Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (64 page)

    
Genna entered with Shela and Dilvesh while we argued.

    
“They’re coming,” Genna said. “Time is short.”

    
“I’ll take the horse around them,” I said, pulling my helmet from my belt.

    
“Wait,” Genna said.  “Take the horse where?”

    
We explained the pincer movement.  She got it faster than the rest of them.

    
“It won’t work,” she said.

    
“Why not?”

    
“They have scouts out,” said Genna.

    
“The woods are too thick, they will hear you,” Dilvesh said.

    
“Because it’s a stupid idea,” said Shela.

    
Got to love the support on the home front.

    
“You need to hide them in the forest, not move them,” Dilvesh said.  “Then your plan might work.”

    
“I will find us a place,” Genna said.  “I would be no good to you in the biff-wack, anyway.”

    
“I’ll stay outside as well,” Dilvesh said.  “In the forest I am served by the Natural Trinity.  In here – I am nothing in here.”

    
“Be of strong faith, my friends,” Ancenon informed us.  Sometimes I forgot that he served as a priest of Adriam.

    
“We are in the hands of the All-Father, and by his will, we
shall
prevail!”

    
I went to Blizzard, saying nothing.  For this trip I had remembered his barding, more for its decorative value than because I thought he needed it.  Divine intervention?

    
War,
I prayed,
I need your help now, big time.  You told me that your children don’t need you – well, this is your area of expertise – I am just a kibitzer here.  Guide me, guide all of us, and give us the victory this day.

    
The second time I’d prayed to him.  I hoped it wouldn’t be my last.

    
They marshaled on the edge of the clearing where we had built the small city.  The woods gave them cover from our arrow fire.  They had expected us to run, and the bivouac confused them.

    
I had taken my thousand and circled back around them, guided by Genna.  She had found a smaller glen outside of the Confluni’s path, and Dilvesh had tangled enough brush and foliage between them and us that they would actually have to be coming
from
the larger clearing to get here.  The Druid linked thoughts from my mind to Genna’s, our flying recon.  By some spell, everything he saw, I saw, plus I saw everything I saw, as well.  That sentence is in no way as confusing as seeing through two sets of eyes.

    
Yet he could maintain that relationship with Genna and I at the same time, tangle brush and elude the Confluni.  What people these Druids were!

    
Shela stayed in the small city.  I’d had to actually raise my hand to her to enforce my decree.  I had agreed that we needed her, she would be as safe as possible.

    
The Sword of War sat light in my hand.  Blizzard trembled with excitement.  His barding shone bright in the sun.  My Lancers were armed and ready – the first such force that Fovea had ever seen.  We were packed tight in the glen and could smell each other’s sweat and fear.  We would give them something to think about when the trouble began.

    
I watched a troop of two hundred Confluni soldiers move out into the open.  Never one to mince words, Shela lifted her hand over her head and one of those fiery basketballs appeared in it.  She hurled it at them and over half were dead before they thought to scatter.  The rest retreated back into the woods.

    
I could be sure that D’gattis would be chewing Shela out now.  I hoped he didn’t get too harsh with her, because I had a feeling we would
really
need D’gattis.

    
“
That isn’t funny,”
I heard in my head. 

    
“
Fuck you, Dilvesh
–
is
that
funny
?” I thought back.  I heard him chuckling in my mind.  Blizzard pranced nervously beneath me.  He felt ready, and he didn’t care for what.

    
With a roar, the Confluni emerged from the trees.  We expected this.  They would try to overwhelm us with superior numbers, but they wouldn’t come all at once.  Let six thousand wear us out and, if needed, they could be supported with six thousand more.

    
Dilvesh and I saw men die on those spear points that we had set on the ground.  Wolf Soldiers held the center where they overran the wall, squads of ten slicing away at the Confluni who had braved the spears or filled them with their dead and then pressed on over their comrades’ bodies and the dirt barricade.  Over and over they fell back and pulled the advancing Confluni into the mass of Free Legion soldiers, to be slaughtered or pushed out over the barricade.  From within the small city, five hundred Free Legion archers riddled the Confluni National Guard with arrows as lightning dripped from the sky into their mass.

    
In half an hour the attackers withdrew with less than half their numbers.  Our losses were minimal.  Spears were already being replaced and walls rebuilt in the small city.

    
They hadn’t committed their reserves, so we hadn’t entered the fray.  We had lost about two hundred according to Dilvesh – the small city gave us the advantage that we needed.  If the Confluni had been smart they would have staged a siege and starved us out – but we didn’t expect it.  They couldn’t tolerate others on their land and we expected them to try to eradicate us. They still had more than twice our numbers.

    
I should have been found by now, but I hadn’t been.  They were focused on us on the plain.  I stored this away in the back of my mind in order to remember that I not be so focused on my goal that I would then forget my mission, as the CNG commander had.

    
“Genna has been killing their scouts,” Dilvesh informed me, sharing my thoughts.  My heart pounded from fear and excitement but still it sent a shudder through me to share my thoughts.  “She has ten to her name already, or you
would
have been found, Lupus.”

    
About an hour later what looked to be all of them came screaming out of the woods, this time armed with very long spears, most likely saplings or small trees that they had cut from the forest.  Well planned - three or four men would use the spear like a battering ram, first to clear away the stakes at the dirt wall of the small city, then on my groups of ten.  When the Wolf Soldiers fell, then it would be hand-to-hand fighting and the best chance that the Confluni had for victory.

    
Dilvesh made almost a third of those spears burn before they could make it to the walls.  Someone inside the small city warped a portion of the rest, making them useless.  Less than half of the Confluni spears made it to where the archers could get at their bearers, and then less than a tenth of what remained made it to the wall.

    
That left more than enough to clear out a huge portion of the defensive stakes and about half of my Wolf Soldier guard.  Karl did a remarkable job just keeping the rest alive.  He wheeled the remaining fifty to one side and surprised the oncoming Confluni with a hundred Free Legion soldiers with similar training – totally unexpected and, although not as well trained, a force to be reckoned with.  The CNG were stalled just inside the walls of the small city but looking at a breach that they could hold and exploit.

    
I readied my men to advance.

    
“Genna says there are still about a thousand in reserve,” Dilvesh warned me.

    
“Foot soldiers?” I asked.

    
“Not mounted, but she can’t tell what sort of soldiers,” Dilvesh answered after a moment.  “They are right between you and the glen.”

    
“
Damn
!
”
I thought, looking at the Confluni through Dilvesh’s eyes.  They should be committing their reserves now.  They should think they have us if they press their advantage with our small city opened.

    
A thousand Confluni troops would be able to hold me in the woods where my lancers didn’t have the full advantage of a mounted charge.   I needed room to maneuver, and that meant I needed the Confluni out in the open.  They
all
had to be committed for my charge to actually help my allies.  Still, waiting is hard when your men, and your friends, are dying.

    
As the fighting raged and the Confluni offensive stalled at the walls of the small city, that remaining thousand stepped out into the plains.  They were archers.  That changed everything.

    
We had discussed this briefly, but we all knew what it meant if the Confluni had a strong force of archers that they could keep out of the general fight.  Charging the archers would be a pointless suicide.  Arrows fly faster than horses and, with the archers uncommitted like this I would have no chance with my men at overcoming them.  My wife and unborn child waited on the other side of that charge – I would spend every man here and my own life it I could buy their safety with the sacrifice.  However, against those archers, we would be dead before we could be of any help at all.

    
Our archers had to remove or lessen the threat from their archers, and that didn’t look likely.  Half of our bowmen had dropped their bows and picked up swords to help with the defense of the small city.  Nantar and Arath were going to have to reorganize the men, push back this offensive and get the archers to commit before we moved.  While he did this, a thousand Confluni would be showing us the Fovean version of “death from above” as arrow fire arced past our lines and into the midst of our uncommitted troops.

    
A rally by our side didn’t look really likely right now.  In my mind, I knew that Dilvesh agreed with me.

    
From the middle of our troops, Ancenon stood up and incanted a spell that brought down lightning on the archers.  It dissipated well above the archers’ heads.  The Confluni had been conserving their magic to shield their archers from the brunt of his attack.  Ancenon struck again, and then Ancenon with D’gattis, but they were already exhausted from the fighting they had done and couldn’t overcome the Confluni defense.

    
Then Shela stood up with them.  Either she’d been conserving her strength or she hadn’t needed to in a battle like this one.  Power served her best when those around her had the same desires.  She waved her index finger in a full circle above her head and pointed at the Confluni archers. Arrows leapt into the air from within what must have been every quiver on the Free Legion side and sped towards that final thousand who were keeping my men at bay.  The Confluni archers were riddled by thousands of shafts – left with less than one man for every fifty.

    
And some sort of laser beam flew out of the woods and caught Shela right in the stomach.  I saw her do a back flip through Dilvesh’s eyes – and then I saw no more.

    
I think I had been seven when I went berserk for the first time.  It changed my whole life.  It involved something stupid – a stolen toy, I think – but I kicked the ass of an older kid, much bigger than I, and his friends.  He hadn’t expected it to go that way any more than I had.