Chapter 20
February 29th, 1663.
Fergus walked at a near crawl, making his way through the dense woods of the Dunkwald. There were no animals around, which told him there were likely lumberfoot Imperials out. He ducked under a log and knelt on the ground, finding some tracks.
Caelan McTavish knelt next to Fergus and observed, his skin dry, flakey, and painful, creating a pattern similar to serpent's scales. He believed it was the gift of Jörmungandr, and that the pain brings a certain clarity to his actions that an uncleared mind would lose out on.
“They’re going north-west, Ferry station direction.”
Caelan nodded and drew his Orkney snaketooth daggers made from titanic serpent fangs. They were sharpened and enchanted to pierce through anything, even enchanted plate.
“And it looks like they’re nearby.”
Fergus yawned and drew his axe.
“Relatively.”
They signaled to their comrades to follow and began to run north-west. They dashed through the dense forest with the grace of mighty stags, and about as much muscle mass as well. The Dunkwald was hard terrain, yes, however nothing was rougher than Orkney, with its massive rushing rapids and tiny islets connecting the islands combined with equally dense forests.
Soon enough they found their prey: some Imperial skirmishers. A group of around eighty of them spread out, screening the forest, looking for people like Fergus and his Berzerkeri. They stood on the massive branches of the oaks and ashes and maples which made up the Dunkwald. One of Fergus’s men spoke.
“My guess is Jagstadt natives, they move well, but not that well.”
Fergus chuckled.
“Agreed Aron, that makes the most sense. What do you say, boys? We goin’ at them loud?”
His company of sixty men silently agreed. Fergus holstered his axe and drew the rifled carbine from his pack, a gift from the Baron, and pulled the hammer to full-cock.
“Honestly forgot we were given these. Let’s get to it, lads.”
They silently acknowledged him and began to move out, running either in the dense canopy or on the forest floor. The Imperial skirmishers were heading towards the two companies of Berzerkeri with seemingly no knowledge of what was about to happen to them. Men all around took their positions and drew their guns.
They all picked targets and aimed for center mass, waiting for the signal. Fergus took in a deep breath and whistled, and a second later they all fired in unison, a single loud crack! From sixty rifles firing at once echoing through the forest.
Many of the shots hit their targets, with some unfortunate men taking multiple bullets at once. The Berserkers began to scream their warcries and leaped from their positions, sprinting with weapons held high.
Jagstadt skirmishers aimed and fired, downing a handful of the running Berzerkeri but killing none. They drew their own Kaltzbagers and took stock of their surroundings. They were being attacked by Orkniers with about equal numbers, a literal nightmare for Imperial skirmishers. And so they ran from their positions, and those who did not were ordered to by officers.
The Berzerkeri gave chase and soon gained ground on the routing skirmishers. A skirmisher turned to block a strike from an oncoming berserker and found his saber shattered by the ancestrally enchanted axe given to the Berzerkeri. His chest cavity was exposed to all, and his consciousness faded soon after.
Soon the entire force was overtaken and slaughtered, with just a single man taken captive. They tied his hands and feet and sat him down on a log nearby. He was a middle-aged man, smaller in stature but well built.
Caelan knelt next to him and put a snaketooth dagger to his throat.
“So, what’re you boys bringing to us?”
The skirmisher glared at him, a defiant look in his eye. He remained silent as Caelan began to speak again.
“You really ought to tell me lad. If you don’t, I’m gonna sacrifice you to Jörmungandr.”
He got closer and whispered in the skirmisher’s ear.
“Your soul will be consumed by the World Serpent, breaking your Imperial cycle of reincarnation.”
The man glowered at Caelan but held strong, refusing to speak. Caelan stood and looked to his comrades.
“You know what to do, right lads?”
His men vocalized their agreement. Caelan looked back at the captured man and smiled.
“Then we ought to get him prepped.”
The man began to struggle as they pulled him to his feet.
“I offer this man to the great serpent!”
Caelan withdrew some dried substance from a pack and threw it on the man, covering him in some kind of dust. A berzerkeri came and threw a handful of worms in the man’s face, splattering him with goop and wet mud.
“And now, we kill the way the World Serpent does!”
The Berzerkeri dropped him to his knees and he started to fight back harder, desperately trying to break free from the iron grasp of the Orkniers. Caelan got low and slithered behind the man, daggers held up by his head, folded against his forearms like the fangs of a snake.
“From behind!”
The man panickedly struggled and shouted as Caelan got closer, though he still refused to speak. Then, in a flash, Caelan pounced on the man, sinking his fangs into his back, pulling them out and biting deeper and deeper the way a snake would. The man screamed with pain as the fangs entered his body, after a few seconds being reduced to grunts and heavy breathing.
Soon the man’s life began to fade, and Caelan released him from the deadly embrace, sighing contentedly and he wiped the blood from his daggers.
“We’ll figure out where they were without him, eh Fergus?”
Fergus nodded.
“Yeah, fairly simple work. Imperials really have no idea what they're doing.”
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A few miles away the berzerkeri saw signs of life, dodging scouts and men who left the camp to take a piss. They observed the goings on from the safety of the tree canopy, where they could watch but not be seen.
Fergus whistled a high pitch whistle, slightly impressed.
“That’s a big camp.”
Caelan nodded.
“‘Least forty thousand.”
Fergus nodded.
“Agreed.”
He turned towards his men.
“You lads agree?”
His men silently agreed. Fergus stood up from his perch.
“Then we’d better get back and tell the ferries to be ready. I think the closest one is Müller’s Ferry, ‘bout a day’s march. Finn, go and tell them to get ready for a fight within, say, the next couple of days.”
Finn acknowledged his orders and left.
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The Bvarian scout clicked his tongue as he gazed upon Müller’s Ferry. The entire area had been fortified, with trenches dug, mounds created to allow for high ground, spike walls, pits, and enough cover to protect against small arms fire near indefinitely.
The ground in front of it was cleared of all flora and flattened, perfect ground for an approaching army to be torn to shreds. In addition to this, the scout estimated there were around ten thousand men garrisoning the ferry station.
“This is gonna be a bitch to get through.”
He looked through his telescope to the far bank and found a similar situation.
“Yeah, they’re prepared to defend both sides of the river.”
He collapsed his telescope and returned it to his bag.
“Crossing is gonna cost a lot of people.”
His partner spoke up.
“You think we can do it?”
The scout looked in the air as he thought.
“Well…I’d say yeah, eventually. Take us a while though.”
His partner nodded.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Yeah, this is gonna be a shitshow. Massive shitshow.”
The scout shrugged.
“Regardless, we’ll have to report this to commander Volkner.”
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March 1st, 1663.
The scouts from Orkney had informed the commander, one commander Hilfschlag, a commoner whose education was heavily subsidized by the Baron von Bickenstadt himself, that the enemy was approaching. A total of ten thousand men, an equal force, likely just a probing attack.
He ordered his men to man the palisades and trenches, and for gunnery crews to man their cannons. They got to their positions swiftly and vigorously, hopped up on revolutionary fervor. They were excited to see their first combat, and they’re especially excited to send the servants of slavers packing.
Dust could be seen billowing in the distance. The army was very close, less than a dozen miles out. They would be upon them in a few hours. The men were messing around with each other, trying to get rid of the nervous tremors that were beginning to make themselves known.
And soon enough, soldiers began to be seen amongst the trees in the distance. They marched in orderly columns, spilling out into the created flatland that extended nearly a mile from the ferry. When they came within range the cannons began to fire, sending six pound balls of iron screaming towards the enemy lines.
The balls hit the ground and skipped over the heads of the enemy, missing them by a wide margin. The artillery adjusted and loaded, taking a little over a minute for each cannon. They fired in a volley, hurtling more iron death towards the enemy, this time skipping through a few lines at once, killing a dozen men.
The Grand Imperial Army began to fan out, elongating their lines to minimize the damage done by roundshot. They were in an open order formation, with denser blocks, six men wide spread out from one another. The Imperials covered the ground quickly, their constant training and drilling allowing them to move fast as a single unit for a surprisingly long time under fire.
Bickenstadters gripped their muskets tightly. Ten thousand men were approaching in neat, organized lines, and every time a cannonball ripped a hole it was swiftly filled, creating the illusion of a black tide of uniforms slowly and steadily gaining ground, losing no momentum even as chunks of it got carved out.
The Imperial artillery had arrived and were engaging in counter-battery fire, forcing the Bickenstadt crews to do the same. A cannonball flew over the heads of a crewman, a little closer than last time. A man with a telescope spoke.
“Raise it ten degrees, and rotate it five degrees left.”
The operators acknowledged him and adjusted the gun. A cannonball flew and tore off a chunk of a palisade, bouncing up and skipping past the crewman, far too close for comfort. It flew into the Grösse Teilander Fluss behind them, sinking to the bottom to lay there, possibly for decades.
Soon enough the enemy had entered 500 yards. Those with rifles fired, downing a handful of men. From such a distance it was expected that very few shots would hit, however, even relatively small amounts of casualties were still casualties.
The rifles fired again, as did the musketmen, this time at 300 yards. At this stage, the rifles were abandoned for smoothbores, as they took about as long to reload as cannons depending on the rifle. Muskets fired as quickly as they could, downing handfuls of men at a time as the enemy approached.
Imperial skirmishers were spread out in front of the massive line, firing at will as quickly as possible to pick off men and keep heads down.
An artilleryman cheered as he looked through his telescope.
“We hit their gun men! Adjust for infantry, get that grapeshot ready!”
He heard a loud crash to his left and glanced in that direction, finding that the Imperials had destroyed one of their guns as well.
Within 200 yards the Imperials fired, the first row passing their musket back to the third and taking theirs. Their bullets whizzed past heads or slammed into palisades, the volley missing entirely.
A cannonball smashed through a palisade, impaling men around it with wooden splinters. Bickenstadters screamed at the top of their lungs as massive chunks of oak stuck out of their bodies, and a few men were unlucky enough to find giant splinters severing an artery.
They bled out as they were dragged back to the ferry station, their wounds far too grisly for them to hold on long enough to get medical assistance. Those who could hold on got the help they needed, healing mages working in the Medic Corps of the Bickenstadt Liberation Forces.
Even with the casualties taken by the Imperials their pace never wavered, and anyone still alive was simply left behind, as the men had faith that their comrades would be taken care of by the medical staff and stretcher bearers.
The segmented wall of black uniforms got closer and closer, and soon their volleys were beginning to kill Bickenstadters. A man peaked his head up and a second later his comrade was splattered with blood and brain, the man falling back and dropping like a sack of flour. His comrade wiped the blood out of his eyes and stared at his viscera covered hand in silent horror.
Soon the Imperials stopped, still in roughly neat lines despite the distance of the open order formation, and fired just as the Bickenstadters did, dropping three dozen men at once. The second row moved in front of the first, aimed, and fired, being replaced by the third row a second later.
They began to slowly move forwards, a constant stream of volleys coming from them as they fired and maneuvered, keeping the Bickenstadter’s heads down for as long as they could. In between the Imperial volleys, Bickenstadters began to fire at will, killing and maiming men as the Imperials drew closer.
Soon enough they were within 75 yards, their officers raised sabers and tilted them forwards.
“Charge!”
The blocks of black again began to move forwards as one, shouting as loud as they could as they spread out and sprinted in unison. Men jumped down into bayonets as they flooded the trenches, pushing as hard as they could.
Bayonet stuck and gun butt hit flesh as men fought as hard as they could to stay alive and kill their enemy. An Imperial displaced an enemy thrust and impaled him with one of his own. He twisted his bayonet and ripped it out, turning to find a gun butt slamming into his face. He fell over and barely managed to knock a thrust aside, kicking the man’s knee and causing him to collapse on top of him.
The two soldiers wrestled for control, punching and elbowing each other as hard as they could manage until, finally, the Bickenstadter rolled on top. He spiked his elbow down onto the Imperial’s face, stunning him long enough for the Bickenstadter to pick up his bayonet and spear the man in the throat, pinning him to the ground. The Imperial struggled against the bayonet, writhing on the ground as the life drained through his neck.
Soon, a bugle was sounded and the Imperials began a neat retreat, just as fast as they came. They ran in neat lines, moving in near complete unison. It was unnerving to the men, they had come, taken casualties, done casualties, and left.
Officers tried to get the men into lines to fire at the retreating enemy, but most of them were too shocked at the swiftness of their battle that they did not react to the yelling. Only after the beatings began did the men begin to respond to their orders, but by that time only the cannons could touch the enemy, and they were busy with counter-battery fire.
Soon, the grounds were quiet, and the enemy was melting into the woods. A man raised his musket and cheered. Men all around him followed suit until the entire position was hooting and hollering in victory.
Out of ten thousand, they had lost a few hundred men. The enemy had lost far more, however the Bickenstadters knew that the Grand Imperial Army had men to spare. They always had more men. This was most likely just a probing attack to see how the Bickenstadters handled themselves. The fact that they had managed to destroy a cannon was just a bonus on top of learning their strength and getting an idea of how many men they would need to fully take the position.
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Commander Hans Volkner poured over the casualty reports from the probing attack. Out of ten thousand men they lost a little over seven hundred men, seven percent of the forces that attacked. Overall, it could have been worse, but the discipline and training of the Grand Imperial Army made sure that they did well.
He was also mulling over the observations he had made during the attack. They had dug themselves in strongly, with trenches and palisades protecting them from small arms fire and preventing full formations from charging in at once.
The flatland in front of the ferry station would would make approaching them dangerous, and the high ground created from the dirt dug up for the trenches meant that getting closer to the actual station itself meant fighting uphill for a portion of it, and the river to their backs guaranteed that the enemy would fight as hard as they could.
Their defenses are said to have been influenced by Ottoman engineers, the gold standard of military engineering in the Assai’id confederation, and it showed. Taking this ferry station would be bloody business, and that was just for a single ferry station. They still had to take every one along the river if they wanted to ferry over one hundred thousand men across.
Hans sighed heavily.
“Baron, you’ve really given me a tough nut to crack.”
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“Empress, you have to understand, this blockade is really cutting into my profits! When is it going to be removed?”
The Empress sighed from her throne. She looked down on the merchant as he knelt in front of her.
“It will be done when it is done.”
He looked up at her.
“But Empress, I need to unload this cargo! Keeping it cold only prevents rot for so long.”
“Then unfortunately you are going to have to pray to Frau Abhilfe that she keeps the rot away from you, because these things take time.”
He nodded.
“Yes Empress, I understand these things take time, I just want to get an idea of how soon we can begin shipping again.”
“And I have told you that I cannot provide that information at the moment.”
“But Empress-”
The Empress spoke over him.
“The blockade is of Bickenstadt ships. They know what they are doing, they are well stocked with the most advanced technology they could get their grubby hands on, so making sure that you make a profit off of your goods is going to take time and lives. I am attempting to save as many Imperial lives as possible, so no, I cannot give you a specific time yet. You and the other merchants will be informed when the time comes.”
She stood from her throne.
“Until then I expect that I will not be hearing of this again.”
The merchant bowed his head.
“Of course, Empress.”
“Good, now leave. I have other business to attend to.”
The merchant stood, bowed his head, and left as the Empress turned and went in the room behind her throne.
She leaned over a table covered in maps of the Empire and models of men with swords and spears, a hold over from previous military doctrine. She was focusing heavily on Leibenstadt, considering what she wanted to do.
She moved pieces around Leibenstadt until she was satisfied. Concentric lines of men stood between Leibensburg and Bergzitadelle Frederick. Her plan was for them to delay the siege of the mountain citadel for as long as possible. It would take a very long time for her to cross the river, and it would take a lot of lives to do so as well. She just had to pray to the gods that her logistics would hold up when she got to Bickenstadt.
She would have the Leibenstadt forces defend areas, but slowly move back, granting the rebels useless territory and hopefully carving chunks out of them in the process. The only thing she truly needed to defend was the citadel, which she was fairly confident the garrison commander could take care of.
She turned her attention to Holenstadt, pursing her lips as he considered what to do. She placed a bunch of models around the mountains in a loose formation and added more to the various forts on the Grössenstadt side of the border.
Her plan was to leave Holenstadt be for the time being. They didn’t have the resources to put down the entire province like last time, and they needed to cross the river before half of her army was defeated in Leibenstadt.
She would have constant skirmish actions and harassment of the local populations when she could, but any large-scale engagements would come from the Holenstadters. She clicked her tongue.
“When we break through, I am going to burn Holenstadt to the ground. Fuck their culture, I want those disgusting degenerates gone. My father should’ve slaughtered the lot of them.”
She turned her attention to the eastern provinces, Ebenenstadt and Weinstadt.
For the most part Weinstadt was safe. She highly doubted Waffenstadt had ambitions there, likely they were cooperating fully with the Baron to take down the mountain citadel, so they would have a token garrison for the whole province. Ebenenstadt was a different story entirely.
The Brayherds of Caprae Loco likely wanted the fertile farmland of Ebenenstadt, and they would likely see this whole civil war as an opportunity to expand their influence. She would station extra troops there from Jagstadt as they were trained. She did not want to invade Caprae Loco, so they would be defensively used.
She leaned back and sighed angrily. She shook her head and frowned.
“This is ridiculous. He is seriously killing Empiresmen over elves. Unbelievable.”