Dark Tide: Book Five of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  As the last units moved into position the Grand Commander surveyed the dispositions and nodded to himself. Waving Septak over, he gestured towards the enemy lines. “Is everything ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Arcont commanded the forces on the right, and Descente knew that if anyone could break the Heartland line and roll them up, he could. “Very well, order the Kets in reserve to swing wide around the ridge and harry the east lines; perhaps they can capture the high ground and knock out the enemy artillery while the foe is distracted.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’re going to hit us with everything they have on our left, skirmish in the center and right, and test the eastern defenses of the ridge,” the Grand Marshal pointed out to Duke Radet as the Hand forces moved into their final positions.

  “Just as you planned,” the Duke nodded.

  “Hoped, actually,” Laffery grinned. “Luck and guesses has made up the factual basis of my generalship, I’m afraid.”

  “So you say,” the Arturian smiled. “I must rejoin my men, sir; our part in this mad affair draws near.”

  “A vital part, perhaps the most vital,” Laffery pointed out.

  Radet shrugged. “We can but hope.”

  The blocks of Human and Direbreed troops surged forward from the Hand’s right, immediately coming under the combined fire of every artillery piece on the ridge, several newly-formed Darkhosts losing all internal cohesion under the deadly stone hail, while the Orcs and Holdings in the center moved forward to engage their opposite numbers in the Heartland force and the wolf riders on the Hand’s left skirmished with the Imperial troops on the Heartland’s right. Laffery sent the Dwarves and Ithanian foot to shore up von der Strieb, who was in direct command of the hard-pressed left, and listened with interest to the reports coming from the skirmishing on the White Line.

  Descente watched the attack develop and was gratified to see it going as planned: the center force kept the Heartland center pinned, while the strong units on the enemy’s right were held in place by the massive block of Direbreed waiting in place behind the skirmishing Goblins; they were only lightly engaged, but dared not shift their forces elsewhere for fear that the thousands of beast-warriors would be released in a charge at any sign of weakness. Arcont’s troops had been blooded by a surprisingly strong dose of artillery; Laffery must have had his men shifting every war engine on the ridge since the assaults had halted, using pre-planned positions for the weapons.

  That gave the Grand Commander pause, to think that his opposite number had planned for a strong attack from this quarter sufficiently in advance to have foundation-sites built for his artillery, and then shrugged it off: Laffery had been here for months, no doubt the entire ridge was a mass of artillery positions so that the full weight of the engines could be shifted about as needed.

  The attack on the eastern defenses, couriers had reported, was not accomplishing anything in terms of ground gained, but it was drawing blood and the Grand Commander sent orders to keep up the pressure. Further good news came when he was advised that Laffery had committed the last of his reserves, the Kordian Foot Guards and two Sagenhoftian cohorts, to his left wing. Descente immediately ordered the Third Holding to join Arcont’s forces and sent two Lardina of wolf riders to assist the Eyade in harrying the back side of the ridge.

  As the Heartland’s left wing was hammered back a step at a time he ordered the Second Holding to join Arcont and shifted his remaining reserves to the right, ready to exploit the inevitable breakthrough. Warning orders were sent to the Markan-Ra on the Hand’s left who even now were still trying to get the Direbreed formed up into at least Arms, if not Darkhosts, instructing them to prepare for a charge; Descente planned to throw them into the enemy’s right at the first sign of the Legions there being shifted to oppose Arcont. The Direbreed would be useless after a single attack, but one charge would be all he needed.

  He had expected Laffery to shift the heavy horse to counter-charge Arcont’s troops, but the cavalry stayed in place out past the Heartland’s right wing even as their left was bowing back; Descente had just assigned a Lardina from the reserve to assist his troops in the center when word reached that the horse was moving.

  Urging his horse across an adjoining gully to a low rise that gave him a better view of his left, he saw that Radet’s force was indeed on the move, although not to support the Heartland’s left as was expected, but instead was moving out from behind the Imperial troops, obviously planning a charge into the Hand’s left. It was of little concern, the Grand Commander decided: while the armored horsemen could easily punch through the mob of Direbreed and the gutted ranks of the Orcs, the infantry on that wing were too few to exploit any breach. He was surprised to see that a line of wagons were stirring out there as well, but dismissed it as unimportant.

  Moving back across the gully to the rise where he could best observe Arcont’s men, he was pleased to see that despite heavy losses, especially from the unending stream of artillery fire, the Hand forces were steadily driving the enemy’s left back; in fact, the Heartland troops were already backing up the beginnings of the ridge’s slope. His troops in the center, however, were not pressing the enemy as hard as he liked, allowing Laffery to shift several hundred Arturian foot to aid his hard-pressed left; Descente immediately ordered a second Lardina to assist the center.

  Sending the Second Holding and the remaining winged creatures to Arcont, the Grand Commander eyed his dwindling reserves and then committed the last Lardina to his right as well, leaving him with only the three Sacred Bands and the First Holding in reserve. That was not many troops to constitute the Bohca reserve, but he felt the crucial point of the battle was at hand and he could bring up the Eyade on the flanks in an emergency. He heard the crash of the enemy horse plowing into the mob of Direbreed on his left but paid it scant attention as Arcont’s forces strained the Heartland left nearly to the breaking point.

  Septak’s sudden appearance and his trying to shout over a courier’s report was vastly annoying, but Descente waved the messenger to silence and urged his horse closer to the excited operations officer. “What is it?”

  “The left is under attack,” Septak shouted.

  Scowling at the priest’s public display, Descente made a dismissive gesture. “I know, the enemy horse charged, I heard. It is of no matter.”

  “No, sir, it is much more than that, the enemy has not withdrawn and is receiving some sort of support; Simbal is greatly concerned.”

  Annoyed, Descente turned his horse towards the nearby rise, Septak falling alongside. He would have dismissed the matter out of hand but Markan-Ra Simbal commanding his left wing was a competent officer, not the master that Arcont was, but a solid combat leader.

  Squinting through the dust-haze that had enveloped both armies he saw that the enemy cavalry had not passed through his left wing and circled around to its own lines as would be expected, but instead had smashed through the Direbreed, leaving a carpet of dead or dying beast-warriors in their wake, and seized a low mound Simbal had been using as a command post as it affording the best view of the ridge in that part of the field. And it also dominated the surrounding terrain, the Grand Commander noted uneasily, including his entire left wing. The enemy cavalry were not withdrawing; in fact, they were dismounting and assuming a circular defensive formation on the crest of the hillock, even killing some their horses to form a crude bulwark while the rest of their mounts were being released, the well-trained mounts immediately heading back to friendly lines. Even stranger, a line of two-wheeled light carts, each with two powerful dray horses drawing it, were thundering through the gap blasted in the Direbreed’s lines, heading to the dismounted horsemen.

  “One company of carts have already made it to the hill, sir; the Goblins pulled back to avoid the cavalry charge, and so were unable to stop them, while the Direbreed lack the organization; of twenty carts in the first group, eighteen made it to the hill.”

  Wolf-riders w
ere picking off several carts while several others were wrecked in their headlong charge across the battlefield, but eleven of the second series of twenty made it to the mound. “What do they carry?”

  “Most just have light loads of cut wood and a few tools, sir; the drivers are Imperial troops. Once they reach the hillock the teams are led to the edge of the defensive line and slain, while the carts are positioned to act as defensive cover.”

  “So Laffery’s horse have dismounted themselves in order to seize that hill? But why?”

  “I have no idea sir; it dominates the area around the left wing, but without missile weapons they cannot affect our troops.”

  “Was Simbal able to escape the charge?”

  “Easily, sir; he is forming up two Horcs to retake the mound.”

  “What...by the Void, the enemy’s right wing is preparing to advance.”

  Septak shaded his eyes as he studied the enemy formations. “Yes, sir, they are. But why? The Direbreed and Orcs outnumber them, and the cavalry holding a hill without missile weapons cannot have much effect upon the battle. The Direbreed lack organization, but they won’t flee from combat.”

  “I don’t know,” Descente could feel a nervous stirring in the pit of his stomach. “Send word to Simbal to clear the hill and prepare to receive an attack; tell him the First Holding is on its way to assist, and then recall two Ket from each flank and one from the rear to rebuild the reserve.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Arcont was still making progress, Descente saw as he rode back to his other vantage point; the Heartland left was being steadily forced back, but they were fighting hard, and extracting a heavy toll. Worse, every foot they retreated moved them further up a steepening slope, which meant their position was gradually improving even as Arcont’s troops’ worsened. The Grand Commander watched the fighting and seethed: Laffery had managed to divert a significant portion of the Hand’s reserves, the First Holding, as a crucial juncture of the battle. Arcont could still break through, of course; no matter how steep the slope, sooner or later the Heartland line would break under the strain, but Laffery’s ruse would ensure that Bohca Tatbik’s losses were substantially heavier than they might have been.

  He was besieged by a constant stream of couriers bringing reports from every sector of the battle, and his view of the fighting was sparse, interspersed with reading hastily written notes, listening to verbal messages, and dictating his replies; since his viewing time was limited he chose to stay where he could directly observe Arcont’s efforts. The first reports from Simbal were promising: he had two Horcs and some wolf riders ready to assault the crude redoubt built upon the hillock, while the other two Horcs had closed the gap in the Direbreed lines; the wing commander was confident that he could contain the enemy’s assault.

  Moments later Descente was surprised when a Markan-Zern of the Second Orbit shouldered his way through the waiting messengers and called for the Grand Commander’s urgent attention. “Sir, we have detected a Gate opening on the left wing.”

  “When?”

  “A few minutes ago; it was partially masked, and for a moment it was thought to be one of ours.”

  Of course, the spellweavers of the -Zern wouldn’t know that a small enemy force had established themselves in a hasty redoubt just behind the left wing; cursing, Descente spurred his horse across the shallow depression and onto the rise that let him see the left wing. Septak was there dealing with reports and couriers of his own; the operations officer looked up as the Grand Commander and his circle of guards thundered up, and waved urgently to the north. “They’ve got archers up there, somehow. Simbal’s Orcs were ripped up as they closed, and then forced back in melee; the two Horcs in the line and the flanking Direbreed are coming under increasingly heavy fire.”

  “They opened a Gate on the hillock,” Descente snapped, standing in his stirrups and staring towards the left as the two battered Legions slammed into the Orcs and Direbreed that made up his left line. “Where is the First?”

  “There, sir, they are just coming up on the line, the shift of the reserves to the right cost us time.”

  “If those archers know their business, they’ll cost us more than time. Send word to Simbal to clear that redoubt at all cost.”

  Duke Radet moved from point to point along his defensive circle, encouraging his men and checking the defenses. This was hardly a new maneuver, he had first learned of it when he was a boy, but it had only been used once or twice in Arturia’s history, and not within his lifetime. Back at Laffery’s Ford he had been impressed by the idea that what was familiar to one might be unknown to the foe, and since then had been keeping some of Arturia’s more obscure maneuvers in mind. This redoubt was his idea ‘Get some archers to me and I’ll cripple their entire left wing,’ Radet had assured the Grand Marshal, and Laffery had sent a wizard with a bundle along on the charge, opening a Gate after they had secured the hillock.

  Every rider had had two stakes and five pounds of caltrops on his saddle when they charged; by deploying these, planting their lances and what enemy weapons lay about in the manner of stakes, piling saddles and the corpses of a few dozen war horses up as a bulwark and adding the carts and horses that reached them, they had created defensive works of a sort; the carts which had reached them had carried some simple tools and bundles of stakes which had helped beef up their defenses a bit.

  Now that they were here and dug in as well as they could manage given the time and resources available to them, all that remained was to hold their line and protect the archers who would savage the enemy. Simple, in theory.

  Certainly the first attempt to dislodge them had failed, an untidy assault by several hundred Orcs who had clearly not expected the savage hail of arrow-fire that had sliced into their ranks as they closed. They would come again, the Duke was confident, and in greater numbers, but so far he was pleased with the progress of his ruse.

  A tall figure looking out of place clad only in leather and cotton amongst the heavily armored horsemen stepped up to the Arturian as he passed the assembly area near the Gate and gave a casual salute. “I’ll be your liaison officer, if it suits you, your Grace,” he said in fluent Arturian. “My name is Halabarian.”

  “That will be fine, and you shall address me as ‘sir’, the battlefield is no place for titles.” The nobleman studied the file of Lanthrell emerging at a brisk walk from the glowing portal, each figure burdened with three or four quivers. “I’ve always heard of your peoples’ prowess with the bow, good sir; today that reputation shall be put to the test.”

  “We are anxious to live up to our claims,” Halabarian grinned.

  Grand Marshal Laffery stood on the rickety tower his engineers had improvised on the slope behind the Heartland’s center and smiled. “Radet, you clever little bastard.” He had fed half his personal guards and most of his staff into the fighting on the left as von der Strieb was forced back a step at a time, gambling everything on the Arturian’s daring concept, and now it was working: the Eighth and Eleventh Legions, the two strongest, had slammed into the disordered Direbreed ranks even as clouds of arrows rained down upon the beast-warriors from behind. The Direbreed and the two Horcs held and stopped the initial charge, lacking nothing in courage, but within moments the effect of organized control began to tell: Direbreed drifted back when pressed hard, fighting as individuals against highly organized units which quickly shifted points of pressure here and there, rolling the Hand force back and trapping small bands of the beast-warriors between cohorts and wiping them out. The arrow-fire from the hillock further disrupted the Hand troops and helped speed the Legions’ advance.

  The fire slacked away to nothing minutes later as a entire Holding, supported by Orcs and wolf-riders stormed the hillock, but by then the damage was done: the leaderless Direbreed were being pushed back at what was very nearly a steady walking pace, while the commander of the Eleventh Legion deftly maneuvered three cohorts to pin the two Horcs and some hundred or so Direbreed against the
hillock.

  It wasn’t all going the Heartland’s way, of course: the Hand assault had penetrated into the redoubt in several places only to be ejected after a savage melee, and the Legions were taking heavy losses with each passing minute. Von der Strieb wasn’t having an easy go of it either, still losing ground as the Heartland’s left wing was being bent back at a slow but steady pace, and the center was pinned.

  While the Heartland Army’s situation could not be described as good at the moment, neither could it be described accurately as bad; it would be fair to say that at the moment, with both armies’ left wings being bowed back, that the battle hung in the balance.

  Markan-Ra Joneth swore bitterly as he trotted behind the hotly-pressed Fire Knives’ fighting line, weaving to throw off the aim of any archer on the low hill above them, his guards trailing along behind. He found the newly-appointed Horc commander, a Hularchek whose name roughly translated as Bad Dried Meat (having lost a great deal in translation) near the center of the line bellowing exhortations to his troops. The priest’s interpreter had been killed by arrow-fire a few minutes ago, but after seven years of advising Orcs Joneth spoke enough Shatoz to deal with battlefield concepts. More importantly, he could curse fluently, something that was more important to Orcs than knowing all the proper phraseology.