In the twilight hours prior to the engagement, priests gave sermons and blessed the assemblage of men. Handed to as many as possible were vials of Holy Water, and those that could afford them equipped blessed silver weapons. Even with these things, the atmosphere among the Francusian army was somber at best. The undead had cut a bloody swathe through the south of their new nation and forced their king to surrender the Normand region to the Anglish. Even if they turned back the undead army here, they would be forced to fight another war to reclaim their lost southern territory from the undead who now controlled it.
Everyone who lived there was now either dead or undead, and the prospect of potentially having to put down those who once were friend and family, even in their current state, was a bitter pill to swallow. The undead would always attack at night, and the fact that they did not tire meant they would reach the battlefield without feeling the effects of having marched several miles before battle. The only upside was that the size of the undead army was likely to have been highly exaggerated by those few frightened souls who managed to escape. Undead never numbered more than a few thousand strong, and they never acted as groups.
The baseless rumors spread by the scattered survivors of masses of undead moving in formation and displaying strategy and tactics were just that, baseless rumors. There was no way that something like that would happen. Even when the Abominable King terrorized the world more than fifteen centuries ago the undead never acted in such a manner and instead merely swarmed their foe in a shambling tide of bone and rotten flesh. Even if the rumors were even slightly true there was no way that the undead ‘formations’ would be as large or as numerous as what was told by the terrified survivors.
They were just ruled by fear, and all their wild tales were just delusions concocted by their terrified minds. And so, the battle lines were drawn and the Francusian forces prepared for their second least favorite form of combat, with defending from a siege being the first. Bonfires were lit to help the living see in the all-consuming shadow that covered the land, but even then there were ominous signs that they were not in for as easy a fight as they thought as a fog rolled in with it being only slightly pushed back by the roaring flames.
The long line of pike-men several men deep was the first line of defense, with a few groups of mounted noblemen on the flanks to make charges into their flimsy foe. Behind the pike-men was several groups of longbowmen, a holdover from the days when Francus was part of the greater nation of Albion. This formation was more than likely going to be overkill when dealing with a motley assortment of Skeletons and Zombies, one of whom was always unarmed and one which was only rarely armed.
The fog was a nuisance, but all it did was obscure the vision a bit, nothing too serious when the enemy was slower, dumber, far less numerous and far less well equipped than you. When the rhythmic stomping of feet as heard over the dullness of the night and the crackling of the bonfires, it was initially assumed that this was just a kind of non-verbal battle cry someone in the line had started and had caught on. Then it was noticed that this stomping noise was not coming from the line, but rather far in front of it.
Like the curtains at a theatre had been lifted, the fog unexpectedly broke and not even thirty meters away was a force not seen since the mythic days when the Heroes fought against the Devil himself. No, that was only partially correct, as the force of undead that were now in view were far more organized and disciplined than those made by the Abominable King. A line made up of several blocks of Skeletons wielding spears slowly and methodically advanced on the pike-men and in an uncharacteristically intelligent move for the undead used their spears to move the pikes out of the way with swift smacks.
Still shocked by the unbelievable numbers of the undead and their very un-undead movements, a few precious seconds were lost, and the Skeleton Spearmen were able to get far too close. Only when the first few men were skewered by the dark, metallic spears of the Skeletons did the shock finally wear off and action was taken. The pike wall remade itself as everyone took a few steps back, giving ground but also allowing there to be room to make a sturdier pike wall. As the living stepped back, the speared men fell to the ground and those in the rows behind where they had been stepped forward to take their fallen comrades places.
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The nobles who were mounted on their horses finally decided to move and in two sweeping pincers advanced around the oncoming wall of Skeletons, only realizing then the magnitude of the threat. The undead were not merely numbering in the high hundreds, nor were they numbering in the higher reaches of around one thousand. As the cavalry ran farther and farther, they began to face the ominous fact that the undead that they were facing outnumbered everyone by a factor of at least ten to one. Their force was over 50,000 strong, and by rough estimation the numbers of Skeletons alone was over 80,000.
However, due to their attention being focused on the Skeleton Army that was gradually destroying their front line, the nobles neglected to look up or to their left/right (depending on which side of the twin pincers they were on). One person in the left pincer took a quick look to the side and in a panic yelled out, “BRACE!”. Before anyone could react however, several units of Dire wolves slammed into their side and sent them tumbling into disarray. The right pincer was not in a good position either, as they were hit from two sides by two units of Fel Bats that had seemingly dropped in on them from nowhere.
Behind the line of Skeleton Spearmen was a few units of Skeleton Archers, who launched volley after volley over the heads of their compatriots and into the poorly armored peasant levees. While the Longbowmen behind the failing pike wall were launching attacks of their own, arrows were practically useless against Skeletons, especially ones that wore armor. Unless the skull was shattered a Skeleton would keep coming, and while arrows coming in from overhead did have the help of gravity, they were not going to be enough to penetrate the iron helmets that adorned the Skeleton Spearmen.
The Skeleton Spearmen kept pushing forward, and the living kept having to fall back, giving the archers a pain as they would have to move backwards occasionally while firing as fast as possible. Every man in the pike wall and the archer blocks all were asking the same question, “Where is the cavalry? Why ware they not hitting the undead in the rear?” They did not know that the nobles had been torn apart by the fangs and claws of the Dire Wolves and Fel Bats, but ignorance is not always bliss.
The two things that broke the last bits of morale and sent the survivors fleeing came almost simultaneously. First was the realization that the king and his entourage which included the priests had already fled the field, leaving those who were fighting to die by themselves. The second thing that shattered morale was when the corpses of those who had been buried on the field where they had died not even three weeks ago rose up from their graves and began to attack the living.
Kain had raised as many units of Zombies as he could right in the middle and rear of the living forces, which led to the pike wall collapsing as they were attacked not only from behind but also from within their own ranks. The archers were luckier than the poor pike-men who were being torn apart by the double whammy of Zombies and Skeleton Spearmen. They at least had the ability to flee around the units of Zombies and were not immediately in the crosshairs of the Skeletons, so those who were not unlucky or injured managed to make it off the field and get some distance in between them and the untiring tide of undeath.
…
Kain walked out onto the battlefield and surveyed his victorious army. Things had gone swimmingly, and he was now in the position to crush the rest of Francus like a champagne glass in an industrial press. His Fel Bats were tracking the cowardly king and his retinue who had left his army to fend for itself, and it seemed that he was going to be taking refuge in an old fortress from before Kain had went to sleep. Yes, the only fortress in the whole of Albion to ever endure the full might of the Darksol Empire and emerge intact (mostly). The Castle-town of Ma-Ginotte, the only fortified city in Albion to endure the war machine that had powered through most of the known world.
This time things would be different. This time the force attacking the fortress-city was not a disorganized rabble of thousands of individual undead all swarming together and separately, but rather a cohesive army that had discipline, strategy and tactics. Yes, this time Ma-Ginotte would fall, and the myth of the invincible and undefeatable fortifications that protected all from harm would be revealed to be nothing more than a fairy tale used to keep children from being afraid.
Ma-Ginotte would fall, and with it Francus itself.