Chapter 386

386 286 – Sally Forth or Die

I understand why so many children die by falling into wells. The slick, wet bricks, the lack of talons, and most tellingly a Might/Athletics/Climbing/Climbing Techniques of less than five. For me, not quite so deadly. I wouldn’t want to make that climb with people firing arrows down at me, but it wasn’t that bad.

Squishing around in soggy armor that you forgot to take off the night before? It raised more than a few questions, let alone the unusual looks.

It was my first experience with mixed infantry; a heavily armored spear and shield soldier, with an archer under their protection. They would remove the shield only briefly, irregularly, at the direction of the bowman (or woman).

I had fallen in with a unit on their flank, hoping to learn how to use the taller body shields. Back then, I had delusions of using them, but the handles were above where I could reach. If I were to try, I’d have to hold it at a ludicrous angle. If I were fighting someone with a shield like that, I would jump upon it, trying to crush them underneath.

Still, I was almost four, and growing... a little bit each year. Depending on how much I grew each year, I’d be able to use one of those in... about a decade?

The unit I was with had given me a boar spear, which looked ridiculous. I didn’t need to be told. Short little me, spear four times my size. But I had the strength to bear it properly, to hold it at low ready or low braced. On the flank of the unit facing a friendly formation, nobody expected those of us on the left to actually wield them.

No plan survives contact with the enemy. We were third through the wide gate, and already the arrows were falling thick and heavy. Our officer ordered us to take up the flanking position, but it was his adjutant who was in charge when we got there.

Oh, he didn’t die, just took a critical that knocked him out of the battle.

The second in command was younger, and had a chip on her shoulder. Her wilted shoulder, as genetics would have it. I didn’t feel sorry for her; her remaining arm was almost as strong as mine. But others did not see it that way, and had said cruel things until she was hard and uncaring for their lives.

.....

She moved us twenty feet forward of where we were supposed to be.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? It was barely enough to cover their forward right instead of just their right flank.

Just enough to leave the back part of their right flank exposed.

A mare and three of her husbands broke from the main circle. They passed behind us. Our rear row pivoted, but there was enough room for them to avoid that. Five archers fell before their onslaught; three would rise again only as smoke.

And then they were away, before the units still streaming from the gate could fill the gap.

“What were our leaders thinking? These arrows are too thick!” screamed a soldier to my right. The soldier to his right thumped him in the arm, whispered some reassuring words.

“Brace!” came the order. Our front two ranks faced half left, to cover any direct charge from the circling Sagitarii. I should have braced full left, but there was a heavy shield there. I had to brace with my point off from the one in front, so far that it was visible.

Centaurs live an average of sixty years to the forty of the average person. Their equivalent of old people could last up to the one hundred forties. This also meant a slower maturation rate among their young. A buck (young male) could take arms in battle with the approval of their mother, or in some cases, their wife. And they are supposed to stick close to their female, and listen to them.

Supposed to.

Clad in steel and bronze, with a lance nearly as long as our spears, he bore down, specifically as though to run me over. Specifically through the place my spear point was not.

It was insane, and should not have worked. I slid my point to the left, as did the man in front of me. The spears of the mixed unit set their spears to seal off the right side of his approach.

He should have withdrawn, but instead he was... fumbling with his helmet? It was too large for him, and had slid to where it obscured his vision. He came directly for my spear point.

Suddenly, I was knocked to the left. It wasn’t that I was weak, or light; I had been braced against almost perfectly the wrong axis to resist.

“Out of the way, youth!” shouted the soldier, the same one who had complained about the arrows earlier. With a savage grin, he placed his spear point about two feet above where mine had been.

Centaurs are not fools; they hadn’t broken their ring. But a shouted order gave the unit to our left a brief respite from arrow fire, as those behind the charging youth aimed forward, arrows bracketing his charge.

I like to think that my smaller body would have taken fewer arrows than the arrogant soldier did, but if I had been there, they might have shot lower. There were other arrows, to the left and right, throwing the ranks into disarray.

The youth took spear points on his shield, on his breastplate, and the hafts shattered. Somehow, he still had the inertia to burst through two ranks of Uruk soldiery, and emerge to our rear. Wasting no time, he veered to our left, and though he took arrows from the fortress, he did live to rejoin the ranks of his fellows. I saw him once after that, edging toward the outside as he continued at pace.

So far as I know, that buck lived to become an adult.

I stood, and closed ranks with the survivors, and put my spear forward and left.

And I blinked. A section of the enemy tents were in flames.

But how? We had no siege engines, none with that range, at least.

With the bellow of a horn, roughly half the enemy split off in a wedge-tipped column toward that section of their camp. We got our own orders, face forward. Then, advance.

What? Hadn’t there been enough of that aggression already?

Apparently not, as the unit to our right sounded its own advance.

This... this couldn’t be the plan! We stopped almost checkerboard diagonal to the mixed unit, which I saw was having an impact. The heavy infantry to our right stopped precisely in line with us.

As our unit wheeled to the new forward, I realized that for all its seemingly irrational bravado, this was a practiced move, rehearsed. Planned for exactly this battle.

Planned poorly, I initially thought. As we advanced forward, the circling archers pulled away. It exposed the archers to our rear, those behind the vanguard, and the Sagitarii wheeled to take advantage.

Exactly as Rakkal, or more likely Uma, had planned.

The mixed unit to our left did an about-face, their rear flank now suddenly their front. We rushed forward and left, to keep them from being taken from behind. Our rear, in turn, was guarded by the heavy infantry behind us.

It wasn’t a thing of beauty, and it had its flaws and stutters and people out of position. But it worked.

With the whoosh of air from a Flash Step, Rakkal, Uma, and four Uruk were there. They couldn’t stave off the charge; perhaps thirty pushed past before the others began to disengage.

For a critical half a minute, a hundred or so centaur milled about in a triangular killing ground, between the mixed infantry and the fortress wall. It wasn’t the end of them, and none of their leaders, nor of their champions.

I saw one, his bowstring never at rest, suppressing the fortress, killing no less than two and perhaps three times that many.

One, with his spear, engaging and holding at bay three heavy spear wielders.

And the one, her voice rising above all, urging them to return to the circle. Her armor was bronze, inlaid with brass, but polished to shine like gold. No, I saw, it shone sunlight in a pale aura around her. There could be no mistake; this was Theoni of the Cloudrunners. Leader of the enemy forces.

I nearly lost my remaining eye staring at her. As it was, I took a YELLOW critical that required surgery to remove the arrowhead from my skull.

I wasn’t the only one; over half of us weren’t fit for combat when the maneuver was over. But it was worse for those trapped in the wedge. One in ten was down, although only one in four of those were dead.

The ones who had it worst were those among the archers. Fools think that because cavalry are good against them, that is all there is to it. Any cavalry force can kill three times its number of archers.

Not always. In this case, there was fire from in front and the left of them, heavy infantry pressing spears from their right...

And the Axe Hero and his sister with elite champions behind them, and no room at all to maneuver.

They killed fifteen, wounded double that; of the thirty or so of them, only three survived.

All things told, it was a wash. Equal casualties on both sides.

It wasn’t our victory, but it also certainly wasn’t theirs.