It was morning of the following day, the second day of the ensorcelled deluge. While the water continued to drip and soak into everything that it touched, whether that be wood, cloth, or skin, the mood amongst the men posted to the city’s earth works was rather light. As they awaited the coming of the enemy, they sat upon countless wooden benches beneath the shelter of dozens of large awnings that had been erected along the front.
Made of treated canvas and leather, held up by stout poles of wood, and staked down with hempen lines to the ground, they served as all but weather proof shelters against the surprisingly meager might of the storm. While the rain itself may have fallen at such a precipitous rate to make even the most hale and hearty man question his lot in life for finding himself far from home adrift in its cold embrace, the actual wind brought by the storm was minimal. The water fell nearly fully vertically, as if more inclined to dampen the soil than to work its way past the feeble attempts of man to defy nature.
The large structures were emplaced by the dozen in a ring around the city on the side of the river most threatened by the enemy’s advance. Their occupants were warm and dry, heated under the cheerful light of great fires beneath each awning even as their counterparts in the enemy ranks suffered the full brunt of the storm. Casks of cider, full to the brim with measures of autumn spices and heated to a near boil were in abundance within each such shelter. Every man present was afforded rations of the concoction and were in great cheer.
While they may have been pressed into the service of the, oftentimes less than cherished lords of their villages, they knew well the stakes hanging in the balance, and the price that would be exacted upon all if the city fell. They had long since made peace with their fate, to be used as expendable fodder in the hands of an uncaring lord, knowing that they must do so for the sake of their families, so that at least their children may yet survive the coming war. Those that had not made that peace had been made examples of. Whether they had been deserters or thieves, the craven had been caught and hung. Their bodies placed upon display as a warning to their fellows, upon gallows and gibbets, hanging from trees as they were preyed upon by the birds. Strung up they became macabre displays of the price of disloyalty. But it was not the grim fate of those poor and unfortunate souls that had stuck in the minds of the men, but of the Empress’s bounty provided to them.
No man liked to dwell upon dark thoughts, and few would have the heart to do so when they were in cheerful environs. The men were free to drink and make merry with the abundance of cider within the casks, a concoction that had been enhanced somewhere along the way by the addition of copious amounts of distilled spirits. The task ahead to which they were sworn may have been perilous, but if not the lord to whom they owed nominal fealty, then the Empress had at least seen fit to provide for them in recompense. A feeling of frivolity and mirth filled the air as the men sat at their benches, talked, and laughed. It may have been the last time any one of them saw the rest, and they would see to it that each man amongst them made the best of his remaining time. Even their officers, the sergeants taken from the ranks of the battle hardened retainers in the service to the lords, who were nominally in charge of keeping discipline within each band of men, partook in the Empress’s offerings.
And who could blame them? These were proud peasant men of Albion, all but born with the great longbows that they wielded in hand. They practiced regularly, both for sport and for martial training, the weapon becoming an inextricable part of their rural culture since time immemorial. Their aim would not be set askew by a few pints of cider, perhaps not even if they drank like fishes. It was a commonly lauded belief that the hale and hearty men that formed the backbone of Albion’s armies in the days of yore fought better while roaring drunk than sober after all. Neither was it certain the enemy would even come that day, much to the inwardly turned prayers to the gods of some among the men.
The Duke’s army had not seen fit to test the walls the previous day, merely cowering behind their own fortifications as if waiting out the storm. Yet, as if to spite their aims, the rains still came, ceaseless and hard not letting up for even the barest moment of daylight. The battlefield had become even more heavily laden with water even as the engorged river rose and flooded its banks, further ruining the fields that the foe had balked at marching upon the previous day. Would they brave the rains upon the second day, even as conditions continued to deteriorate?
Perhaps they would, the enemy were many and their supplies, dwindling without hope for resupply while encamped upon the barren wasteland that had become of the capital region after the exodus of its populace were rather finite. They surely could not afford to postpone their attack over long, not with such a great body of men committed to the attack. They could not hope for forage, nor could they hope to split their numbers to reduce the drains upon their supply lest the city’s defenders take to the field and destroy their mighty host in piecemeal. But they could not afford to be hasty either. It was with the clear intent of besiegement that they marched upon Maegwyn and in the seemingly endless fall of rain, there was no chance their stocks of powder would stay dry enough to be of use in bombarding the city. Despite their experience in war these men were a field army, reliant on long pole arms and ill suited to direct attacks upon fortifications.
Thus, despite their impending peril the city’s protectors, at least those posted to its outermost defenses, remained in high spirits. All until a cry of warning came from atop an earthen mound, elicited from a spotter that had lain low upon the crest keeping watch over the foe. It seemed that the enemy had finally roused themselves to action. The cheery atmosphere vanished piteously as thousands of men from shelters all across the earth works stood up simultaneously, grabbing their bows, swords, axes, billhooks, or any other of innumerable improvised weapons, and forming up between earthen crests.
Nathaniel observed their response with quiet contemplation, sitting as he was upon one of the shelter benches. Dressed for battle, he was equipped in full plate, overlapping layers of masterfully artificed armor allowing for a full range of motion while still affording a tremendous amount of protection. Despite its well polished sheen and clean appearance, free from either dirt or rust, it was somewhat of an antique. He had not had much need of it since the days of the civil war, and even then, it had been rather behind the times. While most armor of recent make had begun a trend of cutting weight where it could to afford a thicker cuirass, with the intent to better resist the fired bullets of the increasingly popular arquebus, his remained a fully enclosed shell. Fortunately, it was if the Empress had miraculously foresaw his current circumstances, and the rains turning all exposed gunpowder to impotent mud would make it vanishingly unlikely that he would be struck with such a bullet in the ensuing battle. Upon back side lay the tools of his old warrior’s trade, a greatsword of thick steel bound in harness about his shoulders and a short sword hanging loosely from the back of his hips so as to be easily drawn when disarmed.
Joined by three other men, each one a man of the Empress’s Shield that had been afforded to him as personal bodyguards for the battle to come, he fit in well with the assemblage of Knights and Lords that remained. The muddy soil would be far too unsure of ground to employ the nobility’s heavy cavalry, and so every man remaining would be fighting dismounted. Even those that had let themselves go to waste in the peaceful times of the Empress’s reign, Nathaniel noted with some mirth. Spying several men of unusually rotund bulk sitting uncomfortably, clearly clad in armor far too tight for their present weight, their skin all but pouring through the seams and joints, he cracked a smile, struggle to hold in his laughter. They would likely last not long at all in battle, and not a second longer in the planned retreat through the twisting alleys of the outer city should the earth works fall. It was truly amusing to see members of the aristocracy, a pillar of society that prided itself upon its place as the preeminent martial class, so enfeebled. But it was all for the best, with every man that fell here today, especially from among the assembled lords, one less dagger would be aimed at the heart of the Empress when the test of loyalty began.
As he cast his eyes over to the ranks of longbowmen, he noted that the peasants were in an acceptable state. Clearly well practiced in the use of their bows, they were taking careful cover behind the rows of great sharpened stakes lining the openings in the earth works that they had emplaced in previous days. However, while they had engrained strength and skill with the bow into their very culture, they were not so versed with discipline and order, and it had been up to the local nobility to instill that sense of order within the ranks.
Thankfully, it seemed that their drillmasters had done an able job as he considered the generally organized rows of the archers. Each of them were each clad in some manner of armor, most possessing a sallet helm or coif and aventail, and a few even possessing full coats of mail. It was, however, rather clear to see that the many of the lords charged with mustering the levy had let their own armories fall into a state of disrepair. Most every piece among the assemblage was a relic of the civil war, antiquated in design much like Nathaniel’s own piece of armor, or of even earlier make. Most pieces, whether antique or more recent seemed uncared for, covered with burgundy patinas of clinging rust betraying their keeping in rough conditions when not in use.
Nathaniel and his bodyguards stood up as the longbowmen were slowly spreading out around the embankments and strode with purpose towards one. He was keen to see what forces the enemy had deigned to risk in the battle’s opening engagement, and eagerly climbed atop an earthen mound, keeping low as he crawled so as to not present much of a target. As he crested the ridge he sighted the approaching foe, rows of ranked archers were at their forefront while lurking behind them and in the wings were waiting blocks of men holding polearms. It would seem that once more, despite its professed martial enthusiasm, the aristocratic class as a whole, even upon the side of the enemy, was less than keen to risk itself in inglorious combat. It would be a peasant’s war then, the conscripted longbowmen of the Empress set against an experienced but equally low class body of longbowmen and pikemen of the Duke.
Making sure that every man there among them kept his head down and body pressed low to the ground, Nathaniel and his bodyguards lay quietly to observe the beginning of the skirmish. It was not his place to lead the men sworn to that of the nobility after all, but it was his duty to keep appraised of the enemy’s movements and tactics, anything that would help him to lead in the battles of real consequence to come. He would bide his time and let the lords lead their own men for now. Whatever the final outcome of the battle, appraising the martial capability of their allies of convenience that were the local nobility was just as important as that of the enemy.
As the Empress’s longbowmen prepared, implanting their arrows within the soil in rings about them so as to be easily grasped and shot, the Duke’s own longbowmen advanced. The rains did little to impede men wearing naught but cloth and light mail, and the battle hardened archers of the Duke’s army, each man proudly wearing tailored surcoats emblazoned with his sworn lord’s coat of arms, walked as confidently through the muck as they might through a paved street. They were numerous, far more numerous than the hastily assembled levy of the nobility, and better equipped to boot. It was hard to imagine that this was merely the first wave, a mere fraction of the total men assembled in the Duke’s name. But time would tell whether the earthen embankments, clumsy things intended to repel cannon fire from other fortifications rather than to provide shelter for men on foot, would be advantage enough to win the day.
After the enemy had advanced to within two hundred paces of the Empress’s lines, the entire advance ceased in place. A herald from the opposing side stepped forth under a flag of parlay, equipped with neither armor nor weapon he crossed the muck with swift strides to approach the lines of the city’s defenders. A trumpeter accompanied him, bleating a shrill tune to announce the herald’s presence, drawing the eyes of every man present on the field.
“I bring glad tidings to all assembled here today. Rejoice! My lord, the good Duke Edward of Brackenweir has seen fit to offer every man among you safe passage and amnesty for the crimes of defending the she demon hiding within the skin of man that dares to call herself Empress of Albion. You shall know we fight for the true Emperor of Albion, raised by the right of blood and strength of man, not the deviltry of that fell being. We shall not harm any man that lays down his arms and flees the field if he does so, not by force of the good Duke’s arms, but of his own free will.” With an earnest expression upon his face, the herald pleads with the Empress’s men, begging them to surrender.
It is a clever ploy, an attempt to sow discord among the ranks of the city’s defenders. The herald comes dressed not as a nobleman, although that is surely what he is based on his eloquence and manner alone, but as just another soldier in the Duke’s army, a fellow peasant to the eyes of the undiscerning. Wearing a plainly tailored surcoat bearing the badge of the Duke’s insignia, the twisting thorny forest of Brackenweir, he seeks to seem akin to them, as if he understands their struggles.
Most of the peasant levy are not there by choice, and would much rather have taken their families and fled the land entirely rather than to fight and die for their sovereign. What’s more, his allusions to the deviltry of the Empress are not without ground. The lower classes, especially in the land of Albion where their presence had once seemed so rare, were especially nervous of the wayward tricksters and conjurors that seemed to consist of such a great portion of the practitioners of the esoteric arts, and it was an open secret that the Empress was one such creature. With the unmistakable disfigurement of her witch mark writ large across her face, none but true halfwits would pretend that she was otherwise.
Nor had she won their hearts in the few years she had reigned. She may have ended the civil war and with it alleviated the burdens of ruthless taxation and exploitation that had been exacted against the increasingly feeble peasantry on the part of a corrupt aristocratic class across the Empire. But despite her past actions, the times remained difficult, and most men still faced hardship not dissimilar to that experienced before the coming of the civil war. Although it was viewed with eyes heavily tinted by traces of nostalgia, many reminisced about the good times of plenty the Empire had been blessed with during the reign of her father. The creeping rot that had eaten its way into the very heart of the empire, that had grown and grown until it had eaten the very souls of its ruling family, lay long forgotten as few among the peasant classes had eyes to see the goings on of the realm. They cared naught for an Empress who did but little for them, and little for them she did as focused as she was upon her grand vision of the future, upon far reaching reforms even at the cost of the present.
Nor did their loyalties lie with that of the city. Living for the majority in humble farming villages, they lived far from the hustle and bustle of the Empire’s capital, content to leave out their lives from its intrigues. They were no warriors, they practiced meaningful trades and local artisanry over warcraft, never thinking that they would be caught up once more in a war that consumed the entirety of the Empire. They held no grand patriotism to their nation, no loyalty to a city they only by reputation and its place as a perpetual consumer of their goods. As a whole, they truly cared naught for the outcome of the battle, at least not beyond the personal repercussions for themselves.
They might have been swayed by his words, perhaps going over in droves in the face of both such insurmountable odds and the compelling entreaties of the herald, but for one thing that the Duke had not accounted for. Aside from those who had already been cast into the great beyond at the hand of the Empress’s executioners for disloyalty, most of the assembled peasantry were working men in their prime, men with wives, families, children. They were not fighting solely for the benefit of themselves, and as keenly felt by everyman present as he individually considered the herald’s offer within the dark recesses of his heart, the Duke was not the one holding their families. No, it was the Empress that had ordered the exodus of the peasantry from the capital region, ordered them east into the waiting arms of her legions. While it was nominally for their own protection, how could they ensure that was the case if they sullied their honor upon the field of battle by fleeing in the face of a foul traitor? If any man among them dared to desert now, under the ever watchful eyes of the Empress’s own sworn shields and her Lord Protector no less, how could they ever hope see their families again?
Watching the increasing agitation of his bodyguards upon hearing the abuse spewn against the Empress on the part of the Duke’s herald, Nathaniel pointed to one man in particular. It was Andross Preston, a particularly zealous member of the Empress’s Shield that looked faintly trembling with rage, the beet red of his face not visible but easily imagined through the obscuring plate of his great helm. Both his great passion and his expendability as a bodyguard and member of a force Nathaniel had already written off as doomed made him an ideal candidate for challenging the herald. Incidentally, he was also the man who had looked most askance at Nathaniel’s rejection of the Empress’s offers of friendship and had thereafter done all he could to position himself into Nathaniel’s service. With the acquiescence of his charge, he stood straight up, easily sighted atop a great earthen heap as he stood high above every soldier present, heedless of the risk of posing too great a target as he cupped his hands about his mouth to project his voice.
“Do you dare spout the lies of that filthy cur? So charged was he to defend our lands that he has turned traitor, allying himself with the likes of Aachish dogs! He brings naught but chaos and strife unto our lands even as he seeks to corrupt your very minds with spun tales of his benevolence. Get ye gone from the field and rejoin your ranks so that I may slay you myself!” With a rather dramatic drawing of a hammer that had lain hooked in a loop upon his belt and raising it high so that it glinted with the dim light from the overcast sky, Andross shouted his hatred and defiance at the herald.
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“Look here! The minions of the devil herself beck and bite at your heels and hang axes over your heads lest you dare rebel against her tyranny. I can scarcely believe that they even deign to honor the right of parlay. I will give you all one last chance to surrender. In honor of the spirit of your brave defiance against that fell demon that has cast her evil shadow over our fair land, I even offer up this generous purse of gold to the first man brave enough to claim it!” Taken aback by the abrupt appearance of one of the Empress’s Shield the herald fumbles, stumbling over the lines of what must have been a prepared speech and deciding to retreat while he is still able.
Eager to return to the safety of his own lines, the herald quickly proffers a large leather pouch, waving it almost tauntingly before the city’s defenders, before opening its contents and dropping it to the ground. Dozens of large gold coins spill out forming a small pile beneath the still nearly full pouch. It is a great treasure, one large enough to keep even wealthy knights in luxury for some time. It is an amount almost beyond conception for the poor peasants assembled upon the field of battle, and greedy eyes and hungering gazes are drawn to the pouch like moths to a flame. For the part of the Duke’s army, not a man among them bats even an eyelid, clearly well used to such tactics. Besides, it would inevitably lay amongst the spoils of war in what will surely become a field of dead men, they merely had to bide their time and wait.
One man in particular among the levy’s ranks stiffened, casting his gaze about semi furtively. Every man beside him was either staring in anticipation at the enemy or casting sneaking glances towards the pouch of gold. Thinking quickly, he dropped his bow upon the muddy ground and started to sprint towards the gold. Having neither family nor land he owed nothing to the Empress, and a fat purse of gold would likely secure himself a comfortable life even in exile. However, as soon as he broke the first rank in his attempt to reach the safety of the field between the two armies, he tripped and fell heavily to the muddy earth. A foot had caught him just as he was to clear the Empress’s lines, sending him tumbling down to the ground.
As the fallen man looked up, he saw naught but the cold and hateful glares of those whom had been his former fellows, those with whom he had drank and dined with for weeks, not just in the capital but leaving beside for years within his home village. He had thrown away his loyalty to not just the Empress, but to them, his former friends, and he saw neither guilt more pity as they observed him facing the consequences of his actions.
Looming large above the wary head of the deserter upon the ground, was the stone faced expression of his unit’s sergeant. The faint pattering of rain upon the sergeant’s raised halberd was all that was audible upon the otherwise deathly silent field. The deserter pathetically pleaded and begged for his life, vowing to rejoin the ranks, vowing to change his ways and be the most loyal servant of the Empress. But it was all for naught, useless noise lose in the wind and rain as none who heard it cared to remember. Neither side stirred as the sergeant lowered the halberd with a sharp swing, cleaving the man’s head from his shoulders in a gruesome display that served as premonition of things to come in the impending battle. Greedy gazes that had once lusted after the gold littering the ground now stared in silent witness to the blood spattered corpse that had once been a man much like them. None dared to make another attempt to reach the purse.
“So as ends all traitors, look upon your fate and despair!” Ever exuberant, Andross hotly takes advantage of the gore still oozing across the ground to rile up the enemy. They were after all, in the eyes of both gods and men, still traitors no matter the dressing with which they concealed their crime.
Seeing his petty tricks stymied, the herald let out a sigh of exasperation none could hear, before turning around and heading back to the Duke’s lines. His expression was not one of annoyance, but of contentment. While he held some regret that his plan had been foiled, the ploy had been base enough that even he himself had been loath to implement it. No veteran of the Duke’s forces could ever respect a man driven by such greed that he would betray his fellows to the enemy, and it would have left a very hollow feeling of victory indeed if it had been bought at the price of such treachery.
It would seem that the Empress had marshaled about herself at least some men of integrity, the herald noted with some amusement. From the reports gleaned from those messengers that had reached the army from the Duchy, it had seemed as if the Empress had deployed all of her real fighting men to the west. The battle would have been a truly dull affair if that had been the case, especially in light of the abundance of men all but overflowing the encampment and devouring the army’s supplies. The spoils of war would surely have been slim if the forces of the Empress were to put up but a trifling resistance. But it seemed that at least there were some men still with the iron blood of warriors running through their veins.
Perhaps in battle against such a worthy foe he would even gain the chance for a knighting, an event that had been all too uncommon during the mundane years he had sat guarding the border. Although, he noted with a grimace, not against a real opponent of course, never against one such as a member of the Empress’s Shield. He himself was but a humble herald, a wordsmith that engaged in battles of wit armed with a pen far more than that of a sword. But the title of knight was a great social boon in Brackenweir, and in the coming reign of the Duke it would surely be of paramount status. How could he let such a chance slip through his fingers? While he would never dare to place himself in peril for a mere title, if such men of strong will were present amongst the enemy’s ranks, then surely he could spin a likely tale hearty enough to win him recognition.
Regardless of the effectiveness of the Herald’s speech, it seemed that a mass defection was not something that the Duke had been relying upon in his plans for battle. While the gazes of all had been drawn to the herald’s announcements, the Duke’s battle lines had slowly advanced a further twenty paces and were already preparing to open fire. The steady creeping forward of pikemen and halberdiers had lain almost unnoticed and the Duke’s longbowmen were implanting their arrows into the ground even as the herald gave up his dialogue.
“They’re within range you laggards, draw damn you, draw!” Andross, standing straight and tall atop the earthen wall, figure cut like a hero from a storybook, gave his impassioned cry rallying the Empress’s men. At his impassioned call, men took heed of the duplicitous advance of the enemy, and soon the call to action had spread up and down the Empress’s lines.
Caught unawares, the noble lords that had nominally been left in charge of their levies had been too occupied contemplating the fate of traitors to notice the advance of the enemy, and had not yet given the order to begin the battle. Blessedly, professional as can be expected from a land so completely rent asunder by civil war in recent memory, the experienced soldiers in the employ of those nobles however, did notice. Upon hearing Andross’s cries for action, were quick to further the cause, giving up with their own calls to battle, regardless of to whom they owed fealty.
“Knock. Draw. Release!” Countless sergeants amongst the archer’s ranks barked their calls in a frenzy as each man roused his men to battle, the shouts all but lost in the sudden cacophony of barking men.
The enemy was still at rather long range, just shy of two hundred paces, but they were within reach of their bows. While single arrows launched from such a distance, even in the hands of a trained longbowmen, were unlikely to hit a precise target, those arrows shot en masse were of an entirely different effect. Capable of completely saturating an area with their evil tidings, they were shot not at one man, but of a great host, and one all but impossible to miss so closely were they standing beside one another. A veritable rain of arrows cast the enemy in shadow, accompanied by the more mundane rain of water as it washed over the enemy.
Disciplined as they were, the sworn bannermen of the Duke were not faint of heart and even as they were caught just a moment too slow to the draw, they held fast and returned fire. The rain of steel came down hard upon both sides, sharp tips bouncing off helmets, deflecting off of breastplates, or embedding themselves in the cloth and flesh of screaming men. A skilled longbowman of Albion can fire at such a rate that a single minute could pass, and he would have already released just shy of ten deadly missiles. With two sides employing such skilled archers in the thousands, tens of thousands of flying implements of death came screaming down upon their opposing number in the enemy ranks. While the arrows may not have been capable of outright piercing plate, with so many fluttering through the air and falling upon the mass of bodies on both sides, it was inevitable that many would pierce chinks in armor, uncovered regions, or otherwise poorly secured joints.
“Get down you fool! The Empress will have no use for you when you’re dead.” Nathaniel pulled Andross by his ankle until he fell down face first into the muck besides him. While Andross had been a useful mouthpiece for driving off the enemy herald, the man would hardly be useful as a bodyguard if he died pointlessly in the ensuing arrow storm. He would need to stay alive for now, especially as he was one of the few men stationed at the earth works that he could trust in any manner melee.
Death was abound as men, riddled with arrows, fell to the ground catching their fellows in their death throes and wholly disrupting the formations that had begun the battle. The screams and shrieks of the dead and dying, feathered shafts piercing their bodies like the quills upon a hedgehog, filled the air with piteous moans and wails. Such sounds were there, that none that had never faced the heart of battle could hope to comprehend it, a veritable cacophony of hideous noise that seemed to hammer at the ears until hearing was lost entirely.
Heaps of corpses soon lay amongst the muddy soil, their blood dripping down until it mixed it into an unholy slurry. The gleaming sheen of polished metal contrasted greatly with the dark hue of spattered blood that covered not just the fallen, but also the survivors standing just beside newly made casualties. But for all that, the Empress’s men came off lighter. With the bulk of the earthworks holding either flank and the fact that they had spread themselves loosely throughout, the arc within which enemy arrows could hit them was small, while the enemy organized in ranks trying to pack as many archers into effective range as feasible, were themselves wholly exposed. A fourth of the levy sworn to the Empress may have lain upon the ground by the end of the exchange, but a full third perhaps of the foe’s lay dead or dying.
With both sides having run out of arrows in but a few minutes, the Duke’s archers withdrew, exhausted and bleeding, carrying what men they could as they abandoned the field. But the archers were not the only troops sent forth by the Duke, and as they retreated the pikemen and halberdiers advanced. Clad not in the light mail of the archers, but many among them in brigandines or even closer to full plate in many cases, they possessed much greater resistance to the arrows of the city’s defenders. However, they were also far less fleet of foot, weighed down by their abundance of heavy armor as they crossed the muddy soil. They were almost as tired as the archers against whom they marched by the time they slogged across the muck of the field to reach the wooden stakes acting as a barrier between the two sides.
The Duke’s archers had quickly run out of the bundled arrows they had gone to battle with, being harshly limited both by the quantity of supply of the Duke’s army, hindered as it was as it travelled far from resupply, and the fact that it had been stretched thinly across tens of thousands of men rather than concentrated in the hands of a few. However, in sharp contrast the city’s defenders found their own supply was replenished rather quickly. Ferrying back and forth from the covered shelters to the ranks of archers were hundreds of runners, bearing bundles of arrows from common stockpiles to keep every man of the city’s defenders supplied with fresh arrows. While far from every arrow in the city had been distributed to the earth works, the city had been preparing for an entire month for the coming battle, and tens upon tens of thousands of arrows in addition to that already held by the imperial armories had been stockpiled and stored in caches throughout its defenses. It would not be ammunition supply that would prove the point of failure of the city’s outer defenses, but that of the men.
Renewing the torrent of arrows against their new foe, the longbowmen quickly grew exhausted. Keeping up the rapid pace of drawing and releasing countless arrows from their heavy longbows had proved immensely taxing, and the rate of their fire precipitously declined as the battle wore on. While the lightly armored few of the bulk of the approaching enemy infantry were even more decimated than the Duke’s archers had been, advancing as they were through near ceaseless volleys of arrows, many of them were clad in armor so heavy they were all but immune to the pointed missiles. While even then, many fell from pierced visors and eye slits, only to fall to the ground an immovable lump of steel to slow the already sluggish pace of the advancing blocks of pike and halberd, not all so fell.
While almost half their number lay twitching upon the field of battle, eventually the survivors of the enemy foot had reached the lines of longbowmen, and after hewing away at the thick stakes of sharpened timbers blocking their path, with their lengthy spears and pike they put the longbowmen to rout with but little effort. With thrusting pike and slashing halberd hundreds of archers, utterly exhausted from the ordeal of firing so many arrows and far from skilled at close quarters, were slain. Even the fear of death or the looming threat against their families looming over their heads did little to sway the impending mortal terror of the peasant levy as the Empress’s lines buckled and threatened to give way entirely to the spearhead of enemy infantry.
But all was not lost, as waiting behind the ranks of archers lay the professional retainers of the local nobility, and they charged with alacrity against the foe. Being veterans of the civil war themselves, and as well equipped as they were what with the nobility being strictly limited in the quantity of retainers it could possess so that they focused their limited funds on well equipping but a few veterans, they proved more than a match for the Duke’s soldiers. Clad in full plate to a man, as archaic as it may have been, and wielding heavy hammers, axes, and halberds, the tools of choice to pry upon the armor of their foe, they set upon the mere up jumped peasants of the Duke’s forces like wolves to an injured stag. Thrusting, tearing, and crushing, they forced the enemy back, rending their bodies asunder and trodding upon their corpses as they pushed them every back.
Lowering his visor Nathaniel himself, alongside his bodyguards, had rushed to the front lines as he had seen the archer’s lines begin to buckle. To an even greater degree than the retainers of the nobility, the men of the Empress’s Shield availed themselves to great effect, acting as a rallying force for archers and men at arms both as they carved a bloody path through the foe. With hammer raised high, Nathaniel parried and struck against the foe, crushing armor clad joints and disabling the enemy with one stroke only to cave in their helm and skull with the next. It had truly been a too long since he had been to the battlefield, fought alongside men in the mud rather than fighting with the pen at his desk and the seemingly endless stream of paperwork required as Lord Protector. He had almost forgotten how much it had truly made him feel alive. Something seemed to stir deep inside his soul every time he plunged into the thick of the melee, presumably the same something that had seen him through safely to civil war’s end in even the most dire of circumstances. Behind his lowered bascinet he smiled, somehow joyful despite all misery, pain, and horror that had beset him since he first received word of that treacherous bastard’s betrayal, to be thrown back down into the crucible of war.
As the ranks of the Duke’s men were forced back by an implacable wall of steel, one fresh and unburdened by either battle or weary march in sharp contrast to the by now well exhausted men of the Duke, they pressed their backs against their fellows in the rear ranks. A tremendous trampling ensued as men, backing away or turning their backs and outright attempting to flee the field were knocked to the ground and crushed by their fellows, or were accidentally impaled by the waiting gleaming spears of the rear ranks. The formations crumbled, and the men were sent back reeling and fleeing back across the muddy track.
“Halt! The foe is in rout, but you have neither horses, nor surety of foot in this treacherous muck. By the time you reach them, they will have reached their fellows and you will be torn to pieces. The day is won, let them run. We will fight them anew on the morrow.” Seeing the foe retreat, the retainers of the nobility charged forward, eager to strike at their exposed backs, but they were stopped by Nathaniel’s raised hand.
With some grumbling, the retainers and nobles by and large acquiesced, halting in their advance at his call. Despite their zeal in the previous battle, few were truly as bloodthirsty and battle seeking as they may have appeared. There were those among them however that were so afflicted, but seeing that their fellows had abandoned the chase, they lost heart to pursue the foe, falling back despondently. The retainers and levy then, seeing the enemy in full rout, fell upon the fallen of both friend and foe as scavengers, plucking what valuables that could be found from their cold, dead hands. This was the way of battle, the spoils of victory and the privilege of the undefeated, and neither noble nor sergeant looked askance as discipline across the entire army disintegrated in a mad frenzy of looting. It was a blessing that the foe seemed satisfied with the bloodshed of the day, or the earth works may very well have been truly lost before the mob was put back to order.
Nathaniel let out a breathless sigh of exasperation. For all of their experience in battle, the glory seeking of the aristocratic class never ceased to amaze him. They considered neither danger nor misfortune moved as they were in the vain pursuit of recognition. If he had not stopped them, the inevitable next waves of the foe’s advance would surely have destroyed them without the benefit of either the protective embrace of the earth works or the cover provided by the archer’s rain of arrows.
While it was a good opportunity, the retainers especially needing to die for him to ensure the Empress’s safety in the coming days, now would not be that time. They were by far the most effective soldiers posted to the earth works, and they would be sorely needed in the days to come. It was a surprise, to be sure, that they had managed to hold the line, but it had seemed that the Duke had shown them mercy this day. The foe had not been the core of their enemy’s army, neither the knights nor men at arms, but rather disciplined and well equipped peasants no different in class than that of the peasant levy of the local nobility. He did not know when, but the enemy’s elite would come. Whether in the next hour, the next day, the next week he knew naught, but that they would come he knew with certainty. And so he would wait for them. Every day they tarried gave another day for the eastern legions to arrive, another day closer to securing the safety of the Empress and Empire.
This day the enemy had been well bloodied; many thousands lay on the field. A paltry amount compared to the nearly sixty thousand that he had counted within the Duke’s encampment from afar perhaps, but nonetheless a promising showing from both the city’s fortifications and its defenders. The rains had been a great blessing to be sure, the muck had won the battle for them as surely as the steel of their arrows, but still the conscripted peasantry had proven its worth and they would be tested time and again against the cresting waves of their foe’s army.
The bodies of the fallen would be left there to rot. As they decayed, they would become vectors for disease and filth, infecting the ground water and the air, but they were afar in the muck between the two camps. With their own water supplied from the city and stored securely within great oaken casks the city’s defenders were at no risk of contamination themselves, and the corpses could be an effective impediment to the orderly lines of pike favored by that of their enemy. Satisfied by the events of the day, Nathaniel withdrew to the city, certain that, at least for a small while, the nobility would possess capability enough to hold the city’s outer defenses.