"People often speak of the glorious Cleansing of the Upland Marsh.
Of how it was a good time to be an Imperial soldier; a time of easy
duty and few fatigues, where men were made happy in the joyous
hunting of the feathered rebels. They don't know augnershit.
"All soldiers did things they regretted in the Duck Cleansing. I
don't care what they say. Hell, I've even seen grown great trolls
break down and weep. The petrified quackings of ducklings, cradled
in their dead mothers' arms, haunt your dreams. Flashbacks of Minor
Class mages launching barrage after barrage of death into some
harmless old drake's hovel, because some shitwittted officer thought
he saw Deathdrakes hiding there. The Upland Marsh was hell. Sure, we
expected a free ride, a bit of fun. But one night in the Duck
Marauding Zone cleared all that. It was peaceful at first, of
course. The Marsh air was stagnant, broken only by the occasional
sound of some wading bird. Little did we know that those sounds were
heralds of guile-spun death.
"Waves of grimly warbling followers of their cursed Death God coming
from all directions. Confusion, as officers vainly attempted to
restore order, and men battled to govern their fear and reassert
their training and faith in the Goddess. The horror that followed as
you realised your comrade had been taken in the misty fray. The
sound of his tortured screams, keening in the distant depths of that
hellish swamp. You'd find them eventually, of course, their
shattered bodies contorted by pain-wracked torment; tarred and
feathered in some grotesque duckish savagery. At least Death was a
blessing.
"Reprisals naturally followed. Whole nests were butchered. All ducks
were fair targets. A duck was a duck, and the only good duck was a
dead duck. Have you seen what a ballista bolt does to a duckling at
close quarters? It ain't pretty. We smashed the eggs of course.
Often with their warbling families watching. It was a release, I
suppose. Yet it marked us. The sticky, glistening residue of
duckblood coating jerkin, hair and weapon alike, impervious to any
amount of scrubbing, pervading your very septessence. The piles of
grisly trophies taken from debilled ducks for bounty, their once
rebellious owners now nought but lifeless corpses burned on massive
pyres; or left to rot where they fell, in watery graves.
"Sometimes there were survivors, largely because we were too tired
to continue the slaughter. Then there were the cruel scenes of long,
manacled lines of plucked and branded prisoners destined for the
slave pits, lit by the smouldering fires of burnt reeds and the
blessed glow of the Red Moon. Sometimes we marched these pitiful
remnants back to the Marsh's edge, only to be overtaken by a staff
officer after an hour or so's journey. Stockades were full. So we
speared them there and then, casting their bodies to the marsh near
some unknown and Goddess-forgotten tumulus rising from the dank
waters.
"When we came across a particularly belligerent nest, casualties
would be high. Whole companies might be eviscerated by maddened
midget warriors, or pulled to their slow-drowned death by any number
of traps and hidden guerillas. That was when the true horror began.
The garbled notes of horns and magically projected voices crackled
across the air, and the eager, murderous glee of waiting came over
us. We could sense the magic rising in the mists, the hairs on the
back of our necks prickling with anticipation. We were addicted to
it, and we always received our fix.
"Every soldier remembers the first time their officers called in
support from the Field School of the College of Magic.
"It was as if the world had ended. Whole nests were destroyed by the
heavenly fires of the Crater Makers. Burning ducks waddling
screaming in the night, their piercing calls rising above the raging
fires as they died. Slowly. The sickly smell of burnt feathers
hanging like a deathly pall in the foetid Marshland air. Even after
a burning we had to collect the bills. Apparently liquidation
manifests had to be assessed by the Entelathosium and the College of
Magic. We scrambled over the charred, putrescent remains of ducks,
frequently fused together in a wretched charnel mass, attempting to
saw off our grisly trophies. Sometimes we found ducks, even
ducklings, buried half-alive in that stinking, smouldering morass.
They died of course, but often slowly, for we only carried saws on
those jobs. Hells, I've not been able to eat fowl ever since.
"Hazia-use was rife. It was the only way to gain an even momentary
release from the terror. The grim and guilty pleasures of death and
murder, the bowel-emptying fear of yet another Humakti Death Song
attack shattering the still marsh air. Self-mutilation was initially
common, with accidental butt-spike injuries offering a respite to
the endless monotony of marshland sweeps and sleepless nights
bivouacked in the damp swampland hell. But the Seven Mothers'
priests soon got wise to that.
"They tried to keep us happy, of course. Jar-Eel visited us once,
apparently, on a morale-raising exercise, but I was on a sweep at
the time. The youngsters adored her, and festooned our reedwrought
temporary barracks with images of the Inspiration. You grew used to
unsettling sounds in the dead of night as they stared at her images
and Onalingi's iniquitous wiles took them. That was punishable by
death, of course, but no-one seemed to care. Then there were the
trips to the Duck Point brothels, where every young recruit would
recall with wonder the words of temptation: 'Ten Loonar!' and 'Me
give you quacky-quacky?'
"And then there were the reports of home. Here we were, in this
sodden hell. You'd have thought any good Imperial Citizen would have
supported us. But no. The tales of violence and rioting in Torang
and Induppa, as those cursed bird-lovers protested at the crimes we
perpetrated upon their 'kin', further sapped morale. Some students
at the Imperial Magical University even went on strike before Tatius
called in the Garrison Army and did the ungrateful bastards in."
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