The marching of boots not too far away caused the earthen walls to tremble and loose dirt to fall away. Mozi reigned the bubbling claustrophobia as he and the soldiers of 1st and 2nd Battalions waited in the near darkness of their underground chamber. Thanks to their earthbenders, the job only took half a night of shaping the earth, and with their skill they were able to create the void far closer to the enemy army’s route than before with wooden covers.
Xing’s training regime for them had made the loyal earthbenders of the 11th just as knowledgeable and proficient as their Earth Kingdom counterparts, even if they might not be as powerful. That competence allowed them to falsify ground density to fool earthbender scouts with impressive effectiveness, while building a far more comfortable and ventilated hiding hole. As usual, they hid underneath rougher terrain like islands of shrubs or rocky outcrops, to further minimize detection.
Redesigned periscopes gave a discreet view of the surface. Smaller and lighter than those used in the navy, Mozi found these devices rather useful, even on the surface. The scouts were definitely happy about owning them, allowing them to not stick their necks out as much.
The 3rd and 4th Battalions were on the opposite end of the marching force, so essentially the enemy was moving between them right now. But a pincer ambush was not the goal here. It’d reveal the regiment’s trump card unnecessarily. Instead, they patiently waited for the army to march past before the earthbenders carefully created a ramp up to the surface.
Now safely in the enemy’s rear, the majority of the 11th Regiment regrouped in the safety of a trench, but not before taking their time to prop up the wooden boards they brought with them in their hiding holes and roughly hack at the dirt walls with shovels. A ‘red herring’, as Xing would say.
Mozi didn’t know why it was called that, considering that there was nothing about red herrings that were misleading or cunning. As far as he knew they were caught rather straightforwardly like most other fish, and showed no remarkable skill. Maybe it’s because Xing got fooled by their taste?
The gathered battalions waited for evening and the Earth Kingdom army to set up camp, and only when their earthen walls rose did the soldiers breathe a sigh of relief. The more speculative part was over, now they could move forward to far simpler things.
Captain Sungho and his scout units broke away from the battalions to disappear into the dusk, while Mozi finalized the orders with the captains. General Sho had requested them to deal with this group before it joined up with the coalition of Earth Kingdom defenders. It would also serve as a reminder of the regiment’s abilities to the rest of the Northern Pacification Army, after being stuck in the reserve for a while now.
Mozi and the other officers didn’t begrudge the general for that, they knew about the necessary games of politics, even within the supposedly meritocratic Fire Nation Army. Reputations must be cultivated, and merits and honors dispensed fairly to not only placate the colonels and captains, but also win them over to the princess’ side.
This was officially her operation, after all. Allowing the commanders to gain commendations here would leave them at the very least more favorable to her, or at best wholly tie them and their influence - however little it might be right now - to her fortunes simply out of gratitude.
So the main army would be preparing to face and break the gathered defenders of the Earth Kingdom in a few days’ time, while the 11th would deal with minor details like this. It’d probably be a bloody but decisive battle, with plenty of feats to sing about. A shame that Mozi and most soldiers of the 11th never liked those kinds of songs.
And it’s not like there wasn’t any honor to gain, anyway.
They were about to assault an army at least four times the regiment’s size, and even at night it was nothing to scoff at. The important part was to ensure that casualties remained light, to shut up the court generals back home before they could spout excuses of desperate gambles and reckless bravado.
Cricket songs began chirping, bringing back a clearer picture of the enemy perimeter. There were heavier patrols, but that would not be important tonight, not with how they’d be attacking. Rufen’s battalion was only slightly off course, but the main initiator of the plan would still work.
The earthbenders began to slowly tunnel their way closer towards the camp, keeping to a zig-zagging pattern as Xing’s doctrine dictated. It minimized visual detection somewhat, but also gave the troops some cover in case of retaliatory fire. All but useless in conventional sieges against enemy earthbenders (or even waterbenders, if they had enough water to flood the trenches), but definitely good for surprise attacks like this.
As the soldiers crept closer, they finally heard the cricket chirping that signaled the 5th Battalion’s deployment. The tunneling ceased, and the soldiers of the four battalions prepared themselves. Soot and dirt was reapplied on their armor, the integrity of naphtha jars double-checked, and reminders were dispensed in harsh whispers.
“Any time now, Rufen,” Mozi muttered, never liking the churning anticipation before a fight.
And then, he heard the first signal. Improvised megaphones hidden underground along with the choir of soldiers roared out a song on the opposite end of the camp to draw the attention of the defenders.
Stand up all the night and call the fight,
Let your mind go wild before the light,
Here we come, the army of the night,
Mater Maria!
Nobody bothered asking where Xing learned the rough song from or what some of the words meant, but boy was it catchy. Immediately the periscopes picked up movement from within the makeshift fort. The patrols froze in confusion for a moment, before running back into the safety of their walls.
Smart folks, at least this enemy commander learned not to offer up their squads piecemeal to the darkness.
Lined up side by side and bound to pray,
Sent to die and fight the final day,
Army of the night, we came to stay,
Mater Maria!
Mozi clung to the wall of the trench as he spied the unmistakable rise of naphtha smoke coming on the other end of the walls. The slingers were probably fleeing after their volley into their hiding spots before the enemy found them, or luring any pursuers into ambushes.
Hopefully the former. Less chances of casualties.
The song continued to echo into the darkness, and the first hints of the enemy being spooked showed in their sallying up. More columns of smoke rose up, Rufen’s slingers must have either remained comfortably undetected or they’d silenced any nearby enemies.
Regardless, the building chaos suited Mozi’s liking. The guards on the wall were being pulled away to the front, leaving only a skeleton crew to watch the sections that weren’t subject to loud singing and noxious smoke. They probably thought that they’d have enough time on their earthen defense to alert the others in case their foes tried to flank around. It worked against other Fire Nation forces, of course.
Mozi almost broke into a grin as he looked forward to proving them wrong once more.
The second signal was given, in the form of a bolt of fire streaking up into the heavens. Rufen should be feinting a siege now, laying down concentrated fire on the walls from some distance away. If the defenders didn’t sally out, their earthbenders would be stuck repairing the bulwarks throughout the night and risk getting exhausted if a follow up attack came.
Another stream of fire shot up into the sky. Mozi grinned this time as the captains behind him chuckled darkly. The enemy were moving out. Now came the important part: Timing things just right.
After years of fighting together, Mozi trusted the captain of the 5th Battalion to maintain distance from the enemy, even if they somehow managed to send out the whole army to chase the battalion down. He’d have made Scout Captain long ago if the job didn’t require him to keep his mouth shut most of the time.
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Straining his ears, Mozi picked up the cricket song. The enemy was emptying most of its forces out of their walled camp. Two-thirds, at the most. It was good enough.
“Go,” Mozi whispered, and the earthbenders took little time to lower the trench wall into a ramp. The four battalions poured towards the walls. Arrows from the scouts silenced the guards on it before they could raise the alarm, further shortening the time for the defenders to muster an effective response. With how close the trench got, it didn’t take much running to reach the base of the wall.
Earthbenders quickly punched their hands onto its surface and promptly blasted out a hole, with firebenders sending out loud but useless blasts at the same time to simulate an explosion of blasting jelly. Mozi joined in with tedious but necessary subterfuge, and quickly followed the troops through the new entrance. Fire bolts flew in the air as four full battalions of the 11th Regiment spilled into the Earth Kingdom camp, sowing confusion amongst its defenders.
The majority of them were stuck at the other end, clumped tightly together as they were in the midst of sallying out. Kai and Ping led the more skilled firebenders surging out, fiery explosions propelling them through the air towards the bunched mob. Naphtha jars were tossed into the tight formations to suffocate the gateway in thick, noxious smoke.
A number of the enemy officers were at the back, organizing the sallying operation. They were among the first to fall as the firebenders plunged blades and burning fists into them.
And then the killing really began.
The rest of the 11th Regiment fanned out, killing the confused and panicked defenders in their way. A ruthless, constant barrage of fire into the smoke-filled press of bodies by the gate reaped a gruesome tally. Liberal use of naphtha soon had the whole camp shrouded in stinking smog, leaving many of the Earth Kingdom troops coughing and vulnerable. More enemy officers were targeted and swarmed upon to keep the enemy disordered.
Mozi himself spied a general and quickly rushed over, with a few squads following after him. The prey was joining his bodyguards in hacking and coughing as they tried to maintain formation, too busy trying to breathe to bellow orders. Mozi and his men and women crashed into them, spears breaking as they plunged into the heavy armor of the Earth Kingdom soldiers. Brutal close-quarters fighting ensued against the survivors, the unique fighting style of the 11th Royal Regiment forcing the opponents on the backfoot and keeping them from so much as stomping their foot to earthbend.
Daggers were jammed into armpits and throats. Fire seared the exposed feet of earthbenders. Non-bending infantry tackled the enemy to the ground to keep them from bending effectively.
Mozi sent a kick into the groin of a bodyguard, forcing his chi out through his knee to properly incapacitate his foe. Then he dodged a slash of a broadsword, and replied by swiftly pulling a dagger from his belt and shoving it into the neck of its wielder. He then shot an elbow strike into the shoulders of another foe, fouling an attempt to strike at a prone firebender. Mozi let the trooper finish that opponent, he found a clear path to the general.
Said commander was doing a good job of staying alive, considering he was constantly coughing as he fended off 11th’s soldiers. He was forced into sloppy earthbending thanks to the constant harassment, but it was still potent enough to impale overextended troopers with rocky spikes. And his bladework was similarly impressive as well. The general’s glaive batted aside spears and flames almost casually, and even as Mozi dove in, the massive blade was being buried into a sergeant’s gut in an eviscerating chop.
The unfortunate sergeant didn’t waste her last moments, and she grabbed onto the blade stuck in her belly with the last of her strength to keep the general from withdrawing it out. Mozi quietly saluted the woman’s final duty, and thanked the opportunity it gave him, as the enemy’s stubbornness to retrieve his weapon left him open for the briefest of seconds.
As the general finally yanked out his glaive and kicked the sergeant away, Mozi flew in with a flaming punch, delivering a literally explosive blow right in his face. The man barely dodged aside, and screamed in pain as he got away with only a seared face. But testament to his skill and combat instinct, the commander did not drop his weapon, instead he squinted through the burning agony and wove the glaive around in a warding pattern.
A shame that the pattern was one of the more common styles that the 11th trained their non-bending combat against. Mozi easily slipped past the guard, slapping the blade away with his bare hand before sending a knee right up the surprised general’s chin. This time, the burst of flame thoroughly burned through his skull, the force of it actually sending his helmet flying and bursting the eyeballs.
The fighting continued, actually becoming harder as the sallying army tried to force their way back in. Some of the returning force had enough brains to get their camp walls earthbended down, allowing more of the army to pour back in. The battalions used the flung of their naphtha in response, and dove into the thick smoke screen to engage in chaotic melee.
In the nearly-blind conditions, the regiment’s earthbenders were free to let loose, stomping up columns and spikes to disrupt or outright crush enemy formations. The sudden bout of earthbending against them caused the Earth Kingdom ranks to devolve further into chaos, and Mozi heard calls from the remaining officers to stop getting in each other’s way.
“Cut it out!”
“Watch your targets!”
Mozi reveled in the experience of watching the enemy’s coherency crumble away and finally surrendering to gravity of shattered morale. Finally, after dozens of minutes of fighting, the first of the Earth Kingdom soldiers began to drop their weapons and plead for surrender.
It was a highly infectious call, one that quickly spread throughout the slowly fading smog. Soon, pretty much the whole army and its cowering camp followers were on their knees, empty hands held high or behind their heads.
Mozi waited for the final tally before he allowed himself to smile.
“87 dead on our end, with at least three times that many wounded,” Kai reported. “In exchange for four hundred or so bodies from their side, most of them piled up by the gate there. We’re still counting their wounded, considering some are still bleeding out rather badly, but it looks like about maybe…a thousand?”
“Prisoners?
“Including their wounded? Looks like we’ve bagged about a half of the army. The majority of those outside the walls have fucked off when they saw the surrenders, but Rufen’s team got some.”
Good. That was very good. Around four thousand bodies for less than a tenth of total casualties. The princess would no doubt be pleased with the results, and it would further add to the 11th’s string of feats without stepping on anyone’s toes.
The light of dawn was beginning to paint the sky as Mozi returned to the regiment’s camp - which was guarded by General Sho’s own 16th Regiment - to write up the good news. He found a sealed message waiting in his tent, with no signs of tampering.
General Sho was a surprisingly considerate field commander.
Mozi broke the seal and unfurled the letter, his eyes quickly reading through its contents, finding and decrypting the simple cipher with near natural ease. He coughed in disbelief at Xing’s report, and then slowly reread the whole thing to make sure he hadn’t gotten the wrong cipher pattern. A third attempt confirmed that Xing wrote what he wrote, and Mozi found himself sitting down on his bedroll, sighing aloud.
The lieutenant colonel got up, and then dragged himself out of his tent to gather the captains and the quartermaster. Hopefully between them, they’d be able to figure out the logistical and political challenges of hosting and hopefully hatching dragon eggs.