I am the virtuous hand, I am the blood of all man, I am the steel in the land.
What was all of this for, one must wonder. To be revealed soon, by Tyr's reckoning, but it had always been part of the plan, since the very beginning when he'd made a simple promise.
They came. A bit late and nobody knew why that was, but they'd always known it would come eventually. A vast host that had inflated beyond the initial projection of a hundred thousand, until it had become the largest army Tyr had ever heard of. Definitely the greatest force ever assembled in the modern era. Yet still they were, by his reckoning, simple clowns in armor.
Dead men walking, and at quite the impressive number for a marching graveyard.
Half a million, five hundred thousand soldiers marching across the arid flatlands that dominated the interior successor states. Even Haran didn't have a professional army so large, though they didn't need to, their primus was deterrent enough for any large incursion. And Tyr was quite confident the 80,000 or so legionnaires would split this rabble like a dry rotted log, regardless. There was a lot to be said for quality over quantity.
“This is not ideal,” As always, it was Tiber with the pessimistic take on things. Amistad had recently had a standing force of about seven thousand after the conclusion of training. Men were simple creatures, and after the revelation that yet more people from all the known nations had piled into the attacking force... Over half had deserted. Three thousand soldiers were what they were left with. 167 of the enemy to just one of theirs, if one were the optimistic sort. “Pushing towards offense was a mistake, we should retreat immediately.”
He'd said that before, and now he was repeating himself. Everyone at the table nodded in agreement, but not Tyr.
Tiber had seen war, and many great battles that went beyond a simple skirmish on the road. From Tyr's perspective, despite that, Tiber had grown old and lost some of that edge and daring, but he was still wise to the minutia of command. Thus he was Tyr's military advisor, and even he admitted that things weren't all bad. Making the prince aware of several other factors at play, namely the monstrosity of an effort required to move so many people overland. But that was sort of obvious to begin with, really.
“I call myself 'prince' still in my monologues, sometimes,” Tyr smiled softly, “Isn't that funny? I'm a king but I'll never really consider myself one. Heavy lies the crown on the conscientious tyrant, or something...”
“You are a prince. And a king, think of yourself however you'd like and get back on task.”
The thing about a host numbering half a million is that they couldn't all march altogether. Tyr had seen them assembled outside the Krieg with a divination spell, a mock siege to force that state to join the cause, alongside many others. After that they'd have to split into component legions and range far afield of one another. Otherwise, they'd forage the ground barren, stomp entire forests flat in their wake, drink rivers dry – and that was just the men.
The horses and beasts of burden carrying knights and supplies would do far worse. Dimensional artifacts could carry quite a bit, but not that much, and nobody seemed to be invested in fixing the problem, with Amistad being as the defacto capital for all magical artifacts, naturally they wouldn't sell anything of benefit to an army they'd known would come years ago.
Thus, the 'crusade' would split their forces into a trident, the majority of the army would go south, along the seaway and river demarcating the Varian border. The other larger component would march along the northern rim. Saltwater could be purified with magic and that is probably why they'd do such a thing, it was much easier to transport large volumes of goods along the waterways as well. Such a force needed to have an extremely fine grasp on their logistics, or otherwise their commanders might very inconveniently perish in the night. Marching through Baccia en masse wasn't a rational option, it was too hot and arid.
And yet they had done that as well, amazingly, and Tyr planned to take advantage of it.
Seaside environs tended to be more mild, easier on the body, but here in the arid scrub lands all of that padding and armor became a man's worst nightmare. The knights and commanders leading their army almost certainly had climate control artifacts, and would command men from a position lacking any kind of empathy for them. Even if those pompous pricks were the type to feel such a thing. Slowly but surely whittling down their morale until they were nothing but walking corpses waiting to be told when to die. It didn't help that they weren't aware that the rare underground springs were poisoned with the buzzing static of impure mana below the earth. Hastur had to have known that, but he hadn't seemed to share it with his buddies in the crusade. The Baccian 'desert' was a hellscape, and a death trap, and that was where they would begin the breaking.
“How many down the center?” Sigi asked a real question, paying great attention to the map with well practiced eyes.
“The first component is about ten thousand men. The host to the north is fifteen, same for the south. Roughly five thousand in total sit between, the hosts seeking to tie the noose around our border are either dead from sickness or left behind by the main bodies already.” Some present were almost universally taken aback by the revelation that Okami could speak – but nobody wanted to interrupt him. It seemed the great wolf didn't take to conversing with others in his free time. “Their necks are bared, now is the time to put fang to purpose, my sister.”
“I by no means wish to insult you, great spirit,” Lina cleared her throat, showing no sign that the talking wolf was a strange thing to behold. “But even if we manage to overcome the three to one ratio between us and the nearest force, could they not walk passed us? Around us? They have so many, they could bury us in corpses until we cannot move.”
“I am not a military strategist, little one.” Okami snorted, he had spoken with Lina before and spent a great deal of time with the tiny human. If asked, he'd say he favored her, and looked highly on her bond with the element of water. “But it is common knowledge among hunters to strike when the prey begins to limp and lag. Do not give them time to cower and drag away, strike the neck and be done with it. Their pack is large but so is ours, you will see.”
“I have a plan for the others,” Tyr mused quietly, more to himself than anyone else. “I also have some great news pertaining to our most immediate threat.”
“Oh?” Tiber mused with a grim smile. Whatever Tyr did, and no matter how foolish, Tiber would follow if allowed. Would die if allowed. He looked young but he was still old, going out in a storm of glory was not such a bad thing. “And what's that?”
“The ground is mostly sand between these buttes,” Tyr bent down toward the ground under the blazing sun and ran his fingers through the dry dirt.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Relevancy of that?” Rafael was back. Maybe he'd always been there, just waiting for the signal – serving Primus Alexandros faithfully.
“Much easier to bury the bodies after we're through with them.”
–
It was commonplace for armies facing one another to meet in parley between battle lines. Not so common when the enemy in question was declared apostate and excommunicated, but it was obvious why the approaching force had chosen to do so. They had no choice, and he'd known that – there was sense to coming out here and it had very little to do with thinning the herd. Just a small sliver, but it was good enough for him.
Tyr had arranged his men in ranks of three on the hanging ridge, and Lernin had assisted with the rest. It was crude, but from their angle one could only see a force stretching for hundreds of meters with a mirrored forest of spears at their back to showcase illusory depth of their ranks. It wasn't an illusion, not literally, just a vast collection of earthen spikes risen from the ground. To the common man Amistad struck fear in hearts by name alone, a place where mages were the norm rather than a rare exception of birth, and few self respecting mages would ever serve a crusade. There were tens of thousands of mages there, and that made them terrifying.
Most of said mages had run as far and fast and their feet could take them, they were the hunted and few remained behind to become prey.
If only they knew that Tyr had taken only the regulars from training, green soldiers without a single talented spellcaster among them, all of the mages he did possess were elsewhere. But to the average soldier, the frosty mists Lina summoned to keep the soldiers cool served dual purpose. The ground they stood on was all fog, pouring down the red hued rock and into the basin where the enemy army awaited. An army of phantoms, their shadows stretching like a fanged maw from their high roost. Sun at their back, mere black figures in silhouette to those staring up at them. War was more a game of the mind than a game of spears and swords, Tiber had said, and through this they had engaged in scores of posturing exhibitions. All along the battle line, until the enemy was convinced they were surrounded by thousands of spellcasters.
They were eerily poor in their equipment and preparation, this force, and that did not make much sense, but all he really needed was meat.
“I am--”
“I do not care,” Tyr scowled the paunchy man's greeting away. The inquisitor's skin had an oil sheen of sweat on it, his face was pale and the veins around his eyes were swollen and blue. Baccians lived the way that they did, separated by many leagues between settlements, because of this. The salt flats that had once been lakes were cursed. The ground poisoned and burning. It killed men who stayed in it for too long without adequate protection, and few knew why. Hastur did, Tyr knew that and kept turning it over in his head, wondering for what purpose that man wanted all of these men to perish out here. It didn't make any sense, it's not like this force contained many mages to aid in completing his supposed plan. “Surrender, lay down your arms, turn around and go home. Or stay and die. It makes no difference to me, I will happily slaughter the bunch of you weakling southerners. By the looks of it, you're all halfway there, just a finger and I could topple you over like so many dominos.”
Amistad's own troops were healthy, standing tall and traversing the higher points and rocky spines of shattered hills and mountains. It was slower, but much easier on their bodies. The quicker way through Baccia was to go low, to traverse the flats. To walk through the heat that pricked and scabbed one's skin, made their hair and teeth fall out. Or in the case of the very disorganized mob behind the noble, who looked to have lost twenty pounds in the last week alone, they'd fall incredibly ill otherwise. 'Soldiers' were hitting their knees, vomiting blood onto the salty sand. The knights and paladins above them weren't afforded the opportunity to reproach, feeling much the same way. Tyr watched in morbid interest as one of them keeled over and died on the spot.
Someone laughed, Tyr didn't know who, and the gaunt faced inquisitor facing him turned a new shade of red at the disrespect.
He didn't need an answer, in any event. The man was honor-bound to refuse, and the moment the first syllable started to form on his lips – Tyr gave the order. “Kill them all.”
It didn't take long. Samson ran roughshod over them, with the blood he was so strong that he could tear men in half with his bare hands, and the others were only slightly inferior to his demonic visage, this was a battle that would be recording in no history. Just a slaughter, and few present reveled in it, as Raphael swathed the field with storming sheets of icy razors, and Tyr did as he had always excelled at, he killed. No need for magic, on his part.
As said, these men were already well on the way to death, what he offered them was a solemn mercy, Tyr wasn't even sure if he could save them had he tried. Those who scattered when the magic rained down and managed to avoid direct damage would die anyways. Either the cursed earth would swallow them up, or a flatter would, or any one of the horrifying beasts that lay in the vast stretches of caverns dotting the canyons. In minutes, three quarters of the army was butchered. Thousands of lives ended in a flash, not a single mage or ward protecting them, like they were an army engaging in centuries old and outdated military doctrine.
Not a soul had expected Tyr Faeron to actively choose to bring his army into the middle of Baccia, to engage them on their war path, it seemed. But that was strange, too... Where were their diviners? Their artifacts? Mages might not be common, but the church had pioneered the artificio, they could afford construct barriers and mana engines. Airships, all manner of things – and yet none had been brought, not down the middle.
“That was... Quite easy?” Rafael marched through the bleeding bodies in the sand and leaned down with squinted eyes, poking at a corpse that seemed rotting from the inside out. “Did you do this? This man is an executor, a fairly high rank among the faith militant. He should by all measures be an equal to myself.”
“Wasn't me,” Tyr replied simply, giving another order. “Pick the bodies clean of any valuables, keep what you take. I speak in the name of Thanatos himself that all belongings of the aggressor now belong to we of Amistad. And there will be no sacrilege in this.”
“You should be careful profaning the gods, Tyr,” Lina frowned. Whether her knightly order accepted her or not, she would always be a paladin. All gods were sacred, or at the very least worth fearing. “It isn't appropriate, even for one who has claims to have spoken to them.”
Tyr was crouched to the sand, rolling over the limp body of the delegate with a strange look on his face. The man's eyes were wide open, stomach distended, and all over his body there were red sores weeping pus. Slowly, and gently, Tyr closed the man's eyes. He was a good man after all, this Derrick. A good man with a good wife and a good family, and judgment on this one was a foregone conclusion. To walk the plains of Elysium alongside those of the light that his line had revered for centuries. “He is here with us. He sees, and knows us, and merely waits to greet more of these puppet men at his river.”
“If you can speak to gods...” Mikhail joked, he was mostly just here for moral support. Only loosing a few arrows and awkwardly looking around, wondering why he'd been brought at all. Fennic too, stood beside him. All bedecked in white now, instead of the old black. Blue cloaks and enameled armor that matched the prince's eyes and hair respectively. Mikhail knew it wasn't some act of vanity of egoism, these were the colors of his mother's imperial guard once. He didn't know why Tyr had chosen it, but it was a far more handsome and eye catching way of dressing. “Why don't you ask them to tell their people to leave us alone?” Mikhail was laughing, until he saw the look Tyr gave him.
Completely devoid of emotion, staring back at the older man with an indiscernible expression. A shuddering ran its way up Mikhail's spine at the depths present in that gaze, the sheer and utter hate. “I will have words with them one day, but first they must see with their own eyes.”
“See what...?”
“Me.”