Authors: Mark Acres
The bowmen—now there was a strange lot. They marched fast; they were tall, proud men in their white shirts, brown breeches, and good, solid boots—the same thing they always wore. Their lines were ragged and unimpressive, but there were a lot of them, and George had seen what they could do with a bow. Their bows were different; tall, long things, much longer than bows of Heilesheim. They took a lot of strength to pull—George had tried. But these men could get off six good arrows in a minute with those bows if the strings were dry, and most of them were dead-on shots. What’s more, those arrows seemed to carry an unusual amount of force. George himself had seen one penetrate plate armor, something that only a crossbow bolt could do, and then at point-blank range.
George stood up, swelling with pride as his eye came to rest on the first of the footmen. Now, these men kept in ranks as they marched, and they held their pikes in the rest position just like he’d showed them. They didn’t dawdle or fall out of ranks, and there didn’t appear to be very much talking. It was a great sight, George thought. Less than four weeks ago, some of those men had been nothing but peasants, and now any one of them could wield a pike effectively—at least in defense, which was what Sir John had wanted.
George turned at the sound of an approaching horse.
“What do you think of our army?” Bagsby called cheerily.
“They’ll do, I suppose, they’ll do,” George said, nodding.
“I’m glad you approve,” Bagsby said, “because when the battle begins, you will be commanding them.”
The long blade of sweet grass dropped from George’s mouth.
“Me?” the man gasped.
“Of course,” Bagsby said, chuckling. “Why do you think I had you train them?”
“But I… I ain’t no general, sir,” George said.
“I know. But as you may recall, I ain’t either,” Bagsby said, teasing. “Don’t worry. The horsemen will all have their instructions from me before the fight begins. You will command the masses of the foot. I’ll arrive at the battle at the crucial time, before the decisive moment,” Bagsby said.
“Where you going?” George demanded. “Where you going to be?”
“Quit worrying. I won’t leave until just before the fighting begins, and I’ll show up at the right time. I’m going to pick up the treasure, as I told you I would.”
“Why in ten thousand ‘ ells would you be bringin’ a treasure to a battle?” George asked, bewildered.
“You’ll see in good time, George,” Bagsby said, his visage growing grim. “Now listen, this is important, and I want you to think hard about it between now and the time of the fighting. When I leave and before I get back, a lot of those men are going to be scared. Not of fighting—everybody’s scared of that. But out there on that battlefield, they’re going to see something they’ve never seen before, and it will scare them bad. You, too. Your job will be to hold them together, keep them from running. You do that by telling them that the thing that’s scaring them so bad is on their side,” Bagsby explained.
“I’m not sure I understand all that,” George said, shaking his head. Sometimes he wished Sir John would just speak plainly.
“Don’t worry,” Bagsby said. “You will when the time comes.”
Ruprecht, Culdus, and Valdaimon sat in the king’s tent on the eastern edge of the Elven Preserve, poring over Culdus’s great maps.
“I knew it was too easy,” Culdus moaned. “I knew it had to be a trap!”
“I don’t see the problem,” Ruprecht shot back, plopping a fresh grape into his mouth. “Valdaimon,” the king added, “step back from me, please. Your smell spoils the taste of my fruit.”
Culdus stood up, his muscles twitching. There was nothing he wanted so much as to thrash this young, spoiled wastrel who happened to wear a crown. Ruprecht looked at Culdus’s impressive armored bulk, at the angry scowling face, at the tension in the muscles that showed even beneath the coat of chain mail and livery that covered the old general’s body.
“We said,” the king repeated coldly, “that we do not understand why there is a problem. We expect an explanation.”
My oath, Culdus reminded himself. My oath. I bound myself to this man for all time, no matter what. I am a man of honor. I will honor my oath.
“The problem, Your Majesty,” Valdaimon intruded, “is quite simple. The army of the Holy Alliance is moving parallel and north of the advance of our flanking force. By now it has linked up with the elves, who are now driven from the Preserve. Their entire force sits on the flank of advancing legions. Were they to attack….”
“The military term is defeat in detail,” Culdus snapped.
“They could attack the flank of one legion, defeat it, then attack the flank of the next, and so on.”
“I doubt that rabble can defeat anything,” Ruprecht said. “They are peasants with bills and staves. We outnumber them, with superior troops. We have Valdaimon with us to deal with their magic and, if need be, he can... bring up a few extra troops for us,” Ruprecht said disdainfully. He popped another grape in his mouth. “That might be kind of fun, actually, Valdaimon, if you were to bring up some of our undead things. Frankly, this campaign has been too easy. It begins to bore me.”
“Your Majesty,” Culdus said coldly, “in order to prevent the defeat in detail that we mentioned, it is necessary to concentrate the army, and quickly. I recommend that we concentrate here,” he said, stabbing with a mailed finger at a point on the map about a day’s march east of the Elven Preserve and a day’s march south of the border with Parona.
“If we do that,” Ruprecht asked, “will there finally be a big battle?”
“If we are able to do that,” Culdus said carefully, “there will most certainly be a very large battle.” He didn’t add that it would be the largest he had ever seen, larger than any he had even studied, in terms of the numbers to be engaged.
“Then do it,” the king said, waving his hand to dismiss his general. “Now, Valdaimon,” the king said, turning to more pleasant matters, “have a few of the prisoners we’ve taken sent in for my amusement.”
It was after midnight when Bagsby met with Elrond on a bare plain behind the army’s camp, just south of the border with Parona.
“Well done, well done,” Bagsby enthused as the elf approached him in the pale moonlight “You pulled it off splendidly.”
“I have only one question to ask you,” Elrond said. “I did not ask it before, and I did not ask it in public, because I wished to do nothing to jeopardize our victory over Heilesheim.”
The tall pale elf turned slightly away from Bagsby to gaze up at the pale light of the moon. The elf’s appearance was even more magnificent, Bagsby thought—more magical, more charming—in the pale flood of light that danced across his fine features and bounced off his longish white hair, than it had ever been.
“I want to ask this,” Elrond continued, quietly. “What did you promise the dragons to get their cooperation?”
“Hmm,” Bagsby grunted. “Of course, you did know, didn’t you?”
“That you would bring them, yes,” Elrond agreed. “Why they would come, no.”
Bagsby hesitated. Everything hinged on the battle in the morning. The battle could well hinge on the elves. There were so many small things that could go wrong, so many little things that their magic could fix.... If he lost Elrond now, he would lose the whole world to Valdaimon.
“I promised them peace with men and elves,” Bagsby answered.
Elrond nodded. “Yes. I can see how it must be so, though it will be hard for us elves. But hard as it is for us, it must have been harder for them. They have racial memory; they will know their history as well as you know how to walk.”
“It was hard for them,” Bagsby acknowledged.
“They must want revenge,” Elrond went on.
“They do,” Bagsby admitted. “But they see the values of cooperation.”
“They must have demanded some token,” Elrond pressed.
“I promised them the life of the elf who killed the Ancient One, the mother of their race,” Bagsby said. “Of course, there are many ways for an elf to give his life.”
Elrond stood still for a moment, gazing at the moon. Bagsby squirmed. He could not keep his feet still. Elrond finally turned to face him, a smile of gentle peace on his ancient face.
“It is a small price to pay for the gain to be had,” he whispered. “But the elves as a whole must survive. There is a curse, cast by the Ancient One herself, that dooms my race. And now is the time of its fulfillment.”
“I will do all I can,” Bagsby said simply.
Over the next hour, Bagsby gave the orders for the final disposition of the army for the morrow’s battle. He had chosen his position with some care, once arriving in the general area where he wanted the battle to occur. As he had expected, it took the Heilesheim forces almost three days to reorient and regroup—about a day longer, Bagsby noted, than crack, veteran troops would have required. There had been plenty of time to scout the open plain for the battlefield that would best suit the tactics Bagsby planned to use.
His army was deployed in a flat, open plain between two low hills, about a mile apart. His infantry occupied the center of the line, arranged in three great blocks, each with a frontage of almost five hundred yards and a depth of twenty ranks. Clustered on the flanks and in the gaps between these three massive blocks were groupings of the northern bowmen, in their own irregular wedge formations. The mounted knights, some four thousand of them, were deployed eight lines deep behind the infantry. Another five hundred cavalry each were posted in line on the crest of each hill as flank guards. The elves, who had borne the brunt of the battle so far and, had pulled off such a marvelous retreat and feint, were posted to the far rear as an emergency reserve.
The priests, who always kept to themselves, were deployed in their own lines behind the cavalry, but under strict orders to come to the front immediately if, as expected, Valdaimon used his dark powers to unleash the beasts of the undead world upon the Holy Alliance forces.
The few mages available to the Holy Alliance were deployed with the forward troops, ready at a moment’s notice to try to counter the force of Valdaimon’s mages.
Bagsby had seen to the dispositions of the troops before sunset, in the hours after the Heilesheim forces had finally advanced to within striking range of the field. His men were instructed to sleep in the open, in ranks; despite Valdaimon’s penchant for the undead, Bagsby feared no attack during the night. His scouts had reported to him fully on the disarray in the Heilesheim ranks—the crossing of supply trains on the narrow, limited roads, the low morale of the troops, and the marching and countermarching that had been ordered to meet the threat to the Heilesheim flank. Culdus was a cautious general, Bagsby knew. He would make no move before morning, and Valdaimon dared not move without him.
Now, Bagsby stood on the southernmost of the two hills and looked out over the field at night. Tomorrow would be the test. He had done all that he could to ensure that the opening of the battle went well. Now he would have to do the only remaining thing he could do.
Sir John Wolfe patted the flank of the white charger provided for him, put his foot in the stirrup, and hoisted himself up. Then, with a final glance at his sleeping army, he turned the horse and galloped off into the dark night, leaving the army far behind.
A little after dawn, the sun was already burning off the morning mist that covered the fair, open plain on which the army of the Holy Alliance was deployed in full battle array. Culdus surveyed the field from the back of his favorite warhorse. He was puzzled by what he saw.
The Holy Alliance commander was showing only his infantry strength. That seemed massive enough; it stretched in three great, rectangular formations across almost a mile of front, with only two gaps. There appeared to be irregular formations of some sort in those gaps; these were of little concern to Culdus. What did concern him was that the enemy infantry seemed to be armed like his own, with the long, eighteen-foot pike. His thus far invincible pike formations had never faced troops armed and deployed in similar fashion; the pike formations of Heilesheim had been developed to defeat noble armies of mounted knights. Of these, there were few to be seen—a small group on each of the hills that delimited the enemy’s flanks, that was all.
Culdus did like the odds. By his own rough head count, he had more than three times the enemy’s strength in foot, and probably a superiority in cavalry as well. The old general thought about the problem for a moment, then ordered his dispositions.
“Well, Culdus, let the battle begin!” the king sang out as he rode forward on his own black steed.
“In good time, Your Majesty. The legions must be deployed to meet the enemy’s dispositions,” Culdus replied coldly.
“Well, then let’s deploy. Who goes where?” the king asked eagerly.
“I plan a very simple battle using our numerical superiority to crush the enemy,” Culdus explained. “We have eight legions, each of about five thousand foot. Two will be held in reserve. The other six we will form in a broad line, which will advance en masse. Our line will be much longer than theirs; our left and right legions will close on the enemy’s flanks and destroy him in one great crush. Our cavalry, as always, will be used to counter the enemy cavalry, and for pursuit.”
The king scowled. This was not the type of battle he had envisioned. “What about some wights or zombies or shadows? What about some magic attacks? I want to see some fireworks today, Culdus. This will be the greatest victory of my life—sadly, probably the last, for after today, who will there be to oppose me? I want it to be memorable.”
“I do not doubt,” Culdus said testily, “that the day will be memorable enough.”
“Well, I do!” the king pouted. “I want Valdaimon to open the battle with magic and undead to terrorize the enemy!”
“Your Majesty, with due respect, that will only waste valuable time.”
“I insist,” the king screamed.
George watched the sun climb higher in the sky. He saw the forces opposing him across the plain, less than five hundred yards away. Their lines of pike formations stretched on forever; they would clearly wrap around his flanks. What puzzled George was why the enemy was waiting. It was almost midmorning, and still the enemy had made no move.