Chapter 20
November 28th, 1665. Bickenstadt.
The Baron stood on a crate in front of a massive crowd of soldiers. An air mage created a sigil in front of him and he began to speak.
“Men, we are about to assault the ferry stations again. The bravest men will lead the charge to keep the Imperial’s attention on them as our Regensburg allies flank around from the river. Since they can walk on the surface, they will simply march up behind the Imperials and scatter them. That is the easy part, I trust in you men, you will carry the day. The hard part, however, is the demigryph knights.”
The crowd murmured in agreement. They remembered being under the affects of their screech, the complete fear and helplessness they experienced due to a simple screech.
“Unfortunately, we have very few methods of killing them. The Demigryphs are massive and covered in enchanted armor, as are their riders. Their riders also have enchanted chainmail under their plate, meaning you cannot simply stick a dagger through the gaps as you usually would. However, there is one thing that enchanted armor cannot protect against…”
He reached into a pouch and pulled out a massive grenade, about the size of two fists put together.
“...that would be a powerful shockwave. If a large grenade such as this were to explode next to a rider it would rupture their organs, killing them quickly. The problem with this, however, is that you would need to be close enough to throw the grenade, and time it well enough to explode next to the ride. Most likely, this would result in the deaths of friendlies close to them.”
He looked solemn.
“I wish to avoid that if possible, however, it may not be possible unless you are willing to give up your own life in exchange for theirs, say, by climbing onto the demigryph with the lit grenade in your hands."
He took a deep breath before continuing.
"Please understand that I do not ask this of you lightly, I will do whatever I can to preserve as many of your lives as possible, however, some brave men must weather the risk if we are to defeat the Imperials, to push the slavers back across the river. I cannot offer you much in this life, however, know that your bravery will be rewarded in the next, and that your loved ones will never want for anything again!”
Some of the men seemed amicable to the idea, while most shifted uncomfortably in their spots.
“Anyone who is interested in making this world a better place by making the ultimate sacrifice, meet with the quartermaster after this speech. They will provide you with grenades, and make sure that your contributions towards history will not go unnoticed. I will not think less of any man who does not take part in this, it is an understandable reaction, many of you have families you would like to return to. If you are one such men, I suggest you refrain from taking this assignment.”
He again took a deep breath before continuing.
“You have five hours to decide. In five hours, we will commence our attack. Dismissed!”
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A Bvarian jaeger informed Hans that the Bickenstadt coalition was beginning to approach. They were arrayed in a different way than usual, with the strongest, most experienced troops in the center, and the weaker men on the flanks.
“I want the strongest men on the flanks, and double the amount of men holding the center.”
The jaeger saluted and ran off. Hans leaned over his table and began to move pieces around.
“The trenches will just have to hold long enough for the demigryph knights to arrive.”
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Cannonballs ripped through the line of Bickenstadt grenadiers. They continued to march forward, undaunted by their losses. To their left were Ottoman janissaries, to their right the highly experienced elves of La République Elfique, and on the flanks were the less experienced Bickenstadt regulars.
They marched hard, staying perfectly in step with those around them even as they moved at a near run. The Imperials fired at the approaching men and soldiers dropped in place, their allies simply stepping over them without stopping, confident that they would be collected by the stretcher bearers and taken care of by the medics.
Imperials fired as quickly as they could load, dropping more and more of the Bickenstadt coalition. The Imperials settled into their routine, firing, pulling out cartridges, filling their guns and flash pans, ramming the paper and ball down the barrel, then firing again. Over, and over, and over.
At 75 yards the men on the flanks stopped and fired at the trench, downing a few dozen men at once. They cheered and began to charge, joined by the center. The Bickenstadt grenadiers, alongside their janissary and elven allies, held their fire all the way until they were upon the trenches, stopping on a dime and firing down into them immediately, killing over a hundred men at once with a singular accurate and devastating volley.
The flanks entered the trenches before the center, jumping down and spearing anyone they could. Bayonets scraped against muskets and glanced off armor as the whirlwind of combat began. Bickenstadters and Imperials found gaps in their foe’s armor and exploited it as best they could, and soon the front of the trenches were filled to bursting with bleeding and dying men.
The flanks took extremely heavy casualties as they attacked, fighting against the formidable Imperial grenadiers. Grenadiers parried thrusts and returned with their own, killing the race traitors with both zeal and expertise. They slowly stepped back as they covered their comrades, pushed by the sheer mass of infantry bearing down on them.
The Coalition center jumped down into the trenches and began to lay into them with bayonets and yataghans A janissary chopped off the hand of an Imperial at the wrist, watching as the Bickenstadt grenadier next to him finished off the man with a well placed thrust to the throat.
Elves perfectly covered each other and thrust with uncanny speed and precision, chewing through their enemies with hundreds of years of experience and training. An elf thrust his bayonet forward and withdrew as soon as it began to glance off Imperial armor. He didn’t even flinch as his opponent thrust back at him, confident that his comrade would cover him, which he did.
The bayonet was quickly displaced by a counter thrust and elves attacked at the Imperial from both sides, sticking their bayonets in both of his armpits. An elf fell as an Imperial fired at point blank range, causing his comrades to roar with anger and redouble their efforts.
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“Send in the reserves to reinforce the center! I want those race traitors pushed back!’
A messenger saluted Hans and ran off.
“Where are those damn demigryphs?”
Suddenly, Hans felt a knot form in his stomach and his blood run cold as he heard an ear piercing shriek. He shakily looked above and saw massive flying beasts overhead, soaring through the air in a chevron formation.
One of the riders broke off and flew directly towards Hans, shaking the earth as the demigryph landed outside his tent. The knight dismounted and entered Hans’s tent, giving him a crisp salute.
“What are our orders, sir?”
Hans shook his head vigorously to regain some semblance of composure.
“Assist the flanks. I want your men to split up and attack both of them from behind.”
The knight saluted.
“Sir!”
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A Bickenstadter on the right flank saw figures in the sky off in the distance and immediately began to fumble with the pouch on his hip.
“They’re coming! The demigryph knights are coming!”
He and those around him withdrew a large iron ball, about twice as large as their fists, and steeled their resolve. If they did this wrong they would die, and if they did this right it was still very likely they would die, but they would be rewarded for their bravery in the next life.
The battlefield fell momentarily still as an ear piercing shriek shook the surrounding area, and a few seconds later men began to scream at the top of their lungs as the demigryph knights landed amongst them, scattering the dense knots of soldiers with sheer weight and momentum.
Some men immediately broke and ran, getting torn apart by massive talons or run through by enchanted lances. Men fumbled with their grenades and were crushed underfoot by the massive beasts, and soon even more Bickenstadters began to run. A single brave man took deep breath to steady himself and pulled the tab on his iron grenade.
Everything slowed to a crawl as he counted the five seconds the fuze would take to explode and ran towards a massive beast.
One.
His legs pumped as hard as they could to cover the distance.
Two.
He could feel his pulse pounding hard and his breathing become increasingly raggad as his death drew near.
Three.
He felt a moment of hesitation, but buried it underneath layer upon layer of revolutionary fervor, and the knowledge that he was about to make history.
Four.
He leapt at the beast and grabbed onto the knight’s stirrup, thrusting his grenade up near the rider’s flank.
Five.
BOOM! The grenade burst, and everyone around felt a massive shockwave. Men were pushed to the ground by the force of the explosion, and their ears rang as they blearily looked around, attemtping to gain their bearings again. One of the men felt a massive weight crash into him, and he stared at it for a few seconds, not fully comprehending what he was seeing. It was a man in beautifully ornate armor, lying still on top of him.
He tried to move, but the dead weight of the knight held him down, and his arms refused to cooperate as well. He couldn’t hear anything, but he soon felt himself being dragged out from under the armored knight, and he could feel the vibrations of someone yelling reverberating through his head.
He stared at the knight, not really sure what to make of the scene. A knight, the one who he had watched kill ten of his brothers in less than five seconds, lay still on the ground.
History had just been made. The first demigryph knight ever had fallen in battle. Their enchanted armor protected them from nearly everything, except for shockwaves. They could take thousands of bullets before they even began to feel it, but no amount of enchanted steel could stop them from turning into human shaped soup after a large enough explosion.
The battlefield was still and men looked at the scene. Dozens of men lay on the ground, looking around confusedly, like they weren’t entirely sure what had just happened. Men froze in terror and grit their teeth as the loudest shriek they had ever heard nearly burst their eardrums, and more fell over as a massive gust of air pushed them to the ground.
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Along the line of trenches five demigryph knights had been killed at once alongside one demigryph, and so their riderless steeds had decided to retreat. They hurt all over, and their eardrums were burst and bleeding. They could hear better than the average human, and a grenade bursting near their head was the loudest noise any of them had ever heard. They felt something they very rarely felt: fear. And so they flew away, followed soon after by the other, less harmed knights.
Before the Imperials could even process what had happened, they heard a thousand cracks from behind, and their comrades fell forward. Then, they heard a deafening roar, and the rumble of thousands of footfalls behind them. Imperials turned just in time to watch as bayonets flew towards their face, given less than a second to process their doom.
The Regensburg troops had arrived behind the Imperials. None of them had thought to watch the river, as the Regensburgers hadn’t been seen in months. It was assumed by the Imperials that they had gone home after taking many casualties trying to unsucessfully keep them from crossing the river. The less disciplined Imperials either threw down their weapons or tried to make themselves as small as possible, with some even playing dead in their trenches.
Imperial grenadiers were caught between the highly experienced men in front of them and the confident and skilled men behind them. The fighting quickly devolved into a slaughter, and from there the battle’s outcome had been decided.
The men untouched by Regensburgers had turned tail and ran, protected by the brave men who knew that they must keep back the enemy or their battalions would be slaughtered or captured, and the Imperials didn’t even want to know what the race traitors, let alone the degenerates they kept as comrades, would do to them in captivity.
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After hours of fighting, and even more time spent retreating, the Imperials had all either been killed, captured, or retreated across the river. The demigryph knights were shaken from their first ever casualties, and the Imperials were desperately attempting to regroup and reorganize.
The Baron stood in parade rest as he watched the last of the Imperial boats row across the river, and the last of the Imperial rearguard surrendered, at least those who valued their lives more than their duty to the Empress, and their hatred of the elves.
The Baron smiled as he gazed upon the thousands of Imperials in their purple gambesons marching in lines with hands held high above their heads, carefully watched over by Bickenstadt troops. They had captured ten thousand men in total, a small portion of the Grand Imperial Army, yes, but a portion nonetheless, and not including all of those they had killed outright or who were too injured to be saved before Geisfeld and his nurses could get to them.
The Bickenstadters had pushed the Imperials across one of the ferry stations, and the others were just a matter of time. Most likely they would begin to move men across as soon as they heard that the station had been taken. Soon, the Imperials would be fully driven out of Bickenstadt. His people would finally be safe again.
The Baron smiled.
“Only a few more steps to liberation.”
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December 14th, 1665. Somewhere in the forests of northern Holenstadt.
Krysia was furious. Her men were steadily being pushed back by the Imperials. They were losing ground every day, and they were bleeding men constantly to Jagstadt jaegers and the bitter winter of northern Holenstadt. The only thought which gave her a modicum of solace was the fact that the Imperials were in a similar state due to the cold and the logistical challenges of bringing so many men and supplies through the mountains on the Holenstadt-Grössenburg.
She watched as her battered and mauled columns exhaustedly retreated with a look of scorn across her face. She wanted to blame her men who were not holding the line, but she knew there was no one to blame other than herself. If she had led them better, employed better strategems, made better use of the winged hussars, they wouldn’t be forced to retreat like this.
She took a deep breath and steeled her resolve. Negative thoughts like this would do her no good, and they would only bring her farther away from victory. She needed to be strong and confident at all times as an example for her men. She turned to her honor guard, some dismounted winged hussars, and her eyes widened.
She could see the barrel of a gun poking out of the tree line, pointed directly at her. She ducked as the musket erupted in smoke, and she heard the whizz of a bullet passing over her head. She and her guards drew their sabers as Imperial light cavalry seemingly appeared from behind the massive Dunkwald trees, sabers held high in the air.
Her aide dove for cover as she readied herself. She hadn’t personally fought in forever, this would be an excellent test of her skills. A horseman flew past her, slashing down with the force of a charging horse behind him. Krysia batted the slash aside and ducked another as multiple men began to attack her.
A bodyguard thrust his saber upwards and allowed the cavalryman’s saber to glance off his helmet, catching the man in the armpit. He twisted his saber and ripped it out, dragging the man off the horse and mounting it himself.
Krysia jumped and spun as she slashed the neck of a cavalryman when he rode by, the horse slowly trotting to a halt as the man slumped in his saddle. A second later she turned and found a saber flying at her face. She ducked, but was slightly too slow, the saber opening a nasty gash across her face. His edge alignment wasn't great, so the blow would likely not be fatal.
She screamed as she fell on her back, alive, but greatly injured. There was a massive open wound from the top of her right cheek to the bottom left of her jaw, cutting across her mouth, exposing a few of the teeth on the bottom row. She pushed herself to her feet and ducked the thrust of a cavalryman, slashing the legs of his horse as it passed. The horse flipped end over end and the man yelled out as it crushed his legs, pinning him to the ground. She sprinted over to him and lopped off his head before he could get out from under his horse, ducking another slash as a light cavalryman passed by, dying the snow red with the blood seeping out of her gaping wound, and that of her enemies as well.
Her guards were chewing through the cavalrymen, and a few had stolen Imperial horses and were engaging in cavalry combat, their specialty. A saber glanced off a hussar’s armor and his own chopped off the man’s arm at the elbow, twirling his saber around and flicking his wrist forward, catching the side of the man’s neck, calling forth a massive torrent of blood.
Just as quickly as they came the light cavalry retreated back into the woods, Kryisa shouting obscenities at them as they left, waving her saber towards them angrily, looking like a crazed lunatic. She stopped and felt the massive gash on her face, cursing as loudly as she could and putting her saber in its sheath before running over to her aide.
“Boy, we are leaving.”
Her aide looked terrified. He could see her teeth through the wound, a massive, gaping wound across her beautiful, masculine features. He wasn’t even sure how she was still standing. She turned to a mounted hussar and gestured for him to take the boy, who came over before the boy was lifted up into the saddle by Krysia.
She got up on another horse and they began to ride, Krysia screaming every curse word in every language she knew all the way.
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December 14th, 1665. Bvarian province, Grindelburg.
The Waffenstadt-Brayherd force had been spending months attempting to take the first layer of Grindelburg. However, none of them had been massive, all out assaults. Gaius and Von Puckelsmark wanted to wait for reinforcements, which they had gotten around a week ago.
Twenty thousand line infantry and five thousand siege engineers from Waffenstadt had come to. The engineers had wasted no time in getting to work, immedietly taking measurements and digging down into the earth. They knew that they would not be able to perform the same miracle that had taken the first layer of Frederick, at least without being noticed like their allies had managed to do, however, they had still learned a thing or two from the Ottomans.
An engineer crouch walked through his tunnel, measuring the distance traveled. When he reached the end of the tunnel he silently celebrated. They were right beneath the first layer of Grindelburg's walls.
He hurriedly left the tunnel and ordered men to begin packing the end with explosives before running off to inform Gaius, who smiled his strange, caprine smile and slapped the engineer on the back a few times.
“Excellent. We shall attack as soon as your men are finished, and our men are formed up. Audentes fortuna iuvat. On my command, collapse their defenses!”
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A Grand Imperial Army soldier looked down at the Waffenstadt-Brayherd coalition. Thousands upon thousands of former Imperials and beastial soldiers were readying themselves to attack his home, and he was ready to defend it to the last breath. He was from Grindelburg, born and raised, and if he had his way he would die and be buried there as well.
Suddenly, the ground underneath him began to rumble, then, all he saw was the sky, and all he felt was the sensation of weightlessness as he was thrown up in the air. He rose towards the sky for what felt like an eternity before landing hard on his back. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs, and he could barely move his head to figure out what happened.
The outer wall of Grindelburg had been collapsed, and the Waffenstadt-Brayherd force began to march forward. Defenders scrambled to figure out what to do, as well as to drag their comrades out from under the rubble.
Waffenstadt mortars fired, and the rounds burst in the air above the defenders, saturating the area with deadly shards of shrapnel. The bombardment only ended when the attackers got within 100 yards of the walls and began to pick up the pace.
Defenders fired down on them from anywhere that was left standing, bullets bouncing harmlessly off of enchanted Brayherd scutum. Defenders cursed and began to retreat, wisely not wanting to engage the Brayherds directly in melee.
Grenades flew down at the attackers as they began to scale the rubble, killing and maiming Brayherds and Waffenstadters alike. However, they continued forwards nonetheless. Waffenstadters equipped with rifled muskets picked off any exposed defenders, and Bvarian jaegers with smoothbore muskets picked off Waffenstadt riflemen, even when they seemed to be out of rifle range, let alone smoothbore range.
Soon Brayherds were taking their first steps inside the city of Grindelburg, too busy fighting to marvel at the beauty and sheer verticality of the mountain city. Civilians rushed into their homes as Brayherds rushed by. They had been ordered not to touch any civilians under the threat of decimatio, and even to assist any who were in danger and help them get to safety. Gaius figured the best way to capture and hold a city was to do it swiftly, and to be as gentle and fair to the civilian population as possible. He knew he wouldn't cooperate with people who had raped and murdered his fellow countrymen.
A legion of Brayherds smashed into a knot of Bvarian line infantry, scattering them through sheer mass and momentum. They laid into them with gladius and Brayherd greatswords, thrusting and slashing down at them with practiced efficiency.
A Brayherd greatswordsman slashed at the first person he saw and soon strained every muscle in his body to stop his strike at the last second, the force involved sending a gust of air which blew up the hair of his target. The man in front of him was unarmed and unarmored, not wearing a uniform and not even carrying a small utility knife on his person. The Brayherd held out his hand and asked the man where his home was in slow, broken Reikers. The man stared at him, terrified and confused.
“W-w-as?”
The Brayherd thought for a moment.
“Eh, Wo bist…du…eh…haus?”
The man glanced back at the building he stood in front of and the Brayherd gestured for him to go inside.
“Gehen, amicus.”
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A Waffenstadter bashed an Imperial across the face with the butt of his gun, knocking him over before skewering him in the stomach with his bayonet. He turned and rushed at a man aiming at him, but was just a little too slow, dropping to the ground as a large caliber musket ball blew a massive hole in his head, scattering brains and skull fragments behind him.
A knot of Waffenstadters rushed at the Imperial and beat him to death with their muskets, holding them backwards like clubs. Imperials moved to help their ally and the Waffenstadters smashed into them too, taking after their Brayherd allies as they scattered the men with sheer weight and momentum.
The Imperial defenders rushed around the city, firing at the pursuing men and only fighting in melee when absolutely necessary. Their orders were to kill men, then leave, a skirmishing tactic applied to the whole of the defenders. It was generally known to be incredibly frustrating for those who faced it, and incredibly effective as well, so long as you had excess ground to give.
The Bvarian jaegers, who knew the city far better than their attackers, ran circles around them with ease in the massive, maze-like city of Grindelburg. They loaded as they moved, months and years of training in incredibly rough terrain enabling them to reload and fire even as they ran.
Brayherds gained on a group of retreating soldiers and slaughtered them all in just a few seconds, ripping muskets out of their hands and thrusting gladius into their guts. Bvarian jaegers fired into the Brayherd’s backs, killing a handful of them. Before the Brayherds could even figure out where they were attacked from, the jaegers had disappeared. loud, angry braying and the stamping of hundreds of hooves could be heard echoing all throughout the city.
The attackers chased around the defenders for nearly two hours, quickly exhausting themselves but being replaced by fresh troops soon after. The defenders were losing more and more men every second, and soon they began to retreat to the second layer of defenses.
A group of Waffenstadters rushed after running men, passing a gatehouse and stopping when they were greeted by a massive wall of guns. The Imperials fired, killing every single man in that group with a hail of a hundred bullets.
Soon all of the defenders had retreated, and the exhausted attackers cheered in victory. Overall, the defenders had done extremely well, killing nearly five hundred men and injuring hundreds more while only taking around one hundred fifty casualties themselves. Their skirmishing tactics were extremely effective, and the terrain of their city was extremely vertical and rough, making persuing the Bvarian jaegers all but impossible.
Gaius sighed as he watched groups of men work together to carry Brayherd corpses and lined them up next to each other for identification.
“The second layer is going to be even more difficult, isn’t it?”
Von Puckelsmark nodded and commented dryly.
“Yes it is.”
Gaius sighed again.
“Well, then I suppose we should get planning. And requesting more men. We are going to need them.”