Rise of Dachwald (Boxed Set, Books 1 through 2)

by Lawlis, Daniel

  These and similar thoughts went racing through Osinduhr’s head. He knew pushing northward without first sending a reconnoitering party ahead was foolhardy, but no one was able to resist General Fuhdor’s fiery speech, after which not even he dared to continue questioning the wisdom of the general’s plan. Furthermore, he suspected General Fuhdor had not really left him and his troops behind so that they could watch his rear flank—he suspected that was simply Fuhdor’s way of saying, “Go to hell!” He knew that in the event General Fuhdor was successful in the battle, he would certainly come back and rub it in. He would “jokingly” say, “Oh, Colonel Osinduhr, thank you so much for watching my rear flank as we cut to pieces those who were exterminating our countrymen; you have done excellent work!” And then, all of the other Sodorfians would think he was a coward.

  (but I’m not a coward; I’m just smart!!)

  They would talk behind his back, and they would state that he was afraid to go forward with the other troops. This was what he had to look forward to if General Fuhdor and his men succeeded.

  He did not have much information about the Vechengschaft’s current size, but he suspected that it had been greatly increased. He didn’t want to guess at specific numbers, but given that when they had waltzed into Dachwald they had not seen a single fighting-age male, he felt it pretty safe to assume that the Dachwaldians had maybe amassed an army of fifty thousand fighting men. Maybe more. There was no way to be completely sure. Right now, he knew that what he was supposed to do was just stand fast with his men until he received orders to do otherwise.

  (but what if General Fuhdor and his men DON’T come back? what THEN?)

  This he did not know the answer to.

  “Colonel Osinduhr?” Captain Ochsendorg said, looking at the colonel somewhat concernedly. The colonel had been in deep thought for several minutes and lost track of time.

  “I’m thinking, Captain. I don’t know what this situation calls for.”

  “What exactly do you mean? Our orders were to hold fast and wait for General Fuhdor to return—isn’t that what the situation calls for: following orders?!”

  “What I’m concerned about is the possibility that he might not return. You heard all those explosions—they certainly weren’t made by General Fuhdor’s men. The very fact that such large explosions are being heard shows that this was a trap. After all, unless the Dachwaldians expected us to be coming this exact way, how in Kasani could they ever have had the time to position so many trebuchets and mangonels into firing range? You can tell by the number of the explosions that they must have hundreds, if not thousands, of trebuchets and mangonels lobbing rocks or some other object covered with an explosive substance, perhaps even pheorite! I don’t know how, but, somehow, they most certainly knew that we were coming! There’s just no getting around that!”

  Ochsendorg fell silent. Everything Colonel Osinduhr was saying made perfect sense. How could so many mangonels and trebuchets have been ready to attack General Fuhdor unless they had been long expected to arrive there?

  “The problem is,” Colonel Osinduhr continued, “if I were to go join the battle now, I would probably do precious little good. If I execute a tactical retreat, I’m disobeying orders. If I stay here, I’m a sitting duck. And if General Fuhdor’s forces are completely defeated, or even slaughtered to a man, then the Dachwaldians are going to soon be coming our way. And if we have to face a force so strong that it has wiped out General Fuhdor, who had far more soldiers than we have, what chance would we stand against them?!!”

  “Of course,” Ochsendorg said, “don’t you think that if General Fuhdor was getting defeated that badly he would have the sense to call a retreat? And if he does retreat, we will very soon know it because we’ll see thousands of our own soldiers running full-speed in this direction!”

  This actually made some sense to Colonel Osinduhr—after all, he couldn’t conceive of an ambush so effective that not one person out of 79,500 could escape it.

  “All right,” he replied; “we’ll wait to see if anyone retreats south.”

  They stood and waited.

  About fifteen minutes later, they no longer heard the faint sound of explosions. Just silence. The kind of silence a mouse must experience right before it sticks its curious little nose just a little too close the cheese and . . . .

  Colonel Osinduhr wasn’t quite sure how to interpret this. Perhaps General Fuhdor had prevailed after all and was now liberating the alleged extermination camp. Growing increasingly pessimistic about the whole situation, he suddenly said, “Captain Ochsendorg, pick ten of your best scouts and have them go forward on horseback as quickly as they can so they can see what exactly is going on up ahead.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” he quickly replied, and he went off.

  The ten scouts galloped north, and within minutes they disappeared over some small hills.

  About forty minutes later, Osinduhr saw four of the scouts appear at the top of a hill off in the distance, galloping south towards him like bats out of a cave!

  “RETREAT!! RETREAT!!” they shouted incessantly as they charged towards Colonel Osinduhr and his six thousand men.

  Mere seconds later, Osinduhr saw an enormous army start to creep over a hill just slightly north of the four scouts. A few seconds after this he saw the scouts fall under a hail of arrows.

  “HEAD SOUTH NOWWWWW!!!!!!” Colonel Osinduhr shouted at his men. The buglers immediately began trumpeting his orders, and within seconds everyone was charging south like stampeding buffalo. The Hugars had horses, whereas the Sodorfian regulars were on foot, so it didn’t take too long before the Hugars were getting far, far ahead of them. It pained Osinduhr to see that the Sodorfian regulars were not going to stand a chance at outrunning the advancing mass of Dachwaldian savages, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He had inherited this mess from General Fuhdor. From a logistical point of view, it only made sense that the Hugars should have the fastest means of escape: they were the more valuable soldiers, and it was more important that they live to fight another day than the Sodorfian regulars.

  Then, suddenly, Osinduhr saw something that just about made his heart stop beating. Directly south of him, he saw dust in the air. It was obviously being kicked up by horses. Seconds later, he began to see what looked like a long, black line.

  Terror seized him.

  Although the enemy was too far away to be seen very clearly, he knew for sure that he was going to be drastically outnumbered. He pulled out a telescope and scanned the horizon slowly and methodically, trying to keep his cool. What he saw chilled the very blood in his veins. There was a wide semicircle of troops coming towards him from the south, and they all looked like Vechengschaft troops. Turning around, he saw that the same thing was happening from the north.

  Although terrified, he couldn’t help but wonder just how the Vechengschaft had managed to pull this off. He figured that General Fuhdor had probably taken a severe beating, but . . . .

  (the battle couldn’t have ended THAT quickly! he couldn’t have lost EVERY soldier!!)

  (then why are there no retreating Sodorfians from the north to be seen? huh? huh? I can’t HEAR you!)

  Although he was completely mystified as to how the Vechengschaft had managed to defeat General Fuhdor’s troops so quickly, he knew that he had to focus on how to get out of this mess quickly, or he and every last one of his men were going to be slaughtered.

  What do I do?! he asked himself.

  As he continued to scan the horizon, he realized that he was far too encircled to simply try to make a run for it. I’ll make them pay dearly for this victory!! he told himself.

  “STOP THE RETREAT!!” he yelled loudly. The buglers immediately trumpeted his command.

  “FORM A SQUARE!!” he shouted.

  Expecting to have already lost all control of these six thousand men, he was very happily surprised to see them stop in their tracks and begin merging together to form a square. This was a defensive strategy they had p
racticed many times, although he had hoped that they would never have to actually use it.

  “PIKEMEN IN FROOOOONT!!!” he barked out. The bugler translated this order into the correct musical notes as well.

  What his men correctly understood by “pikemen in front” was that the pikemen were to be positioned in all of the outermost ranks of the square. The Hugars quickly galloped back on their horses to form the square. They had to dismount because it would be difficult to use a pike defensively on a horse. They had a way of dealing with the excess horses, and this was also something they had trained for numerous times.

  They first brought all of the horses inside the center of the square. All of the soldiers that were not going to use pikes would get on top of a horse and try to hold the reins of the other horses to keep them calm. The plan was to keep a perfect square while slowly and methodically heading south. This would have the advantage of enabling them to at least have a chance of getting to Sodorf, while simultaneously they could do their best to defend themselves and make the Vechengschaft pay dearly for every offensive maneuver.

  Within about five minutes, the Sodorfians had formed a nearly perfect square. It bristled with pikes like a thorn bush in a harsh desert, all of which were about twenty-two feet long. Osinduhr took his place in one of the outermost ranks on the southern side of the square. The square moved south very slowly to maintain formation. From what Osinduhr could see, all or nearly all of the approaching Dachwaldians were mounted on horses.

  They were not too far away.

  “HALT!! ASSUME DEFENSIVE POSTURES!!” Osinduhr shouted at the top of his lungs, and the buglers quickly echoed his command. The Sodorfians knew what to do: The first several ranks would put the base of their pikes on the ground roughly at a fifty-degree angle and then put the instep of their foot against it to keep it secure. The ranks behind these pikemen would hold their pikes horizontally so as to give a double blow to any horses that ventured too close. The Dachwaldians were quickly advancing on all sides.

  “HOLD FAST!!” Osinduhr yelled, encouraging his men. He expected the impact to be within seconds, and he was looking forward to impaling thousands of these Dachwaldian scum.

  Then, suddenly, the Dachwaldian horsemen slowed their horses.

  “Curses!!” shouted Osinduhr; “They’ve lost their nerve!”

  So he thought.

  He could tell by looking at them that they appeared to be holding a mace or some similar short-range weapon. Suddenly, something very strange happened. The Dachwaldians appeared to be flipping some kind of lever on the handles of their maces, and to his bewilderment, he saw the spiked mace balls descend from the tops of the maces that only seconds before they had appeared to be so securely fastened to. The Dachwaldians then pulled their maces behind them and brought them forward hard.

  SHOOMM!! SHOOMM!! WHACKK!! Although the Dachwaldians were at least fifty feet away, the balls from their maces went crashing into the unprepared Sodorfians. Many of the balls found their mark against a Sodorfian’s head and sent his brains flying onto the soldiers around him. Some fell low and hit the Sodorfians so hard in the chest that they went flying backwards, knocking over several of their fellow soldiers. Others got hit in the hand, and the impact of the razor-sharp spikes against their hand immediately pulverized almost all of the bones and tore flesh.

  “UCHINWELDD!!” they shouted out in pain.

  This was the first volley.

  Before Osinduhr and the others even had a chance to try to understand just what this weapon was, the Vechengschaft and Moscorians sent another volley of steel from their fishing maces flying right into the tightly packed Sodorfian ranks. They really could not have been in a worse formation for being attacked by this lethal weapon.

  BAMM!! BAMM!! Thousands of spike-covered balls went flying into the Sodorfian ranks with merciless rapidity. In less than a minute, the square had already been thinned by at least three full ranks, and panic was quickly setting in.

  BAMM!! BAMM!! What in Uchinweld is this devilish device?!! Osinduhr asked himself angrily.

  It was his last thought.

  Seconds later, a spike-covered ball found its mark right on the side of his chin, and the impact broke his neck and killed him instantly.

  Now in an absolute panic, and with nowhere to run except towards the enemy, the Sodorfians began charging wildly in all four directions. Expecting that this would eventually happen, the Dachwaldians began executing a drill they had practiced thousands of times. They began to fall back quickly, yet in an organized fashion. As the outermost ranks withdrew, the ranks behind them stayed put and began pummeling the advancing Sodorfians with merciless power and accuracy. Then, those soldiers withdrew, while those behind them stayed put and struck. Thus, the Sodorfians were advancing against a receding wall that was always outside their reach and yet constantly able to deliver lethal blows to them.

  Chaos reached its zenith. The Sodorfians ran about madly like beheaded chickens trying to find their way back to the barn. Although at first there had been nowhere to run but towards the Dachwaldians, as their “square” (now in almost complete disarray) got wider and wider, and as the pounding they were taking got worse and worse, they now had the option of retreating back towards the center of what had been the square. The problem with this, however, was that now the Sodorfians were going in opposite directions, and, in their panic, they were crashing into and trampling one other. As piles of stampeding, panic-stricken Sodorfians began to form, the Dachwaldian longbowmen opened fire.

  WHOOSH, WHOOSHH, WHOOSHH, WHOOSHH, WHOOSHH!! The sound of arrows flying through the air sounded like angry hornets buzzing around an intruder’s ears. Those on top of the quickly forming piles of panic-stricken Sodorfians were soon turned into bloody pincushions as the Dachwaldians, who greatly outnumbered the Sodorfians, sent a shower of arrows into them. Those underneath the piles were protected from the arrows, but their fate was worse. With the people on top of the pile now stone dead, they were trapped and quickly suffocating. At this point, the Sodorfian horses took off and started stampeding in every direction. The Dachwaldians simply moved to the side and allowed the horses to pass through their ranks. They knew that the horses had never been in Dachwald before, and thus did not have a good chance of finding their way back to Sodorf. Besides, there were already some Dachwaldians along the border that would capture as many of the horses as they could. They knew some might make it to Sodorf, but they would deal with that problem later.

  As the longbow arrows continued to pour into the now nearly defenseless Sodorfians, the Dachwaldians continued to pummel them with their fishing maces as well. A few of the toughest Hugars managed to break through and engage the enemy, but since they were so greatly outnumbered, they were quickly slain. After about thirty minutes of intense fighting, once again, another large group of Sodorfians had been slaughtered to a man, with the Dachwaldians suffering almost no casualties. In all, about forty Vechengschaft were killed. They quickly started undoing the large piles of Sodorfians and putting any survivors, which were very few, to the sword.

  Tristan was absolutely enthralled with the way things were going thus far. Yes, he had been confident, but his soldiers’ success with the fishing mace exceeded his wildest dreams. Summoning Feiklen, General Sivingdon, and a few of the other high-ranking Moscorians, Tristan said, “Our victory over Sodorf is almost complete. My pholungs have informed me that there are only ten thousand Sodorfian regulars standing between us and the City of Sodorf!”

  “Let’s attack now and kill everything that moves!” General Sivingdon exclaimed bloodthirstily.

  Chuckling cheerfully, Tristan replied, “I like your spirit, Sivingdon; you have the heart of a true Dachwaldian, and I’ll never forget that. However, there is one other obstacle besides the mass of Sodorfian regulars.”

  “What?!” they all asked with great curiosity.

  Smiling slyly, Tristan said, “The Sodorfians have been busy little bees indeed. They have set up an alert system
which, I must admit, is quite clever. They have stationed towers containing large bells throughout the northern regions of Sodorf, and Sodorfian regulars stand watch day and night there on the lookout for an attack from the ‘savages’ from the north! Deviating quite markedly from their typical stupidity, they have actually done a good job with this network of lookout towers. They have distanced them just far enough apart that whenever one of them rings the large bell, at least one other tower will hear the sound, and as soon as that tower hears the sound, it is that soldier’s responsibility to immediately ring his bell. If all the Sodorfians move quickly, it is possible for the all of the northern regions to be alerted to danger within less than a half hour!”

  As Tristan finished these last words, it was plain by the expressions on Sivingdon’s and the Moscorians’ faces that they were quite impressed with this elaborate network. Sensing their tension, Tristan got an evil grin on his face.

  “You know, should the locations of these towers be secret, it would be impossible for our army to travel even one mile into Sodorf without the whole country soon knowing about it. We would lose that which has enabled us to win such easy victories thus far: surprise and ambush.”

  Sivingdon and the Moscorians thought they knew where Tristan was going with this, but they felt anxious nonetheless, since it was they who would have to carry out the invasion.

  “HOWEVER . . . .,” said Tristan, his voice raised in triumph, and then he reached inside one of his sleeves and withdrew a long, white scroll. The evil grin still plastered on his face, he unrolled it slowly, savoring every moment as he prepared to reveal his secret.