Saga of the Old City

Chapter 25

The broad waters of the Harp River at Woodford were wide and rippling between tree-lined banks. Save for a deeper channel near the western shore, the depth was nowhere above the knees. At the one deeper place, a stretch of perhaps fifteen yards in width, the waters had managed to dig a place nearly waist-deep, but solid granite bedrock had resisted erosion beyond this, and man, animal, or even cart could ford the river here without difficulty or danger of drowning. A narrow road, one of only a very few indeed within the Adri Forest, led to the shallow place and away from the other side of the river. This set of pleasant circumstances had led to many groups using this ford-the latest of which was to be the army of Overking Ivid, which was advancing toward the river from the east.

The Overking’s force was an impressive one. Ahead of the formations went a swarm of light troops, some afoot and some horsed, to scout and make certain that no men encountered could carry news of the army’s coming to its enemies. These scouts were evil woodsmen, bandits, and the worst of the mercenary companies, and they were like a small army themselves, for they numbered well over a thousand, with a main body of light cavalry ready to charge into battle or carry news swiftly to the horde behind.

Normally, these advance troops were anywhere from half a mile to two miles ahead of the slow-moving army behind. The roadway allowed them to move faster than usual, however, and they were now easily two leagues in advance of their fellows. The advance group’s commander, General Lomor, the Margrave of Uskedge, drove this swarm of murderers and looters far ahead today because he feared that there would be a hostile force barring the ford. Also, for this same reason, he had with him several companies of light mercenary infantry plus a squadron of the Overking’s personal armored lancers. With these reinforcements he felt he could brush aside any resistance and hold the crossing until the bulk of the army came up-General Lomor was pleased to find the place tranquil on the morning he arrived. Several hundred scouts had splashed through the cold water and combed the west bank, sending back word that no sign of an enemy could be found. Now his whole force was past the dangerous ford, while a courier group hastened back to give this happy intelligence to Grand Marshal Dreek.

The Aerdian general was just giving orders to send a small company of mercenary horse and foot farther ahead, while the main body of the advance waited for word from the rear, when a storm of arrows rained upon the troops. The broadheaded shafts bit through armor, killing men and horses as if a giant scythe had passed through the force. Even as the first shouts and screams were being voiced, a second volley of missiles struck, and then a third.

The general, being not a complete fool, understood immediately that a horseshoe-shaped ambush had been laid on this western side of the river, and his soldiers were caught between the offensive and the waters they had just forded. He turned and rode off immediately, his bright gold and red banner bearing the arms of Uskedge signaling the route of the retreat, even as his herald sounded the fact on his horn. The general made good his flight, but no more than a few notes came from the herald’s trumpet before a half-dozen long arrows silenced its owner forever.

Half of the advance force of the Aerdian army escaped the ambush. These survivors were mostly mounted, of course, their horses enabling them to flee the onrush of men that followed the initial arrow storm. General Lomor was at midstream on his way back across the river when the fullness of his disaster came upon him. More cloth yard shafts flew from the supposedly safe bank to the east. His accompanying clerics, and the magic-user near them, began to prepare their spells but, exposed as they were in the middle of the river, none managed anything significant. The Margrave attempted to rally his remaining troops and make a stand where they were, while the spell-binders sheltered behind shields and men to work their desperately needed assistance.

Suddenly, a cloud of biting and stinging insects buzzed around the trapped force. There was a confused scramble among men and mounts, all trying to escape the plague of pests, while still more arrows sped into the cluster of invaders with a sound similar to the hornets that were stinging them with less deadly effect.

The sole surviving magic-user, a warlock calling himself Comet, managed to dispel the magically created insect swarm, but then the enemies from both sides of the river closed on the trapped remnants of the Aerdian advance force. General Lomor threw down his sword and cried for quarter, but no prisoners were being taken. His body fell into the water moments later, across that of his warlock, and the fight was over. Not one of the invaders remained alive, and none had succeeded in breaking through the ambush to get back and warn their fellows.

An hour passed before the lead elements of the Aerdian main battle, as the central division of the army was called, arrived at Woodford. The place was quiet, the waters were still, and no trace of fighting was apparent. The troop of light horse saw a strong body of mercenary infantry spread about on the opposite shore, evidently on guard against any possible foe, but obviously relaxed and awaiting the arrival of the Grand Marshal’s army so they could push forward again to scout. Just visible on the road in the distance was the banner of General Lomor, the ensign surrounded by a small body of cavalry, moving westward away from the river.

Another small body of mounted men appeared from the trees along the east bank and waved to their fellows on the opposite side of the Harp River, signaling that all was well. The cavalry troop came across the ford first, keeping their horses at a slow but steady walk. The head of the Marshal’s long column of soldiers was marching swiftly toward the crossing place, and the horsemen wished to get clear of the ford before the soldiers arrived. There was no love lost between the cavalry, who were mercenaries, and the oncoming imperial and noble contingents.

The blue and gold tabards of the Overking’s Guard proclaimed the coming of the army. Although the noon sun was now being obscured by slowly thickening clouds, the crowned sun on each tabard’s deep blue field seemed to glitter without the aid of beams from the real one above. The leading regiment was of archers, a thousand strong, shortbows slung, short spears shouldered for the march. Behind them came a like regiment of crossbowmen equipped with great arbalests and swords. Together these two units composed the first brigade of heavy foot, for they wore chainmail and stood in close formation.

Behind them came the serried ranks of pole-armed infantry, imperial troops who bore glaive-guisarmes and fauchard-forks. After a suitable interval came the disdainful and haughty riders of Ivid’s Own Cavalry-light horsemen with small crossbows, bucklers, and javelins; then mounted sergeants in plate mail with lances, flails, and shields; and finally the so-called Knights of the Malachite Throne, in even heavier armor, bearing an array of heavy swords and axes in addition to lance and shield.

All of these horsemen held their slender javelins and long lances aloft, pennons astream, to proudly proclaim their presence. Although there were but three thousand of them, they considered themselves to be the finest and best soldiers in the army. In truth, these cavalry were indeed terrible foes in battle, but in a place such as the Adri Forest they were not of much use. They, and the pole-armed phalanxes as well, were much better suited for employment in the open terrain at Knurl and in the Blemu Hills.

At some little distance after the horsemen came a regiment of voulgeers, their long weapons surmounted by cleaverlike steel heads, and also proclaiming their imperial status by their bold colors. Thereafter came the train of artillerists, engineers, and sappers who marched with the baggage and supply.

A small company of mercenary light cavalry served as drab punctuation at the end of the Overking’s main battle.

A quarter of a mile farther back, the rear portion of this host was arrayed. This last division was a motley collection, composed of some two thousand infantry belonging to the noble contingents levied at the Overking’s behest. These footmen displayed a rainbow of colors and armorial devices, marking which lord they served. Weapons and armor likewise varied as widely, ranging from ranseur and halberd to axe and crossbow. There were relatively few infantry in this unit, compared to the total number of men in the force, because their noble masters deemed such troops to be fit mainly for use as a buffer to absorb missiles and even magical attacks prior to the charge of their more numerous mounted troops.

Farther back, a host of pennants, bannerols, and oddly shaped standards marked the noble lords, knights, and esquires who were riding before an even larger group of their mounted men-at-arms. As varied as the foregoing foot soldiers, this group of cavalry was as numerous as the imperial horsemen-although of questionable merit at times due to lack of discipline, for every baron, plar, count, or whatever felt himself a prince and peer to all the others. Nonetheless, once it was in motion, this mixed brigade was formidable in the extreme.

At a respectful interval came the last elements of the army, a tail of mercenary light horse and skirmish infantry totaling perhaps another thousand, placed to absorb any sudden surprise from the rear. This vast force, strung out for miles, was about to receive a blow upon its head that the body and tail would be able to react to in saurian fashion only.

The foremost riders were well across the ford and amidst their supposed counterparts before a sharp-eyed member of the mercenary troop alerted his fellows that the men around them were not friends. The resulting melee decimated the force and sent the survivors in rout, but served to alert the archers who were nearly across the river and the crossbowmen just behind, and thus the whole main battle soon knew what was happening. The Battle at Woodford now commenced.

The longbowmen of the woodsfolk were ranged for three hundred yards along the west bank of the river, hidden in the foliage and sheltered by logs and tree trunks. These archers opened a withering discharge upon their enemy counterparts, the devastation of which was only slightly lessened by the targets’ armor. Despite losses and disadvantage, the imperial troops held firm, slowly spreading out their formation to present a broad front so they could not be as easily hit, and so as to be able to reply in kind to the hail of arrows, bolts, and sling bullets pouring upon their ranks. They were brave, these men, and half were slain or wounded by the time they were stretched the entire length of the shallows of the Harp and were returning their own missiles in hopes of finding targets clad in colors that blended with the forest.

The disciplined sacrifice of the archers was not in vain, for coming at the double was the narrow column of pole-armed infantry. When their bristling mass of glaives and fauchards crossed the ford and struck into the lightly protected archers on the far shore, the sharp edges and points would pierce the woodsmen’s line and spread out along the river edge. Thus the onslaught of flying shafts would be assuaged, and the cruel tormentors plying their deadly bows would be slain.

Although arrows rained in arching fire over the heads of the screening shortbowmen and crossbowmen to fall upon the rushing brigade of infantry, these latter men were more heavily armored, with studded jacks of padded leather over chain-mail, and their front ranks were provided with steel chest plates and greaves as well. A few fell, but most came on unharmed. The screen of bowmen before them parted at their coming, glad at their comrades’ ferocity and lusting for the slaughter that their arrival portended.

This parting enabled the woodsmen to increase the effect of their archery upon the infantry, however, and whole ranks of the pole-armed imperials dropped before a new onslaught of arrows. Still, those behind came grimly on, lowering their weapons as they filled the front of the column, stepping over the fallen in their path. Had the water not slowed their advance, far fewer would have been killed, but this was not the case.

Finally, the ford was crossed by the leading men of the column, but their rush fell onto empty ground, for the woodsmen had fallen back before the imperial charge. A hundred yards away, a company of bowmen continued to stand across the open road, loosing missiles steadily at their foemen, while from the flanking woods came still more shafts.

As the full force of the pole-armed brigade came onto firm ground, its parts were sent left, right, and ahead to clear the trees of snipers. In such conditions, though, shorted axe, morning star, and sword are as good as, or even better than, the long-handled weapons the imperials carried. A raging melee swirled through the trees, as that part of the woodsfolk’s contingent without missile weapons no longer had to stand and watch their fellows work. They fell to with joy. At this point, the defending force had suffered losses numbering only a few hundred, while the invading army sent into the Adri by the Overking had lost thousands. The foresters’ hearts were singing, and their hopes were high.

After serving as the hard place against which the nut of the vanguard of the imperial army had been wiped out, Gord’s unit had recrossed the Harp and rejoined the others. They had not suffered more than a dozen casualties, thanks to Curley Greenleaf’s use of spells and their own hard fighting. They were then sent off to a place on the left flank where they were hidden and kept ready to reinforce either those who held the bank before them or the center, where the hardest blow was sure to fall.

From his unit’s hiding place, Gord was unable to see any of the initial fighting against the main force, but word came that the hated imperial archers and crossbowmen had been cut down by fully two-thirds, and that the brigade of infantry that followed was being mauled by the savage woodsmen. The sounds of the battle were coming closer.

“I’m ready to trash some of those libertines,” Chert said, nervously flipping his great axe.

“Let’s have a contest, you and me,” said Wren. “The one who knocks over the most of those blue-back sissies gets the other as servant for the evening….”

Their banter was interrupted by the voice of a captain who was calling the group into a rough line. Stalker’s band went onto the far right, archers in the front rank and others behind. Both Gord and his hulking friend were thus at the forefront, for Wren was impressed with the aim Gord had displayed while slinging missiles at the Aerdians’ hired soldiery hours earlier. Curley Greenleaf was off somewhere else-probably with the commanders of this unit, Gord theorized, for he now realized just how powerful spell-casters of any nature could be, and druids in particular. He made a mental note to avoid finding out what it was like to be on the wrong end of some hostile spell-binder’s pointing finger.

The sounds of fighting were closer than ever now, and whistles alerted the waiting woodsfolk to be ready. Arrows were nocked, and Gord placed one of his stones in his sling. Almost without warning, a knot of men burst into their view-imperial troops with wicked-looking fauchard-forks chivvying several defenders whose shorter weapons were unable to score damage on the advancing men-at-arms.

Gord loosed the stone from his sling just as the first of a cloud of arrows sped into the confident imperials. Gord’s eye followed the path of the missile he had released and saw his target go down as the stone struck him full on the temple.

Thrown into disarray by a missile attack they had not anticipated, the remainder of the foot soldiers were easy prey for the men they had been preparing to kill. The captain signaled to the members of Gord’s band to move ahead, and they advanced along with similar groups to the right and left, going slowly and using all the cover available. After a few score yards they were halted again, for beyond there was less cover and fewer trees.

In this partial clearing stood hundreds of the Overking’s heavy infantry in blue and gold, forming for an attack toward them. Then woodsmen on the imperial force’s left flank came howling out of the forest. The disciplined formation turned to face this challenge, only to have its new flank assaulted by missiles from Gord’s group and the others on either side. The Overking’s men fell back in confusion, heading for the river, but since there were some two hundred bowmen, slingers, and javelineers along their route of retreat, they were soon forced into an obliquing retrograde.

“That’s three of those bun-blasting imperials I’ve nailed so far this round!” shouted Chert from his post at Gord’s side.

Wren’s voice from the rear called back derisively. “Never mind counting the needlework! Our wager is your axe versus my little chopper here!”

The order came to advance upon the struggling imperials. Gord and his compatriots rushed across the open space and into the trees on the opposite side, in hot pursuit, and soon close work demanded the tossing aside of bows in favor of axe, sword, and like arms. Now the full force of the big woodsfolk was falling on the soldiers of the Overking, and the infantry was being pushed back and crowded into a defensive position at the head of the ford. Then the imperial horse, having finished their crossing, were amongst their own footmen, and in their desire to strike at the enemy, the cavalry were careless as to who they rode down. By the time they got through the lines of pole-armed soldiers and rode toward their adversaries, it was evident that the infantry brigade would not be fit to contest with another foe for some time to come.

Gord was close enough to the river now to see some of the displays of magic that marked where the spell-casters of the opposing forces were trying to gain an advantage for their own side. A horrible-looking thing, seemingly formed from the very waters of the Harp, rose up suddenly and was rushing toward the rear of the long line of horsemen, but it suddenly seemed to lose speed and sag, then rippled into nothingness. Little darts of glowing coral-color leapt from the far shore to strike and slay any woodsman who showed a target.

A great cloud of ghastly, citrine hue formed in a place above the river where no imperials were fighting, and it quickly traveled westward with a roiling, sickening movement. It touched the tree line, and Gord heard screams and coughing cries. Then it was blown downstream by some gust of wind, and the imperial horse recoiled from its edge.

Then came great claps of thunderous noise, and streaks of lightning and explosive flashes of fire were flying back and forth, slaying friend and foe so indiscriminately that the processes were soon stopped.

The imperial cavalry regrouped and came on again. Then the sky, which had grown darker and cloudier by slow degrees, began to release a cold, fine rain.

“Shit! There goes the bows!” grumbled Chert.

“Now it’s time for our contest,” laughed Wren in reply to his remark.

“Stay out of the way of those crazy magicians!” was all that Gord could add as he readied for the horsemen to ride them down.

As the lances lowered and destriers began to move forward at a trot, the heavens were torn by jagged strokes of lightning. These bolts streaked down amidst enemy knights and their attendant riders, making metal glow and crackle, bringing down men and steeds in smoking ruins. In reply, a whirlwind suddenly swooped down out of the lowering sky and tore into the ranks of the waiting woodsfolk.

The cavalry charged ahead to escape the crackling electricity, and their adversaries ran to meet them rather than face the roaring destruction of the tornado that was shredding trees and men alike. Once melee was joined, the dreadful destructions of the deadly dweomers ceased, for bloody work was now the sole purview of fighter and ranger, barbarian and cavalier.

The rain went from drizzle to downpour, augmented by sudden bursts of great, blinding raindrops. These conditions prevented the imperial horsemen from making a slaughter of their unmounted foes. Nevertheless, their lances and great swords took a heavy toll on the brave defenders. Gord fought silently and kept near Chert, who was now nearly berserk, swinging his broad axe with both hands and so powerfully as to sunder steel and flesh in a single stroke. In turn, Chert stayed near the amazonian female who commanded their squad-a unit that now numbered only four.

The ground underfoot became a mire of mud, blood, and bodies. There were screams and howls mixed with banging and clashing, a cacophony that numbed the mind as much as the weapon-work deadened the soul. Gord lost count of how many men he had met. Some were before him one moment, and after stroke and counter were swept away in the press of milling, shouting, struggling humanity. Others remained long enough to thrust or cut and parry until Gord slew them. In the process he had taken many wounds himself, but none were serious. His greatest enemy now was the growing fatigue brought by exertion and tension of battle. How long could this awful melee continue? Until one side or the other was dead, or broke and fled. Either way, he must fight on.

Gord saw that the cavalrymen, most of them dismounted now, were slowly breaking off and falling back, but supporting them were a body of mercenaries and a group of men armed with long voulges. Gord realized that fresh contingents of the Overking’s large force had managed to cross the river and take up formation. Through breaks in the crowd of warriors, he could see that beyond these newly arrived soldiers were a great cluster of men still wading the ford. Then the rain sheeted down again, and his vision was obscured. Gord prepared himself for the end, silently cursing himself for ever wishing to have seen a battle between armies.

“Stop gawking at the frigging enemy and get the hell out of here!” Chert shouted in his ear.

Gord started and looked around. The woodsfolk were sprinting westward into the trees, away from the imperial army. There seemed to be a few hundred newly arrived war-band members there, trying to make a rear guard for the exhausted, beaten remnant now in flight from the ford. A few slingers among these newcomers, augmented by stragglers from the worn groups disengaging from combat, enabled the woodsmen to manage a desultory discharge. Gord was glad he had no missiles left and could pass through this line without feeling cowardly.

In a few minutes the woodsmen were clear of the battle scene, and the rain suddenly stopped. Leaders, chiefs, and captains urged the retreating force to hurry on, away from Woodford and the army that would certainly be in full pursuit. After another hundred yards of retreat Gord understood the reason for this order, for he and his comrades were passing through a formation of carefully concealed sylvan elves, just taking bows from oiled leather cases and setting spears and swords at ready. There would be yet another nasty surprise for the invading horde before this day ended.

Finally, hours later, the scattered remnants of the once-proud assemblage of free forest fighters began rallying in a small valley south of the battle area. Of the thousands who had gone forth, only about half remained. They were all dejected and downcast when Gellor and several other men, accompanied by two women and a slender elf, worked their way through the slumped warriors. Gellor’s presence heartened the fighters, and he soon had their attention. Gord, Chert, and Wren moved closer to where he and the group with him stood. Gellor waved, smiled, and spoke.

“What you have done today will go down in the annals of history!” he said warmly. “Don’t feel defeated-you have won! Six thousand of you have killed or wounded more than that number of the enemy! You have wiped out the advance division of the Overking’s army, mauled his vaunted guardsmen, foot and horse alike, and blunted the edge of Ivid’s invasion. You had no choice but to fall back before an army that numbered twice your strength. You took the worst of clerics’ and magicians’ spells, and held your ground. Only numbers of fresh and heavily armored foes forced you from your slaughter. Now rejoice at this: The Grand Marshal remains in camp at Woodford, afraid to come farther, and he’ll soon turn tail and march home to Edgefield. The invasion is over, and you have won the day for us all!”