“FIRE!”
The cannons roars ripped through the dank, dust-filled air, tearing into the Kobold’s uncoordinated mass with the ease of an eagle in a dovecot. The cannonballs struck true, splintering pieces of Kobold skulls and torsos and then rolling along a deadly path that cut right into the horde.
In the meantime, the ratguard seized the opportunity to seek out defensive positions at the nearest rotted farmstead – leaping the tiny walls and using them as makeshift shields from which they could ready their spears.
“SHILTRON!” Marcus bellowed from the sidelines of the spear-columns, Deekius and Skeever running alongside him to escape the rabble that had been spewed from Grindlefecht’s rotten, smoking guts.
The ratguard obeyed without question. Their spears came down, they readied their arms, each man braced by the rat behind him, and thrust their weapons into the oncoming hordes with as much power as their bodies could muster. Their eyes still stung with the debilitating mix of light and ashen-dark. But they didn’t need eyes to poke dents in the oncoming mass of flesh that threw itself at them, chanting “KLEANSING, KLEANSING!” with frenetic breaths.
“They are going insane!” Skeever yelled among the cries of suffering each speared Kobold suffered. “They are coming at us in droves, Sire, not caring for their safety!”
“It…it is not like them,” Deekius told Marcus as they spat commands into their newly-formed battle lines, trying to make sense of the devastation they were seeing play out before them. “Kobolds are being stupid creatures in packs, but not suicidal.”
“Unless,” Marcus said with a dust-filled gulp. “They have something new to believe in…”
His thought, barely formed, did not have time to expand – the Kobold lines had faltered and they began to pull back, seeing that they could not penetrate the ratman formation.
“HAH!” Skeever cheered with his men, punching the stale air with his bloodied cleaver. “Finally, some sense is being shown by the enemy. Now, CHARGE THEM!”
“Wait!” Marcus shouted, watching the Kobolds as they moved. Their retreat was slow, deliberate, and possessed of a kind of coherency. They moved as one towards the Eastern ridge of the North, just beyond Grindlefecht’s perimeter. Such movement, and the complete lack of fear denoted by their focused eyes and movements thus far, did not imply a collapse of morale.
Instead, it implied quite the opposite. This was a planned retreat.
Towards…what?
The cannons continued their clangoring assault on the Kobold battle-lines, sending the loyalist Yips flying in hazes of blood and broken bones, but still they steered towards an objective that lay back at their base.
And only then, hearing the richochet of gunshots in the darkness up ahead, did Marcus realize their intent.
Ix…
“Sire?” Skeever asked. “What is your-“
He stopped as he saw Marcus bite his lip, his fists clenching in consternation.
“CEASE FIRING!” he bellowed at Deekius, forgetting entirely that the rat-priest could not read his thoughts in that moment. “Send up another flare – tell the cannons to stop firing.”
Deekius did as he was bid, while Marcus rounded up the rats into five small columns of two-hundred men, ordering them towards the Eastern ridge after the Kobolds.
They want us to follow them, he told himself. They want us to take the bait. They…they know how much stock I put in Ix.
“You are hearing your Shai-Alud!” Skeever yelped into the crowd. “FORWARD! MARCH!”
The smart thing would be to maintain a defensive perimeter now, Marcus’s mind said, begging its bearer to listen to logic. The best chance you have is waiting for reinforcement. Grindlefecht has fallen. Its destruction is complete. You’ve failed – but only partially. Don’t make a pyrrhic victory into an utter defeat just because you’ve grown sentimental for some tiny red demon.
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But equally, another part of his mind spoke to him in moving pictures, not words. This other part of his brain showed him the bravery of a Kobold that had done more for Marcus’s cause than he had any right to. A soldier that had come to Marcus as nothing more than a slave, and proven not only his usefulness, but the usefulness of his entire species to the ratman cause. Hell, their usefulness to unifying the Underkingdom under a single banner itself.
Who cares, Marcus? This is just a fantasy. You’re a General in a fantastical world of little creatures all biting at each other’s throats. This isn’t your world. These aren’t your people. They never have been.
“Sire?” Skeever asked. “Do we move?”
And Marcus, gritting his teeth in what Skeever assumed to be fury, did nothing more than give a curt nod of his head and nod, sprinting with the remaining ratguard up the blasted hill towards the ruined stronghold’s perimeter.
Damn it, Ix, he cursed. If you’re dead…yours is not a ghost I want hanging over me. Not another one. Not you…
…
When the walls had fallen, he had looked beyond the ashen cloud and seen what remained of his people.
They swarmed like wraths through the mist, knives flashing as they threw them at Ix’s squad of Sharpshots, and he was forced to re-live the pain of the Battle of Black Gulch – where the Shai-Alud had first used the exact same tactic against Head Yip Gith and his forces.
But that was back when he was nothing more than a simple Yip. Now, he was a leader. He wasn’t about to see his men perish even if he was blinded.
“Stand fast-fast!” he told them. “Wave is coming!”
Those that listened were able to bring their firearms to bear against the shadows that sprinted at them, though the discharge of their arquebus did little now that the forces of Skegga had closed the distance between them and the bulk of the ratman ranged forces on the Eastern bank of the stronghold. Already Ix could see Kobold daggers finding the hearts of his squad. One-by-one, his newly formed battalion was dwindling.
“Commander Ix!” one of his ratman subordinates shouted over the din of battle. “What are we doing?”
Ix wasted no time, answering the rat as he brought up his gun and bashed the brains out of a sprinting Kobold with its steel stock.
“Move back-back!” he ordered. “Dust cloud cannot cover whole tunnel!”
His men obeyed his commandment without question, and if young Ix had notions of historical legitimacy about him, he would have remarked about how this moment may have been the first time in recorded history that a ratman had taken orders from a Kobold as his superior.
But such thoughts were those meant for later. They were more the domain of the Shai-Alud than creeping creatures like Ix and his kind.
The Shai-Alud…Ix thought.
No word had been sent to them. The last thing they had seen from their firing position had been the Spinerippers falling with the walls. As far as Ix knew, the ratman columns were already decimated. They could be all that was left…
But he put such thoughts from his mind as soon as they started to form. This was Sire Marcus, after all. He was no fool. He was strong. If this battle could be won, he would win it.
And so he kept his men close, demonstrating just how to deal with setbacks like this. He’d seen enough, and been in enough, to know exactly how to keep calm under pressure.
“Keep line-lines straight!” he squeaked over his shoulder, letting fly another shot that struck a leaping Yip right in his shoulder and sent him tumbling back the way he had come. “They will be striking at us from North-north! Keep up volley, and bash-bash any that come too close!”
The men obeyed, but the lack visibility didn’t do them any favors. It seemed that every inch they moved back simply brought more Kobolds sprinting at them, some not even bearing weapons – simply running at them hoping to take a chunk out of the opposing force with their infected teeth. Ix watched them go down one by one as his men moved back – and with every five kobolds they felled, the beastly loyalists slew at least one Sharpshooter for good measure.
The squad was wavering – Ix knew it. He could feel the vibrations of their tentative paws on the ground. He knew they wanted nothing more than to turn tail and flee.
“Talon-Leader Ix-Ix!” one of his Kobolds screamed. “The tide do not stop! Should we be retreating? Should we be falling ba-“
“No run-run!” Ix cried back into his faltering ranks. “Shai-Alud Marcus will have plan-plan! He will not want us to run. He never run-runs!”
Ix’s form became almost feral as he kicked out at an advancing Kobold with his bare feet before bringing up his arquebus and popping a cap in the flailing creature to make sure he was dead. He looked down at his fallen once-brother and was overtaken in the moment by something strange. Something that become so, so much stranger once the fog was finally lifted and the Sharpshots of Ix saw their Brothers staring back at them across a field littered with Kobold and Ratman corpses.
“Be readying shooters!” one of his ratman units shouted. “There they are!”
***
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