“No matter whether you merely dig pits to make ends meet or create masterpieces sought after by lords and ladies high and low, always remember to take pride in the work you do. How would others appreciate your work if you yourself, the creator, could not do so?” - Saying attributed to Guillan del Cuvo, philosopher from Levain, circa 339 FP.
“Hoo boy, here come the misbegotten bastards,” muttered Karven Horst, youngest son to Stefan Horst and one of the lieutenants in the Horst’s Hellraisers. The relatively young dwarf – along with his subordinates, roughly a fifth of the company – had been the one sent with Nestor’s coalition army while the main bulk of the Hellraisers worked to set up more defenses within the territory of the border duchies, just to be safe.
Like many combat engineers, the younger Horst had a near-maniacal obsession with fortifications and various sorts of structures and traps. To say that he and his people enjoyed receiving such a challenge like when they had to set up the battlefield in a relatively short time was an understatement, and they went above and beyond the expected to finish their work on time.
Not only that, but the dwarven engineers also pulled off many, many nasty tricks of their own. Some of them seemed minor at a glance, but actually had lasting effects.
For example, the trenches they dug to serve as traps and obstacles to the enemy had the sides that faced the hill reinforced with stones, to increase the chances of injury for anyone that stepped on them. The stone backing also rose a bit higher than the soil around it, which made it a trip hazard on top of everything.
Not only that, but the bottom of said trenches were turned to loose sand on irregular intervals, which meant that even if their foes were to fill up the trenches – something they would do after they ran afoul of it the first time, unless they were fools – some parts would still cave in and form into new obstacles that had to be filled in once more later on.
The trenches themselves were just grooves dug into the ground, with no particularly nasty additions to them. Some favored setting traps with spikes and the like, but Karven knew that a twisted ankle or a broken shin would keep a soldier out of the fighting just as certainly as a sharpened stake through the foot.
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Neither did he plan to cause fatalities with his traps, though no doubt some unfortunate bastards would die anyway because they fell the wrong way or got trampled by their own fellows. His intent was to cause as many injuries as he could while also delaying the enemy advance or forcing them to break their cohesion, one or the other.
In many ways, injured soldiers were worse than dead soldiers, as an injured soldier had to be cared for, which naturally tied up more resources to them, for no guarantee that they would be able to participate in the fighting at all. As such, causing injuries would exhaust the enemy’s supplies faster than killing their soldiers, hence the plan behind the traps his company had set up.
On their enemy’s side, they started off the battle without much preamble, as a good forty to fifty thousand of their infantry marched forward in tight formation, with their archers following behind. At the same time, nearly half of the enemy’s cavalry force – around fifteen thousand or so, perhaps – guided their steeds towards the section south of the hill where the road used to run through.
It was a simple and obvious strategy, one that was not surprising to see employed by someone in a position of strength, to simply overpower the weaker enemy before them and send a fast detachment to break through and circle around their back. Clearly the bastards either failed to take account of their defensive preparations or looked down upon it, though.
And that would cost them, Karven thought.
Sure enough, before too long some of the infantry soldiers ran afoul of the trenches his people dug. Enemy soldiers fell over, some falling flat on their face, even. Others who had the misfortune to step into a deep trench while maintaining their steady jog even screamed out as the momentum of their jog was enough to break their knees in twain, one leg stuck in the trench with their knee bent the wrong way.
Even so, the enemy soldiers marched forward steadily. There were far fewer cases of trampling than he expected, with some of the enemy soldiers helping the fallen ones almost immediately, but their pace reduced from a steady jog to a more cautious walk as the soldiers up front paid close attention to the ground before them.
That naturally caused a congestion as those behind them kept pushing forward at a faster pace, and as if that wasn’t enough, the coalition forces on the hill chose that time to signal their archers to fire at will. Almost immediately after the signal was given, thousands of arrows soared in the sky above the battlefield and rained down upon the invader’s forces, with a steady stream of more arrows following behind as the archers on the hill made full use of their height advantage over their invader counterparts.
Around that time, the enemy cavalry – which started their advance a bit later, as they clearly intended for the infantry to engage the enemy first before the cavalry made their attack – that was galloping on their horses ran into the trenches on their section of the battlefield. The results there were far more exaggerated, due to the far greater momentum possessed by a galloping horse with a rider on its back.
The unfortunate steeds that stumbled upon a trench often ended up rolling on the ground with at least one of its legs broken and its rider either hurled off its back or directly crushed under its mass. Not even such a sight prompted the other rider to slow down, though. They clearly expected to lose some of their number in the battle to come and simply kept charging.