The first few moments were the most deadly. After that the gurvani moved more cautiously, which made them more prone to sniping, but which allowed one of their shamans (the lower-order type, not the super-shamans of the Dead God’s personal priesthood) to use his stone to pry some of the enchantments loose. Gurvani magic is not adept at dispelling, but it has some effect.
Just as the last major sigil was dispelled or triggered (or both – it was hard to keep track, even with magesight) I decided it was time for my lancers to join the fray again. While the gurvani were defending an ambush on their flank from the redoubt, my unit thundered down a hundred-yard stretch of open pasture, this time in four ranks instead of two, and once again Sire Cei’s magical Talent came into play. A powerful shockwave knocked down dozens of angry warriors, and some collapsed just from the sound.
Then it was a slow dance of slaughter as we waded back into the fight. Ironically I found myself fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Sir Gimbal, and I had to agree with Roncil’s assessment. The man knew his business with lance and sword, and had no trouble attacking superior numbers. Some of his men were just as deadly, and I felt a new, grudging respect for the plucked Warbird. He might be a mean, callous little shit, but Gimbal was human, for all of his faults. He knew his duty as well as his deadly business.
My admiration was cut short by the urgency of the situation. I had chosen to use my new battlestaff for this engagement, and as soon as I felt Sire Cei’s concussion subside I began using it on the ferocious warriors around me.
At a command blue lightning shot out and laced its way across the mass of gurvani, sending dozens spasming helplessly to the ground to be trampled by their comrades. Another spell sent a dozen to sleep instantly. I quickly reversed the staff, muttered another command, and a fifteen-foot lance of fire was plied among our foe, demonstrating the utility of being hairless. Not that the bare gurvani were spared the savagery of burning, but they were less likely to ignite than their furry friends.
Rondal was shooting small pebbles at the gurvani by the fistful, magically accelerating them to the speed of arrows or arbalests. Planus was standing just behind the edge of the redoubt, a wand in each hand and a fiendish grin on his face as he enjoyed his first taste of battle. I don’t know if he fashioned the warwands or borrowed them, but he seemed to know how to use them. Dozens more goblins died under their power. Other warmagi were lobbing their own spells and enchantments, and some had taken up bows to fire into the gurvani ranks.
But it became clear within ten minutes of heated battle that, despite the element of surprise and the success of the ambush, we were still outnumbered. Once the gurvani discovered that for themselves they could afford to soak up the hurt we were giving them, secure in the knowledge that they would eventually win by sheer numbers. We might be killing them by the score every moment, but we were still losing.
All we had to do was keep them busy, though.
Dara says Baron Arathanial is only a few hundred yards away to the northeast, Pentandra told me, helpfully, as I was knocking the top off of the head of one gurvan with the iron tip of my staff.
I slid it eighteen inches to the right until it was lined up with the back of the neck of another and then pressed the stud that activated the hidden blade. The ugly, hairless gurvan dropped like a rag doll. I thanked her and told her to pass that along to Taren, while I got Sire Cei to order another retreat.
That excited the gurvani – they had already forced us to retreat once. As I fell back with my men to the rise where we had started, leaving a trail of goblin bodies behind us, the gurvani pursued us gleefully, ignoring the arrows from the redoubt and the surrounding forest. It almost looked to them as if they had us pinned down on that rise, too.
That’s when the horns of Baron Arathanial’s troopers could be heard through the scrub. The goblins ignored it at first, but the rumble of massed horse hooves couldn’t be ignored for long. It grew in volume and intensity until I watched the left flank of the column come under heavy attack.
If Sire Cei’s charges had been powerful, the heavy cavalry charge by the Riverlords was devastating. We had but two hundred and fifty horse. Arathanial commanded seven hundred, and they hit the left flank of the bunched-up column like an avalanche of steel. Caught between the hammer and the anvil, held in place by the tongs, the legion was bashed into tatters. Screams and shouts raged over the site like a storm cloud as man and goblin fought in the rain and the mud and the blood.
In the chaos of the fighting, I saw my apprentice Tyndal standing up in his stirrups and flashing my old mageblade around like he was born to it. While Rondal fought with determination and desperation, Tyndal fought with aggression and ferocity. At his side was Sarakeem, the Merwini mage gleefully using his magic arrows and other weapons to lay waste to the foe.
When our troop regrouped and charged a second time, I found myself face-to-face with one of the hideously-scarred ‘hobgoblins’ Terleman told us about.
He was almost five feet tall, as broad as a man, and his hairless head had a vicious burn scar on the left side. In his hands was a human-made double-headed axe looted from some battlefield, and he was doing his best to bisect me . . . when his face exploded. When he fell at my feet, I could see one of Sarakeem’s blue-and-silver fletched arrows sprouting from the back of his skull. I looked up, and the warmage grinned at me – from the other side of the battlefield. That was a mighty bow.
I was too busy in the next moment to return the grin, and I had even less reason to. I was being rushed by a band of six brandishing spears and scimitars. I was able to blast two before things got into hand-to-hand combat, and then I used the blade on my staff as a spear until they came too close.
At that point I felt crowded and used a sweeping spell of repulsion that did little more than knock my attackers off of their feet. But that put them in the perfect position for Traveler to savagely trample them, which is precisely what he did.
The gurvani were trapped, but they weren’t helpless. While we had magic on their side, so did they. That was evident when a goodly portion of Arathanial’s troop, about a fifth, was enveloped in an inky cloud of blue. They seemed to be fine as they rode through it . . . until they started falling dead on their mounts, their horses with them. I didn’t know if it was an effect of breathing the cloud of if the cloud was merely the physical manifestation of the spell, but the result was the same. With one spell, over a hundred brave Riverlands knights left widows and orphans behind.
That was an egregious blow to our forces, but it seemed to enrage the rest of the men and inspire them to action. While another shaman began to cast something similar or as deadly, to my amazement I saw Rondal leap haphazardly over the top of the primitive redoubt, his mageblade in hand . . . leading the heavy infantry within into the fray. With their vanguard and one flank engaged, the gurvani were disheartened when the anvil became as active as the hammer.
Bunched as they were between us, the remnants of the legion began withdrawing, the rearguard first as they saw the slaughter ahead. When their reinforcements quit arriving, the rest of the gurvani began to retreat, in good order at first.
That’s when Sir Arathanial’s band managed a second charge over less than a hundred feet. One would think that wouldn’t be enough momentum to be effective, but it did the trick admirably. That second charge also overran one of the accompanying shamans, because I could feel about half of their defensive spells fail.
So did the other magi. Within moments we were all hammering at the remnants with lavish disregard for how much energy we were expending. Great gaping holes began appearing in their retreating ranks. Of the two thousand gurvani who had sortied out an hour ago, more than two thirds lay dead or dying in that cramped little field.
“That was a good beginning,” I sighed heavily as I watched Sir Roncil lead a chasing force of two score riders, to ensure the goblins did not regroup and double back.
“But at what cost?” Sire Cei asked, grimly. He pointed to the easte
rn edge of the field, where hundreds of the Riverlands finest knights lay dead with their horses. “And what did we win?”
“Their attention,” I said, quietly.
“It seems dearly bought,” Sire Cei said grimly.
“Now that we have it, we should prepare to use it.”
* * *
There were still ten thousand goblins surrounding the Castle, but they were less organized and more dispersed as they attempted to discern through scouting and patrols just how many humani had attacked their fellows. The retreating remnants of their sortie were no doubt vague with their own account of our numbers – most gurvani can count up to ten, after that they say ‘many’ – and with the powerful obfuscation spells we had as proof against their scrying us out, I’d hoped that that confusion would work to our advantage.
Seeing hundred-gurvan units ordered away from the siege to march out seeking us in several directions began the process of dilution that was the goal of our campaign. Our bird-supplied perspective told us as much. Dara was becoming more adept at using her hawk for spying, and thus far none of the gurvani had given it any thought. I filed that away for future reference.
I had gathered most of my small army together around the redoubt, stopping to eat and drink a little (each man had been issued five days of hardtack, ground corn, and dried or salted meat, as transporting an appropriate baggage train was too difficult for our Alka Alon allies – after that we would have to live off the land) and arrange to have the wounded sent back to our field hospital. The rain had slowed to a drizzle by then but showed no sign of stopping. When I felt we’d caught our breath, we began advancing back toward the castle, all three troops united now.
It took over an hour to march back to within sight of the siege, and along the way we dispatched plenty of wounded or deserting or simply lost gurvani who lingered behind. When we finally got back around the curve in the road, there were more of those dog-cart chariots to harass us. Once again they raced toward us, flinging their javelins and firing their darts.
Only this time we had a proper answer to them. Before they were even within a Wilderlands bowshot of us, Sarakeem’s and Lady Ithalia’s strong Alka bows sent shaft after shaft unerringly at the goblin cavalry.
Sarakeem focused on the drivers of the carts, reluctant to hit a dog, for some reason. Ithalia had no trouble slaughtering the canines, and made a point of it. It was interesting to watch her humanish body shoot. It was just as elegant as a standard-issue Alka Alon, but in a primal human fashion that made it even more beautiful to watch. There was an intense curl to her lip as she found her targets and loosed her shafts with methodical precision. Before the first of the chariots could hope to reach us they had broken formation and retreated.
“That should teach them to send cavalry against us!” Sarakeem said with satisfaction as he caressed his new bow with the tenderness lavished on a virgin bride.
“That won’t stop them,” I warned. “They may be bad at it, but even they can see the advantages of cavalry. Let’s see if the rest of them take the bait.”
Our lines formed up in the mud, with Arathanial commanding the center, Taren the right flank and me the left. Most of our infantry was massed in the center, with heavy cavalry screening them and Sire Cei commanding the light infantry that was screening us all. It didn’t take us long to form up. And once we formed up, as far from the castle wall as we could and still be a threat . . . we waited.
We were clearly a smaller force. We were clearly large enough to punish a legion. We were clearly ready for battle. And we were clearly winded from the earlier fight. The longer we stood there in formation, just waiting, the more anxious the goblin commanders would become.
Sure enough, the besieging army re-formed itself to face us, with reserves that had been ranging around the castle wall being ordered to mass against us. For almost two hours, while we stood there and rested and snacked, the gurvani army before us contorted, and the front toward us thickened. They expected us to try to fight our way through to the gate to relieve the siege. That’s what I would have expected.
Just to tease them, I ordered my troops to march forward a hundred paces . . . then stop again. Since most of them had pawed the ground bare and were tired of standing in mud that clung to their boots like glue, they were happy for the fresh footing. The sudden movement caused the goblin army to spasm as more troops were rushed to the front in expectation of our continued advance.
But we just waited.
“I don’t follow your strategy here, Spellmonger,” Baron Arathanial told me at one of our little horseback conversations. “Surely the closer to darkness, the closer to the scrugs’ natural light.”
“The sun will not be a factor in this battle,” I agreed. “But neither will the darkness. See how they’re spending their reserves to protect the gate? The lines grow thin and bare around the other sections of the castle.”
“And yet far thicker nearer to us. I’m still not understanding . . .”
“The longer we stand here, the more rest we get,” I reasoned. “The longer we distract them from harassing the castle, the less casualties that our men inside will take. And the more time they will have to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” he asked, mystified.
“In just a few moments,” I prophesied, “one of those goblin commanders is going to lose their nerve. The sight of so many horses, even this far away, is going to make them nervous. Gurvani don’t have the same discipline as human troops, usually. One or two brave hot-heads can sway an entire group, if they aren’t well-led. So we show ourselves as a large but decidedly smaller force than they are, and hope that coaxes one of their commanders to take leave of their senses and attack.”
I waited with Arathanial for a while as my words came true. The reserves on our left (light infantry culled from mountain tribes – hairy, naked, iron clubs and captured swords) began chanting, and within a few moments the gurvani warriors shrieked and charged us. On foot. Over a quarter of a mile from us.
It was a brave but blatantly suicidal move. A little less than a thousand of them began racing across the trampled fields. Before the group had made it half way, they had slowed to a walk.
“Duin damn them!” I swore. “That’s not enough of them!”
“What do you mean?” Arathanial asked. “It seems a prodigious amount to me.”
“Not enough,” I repeated. It was starting to look like I was going to have to do something brave and suicidal, if the gurvani didn’t cooperate. But then another light infantry legion on the right followed their fellows’ lead, and then a troop from the center. Before long most of the gurvani army was staggering across the field toward us.
“That’s it!” I declared cheerfully. “It looks like most of them are advancing on us!”
“That’s . . . good?” asked Arathanial, who had a commander’s appreciation of numbers. “Spellmonger, there seem to be six or seven thousand goblins heading for us . . . three thousand of us.”
I shrugged. “That means that we each have to kill just over two goblins to turn it into a rout,” I pointed out, cheerfully.
“I’ve got my quota,” Sarakeem volunteered, smugly. “Maybe I should just watch and smoke my pipe.”
“I still fail to see—”
“Trust me, Baron,” I soothed. “All will become clear in a moment.”
Well, a few moments. The gurvani advance slowed to a crawl as they came within bowshot. Their dog-carts still dared to tease our flanks, but Cei kept them off of our infantry. Then we settled into a line a few hundred yards from each other.
“Prepare your men for a charge,” I quietly told Arathanial. “Lances at the ready, but not couched. Not yet. I’ll wave once to signal to couch. Twice to charge. One charge, then disengage and return to ranks. No vainglory today,” I instructed.” The Baron nodded, finally receiving an order he understood. He slapped his visor down over his face, and rode off.
“What are we waiting for, Master Minalan?” Sarakeem ask
ed.
“We’re waiting for the goblins to be committed to their course of action,” I answered. “And . . . there’s the signal,” I said with a sigh. Terleman had arranged for one of his apprentices to flash a red flare from the castle tower when they were ready within.
“What signal?” Sarakeem asked, with interest.
“The signal that they’re ready,” I said. I waved my hand in the air, and Arathanial nodded. He shouted an order and five hundred lances were leveled at the goblin vanguard.
I watched their ranks with magesight, and every dark face I spied looked grim. They had been on the business-end of a cavalry charge often enough by now to know what was coming. That didn’t help them much when it did.
I waved again and the horns called for a charge. Arathanial thundered across the field at the head of that tempest of steel and flesh, and when he hit the gurvani line first his horse plowed three ranks deep before it stopped, standing on a pile of wriggling black bodies.
The rest of the line was likewise successful, and the gurvani center started to fall apart. Additional reserves were called up as my knights hurriedly disengaged and headed back to our lines, where our archers were screening them from pursuit.
But that gave me the opening I needed. With those extra reserves in motion at the gurvani rear, that gave us the perfect opportunity to launch the second phase of the attack. Suddenly the castle gate was slammed open, and cavalry began pouring out of it four riders abreast, like a bag of beans with a hole in it.
Those first riders were skirmishers in charge of scattering the goblins left investing the gate. They were overwhelmed by the sudden and unexpected assault, and the gate was clear in short order. The siege had become of secondary importance now that we were here.
Soon a hundred men had passed through the gate and held the space beyond. Then two hundred. Then five hundred. When it reached a thousand, ten minutes into the battle, someone ordered a charge.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 87
