By the time the battle was about to begin, Arden was already half starved. Looking down on the field from high in a nearby pine, he watched the armies wheel and posture, willing the battle to commence so that it might end. Pressing himself low against the branch, he pulled free a pine needle, breaking it and taking a small bite. He grimaced at the taste, but returned to nibble at it almost compulsively, his empty stomach rumbling.
Down below, two armies faced off across a field of felled wheat stalks. To the north, the Quarryhold expeditionary force had positioned themselves defensively, their backs to the treeline. They were lightly armoured, consisting of several hundred archers with bows of strong fiber and twig arrows tipped with tiny pieces of folded tin. In front of the archers were about the same number armed with pikes of simple wood. The pikes were of the cheapest possible construction, consisting merely of sharpened twigs just over a foot in length.
Across from them, forming up between two of the large fruit trees which stood scattered across the field, were General Naberius’s Abaddon Legions. They consisted of perhaps two hundred fighters in total, each armed with a metal short-sword, shield of wood and a single copper-tipped javelin. Behind them, pulled by several hundred labourers, was the large oak beam that acted as the centerpiece of a tremendous war machine. Forming up into a rough semi-circle, with the flanks extending forward protected by the fruit-trees, the Legions paused, waiting for the labourers to reach them.
Soon the construction had begun in earnest. Behind lines of Legionaries, the engineers and labourers, themselves numbering more than the fighting men, set to work constructing their machines of death. With pegs and lashes they began assembling a great trebuchet from the oak beam, as well as dozens of other components that had been hauled up from the heart of the empire. Others set to work constructing small ballista’s, their bows almost twice the length of a man. Meanwhile, farther up, a platform was quickly built of post and plank. Several large brown rats were led by thick cords, their eyes covered by veils of cloth, and tied to pegs by the base of the platform. When it was done, General Naberius himself climbed on top, surveying the field from this new vantage, his terrifying mascots sniffing the air beneath his feet.
The General was dressed wholly in armour of dark metal, a heavy cape of black mink cast to the side in the late summer heat. A heavy sword hung at his side and his helmet laid at his foot. Calmly, he lifted a looking-glass to his eye, panning it over the opposing forces. Twisting, the General suddenly swept the glass over the rest of the surrounding treeline, seeming to pause on just where Arden lay hidden high up in his pine.
His heart was suddenly in his throat, Arden pressed himself lower still on the branch, trying desperately to hide behind the needles at the end. For a moment panic gripped him, terror at the thought of being spotted. He was relatively far off, at least two dozen feet from where the Legionaries were standing. He had thought himself safely outside their field of view, never considering the possibility that he might be spotted by the looking-glass of the General himself. Carefully, he peeked up over the needles, looking towards General Naberius. But the General’s attention was fixed on the opposing force once again, and Arden let out a sigh of relief.
Back to the north, the Quarryholders had broken from the treeline and were now slowly advancing across the field. Arden looked on them with wonderment. They had spent the last few days in hurried retreat from the disputed territory. Now safely within their borders their commanders appeared to have been emboldened to face their pursuers. Perhaps they felt obligated to defend the territory. Now, having chosen this as the place to make their stand, he supposed they had decided to make a move while the Legions were still preparing their war machines, and not risk waiting for the trebuchet to be completed and begin raining down death. Poor bastards, he thought, he would not want to be one among them.
Forming up with a large phalanx, the Quarryhold pikemen advanced in a block that was four rows deep and almost a hundred men across. Behind them, the bowmen following in a tight formation, arrows already fitted to strings. Moving five or six feet from the trees, just far enough for the bowmen to come in range, they paused, the archers loosing their first volley of arrows.
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Meanwhile, with the General hollering commands from his platform, the Legions had broken into units, tight rectangles of twenty men, which had spread out across the battlefield. Moving slightly forward and raising their shields against the incoming arrows, the units themselves formed into a rough semicircle, somewhat wider than the Quarryhold phalanx. Holding two units of Legionaries in reserve, the General climbed down from his platform and joined them before calling for a quick advance.
The Legionaries surged across the field, quickly closing the gap between themselves and the phalanx, as arrows bounced off shields or found their way to exposed flesh. Those struck were left where they fell, at least a dozen soon scattering the field, screaming in agony and clutching at their wounds. From the rear, a small contingent of labourers ran up carrying stretchers of woven reeds, grabbing the injured and pulling them from the front. None were triaged. Even those who were clearly dead, arrows protruding from throats and breasts, were taken. Up ahead, those blocks of Legionaries at the farthest flanks reached the phalanx first. Mid jog, they hurled their javelins at close range, causing the pikemen to flinch and many to fall dead or wounded.
The Quarryholders, for their part, held firm, jabbing out with the footlong pikes and creating a wall of stabbing points. The pikes of those in the second row protruded from between those in the first, while those farther back in the third and fourth rows held theirs somewhat aloft, waiting for their opportunity to lower them.
The Legionaries at the far flanks made first contact. Having flung their javelins, they pulled out their short swords, slashing at the pikes and parrying them with their shields. Wrapping around the edges of the phalanx and pushing their way in, they began to force the Quarryholders to turn to defend their sides, just as the units of Legionaries farther to the center began to make contact.
For a while, things seemed to slow down. The Quarryholders held firm, those in the back rows stepping forward to take the place of those felled by the javelins and fanning out to support those on the flanks. The advance of the Legionaries meanwhile was paused by the pikes. Slashing out at their tips and doing their best to keep from being stabbed, still they could not advance through the sea of pointed sticks.
Only on the left flank was the situation evolving. Here where the pikemen had successfully spread out, the back rows fanning out to envelop the Legionaries. The bowmen too had come forward, firing over the heads of their allies and into the Legionaries with deadly accuracy. From the back however, General Naberius recognized the danger. Marshalling his two reserve units of Legionaries, he turned to the flank and charged. Joining the battle with two fresh units, the Legionaries quickly laid into the pikemen, who immediately found themselves over-extended and made to flee. With their General out in front, his great sword passing through pike, flesh and bone alike, the Legionaries surged forward, completely rolling the flank. Now attacking the phalanx from the side, they pressed in, wreaking havoc.
Though almost unassailable when able to take advantage of the full length of their weapons, the Pikemen were defenseless up close and from the side and rear. The bowmen meanwhile, almost frantic at the plight of their countrymen, began hurriedly loosing arrows at close range, many of them missing the Legionaries and striking the pikemen in the back.
Within seconds, panic had begun to spread through the phalanx. Those in the back rows, especially those on the right flank where retreat was still possible, began to drop their pikes and run. The Quarryhold commanders screamed at their troops to hold their position, but it was too late. Soon the bowmen too were running towards the treeline, followed by as many of the pikemen as could make it. As the phalanx began to dissolve, the Legionaries pushed forward along the line, cutting down scores of their enemies from behind.
Pursuing only as far as the treeline, General Naberius called a halt. Quickly forming back up, the Abbadon Legions fell back to the location of the skirmish line, meeting up with the labourers and helping them to carry the wounded from the field. A small detachment was left a few feet closer to the trees to guard in case of attack, while the rest set immediately to work building both a camp and fortifications for the night. All told, they appeared to have lost as few as thirty or forty, injured or dead, and had killed at least three times that many.
From his treetop perch, Arden watched with muted amazement as those who had been fighting mere minutes before now worked with seeming tireless effort to build a night camp. In the end, the battle, which had come after almost a week’s chase, had concluded within a half-hour of the first arrow being fired. Now, as the sun began to set, fires were being lit, dinner was being cooked, and tents pitched. And all this before the great trebuchet had even been fully erected, let alone fired a single shot. Quietly, he shifted on his branch and prepared to leave the tree.