The Ruby Cradle
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Chapter I – Crimean War
Smoke from cannon fire caused the morning sun to shine dimly over the battlefield. The moans of the dying have quieted to a faint hum. Bodies lay half buried in pools of blood drenched mud. White plumes rose slowly from the battlefield. Death drifted on the whispering wind, a smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder. Man, and horse disemboweled and scattered over miles was testimony of the madness that had claimed this land. Men too old for battle have taken to the field scavenging the dead for their worldly possessions. Stripping them of boots, clothes, and coins, then heaping their bodies together and setting them alit. Shuza had fallen but at a great cost to Tsar Nicholas Pavlovich. The siege lasted three gory days. Each sunrise a gate flung open and screaming scimitar waving troops flooded the battlefield as arrows rained down. The Sultan’s knights with razor sharp crescent headed spears rode out knowing they were charging into Firdaws, never to return to the safety of the walled city. The Cossacks were swift and out maneuvered the cannon batteries that defended Shuza. They rode fast and hard from the Black Sea drawing fire on one flank, but the cannon balls fell short of their ranks. Cannons still caused the Cossacks to ride through a rainstorm of rocks and debris ejected from the earth by iron balls stripping more than a few from their horses as effectively as a line of riflemen. The scream of the cannon balls heralded death to all that approached. They rode a line of certain death that kept the thunder of hooves and iron balls in constant flow like the tide upon the shore. Neither could cease for fear of death washing over their position. This was the plan of the Cossacks, to draw fire, to invite death, to play a devilish game with the Ottomans until it was too late for them to change position. |
A second wave attacked from the north, crossing the Alma River under cover of night. The Ottoman soldiers held the city for most of the day, repelling infantry and cavalry charges. Although most of the fighting was in the fields surrounding the city, the heaviest losses on both sides came late in the afternoon when brass guns formed a line to the east of the city. They were smaller lighter cannons, pulled into place by soldiers. They loaded and fired five-pound balls, not as devasting as the big twelve- and twenty-pound iron balls, but effective. The bombardment collapsed the old walls of Shuza and finally the Cossacks charged in. Swords and bayonets turned the streets slick with blood. There was no retreat sounded. No surrender offered. The fighting went on until the last man gave his all.
Aberash dressed in white climbed over the piles of bodies pulling those that cling to life to the buckboard wagons. Other women, whose white dresses like hers were nearly dye red, searched for the living among the dead. The brave and valiant whose courage could not be measured in how long they endured the fighting, or by counting the number of dead lying amongst them, now forgotten and abandoned as their armies marched on. And be they Russian or Ottoman, they were heaped upon the wooden planks of the wagons and taken to a church in the square for treatment.
“Work quickly my sister,” commanded Aberash, “we must save all we can before the night falls.”
“There are so many lying in the fields,” Abagail lamented, “he shall more than his fill of souls this night.”
Mind your words sister, they betray your nature. We work side by side with women here. But you are right, we cannot save all these men from Deyhezas. He will grow ever more powerful with each battle fought and bodies he consumes. However, he gains the most from those he takes alive, so let’s deny him all that we can. Use your powers to quickly find those with even a glimmer of life left in them. It is better they die in our company than here in the wasteland.
Aberash dressed in white climbed over the piles of bodies pulling those that cling to life to the buckboard wagons. Other women, whose white dresses like hers were nearly dye red, searched for the living among the dead. The brave and valiant whose courage could not be measured in how long they endured the fighting, or by counting the number of dead lying amongst them, now forgotten and abandoned as their armies marched on. And be they Russian or Ottoman, they were heaped upon the wooden planks of the wagons and taken to a church in the square for treatment.
“Work quickly my sister,” commanded Aberash, “we must save all we can before the night falls.”
“There are so many lying in the fields,” Abagail lamented, “he shall more than his fill of souls this night.”
Mind your words sister, they betray your nature. We work side by side with women here. But you are right, we cannot save all these men from Deyhezas. He will grow ever more powerful with each battle fought and bodies he consumes. However, he gains the most from those he takes alive, so let’s deny him all that we can. Use your powers to quickly find those with even a glimmer of life left in them. It is better they die in our company than here in the wasteland.
