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The 2nd Brigade’s 8th Volunteer Regiment had crossed the river at the southern-most line of attack, Stocie’s Company taking up the southern flanking position. The company had gone in first, crossing the river shortly after midnight. It had continued to push the point for the regiment and was now emplaced a mile forward, spread out along a series of hillocks for about six furlongs, north to south, with its southern platoon on another hill some three furlongs further to the south.
Casualties had been light so far - a few injuries from accidents crossing the river, minor wounds from distant snipers, and only one that was life-threatening, caused by a mine. In fact, Stocie’s Company was getting a reputation for being in the right place at the right time for staying out of trouble. It got the glory for raising the banner at Destiny’s Peak, an exhaustive though relatively safe undertaking, but had always managed to not be where the direct fighting was. Other companies in the regiment had nicknamed it ‘Stocie’s Country Club for the gifted and refined’.
Merna’s platoon was the one stationed furthest south. They were spread out in a crescent shape curving back toward the southwest, following the natural shape of the hill. Being on the southern most flank of the entire army, the captain had ordered the platoon forward on picket to alert the others if the enemy made a surprise attack.
Because of the threat from snipers, few in the platoon had moved around all day. They lay in the finger-numbing rain, with only their slickers to protect them. What little food there was to eat had been cold because no fires were permitted, and now their water was nearly gone. A break in the drizzle late in the afternoon was a pleasant relief. Soon night would fall, with its promise of obtaining fresh supplies or, even better, being relieved of picket duty.
Darkness was beginning to settle in when the Lieutenant MaydaIuem ordered Sergeant Merna to take part of her squad and refill the platoon’s canteens. She spoke just above a whisper, her breath turning to vapor. “There’ll be no replacements here tonight. Enemy’s on the move and we can’t afford to get caught shifting places. Now take and get us enough water to last another day. I’ll send others to see if we can get a few rations. Be careful, Sergeant! This is not a good place to be at the moment.”
Merna took twelve others with her, leaving the rest of the squad under the charge of her corporal. Ten, including the sergeant, were loaded down with canteens, while the remainder took automatic rifles. Few of the enlisted carried side arms except for daggers, knives, or the occasional short sword. Merna had debated whether to trudge off with her sergeant’s sword, a double-edged, broad derker blade about a long-cubit in length from tang to point. She put her hand on its hilt as she thought. A warm feeling of security flowed through her. She decided to carry it along.
Half crawling, half walking, the party struggled its way west, away from the platoon and toward one of the sluggish estuaries that crisscrossed the swampy wetlands. Thick patches of tall grasses with razor-sharp blades and nettle-like stings needed to be circumnavigated. Painful cuts and welt-like lesions became unavoidable. To add to the misery was the boggy soil. With every step, a boot would sink into the muck up past one’s ankle. It took over twenty minutes just to make it to the first slime-choked, little stream.
Merna stood knee-deep in the slop to fill her canteens, doing so to reach clear water. Her helmet lay back on the bank, if that’s what a person could call the goo that was supposedly solid ground. She quietly grumbled, “Too wet to walk on and not enough to sail on! I’ll sink outta sight if I stand here long enough!”
What the sergeant did not know was this was the rainy cycle for this region. Eventually the monsoon-like weather would end. It might be years until it came again. The river would become little more than a trickle to step across without getting wet feet. Most of the plant life would die off, leaving only scrub brush and tiny seeds waiting patiently for the next wet cycle. When the dry cycle became mature, a person might walk for hours or sometimes days and not find any water.
Merna was filling her fourth canteen when the sound of gunfire echoed across the plain. She jumped and bolted for the shore, or at least struggled to. By the time she crawled up the bank, the rattle of machine guns and ka-boom! of grenades filled the air. Merna threw down her canteens and yelled, “Go for it!” Off she went on a run, heedless of the obstacles hidden in the swamp.
She was the first to reach the platoon’s position; three others were just behind. By now, the fighting was going on to her right, further down the hill. Fires sputtered here and there, and the remnants of still-burning phosphorus bombs littered the area. Shapes darted in and out of the blackness, most going north. There were others scattered around the bivouac rummaging through packs and clothes on the dead.
Hearing a painful moan off in the darkness, Merna cautiously stepped forward, peering into the night. At that moment a ruptured fuel can ignited, sending a shower of flaming sparks into the air. The sergeant stared in horror, watching two of the enemy with the wounded lieutenant. One was pulling her shirt up over her head, throwing her arms back as he did. The other had driven his rifle bayonet into her groin and was in process of eviscerating the woman.
Merna went mad. All she could see was her little daughter shrieking for her mother. Growls of ravenous cats fighting over the child filled her ears. She remembered nothing more until she awoke at the base hospital several days later.
Eyewitness accounts of events were recorded in the official records kept by the historian for Stocie’s Company. Following are selected entries:
“- Upon seeing the cruelty being heaped upon Lieutenant MaydaIuem, Sergeant MernaEphesus wildly charged the enemy protagonists with her drawn sergeant’s sword. Witnesses attest that the sword not only shown the ghostly blue of a derker blade, but a strange, iridescent, white fire could be seen racing along the edges of the weapon.
“-The enemy was caught by surprise, and had no time to prepare their weapons. As the sergeant went in, she could be heard making the strangest of bone-chilling howls, accompanied by guttural curses uttered in an unknown language.
“-Stepping back to avoid the first blow, the man who was torturing the lieutenant lifted a hand in defense. The sergeant’s sword cleaved the man’s arm below the elbow and continued on to cut through his neck just under his chin. A great rush of misty blood enveloped the sergeant in a cloud of red, saturating her face, hair, and uniform. Before the dying enemy soldier could fall to the ground, Sergeant Merna charged her sword again, bringing it down on the man’s head with such force that it split his skull asunder from just above his nose. The blade, making sizzling and crackling noises, plunged on down through the man’s body, ripping open his chest and stomach cavities, from which his innards fell out.
“-In less than a heartbeat, the sergeant was on the other man, removing his head in one swift blow. A third enemy combatant who came rushing to the support of his comrades was cut down, losing an arm and a leg. The sergeant quickly disemboweled the man, leaving him to die in his agony. She turned and, still howling and uttering fearsome oaths, rushed into the night.
“-By this time the remainder of the sergeant’s water-gathering squad was up, joining the battle. Blue, green, and red of tracer bullets filled the night as the fighting increased. About this same time, other squads of Stocie’s Company arrived, driving the enemy back. In the darkness and confusion of battle, the sergeant was struck by stray bullets but continued in the fight, dispatching one enemy after another.
“- The evidence indicates that sergeant Merna single-handedly killed fourteen attackers. The number she wounded can only be guessed at. Most of the enemy were ripped asunder in her fierce counterattack.
“-It has been reported that some of the surviving enemy soldiers claimed a demon god had risen from the swamp to bring vengeance upon them for their failure to show the wetlands proper respect. Thus the rumor of a ghost warrior called the ‘Crimson Jackal’ has circulated within the Pseudes
army. Shortly following this incident, our people began finding stone incense altars near many abandoned enemy encampments in the lowlands. They were sprinkled with blood and holding tiny wooden idols of two-legged jackals brandishing swords.
“-The attackers were eventually driven back, it not being a main thrust, but just a probe of our positions. It being extremely dark and the night filled with new storms of wind and rain, we could not assess the field until dawn.
“- When the numbers were tallied, Stocie’s Company suffered one hundred forty-two casualties, twenty-three being fatal. Most of the fatalities came from Lieutenant MaydaIuem’s platoon, she included.
“- Sergeant Merna was not discovered until morning light. She was found in a stupor, sitting slumped on the bloodied ground, the lieutenant’s upper body cradled in her arms. She was slowly shaking her head, making pitiful cries and muttering over and over, ‘Hilen… Hilen… Hilen…’”