Falling back, rear Manse elevation. Front rank rest, third to line. Weapons ready. Joining.
Aeb savaged his sword into an exposed neck.
It was mid-afternoon.
‘Balaia, let’s march!’ Darrick roared, swinging his sword arm in a wide circle over his head, and his desperate move began. Eschewing his horse in favour of walking at the head of the exclusively foot-borne army, Darrick nonetheless made himself as visible as possible. He knew that the Wesmen scouts would report back to Tessaya almost immediately and he wanted them all looking for him.
He’d been at pains to make his Captains understand that an attack could come at any time, at which point they were to scatter in centiles into the forest, heading for their allotted grid positions. They were not to engage on open ground unless absolutely necessary. Indeed, if the Wesmen stayed out, Darrick was happy to develop a stand-off. He had warned of the chaos of forest warfare and of the importance of continued communication along the fragmented front line. He knew it was a gamble but he considered it the only chance they had.
Darrick would have loved to have spoken to the assembled army but that luxury was denied him by the pressures of time and organisational necessity. Instead, he had impressed very hard on his command team the importance of that which they undertook. Once again, Balaia could not afford for them to fail. Once again, The Raven deserved their unflagging courage and energy. There was no sense in saving themselves for the next fight because failing in this one would mean there were no other fights. Not for them, not for the Wesmen.
The army set off in tight formation, mage assassin pairs ahead under CloakedWalks, searching for enemy scouts. In his heart, Darrick knew their task would bear little or no fruit but there was no sense in holding them back; and at the least, they would provide an element of early warning.
They were less than an hour from total chaos in Grethern Forest and he wanted to squeeze out any advantage he had. His regiments marched quickly along the main trail, making good ground towards the Wesmen camp a mile distant. They had travelled less than half distance when a roar like rising thunder grew ahead.
It echoed off the far crags, fell away down the gentle slopes into Grethern and hung above the rise they approached, like a cloud of sound. The Wesmen. And they were charging. Darrick heard the sound of running feet approach and two pairs of mage-assassins dropped their Cloaks and appeared near him.
‘Wesmen seven hundred yards and running, General,’ said one, a willow-framed elf, very tall, bald and dressed in tight-fitting cloth.
‘Spread?’ asked Darrick.
‘Three hundred to three fifty, touching the first north rises and down closing on the first trees south.’
‘Thank you.’ It was a wide front but nothing more than Darrick had anticipated. He assessed their terrain.
To his left and north, the trail broke into small rocky undulations that cut up to high crag and scree slopes a mile distant. South, the Grethern Forest stood, dark and dense. Its first boles were scattered no more than a hundred yards from them but Darrick’s preferred battleground was the thick growth that burgeoned a further two hundred yards distant. He could see the darkness within, could sense the restrictive snags of bough and branch and prayed to all the Gods that he’d made the right decision.
Behind his army, Izack would be leading the Manse relief column south. Now was the time of greatest threat to the plan. Darrick could not afford a single Wesman scout to report the split of the army. Tessaya had to believe he was fighting all of the last Eastern regulars outside of Korina. Mage-assassins from Gyernath swept the forest behind and the crags and rises north. It was time to move.
He raised a hand and the order sped down the column to halt. Next, he clenched the raised fist, splayed his fingers and shouted the order to split.
‘Centiles, detach, crescent formation by number. Running. Now!’
Slight unevenly, the result of a lack of drill time, the centiles broke formation, cutting away from the main trail in sequence, leaving a strong line defending the trail. Darrick called it a crescent and in his drawings, that’s how it appeared. In reality, however, it was a more uneven cascade. He could be nothing less than satisfied that they understood his orders at all.
Darrick nodded his appreciation and set off with his own double centile, angling only slightly from the main trail. He was little more than bait. Acting as running vanguard, he hoped to bring Tessaya’s army to the forest before they had a chance to work out the weakness of the defence leading to his camp. They could, he knew, be quickly surrounded but he was relying on the Wesmen desire for battle. And though Tessaya was tactically aware, Darrick remained confident he would see their move into the forest as an attempt to skirt around to the Septern Manse.
Behind him, the army ran down towards the forest, breaking its borders. Orders rang out, centiles switched directions and from the morass came order as each found its feet and space from its adjacent centiles. A wall half-bricked and a temptation surely too much for the Wesmen to ignore.
Darrick would not be disappointed.
Ahead of him, the leading Wesmen crested a rise, bellowing out cries as they surveyed the fragmented army below. For a while they gathered, like a dark stain spreading on the near horizon, then a blast from a hundred horns sent them flooding down on the Balaians, their battle cries and chants splitting the air, Tessaya plainly visible at the centre.
For a moment, Darrick considered attacking him but, though he was in the front line, he would be very well defended. And Darrick had better things to do than commit suicide. He took his twin centile and ran for Grethern, the first arrows of the Wesmen falling short.
‘Stand ready!’ he shouted, seeing his men ranked inside the confines of the forest. ‘Fall back three paces. Make them break stride. Mages, fill those gaps.’
The orders were relayed through the forest as the Wesmen swept towards them, no more than half a minute behind. Arrows skipped and snapped against trees and branches, howls and taunts echoing darkly into the depths of the forest. Darrick turned, drew a line in the leaf mould in front of him, his men forming around and behind him.
The sky, brooding and grey, spilled rain, and the wind whipped up beneath the cloud, whistling through the trees. Somewhere, Izack and his men raced to the aid of the Protectors. Darrick watched the Wesmen pour on towards the forest, so far taking the bait laid for them. But the Balaians were outnumbered and would have to work very hard to remain unbroken. It was going to be a long afternoon.
Chapter 34
Senedai brooded over the reports from his army surrounding the pitifully small band of masked warriors defending the Septern Manse and its gateway to the land of the dragons. As his warriors tired, the enemy seemed to grow in strength. Their movement was smooth, their fighting ordered, like nothing he had ever seen. He knew there was magic involved but he couldn’t see where. There was no mage, of that he was now certain.
Yet that hardly mattered. What mattered was what was before his eyes. The bodies of his men covered the ground, in places so thickly that the dead and injured had to be dragged away through the legs of the fighting front line to give them solid ground. And as the afternoon wore on, with the rain increasing in intensity hour by hour, Senedai’s desperation increased with it. The enemy left no gaps, the numbers of their dead could be counted on the fingers and toes of a single man; and even though his warriors had injured a good many, they simply melted back from the battle to bind their wounds while others took their place.
Their strength and endurance were extraordinary, their courage something Senedai could admire. But his failure to overwhelm them despite massive odds in his favour gnawed at his confidence and at the belief of his men. It should have been a quick victory and yet, with the afternoon waning, he was now faced with returning to his camp as night fell, to face another day of humiliation.