Looks of renewed hope replaced the grave looks of despair on the generals’ faces.
“How do we set up this decisive battle?” General Santaran asked.
“We set it up in how quickly we allow Kingdom Pass to fall to the enemy.” I said somberly.
The generals stared back at me blankly. The concept of allowing Kingdom Pass to fall quickly was obviously a strategy that they had never even given thought too before.
“Even without the Attorgron invasion from the rear it is doubtful whether Kingdom Pass could withstand the bombardment by the advanced siege weapons that the Zoarinians have created. They will be able to pick our wall and defensive installations apart at a distance that is out of the range of any of our weapons to respond to. The whole success of the battle for Kingdom Pass will hinge on three things, surprise, angered pride and carelessness on the part of their inexperienced field commanders. They expect us to stay behind our wall, as we have done for centuries as we let them come to us. They will be content to engage us only lightly and pick apart our walls at a distance, while they wait for the Attorgrons to get into position behind us. They will then attack us from both sides with the utter destruction of our army being the end result. We will surprise them by meeting them in force in front of our wall instead of standing behind it as we have always done. The front half of their army is comprised of mercenaries, with inexperienced field commanders. Their untrained commanders will rush at the chance of whittling down our forces in what will appear to be a bad mistake on our part. They will rush foreword heedless of the potential cost they will encounter against our best troops and whatever traps and snares we can arrange outside the walls in the little time left to us. Once the onslaught begins, confusion will reign on their part as we chew up their forward brigades. When they realize the cost being taken of them they will retire from the fight and I hope to have attained a small decisive victory that will bolster our troops and demoralize their less experienced troops. The Zoarinian people are a proud people and our actions and the needless loss of their troops will incense the Zoarinian generals into doing something impulsive. In an effort to regain momentum and revenge for the fallen, they will commit themselves fully before the Attorgrons have had a chance to move into position behind the city. It will become a matter of honor to be the first in defeating us. They will bring their advanced siege weapons to the front and begin pounding holes in our wall.”
I fell silent and General Naldero spoke up, “What then?”
Studying each of the generals I said, “We will retreat from the walls and let them have the city.”
“That’s it? That’s your plan to just give them our ancient city!” General Sanjo stormed out angrily.
I shook my head no. “No General Sanjo losing the city is an inevitable fact we can’t change. However, the way in which we let them have the city and what follows after, well you see gentlemen that is entirely within our ability to control. This is what I propose and it is for your ears only.”
I then explained our retreat from the city to them and they listened in rapt attention not even asking a question, as I laid out the plan before them. When I had finished they stared at me in silence and then glanced meaningfully at each other for a moment.
General Sanjo’s hard old eyes rose to mine, “In my long years as a soldier I have learned more than I care to acknowledge about the ways of war and the endless killing it involves. I do not question the legitimacy of your plan, as crazy as it may be. It illustrates to me that you know what war is all about and that quite simply is winning at all costs.”
He then looked down at the map and added, “Even if it makes monsters of us all. We must preserve the innocent even at the loss of our own human decency and honor. My troops are at your command Roric, as am I. All will be done even as you have said.”
Both Generals Nadero and General Santaran echoed General Sanjo’s pledge of soldiers and allegiance and after grasping their sword handles in a warrior’s salute, they left the room and I was left alone with the responsibility and ownership of my own thoughts.
It’s easy to dream up a battle plan, but knowing what the cost in lives could be…..would be, well it was the worst self awareness moment that I had ever encountered.
The cold calculated precision of the plan bore evidence of the hardness of my own soul. My plan could be my people’s saving grace in their gravest hour of need, but did that justify its methods?
One Month and three days later
It was raining softly. The pity patter of the rain drops splintering off of the armor of the men standing silently in rank behind and around me made its own pleasant music as we waited. Then like the obtrusive sound of a crow shattering the melody of a songbird in full trill came the sounds of heavy drums from further down the pass.
The drums announced the menacing presence of the enemy close at hand. The drums grew louder and louder until they reached a fever pitchness of intensity. It was a performance of sound meant to instill fear in the hearts of my warriors. I saw the enemy for the first time as they rounded a bend further down the pass.
Their column was as wide as the pass and it bristled with the shiny teeth of war, even as the dull finishes of their shields and armor seemed to drag down what little light there was on this overcast day. I could see that they were surprised to find soldiers in massed file waiting for them, before the massive ancestral wall of this land they were set to invade.
I stood at the head of five thousand picked warriors. The wall’s central fortifications lay behind us. We were flanked on either side by separate contingents of fifteen thousand warriors each. They too were handpicked for this battle before the great wall of Kingdom Pass.
The enemy columns spilled into the wide expanse of ground before the great wall. I could see hurried consultations occurring among their field commanders, which showed their evident surprise at our unlikely and unexpected appearance before our great wall. Their drums had fallen silent in the sudden confusion that our presence outside of the wall had elicited within their chain of command.
I didn’t let them discuss it any further, but instead I lifted my shield high and within seconds countless trumpets blew as one in a direct hard challenge that buried whatever perceived threat the sound of the drums of the enemy had tried to drum up earlier within our hearts. As one we started to move forward stamping our feet heavier than necessary for the effect of the sound of a moving army committed to the action before them, even arrogantly so. Both flanking columns of fifteen thousand warriors each followed our central group of five thousand only they stayed close to the sides of the pass and kept slightly behind in pace from our central column of warriors.
The blaring of the horns ceased and all that pervaded the stillness of the peace that followed was the sound of our marching. My group of warriors slowly mounted a slight promontory rise in the relatively flat terrain, which had been created by sediment buildup from the two great rivers that used to flow through the pass. We stopped as one in complete unison across all three companies of warriors. In unison shields were slammed into the ground, even as spears were poked out through narrow gaps in the shields in the direction of the enemy. As one we roared out a military grunt of aggression as old to mankind and the history of fighting as two buck deer slamming their heads together in provoked aggression of purpose.
Silence followed our shout and the enemy continued to swell into the wider expanse of the pass as they formed a hasty and somewhat disorganized battle line. Behind us the walls bristled with the poised arrows of thousands of archers, many of which were women.
Suddenly a woman’s voice broke out from the ranks of the other archers gathered there. She was singing. The words of the song she sang echoed clearly into the crispness of the morning air and every warrior’s heart gathered before the wall.
Her song was older than the wall she stood on and was quickly picked up by both men and women up and down the wall, who repeated the chorus to her lead.
Across the waters so far have we come,
In search of a land of milk and honey,
At last we have found our home,
Where we will grow strong,
We will grow strong,
Loss of our homes we have known,
But in our valley’s rest is to be found,
Come and see our valley’s so fair,
Mountains so high they reach the sky,
No better a home could one ask,
We have found our rest,
Our rest we have found at last,
Proclaim to one and all this our journey’s end,
Move on as strangers no more shall we,
We will fight for our home,
May it forever be.
Throughout the song the enemy soldiers rushed to form a battle line that they had expected to have had hours to accomplish in an orderly fashion, but instead were down to only minutes. The song ended and so did the enemy’s rush to reach formation.
The enemy formation abruptly opened up across the battle line to form gaps, which mounted cavalry poured through in endless streams. They were lancers just like the ones who had killed my family. They fanned out the width of the pass over ten rows in depth as they surged forward heedlessly toward us, intent on breaking us with the power of their charge Ground soldiers rushed to keep up with them in order to support them if need be.
“Get ready men! For our families and our country! Hold the line!” I yelled out, my words similarly repeated by other warrior commanders around me.
The horses of the unbroken line of cavalry were completely stretched out in a full gallop, when suddenly it appeared as if the ground opened up and swallowed them. They were but forty feet in front of us when it happened. As the first row of lancers pitched unexpectedly into the camouflaged chasm before them, they were followed closely by the next several rows that had been pressed close behind the front line of cavalry. As both horses and riders somersaulted into the ditch from the force of their momentum alone, they were impaled on the sharpened stakes which lined the steep sides of the deep trough hat they had careened into.
The remaining cavalry floundered to avoid a similar fate and streamed through the narrow gaps between our three companies, where there were no spike laden ditches. We had broken the force of their charge, but they had regrouped behind us and were preparing to charge from the rear, when a literal shower of arrows reigned down unexpectedly upon them from those gathered along the great wall behind them. Within moments the once proud lancer cavalry brigade was reduced to but a few scattered survivors, who either faked death on the battlefield or were trapped underneath the heavy bulk of their dead mounts.
The onrushing soldiers, following close behind the ill fated cavalry charge, attempted to climb across the ditches, trampling on the fallen and wounded bodies of their own fellow soldiers and their mounts. It was a grisly scene of hell reserved for only the bloodiest of battles.
The ditches filled full with the bodies of the fallen. As they met our tight line they were thrust through by our spears, as we stood packed tight together in our wall of shields. They parted around the strength of our shield wall as the cavalry had in search of a weak spot in our shield line and because they were being pushed on by the onrushing mass of soldiers behind them still eager to claim their part of the victory over us.
The strength of our shield wall and the deadly thrust of our spears helped send them sheeting through the gaps between our three columns in search of an easier target than the one we presented them with. As they poured out and around our company’s rear they too became victims of the same scathing rainstorm of iron tipped death shafts as their cavalry had been before them.
We held our shields tight against the desperate jerks that came from the enemy in their vane efforts to break our shield wall. The ditch before us was now full with the bodies of the slain and the dying. It was time to move on.
“Lift shields and circle turn!” I bellowed out trying to be heard over the loud din of the battle all around us.
Those nearest me echoed my words and soon all were in awareness of the command. The center column, of five thousand warriors, split seamlessly into ten circular shield formations of roughly five hundred each, which moved independently of each other and began to march in spiraling trajectories pressing deeper into the enemy line.
Each of the ten formations lengthened the distance between them and the other groups. Some moving slower while others moved faster in beat with a choreographed plan that had been weeks in the practicing of. The enemy ranks gladly parted allowing the circularly spinning and tightly pressed formations to go deeper and become more isolated away from the two larger warrior groups that still remained pressed against the steep sides of the pass in an elongated formation.
Warriors fell to the ground within the hot press of the formation either the victims of blind sword thrusts through the shield wall or because they had been brutally hauled out into the encircling mob and hacked to pieces. Gaps in the shield wall were filled as quickly as possible, but it was hard to keep up with the rapidly appearing vacancies in the outer rim of the formation.
I narrowly side stepped a sudden sword swipe at my ankles from beneath my shield even as the warrior beside of me was pulled out into the mob. We wouldn’t hold up to much more of this kind of pressure. I had no idea if the other formations had even reached position yet, but I hoped that they had because I had caught a glimpse of the white paint on the ground just up ahead of us.
The command would be given to fire when our formation reached its target goal, regardless of whether or not the other groups had reached theirs yet.
“Twenty more feet men! Twenty more feet and we have it!” I screamed out in encouragement as I struggled to hold onto my shield and maintain a forward circular motion.
There was the huff of renewed struggle as warriors all around me saw the white arcing lines of paint on the bloodstained ground too. It seemed like an hour went by instead of probably just the few minutes it took us to center overtop the scuffed white paint circle on the ground. We slammed our shields down and stopped even as warriors behind the outer rim raised shields overhead to form a canopy of dented steel over top of us.
Other warriors moved within the canopied formation to brace and hold on to those of us on the outer rim, who were struggling to keep from being ripped from the safety of our huddle of shields into the certain death of the enemy’s voracious hacking blades beyond.
It felt like we were inside a bell that was ringing loudly, as the enemy beat on our shields unmercifully. I barely heard the sound of our horns on the ramparts sound out again. There was a questioning breakup of the intensity of the assault upon us as the enemy soldiers heard the sound of the horns too.
Panicked shouts rang out, but it was too late as a massive perfectly timed barrage of stone rained down upon the enemy ranks in a perfectly calibrated pattern of crushing force. Stones pelted down all around us, with one stray stone taking out several of our number, but that was the extent of our losses to the barrage. We waited, our breathing tight within our chests, as within minutes of the first barrage another came as coordinated as the first, only this time it wasn’t stone but fire that fell instead.
The fiery bombs hit the ground and exploded into engulfing walls of explosive flame that spread out along the ground with a vengeance. Flames licked around the edges of the tightly pressed together shields and I was grateful for the leather grips by which I held onto the shield, as the shield heated up from the outside exposure to the flames of the fire bombs.
We were gasping for breath within moments as all the air seemed to have disappeared and we were left with only smoke to suck in. The strength of the fire died down after several minutes of intense burning.
Coughing hard I gave the order to drop shields and it was with relief that we dropped the heavy burdens we had fought so hard to hold onto. It was a relief as real as drinking cold water on a hot day to feel
and breathe the cooler air that rushed in around us when we dropped our shields as well.
There were still fires here and there across the breadth of the battlefield, but it was clear enough from smoke now to clearly see the depth of the carnage we had caused. Thousands upon thousands of the enemy lay dead and scorched all around us. Counting out in my head I could see that six of the ten formations had made it through as we had and while I mourned the four who hadn’t I was also glad to see how many had made it.
The enemy line was drawn all the way back to the bend in the pass, where they gazed in shock at the grizzly fate of their brethren before them. A dark hooded figure on top of a black stallion was riding up and down the disorganized line of the shocked enemy. He appeared to be screaming at them and then I saw him lean out of the saddle and lop the head off of what looked to have been a field commander.
I knew who the black robed figure was and I quickly shouted out as loud as I could banking heavily on Marfoul’s obsessive arrogance and hatred of me to instigate further rashness on the enemy’s part.
A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind) Page 28
