5 EK, Arhi-Shinu 12 [mid-November]

First day out of that compound. Can’t say there was much to add to our supplies. It’s almost as if one runs out of food quickly while keeping a hundred and fifty soldiers at one small fortification.

We’ll carry on, then. Before we executed the last of the homestead’s defenders, we received a hint of a larger walled town maybe two weeks from here. Or at least we estimate two weeks; closer for most, but not with an entire army in tow.

We’ve been receiving food shipments from the couple of settlements loyal to us--other offshoots of the main army secured some allies as well--and the boys are already complaining. “Do they eat nothing but rice here in Dao-Lei,” they say. Guess the ones I overhead have never been to Enaqaat.

At least they’re not talking about the weather anymore.

In the original, the next lines slant unpredictably and occasionally run into each other, though undoubtedly the same writing style. One line even seems to begin somewhere past the edge of the page, though I don’t think much of the message is lost. Thankfully, even the worst handwriting of an educated man is still decipherable by means of a dedicated effort. I can safely attest from personal experience that this is the result of attempting to write in exceedingly poor light.

Can’t sleep. Or I did, and then my head decided that was enough of that. I saw a wide river, flowing crimson with blood, the dark hues interrupted with lighter-colored lumps. Bodies, uncountable, floating along as if an ordinary feature.

as nothing else to write, but not much else for me to do right now. Try grinding an inkstone and getting set up on a large slab of stone somewhere outside the main camp. Wasn’t about to wake everyone else by preparing the ink, and it’s so dark and thick with foliage here that a Tao could patrol within three qaabutu [approx. three cubits] of me and we’d never meet.

War’s not hell on the battlefield. War’s hell immediately after you leave. To think the old dreams were starting to wither, only for me to water them.

5 EK, Arhi-Shinu 16 [mid-November]

Three days without another attack on the road--fortunate, as we’ve spent a fair amount of time taking chariots apart and reassigning horses. The land’s rising up on either side of us, rapidly now, and I can’t help but see this as risky ground. Seriously doubt we’ll be alone in this valley for long, but apparently it’s the fastest way to this next town, one of the larger holds for potential resistance against us.

A substantial portion of the journals that followed are damaged, some by dirt and others by what I think is blood. Obviously the army ran into some terrible trouble sometime after the assault upon the aforementioned homestead, but exactly when this took place will have to remain a mystery. The damage to these records at least indicates that the force suffered a serious assault while camped, or perhaps one of the officers’ supply wagons was targeted.

5 EK, Arhi-Shinu 22 [late November]

Rare bit of luck. One of the abandoned plantations up here was growing rattan, with substantial stores of the stuff dried, so we were able to mend or replace a good number of the wicker shields. Fortunate as we’re on our way to what’s likely to be another assault upon a walled settlement.

5 EK, Arhi-Shinu 28 [early December]

Getting there. The going’s been slow, though that’s more our fault than theirs, even with the new rounds of ambushes. My unit has fought off two alone.

Here’s hoping the other unit can meet us there in time--or that they’re not sitting around waiting for us. Scouts say we’re on our way to a much more populated area--apparently the Tao have decided to stick around in these parts--so we’re set for a real fight somewhere down the line. Meanwhile, the chariot-teamsters took a full day fighting over what should be done with the horses. Noble steeds, my ass. They can pull their weight just as we do.

I realize that any readers might not get this. Yes, we need spare horses for cavalry such as myself, but chariot-pullers aren’t quite suited for the job. They’re essentially draft animals, just more desensitized to what’s happening around them. If you sit on one, nudge with your knees or bark orders all you want; they don’t understand even the most basic riders’ commands, and I’d rather not sit on a horse that’s been trained on short notice. My chances would be better on a mule.

5 EK, Arhi-Shalaa 1 [early December]

It’s as if they know our calendar. First of the month, and they come at us with a couple hundred, as if they’re willing to spend so many of their lives on a costly ambush simply because they don’t want us to be here. Trust me, we don’t want us to be here, either. Secret to our success.

Okay, the better equipment might’ve helped, too. Any of their riders--and they have as many as ever--who get too close to our infantry have to contend with ħeqosneru, plenty good for hobbling their steeds. Might also be worth mentioning that most of my riders are of Ongin blood. Maybe if they knew that they wouldn’t bother to fight us hoof-to-hoof.

Tao horses are curious. Thinner fur and manes, probably a good survival measure in the humidity. They seem built more for sprinting than long runs, too. Fits their tactics, clearly, though our stouter horses are perfectly good for our way of doing things. Wear armor as heavy as the beast can bear for the duration of a battle, give the beast some padding to boot, and wade in with crushing and hacking weapons. They love to skirt around us and try to jab at our weak points, but Tao riders crumple against riders such as yours truly--not to brag.

Hopefully we can manage to keep winning in their field. I know for a fact we can win assaults against fortifications--what are we if not Hashas?--but until we start knocking on their walls, we still have to contend with their familiarity with the terrain. Guerillas can come out from anywhere and retreat in just as many directions.

5 EK, Arhi-Shalaa 5 [early December]

The contents of this entry, regrettably, were so badly damaged as to be virtually illegible. Despite the best efforts of a number of helpful scholars, it was not possible to glean a single complete sentence from this entry; those words that were recovered did not provide sufficient context to understand the events being described. It is this writer’s personal guess that Tahur is describing a military situation that has grown increasingly complicated and trying, possibly the natural result of the Hashas army’s delving deeper into foreign territory and having difficulty adapting to their circumstances, but this guess is largely unsubstantiated.

5 EK, Arhi-Shalaa 9 [mid-December]

The name given for the locale Tahur describes below is an approximation of the name’s sound in the Tao language based on a Tao word inscribed in the original journal in the Korasai script, clearly by someone else’s hand. In his own writing, Tahur makes an earnest and fairly good attempt to transcribe the name in our Court script. It is difficult to know whether his rendering of the locale’s name is truly accurate, but his years spent in Enaqaat have likely served him well in this regard.

The Tao called it Shuibin, I think, or perhaps al-Shuibin. I suspect that they say “al-” to mean something like “of” or “from,” as we Hashas do, but I the prefix accompanies the name so often--as far as I can tell while listening to the fast speech of the Tao, anyway--that perhaps this was part of the town’s name after all. In a manner of speaking, this is ultimately of little consequence.

My telling of the Battle of (al-?) Shuibin will be muddied at best, I’m afraid. This engagement was far different from our assault on that homestead before, the former being such a straightforward affair that I could recall all of the events readily. This was a battle in the truest sense: frantic in pacing and genuinely dangerous for even the most seasoned soldiers. A “true” battle often cares little for the qualifications or martial skills of the parties involved. It is difficult to recall much in detail after an extended battle for one’s life, and to end others’. Further, there was--well, my meaning will be clear by the end of this entry.

I think it was three days ago. Time makes itself readily apparent during a siege but is far more elusive during urban combat. Fighting house to house and often holding positions indoors, sometimes for many hours at a time, and needing to rotate paltry sleep schedules while one’s unit’s on constant guard… one’s sense of time is among the first casualties of this sort of fighting.

Getting ahead of myself. We finally discovered the walled town, Shuibin or al-Shuibin, just as our scouts reported. It was of sufficient size and command sufficiently large-scale agriculture that the powers-that-be saw it as a good base for our future operations in the area. As we neared it, sending scouts ahead again, they returned with two unfamiliar riders: local Tao representing the town. This seemed a good development, as it would be easier to negotiate terms or seek to win their loyalty far outside their walls, but to our disappointment, they weren’t interested in swearing fealty. Actually, they came with demands, rather absurd ones. This, at least, I remember well, as it all took place before the battle while I was still lucid.

Rather than surrender or swear fealty, they had the audacity--no, sheer foolishness--to tell us to yield to them. By their “terms,” we were to give a fourth of our force of five thousand--the other company hadn’t met us just yet--as what we thought, at the time, would be prisoners or slaves. Their claims that their victory was assured and that this would be the easiest course were so laughable that we didn’t even decide to have them killed for their insolence. The two messengers returned to their town with us at their tails. We had come prepared, but apparently they were prepared as well. As soon as the gates entered our sight, so did their army of what I think was two thousand. A full thousand riders--by Adad, they had more than we did--and I would guess another thousand infantry engaged with us outside the gates. Yes, engaged. Whatever terrible religion or fanaticism has won these people has also muddied their tactics, or perhaps just their will to live.

Their light cavalry proved highly maneuverable, allowing them to play a few early tricks on us, but we were able to use our superior numbers cut off their intended routes and force them into a more direct engagement. As I’ve said before, they crumple under our hooves as soon as we’re toe-to-toe. They have fair anti-cavalry polearms, which would’ve come in handy against if not for the fact that our infantry outnumbered their polearm-users anyway. Our chief disadvantage was range in the field: our bows seem to disfavor this environment, while their all-wooden ones hold up better (or do they just craft new bows more often?). Our slingers are mostly running on improvised ammo at this point, so they were a so-so counter; we mostly had to depend on the wicker shields--I did mention how much of a boon they were--and tight formations to stay standing amid arrow-fire.

The whole of the field engagement is rather clear in my head as our maneuvers were methodical and the fighting predictable. After we killed maybe half of the whole Tao force, the survivors retreated behind their walls and we had to force our way in. These walls were longer-standing and built with defense against a larger-scale assault in mind, so we really had to pull out all of the stops. We weren’t able to get any of the siege engines all the way up here, but the manaqelu were easy enough to assemble on-the-go, and we had the manpower necessary to run several of these. It was still their bows versus our slingers with improvised ammo and staff-slingers, but we played it safe and relied on the trusty wicker shields while we battered the front gate and the surrounding walls. Staff-sling fire and the occasional high volley from a manaqelum menaced those archers who hid behind the crenellations, and the enemy seemed to be in our hands. Their walls seemed under-manned, if anything.

We broke through, we forced entry behind walls of wooden shields, and that’s when the mayhem began proper. We saw surprisingly few civilians--assumed they had elected to hide in their hovels rather than fight in defense of all they knew--but many of the soldiers met us right where the gates had failed, with others using the roofs and windows of mostly civilian buildings as their cover. We carved through the initial force, pushed them past some freshly-erected palisades, and then commenced the fight for the town itself. I imagine Mawerhaad’s revolutionary battles must have played out something like this, with men fighting and bodies piling to contest every household, store, and square. Screaming and shouting from every direction, it sounded like. This, we thought, was the horrible struggle to end the battle. We knew little of horror, I now know.

The first night, or I think that’s what it was, was as chaotic and uncertain as the first day spent within the confines of that place, but as dawn came, their resistance waned and they began to slip from their footholds. Fewer shouts and battle-cries, and more screams coming from within the town. Some Hashas glimpsed Tao running through alleys, their backs fully turned to us. Still, their defense of the middle of the town was stalwart; we assumed that something of great political or religious importance lay there. We were not so imaginative in our guesses.

We met a couple of additional cells of resistance just before the town square, taking a couple of hours to force them out of hiding and slay them. With no other Tao standing against us, we finally came up on it.

I had never heard so many men utter “Aqalai’s works” under their breaths, never mind out loud. Truth be told, I’ve seen too much in my own time, and even I grew sick. The town square was of religious importance, alright--for some religion that I hope never sees the light of day again. Four altars, just like the ones we’ve seen in other settlements, the ones that I knew were altars and others had overlooked. These will not be overlooked again, not after what we’ve seen. Bodies, I don’t know how many, were piled like lumber or inconvenient detritus. Bodies of every age and shape were piled around, all of their chests wide open. The divine’s grace, you could still see the agony in some of their faces. The screams from earlier rang in my head, though not a soul remained here.

The original writing grows hurried and less legible here. The word “apparently” is written in larger letters every time it appears.

Well, we wondered where the civilians were hiding, and apparently they were all right here. Apparently these sea-swimmers think they have something to gain for slaughtering their own like cattle, but without the dignity of a quick beheading. Apparently they thought that taking a quarter of us prisoner--and I assume consigning us to the same damned fates--would help them somehow, and apparently they decided their own wives, their children, their elders, would have to substitute. Apparently they are Aqalai’s mad, adopted children, so evil and detestable as for Am-Ishatu to disown them, so far these people are from his light.

Less hurried here.

It only deepens the shock that I’ve known many Tao from Enaqaat. I never would have suspected them of such wickedness, so not these Tao either, but the number of these stone altars we’ve seen along this campaign almost makes me wonder. Our Tao seem different to me somehow. Maybe it’s our influence, or the influence of our temples, or just the influence of living in a place where one god and one man uphold nature’s right order. I’ll admit I didn’t take much stock in the teaching of our Enu, probably less than the average man, but now I think this is only because I never saw the sheer madness that takes place outside of Am-Ishatu’s sphere.

All were horrified, most with little to say save for the Enu accompanying us. One who goes by Imahel al-Qahiid disappeared for a while and then came back. He has been preaching of the evils that lurk outside civilization ever since, seemingly nonstop. While we were deciding the fate of that wretched town, I think he spoke for four or five hours straight. Didn’t hear much of it, as I had military matters to attend to, but it seems like everyone else has been. Between the horror in the town square and Imahel’s words, the men have been whipped into an absolute fury that makes the fervor of the conscripts and volunteers back in Enaqaat seem subdued.

He has much to say, but he repeats himself often. We must carry the torch, the Light, to drive out the darkness, he says. Fire will destroy the beasts that lurk within, he says. If they don’t destroy themselves first.