by Guy Antibes
Willow brought out cup of ale for Anchor, as he stood at one of the barricades a few hundred paces from the village proper. “You don’t have enough men, do you?”
Anchor shook his head and gave her half of a smile. “My greatest resource was the proper positioning of my forces in all of my campaigns and now, it’s used against me. I didn’t see this happening.” Was his string of victories going to fall apart and he with them? His stomach felt like it weighed a ton and his face burned with embarrassment. He had to find a center someplace.
She put her hand on his arm. “This is war. You told me long ago, that it’s an unpredictable bastard. Weren’t those your exact words? Not your fault.”
“I still have to fight.”
“Don’t let yourself be killed. Besseth needs you.”
“An old man?” Anchor shook his head and took a long pull of the ale. Besseth needed him. Restella’s army needed him. Thank the gods that Bastian and Lessa knew what they were doing. Peeron, feckless as he was, barely gave him enough notice. The army must have intended on attacking Sally’s Corners all along. They were after the princess because she held the Bloodstone. He should have given Peeron some Ropponi, but he didn’t trust him. Another mistake. He couldn’t believe that he could produce such a disaster.
He looked east and saw more Rangers rushing his way.
“They’ve got at least a few battle mages. They blew up the first barriers.”
Shiro had to give him some fresh sorcerers.
“Get your rangers into the field. Send some arrows into their mages along their flanks.”
Anchor began to deploy his forces throughout the town.
Shiro showed up with Lotto.
“Need some help?” Lotto said.
“Battle mage?”
“I’ll get a few more.” Lotto disappeared and a few moments later, six men showed up. “I’ll take them into the woods just north of the road.”
“Be careful I have Rangers with bows in there. Don’t get shot.”
Lotto grinned. “We won’t”
More Ropponi began to appear. Shiro had recruited another ten.
“Shiro, you know their strength. Our enemy can encircle the village, so put some close to the roads and see if we can get a few more troops for reinforcements. An open village like this won’t stand a siege.” He looked at Willow. “Get everyone out of the village. Have them go north. There is a battle keep an hour north just inside the Gensleran border. You’ll be safer there than in Sally’s Corners. Help me save your friends.”
“Does that make me part of your army?” she said giving him half of a smile.
“It does. Move out, Captain Willow.” He saluted her and watched her run back into the village.
Anchor could hear shouting as barriers began to blow up to the East. Histron’s rogue army had arrived.
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AYRTAN
~
DARYAKU’S BATTLE SORCERERS FINALLY RETURNED TO AYRTAN on ships filled with supplies. As they walked down the gangplanks to the crude wharves, lined up carts began to inch forward to be loaded.
It took a few hours to locate enough horses for the one hundred sorcerers and the rest of the day to assemble their escort. Vishan wondered if some of soldiers would be sober enough to stay on a horse. Daryaku paced to and fro like a caged lion. Lioness, he thought smiling in his little cocoon. Banishing him would have used a bit of power, so he had been around to see everything. All of the sorcerers were commanded not to use a smidgen of magic. If they did, they would lose their power and if that happened, Daryaku threatened them with death. Vishan saw that as an empty promise since she wouldn’t be monitoring their power by throwing away her own.
An officer rode up with a satchel. “Messages while you’ve been gone, Your Eminence.”
She ducked into a large tent filled with drinking soldiers. They all stood at attention and with fear in their eyes. “Leave.” Her subdued voice filled the tent with menace, as Daryaku sat down to go through the dispatches quite alone, except for Vishan.
After all these years, he could still read faster than she could, so Vish kept up rather well as she organized the messages by date and went from the oldest to the first. They had been gone nearly two months.
Most of the messages talked about further encounters with the savages, but after waiting so long for the sorcerers to return, the savages in their area had been thinned by fighting and had become a nuisance more than anything else.
Word from Besseth indicated that Histron held out and had launched his final assault on Sally’s Corners where Princess Sallia had been seen. No one knew if the Highfield army had retrieved the Bloodstone yet.
She crushed the last message in frustration. It hadn’t given her a new status of the events on Besseth.
“Even if Histron succeeds, we will invade,” Daryaku said swishing her hand imperiously in the air. “No comment, Vishan?”
You have another three weeks of fast travel to General Bishyar. By the time you reach the army, you’ll know if you will meet the Bessethians on Ayrtan or Besseth. Tell me, does your power seep out even if you don’t use it? Vishan knew that his needling would get her upset. He didn’t want her to win. Was that betrayal? Certainly not. If he had ruled, Dakkor wouldn’t have ruined his country. His people were starving slaves. Men, women and children died because of the monster that inhabited his body. At least Polymeer, the Cuminee chieftain still roamed the plains making trouble for the Empire. That message had followed them from Dakkor.
The end drew near and if Vishan could choose, he wouldn’t fight against Besseth. He’d fight for a free Dakkor.
“You don’t have to remind me,” she said.
So the power did seep out. If the Bessethians only knew about Ayrtan’s power-deadening nature, then she wouldn’t have any advantage. He hoped.
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BESSETH
~
ANCHOR’S ARMY SUCCESSFULLY REPELLED THE FIRST ATTACK. The Red Rose destroyed the road with gullies and created little hills with the hardened dirt techniques they had used in Learsea. Those proved to be more successful than the barricades. The rogue army’s sorcerers tried blasting the dirt and ended up making the battleground no easier to negotiate.
The enemy withdrew for the day and set up camp three or four hours from Sally’s Corners, while Anchor brought all of the commanders to him to the first new berm. The Red Roses, who had the ability to transport, wouldn’t be able to bring more reinforcements for two or three days, about the time a battalion from Lotto’s army would arrive. The Red Roses still couldn’t deliver many more troops, but their valiant efforts building the fortifications had halted the advance of the enemy.
He didn’t look towards tomorrow. Anchor looked for answers from his allies in the night as he stood behind a Red Rose-created berm. He had to get back to the South, but his overall strategy would fall apart if they couldn’t take care of this army.
“Anchor?”
Anchor turned around at the sound of Duke Jellas’s voice. His throat constricted as he confronted a father who had just lost his son. “Duke, we are all appalled at the loss of Morio. He was a very good soldier and a good man. I wish that I loved life as much as he did.” His eyes watered as he said it.
The Duke’s foot dug into the loose soil. He folded his arms and nodded as he was obviously gathering his emotions. “He died defending Gensler, defending Besseth as a hero should,” he said. “I loved my son and I love Gensler. His mother and I grieve along with his brother and sisters. I’ve brought another five hundred men, all cavalry. All of them lost friends among those lost in Morio’s army. We rode here from Everwet as soon as we heard. There are no enemy troops west of Gensler. It looks there are plenty here.”
“Let’s make sure we give them a chance to avenge Morio’s death and those of his command that were killed. I knew a number of them myself from South Keep.”
The Duke nodded.
“Now…” he cleared his throat and wiped his eyes, “You’ve called a meeting?”
Anchor managed a smile. “I have. I refuse to wait until tomorrow to fight the usurpers. We still have a number of Red Roses and battle mages to counter theirs. Destroying our work had to have sapped their magical strength more than ours. I want Histron’s army whittled down so that when Restella’s battalion comes the day after tomorrow, that they will be mopping up the leavings. I’m looking for any ideas that I can.”
Other commanders began to gather and gave their condolences to Duke Jellas. Anchor waited a few more minutes and then asked Shiro for a sorcerer’s light to be placed down low. Anchor crouched down and unrolled the map that he had marked up.
“We have men concentrated here and here,” Anchor pointed, “but the rest of us are sprinkled around the village trying to plug up the entrances. I don’t like being on the defensive,” Anchor said. His comment didn’t even begin to describe how he felt. This debacle had hit him blind and the rout of Morio’s army left an even worse taste in his mouth after his words with the duke. “What do you all think?”
Anchor let them all have a say. Eight men, nine including the Duke of Gensler contributed to Anchor’s hastily convened conference. Half of them wanted to use the Red Rose to reinforce Sally’s Corners and the others wanted to take the fight to the enemy. He didn’t get the direction he sought, but the Gensleran cavalry were useless in a defensive fight.
“We can take care of all of their sentries,” Shiro said. “Lotto is still out there—“
“No, I’m not,” Lotto said, as he walked up to the group. “Since they have greater numbers, we need to compress them, like a funnel. Then we just grind them up. It has worked before for Valetan in a battle one hundred fifty years ago with Oringia. We advance with a small force of a thousand men and draw them back.”
Anchor looked down at the map. “The forest keeps them from leaking out in any force to our left.”
“My archers and a few battle mages can do that,” an officer said. “If their mages attack the trees, it will sap their strength, like blasting the Ropponi earthworks did this afternoon.”
Anchor smiled. He could see the plan developing in his mind. “We don’t need any cavalry to create the grinder, so we can move nearly one thousand mounted men around their southeastern edge and herd them into Lotto’s funnel. Our infantry concentrates where we stand. We’ll have to make sure that any flanking maneuver on their part is detected.”
Shiro smiled with encouragement in the sorcerer’s light. “I only need a few Red Rose to do that. We can build more earthworks that will close them in.”
Anchor looked at Duke Jellas. “Would you stay here and command the ground forces? I’ll take the cavalry, myself.” He gave more specific directions to his infantry commanders.
“I’ll be taking the cavalry out in one hour. I’d like the rest of your people to bring in more troops, but I need more earthworks.”
“Waiting will only cost more lives on both sides,” Duke Jellas said.
“Then let’s get it moving. Duke, I’ll leave the map with you and Shiro.”
“Shiro, when you are through with Sally’s Corners, start making the funnel starting from here,” he pointed towards the house at the end of the village, “and extend it out in this line.”
“Gentlemen, you are free to improvise, but I don’t want the village sieged if at all possible. If you have to retreat towards Gensler, do so. For those of you who don’t know, the villagers have retreated to the battle keep along the main road to Crackledown. Defend the villagers, if we are routed.”
With that, Anchor excused the men and asked the Duke to introduce him to the cavalry commander.
~
“A large hidden army has moved north from Highfield and attacks Sally’s Corners,” a Red Rose messenger from Shiro told Tishiaki.
The Red Rose commander looked out at Red Kingdom plains painted with the weakening orange light of the setting sun. He called in his scouts to see if they had detected any movement towards the Learsea border and they detected no invasion and sought out his Learsea counterpart. Tishiaki thought hard about what he could do.
General Leef, Anchor’s Learsea commander, walked along the battlements on one of the forts at the Learsea-Red Kingdom border with Tishiaki.
“If it’s a big force they could mow right over Morio Jellas’s Genslerans,” Leef said.
“And blindside Anchor’s strategy. There’s no force large enough to stop them from capturing Princess Sallia and the Bloodstone,” Tishiaki said. “As least not before we knew Histron’s force headed northwest. Where is Peeron in all of this?”
Leef batted his hand in the air. “Chasing ghosts, most likely.” He looked at his forces at the border. “I doubt that Anchor will use him if the fight is critical. He doesn’t trust the prince any more than we do.”
Tishiaki knew his Red Roses would be exhausted, but they could transport all of the ground troops, without any supplies. He couldn’t transport a speck of dust, but he had spent weeks training the Learsean troops and he hated to see all of that effort going to waste guarding a silent border.
“Let me take four thousand men and attack the rear of the army.”
“Anchor—“
“We don’t have time to ask. I can have my best Red Rose find out where they are and then she can take the others to a mustering area. I’ve been to Sally’s Corners and it’s only a good-sized village. No walls, nothing. Anchor’s probably there making do. He shouldn’t have to,” Tishiaki said.
He looked at Leef scan the border and then saw the general nod his head.
Leef shook a fist at Tishiaki and said, “I’ll haunt you forever if an army comes my way.”
Tishiaki laughed. “You’ve got one thousand well-trained men and two new border keeps within spitting distance. The army didn’t turn east. We know that from the message. Anchor’s got a village to defend. We cannot afford Histron getting the Bloodstone.”
“Agreed. Let’s get the men into battle gear.”
The Ropponi sent a Red Rose to jump ahead of those creating earthworks. She could go as far as she could see and then she’d return when she found the army. Getting a four thousand man army ready for battle would take a few hours. Then they would begin to move far to the West and give Anchor a present. Tishiaki was certain it would be appreciated.
~
The cavalry moved south and then turned east. They kept to the bottom of the rolling hills that made up the plains of northern Red Kingdom. A Red Rose led them on, signaling from just to the North, showing them the way. Anchor had given the order for silence. Riding in the dark didn’t permit moving very fast, but they could get around Histron’s army before the light of dawn.
He would rely on their ability to slash and retreat. His intention wasn’t to close with the enemy, but to put pressure on the funnel.
After a few hours, they received the signal to move north again, easing in behind the advancing army. Nerves began to jumble up Anchor’s belly. They were meant to drive an army of ten thousand into the funnel. He could only hope that they could and that the sides of the funnel would hold.
In the moonlight, he could make out the faint line of forests that defined the border with Gensler. His unit finally stopped. Anchor heard a few whispers in the dark and the blowing and snorting of the horses. He had successfully taken the cavalry to the rear of his enemy. To the west, Anchor could see fires blinking in the distance. The vast army seemed to cover the farmland like an evil blanket.
“Marshal Anchor,” a scout quickly rode up. “There is an army on the march from the East.”
Anchor looked at the rogue army ahead. How many men did Histron have?
“When will they arrive?”
“They are perhaps an hour away.”
“We’ll move into the forest,” Anchor said. “No sense being squeezed between two armies.” He led them towards the trees perhaps two miles ahead.
The force dismounte
d. Some sat on the leafy ground and others tended to the horses. Anchor paced back and forth wondering what to do. His plans had a bare chance of working with ten thousand of the enemy and now Histron had reinforcements? He hadn’t brought any Ropponi with him since the earthen works were more important, or so he had thought. There weren’t that many men left in the border keeps.
“What will we do, Marshal?” the cavalry commander said.
“When the two forces meet, we will push them from this direction. We’ll form up a line three deep and hit the eastern remnant on the northeastern side. That will get them clashing into their main group, then it’s still up to Duke Jellas to grind them up.”
The new army jumbled up their fragile strategy. So many things could go wrong. Anchor knew what kind of a gamble he had made. He hadn’t intended his strategy to be all or nothing and he didn’t worry about Sally with Chika as her guard, but too many men would die on both sides and that fact grated. Anchor needed as many fighting men as he could muster for the war with Daryaku. Now there was a good chance that Anchor wouldn’t live through the day. He waited until he could see torches of the advancing army. He squinted in the dim light. Were those Learsean uniforms?
“Mount up!” Anchor sought out his horse and got up on it. “Those aren’t enemy, men. They are part of the alliance.” He couldn’t believe his eyes. Leef had sent his forces west, but how could he have gotten them here? Tishiaki only had a handful of strong Ropponi. He just might survive this debacle to get his answer.
He had his men light torches and took one as he rode towards the Learseans. He recognized Tishiaki, leading the men.
“Why did you leave your post, soldier?” Anchor said as he reached the Ropponi commander. He tried to keep a straight face. Tishiaki looked so good, Anchor could kiss the man.
“Anchor! That’s quite a cavalry you have. Are you lost? The enemy is that way.” He nodded towards the myriad of campfires.
Both men laughed. “So they are!” Anchor said. He clapped Tishiaki on the shoulder. “Let’s set the order of battle while we ride, shall we?”