"Maybe we should send our archers at the front to cover our moves," Gramus suggested.
"Good idea," Masolon seconded, pointing his finger at Gramus. "Let them keep those scouts at least one mile away from our camp. Now go and inform your captains."
Gramus nodded and strode away.
"Six hundred Skandivians are not enough to decide this battle, Your Grace," Jonson pointed out.
"And what happened to our infantry, Lord Jonson?"
"Our swordsmen and spearmen are less than sixty hundred. And even not all of them are seasoned fighters." Jonson nodded toward a group of soldiers. From the way they contemplated their armors, Masolon could tell they were green.
"Put the uninitiated at the rearguard." Masolon's eyes were still scanning his soldiers. "In the darkness, they may make some mess in our enemy's lines."
"I was thinking of keeping them here as the city guard with Captain Tarling."
With his outnumbered forces, Masolon could not afford to spare any of his soldiers, even the uninitiated ones. "Give Tarling a hundred of his new recruits." Masolon hoped he had taken the right decision. Unfortunately, he would only know after the battle.
Jonson folded his arms, looking at a bunch of pale-faced peasants. "I bet those naive farmers pray for the arrival of the Antram monk so that they can return to their homes with their heads above their shoulders."
"The Antram monk?" Masolon echoed in disapproval. "I see this tale is just getting bigger."
"It is not just a tale, Your Grace. Lapond has succumbed to the last Antram, not to Daval."
The tale of the last Antram who had joined Daval was hard to believe. The southern usurper must have fooled the bannerlords of the East. "I knew the last Antram, Lord Jonson. We fought together. We were brothers." Before I disappoint him and the rest of the Gang.
"Were brothers?" Jonson would not let that pass, would he?
"I assure you we are still brothers." Are we? Masolon might fool Jonson, but not himself. "If the real Antram decides to take part in this struggle, he will join me without hesitation."
30. ANTRAM
"We are almost there, Lord Antram."
Daval was riding his warhorse when he announced, a wide grin on his face. Day after day, Antram was getting used to the new title that preceded his name when being addressed. In the beginning, it had sounded alien to his ears, but now he was even starting to like it. And why not? This title was the heritage of his family. He should have been addressed as 'Lord Antram' long time ago if it had not been for Charlwood, the bloodthirsty tyrant.
"Are you ready for another victory, Lord Antram?" Daval asked.
"I learned one thing from fighting in the Contests," said Antram. "You should never underestimate your opponent."
"Our opponent can barely amass half the men we have now."
"Our opponent is Masolon, Your Grace." Antram pressed his lips together. Fighting his old friend was still a notion hard to swallow.
"That Masolon is going to be crushed if he stands in our way, Lord Antram." Daval studied Antram's face.
"No one is going to be crushed, Your Grace." Hopefully. "As we did in Lapond, we will conquer Ramos without a single drop of blood."
"You still care about him." Daval's disappointment was plain in his tone. "Even after he had abandoned you for the daughter of the man who slaughtered your family."
"In Lapond, I spared the lives of one thousand men I never met before," Antram reminded Daval. "Why wouldn't I spare the life of the man I fought alongside once?"
"What if he doesn't yield? What if he insists on fighting us?"
Antram hoped he would not reach that point where he had to choose between Daval and his old brother. He wished Masolon would abandon his pride and use his mind.
"So?" Daval was determined to get an answer.
"Your Grace, our scouts have not returned yet," Daval's marshal announced, saving Antram from answering the question.
"Strange." Daval gazed at the horizon. "The walls of Ramos will be visible at any moment. Those scouts should have been back already."
They could have been ambushed by Masolon, Antram thought. Accidents could happen in the heavily forested area around Ramos. "Nightfall and thick trees; neither the time nor the place to face a resourceful commander like Masolon." He contemplated the reddish sky of dusk. "We should slow down until we can see the ground we are treading on. My old friend has his own tricks."
"One has returned at last." The marshal pointed at a scout galloping toward their marching troops.
"An outpost!" the scout hollered. "Their archers have advanced to hunt us!"
It is starting sooner than I thought. Antram and Daval exchanged looks. The King of the South was obviously not happy about the news he had just received. "Your friend is not ready to talk tonight." Daval ground his teeth.
"Too early to say so. These skirmishes are nothing."
Silently, Daval kept his eyes fixed on him for a few moments, before he turned to the scout. "How many archers did they send after you?"
"I didn't have the chance to count, Your Grace." The scout lowered his head as if he was apologizing to his king. "The arrows were coming from everywhere when we—"
"So, you didn't see an outpost with our own eyes," Antram firmly put in.
"Well, there were many archers, so I presumed—"
"Presumed?" Antram interrupted him again. "You tell us only what you saw, soldier."
"Alright, alright. Go now." Daval waved the scout away. "My troops didn't march all that distance to be deterred by some archers," he mumbled, glancing at Antram and the marshal. "Send our heavy cavalry after them, and let's see how long those archers can stand their ground."
The marshal nodded in approval. Antram wondered if he was the only one who could see the trap. Haven't they learned about what Masolon did to Rona's troops at the scorched lands of Herlog?
Darkness had fallen when Daval's knights returned from their pursuit and told the marshal about the mounted archers who had fallen back to their city. Now the army could resume its march on the field that lay between the two forested areas. Our doom crouches there, waiting for the right moment to come out from those trees. Antram kept looking right and left in anticipation of one flaming arrow that would soar into the air before reaching the tarred ground. Hell would be hissing in their ears.
But the arrow did not come. Antram sniffed as his horse trotted onward with the advancing army, but he did not smell tar. From his place next to the king at the rearguard, he warily watched Daval's knights at the front ranks. Masolon will start with you.
"The city looks quiet and dark as if it is abandoned." Daval gazed at the walls of Ramos. Not even the slightest flickers of light from a torch could be spotted. The same silence before the battle of Herlog.
"I strongly recommend we do the same," said Antram.
"Do you want us to put out our torches?" Daval furrowed his brow.
"Yes." Antram pointed backward at the soldiers escorting the four trebuchets. "Especially those." If Masolon managed to destroy their siege weapons, they would spend the rest of their lives trying either to scale the walls or ram the gate.
"We can't." Daval shook his head. "Especially with those. They need light to work our siege engines."
"We wait for tomorrow's sunlight, then."
"While we strike the walls to keep Masolon and his men up the whole night, our soldiers will be replenishing their strength," said Daval. "Tomorrow morning we conquer the city after vanquishing his exhausted troops."
It sounded like a good plan, but was it good enough to defeat Masolon? Darkness was the Demon's best friend.
The titanic army stopped by an order from the marshal. And without wasting any moment, Daval's men started readying the four trebuchets. Soon these gigantic engines would be hurling huge fireballs at the walls of Ramos. Antram was quite sure that Masolon was watching from somewhere—probably atop the bulwark—waiting like a lion for the right moment to stun his prey. Yes, his prey.
Anyway, Daval was not the first one to be deluded by the host he had amassed against his much outnumbered, sly opponent.
And suddenly, thunder struck. Four consecutive times.
Before Antram could grasp why thunder sounded as if it came from the woods at his right, he felt his heart had stopped when four close explosions almost deafened him. A couple of seconds later, he was able to recognize men's shrieks and horses' whinnies. What on earth was happening?
Antram needed one minute to collect his thoughts after the shock. He had thought of the tales of Masolon's thundermakers as nothing more than drunkards' folly, but they came out to be real. And indeed they did make thunder.
"Light! They are there!" Daval hollered, pointing to the right forested area. Antram could see a dozen distant torches that had appeared in the heart of the woods.
"Shall we attack, Your Grace?" the marshal asked nervously.
"That's what they want us to do," answered Daval, a scowl on his face. For sure, the King of Augarin had never imagined that Masolon might stun him before he did.
The torches in the woods did not move from their place, as if they were inviting Daval to come. "Hold!" Daval demanded, raising his hand, making himself visible not only to his men but also to Masolon.
Shortly after, another four distant booms shook the ground, followed at once by a gruesome mix of shrieks and explosions. This time, Antram was aware of the sites of damage; one of them at the vanguard, the other at the heart of his infantry. "We mustn't wait, Your Grace!" the marshal begged his king.
"Send two cavalry battalions to the cursed woods!" Daval howled.
The field trembled under the thudding hooves of a thousand galloping horses. Now all eyes were directed to the forest instead of the silent walls of Ramos.
Antram squinted, trying to have a clearer view of the cavalry raid. The horses gracefully went through the woods, but after cutting a very short distance inside, the horses suddenly neighed when they halted, raising their forelimbs. With the help of the knights' torches, Antram realized that the horses' trunks were pierced by a long wall of pikes fixed to the ground. And from the utter darkness of the woods, a horde of pikemen charged at the sound horses trapped behind the killed and wounded ones. In a couple of minutes, two battalions of knights were unhorsed in the woods. In the coming few minutes, they were going to be slaughtered by another horde of charging swordsmen. Blast! Their roars sound Skandivian!
"Send the infantry!" Daval bellowed. "And the rest of cavalry as well!"
"There is no way to save those men!" Antram snapped. "Order your men to fall back for tonight, and don't make your loss get worse."
31. MASOLON
The battle was going so far as Masolon had expected. He was sure Daval's cavalry would haste to his cannons to stop them from shattering the southern army, but with the help of darkness and trees, the southerners could not see the pikes standing in their way to reach the slightly elevated terrain on which the cannons were placed. Now the Skandivians together with his men were laying waste to their opposing unhorsed knights. If only Gramus had brought more of them, Masolon thought. Two thousand Skandivians would have made the scene even prettier.
"They are not falling back," Edmond told him, gazing at Daval's infantry. "They are bringing their ladders to the wall."
Masolon's swordsmen were not done yet with Daval's vanquished knights. Obviously, his opponent had lost hope in saving his trapped men. "The King of Augarin wants to drag the battle away from the woods." Masolon watched Daval's battalions marching toward the walls of Ramos. The southerner wanted to decide the battle tonight.
"Always shoot at the soldiers at the front," Masolon ordered his cannoneers. Thanks to their slightly elevated positions, the cannons could fire without hurting his men fighting at the wall of pikes. As the invaders thronged the plain field between the two forested areas, the chances of hitting many of Daval's soldiers were high with every wave of cannonballs. The roar of thunder together with the sight of shredded corpses brought mess upon the southerners, yet it did not deter all of them. Masolon remembered what Rona had told him about the need for hundreds of cannons to balance the two struggling parties. Perhaps she had exaggerated about the number of cannons required—hundreds of cannons could have ended this battle in a few minutes—but still four cannons were not enough to beat this titanic southern army.
Daval's soldiers were wavering now, and all they needed was a little push to fall into a crushing defeat. And that was why he had hidden his cavalry at the opposite forested side under Gramus's command.
"Force their reserve forces to fall back. Strike their trebuchets before they finish setting them up," Masolon demanded as the invaders were getting so close from the walls. The cannons were turned at once toward the enemy's siege weapons, making it safe for Gramus's knights to enter the battlefield from the other side.
A thousand horsemen coming out of the woods destroyed what remained of morale in the hearts of Daval's men. That is what I call a cavalry charge, Gramus, Masolon thought, his eyes following the towering general whose huge galloping warhorse was running over whoever stood in his way. Southerners fell on his right and left with every swing of the massive war axe. Even to Masolon's standards, Gramus was not a bad horseman at all.
Deprived of Foubert's heavy cavalry, those knights summoned from Kalhom, Ramos, and Paril were all Masolon could muster for this battle, and so far they were doing what they had been trained for years to do, slaying the southern footmen who were too stunned to fight back. If Masolon wanted to make the most of this surprising counterattack, he had to make his move now to vanquish the southerners before they might rally.
"Let us end this, lions! Only pikemen stay here!" Masolon pulled the greatsword strapped to his back, letting his arms feel the weight of his hefty weapon. It has been a while, my friend. The last time he had swung it in battle was two months ago in Paril.
"We need you here, Your Grace," Edmond advised. "Still a long way ahead to decide this battle."
Masolon had heard a few tales about Bermanian kings leading their men on the battlefield, but fighting their enemy toe-to-toe, without a horse? He doubted if Edmond or any of his soldiers were accustomed to such a sight. "You need me there, General." Masolon pointed his huge blade at the chaotic field on which Gramus and his knights were laying waste to Daval's infantry, the field at which the long way to decide this battle started. "Now CHAAARGE!"
32. BEN
They were winning this fight, Ben believed. Standing atop the bulwark among his fellows, he watched their infantry emerge from the woods. Despite the distance, Ben did not mistake Masolon's roar in the middle of the battle clamor. And it was him indeed; the same moves, the same fury, and the same unbelievable speed. I can't swing Smit's cane as smooth as he wields that greatsword. Seriously, Ben pitied those unfortunate soldiers whose fates had brought them in the range of Masolon's massive blade.
The four devilish thunder makers were crushing Daval's men with their dreadful missiles. Ben was not able to see those weapons amid the thick trees, but he could spot their sparks when they struck their thunderbolts. "What in the hell are those things?" Ben wondered, his voice loud enough to be heard by Captain Tarling.
"Cannons, soldier," Tarling replied, leaning to the parapets. "They say His Grace has built them with the help of demons."
Ben would believe that tale if he did not know Masolon in person. "You think he has?"
"Would it matter?"
"Of course." Ben was not sure how he should answer this. "I mean. . . I believe somehow that these are not real thunderbolts, although they sound like them. Thunderbolts only come from the sky by the Lord's will."
"So?"
"These crafts are man's work," Ben mused. "If crafting them is something that can be learned, others will be able to make them as well. It's frightening to imagine what may happen if these monstrous crafts fall into the enemy's hands."
Tarling remained silent for a while, but Ben noticed that smile slipping ove
r the Captain's face. "Sometimes you act like a foolish lad, sometimes you talk like a wise old man." Tarling approached, holding Ben's shoulder with one hand, pointing at the battlefield with the other. "Look at these soldiers, soldier. Those who are going to survive this battle will only remember the hooves of warhorses that crushed the bones of their brothers, the thunderous missiles that tore their bodies apart, the bloody blades that slit their throats. Coming to their senses is a boon they have lost forever, so rest assured," he pointed at the southerners' wavering rearguard, where the trebuchets were reduced into wooden fragments, "none of them will ever ponder whether the thunderbolts are man's work or not."
Listening to Tarling, Ben spied Daval's reserve troops slowly retreating, as if they were hesitant to flee. But eight cannonballs persuaded them to abandon their positions, leaving their ruined trebuchets unguarded. Who can blame them? Ben found it hard to imagine himself standing his ground with those thunderbolts hitting everywhere and everyone around him.
"We are winning this!" Edd was exhilarated when he stated the obvious. Ted shared his joy. For sure, they were relieved to know they were going to live long enough to see the next morning sun. But what was the glory in watching a battle from a high wall?
The bombarding was not over yet. The cannons kept battering Daval's retreating forces, driving them farther from the city walls. Despite his archers' desperate attempts to cover their falling back, hundreds of his soldiers surrendered as they found themselves trapped between the cannons missiles and Masolon's warriors. Victory.
"What is the matter, Ben?" Edd asked him.
"Even a southerner wouldn't have the scowl on your face," added Ted.
Ben ignored them and asked Tarling, "It is not over, is it?"
"For tonight? It is." Tarling folded his arms, gazing at their celebrating soldiers. "Unless the southerners launch a suicide counterattack."
"We should pursue them to make sure they don't rally."
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