----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [u][b]July 1st: The Semien Mountains, Begmeder Province, Ethiopia[/b][/u] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The [i]shifta[/i] army marched over the rough and rocky terrain on the northern bluffs of the Tekeze River. It was a sight hardly removed from the [i]Zemene Mesafint[/i]: columns of barefooted men in dusty cotton tunics and trousers, [i]shammas[/i] wrapped around many necks, hair as wild as the heath that bloomed all around them. Rain made the terrain slippery and slowed their travel, but it also swelled the river. [i]Fitawrari[/i] Ergete considered this a blessing. The rushing waters made a wall between him and the mysterious regiment shadowing them from the other side. This new threat had appeared several days before on the open ground west of the Semien mountains. Ergete led his men along the foothills, keeping himself between the enemy and the high ground, preparing for anything the newcomers might do. A rider came up in a cloud of dust. Ergete recognized the man, and in recognition he called out. "Amsale! What news?" "The river is growing shallow." the scout reported, "Soon they'll be able to cross." "If they want to cross. Who are they?" "We haven't been able to find out." Ergete puffed himself up, made a fist, and shook it at the silhouettes across the water. "If the [i]Mesfin[/i] has betrayed me, I will turn out all the [i]Neftanya[/i] and [i]Korro[/i] of Begmeder and make them into beggars. I swear this to Virgin Mary." he announced dramatically, a curse on the military middle class and the bureaucrats of the province. They trudged on, the tired soldiers keeping quiet, only the rattle of rifles and squelching of muddy ground to be heard. A fight was brewing, and Ergete's eyes were fixed on the terrain. Too steep an incline made hard work for both sides. The wrong terrain on either flank could open them for attack. He'd put his a army between their enemy and the mountains on purpose, giving him a buffet of higher ground to chose from, anchor his lines to, and to retreat into if it should come to that. But that higher ground represented the unforgiving Semien range at its highest heights, some of the roughest terrain in the entire country, where the mountains appeared like the worn-down canine teeth of a dead giant ripping into the flesh of the clouds. They were far from civilization out here. The river was the only true path. Eagles circled it far above, their barking occasionally heard as they searched for prey among the blooming scrub-land. The ragged band came around a bend in the river masked by the rising hills. Ergete's mind looked at the piece of ground and saw a battlefield. The river bend put high ground on his left flank, in the direction his men were climbing from now. Ahead of him, in what would be his right flank should he fight a battle facing the enemy, a wall-like ridge split the river from an incoming meandering stream. The convergence of the courses created a place where the foothills rose more gently, giving the defenders the benefit of the high ground without burdening them with terrain only a goat could stand comfortably on. "We camp here tonight." Ergete shouted. The officers on horseback repeated the order with whistles and yelps, and the column seemed to breath a collective sigh of relief. The work wasn't done. Rifle pits had to be dug. Watchmen were sent to scale the two towering plateaus marking the right and left flanks. Ergete himself dismounted and joined the effort, shoveling defenses with gusto, working up a sweat in the humid wet-season air. Rifles cracked as soldiers fanned out to scavenge the countryside, taking down birds for meager meat. This land was wild and lacked villages to support them, forcing them to subsist on meager rations. Many of the men carried bullock horns filled with honey wine, and they traded sips of it for slices of raw meat from the hunters. By the time the sun first started to sink below the hills, the [i]shifta[/i] forces were finished with their work and staking out their spots in the spread out camp, the hillside coming alive with idle chatter. Their stalkers disappeared over the southern ridge. For a second, Ergete entertained the thought that the other army had been a mirage the entire time, but he put that out of his head and tried to focus on real planning. Mahetsent rode up from the rear of the army and joined Ergete in a makeshift tent above a rifle pit where the self-proclaimed [i]Fitewrari[/i] held court. A [i]shifta[/i] had tributed Ergete with a couple of birds, and the commander shared his meager fare with his friend. "Do we hold this spot in the morning?" Mahetsent asked, chewing on a gamey piece of raw meat. "We wait to see if they do anything. I doubt if they'll fight us here." "You chose the ground." "They'll wait until they get a better field. But I want to draw them out, if they mean to attack." "Who do you think they are?" Ergete looked at the hills across the water, the falling sun washing the slope in yellow light, shadowing the tops of the hills and beyond in pitch black. "I think it's [i]Ras[/i] Wolde Petros." "Not the Emperor's military?" Ergete shook his head certainly. "They have men on horses. If the Emperor came for us, it would be with his machines. This isn't the government, it's something smaller. Wollo is a day's march from us, and the Emperor's uncle has less to fear from breaking the law and entering Begmeder to hunt our people than any other [i]Mesfin[/i]." "Can we fight them?" Ergete sat real quiet for a second, the cry of insects and uncaring sound of the warriors mixing into a soothing afternoon melody. "I think the great revolutionary armies of the world have done amazing things because their armies were free. The Americans at their Boston Hill, the French in their Revolution, they fought powerful foes and won. We will do the same here I think. If the enemy is foolish enough to attack us, they will run against the power of the people, and they will be broken." "You words make me feel better about our chances." Ergete put his hand on Mahetsent's shoulder. "There is nothing to fear. Sleep well tonight, my friend. I will put you on the left flank to protect our high places." Mahetsent nodded, and the two warriors parted ways for the night. Ergete turned his [i]shamma[/i] into a pillow and went to sleep. When he woke up, everything was quiet and wet with dew. The first red rays of sunrise peaked over the eastern cliffs. The men were stirring, making breakfast of what they hadn't ate the night before. Ergete looked down at the first line, where men slept in their rifle pits. They were now staring across the river at a line of enemy warriors on this hill below. When Ergete saw this, he knew in his heart that battle would come today after all. This was good. He had the best ground. He dug out a pair of binoculars and trained them across the river. Their soldiers looked much like his, including a compliment of men on horseback. Too many of them to be Begmeder's [i]Neftanya[/i, and too haggard for that set. They could only be the militia and retainers of some official or lord. Ergete was certain it was [i]Ras[/i] Wolde Petros, more so than he had been the night before. The wait seemed to go on all morning, the two sides facing against one another, doing nothing. Ergete itched to move out of his trenches and take the enemy where they stood, but that way was foolish, and he fought his urges like a recovering alcoholic, twitching in the saddle. An eagle screeched somewhere above him, but he did not look. Then it began. He couldn't contain his excitement when he saw their horsemen lurch forward and cross the river. He jumped out of his place, drew his sword, and stood above the rifle pits of this first line, uncaring of the danger to himself. Gunfire pattered somewhere far to the west before the horsemen were in range. The enemy horsemen let out a high pitched cry, and ululating like devils they charged Ergete's men. The Battle was opened. The first volley of rifle fire echoed all around him. Charging enemy riders fell from their horses. Sometimes it was the horses themselves that fell, taking the rider with them. Clods of mud flew all around, painted with the spray of blood, coming together as a cloud of filth. Riders with rifles and carbines shot at the [i]shifta[/i] line. Bullets whizzed by. The cavalry reached the rifle pits and rattled the first line. Hand to hand combat followed. The riders were dressed much like the [i]shiftas[/i], though some wore goatskin capes or lions-mane headdresses. Ergete jumped into the fray, slashing the leg of a rider, bright blood painting the steel and flowing freely, soaking into the man's cotton trousers. All was chaos. A bullet rang past Ergete's ear and lodged in the haunch of a horse, causing the beast to panic. Almost imperceptibly, the fighting pushed back, and they were driven into the [i]shifta[/i] army's second line. A new volley rang out, and the horsemen were forced to retreat. They left a row of blood and corpses trampled into the muddy ground. The riders took a place within firing range and threw a few Parthian shots into the [i]shifta[/i] line before it was completely reformed. Ergete realized he still heard the gunfire in the west, and knew this time that his right flank was embattled. He rounded up some survivors of the recent attack and took that party in the direction of the gunfire, leaving the rest to defend their well-won rifle pits. Moving like prowling hunters they crossed the thin stream between his center and right and headed for the imposing ridge where the right flank had been placed. They climbed over stone and bush, sticking to the rocky places, struggling and sliding where there was mud. By the time they reached the crest of the ridge they were exhausted and covered with sticky earth, but they plunged themselves into the fighting all the same, giving out a ululating war cry to let both sides among the embattled rocks know they were there. Struck men rarely fell where they stood on this incline. They slid down the muddy slope until they caught on a rock or a tree. The blooming heath exploded in the gunfire into clouds of shredded peddles. Ergete grabbed a rifle and trained it on a bobbing head down slope. He let his rifle crack, but did not see if it was a hit or a miss. Soon enough, the reinforcements had done it, and the [i]shiftas[/i] were driving their enemy from the ground. They stopped at the edge of the rough ground, where sandy ground opened up along the river. From here they took pot shots and screamed curses at their retreating foe. Some of the [i]shiftas[/i] combed the ground for wounded enemies, who they stripped of all their valuables, leaving them naked in their pain, which they made much worse by slicing open their scrotums and removing their testicles as bloody prizes. The first phase of the battle was won, but most of the enemy army hadn't been thrown into battle yet. Ergete climbed back up the ridge, followed slowly by the others, until they had a good view. He watched the enemy army from the height. They did nothing. He became conscious of an unnatural humming sound coming from far away. It was low, and seemed to come from everywhere. At first, he didn't connect the sound to the fighting, but as it got louder, and the enemy army continued to hold their ground, the atmosphere grew ominous, and Ergete expected something strange and dangerous to happen at any moment. The enemy started to advance. A second later, six fighter planes crested the ridge behind the enemy line, bathed in the glory of the sun, brightly painted scenes of lions, and prowling leopards, and charging warriors shining on their fuselages. The fighter planes dived at the [i]shiftas[/i] and sprayed them with rapid death. Chaos ensued. Ergete fired hopelessly at the incoming planes with a stolen rifle. The [i]shifta[/i] lines broke, and were driven back by the charge of enemy infantry. Ergete tried to hold the ridge, jumping in where the fighting was heaviest. Some of the fighters were dropping bombs in the main field, jets of fire visible from the rocky ridge, where the ground shook from the impact. Only the oldest of the [i]shiftas[/i] had experienced combat like this, during the Great War. For the rest, this was more than they could handle. They were unmanned. The enemy surged forward, and the [i]shiftas[/i] gave up their ground. Ergete's force was in full retreat into the mountains. He found himself practically tumbling down the ridge, stopping behind rocks to take shots at the incoming wave, rejoining the retreat before he got overwhelmed. In the stream below he was given a horse. Mounted, he looked back one last time at the bloody field, saw the fighters diving down on his fleeing warriors like angry dragons. It was that moment that he accepted the battle was lost. There was no rallying on better ground. He joined the torrent of men rushing like an avalanche in reverse into the cloud-ringed Semien mountains.