they slow down every time we lose someone,” the soldier gulped, trying his best to help.

Yjennka blinked. He glanced at the soldier, then back at the front of the line. Another man died, there was another loud cheer, and the rebels seemed stunned in place by their own progress.

“Twenty,” he muttered as he watched his soldier fill in the gap. For just a second, just a measly, tiny second, the crowd stopped attacking.

He slammed his sword on his shield as hard as he could. “Fall back! Fall back! Shields front – move back in formation!”

His men shuffled backwards, glancing every now and then at where they were going. ‘Don’t rout, don’t rout, please don’t rout,’ Yjennka thought, the unit struggling to maintain their cohesion. ‘I should’ve planned an escape plan!’

He glanced at his sides, terrified, trying to find the right moment to start the ambush. Fruit crates. Fish stalls. Spice jars. He jogged his memory, searching frantically for the ambush point. ‘I’m gonna puke.’

There was the scent of coffee. A café and a library. Yjennka caught the glint of Hadel’s eye, nestled in a dark corner of the café – and Hadel knew what to do.

“Attack!” Hadel’s roar ripped through the air.

The chairs crashed to the floor, cups shattered, and the smell of coffee mixed with the stuffy air  as the rebels froze in terror. Books fell, their pages fluttering like dying birds – the ambushers descended like a storm.

They fell onto the enemy like lightning, their first strike leaving a wake of destruction. Their boots stomped as if there were a thousand, quickly coating the cold floor in warm blood.

Like the jaws of a bear trap, the group snapped shut around the rebels, crushing and stunning them in an instant. The eyes of their foes grew wide with terror as weapons clattered to the floor en masse, two hundred war cries dwindling to seventy whimpering yelps. The floor trembled under the chaos, rebels banging against walls and tumbling over one another, desperate to find balance.

It was like razing grass. Impersonal, random violence – soldiers stabbed and stabbed and stabbed into the mass, not knowing what they’re stabbing exactly, their crisp red uniforms growing a darker red the more they soaked in the bloodshed.

Yjennka raised his sword, taking a deep breath, his eyes dead set on ordering the men to chase down the fleeing rebels. But Hadel grabbed his wrist, shaking his head, his breath heavy. He looked at Yjennka and felt the tremble in his hands.

“We’re done,” Hadel said. “We’re done, Yjenn – they’ve lost. We aren’t here to kill them off.”

Hadel lowered his sword, taking slow steps back, slumping into a wall behind him. There was a sense of stress alongside the triumph. It was in the way his eyes focused too hard on objects that didn’t matter, how his fingers pressed and stressed against the hilt of his blade, how his breath inhaled far too deep, trying to even out the hitches in his throat.

“Good commanding,” was all Hadel had to say. The blood on the sword felt too heavy.

Yjennka was frozen in place. Good commanding? It didn’t feel like praise at all. Just a reminder to every choice he made. ‘It feels like ash in my throat.’

Nobody cheered. They stood around, as if expecting the earth to swallow the scene whole.

He turned his head with his gaze, his neck too stiff, a slight tension in his jaw as if he wanted to bite his tongue. Some of the Reds huddled together, coiling bandages around their wounds, or passing around bottles of water. They had silent conversations, trying to return any sense of normalcy.

“Is this street getting named after us, or…”

“I don’t know, they might name it Traitor’s Lane and leave it at that.”

Five more men aren’t coming home today.

The old soldier with the three names on his armor scratched on five extra names. He directed the younger troops, assisting them in recovering their fallen and their wounded.

Yjennka stepped out of the cold tunnel entrance, the harsh sunlight beaming off his royal uniform. Even in the open air, the ash clung to him, as if the tunnels refused to let go.

Everything was tinted with a yellow glow. The town was ruined, nature and building falling into each other. Rats and small birds emerged from the wreckage, as if the land had already forgotten the blood spilled on it, their squeaks filling the ashy air.

Hadel came up next to Yjennka, sighing, as if trying to consume the sunlight and stuff it into his shaky lungs. “I was in a tunnel battle once. Battle of Rothermere. We… lost our regiment.”

There was a pause. Yjennka stared at him, bile rising in his throat.

“Do you ever think about quitting?”

Hadel stared back. A short, dry chuckle escaped his lips, though it was as heavy as his breath.

“Every day.”