Fell hounds ranged in packs around the eastern side of the town, leaving skirmishers and scouts scattered in their wake. They were searching for resistance, and seeking to cut Tudry off from any hope of help from outside. They met none. There were no defenders in the field closer than Megelin Castle. Even the peasants of the local villages had long fled, after a hasty harvest.
But Tudry was cut off. The storm of gurvani filled the lowlands around the hilltop town until it was surrounded. With each new arrival of reinforcements from the west, the beleaguered town was like a turtle in a pond. The accumulation of gurvani units grew for days, until the broad fields were filled with furry black soldiers prepared to press the city’s walls.
Though the sentries on the walls of the town watched, they did not fire at their foes. Even when the goblins were brave enough to chance the range of the Wilderlands bow, they restrained themselves. The brash among the gurvani no doubt saw the lack of response as weakness; the wise among them likely understood the value of cautious restrain in a siege.
Of course, the shamans had to make their contribution. As soon as they arrived they began to collect around sacred fires in the camps and cast their spells. The usual sorts of obfuscatory and defensive spells wrapped around the camps, while tendrils of arcane power attempted to pierce the strong wards the warmagi of Tudry had been constantly improving for years. Their scrying showed them nothing that we didn’t want them to see, and their rudimentary spells designed to demoralize and demotivate the besieged were useless, in the face of Astyral’s countermeasures.
About the time the first boulders began to rain down on Tudry from the goblin catapults, the shamans added their own magical artillery by flinging more dangerous and damaging spells against the town. Had the place been fully occupied, they would have been devastating. But the townhomes and shops the rocks descended upon were abandoned, and the fires their missiles set threatened no one and were quickly extinguished.
Still, from a distance, the damage looked a lot worse than it was. Particularly as warmagi augmented the amount of smoke from the town to make it look like the place was burning more rapidly than it was.
Astyral and the Tudrymen finally answered, sending a great ten-ton boulder smashing into the enemy camp from the massive trebuchet he’d built to defend the walls. For hours, the two sides exchanged such fire, until the gurvani became confident in the town’s tepid response and began to march on the walls.
At first, they sent archers ahead to try to clear the battlements with crossbows, with little effect. Though they spent hundreds of darts, they got no satisfaction out of the sortie. After three flights, the Tudrymen had had enough. They returned fire with their Wilderlands bows, in well-formed volleys, and drove them back out of range.
That was just a warm-up. They trundled the catapults even closer, allowing their missiles to fall nearer the center of town while they prepared their scaling parties.
They were making such a good effort. We hated to mess it up until we saw what they were planning. Astyral and I, and a few of his staff, got to witness the entire battle from one of his squat towers on the city wall. He brought the wine, some of the best in his cellars, for the occasion.
While the storm raged outside of the walls, inside the remaining Tudrymen were content to man their posts and endure the darts and stones that came crashing down on the rooftops they’d guarded for so long. It took a particular kind of nerve to stand and take such insults unanswered, but they trusted Lord Astyral, and they trusted the warmagi who had defended Tudry for years. They also trusted the spells that influenced the missiles away from the occupied portions of the city.
The lack of response only emboldened the gurvani. Their mighty engines increased the pace of their assault, throwing single boulders or cascades of stones the size of loafs of bread. More scaling parties prepared for an assault. Skirmishers braved the snipers on the walls to try to erect standing shields to protect their own archers. Not many completed their tasks before they were cut down by three-foot long shafts from the townsmen.
At last, losing patience with the siege even before it was properly begun, some gurvani commander allowed boldness to overcome what sense of discipline he had. He led a sortie of three hundred to rush the gate of the city, closed against him. Despite the sentries in the turrets overhead decimating his screaming soldiers as they attacked the gate, hundreds of gurvani pushed to force the great redwood doors, sheathed in bronze, with their tiny clubs and bare fists.
Astyral let them wail and throw their small javelins at the big double doors for a few moments before he ordered a more active defense. Two barrels sitting just outside of the gates exploded open, revealing a deadly, crab-like thaumaturgical construct within.
With six weirwood legs and four arms each, the spindly enchantments seemed frail – but they moved with such speed, driven by the enneagrams of some ancient, vicious undersea creature, that it was nearly impossible for the gurvani to land a blow that would damage the things.
Steel blades whirled and struck with magical precision, turning the black wave of gurvani attackers red as they sliced through them without direction or fear of damage. In moments, less than a hundred wounded goblins retreated from the gate.
While the impetuous commander had likely acted against orders, he had discovered something important. Tudry’s arcane defenses were active, as well as passive.
Ringing the entire town were dozens of constructs the industrious warmagi of Spark Street had been enchanting for weeks, in anticipation of their abandonment of the town. Made of what junk had been left behind by the departing townsmen, and then cobbled together with weirwood and other thaumaturgically active materials, the result was a small army of expendable defenders that would make scaling the walls of Tudry problematic, and overwhelming her gates nearly impossible.
Some were large, encompassing the bodies of carts or thick hogsheads as their base. Others were no larger than dogs, though their size was no indication of their deadliness.
For the warmagi of Tudry had not stopped their enchantments at ensuring their creations could wield a blade; many were packed with unexpected enchantments, secondary spells that activated if the construct were destroyed, and even alchemical devices that made defeating the nasty little buggers problematic. Nothing eats into the thrill of victory like having the defeated corpse of your foe suddenly incinerate everything around it.
The variety of the constructs, as well as their placement, was designed to throw off the goblins’ ability to form a defensive strategy to them. Some were placed in holes dug in the fields outside of the town, ready to activate the moment a foe came near.
Others were concealed in haystacks or under wheelbarrows, or just lay there like a pile of refuse until activated. Some were spindly and crab-like, others were more like turtles or more traditional four-footed animals. Regardless of the form, the great variety and placement of the enchantments proved daunting for the besiegers.
For three days, the vanguard took runs at the city walls, flung stones, and showered the gates with arrows, to no avail while their baggage train caught up with them. The siege beasts were finally brought to bear on the third day. That was the signal to begin the final element of the plan.
As the lumbering, six-legged monsters were driven toward Tudry, the eastern gate suddenly burst open and the last of the Tudrymen spilled out, quickly taking formation in a long shieldwall.
The goblins were delighted. After pounding the town relentlessly without receiving much of a reply, seeing rows of actual foes to face, instead of magically-motivated death machines, was a welcomed sight.
The Tudrymen were infantry, stout Wilderlands folk with axes, swords, spears and great round-topped infantry shields made of hickory and rawhide. Two companies of archers ran out and formed up behind them, preparing to launch volleys against the goblins. All perfectly normal infantry tactics.
But that great gate remained open, the iron portcullis was still raised. It must have made an unbelievabl
y tempting target for the gurvani. All they had to do was get past the Tudrymen. They wasted no time in reforming their advance away from the walls, keeping their siege beasts back while their infantry advanced.
First, a gigantic pack of fell hounds, some with riders, some alone, sprinted against the Tudrymen. Two flights of arrows tore through them before they launched themselves against the Tudrymen like a hailstorm. The men were disciplined, however. Many had trained for years with soldiers from all over the Duchies.
As the shieldmen did their best to hold their positions, men with great two-handed axes waded into the front lines and plied their heavy steel blades against them. There were losses, but the calm management of the line and the adept use of spears and pikes to keep the filthy hounds at bay were critical. When the survivors limped away, there were a lot more hounds on the field than men.
The hobgoblin infantry advanced relentlessly as their canine comrades retreated. Their archers used heavy arbalests, crossbows of iron and oak that could drive a dart through nearly any kind of armor. A shorter range and slower rate of fire made them ponderous to deploy, but once they were in range they managed a volley themselves. Many of their darts stuck in the thick shields of the defenders, but many found throats or foreheads or torsos. Still, the Tudrymen showed no signs of breaking.
It was only when the force of hobgoblins was committed to the attack that the sound of horns was heard in the distance.
Astyral knew that presenting the infantry, outside of the town’s walls, would be irresistible to the goblins. After their defeat five years before on this same field, they wanted revenge. Astyral also knew their weakness for cavalry, and figured that the best way to make them more confident was to hide the horses of the defenders. So, he did.
For a month, his finest warmagi had been crafting a complex obfuscation spell on a freehold estate about a mile to the south of town. Using layers upon layers of thaumaturgic excess and the most advanced spells from the War College, they’d turned the pasture of the place into a staging area that was invisible to even intense magical scrying.
Then Lady Ithalia had come with a squadron of Tera Alon and added their own sophisticated spells to the effort. By the time they were done, scrying spells would show nothing wrong, not even a thaumaturgical signature. An army could be within and a goblin sentry walking fifty feet away wouldn’t realize it.
In fact, that’s just what happened. When Astyral signaled that the hobgoblin infantry was committed to the attack—and were out of easy range to support the siege train behind them – he ordered the counterattack. When the vanguard of Azar’s Megelini Knights charged out of the farmstead, they actually trampled three goblin scouts who were avoiding more dangerous duty closer to the battle.
Azar had managed to gather over seven hundred horsemen from his lands around Megelin – three hundred knights and more than four hundred sergeants were in the saddle under his banner. Added to that nearly five hundred Wilderlords recruited for the effort, and the cavalry force that poured out of the freehold numbered more than a thousand.
The vanguard, lea by Azar and Bendonal, included most of the Horkan warmagi who lingered in Azar’s orbit at Megelin Castle. They were experienced at fighting goblins – and passionate about it, after their long patrolling of the Penumbra. All had been involved in the Great Liberation months before, and many were also veterans of the Olum Seheri raid.
They pulled ahead of the main force at once, and cantered toward the siege train, the giant worms, and the goblin reserves . . . just as the hobgoblins began their final charge against the great shieldwall of the Tudrymen.
The horncalls of the Megelini knights (magically enhanced – it was Azar, after all) boomed over the battlefield just as the first elements of the hobgoblins crashed into the Tudrymen. I watched from Astyral’s tower as the hobgoblin commander had a crisis of command – he had fresh, new, fast and powerful enemies behind him while he was attempting to take apart the shieldwall.
That indecision manifested in the hesitancy the second wave of the charged showed in reinforcing their comrades ahead – which the Tudrymen immediately exploited. The same axemen who had hacked the fell hounds quickly moved forward and hacked at the helmets of the shorter hobgoblins. Without support, they were easy targets for the Wildermen.
Azar’s horsemen charged into the gurvani rear with flashes of arcane sparks and loud reports of concussive spells. The goblin infantry were dashed before them, and hundreds fell under their spells and swords.
More powerful spells were directed at the siege worms the goblins were supposed to be protecting. Explosions and gouts of plasma erupted in their faces – not enough to kill them, but certainly enough to enrage and confuse them beyond the means of their keepers to bear. Azar was relentless in his attack, Warmaster held over his head as his men destroyed everything in their path.
The hobgoblin commander finally made up his mind – he could not concern himself with the slow-moving infantry while his reserves were under attack. It took a few moments, but the hobgoblins disengaged and withdrew from the line, leaving behind a rearguard to cover their retreat.
I give the gurvan leading them a lot of credit. He pulled off a difficult maneuver on the battlefield without much guidance. His troops broke formation and began running back to rescue their endangered comrades from the mounted warmagi. They still maintained good order on the move, marching at a run, keeping their weapons in hand. Five years ago, they wouldn’t have been able to manage that.
Not that it did them any good. As they were running the distance back across the fields the main body of the cavalry caught them in the most glorious cavalry charge I’ve ever witnessed.
Eight hundred Wilderlords thundered across the fields, their long, steel-tipped ash lances couched level with the brown stubble under their hooves. A few hobgoblins tried to adopt some sort of defensive posture at the sudden attack, but it was in vain. Heavy infantry has a chance against massed cavalry only if it can maintain formation and use pikes and spears to effect. The hobgoblins had none of that.
The mass of Wilderlords swept over them like a scythe at harvest. The well-muscled destriers and chargers the Wilderlords favored darted across the countryside, leaping over obstacles and colliding with individual hobgoblins with devastating force. When their lances broke they drew their long, two-handed swords or switched to battle axes, but they spared none in their path. The Tudrymen advanced their line enough to menace the rearguard, but no more. This was a charge for the Wilderlords.
Astyral could have pressed the counter-attack to a full rout, but that wasn’t the plan. As soon as the Wilderlords devastated the hobgoblins, Azar pulled his troops out of the tangled mess they’d made of the siege train, and reformed with the northern knights. They screened the Tudrymen as the infantry hoisted their banners and began marching away down the eastern road, while the gurvani tried to contend with the destruction and chaos of their troops.
Siege worms were running mad among the reserves, fires and spells continued to torment the surviving infantry, and the remaining fell hounds ran through the tumult attacking berserk. One of Wenek’s spells, I learned later, designed to confound the senses of the canines and induce a highly aggressive – and paranoid – feral state.
Our troops reformed at the eastern end of the battlefield, but they did not prepare a charge. I’m certain it was very confusing for their commanders, to see their foes not take advantage of the chaos when they could have. Instead they just . . . marched away.
Leaving Tudry completely undefended.
It still appeared occupied. The warmagi had enchanted it to seem that way. As far as the gurvani could tell, the army was marching away and leaving a town full of civilians and heaps of loot just waiting for them.
The illusion spells and psychomantic enchantments made it feel as if you’d just seen sentries patrolling the battlements a moment before. There was still the sound of urban life (such as it was) ringing in their ears from inside the walls. Astyral’s m
en had lit enough fires in the empty townhomes and shops to make it seem as if there were still thousands living within the walls.
But it was all a lie. Apart from a few brave warmagi who had volunteered to stay behind and activate the final enchantments, the entire town was empty. As Astyral and I departed from our vantage point in his deserted tower by means of the Ways, after a final toast to Tudry, the first gurvani were crossing the threshold of the western gates.
Tudry was deserted, but it was not undefended. The goblins who began to swarm into the town realized that it was only sparsely defended, and they raced from building to building without resistance. But they stumbled into the sigils the warmagi had packed into the streets.
They found a town where vicious defenders always seemed to be around the next corner. Where each gurvan simply knew that hapless, defenseless civilians were hidden behind the next door. A town that seemed filled with treasure, loot, and slaves, all hidden just out of sight.
Instead, it was filled with more thaumaturgical constructs, and Spark Street hadn’t spared any imagination in their design. Some were built into the walls and streets themselves, coming alive to slay and destroy the moment they were approached. Tudry offered its invaders the tantalizing temptation of victory, wealth and conquest . . . and then served them sudden death and madness.
As the gurvani pressed their apparent victory across the town, spells erupted and caused entire buildings to collapse. The rudimentary sewer system opened up and swallowed patrols who crossed them. The squat little turret towers around the city’s walls suddenly fell while gurvani passed below.
The only gold or silver left in the place was in the deserted market square. A large gilded cask was left temptingly on a wooden platform, almost as an offering for the conquerors. It was an obvious trap, of course, made more tempting by enchantment and disappointment in finding any actual gold. But there was no active spell on the box, itself. A dozen shamans could examine it and not find anything amiss. I’m sure they did something just like that.
Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Page 104
