> 'By all gods old and new, you don’t fight Horselords on Eplas outside of a city,
>
> lest you're a brave fool, or ride atop a Wyvern.'
>
>
>
> Ancient Lorian saying
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Sir Gust De Weer,
Raven of Dawn
A most unfortunate event
Part II
-Bleached White Bricks-
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> In the early Fall, the year one and ninety of the New Calendar, Baron Van Durren’s remnants of the First Foot reinforced by Sir Gust De Weer’s crack expeditionary force out of Devil’s Cove, attacked Tirifort at the banks of Shifton River near its stone bridge. Prince Radin Radpour, having been informed by spies of the army advancing against the crossings, moved the force he’d managed to assemble the previous months (going as far to the west as Merchant’s Triage to ‘find’ men) from Tyeusfort to meet them in the field.
>
> The Prince stripped caravans from their guards and slaves using the Khan’s authority and his personal purse, the desert mercenaries mostly a cavalry force, built around Tyeusfort and Eikenport’s sentries and city guard. Whilst the around four hundred soldiers of the infantry were of questionable quality, the mercenaries were tough men well-versed in smaller scale battles, mainly mounted archers and light cavalry led by his bodyguards. Their number difficult to pin down, as caravans coming through the Great Desert could have up to fifty or even a hundred guards each.
>
> Depending on sources, the Cofols numbers ranged between five hundred to a thousand mounted archers gathered near Shifton’s Camp, a tiny settlement beyond the bridge and on the other side of the river bearing the ancient Horselord leader’s name.
>
> It must be noted here that most of the First Foot was an infantry force by now, numbering around seven hundred soldiers and three hundred support personnel, with the addition of the around a hundred men from Sadofort. The rest had been kept in reserve at Devil’s Cove along with the civilians the Baron had brought with him earlier that month.
>
> Now the men from Scaldingport were more diverse than that. Their five hundred strong men-at-arms could fight on foot and they did, but they kept theirs horses at the near and they were always followed around by the three hundred solid and now reinforced Old Spears unit, Scaldingport veterans of the First and Second Foot mostly.
>
> In addition to that Sir Gust must have had over fifty heavy cavalry with him that sported plate armour, long lances and fought mostly on horseback. Knights amongst them. The rest of the bigger Scaldingport force was comprised of two hundred longbow archers, two hundred crossbowmen (a large detachment of the famed Castalor’s crossbowmen swelling the original unit), a hundred slingers and over five hundred support units.
>
> With over a thousand three hundred fresh fighting men in the field to the Baron’s smaller worn out (barely a thousand though the number is disputed) very hardened soldiers, the man in charge wasn’t the man with the most troops. This created a strange dynamic in the Issirs camp and command structure.
>
> In any case Prince Radin was heavily outnumbered and sporting a mainly long range, less armoured and overwhelmingly mounted force opted to avoid a direct confrontation and fight like the Khan’s ancestors had in the distant past.
>
> This important but smaller scale series of battles foreshadowing that when on Eplas and outside a city, even unskilled Horselords are very difficult to beat.
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Battle of ‘whitebrick’ wall
Early morning, first day
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Damnation, Gust thought seeing the hundred kilo boulder smashing their catapult, sharp splinters, bolts, pieces of hardwood from the frame and springs ripping through three soldiers pushing it in place, the steel arm snapping at its base.
“WATER FUCKIN’ MELON!” Bugs bellowed flying above the battlefield, beak pointed down to the red mist of body parts hurled right and left, the straight flat part of steel almost three meters in length soaring backwards and cutting a hapless sergeant of engineers in two pieces.
Everything above the hips gone at the snap of one’s fingers.
“SPREAD OUT!” De Moss barked to his columns of infantry, the men-at-arms jumping on their horses and galloping to safety, as the rest of the shelling reached them.
“GUST!” Mael yelled seeing him reeling turning his stallion this way and that to see the damage the defenders were causing with their surprise attack. The soft ground swelling on impact at spots, afore the boulders bounced off the harder subsoil and exploded out to roll for another forty meters. Men dived out of the way, with the occasional shocked fool getting an arm, or leg ripped off his torso, if he was lucky.
“They don’t have the range!” He grunted and kicked his legs to send his mount galloping towards the engineers. “SET THOSE MACHINES DOWN!” Gust yelled furious. “FIRE AT THE GOD DARN TOWERS!”
“Gust you have to get the crossbows in range!” Mael yelled galloping after him. “To clear the parapets! They are going to fire on the ladders!”
Argh!
Gust turned his head around breathing heavy, his helm restricting his vision somewhat and scanned the expanding area surrounding the brick walls. Robert had taken the east approach, nearer to the bridge and was attacking that part of the fort, while the Crows that had range weapons and machines had tried to set up for an assault on the front gates. The two towers were overlooking the flat battlefield, whatever vegetation nearer to the banks of the river. Rows upon rows of soldiers were hurrying to approach the walls on foot, the cavalry standing back idle and useless.
Count, his mind told him, whilst he tried to calm himself down.
“TIME!” Gust bellowed and sergeant Gullit busy setting up their own catapults raised his head and stared at the walls.
“Half a minute sire! How many fired on the first volley?” he asked a soldier sitting on the small table and reviewing the maps.
“Ahm,” the young Issir muttered not expecting the scrutiny, just as the second volley reached them. Most crudely cut and rounded boulders missing, or aiming at the men approaching the fort carrying the long ladders, but one striking the table he was standing next to pulverizing it. The soldier along with it.
The young man turned into a splattering unrecognizable gore, flesh, skin, bones and armour liquefying and the crimson material spraying a five meter wide area.
“Twelve,” Mael grunted, grabbing his arm as Gust was about to punch his scared horse on the head to stop it from turning about maddened. Gust shoved his hand away and stilled his eyes on the stunned and gore covered sergeant.
“Gullit, fire on those blasted towers!” He barked and turned around pulling savagely at the reins to rush towards Captain Mads Struder’s crossbowmen. The heavy laden company creeping closer to the walls a couple of hundred meters away.
“Gust, you got to keep back!” Sir Mael yelled galloping after him, with a panicked Klaas in tow.
Gust turned his head around and showed him the killed men that had stood still.
“Keep on the move old man, it’s the better strategy!” He yelled and charged his snorting and kicking wild horse towards the man from Castalor, Captain Struder.
Gust jumped from the saddle when he reached them, boots sinking in the ground and grabbed the Captain by the arm to get his attention.
“How many archers on the walls?” He asked him seeing the experienced crossbowmen slowly unloading the cumbersome and heavy weapons.
“I’ve seen soldiers milord,” the Captain replied calmly amidst the chaos unfolding all around them. “But only rocks are falling.”
Uh?
Gust stared at the soldiers with the ladders nearing the bleached white bricks of Tirifort, the walls a mere five meters tall, which was an advantage for the Towers to fire over them, but wasn’t intimidating for the attackers.
What is this? He wondered now worried.
Struder gave him a spyglass and he brought it to his face, an eye looking through the lens, the other following the volley ripping through the men carrying the ladders killing, or maiming over twenty at once. Grinding his teeth Gust examined the Cofols manning the walls and then finding no one shooting arrows down turned the spyglass about to examine the battlefield.
He had reached his cavalry resting their animals near the grassy banks of the river, when one of the knights rose on his stirrups and pointed an arm back towards the Fort. Gust swung the spyglass around following the shoreline to the bridge hidden behind the mass of Tirifort.
He felt the spit dry in his mouth.
“Riders,” he grunted and tossed the spyglass to Captain Struder, the bronze instrument smacking him on the chest.
“Where?” Sir Mael rustled, staring at him under his open helm.
“By the river,” Gust replied and climbed on his nervous horse afore bellowing like an angry beast to his pale faced squire. “Toss me my goddarn lance boy!”
> Prince Radin, the Bloodfang as was his moniker for striking when you weren’t expecting him, attacked the men rushing to climb the walls of Tirifort and escape the shelling. Everyone’s attention was on the bombardment and the walls, the Prince’s riders routing the distracted infantry hitting it on the flanks. He’d split his mounted archers in two large groups, the first attacking the Baron’s men, the other striking unexpectedly after popping out between the walls and the river at the Crows testing the gates.
>
> The Baron’s men retreated in panic, losing almost a hundred men in the process and when their officers turned them around, they realized that running after horses was futile. Lord Van Durren sent his cavalry after the mounted archers, but they dashed over the bridge and the knights decided not to go over after them. So the mounted archers returned, whilst the machines on the towers fired volley after volley on the rattled attackers. The remnants of the First Foot, badly battered and mauled for more than a year were at their breaking point.
>
> Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
>
> The Crows troops fared even worse initially, as they were caught almost mid-way up the walls, the riders dragging the ladders away from under them. Men toppled to their death, breaking legs and arms, or trampled under hooves. The mounted archers fired volley after volley on the slow spear columns and the men-at-arms that rushed for their horses.
>
> The riders turned towards the lines of foot archers and crossbowmen next, the advantage here huge, although the Prince had given strict orders for them to retreat and regroup. Some of them –the majority of Radin’s men not professional soldiers- just couldn’t resist the easy kills, the unarmored Issir foot archers being extremely vulnerable to a charge and stalled long enough for Sir Gust’s cavalry to catch them.
>
> Sir Gust’s reaction cleared the field and scattered the first group that was toying with the Baron’s infantry, killing those greedy enough to stand and face him, but the majority of the second group pulled back, galloping wild parallel to the Shifton River and then crossing its bridge in turn under the cover of the Fort’s walls towards the nearby friendly Shifton’s Camp, a small village built on the road to Tyeusfort.
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> They expected the strong detachment of the Crows coming after them to hesitate a crossing like their allies had done earlier in the day, opting for a calm approach to the situation, but Sir Gust’s cavalry followed by more than a hundred men-at-arms that had jumped on their horses furious didn’t hesitate.
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> He charged over the bridge after them instead riding hard at the tip of the armoured formation.
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> The ‘Raven of Dawn’ was probably the angriest man on the battlefield, so the Cofol’s assessment this time was dead wrong.
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Gust saw the stone bridge ending above his horse’s head and used his spurs to push the animal even harder. The last mounted archer swung around on his seat when he crossed the lip of the bridge on the other side of the river and ogled his eyes seeing the knight approaching despite being considerably heavier. The Cofol mercenary cursed, then cried a warning for his friends riding a body ahead and pulled hard at the reins stopping his horse. He was going to try and stall Gust and give them time to escape towards the barely visible mudbrick buildings in the distance.
Two of them turned their heads around, bows in hand and reached for fresh arrows, slowing down as well.
Or try to drop him, when he paused to deal with their friend, Gust thought and cut hard left without slowing down. Sir Jan Reuter riding two horse bodies behind him and still on the stone bridge cursed loudly seeing him veering away from the mounted archer. The Cofol had managed to turn his smaller horse around and aimed his bow on the onrushing Gust, the knight half-covered in a cloud of dust.
Had the road being drier, or the hour not closer to noon, the Cofol would have seen that Gust had kept his long lance aimed at him in a slanted manner, pointed away from his horse’s head and towards the almost still mounted archer. Had he been a knight fighting at tourneys the Cofol would have realized Gust was risking a heavy injury on his good arm this way. Of course had the man been frequenting such foreign events, he’d surely have heard that Sir Gust De Weer’s grip on the long lance was renowned, without the need for proper stances and second only to his physical prowess, the latter the stuff of legends.
The mounted archer loosed his arrow a second afore he spotted the steel lance lunging towards his head. He made to jerk his neck out of the way, but the sharp tip went through his forehead, exploded out of the back, breaking his neck and then ripping his head off his shoulders, the upper part of his spine attached.
“Ugh!” Gust grunted, pulling his arm holding the lance closer to his body, raven-shaped face of his helm covered in gore and totally blind. He dropped the lance and raised his right arm to his face, galloping hard past the decapitated, but still upright on the saddle archer. Gust found the cover and made to lift it, an arrow smacking him on the chestplate and splintering, another striking his horse between the eyes and bouncing off his skull leaving a deep cut behind.
Gust cursed still blinded, the horse veered hard one way, its snout raised high the other in a desperate neigh filled with preternatural horror, whilst the knight recovered his balance, nearing the reloading fast Cofols. He slapped his face cover open, reached for a weapon, realized he’d no time for that, dropped the reins and raised both his arms, just as his horse plunged between the two panicked archers, shoving their horses aside.
The smaller horses cried scared, as the knight burst by them full speed, right hand gripping a kicking and screaming archer by the neck lifting him off the saddle, the other still holding a teared piece of bloody cheek containing a left ear and a large portion of the skin and hairs above it.
Sneaky bastard had jerked away at the last blasted moment!
“TYEUS HAVE MERCY!” Sir Jan gasped, following a bit behind him witnessing the mutilated face of the archer Gust had ‘spared’. Granted he run him through with his lance and in the end the hapless man got to live even less than his friend.
Gust realizing he was still carrying the desperately fighting Cofol with him, dropped the smaller man by the side of the road, the momentum sending the screaming archer head first on a limestone plinth used as a crude bench outside the village and silencing him abruptly.
“Eh,” Jan flinched ogling the splattered brains of the man’s head that had painted the tan plinth red. “I suggest we wait for the rest of the company to approach milord,” he added clearing his throat, helm and armour covered in dust much as Gust was.
“They’ve gotten away! Hells and damnation!” Gust growled irate, right as his shell-shocked horse collapsed under him, its heart giving out.
Sir Mael Bolte being the first of the larger group that reached them half a minute later, stopped Fiend his loyal horse clicking his tongue, perceived the situation unruffled for a brief moment and then turned his helmed head around and asked in a clear voice over the sounds of men and mounts.
“Klaas, have ye got that second horse wit you son?”
“Aye, Sir Bolte!” His unseen squire squeaked from the back of the many armoured knights.
“Bring it here posthaste,” Sir Mael ordered him calmly.
“Bah! It was a weak breed!” Gust defended himself and the aged knight nodded.
“No breed can survive ye milord,” Mael elucidated earnestly much as he always had. “Herein the reason I told the lad to bring ye a spare.”
> Sir Gust chased the riders to Shifton’s Camp, but got attacked amidst the mudbrick buildings and a fight broke out from alley to alley. Prince Radin would have pulled away, but he had his supplies inside the settlement, so he turned around to test the knight from Scaldingport instead. Sir Gust found himself encircled almost inside the village, by way too big a force and probably realized no one had any idea at all about the Khanate’s real forces or topography.
>
> The fallacy was to repeat itself again and again, as if the old dictum was incomprehensible to otherwise fine generals and strategists.
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> A common theme since the start of the war and would again be demonstrated that same year to the north and on the other side of the continent, when half the Second Foot, marines and horses that had landed and taken Ri Yue-Tu in the summer, tried to attack and dislodge a force four times larger in Altarin and got themselves wiped out almost without stepping a foot into the city.
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> The centuries of sparse relations between the kingdoms blinded Issirs and Lorians alike (some of it was bigotry of course) to the true abilities and population of the Khanate. To give example, Issir’s Eagle one of the two biggest cities in Kaltha was about a hundred thousand people (behind only Midlanor’s a hundred and fifty), but it was half the size of Yin Xi-Yan a middling city by the Desert Lake by Hath-Kirk River and deep in the Great Desert. Even worse the size of Issir's Eagle was a mere one-fifth of the capital Rin An-Pur that stood at well over half a million souls.
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> As Sir Mael Bolte eloquently wrote in his war journal that survived the campaign, ‘that was way too many plaguing horses, twice that in arrows.’
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> ‘By all gods old and new, you don’t fight Horselords on Eplas outside of a city,’ is the ancient saying, ‘lest you're a brave fool, or ride atop a Wyvern.’ Since Sir Gust didn’t have one of those mythical beasts at his disposal, he’d at least found himself trapped somewhere with cover of sorts.
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Battle of Shifton’s Camp
Late afternoon, first day
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The Cofol saw him charging down the narrow street and jumped inside the small mudbrick building again, his arrow striking Sir Gust right at his visor’s slit and almost taking out his right eye. The cut on his brow bleeding down and right in it, stinging and restricting his vision. Gust grunted fuming and turned the fast galloping horse towards the washed out yellow crude wall.
“Yah!” He yelled kicking his legs savagely to get it going, the frothing at the mouth animal trying to turn but failing to break his grip, until the last moment.
Whoa, Gust gasped realizing he hadn’t thought it through, seeing the wall coming at him with incredible speed and looking sturdier up close. ‘Luckily’ for Sir Gust it wasn’t. Man and horse went crashing on the poorly-built wall and came out inside the one-floor house, the explosion sending debris, broken wood and half-decent mudbricks to rain on the two -shell-shocked at the unforeseen turn of events- mercenaries that waited for him in there.
Oh shite.
A cursing Gust tumbled violently from the saddle, the horse dying under him with its legs and ribs broken –hence why the ‘luckily’ only applied to the knight earlier- almost flew three meters to the other side of the room and crashed down between the two bloody mercenaries, breaking the only furniture that remained unbroken. A sturdy oaken table.
“Gah,” Gust grunted and pushed himself up on shaky legs, the dazed mercenary archer staring at him shocked with blood running down his cut forehead.
“What in Goddess’ nam—?” the man tried to say afore a half-blind Gust backhanded him once across the face breaking his nose and brutally snapping his head back. The Cofol went sprawling down, a broken piece of wood from one of the table’s legs with a long nail still stuck in it, ripping his left cheek out from earlobe to the corner of his mouth.
The wound catastrophic for his looks.
Gust coughed up what he’d swallowed and removed the helm from his own head, trying to see through the dust cloud clogging up the small room. A crunching sound and the second mercenary came at him holding a long knife with a curved blade. Gust smacked it aside using the helm, got knifed on the sides on the return, the blade slipping through his wrapped armour there and his gambeson stopping the tip sort of.
“Eh,” his opponent grunted realizing he’d failed to cut the much taller, robust Gust enough and then got hit by the knight’s helm so hard, his face caved in and one of his exploding eyeballs flew over an enraged Gust’s head.
The man fouled himself afore dying without another sound.
Gust got out of the crumbling building covered in gore and dust five minutes later, his robes tattered and stumbled on to the street again. He had his bloody helm in a hand, his equally gored sword in the other. He stared down the narrow street cutting through Shifton’s Camp and towards the last of the riders escaping the settlement for a long moment, until friendly horses and men approached him from behind.
“They run away,” Sir Jan reported, himself covered in soot and gore from the intense fighting in close quarters. “We lost men milord.”
“Bloody cocksuckers,” Gust cursed grinding his teeth. “Hiding alike ruffians behind windows and rooftops. Never standing to fight it out!”
“We found their wagons on the south side,” Sir Mael said jumping down from Fiend lithely. “Supplies, fodder for many animals.”
“How many?” Gust rustled and accepted the spyglass from Sir Jan to better see the riders that had stopped four hundred meters from the village’s edge and were slowly gathering up again. Gust counted three hundred horses just in that bunch.
“They are back here too!” Someone yelled.
“More to the west sire!” Another informed him.
Sir Mael, sweaty face looking haggard under his helm stooped and spat down to clear his mouth. He then stilled his eyes on the fancy dressed, heavily armoured Cataphracts that had appeared to spy on them from afar in their turn, amongst those ever-smiling grotesquely carved silver masks, one wearing a gold one. His scaled armor looking twice as expensive as those of his fancy armoured friends.
“Too many. There’re over a thousand wagons back there Gust,” Mael told him worried. “Haven’t seen the like in me life. It’s a small city.”
Damnation.
“How could a local commander gather so many men and animals?” Gust grunted and the Cofol riding the mail-covered warhorse raised his arm in a signal.
“I think there’s a Prince of Ri An-Pur out there,” Sir Mael replied and Gust sensed the men near him tense up. “They say they carry ‘Khan’s Voice’,” Mael added, a much more learned man than Gust himself.
“There’s only one Prince I have a grudge with on this gods-forsaken land!” Gust roared snapping the men out of their fear-induced stupor. “The one that maimed me brother! I say, he did us a blasted favor!”
“AYE! HAHA!”
The tired men boomed finding their courage again and Bugs landed on the collapsed house across from them. The huge raven’s sinister black eyes examined the faces of the cheering men for a while afore croaking loud with a chilling inhuman voice.
“WHAT’S ALL THIS? FODDER?” Bugs asked them and started chuckling pleased, the sun darkening just before the arrows came.
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