Styliann had chosen a reasonably narrow focus for the attack. His front line would be no more than eighty warriors wide. Narrow enough to ensure he couldn’t be overwhelmed, wide enough to unleash the full force of the Protectors on an enemy who would be totally unprepared for what they faced.
He heard the Wesmen long before a silent order brought his Protectors to the ready, each with sword and axe in either hand. The tribal songs echoed from the slopes, filtered through the trees and rang into the clear blue sky on the gusting breeze. Ten tribesmen, making up a Wesmen advance guard, ran up the rise and over it, meeting swift, silent death on the blades of the waiting Xeteskian warriors before they had a chance to change their songs to warnings. The rest of the army were jogging, the pace and rhythm of the words told him that, driving hard towards their doom with victory on their lips.
Styliann smiled at the irony.
It would soon be time, and the former Lord of the Mount found himself irritated at the necessity of the fight to come. But he couldn’t have the Wesmen chase him to the gates of Xetesk, as they would undoubtedly do if not stopped before. He had no guarantee that he would gain access to the city immediately and any delay could quite literally be fatal. The ground around Xetesk was too open and even the Protectors would struggle against four thousand on the fields before the walled city. No, it had to be here and it had to be now.
Styliann turned to Cil. ‘Engage at will.’ Cil nodded and faced the ranks of his brethren, still with a secure hand on the reins of his Given’s horse. Styliann felt a stab of nerves through his confidence but he quashed it merely by looking again at his Protectors.
Not a word was shouted, no signals fanned through their ranks, no heads turned to await command. The thunder of footsteps grew, vibrating through the ground as the enemy closed. Individual voices could be heard through the mass of the song, whose intensity never let up as they ran. Four thousand Wesmen calling death to their enemies, beating axes against thighs, the dull thumping adding a grim beat to the song. On they came, a surge racing forward, ready to crash on their foe. They had no fear. It could be heard from every throat. They were the Tribes; the land would be theirs.
And hidden before them, the Protectors. One moment, they were standing stock still while the songs of the Wesmen and the sound of their feet rolled over them. The next, battle was joined in a ring of steel and a storm up the rise.
Wide-spaced, to allow the free wielding of both weapons, the Protectors ran mute into the unsuspecting ranks of the Wesmen, whose songs died in their throats, turning to warning and battle order as the first of their number dropped lifeless to the ground. The Xeteskian thralled force plunged in with extraordinary brutality, stopping the Wesmen in their tracks with a blistering barrage of axe and longsword. Screams filled the air.
Styliann watched dispassionately as his Protectors destroyed the vanguard of the Wesmen before they had a chance to break from their ten-abreast column, the mana shape for HotRain playing in his mind.
He rode further up the rise on which he was positioned, moving nearer the battle, and was greeted with the sight of his flanking forces wading in from the left and right. They scythed through the column, cutting off a section of perhaps three hundred Wesmen.
Completely surrounded by Protectors, they were simply massacred while the Dark College force simultaneously formed a new advanced front line, again precisely spaced but with a concavity to draw the Wesmen in.
The enemy leader finally managed to force order on his men. Commands ran throughout the panicked column, which broke and moved to attack on a broader front, meeting the Protectors head on. Behind the lines, archers peeled away and Styliann quickly adjusted his mana shape, moving from the lattice that was HotRain, to the tight spheroid that produced FlameOrbs.
Before the first volley of arrows was nocked, the ex-Lord of the Mount’s quartet of white-striated orange Orbs, each the size of a human skull, sailed over the closing battle lines to splash fire on the defenceless archers. Those not deluged, scattered, a pall of thick smoke rising from burning victims, cries of pain louder than the urgent orders to reform.
Battle proper was joined with the Wesmen in turmoil and fighting as much for shape as for their lives. They were scared. Styliann could see it in the set of their bodies and knew what they faced. Masks and polished steel. Death whose countenance they would never see, death that was silent and unstoppable.
The Protectors made no sound. No grunts of exertion as they struck, no battle cries, no screams from the injured and the few who died. Nothing. Just a wall of blades; flat, featureless masks and dark-stained leather, chain and plate. To Styliann’s ears, the sound of their weapons was almost musical, and he watched their inexorable advance, likening it in his mind to a macabre dance.
Blades flashed in the sunlight, crashing into the Wesmen’s stout defence. Axe and sword fell remorselessly as the Protectors forced the pace, their onslaught withering and awesome. The clatter of weapon on shield, the dull thud of blade on body, the sparking clash as metal found metal; all drifted over Styliann on a cloud of Wesmen blood. Three more times, at Cil’s request, he launched devastating FlameOrbs into groups of archers or individual bowmen. Three times, fire washed the sky. Three times, the acrid smoke rose to mingle with the dust and the blood.
The Wesmen were brave and resolute and Styliann admired their spirit while pitying the futility of their action. And they didn’t simply queue up to die. From the rear of their lines, more than five hundred broke ranks to skirt the battlefield, aiming to flank the Protectors. Watched all the way by the scouts concealed left and right, they were met by a force of the Xeteskian warriors who peeled from the line to confront them before they could pose any threat to Styliann.
Even that didn’t deter them. Ultimately, it was the Protectors’ defence that broke their morale.
The battle had raged for well over an hour and the Protectors had maintained their steady, silent advance, walking through the bodies of the Wesmen, never looking down to find their feet, each pace sure and certain. Those behind the fighting line directed movement, leaving them free to focus on attack, while others stooped to pull fallen brethren from the carnage.
It was a hopeless task for the Wesmen. Even when a Protector fell, their line was never in danger of being breached. Almost before the warrior had hit the ground, another was in his place, completing the defensive net.
Each Protector attacked without a flicker of a glance to his flanks. And while his sword or axe drove at his latest opponent, his chosen second weapon blocked and parried both strikes to his own body and those of the brother next to him; all directed by the soul mind whose conscious strength lay in Xetesk and whose eyes looked from five hundred faces. They missed almost nothing, gave the Wesmen no consistent target, and any hope that flickered was snuffed out by the turn of a blade at the critical moment.
Styliann saw the end. To the right of the battle line, the Wesmen mounted a desperate push. Spearmen jabbed between the sword and axemen, adding a new dimension to the fight. They roared their battle cries, summoned every ounce of spirit and hurled themselves forward.
Instantly, and almost imperceptibly, the Protectors responded. The slightest closing of their ranks, the merest quickening of their strike rate, the smallest increase of the defensive response. Wesmen axe and sword found nothing but steel; spear thrusts were caught in the gauntleted hands of the second-line Protectors, their wielders dragged to their deaths. Bodies dropped, the wounded screamed, and blood ran over the feet of those still standing. In a matter of moments, the Wesmen effort to break the Protector line was reversed, the Xeteskians punched a hole in the enemy defence and their order broke and scattered.
Across the battle front, they turned and ran, the orders of their captains ignored, the belief gone and their spirit broken. The Protectors made no move to give chase, merely standing and watching them go.