The Legacy of Dytryk Radetzky Shakhovskoy VII

[Kent]

We get up very late, and hungry; oh! how hungry we are, we are all supplied with a liberal breakfast composed entirely of river water, and of course cannot complain. At 12 o'clock we receive the same for dinner that we got for breakfast, which is a very extravagant bill of fare.

Dytryk Radetzky Shakhovskoy VII

Background

Dytryk was the fourth born child of Dytryk George Shakhovskoy VI. His father was an old man when he was born, in his late fifties having returned home to the clan in Aleksandov after a forty-year career as a foot soldier for the Venerated Inquisition Corps.

As so often occurs for Terameran youths, his father had long-since passed when he came of age. Being unusually small for his age, his mother negotiated with power-brokers in the Clan to see that he was taken under the wing of the most elder marksmen. As young as seven, his skill with the sling was recognized as significant but by the time he was thirteen it was evident his ‘growth spurt’ was not going to come.

Having gained great skill with the simple crossbow and being a well-saddled and an able-horseman, he was sent off in service of the Republic...

Description

Bleary eyes hide behind tangled locks of often-matted champagne-colored hair. His broad nose is flanked on either side by extremely ruddy cheeks and the best overall summary of his face would be 'bloated'. His broad shoulders are juxtaposed by a paunchy and swollen-looking stomach. Upon his right arm is a lengthy scar that would appear to have been caused by some sort of claw-attack or shrapnel.

Governing Throne

Covetous

Governing Vice

Wrath

Governing Virtue

Valor

[Kent]

Rural Kaduuras, 1327

Dytryk took a long look into the reflective surface of the watering hole, wiping his razor off on his trousers. A clean face with a strong jawline. It was the first time he had enjoyed the opportunity to wash up in months, something he did without needing orders from the aging man who, along with a few dozen others, he was the charge of. His heart swelled with pride as he stared into the pool before being jolted back to reality by a firm slap on his back. “Get your fuckin’ shit together, Jakoffsky. We’re beatin’ feet in ten.” Speak of the thirteenth and they shall appear, he thought. Folding and pocketing the razor, Dytryk dashed towards the entrenched pit upon which the ‘Large Volume Repeater’ was set up.

A hatefully heavy device, Dytryk reflected as he and his crew began packing up the device. It took no less than three hearty men to crew and while it could pour bolts downstream, the various chains and gearings that enabled it to do so required constant oiling, managing, and replacement. Popping the top cover and re-coiling the line of bolts back into the munitions box, he gazed out upon the fields which the LVR had been set up in front of.

Paths between interlaced and still smouldering pyres were padded with afflicted corpses. The screamers had been dashing between them heading for the line all throughout the night, and the crew had gunned down no less than a dozen by his counting. As dawn approached their numbers thinned and eventually ceased, but the moans and groans of the disabled yet still “living” undead created the sort of cacophony the men had grown to utterly ignore, a sound which still echoed throughout the scorched plain before him.

As his section prepared to weave through the killing fields, he slung the box of bolts across his back and took up a pike, motioning for his squaddies to follow. It was his turn to finish off the stragglers before the crew, though the knights ahead took care of most of them. Most.

Soon they came upon their target: a village completely surrounded by wooden stakes. Upon the stakes, impaled undead moaned and groaned incessantly as they approached but the walls and wooden door of the makeshift fortification seemed in-tact. His officer strutted towards the gunnery crew Dytryk was proud to be chief of, offered them all a nod and took Dytryk aside, speaking in a low intonation “Alright, Ryk. There’s a group of irregulars in that fortification ahead. Resolvists, we figure. We’ve got the shitheels surrounded.” Dytryk nodded along, squinting up at the man as the blazing Midsummer sun played havoc on his eyes.

“Johann is going to take his boys around the rear and throw firebombs in. I need your crew to set up in line of the gate. They’re going to come out with their magic horseshit, but you boys and girls are gonna put bolts in them before they can say a single filthy word. Got it?” Dytryk offered a firm nod “Aye. We’ll set up over thar, ought to give us a good arc.” The officer turned without a word, running in a low crouch back towards another group of huddled fighting men. Dytryk groaned, turning to his crewmates “Let’s get this fookin beast up an’ running, folks”

The low-run, the rapid assembly...it was something they had done and drilled so frequently that it was over before any of them had opportunity to actively think. As he gazed down the large oval ring that made up the bolt-slinger’s sight he had a good clear picture of the wooden gates. He heard yelling down the line, and soon smoke began to rise from within the walls. High flames began to shoot up above. He tapped the shoulder of the woman to his right and she held the string of bolts aloft on her arm to ensure their smooth feeding into the hungry maw of the bolt-slinger.

From within the walls, he heard frantic yelling in the unmistakable guttural intonations of Collatian. Some Decusian mixed in, but mostly panicked Collatian. More flames began making themselves visible to the crew and he could begin to feel the heat from where he was. Soon the gates flung open and figures clad in a mish-mash of dreary colors began pouring out. Voices yelled out the command behind him “Open up!!!” Dytryk depressed the long bronze lever which made up the device’s trigger and closed his eyes, as he always did. He couldn’t stop himself from doing so.

No one had noticed so far, and he had been in the field for months….the rhythmic DUHD-PLUNK DUHD-PLUNK DUHD-PLUNK as the machine fed itself more bolts and wound its string back by recoil-action was the only thing he was conscious of. He focused on it, moved his arms in concert with it to keep the muzzle of the machine in-line with the target. This carried on for what seemed an incomprehensible long amount of time:....hours….days? Minutes. It had only been minutes until his shoulder was slapped by the man next to him and he opened his eyes, squinting in the sun as his ears began to rattle…”CEASE FIRING!!!! CEASE FIRING!!!!!!!”

The order soon shifted to one of advancing, and he and his crew took up their secondary arms, the pike once more in his hands as he joined the steady advance towards the pile of flinching corpses that formed a mound before, in, and beyond the threshold of the crude wooden gate. Knights in full-ensemble plate stormed ahead of them and over the mound and into the excruciating heat of the smouldering ruins of….a village? The ramshackle buildings hadn’t stood a chance against the flash grenades, already reduced to cinders.

Dytryk and his crew approached the pile of bodies...elderly bodies, youthful bodies, dirty and emaciated bodies...bodies with bolts in them. No tomes, not a piece of jewelry in sight. Inside, he saw the valuables they had built their fortifications around: a few plows, pitchforks, and other farming implements. A few fire-singed sacks of grain…and what was that pounding sound?

*DUT DUT DUT* He glanced around furiously, seeking for the source of it, the faces of his squaddies were unrecognizable blurs. *DUT DUT DUT* He looked behind him, the mound of bodies had grown triple-fold somehow and all their eyes were staring at him. Jet-black ovals with fiery red within, a flickering flame almost distinguishable...or was that something else? *DUT DUT DUT DUT* More bodies were on the mound every time the sound came crashing through, their clothes were different though….their eyes still penetrated right through him. He looked side to side, searching for a person that didn't exist to answer an unanswerable question: “Wha’ tha fook is going on?” His squaddies were gone. The officer was gone. There he stood among the ashes, staring down the expanding mountain of bodies *DUT DUT DUT DUT* One of them reached out to him, grabbing his ankle! Her lips formed incomprehensible, silent words as deep scarlet fluids poured began pouring out of every visible orifice, the elderly woman's body slowly deflating like a wilting grape as more and more bodies piled on top of her *DUT DUT DUT DUT* the woman melted wholly away, but her grip on his ankle persisted somehow *DUT DUT DUT* She yanked him, somehow, into the inconceivably high mountain of bodies. He was being drug underneath by a hundred squeezing, clawing, clambering hands, he was suffocating under their weight; all of their weight, he couldn’t breath, excruciating pain surrounded his head as though the very life-force was being wrung out from him by all the innocents he was ensconced in. The pain was pounding...pounding...pounding...pounding *DUT DUT DUT*

Dytryk’s eyes shot open, a brown blur beneath him and air flowing around him. He was being dragged “Another fucking vagrant” he heard someone mutter in crisp Decusian. He kicked away from the woman, rolling onto his back and springing up with such speed that he felt his entire world was going to fall apart: his head felt like someone had dropped a sack of stone on it. He looked up to the foundry thug who raised her blade “AH’M UP! Fook off ya fookin goon” Dytryk spat out, squinting at his surroundings. He identified the sound of the hammering…a blacksmith hard at work on a road-side anvil. He was in Fort Praesidium, and apparently the local foundry thugs had taken exception to his choice of sleeping-ditch the night before. “It’s high noon, you fuckin’ drunk. If I catch you sleeping here again I’ll cut your sack off” the dark-haired goon said, brandishing her cutlass in a vaguely menacing fashion

“Wha’eer you say, big broad'ah the block. Ain’ no fookin respect for elders anymore” Dytryk shot back, swivelling -far- too quickly for his head’s preference. He needed a drink, and he needed it yesterday. He began trodding towards the tavern once again, chin tucked low into his gorget in defense against the wicked pain the sun brought his bleary eyes.