Tanya's Third Life as a Barbarian Queen, Chapter XXXVIII

I will have the chapter as links to download at the bottom of the post. As well as a link to the Google Document page.

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Ninth Legion Campsite, North of Kontia.

Antonious, Centurion of the Ninth Legion.

I held the wood, damp still and unready for whittling, but I cut into the flesh even as it was oozing a wet and insubstantial sap regardless. My hands were numb, and despite my belly being full for the first time in well over a month, I felt sick and lightheaded. Now and then, I had to swallow to keep the bread and fatty meat in my belly.

Another cut, a few splinters of wood cast to the pile under my knees as I gradually teased out a form from the roughly-cut wood. It had been a long march to get here, so far from home. Beyond the great wall, then north, along a road built a century ago but with blocks as fine and unblemished as the day they were put in by men long dead. 

The edges were hard and angled, not worn down by countless feet, hooves, and wheels over the years. The host, three full legions of three hundred thousand men, and another two hundred thousand auxiliary demihumans at least. Assembled by the Prince of the Realm, marching to the glory of Sadera against one of the last great enemies of Mankind.

How glorious it had seemed, how colossal and indomitable. How thousands of wagons overloaded with grain and meat and wine were driven north along an endless road. How tens of thousands of camp followers and women were eager to see young men at war and take with them some small token of this last, great conquest. 

It had been great, too, the demons of the steppe were taken by surprise, but still amassed numbers unthinkable. First, forty thousand of them clashed with us on our approach to the steppe in Goblin country, vassals of Sadera. Traitors, they owe Humanity their fealty but did not tell of Tyuule, the then-High Queen of the Lepus and her march south. 

That small army was swept aside, and oh how the Goblins begged for forgiveness, but the Prince had none to offer. He put their primitive farms and settlements to the sword and drove hundreds of thousands of them into the steppe, or westwards, to the old Dwarvenholds that were now occupied by the Goblin Kingdoms who have not yet submitted themselves to Saderan rule.

I winced as I upset a shallow cut on my arm as I whittled, the stinging wound packed and bandaged after the Lepus hostages had attacked with their exploding waterskins. I took heart in the bag at my feet. While I had not personally avenged Tanitious, it was right that as she took his head, so too was hers taken.

The loot was pitiful in the Goblin Colonia, in the borderlands between Sadera proper and the Headhunters of the Steppe, but that was to be expected. The beasts would come south  yearly to take from the Goblins what little they had, the Goblins would then beg their Human masters to take pity on them.

Many would, and yet as Demihumans are want to do, when we made way north to deal with the Lepus, the Goblins did not serve faithfully, so they deserved to be scoured from the lands.

Once we had secured our foothold at the edge of the steppe proper, we marched north and found another army assembled by Tyuule. This time a force roughly one hundred and twenty thousand strong. Again this force was swept aside as Wyverns burned the pitiful defences and palisades of the rabbit women.

Weeks of marching and once again, this time two hundred thousand stood against the legions in a vast network of trenches and hillforts. The squat and ugly wooden buildings represented the 'great' capital of the Lepus and their many tribes. 

We had run out of Demihumans at this point, save a small number of them I suppose. In this greatest challenge, it was the strength of men alone that won the day as we burned the beastwomen out of their trenches with dozens of Wyvern Knights commanding the sky. Soon their resistance was shown to be pointless and they surrendered or fled, and that was that.

The loot was pathetic, copper and tin cups and baubles, slaves aplenty but nothing of true worth was recovered. The glory was to be our reward as we shattered the power of the beasts of the steppe forevermore.

Or, that was meant to be what happened. So many of their kind faded like rats into the endless rolling plains and were impossible to chase, and the mountains of supplies taken north began to dwindle as the Ninth Legion was set to the last bastion of resistance from the rapacious barbarians. 

The Tanaoi.

No civilised man had known of that name before marching to the Steppe. But none who fought here would forget them, as even among their own kind they were known as opportunists and thieves, a strange people who thought in ways no proper person would. 

They had done well to give the impression they had done nothing, but while the rest of their misbegotten race faught us, they had sent raiders east to the Saderan Centaurs lands. Long have the Centaurs loyally served the Legions, so the Tanaoi knew well the danger they posed to their east. They destroyed Centaur settlements and took any and all metals they could find, crippling one of the few loyal demihuman races in this part of the world.

With the Centaurs no longer defending the east, defending Kontia, the Tanaoi could abandon their lands to march south, bypassing Saderan forts and making war in the vast lands north of the River Konta. 

We, the Ninth legion, had chased them. Roughly ninety thousand strong when we had begun this last war against a fraction of the Lepus. But now there were less than seventy thousand who could fight, and even then, only barely. 

Zorzal, the Prince, had been confounded by the Tanaoi day after day as not a single victory could be had against them when nothing but victory had been found from the rest of their kind. Flavius had compared the Tanaoi to the vicious elves in the great Imperial Elvenwood with how they would fight and fade, content never to offer a battle that disfavoured them. 

But what set apart the Tanaoi was their magic, the magic of their Queen. It was a fearful thing, without grace, without refinement. The elegance, the grandeur of magic was cast aside for undignified and sudden bursts of vicious power. And what power it was, to slay Wyverns, to blast apart fortresses, to kill scores of men at a time.

I was not despondent at the accomplishment of some savage witch, for she was but one person in the face of Sadera. But we of the Ninth Legion were not ready to face such an enemy in battle, we were unprepared to fight such magic withouts auxiliaries and without more Wyverns.

Yet still Zorzal would command us forwards at dawn, to be blasted apart as we fought over the trenches and mud of the Lepus.

Oh how the Lepus adore digging their holes, how indomitable that mound of mud and earth had seemed, how little steel and faith offered to the fearless Saderan. Dragonhearted men dying in a skirmish after the glorious conquest. There was no glory to be found here, the war was won long ago and this was just a shadow of the barbarian peoples' power.

Zorzal brought us here, not to this place, but to destruction in a conflict that will be little more than an afterthought in the ballards and histories. There was nothing to be had here but death, of them or us, and none would sing for us in this battle. The Ninth Legion would bleed here, forgotten. I thought to the head at my heels, to the men she had gleefully cut apart, naked and bleeding, grinning even as her own head was cut from her shoulders.

How she was still grinning now. Perhaps she knew, for her people this was everything, for Sadera, the war was over.

"Done with that one?" Flavius said to my side as I looked at the wood in my hands and felt my blood boil.

"By the Gods, what are we doing?" I bemoaned and let the tall rabbit ears fall from my hands into the mud. Already hundreds had been made for a mad plan from the Prince. That since the Lepus use Saderan Equipment, and from a distance they can be seen to almost resemble a century of men without helmets and with their ears standing tall, they could be fooled.

The only fool was the man who believed that the ruse would last for more than a fleeting moment. 

"Questioning the brilliance of our glorious Tribune." Flavious grinned, but when he saw my face, that smile faded somewhat.

"It just won't work. We can't do anything about that Queen and her magic, not here, not with what we have," I explained, memories tormenting me of a man laying on the floor, clutching at a face that had just been blasted apart by one of the wineskin weapons.

The confused gurgle and the laughter of the demons who knew they were dead, but were eager to kill us all too... There were dark things here in the Steppe, things we should never have trifled with. I had no doubt that Sadera would be victorious in the end, but the Ninth Legion...

The Tanaoi were not like the rest of their people. They would willingly fight to the death, to the very damned last of them.

"Stabbed to death if we fight. Fucked to death if we surrender," I complained.

"What a way to go!" The Italican jokes, itching his pointed ears and elbowing me in the chest.

"Yeah, we go with our seed stolen to make more of the fucking devils," I pointed out. "It's a betrayal to bed one of the beasts, and that is that." I thought again, to the head at my heel, how she had so gleefully slain the man I considered like a brother to me. The thought of good human men laying with them rather than our own kind disgusted me.

But the thought of the Ninth Legion dying pointlessly here was far worse, even if it was uncertain. There was simply no way for them to win this battle with Zorzal in command. I sighed and looked at one of the older men sitting across from us, watching in silence. He was a Centurion, a man I had not gotten along with. Far too serious, far too rigid in his thinking. 

The sort of man who would march into the sea if the Emperor commanded it. 

"This. Won't work." I gestured to the crude wooden rabbit ears on the floor.

The Centurion ground his teeth in some internal battle before getting up to his feet.

"Then we have to do something." His tone was filled with resigned dread, and the men with us did not speak. There was nothing to say. It had gone too far.

"I will spread the word," I said, getting to my feet and feeling sick from just that motion.

"Is that wise?" Flavious said. The man did not have a clawing, smug tone for the first time since I had known him.

"We do this together, or not at all," I said, looking around, raising my voice and not a man stood against me. We all knew what it meant. We all knew what the punishment would be. "Go on," I ordered, turning about as a dozen men slipped into the legion to whisper, to coordinate.

I just had to hope it was not too late.

After everything, after dedicating myself to the path of a traitor, what burned the most, what hurt the most was a voice in the back of my mind. In total confidence, that voice said but one thing. In a moment of weakness I brought that voice into being with tired and windburned lips.

"Should have done this a long time ago." 

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Royal Tent, North of Kontia.

Zorzal El Caesar, Tribune of Sadera and Heir to the Imperial Throne.

I awoke to men holding me down, a leather lash held around my mouth as I struggled, every muscle straining. A man in the shadows brought his fist down on my stomach once, twice. The third time, I managed to grab at the bicep of one of the men attacking me and sent him screaming to the ground as I tore some of his flesh away in my fury.

With one of the attackers no longer holding me down, I had more room to thrash and resist. The men holding my hands suddenly had something to fear as I tried to grasp those who dared to attack the future Emperor. 

"By the Gods he's strong, is he even human?!" One of the men shouted as, in a panic, they began to strike. At my arms and legs, clubs, fists, they were brought down again and again until I stilled from the beating, resigning myself to being unable to win such a dishonourable fight.

"Bind him!" A man shouted and I was rolled onto my front. I considered fighting again, but my assailants seemed to expect that, and I felt a club being brought down upon my back again and again as my hands were bound.

I strained against the bindings on my arms and legs as I was carried by a quartet of traitors, my righteous condemnation of their betrayal silenced by a rancid leather gag that was kept in my mouth with rope that was tied around my head.

"Just give it up, we won't hurt you and I expect that Sorceress won't either. Not like we have a choice anyway," one of the men said to me as I was dumped onto a table where I had meticulously planned the battle that was to come on the morrow. It was only now that I could see the corpses of my personal guard laid out in the edges of the room that I truly understood the total betrayal of the Ninth Legion.

Shielding my bed from the sounds around me using enchanted cloth had clearly been a mistake.

I raged, glaring at the men around me as they chattered amongst each other about what to do; how to approach the Tanaoi, how to give up, how they were going to give me up! On the cusp of my great victory, I was betrayed by weak and scared men.

Oh how I would see them dead! No, not dead, I would see them live a long and pitiful life for what they have done. Without any ceremony, a tall, hooded Legionary slipped into the tent and the men around me glanced at him without any concern, confident that everyone living was party to their evil.

"Has a runner been sent to the Tanaoi?" A man asked the Legionary, clearly expecting them. It was then I noticed that they were in the fine gilded chain of a veteran Centurion. The hooded Centurion cocked his head for a moment before responding.

"I honestly don't know," she replied. There was a moment of silence before she turned to the side and planted a boot into the traitor's chest, caving it in. Every man drew a blade, but the armoured woman was faster. A wicked blade in her hands was driven into a man's neck with enough force to almost decapitate him with a thrust, and she was onto the next man who was not fast enough to bring his blade up to defend from her wild strike. 

Fear gripped the men about me as her hood fell back and Tyuule, the woman who I had made my whore, butchered the men with glee, her wet blade glistening in the scant light cast from candles and lanterns in the corners of the room. 

She moved with an unearthly grace, one honed in savagery as she merely moved from man to man to mortally wound them before moving onto the next. In the dim light, it was difficult to track her movements, how she shifted on the balls of her feet, how she strained against her armour and danced, forwards and back from man to man so fast that she never needed to dodge or parry.

She acted, and a dozen veterans of war, men trained for battle since they were children, reacted. Reacted far too slowly. A dozen men joined the dead in but moments and I felt a blade pressed against my back as a man I could not see screamed out to the deadly beastwoman to stop.

She seemed amused as she looked at what few men must still be living, behind me and out of my line of sight. For all the butchery she had inflicted, not a drop of blood touched her as she stood in stolen armour that I could see now strained at the hip and breast.

"I'll kill him!" Came a panicked scream from the man who I assumed held a blade to me.

Tyuule grinned and flourished her blade, eyes wide and filled with madness and hate. "Why do you think I am here?"

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Edited By: Y1, Shirojacky

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_vyGpaf7EgidRVKM3CSZmvMQYhHN37zlECQmj_oTTcs/edit?tab=t.0