by Robert Brady
Henekh was setting himself up to be King, I thought, and so long as his troops aren’t annihilated, he’s going to claim he did better somehow, and he’s going to call for Eric to step down.
Eric simply wouldn’t do it. That sort of divisiveness was going to get the Volkhydrans questioning their allegiance and affecting their ability to fight at a time when we needed them at their best – not that Henekh was capable of thinking that far ahead. I said good-bye to the beaten Volkhydran’s, advising them to return to Eric, their King, as soon as they could. I didn’t have a lot of faith that they would do it.
The horse I bought was an Andaron mare. She didn’t like the cold and I was probably too heavy for her in my armor. I didn’t dare push her to get to the army faster, because I didn’t know what she could take. I missed Blizzard already and I felt the sacrifice I’d made for him, not that I’d changed my mind. I pushed as directly West as I could, hoping to cross the path of one of the two armies as soon as I could.
In fact, it was Lupennen who found me four days later, with Chesswaya on her Andaron horse and he on his daughter of Blizzard.
He didn’t call out for me, Chessa raised her staff and its gem glowed bright green. I followed it to them over a hill where they waited.
“I grieve your loss, father,” Chessa said to me. I didn’t need to ask what she meant.
“Thank you, Chessa,” I said. “And thank you for your warning. You’re a good daughter.”
She lowered her head.
“You’re headed right for the Great North Army,” Lupennen told me. “Chesswaya saw you. I didn’t think that’s what you wanted to do.”
No, probably a bad idea, I thought.
“Can you get me to Eric or Vulpe?” I asked.
Both nodded. “Vulpe is close,” Lupennen said. “He plans to engage the Great North tomorrow morning, with the sun behind him.”
Not a bad strategy if you could pull it off. Especially when your enemy’s average height is greater than your own, giving them that extra factor to deal with can put a commander off, especially if he over estimates it.
Why did I think this ‘Vinkler,’ wasn’t going to give him that, so easily.
“And Eric?” I asked.
“Farther west,” Lupennen said. “Trying to rally more warriors and relieve Vellock or Senta. I advised him against it – if we’re to believe the refugees from Vellock, the Men of the North left no male alive and enslaved the women and children. There’s nothing to relieve, and then no way to get to Senta unless he can do to Vellock what Vinkler ordered.”
Vinkler was taking no chances, I thought. He wanted the north of Volkhydro to be Great North, no one left to question or to want their land back.
Brutally efficient – and speaking of the god War.
This was not going well.
“Let’s get to Vulpe first,” I said. “He’s probably more amenable to advice. A victory by him puts Henekh a step farther from challenging Eric.”
We turned our horses and Lupennen pulled his up next to mine, Chessa following behind and keeping her own thoughts.
“Henekh will try to take the Kingship as quickly as he can,” Lupennen said, “before Eric can have a real victory.”
“Meaning Henekh will attack the North as soon as he can,” I agreed.
“There is a wide gap between our forces,” Lupennen said. “Henekh, if he sees it, will probably move through there and try a surprise attack on the North. Something –“
“Wait a moment,” I said, and I looked into Lupennen’s cat-curious eyes.
“What exactly did your mother teach you?” I asked him
He looked into my eyes, trying to figure out what I meant.
“You speak like you’ve been to a war college,” I said. “I’m sorry, son, but you’re around fourteen and act like you’ve been doing this for fifty years.”
Lupennen looked away from me, then looked back.
“I get advice,” he said.
I waited. Chessa actually pulled forward a little.
He put his hand on the dagger in his belt – the one I’d seen him with. “My mother found this on a battle field, and it gave her horrible dreams, so she gave it to me.
“It can advise me,” he continued. “It can put thoughts in my head. It knows things about people, about armies, about how they behave.”
“What battle?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “The Battle of the Vice,” he said. “Some are calling it ‘The Battle of Two Sons,’ because you called Tartan Stowe your son –“
“I’d heard that,” I said. In fact, I never said it. Probably some ambitious troubadour.
Patterns were forming that I didn’t like. There were possibilities that we were both right and wrong about the prophecy, what it meant, what it was going to mean.
Who’s to say that it couldn’t replay itself. Isn’t that what happened if you didn’t learn from history?
We traveled on for two more days, skirting patrols from the Great North. Moving south west, we were looking for indications that Vulpe’s battle had been more successful than his brother’s.
We came across his army on the 15th day of War, spread out over a daheer in nine jess doonari atop what high-points they could find. Daheeri to their north there was a horde that I could only assume was the Great North army. I went straight to the central, blue-and-white pavilion which I knew would be my son’s command tent.
I didn’t see the bodies that would tell me how the battle went, but I had to think there were no more and 9,000 warriors here, and we should have met him with closer to 15,000.
Vulpe and Shela were in the pavilion as expected, with a few of my generals of the Regulars. To one side, on a cot and covered by a thick blanket, Dagi lay asleep with her sword and shield beside her, a bandage on her head.
No one looked real happy.
“Status,” I ordered, walking into the pavilion.
Shela ran into my arms and held me. Vulpe looked up guiltily, then looked back to the standard table in the middle of the room, with a giant map held down by paper weights, with little models of armies on it.
“Not good, your Imperial Majesty,” one of the generals, an Uman named Varr, said. He was about 100 years old – he’d served Eldador since there was an Eldador. He worse a uniform of green with silver sleeves and pants legs, because he was too frail for armor.
“We’ve engaged them yesterday as the sun rose,” he continued, “from the East.”
“To give you the advantage of the sun,” I said. He nodded.
The other general, a Man of forty named “Grainger,” took over from there. Grainger, knowing him, had probably been near the front lines. It was my number one problem with him: he loved to engage. We really had to ram strategy down his throat.
“Our front line engaged their horde, and they overwhelmed it,” he said. He still wore his armor, and it was bloody. His brown eyes searched the map like he was seeing the battle again.
“So went the second line, so went the third,” he continued. “Some of them are strong enough to cleave a shield in half. Others swing hammers that will smash a sword, then leap in with long daggers, fighting man-to-man.
“Our fourth line held and delivered punishment, and then we were able to rotate our lines, and we made advances.”
“Until we met their fresh troops,” Vulpe said. “And then we lost another line, and another, and then made advances, and that happened all day.”
“I can say they withdrew before we did,” Varr said. “But it was hard to say they lost more warriors. Looking into the sun didn’t seem to bother them at all.”
“So they withdrew over to where they are now?” I asked. All nodded.
“And Dagi?”
No answer for a moment.
“She engaged them directly,” Chessa said. She walked to her sister’s side and stroked her wounded face. “She reasoned that if she were to kill Vinkler, then they would break. But she met Maree, and Maree was more than able to handle
her. I think if not for her shield, we would have lost my sister.”
“How is that?” I asked.
“The shield continued to defend her even after she fell,” Vulpe said. “It moved her arm until I could step in and rescue her.”
“You stepped in?” I looked Vulpe in the eyes.
“She’s my sister,” Vulpe said, simply.
“Blows laid on Vulpe don’t seem to touch him,” Grainger said. “He simply ignored Maree and picked up his sister, and brought her back here.”
“When Maree sought to follow, I dealt with her, as before,” Chessa said. “I could not kill her, however. She resisted some of my magic. She is stronger than before.”
“My magic barely helped us,” Shela said, looking at me. “They resisted me – I know not how.”
“Where are Raven and Jack?” I asked.
“Raven, Jack and Vedeen left with Eric on Vedeen’s insistence,” Shela said. I shook my head. She put an arm on my chest. “Without them, he would have had no magic to aid him at all.”
‘I heard how well that went,” I said. “How far is the battle field?”
“Two daheeri,” Vulpe said.
“When are they going to hit us again?” I asked Varr.
He looked at the map. “Tomorrow morning, I think. We’re skirmishing with them almost constantly – they throw themselves at our pickets in groups.”
I nodded. “Take the southern half of the army and move it northeast,” I said. “Make sure that, when they hit us, they have to face the sun.”
“That didn’t work – “ Vulpe began.
I cut him off. “You’re with me,” I said. “Shela, you as well. Grainger, get me a stout horse to ride and turn that mare I came in on over to the Regulars.”
Shela looked into my eyes. “Blizzard?” she asked.
“Returned to his herd,” Chessa said. “So great is my father’s heart.”
“The men expect to see you on your stallion,” Varr drawled.
“Well,” I said, “they won’t, and before you tell me about morale, Spread the word that Blizzard collicked, not that I freed him. Who knows where they would take that.”
We walked out of the tent and I asked Shela, “Where is Lee?”
She looked away.
“You told her to remain in Medya,” I said. It wasn’t a question. Shela had lost Lee once, and she wasn’t about to lose her again if she could help it.
“Someone must –“ she began, but I shook my head.
“I have a message for my daughter, which you will convey,” I told her.
***
We left with 300 Wolf Soldier guards for the West, as the bulk of the army moved to the East.
The battle field in spring, two days after the fight, was a sight and a stench that could actually kill a man. Shela encompassed us in a protective bubble, and even then it was almost too much for us to bear.
I found the front line. It was typical of battles with the new Eldadorian Regulars. Our strategy parroted the Romans – wide lines that face them enemy with columns behind them. The warrior in front would fight for 15 minutes or until he/she fell, and then be replaced by the one behind. He would push off with his shield, fall back to the left and then the next warrior would step up.
Our troops would then run to the back of the line and wait to step up in place, meaning that if I could manage to stay 10 deep at the start of the battle, a warrior would fight only 15 minutes every 2 ½ hours.
Obviously, you had losses, however the enemy would fight to exhaustion against lines that remained relatively fresh, and if the two sides were of relatively equal skill, then we would prevail against as many as 10 times our numbers.
For meeting Foveans, this was an ideal strategy. For the Men of the North, not so much. They didn’t seem to tire as quickly, and man-to-man they were better fighters.
But they simply couldn’t resist a fight. They lacked strategy, they were just fierce.
A different strategy was needed for them and, unfortunately, that’s not as easy to implement as one might think.
I examined one of the warriors from the enemy who had fallen.
He’d taken hits enough to kill three men. As we’d noted before, they weaved their chain into their furs, making them doubly strong – but that had to be pretty hot in the spring. They wore steel caps with nose-guards and a thick, leather curtain to cover the backs of their necks. Their weapons were hammers, poles with hooks on the end, axes and swords, all mixed. They carried round shields and shields that were more like a figure-eight, but inwardly curved on the sides. These were good for pole arms or for shield walls to repel arrows, but to see the enemy through.
I examined a few more. I wanted the ones who’d died first. Finally I found one under a pile of bodies under both sides.
Even Shela was getting queasy by then.
“Ha!” I shouted. “Knew it.”
“What?” Shela demanded. To his credit, Vulpe stepped up to see what I was talking about.
The man had a strip of black cloth over his eyes.
“This is how they met you to the East,” I said. “They know this tactic.”
“But if they’re blind-“ Vulpe argued.
“No,” I said. “They lose a little of their vision, but they still see who they’re fighting, especially up close. No matter what size, warriors are proportionately the same – you see where the head is, you know what to swing for.”
I pointed to the dead man. “This is how we beat them,” I said.
Shela couldn’t contact either Vedeen or Raven, but she was more than able to get in touch with Nina.
The message was simple: “We need you. Come south east at all speed.”
Eric didn’t want to do it, then we warned him what Henekh was up to. Eric needed to meet his army directly, and take command of it before Henekh was ready to defy such an order.
It would take Eric days to be in position.
That morning we had a battle to fight. I lined up 1,000 warriors to the East in close formation, and another 8,000 to the south, out of range. The horde from the Great North rumbled to the fight, aware of what we were doing, ready to engage us in the dark so that we would both be blind.
That was, actually, even better.
The Great North surged east with a roar. The tactic was obvious – remove the smaller threat while it was trying to assemble, then go after the larger one with the win behind you, and maybe a numerical advantage.
As the horde surge forward, the warriors to the east, myself among them, broke up into groups of ten.
Because they were Wolf Soldiers, not regulars.
The warriors out of range to the south stepped forward and fired arrows into the horde as it passed. Dozens dropped, more tripped over them.
The horde surged into the center where my Wolf Soldiers had been. We circled and began to attack them with pikes. Over the night, we’d covered our shields with the enemy’s own armor, toughening their resistance but making them heavier and harder to manage. You could hear the hammers and axes pummeling those shields from daheeri away, and the enemy roaring at anger, that we would strip their own dead and use their weapons against them.
The sun began to crest the horizon. Vulpe moved three Millennia forward from the south, coming in from the southwest now.
Their own shields blocked the sun – but that wouldn’t make for good fighting.
The horde was suffering against the Wolf Soldier tactics. Squads were mobile and didn’t fight man-to-man. The horde would chase ten here, and twenty there would wheel around and come at them. They would turn and the squads would evaporate, replaced by thirty from another direction, then back to the original ten. The Men of the North were expending most of their energy chasing an inferior enemy that they couldn’t nail down.
And getting more and more tired all the time.
From their original position, horns started to blow. The horde perked up its collective head and looked to the west for direction.
The de
cision was, again, easy. Attack to the west. Take on the soldiers who fought man-to-man, with the advantage of the sun behind you.
They turned, roared again, and charged.
The Wolf soldiers formed a wide arc behind them. If anyone of these had been to that first battle in Thera, when the Wolf Soldiers had participated in war games with the Free Legion, they would have known exactly what to expect, however that was pretty freaking unlikely.
The horde closed in on three Millennia of Eldadorian Regulars, and then the dawn glinted from a thousand points of steel that appeared over their heads.
Those points moved backward as one, and then surged forward through the air.
1,000 of our spears, made with a wooden handle that would snap on impact, and soft iron shafts that would bend easily, and barbed ends that would do as much damage exiting a wound as entering it.
They flew through the air, and they met the front line of the horde as the warriors in front tried to skid to a stop, and the ones behind, unable to see what was going on, pushed them.
The roar became a scream of pain. Men who caught the spears on their shields now had a useless, heavy piece of wood and shield that weighed their shield down. As many if not more found themselves skewered through arms and legs and chests.
The three Millennia raised their spears a second time.
The trumpets blew from the Great North command, perhaps Vinkler or Maree themselves.
The spears flew, the warriors screamed.
The Wolf Soldiers advanced.
The second wave was devastating because now so many shields were gone. Varr advised me that we couldn’t just walk through their dead, because they’d continue to fight with their long knives. I already had four squads out slaughtering the fallen on my side, ahead of the marching army, almost completely intact.
The trumpets from the enemy blew three, short blasts. The Men from the North shuddered, and then they blew the blasts again.
They retreated to the North, leaving their dead behind, this time by the thousands.
If they’d stayed, I could have gotten them all. If I pursued them, I had to fight them man-to-man and take my losses. This was a good trick but it wasn’t likely to work twice. I wasn’t going to make their mistake:
