THIRTY-NINTH WAR BETWEEN INNIS AND MEQING: COMMENCEMENT

THIRTY-NINTH WAR BETWEEN INNIS AND MEQING: COMMENCEMENT, by Mary Soon Lee, artwork by Simon Walpole

 

Not a battle, but a raid,
not on impulse, but under orders–

Prince Connol would have risked
his brother’s anger
and questioned those orders
had he judged it would do any good,
but King Donal was set on war,
so war it would be.
And Connol would start it.

Connol and twenty of his soldiers
trudged through snow and wind,
crossed the border
somewhere inside a forest
that had been renamed six times
in the past hundred years
as war shifted it from one king to another,
or, as now, carved it in two.

Rested until dark,
then off again, light snow falling
as they went from farmstead to farmstead.
Burning, killing.
Setting the Innish banner by each burnt farm.

They didn’t kill or rape the women,
just bound them and left them in the snow.
One woman nearly naked,
Connol worried she’d freeze.
He wrestled a coat from a corpse,
put it on the woman as she spat at him.

Not many women, no young children,
for which Connol was grateful.

Wherever the women and children
had fled, the men hadn’t followed.
Peasants with pitchforks and shovels
that Connol and his men
killed with brutal ease.
Some of them not armed at all.
Some trying to surrender.

Armed or unarmed,
resisting or cowering:
all killed.

Three hours before dawn, the sky cleared.
Snow gleamed under the half moon
as they happened upon a larger farmstead.
Stone house and outbuildings.
Connol gave the signal to halt.

None of his soldiers injured,
but all of them tired.
He weighed it up, said quietly,
“We’re heading home.”

Fergus gave him a look.
“King Donal won’t like it.”

That the only protest,
Connol started back.
Before he’d gone a hundred yards,
a scream.
Connol spun round,
saw Tamhas collapse, arrow through his neck.
Saw the pair of archers.
Helmets. Cuirasses.
Not peasants, but Horse Boy’s soldiers.
A large group of farmers assembled behind them.

Well then. A fight after all:
“Kill the fucking bastards!”

Connol ran, shield up,
straight for the pair of archers,
Fergus alongside him, the others following.
A cut-off yelp behind him.
Connol didn’t turn. Ran on.
Drew his sword as he reached the archers,
slashed one in the shin.
The man staggered, fell.
Connol cut the man’s throat,
looked round: Fergus and Iain
fighting the second archer,
most of his men attacking farmers.
He stepped toward Fergus,
lost his sword to a blow from a shovel.
Grabbed his axe,
took down the farmer with the shovel.
Looked round again: the second archer
face down in the trampled snow,
Iain sprawled beside him.
No farmers standing.

Connol tallied his soldiers. Iain dead.
Tamhas, Dunne, Liam downed by arrows. Dead.
Muiredach with an arrow in his shoulder.

Connol took his axe.
Went to the archer he’d killed,
chopped the archer’s hands off.
Opened the archer’s jaws,
set a severed hand in their bite.
Did the same to the second archer.

Less than Donal would have done,
and he took no satisfaction from it,
but a message for Horse Boy.

Headed back to Innis
with his remaining men.

 

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Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for over twenty years. Her two latest books are from opposite ends of the poetry spectrum: Elemental Haiku, containing haiku for the periodic table (Ten Speed Press, 2019) and The Sign of the Dragon, an epic fantasy with Chinese elements (JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2020). After twenty-five years, her website has finally been updated: marysoonlee.com.

Simon Walpole has been drawing for as long as he can remember and is fortunate to spend his freetime working as an illustrator. He primarily use pencils, pens and markers and use a bit of digital for tweaking. As well as doing interior illustrations for various publishing formats he has also drawn a lot of maps for novels. his work can be found at his website HandDrawnHeroes.