Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (37 page)

     He was my ‘in.’

     “I’ll be looking for you, Black Hawk,” I said, pointing at him.  “I’ll find you on the battle field, and you’ll wish you’d stayed out of my way.”

    
Black Hawk straightened and dropped his hands to his side.

     “If you have the courage, then, little man,” I challenged him.

     Three of the warriors behind him gave a whoop but Angry Lion held up his hand.  I heard my warriors shift behind me.  It was too close for them to take advantage of their arrows and too far from their tribes to guarantee they’d get away against our lances.  Angry Lion knew that I could stop the fight right now if I could kill these two leaders, which is likely why we didn’t see Hungry anywhere. 

     “Go back to your people,” he informed me.  “We will come for you there.”

     I waited for Black Hawk to make a move but he wasn’t going to oblige me.  His warriors weren’t happy.  It had been worth a shot.

     “On the battle field, then,” I said to him.  “Where you have better men to hide behind.”

     He started but Angry put a hand in front of him.  No, this wasn’t going to happen.  I laughed and I turned Blizzard around, Tartan next to me.  I led my warriors back down the trail to the little village we’d made, my mind racing.

     To get at me, they were going to have to charge down the peninsula.  They’d come in firing arrows from horseback, trying to keep us down.  Then they’d engage us with their greater numbers at close quarters, where the peninsula would work against me.  I needed to be able to move around against a light horse advance and I’d given that up for the inability to be surrounded.

     My archers were the old men and younger children who were part of my ‘tribe.’ 
Historically speaking, they’d been the archers throughout history once warfare started trying to be ‘modern.’  You put a lot of arrows in the air in the direction of your enemy and let them run into them – being an expert might be more impressive but in fact it works against you in the long run.  Better to put ten barely-trained archers in place than one who took you years to train and years to replace. 

     Say what you will – missiles take the grace out of combat, and turn it into a numbers game.  I’d lose a numbers game pretty easily here.

     “Ware!” a Wolf Soldier shouted to me.  It wasn’t J’her – I had left him to hold Eldador the Port.  Dev Nevala held my left side, and Two Spears the right.  I’d taken the horse – this was going to boil down to them.

     All eyes turned east and we saw a dust cloud and a wall of Andarans come trotting up over the horizon.  They move
d like a dark wave, warriors and horses together, not whooping and building up their own courage but angry and serious, knowing what they were riding into, knowing that the ones whom we were looking at right now were likely dead men, the first wave of the attack doomed to fall to whatever I had planned for them, and they were coming anyway. 

     Warriors who’d rather be dead than give in to me.

     “All hands,” I shouted, turning my head left and right, mounted on Blizzard as I had been for most of the morning. 

     Wolf Soldiers mounted up or took their places on our battlements.  We’d improvised a little on the ‘small city,’ and created an earth wall with a ditch in front of it, which was going to be hell for them to get their horses over.  I’d managed to port some wood over from the Confluni side of the lake we were on, using my new ships.  We had spears that they wouldn’t be expecting, as well as extra arrows and bows and some other useful things.

     The ground started to shake a little as they got themselves moving.  Wolf Soldiers were exchanging glances as they noticed it.  Blizzard and some of the other horses snorted and stamped.  My stallion likely knew what he was in for – this wasn’t his first rodeo.

     The wave came forward and we could hear a few war whoops from the middle – Andarans who thought that maybe they wouldn’t die.  I could see the bows and the arrows now.  Most were held down to conserve the elasticity of the wood.  Some were cocked and ready, the warriors standing in their saddles, waiting for the command to fire.

     “Archers!” I shouted.  My own Andarans pulled back, a few hundred of them.  We’d given them some basic instruction on how to do this from my veterans.

     I waited for the Andarans to pass a couple flags I’d planted in the ground out past the battlements – the outer range of our bows.  Likely they either didn’t notice them or didn’t care.  I wanted the first rank to get past them, and shoot for the warriors right behind. 

     My breath quickened.  There was no sure outcome here – this was one of those fights that I might lose.

     They crossed the flags, one rank, two, three…

     “Loose!”  I commanded.

     The air filled with the twang of the bow strings, the whistle of the arrows through the air.  They arced gracefully over our heads, a few flying off the side useless, released improperly from children who barely knew one end from the other. 
Life was harder on the Andaran plains and kids learned to do these things earlier, but a kid is still a kid, and they knew what happened to conquered tribes.

     Several arrows flew back in return, warriors firing before the order was given.  Their archers essentially used the same bows as we did – they would start firing as a group as soon as they realized that these arrows landed within our midst.

     Our arrows fell like rain into the front portion of their advancing army, past the first rows as I’d hoped.  Theirs fell among us.  I heard a few angry grunts.  Other warriors scrambled for their shields on Dev and Two Spears’ orders.  No point in just taking their fire.

     The Andarans picked up their pace and their arrows started coming sporadically.  I waited.  I wanted another few rows of Andarans to get past.

     “Pull!” I shouted, as the arrows started to patter down on our shields.  More and more of them filled the air, landing among us and then against the front of our battlements, fired too early.

     “Loose!” I shouted, and our arrows flew out again, fewer mistakes this time.

     I’d had workers out digging in those plains.  What I’d arranged for them was going to start happening soon.

     Arrows were hitting the ground about 100 feet in front of our own archers.  I was going to get another shot in before I pulled them back.  I had lined the horse up behind them.

     “Pull!” I shouted.  There was clear fear and dissention in the archer ranks.  They were starting to think I was going to let them take fire, and they would break.  They weren’t warriors, they were civilians who’d come to me because they had nowhere else to go.

    
The Andarans were picking up their pace now.  They arrows were raining down on the warriors in the battlements.  I was starting to lose troops.

     “Loose!” I commanded.  The arrows flew out again – some of them off to the side.  Their fear was getting to them.

     “Archers, retreat!” I ordered.  They dropped their bows, turned and ran.  I heard swearing from among the lancers.  Who knew what they could be thinking- they’d just lost whatever means they had to defend themselves if the Wolf Soldiers failed.

     The Andaran riders were moving in at a gallop now, pummeling us with arrows.  They’d reach the horse soon if something didn’t stop them.

     That’s when they hit the first trench in the ground outside of the ramparts.

     For three nights in a row, we’d trucked out our civilians to dig long, shallow trenches, and then fill them back with sod in order that they look like nothing more than an anomaly in the plains.  When the Andaran
front lines hit the unnatural dip in the ground, their horses stumbled both on the loose sod and the unexpected drop, becoming worse when the horses’ weight pushed the loose soil even farther down.

     It wasn’t a deep ditch – they’d have noticed that.  It was just enough to surprise a running horse and a rider standing in his stirrups, firing arrows.

     Hundreds stumbled, and the line following behind them at a sizeable gap both crashed into them, or stopped in time and were themselves crashed into the riders behind them.  The whole situation repeated itself behind, where the force of the charge folded in on itself, or ahead, where those who managed to push through hit another dip in the ground, and the whole thing happened again to a smaller degree.

     “Charge!” I ordered my Wolf Soldiers, driving my heels into Blizzard’s sides.  The white stallion leapt forward, the lancers behind me following.  Our front lines opened up at the center where
we’d built a wall of half cut timbers that my front line could push out over the ditch just outside of our ramparts.  Shela used her magic to strengthen this make-shift bridge as we thundered over it three at-a-time, into the churning mass which had been a well-instituted charge by the Andarans.

     The hardship for my lancers was to face Andaran mounted archers.  That advantage was gone now.  My Wolf soldier foot began to pick up and throw spears we’d cut from the Confluni timber we’d ported from the other side of the lake.  Warriors and horses screamed as we rode out and met them, still outnumbered as many as five-to-one.

     The lance under my right arm jumped backwards as it engaged the breastbone of the first Andaran who got in my way.  It shattered against the second.  Thundering to the left of the Andaran mass, I pulled Blizzard to the outside of the three columns of lancers which flowed out of Wisex.  Another lancer replaced me and struck another Andaran, and another, and then a third before his lance also shattered and he pulled to the outside beside me, replaced by another lancer.
     Down the column as we wrapped the Andarans from the left, the lancers followed suit.  Strike from the inside of the charging column until your lance broke, and then pull out and let another warrior replace you.  Meanwhile we pressed the perimeter, closing in on the Andarans, adding to their confusion as some tried to engage us and some tried to get out of our way.  I and the lancers around me all without our lances now, we pressed on with our swords out, slashing the Andarans as we passed, killing them and their horses as they began to get their mounts under control and small groups of them tried to rally.

     Lightening crackled in the air above us.  Fireballs arched out from behind the Andaran lines.

     Shela met them from our own.  I didn’t know how long she could hold out, how badly outnumbered she might be.  In the rest of Fovea her style of magic came as a complete surprise.  Here is where she learned it; here were the people who’d taught her what she knew.  I’d told her not to try to fight them, just conserve her energy and block what they try to do.  It’s much easier to disrupt a magical attack than to originate one.

     The lightening discharged harmlessly above us.  The fireballs fell as ash.

     We’d wrapped a fourth of the Andarans and my lancers were still pouring out of our ‘gate’.  The Andarans themselves were pulling back or simply dying to our lancers where we’d stopped them at the second ditch in the ground.  We were having to move farther and farther forward to find fresh targets for them.

     Dev Nevala’s foot soldiers pressed forward over the ramparts, engaging the Andarans on the right hand side
before they could prepare for us.  They moved forward in classic squads, shields in front and pikes bristling from behind, swords stabbing at the Andaran horse that came too close.  Dev’s troops became a wall to push the Andarans against.

     In front of me an entire tribe of Andarans had managed to break off from the mass and their leader could be seen rallying them, lining them up to face the continuing charge.  Hundreds strong, they’d seen
what we were doing and knew they had to stop us before we could get half way around the Andaran main force and then turn and press them on two sides.  That would force their warriors to meet us one-to-one while their own front lines kept the mass of their numbers from engaging. 

     “Wolf Soldiers to the ‘fore!” I commanded, slowing Blizzard’s charge.  The lancers around me spread out into a line, first three across, then six, then twelve, increasing in number and being supplied by the charging Wolf Soldier lancers behind us. 

     I ordered one of Two Spears’ lieutenants to hold back and siphon off 200 for my uses, but to keep the mainstay of our forces encircling the Andarans.  It wouldn’t help us to have a break here, or to leave the main force of the enemy alone to recollect themselves.  Even now, most of them couldn’t decide whether to attack the lancers, to pull back or to just wait for orders.

     My lancers were 50 across and two ranks deep when I ordered them forward.  By then the Andarans were moving as well, some with arrows but most not.  Very few of my own riders had their lances intact – this was going to be a bloody hand-to-hand with a veteran opponent which outnumbered me.  My troops stretched almost to the beach at the edge of the peninsula, and almost to the line of charging lancers emanating from our battlements.  At least the enemy had to face me one-to-one and would have a hard time flanking me.

     They started to scream and whoop and fire arrows.  A horse went down right next to Blizzard with an arrow in his throat.  Another arrow pinged off of the front of my armor.

     Blizzard put his head down and stretched his legs, outdistancing the other horses.  As I drew closer, I couldn’t recognize the tribe except to say that I didn’t think it was the Bears.  I wouldn’t be meeting Black Hawk here.