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Lucius
Carnage at the Bridges
Part IV
(Equal trade)
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Uher keeps us, Lucius prayed seeing the first line of Issir warriors smash on the Northmen’s shieldwall. People yelled, fighters were shoved back onto the shields of their friends, weapons clanging as they struck metal and a savage and wild racket filled the air, mixed in with fear and the smell of piss.
He kicked his legs on the stirrups and galloped behind the mass of friendly troops towards the edge of the line where half the mercenaries stood, Galio barking orders to those armed with javelins to stay back and wait for their chance, else he’d kill them with his bare hands.
It was a weird sort of encouragement.
Stormbolt neighed and made to rear, scared from the ruckus and the smell of blood, head veering left hard as the animal tried to turn away, black eyes wide as saucers and thick froth covering its mauve lips. Lucius kept his hold on the reins firm and led the horse where his ‘cavalry’ waited for him.
Twenty in all.
“That’s all the horses,” Roderick yelled appalled at the number, voice hoarse. “Not even half of them wit spears!”
“Can you charge?” Lucius asked the first Northman, hefting a long shafted axe.
“Don’t have to,” The man replied, a grin on his mouth and red-beard dancing underneath.
“How about you?” The young Heir probed the next one in line. A youth looking barely fifteen, hefting an old sword tight.
“No, milord. But I can fight!” He declared all proud, not a single strand of hair on his face.
Goddarn it, Lucius thought, realizing most of the rest were his age.
“Roderick, pull some mercenaries from the line. With spears. Anyone that’d squired in his youth.”
“I’m not giving up my horse!” Faye snapped and he spotted her round almost shorn red head, popping up behind the boys.
“Keep it,” Lucius yielded with a grunt. “Just do what I say.”
“Twotrees is a fool for trusting ye,” Faye spat with a glare.
Oh boy.
“I’ll make you an offer,” Lucius countered.
“What kind?” The fiery young woman asked, suspicion written all over her pretty face. It troubled Lucius that he’d noticed it. The pretty part. He sighed and saw Roderick and Butter returning with half a dozen spear carrying warriors following him on foot.
“Help me win this today,” Lucius told the scowling Faye, hint of a smile on his lips. “Hate me tomorrow.”
Faye blinked, taken aback.
“Listen up!” Lucius said rising up on the saddle, loud enough to be heard above the clamor of battle at the center of their line, further to his left. “Lord Bart wants us all dead. Northmen and Black Skulls alike. We bury our differences here, today!”
He pointed at the quivering lines of Issirs encouraging their colleagues to move forward, half of it shoving, the rest curses. The tail end of their formation had started reforming, as one line and then a second were pulled to assault the Northmen’s flank, guarded by the Black Skulls. A hundred each.
“There’s the real enemy,” Lucius yelled at the top of his hurting lungs now, passion in his voice, and the last part a proper tiger’s roar. “BURY THEM INSTEAD!”
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> The moment the first four lines of Issir warriors made contact with the Northmen’s shields, almost six hundred men of their long column following behind them, were left without a target. Men started spilling out of the remaining six lines mostly towards the burned out and unprotected Wolvesbane Castle on their eastern flank. Those running up the slight slope to reach it, forgetting about the battle raging behind them, were locals for the most part. Men that had run away from their home almost a month back, when Gangly’s warriors had arrived.
>
> Sir Reggy Crull realizing the danger of losing control of his men, pulled the last two lines out of the column, around two hundred men, split them up equally and ordered them to charge the Northmen’s, by now fixed in place shieldwall, from both sides. Half-way there, the two new groups of Issirs were assaulted en route, by Black Skull mercenaries coming out of the Northmen’s folding outwards flanks. Sir Reggy had lost track of them after the start of the battle, but had assumed erroneously they had fled, after being left leaderless, beyond the river. It proved to be a costly, but reasonable oversight; in a day almost all other Lord Bart’s pre-battle plans had worked.
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“Lucius!” Roderick growled seeing him stalling, an eye on the chaos unfolding where the shieldwall stood, a hundred men in length and almost three lines deep, the other beyond it, where Faustus’ group of mercenaries were waiting for his message to reach them. He’d tasked young Philon and his mount with the job.
“NOW!” Lucius ordered, seeing the mercenaries on the other flank looping around the shieldwall they’d hidden behind until now, with Galio repeating his order twice as loud, and the first javelins already flying towards the onrushing detached Issir force a second later.
“RIDERS ON ME!” Lucius bellowed and clicked his tongue to start Stormbolt going. He galloped in an oblique route watching Galio and the mercenaries counter-charge their opponents over his left shoulder. His heart thundered wild in his chest, the rhythm of his stallion’s hooves on the icy terrain alike drums of war, ears ringing and the cold while present, momentarily forgotten.
Here’s my sword, Lucius thought as he led Stormbolt the final meters before reaching the disorganized rear of their enemies. His heavy warspear broke on impact, sharp tip and half-a-shaft going through a soldier’s torso from the side, penetrating his mail armour under his left armpit, lifting the hapless man up off of his feet and carrying him briefly, while traveling through his vital organs and exiting out of the other. The man disappeared under Stormbolt’s hooves, when the shaft broke and Lucius hurled the part he’d still held, on a short man hefting a nasty halberd five meters away, kicking his legs to force Stormbolt to power through. The short, yellow-teethed Issir, saw the projectile coming for his head and made to swat it away with his cumbersome weapon, one panicked eye on the charging right behind it Lucius.
> Men collided with each other, swords stopping on shields, or slipping through and biting armour and flesh. People started screaming almost immediately, limbs were severed, faces mauled and blood started painting the ground under their feet. The Issirs not expecting the charge, reeled back shocked, losing almost fifty men in less than five minutes, especially on their west flank, which was nearest to the woods and Lucius riders caught them on the sides, when they tried to run towards Wolvesbane Castle.
Lucius swung his longsword in an outwards arch, blade starting low facing the ground and ending up painted a bright red pointing to the heavens. It sliced his opponent open from groin to chest, the wound catastrophic. The man, mouth opening and closing in stunned silence, felt his bloody inwards spill down between his legs, pieces of his lungs on top of the steaming gory mess. Stormbolt galloped right past him strong, pushing two Issirs aside and to the ground, another losing an arm at the elbow, as Lucius broke through their retreating lines the rest of the riders on his back. Most of them that is.
“LET THEM RUN!” Lucius bellowed to those still with him, amidst the chaos behind Sir Reggy’s main body of soldiers still duking it out at the shieldwall. “Roderick take them and charge their backs, before they collapse our wall!” He ordered and turned his horse the other way, where he’d caught sight of Sir Reggy’s entourage.
“What are you goin’—” Roderick cried on his back, but Lucius was already pushing Stormbolt into a fast gallop away from them. Sir Reggy saw him breaking through and pushed his helm cover down, the sculpted eagle wings on both sides of his helm shaking as if coming alive, when he kicked his legs to come at him. One of his mounted men tossed him a warspear and he caught it with a hand deftly without pause.
Oh crap, Lucius thought and pulled at the reins and came to a stop, seeing the crucial flaw in his plan. He looked about him, saw that several bodies lay here and there, most in dark pools of cooling blood, not all of them completely dead and not a spear in sight.
“Hey Alden!” Faye yelled from behind him and he turned on the saddle to glare at the young woman approaching on her bloodied mare.
“What are you doing here?” Lucius inquired, frustration radiating off of him in waves and the redhead tossed him the warspear she carried with a snort, putting an end to that. He caught it with his left hand, almost losing the grip, his broken fingers not yet fully healed.
Faye Numbers raised a crimson brow, not impressed.
“Helpin’ yer arse win,” She said matter-of-factly, just before Sir Reggy charged him.
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Reggy came at him riding fast, bobbing on the saddle and Lucius turned his torso hard the last moment, the steel tip of the spear punching through his plate, cutting his quilted woolen gambeson, then his flesh and opening a wound at his side a handbreadth in size. Lucius growled in pain, his body almost toppling from the saddle as Stormbolt blasted past his opponent, his own spear striking the armoured knight at the left shoulder destroying the plate there, but failing to drop him.
Lucius clenched his teeth hard, tasting blood in his mouth, saw a blade coming at him through the cover slits and ducked his head on instinct, catching it at the conned hardened part of his helm. He felt the ring to his very bones, eyes tearing and the ground dancing underneath. Stormbolt cut left hard on his own and charged the third rider from the side.
The man saw him coming and pulled hard at the reins, while trying to turn his body and spear towards him. The shaft banged his horse right at the ear, the attempt an utter failure and Lucius who’d traversed the last ten meters completely out of it, came about just in time to raise his spear, before horse and rider crashed on his stupefied opponent.
The steel tip caught the unlucky squire right in the face, next to the nose-guard and exploded out the back of his head, but it was the sound of his poor horse’s ribs breaking, when Stormbolt crashed on it, impossibly loud over the clamor of battle that sickened Lucius the most.
“Gah,” Lucius coughed and slipped down from the saddle, as the tremendous impact had rattled him and he was bleeding from the side a good deal. He landed on his good leg and almost went down right there, but saw Faye taking on an injured Reggy and his squire by herself and put a fist on the hard ground to stop himself.
He lifted his visor to breathe and slowly got up and unsheathed his sword. He patted the rattled Stormbolt once on the shoulder for comfort and walked slowly towards the mounted group fighting it out, his left leg dragging a little.
“Sir Reggy!” Lucius called out and spat once to clear his mouth. “Here’s your prize!”
The injured knight, left shoulder painted red, the plate there wrapped and torn, turned his way.
“Lucius Alden,” Lord Bart’s firstborn said and pulled away from Faye, leaving her to his squire. “Why in Uher’s name are ye helping the Northern scum?”
“Cut the crap,” Lucius admonished him. “You knew. Where’s Zofia?”
Sir Reggy tried to move his left arm, but a shudder stopped him. He climbed down from his horse though, sword in his other hand.
“O’Dargan’s spawn,” He spat, vitriol in his voice. “Antoon ordered her arrested, Lucius.”
“I don’t answer to him,” Lucius replied, testing his sword blade. “Nor do I wage war on women. Where is she?”
“You’re a fool and a traitor,” Sir Reggy said. “I should’ve killed ye in the camp.”
“You can still try,” Lucius taunted and stepped away from his furious surprise attack aimed for his uncovered face, his knee smarting, but holding. The blade missed him and Lucius snapped his catching the knight on the chest, scrapping his plate and pushing him back.
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Sir Reggy recovered with a curse and went for his head again, but Lucius pushed the blade aside, parried the return and sidestepping to the right, attacked Sir Reggy’s exposed leg. The sharp blade cutting through mail and his hard-leather pants, just where his plate ended.
“Aargh, curse you!” Sir Reggy cried and hobbled away.
Lucius advanced on him without replying, set on finishing this quick.
He parried a half-hearted attack away, and opened another wound on Sir Reggy’s right wrist disarming him.
“Yield,” Lucius demanded, resting his blade below his opponent’s chin.
Sir Reggy slapped it away. “You lying scum! Pretendin’ you’re holier than thou,” He pushed his face cover up, fury in his eyes. “Everyone knows you killed yer own wife! And this…” He looked about the battlefield. “Huh, you’re on the losing side.”
You think ye won? Macia had said. That it is over?
Lucius turned his head left, saw Roderick amidst the rattled Issirs, mercenaries on his side. The Northmen pushing forward, the shieldwall holding, but the Issirs too many to dislodge. Despite their losses and the fact many had broken and run away towards Wolvesbane Castle, enough were left to continue what was now a bloody brawl, with no more cards to play. It could go either way, he thought, pushing the rotten memories aside. Faye was standing in his field of view, a strange look on her face. He expected hatred, but it looked more like disgust. She heard him, Lucius thought and it hurt him that look in her eyes.
“I didn’t kill—” Lucius started to say and Faye’s eyes opened wide with fear. He turned on instinct, the dagger Sir Reggy had produced catching him on the vambrace; sparks flying as it scratched the metal. Lucius sword reached the knight first on the return, before his dagger made it half way. The edge sliced open Sir Reggy’s neck; nothing but a simple flick of the wrist and the knight dropped to his knees, blood pouring down his chest, painting the plate red.
People came out of the woods right at that moment. Women and children first, coming in large groups, some warriors following right behind. Then came the Issirs. Hundreds of them.
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> Lord Vanzon's men pouring through Midriver Bridge attacked the main army the stories say, at Gangly Steven’s great surprise. Bas Crull though went straight for the other bridge, following the retreating civilians. His men broke into smaller groups and slaughtered indiscriminately everything in their path.
>
> Just before the forest gave away to the frozen marsh of the Montfoot, Twotrees McCloud tried to stop him, but gotten overwhelmed instead, as Bas forces while disorganized at the time, were five times the size of his and was smashed. What had started as a fiercely contested battle now turned into a senseless slaughter. The Northmen broke and run, with some fighting to the bitter end. This panicked crowd of civilians and warriors, with remnants of the main force mixed in, burst out the forest, running for their lives towards the last hope they had to escape a merciless enemy. The Bridge on the Montfoot.
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“They’re pulling away, milord!” Galio reported and Lucius watched as most of the remaining Sir Reggy’s force gathered near Wolvesbane Castle, giving the defenders a much needed breather. The Issirs had retreated the moment word of Reggy Crull’s death had spread, but hadn’t left as the Northmen, still outnumbered at least three to one, couldn’t give chase and the Issirs could see their own soldiers appearing at the edges of the forest, hunting the retreating Northmen.
“They’ll come back,” Lucius said, walking stiffly before what remained of the Black Skulls company. He’d split his force again, the moment he got a breather. They had retreated towards the bridge’s mouth and Lucius had arranged the Northmen to guard the southeastern approach to it, coming from Wolvesbane Castle, now firmly under the control of Lord Bart’s men.
The rest, mostly the sixty or so mercenaries, he had them face obliquely towards Stag Doab’s woods, leaving a five meter wide corridor on their right flank, bordering the pregnant waters of Montfoot, for the survirors to pass through and head for the bridge inside this hundred meters in breadth semi-circle. The battlefield had shrunk spectacularly in less than an hour.
“We should get over the Montfoot,” Roderick suggested. They were all on foot and had left Mamercus back to guard their animals, next to the wooden bridge’s south end.
“They’ll kill them all Roderick,” Lucius said, wiping his blade with a piece of dirty cloth. “The more we save here, the stronger our position.”
Roderick shook his head. “Ah, son. They’ll kill us too, if ye give 'em the chance.”
Lucius nodded and walked away, heading towards what remained of his ‘cavalry’ force at the end of their loose shieldwall, now on foot as well, since most of their mounts had been slain. All the animals, were either over the bridge already, or dead. Faye stood there, watching as people burst out of the trees and run desperately towards the opening in the Black Skulls line and salvation.
They were slow and injured, some bleeding and other’s missing body parts. Issir fighters were hot on their trail, sometimes a few meters behind them, the only thing giving hope the sheer numbers their enemies had to kill, in order to get them. So for every six or seven people that got butchered in front of their eyes, a couple manage to escape.
“KEEP IN POSITION!” Galio barked and his booming clear voice, shaded the horrific song of carnage momentarily. It was performed in front of the unable to help their own, but silently watching warriors of Lucius’ force and it had its own relentless rhythm, its own disgusting smell and its own nightmarish voice.
It belonged to many people of different ages and vastly different souls, but it sounded strangely the same at their final moments. Ora’s voice, someone whispered from the ranks and Lucius touched Faye’s shoulder in a comforting manner seeing her shiver violently. She turned her head, tears creating dark dirty lines on her face as they run freely down her cheeks.
“Ye promised me a win,” She said simply, with a sniffle.
“This was lost, the moment Gangly agreed to a truce,” Lucius explained tiredly, dropping his hand. “I’m just trying to save as many as I can.”
“I cursed Benton for not siding with the Jarl for so long,” Faye Numbers lamented. “All of my life I did. Free the North, I told him. Everyday. Danced like a little girl, when he told me he’d agreed to join the Jarl’s cause. Nothing sounded better in my ears,” She flashed him a bitter, as much as forced smile. “Never pictured dyin’ here, next to the fuckin’ Heir of Regia.”
Her grief washed over him, thick as a dark shroud and he had to step back and draw a deep desperate breath, the cold air hurting going down.
“I’m sorry,” Lucius said, his words sounding hollow to his ears. So sighing, he added all serious, his words binding to the gods.
The fool that he was.
“You won’t die here.”
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The Issir grabbed the woman’s hair, the child she held dropping with a scream to the frozen mud. He run her through with a bastard sword, the blade worn out from all the use that day and reached for the child wailing from the shock. Lucius reached him, running out of their broken line and severed his left arm below the elbow, his blood spaying out and mixing with that of the butchered mother.
The man wailed twice as loud in turn and tried to pull away, but Faye stabbed him in the neck viciously with a dagger and then kicked him down. Another soldier appeared, sword and round shield in hand. A Northern design, probably a spoil he’d picked up from a corpse, it seemed to him. Two more right behind the Issir.
A group of around ten of them approaching. Lucius charged the man with the shield, got his blade blocked and had to jump back to avoid getting his own arm chopped off. Faye attacked from the side, slipped her sword’s blade in, and got the man between the ribs. He howled and twisted away, his leather armor ruined and bleeding profoundly. Out of the fight, but his friends joining swiftly, the moment he stepped away.
Lucius stopped a sword coming for her head, turned it aside and cut the man savagely in the face on the return. The other blocked Faye’s tired swing, punched her in the face, splitting her lips, kneed her in the stomach next, all professional and made to take her head, when she doubled over with a pained wail.
The knight stopped him, pushing the fatal blow away, sidestepped to avoid the Issir soldier’s angry retaliation and almost got a dagger in the gut by the cunning man. Lucius cursed and parried the dagger one way, the coming sword the other, managing to attack in the tail end of that same move, a devastating fast combo that left the Issir soldier stupefied and quite dead at the end of it.
“Are you hurt?” He asked stooping over the young woman and Faye signed with a hand that she was. Lucius looked towards the bloody brawl on his right, the corridor they’d kept open for almost half an hour now non-existent. Then back towards the larger group approaching from the woods, behind the dozen or so enemy soldiers already on them. He grabbed Faye’s arm and pulled her back retreating towards the still fighting mercenaries.
At the other end of their shrinking lines, the Northmen, fighting back the ferocious attacks of Sir Reggy’s returning force, now driven with renewed vigor seeing the tide had turned, buckled from exhaustion and their mounting losses. When they break, Lucius thought with a shiver. It will happen fast.
Roderick reached him a moment later and pushed them both towards the bridge.
“Leave now,” The old hand said, voice coming out strangled. “While there’s time.”
“We should pull the Northmen back as well,” Lucius argued.
“No time for that son,” Roderick countered. “Galio will give the signal the moment we finish off this group. The next one is two hundred men strong. There’s no beating that.”
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“ARROWS!” Kaeso yelled a warning, seeing half the force; -led by a strange Issir with a painted white face, in a manner Lucius recalled seeing before, orange and white hair braided and tied at the nappe in a bun- stop and reaching for the bows, they all carried on their backs. The rest continued their fast trot towards them.
“SHIELDS UP!” Galio boomed turning around, half of the retreating mercenaries still carrying one, turning with him.
Lucius heard the whistling, an angry sharp sound and ducked on instinct, a shaft breaking on his shoulder guard and splinters rattling his helm. Faye running beside him stumbled and went down, an arrow right through her thigh.
“Fuck!” She cried, frantically trying to dislodge it and failing.
“Leave it!” Lucius growled and pulled her up, wrapping her right arm around his shoulders for support. The bridge still twenty meters away, some people still running over it, the rest of the civilians left behind, when the mercenaries pulled back, jumping in the frozen waters and sinking straight for the bottom as the current was too great, an act of pure desperation to avoid a worse death, at the hands of Bas Crull’s rangers.
“I want that bridge!” The man himself yelled to be heard by his men. “The warrior that kills the red Knight, I’ll name my brother!”
With a wild roar, his rangers charged as one. Galio ordered Kaeso back towards Mamercus, the men with him to form a wall.
“Galio, head for the bridge now!” Lucius barked at the aged ex-legionnaire, his voice hoarse and tired, with a look over his shoulder. His leg could barely support both his weight and Faye’s. He could feel it buckling, despite moving as slow as a pregnant turtle. “That’s an order, Captain!”
Galio puffed out hard, glanced once at the onrushing Issirs and then at the hapless remaining mercenaries tasked to be their rearguard. The men giving him glances of pure despair, some pleading, others terrified, while few even nodded in understanding.
“They won’t hold,” Roderick grunted and stopped in his tracks. His tired, gaunt face, almost unrecognizable. The loyal hand had aged spectacularly during these past months. “On their own, they bloody won’t.”
“They will,” Lucius insisted, though he didn’t much believed it. “Galio, I won’t say it again!”
“Aye, milord!” Galio replied and started after them. Lucius turned to continue the final meters towards the bridge, but Roderick stayed behind, a resigned look on his face.
“Roderick, what are you doing?” Lucius asked, doom lacing his words, because he knew.
The old hand, sucked his wrinkled cheek in once, where a tooth was missing, he’d never gotten around fixing. Let it go audibly the next moment and looked at Lucius long and hard for another.
“Remember who you are, son. Always,” Roderick said, a touch of melancholy in his voice. “Live for ye first, then Regia. See that you make it back in one piece and if ye see yer father, tell him I died on my feet.”
No, darn it!
“Roderick… for fuck’s—” Lucius protested irate, voice breaking as emotion clogged his throat, but the old man stopped him nonetheless, before he could finish.
“I want none o’ that lip, boy. I taught ye better,” He admonished and pointed at Bas Crull’s rangers that had stopped and were nocking fresh arrows now, the moment they saw the less than thirty men had formed a shieldwall to bar their approach. “We’ll charge ‘em cowardly ruffians. Lick ‘em proper,” He snorted and shook his head at the absurdity of it all. “May Luthos guide ye, through the pending struggles, Lucius. It was the greatest of gifts seeing ye grow, to become the man ye are.”
You won’t die here, Lucius the Third had promised his companion to be and the Gods listened to his plea for a trade, magnanimous on one hand, cruel with the other and stripped the young Heir of something equally valued in return.
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> Bas Crull’s rangers reached first at the bridge, the stories say, when that desperate breakout attempt from the remnants of the Black Skulls company failed. Half of them turned around and charged the remaining Northmen fighting with Sir Reggy’s men, causing their collapse and complete annihilation. The other half gave chase across the bridge, but were stopped dead the moment they set foot on the other side by the regrouped escaped Northmen and a forward detachment of ‘Mad Wolf’s’ own men, still force-marching hard from Ludr to reconnect with Twotrees McCloud. In the brief battle across the Montfoot, the Rangers were routed and almost killed to a man, or woman.
>
> Bas Crull watched it all happen from across the freezing waters, now filled with stiff corpses coming from almost all ages and races. The frozen dead will float all the way down to Ludriver proper, hundreds of kilometers away for the rest of winter. Whether it was common sense, or grief for the loss of his older brother that made him decide to not make another attempt at a crossing, it isn’t clear to this day. The Northmen had to retreat to Maza Burg either way, carrying the wounded, as the weather turned freezing, when late afternoon approached.
>
> The Battle of the Bridges saw almost five thousand Northmen dead, from either blade or cold by the end of that day, more than a thousand of them being civilians. Among them famed names, like Logan ‘Gray’ Barret who was presumed lost, or the Jarl’s firstborn ‘Gangly’ Steven O’ Dargan, who was surely dead, since his head decorated Lord Bart’s hall in Eaglesnest, before that week was over.
>
> It must be noted here that rumors the Heir to the throne of Regia had died in the battle circulated immediately, along outright vile accusations of him betraying the Issir Lords and siding with the Northmen. The latter spread like wildfire and caused friction between the two Kingdoms, then in the midst of securing a permanent alliance between them that would replace the Old Treaties. Whether it was the reason for the events that followed, or an excuse to fan the flames of treachery that led to the Battle of the Turncoats, it is unknown.
>
> Black Skulls lost two thirds of its effective force at the time (sources cite seventy out of hundred and twenty fighters) and disbanded, most of the surviving men entering Lucius entourage, or honor guard, though that happened much later. The Crull’s losses amounted to a thousand seven hundred, along with Lord Bart’s firstborn Sir Reggy. Lord Vanzon lost more than two thousand men, the majority of them fresh recruits and had to retreat towards Krakenhall in turn.
>
> Such were the losses on all sides, it would take more than a year for any meaningful large battle to occur. The war though, never really stopped henceforth.
>
>
>
>
>
> Lord Sirio Veturius
>
> Circa 206 NC
>
> The Fall of Heroes
>
> Chapter III
>
> -Epilogue-
>
> (Lucius the Third,
>
> Northern Campaigns,
>
> Battle of the Bridges,
>
> Either late 3rd or early 4rth
>
> Month of Winter, 189 NC)
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