by Luke Norris
Riff gazed at the sky and pulled the black scarf away from his face to speak. “Haras' cavalry unit and Drake’s infantry are across. But I had to wait for a rider to come back from the cavalry bridge to confirm they had made it, that's why I'm late. We still have an hour before dawn by my reckoning.” Riff wore the same full black garb Drake had ordered his select group of two thousand commandos to wear for stealth. His blond hair poked out from underneath the leather black cap he had pulled tight over his ears. He had painted the exposed skin on his face matte black so all Verity could see in the dim light was his white teeth and blond beard.
“I would estimate that Drake’s infantry are lined up in position along the left flank already,” Riff said. “Haras' cavalry will take longer to come around to the rear. They had to use the small forest as a curtain of cover, and it took them several miles further north than expected. However, they should be ready to cut the enemy off at the rear by dawn. They will have no retreat options.” Riff twirled his mustache.
“You look like an idiot!” Yarn said. “Why are you dressed like one of Drake’s infantry?”
“I wanted to get in the spirit of things, you know!” He adjusted his bow strap uncomfortably.
“The bridges functioned ok then? You were worried about them breaking.”
“There were no problems there. The current is more sluggish than I thought. They are holding well and are still in place in case of retreat.”
“There is the permanent bridge! Eight hundred meters in that direction!” Verity indicated. The false dawn showed a pale sheen on the river surface ahead. She looked at the young boys marching beside her and felt a belt of queasiness hit her again. She loosened her bow slightly. Just in case...oh god what am I doing.
As they converged on the river bank behind the Naharain soldiers already stationed there, Verity let out a gasp. “There are so many,” she exclaimed. Thousands of Wasat soldiers on
the opposite river bank glimmered dully in the light of the false dawn.
“It looks like our false intelligence has worked then.” Riff examined the enemy lines.
“What do you mean?” Verity asked.
“We've been allowing their spies to overhear certain meetings,” Riff replied, “where we feed them false information. They expect us to launch our assault here on the permanent bridge today. That's why we needed the youngins to bolster the numbers and make it believable. Although nobody could lead any effective attack across that bridge. You'd be lucky to get ten men abreast across that!”
Verity looked back at their own army and was surprised to see how much larger it looked with the new additions. It would be impossible to tell that half its numbers were made up of scared children from a distance, she thought.
“I'm going to check the bridge supports,” Yarn said, “and make sure they are ready to fall should I give the order.” He walked briskly down to some soldiers near the water.
“Why is that necessary? “ Verity asked.
“We want them to stay boxed in when they get flanked by Drake.” Riff replied. “If they choose to come pouring across here I doubt they would discern between kids and real soldiers in the heat of things. And it would not be strategically advantageous to have a child massacre on our hands when we are trying to rally the people.”
Verity watched Riff’s indifferent expression as he stared across the river. It suddenly seemed very quiet to her. As the dawn light brightened only the sound of the river could be heard. The children beside her had lost any courage from Yarn’s speech earlier and stared with wide eyes at the host facing them. The wooden barricade placed at their end of the bridge seemed laughable.
The moment the first rays of dawn finally struck the Wasat soldiers on the opposite bank, the men let out a frightening roar. They made an enormous cacophony, hurling verbal abuse and banging their shields and swords. And they didn't stop, it went on for minutes. Verity was transfixed by the display of raw energy and anger. This is like some kind of battle I've read about in history, she thought. The smell of urine and feces caught her suddenly, and she turned to see a pool of liquid at a boys feet beside her. That's why they put the boys at the front of the men, so they can’t run away, she realized.
The Wasat army was working itself into a frenzy, getting louder and more aggressive. Men were flashing their private regions in odious displays to the Naharain soldiers across the river. Some of the men on the front line near the bridge showed early signs of berserker behavior, strutting out onto the bridge in displays of bravado. The soldiers on the frontline had almost zero percent chance of survival, and some soldiers mental mechanism for dealing with this fact was to engage in maniacal attacks with complete disregard for their own lives. These adrenaline filled berserkers were very difficult to stop. Verity had read about this human condition during war and found it hard to believe she was witnessing it first hand.
The Wasat soldiers behavior appeared to have the desired effect on the Naharain army. Verity could see the full-grown men further back in the ranks shuffling nervously. And a fresh wave of sweat and fear gusted past her.
“Riff where do you think you are going?” Verity demanded. She could tell he was boosting already, his movements were becoming fidgety and quick and his talking sounded unusually rapid.
“I'm going to the bridge in case they decide to swarm across suddenly, and Yarn can't destroy the supports quick enough. Besides, you don’t want to miss all the fun do you?” He pulled the black scarf up over his nose and removed the bow from over his shoulder.
Riff walked out alone onto the bridge about ten meters and stood there silently in clear provocation. Damn him he's trying to provoke those berserkers to charge, why would he do that? The idiot. Verity heard a roar from behind her nearly making her heart jump out of her chest. The Naharain soldiers cheered, encouraged by Riff’s bravado. She had to admit he did strike a formidable figure, black billowing around him in the breeze. The entire scene before her sent shivers over her body, raising goose pimples on her arms. It all seemed so surreal that she couldn’t feel any fear, just detached fascination.
Suddenly one of the berserkers from the Wasat army broke free from the line making a solitary charge across the wooden bridge towards Riff. The man had dropped his small shield and ran with his spear in a javelin stance on his shoulder. Verity could hear his high battle cry over the roar of his comrades. Riff stood motionless as the gap between them closed, fifty meters, forty meters.
The Berserker hurled the spear at Riff. It flew true and fast. It hadn't even appeared as though Riff had moved, but he was suddenly leaning slightly to one side with the throwing spear caught in his right hand. The Wasat soldier stopped, slightly confused at what had just happened, but upon realizing his quarry was still standing, he drew his dagger raising it in the air, then released a second battle cry to charge Riff down.
Verity could see him more clearly now. His only armor was two shoulder plates, and his helmet lay discarded back on the bridge. His dreadlocked hair flew in a storm behind him, and his eyes were fierce.
In a blur of motion so fast that Riff became a black haze for a few moments, he loosed four arrows in quick succession. They struck the raging berserker in such rapid sequence that the force of the arrows thudding in his chest knocked him off his feet and propelled him back several feet through the air. He crashed onto his back and lay still, eyes unblinking.
All the noise stopped. The banging of weapons, the curses, and taunts all stopped. For an endless amount of seconds, only the quiet rushing of the river could be heard. The silence hung, suspended in the air for a golden moment, like an arrow that had reached the pinnacle of its trajectory before racing back to earth to reap carnage.
They charged. The war cries reached a crescendo again. The Wasat army poured onto the bridge. It was chaos where the army bottle-necked at the head of the bridge, but they still came six or seven men abreast.
Riff turned and ran back toward the Naharain end, calling to Yarn underneath as he we
nt.
“Take out the supports! They are crossing.” He yelled.
“You heard him, lads! Heave!” Yarn cried. He gave instructions to the men under the bridge to pull the ropes and collapse the temporary supports they had built, then ran up the bank to where Riff was. The bridge groaned and creaked. The Wasat soldiers were three-quarters of the way across.
Verity wasted no time. The bridge is holding! It’s not going to break damn it. This will turn into a massacre of these children! She ran towards the other two second-stagers and started boosting. She could feel herself speeding up. It felt easy with so much adrenaline flowing through her. She looked at Riff, he was loosing arrows at impossible speed. Two enemy soldiers fell into the river’s current as they were struck. One was struck by an arrow in the leg, fell, then was trampled by the stampede behind him. As Verity came to his side, she saw Riff had already depleted his arrows and had drawn his sword beside Yarn.
The enemy was twenty meters and closing. To Verity, they appeared to be running in slow motion. Sounds around her were deep and drawn out. Verity hesitated a split second. Think of the children! I must protect the children! She started loosing arrows. Two men fell. She saw them wince in pain as the arrows buried themselves in the soldiers’ torsos, then become crushed underfoot by their own comrades, all in slow motion.
To onlookers the three second-stagers were a blaze of motion, appearing in several places at once. Yarn and Riff slew the attackers easily, but the sheer inertia of enemy numbers forced them back steadily to the bridges end.
Verity had exhausted her arrows and drew the blade from over her shoulder. The three of us are the only thing standing between this army and those children. She looked up just in time to dodge a sword swing. She was boosting, and the blade looked so slow she could examine the notched steel as it swept past her face. A thunderous crack caused everybody on the bridge to pause. Even the attacking Wasat looked wide-eyed as they realized their peril.
“The bridge!” Yarn yelled, “It’s going. Run to the bank!”
The bridge underneath Verity began to sway, it was giving way. To onlookers, the sabotaged span of the bridge collapsed into the river in a few seconds. Sixteen unfortunate Wasat soldiers were taken with it into the water.
With Verity’s metabolism rate ramped up, she danced across the falling planks as they collapsed. The last beam was still supported by a pillar that hadn’t fallen. She could use this. She found purchase on the wood and launched herself into the air toward the safety of the Naharain river bank. Her extra speed propelled her with much more force than she anticipated. She flew high off the bridge with her arms stretched out, blade in hand. Onlookers gaped in religious fascination at her form in the air. She landed and rolled into a crouch.
A cheer went up from the Naharain soldiers as their enemy floundered in the river. It took several minutes for word to get back to the Wasat riverbank that the bridge was out, and in that time more unfortunate soldiers were being forced off the end and into the torrent, by the momentum of the soldiers behind. Their heavy leather clothing and pieces of armor pulled many of them under, and they did not surface again. Some had managed to cling to the floating planks from the bridge, and screamed at their brothers in arms for rescue, while the current tugged at them mercilessly.
I killed men today! Verity felt sick. Her body was returning to normal speed. Now they are dying only twenty meters away from me. A man went under as she watched. The thirty or so drowning men had a predicament. They couldn't swim to the Naharain bank only twenty meters away for they knew they would be slaughtered.
“Yarn! We can't let them drown like this!” Verity pleaded. “I thought we needed to take prisoners for the strategy or whatever.” She knew her voice sounded desperate, and she had tears in her eyes, but she didn't care. She could see Yarn’s disdain at her reaction.
“I knew you would say something like that,” he muttered, then turned to several soldiers on the bank who were holding the ropes that had been used to pull the bridge supports. “Pull ‘em out, men!” he ordered, “none are to be harmed, they are to be taken prisoner!” The soldiers stared at him astonished. “Now!” Yarn bellowed. The men jumped into action, hurling the ropes to the most desperate men, who clutched at this last chance on life.
“Verity, you take these people much too seriously,” Yarn said.
Stone-faced, she watched the rescue and didn't acknowledge him.
*
The chaos in the Wasat ranks disgusted Drake. He watched his enemy, concealed by low foliage one hundred meters from their left flank. He looked back at his men lying flat, waiting, dressed in their black garb. Their stealthy approach had been satisfactory to Drake. They looked disciplined and confident.
He had selected and trained these men especially over the months leading up to the battle. Several men had died in the intense training, and many were seriously injured from the extreme endurance exercises. The men who remained made an acceptable fighting unit by Drake’s standards, much better than the pathetic excuse for an army he saw in the Wasat soldiers before him.
Their disarray made him angry, this wasn't the enemy he deserved. His two thousand men made a self-contained army, with archers, light infantry, and heavy infantry. They all wore the black with only their eyes exposed. The reputation of his black soldiers would strike fear into every enemy's heart after this victory. Drake knew that although they were outnumbered seven to one, the odds didn't matter with a well-executed plan and discipline.
The day was beginning to dawn and Drake could see the rouse from Yarn’s army at the permanent bridge was working, drawing the attention of the Wasat soldiers to the opposite riverbank. They were adequately distracted by Yarn and the children wearing armor.
Drake knew that once the sun rose Wasat soldiers would see him and his men despite the black uniforms, but that didn't matter. Drake stood. He walked brazenly out into the open towards the enemy. At fifty meters from the Wasat soldiers, he turned back to face his men.
“Formation!” He bellowed the order.
His men rose from the earth, already in formation, and stood silently. The six hundred heavy infantry were on the frontline, standing three men deep and two hundred wide. They all carried a three-foot wide mat black hardwood shield, armored shin guards and full black helmets with plates covering the jaw right up to a narrow slit for the mouth running up to two narrow eyes slits. Drake had the smiths working night and day to equip his heavy infantrymen. They stood side by side with their shields overlapped, like the scales of a serpent, forming an impenetrable wall. The heavy infantry soldier's weapon was a thrusting spear and a short stabbing sword.
“Forward march!” Drake ordered.
He was standing completely exposed with his back to the enemy. He walked up and down the line of his men examining their formation with complete disregard to the danger behind him. The Wasat soldiers behind him saw the sudden appearance of this enemy and the commanders were screaming, frantically to arrange a front line to meet the charge. But the black Naharain soldiers didn't charge, they marched to the sixty-meter mark and stopped in front of their commander.
“Drink!” Drake ordered. They had been trained to drink four large swigs from their bottles at this command. They were to stay hydrated and fresh for the extreme rigors of frontline engagement.
The normal method to minimize casualties from the archers was to charge as soon as they were in range. The infantrymen were so heavily armored that this tactic would exhaust them. Drake's men had also been trained not to charge. Instead, Drake gave the command “shell” and the second and third rows behind would create a roof with their shields to protect them from falling arrows.
“Good!” Drake commended them. The men felt invincible watching their commander walking before them on the battlefield as if it were just a training session.
Drake heard the distinctive sound of a volley of arrows been loosed from the Wasat archers. “Shell!” He boomed.
“Ho!” The unified voic
e of six hundred men answered, and in a single smooth motion they formed a shell of shields. Arrows rained down and clattered on top of the hardwood shields. If any men fell, they were so seamlessly replaced that it was not noticed. One arrow clanged against the back of Drake's helmet. He walked forward unfazed, and the black ranks opened a door in the line of shields for him, then snapped closed once he was inside. A second volley fell harmlessly on the shields of Drake's men, followed by the Wasat battle cry as they charged.
The sixty meters of ground between the two armies was an alluvial broken floodplain, several men stumbled and fell during the hastily organized charge. The light Wasat infantry crashed into Drake’s heavily armored ranks and were crushed against the wall of shields from the men behind. The noise was horrendous, cursing and screaming, some soldiers being crushed to death.
The frontline of the Naharains were losing ground foot by foot but were able to hold formation.
“Third row, thrust!” Drake bellowed. The first two rows were pushing to hold the wall of shields in place. The row behind reached over their comrades with their long needle-like thrusting spears and the Wasat men crushed against the shields became pincushions. This alleviated the pressure slightly.
“Shell!” he bellowed.
“Ho!” Came the response, and Drake’s second and third row made a roof with their shields.
“Volley!” He called to the light infantrymen behind, and several men raised the red flag to signal the archers further back. A volley of arrows from Drake’s archers rained down on the front lines, felling the Wasat soldiers but clattering off the Naharain shields. Suddenly pressure against the shields dropped off as arrows decimated the Wasat front line.
“Front row, thrust!” Drake ordered.
“Ho!” The line of shields opened, and Drake’s men began mercilessly slaughtering the men before them, many of whom had already fallen from thirst and exhaustion. They marched forward ten meters stabbing all in their path. When the spears became embedded and stuck in the enemy's armor, or the enemy simply held onto the spear shaft, the men were trained to draw their short swords instantly.