“Heard it might rain today,” he remarked casually as a wave of javelins crashed around us. A few shouts and screams told me that not everyone had been so lucky.
“That’s one rain you don’t want to get wet in,” I agreed, as I saw a man two paces to the rear suddenly sprout a nasty looking black javelin from his calf, behind his grieves, pinning him to the ground. My protector nodded gravely as a field medic rushed to help.
“Duin’s favor upon you today, Marshal Spellmonger!” he chortled as the field herald called the all clear and we continued the advance.
“And on you!” I called over my shoulder as I prepared my first set of battle spells. Tyndal was nearly quivering behind me, Slasher in his hands. He looked so intense I had to do a double-take. He held the blade like he’d been practicing.
As the infantry advanced, the goblin center fell back, as expected. More and more of them were heading out of bowshot, now, because as soon as their shield bearers started running, they stopped warding their comrades and the Nirodi archers weren’t about to let a target escape. The gap was filled with plenty of little black furry corpses. When the field herald called a halt, just as we crossed through the gap, I knelt to examine a few, Tyndal beside me.
“This one was a skirmisher,” I remarked, as I used my new blade to prod one body that had taken a three-foot long arrow through the throat. “Note the light armor, just a leather jack, not even fastened. No helmet at all, and he’s got one of their clubs in addition to that knife and his sling.”
“This one wears steel,” he observed, toeing another dead gurvan over with his boot. He’d taken a shot in the eye and one in the thigh. The lower shot had punched right through the crude chain mail hauberk he wore, and the upper had gone neatly through the eye-guard of his steel cap. In his left hand was a short sword or long knife that he’d liberated from some northern keep, and in his right was a tilting shield bearing a loathsome device that used to be a candle and a sword. “He looks . . . bigger than the others, and the ones we saw at Boval Castle.”
“He is,” I agreed, as the Gilmorans gathered around. They didn’t have anything important to say, they were just curious. “In fact, he’s at least twenty pounds heavier than the skirmisher . . . and a good three inches taller.”
“How are they getting bigger?” Mavone asked, despairingly. “It’s bad enough that there are so many of the little bastards. We don’t need them to get bigger.”
“I agree,” nodded Astyral.
“Shall we put it to a vote?” Mavone asked, dryly. “How the hell is Sheruel the Cruel doing this? You can’t just . . . just . . . enchant someone taller. If you could, don’t you think Wenek would be at least eight feet tall by now?”
“If only we had a fully qualified warmage who was also a thaumaturge,” Astyral said in exaggerated tones. I sighed, pulled off my gloves, and got to work.
It didn’t take long. “He grew them bigger,” I said, after casting a few small preliminary spells. “They’ve had a protein-rich diet, and their mothers were . . . altered. If that gurvani general is any indication, they’re going to get significantly taller and more muscular. That’s clear from just the cellular structure. He’s tampered with the cell nucleus, somehow, and magically advanced traits in its essence he wanted, like breeding a prized warhorse.”
“And this one?” inquired Curmor, stepping between the ranks to where another large corpse lay. “He’s got to be at least twenty pounds heavier than that one. Barrel-chested, too,” he observed. I went over to look. He was missing half of his forehead, for some reason, but his body was almost twice as wide as the skirmisher, even before you added his bulky armor. “Dear Ishi’s brown left nipple!” I swore. “This one is just one big slab of goblin!”
“He’s a eunuch,” Curmor said, after staring at the body for a few moments. “That’s one way he’s increasing their size: they’re cutting off their balls.”
Everyone present visibly winced.
“That would explain it,” I agreed. “That and manipulating their essences, and I guess he plans on getting a man-sized goblin. One that can ride horses, I imagine, or at least be able to fight toe-to-toe with a human and have a chance.”
“This is all very educational and fascinating,” Mavone pointed out, “not to mention depressing and macabre, but it looks like that band up ahead is reluctant to quit the field.”
Sure enough, a group of about two hundred had rallied just within bowshot of the redoubts and was preparing to charge. We had about two minutes to prepare to accept their charge, but that was plenty of time. Between the Nirodi in the redoubts and the Orphan’s own very competent archers, less than half of the gurvani who had begun the charge completed it. And then they were hopelessly outmatched, outnumbered, and disorganized by their haphazard charge. Thirty seconds after they hit our shield wall, every one of them was dead.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Curmor sniffed.
“Didn’t even wet my blade,” I agreed, putting the shiny new thing away. “Now, all we have to do is taunt a much, much larger band to attack us . . .”
But they didn’t – I guess they weren’t that stupid. Most of the attackers around the redoubts retreated, some in good order, some less so, and formed a growing knot in the center, just out of bowshot. Our infantry built a shield wall from redoubt to redoubt across the gap and began taunting the gurvan from across the field, the way that soldiers do when they’re bored and scared.
I was hoping we’d make a juicy enough target to convince them to charge us prematurely, but once again, someone on their side wasn’t stupid. The moment they advanced against us, they’d be highly vulnerable to archery. Instead they continued to retreat to the safe pocket in the center, a pocket strewn with stumps and piles brush that made it very cavalry resistant and easy to hide from advancing archers. We’d dragged all of the brush and stumps from building the redoubts out there a week ago, and there were hundreds of great places to hide or seek cover.
It was close to an hour after we’d advanced that I had a psionic conversation with Pentandra.
Min, they’ve got almost thirty thousand clumped up in the center, north. They’re rallying.
I know. That’s the plan.
Well, no one told the gurvani shamans. They’re using earth elementals to repair the center and eastern causeways. And they’re good – I didn’t think they did much with the elements, but their earth spells are powerful. We’re taking countermeasures, but as long as there are that many shamans working on it –
I understand. There’s nothing we can really do about the eastern causeway—
—They aren’t focusing their efforts there, anyway.
—So I guess it’s time for Carmella to warm up her baby. See if she can discourage the repair effort. She knows what to do.
I’ll tell her. She’ll be thrilled to finally see it in action.
“What’s happening, Master?” Tyndal asked when I finished talking to Penny.
“We’re going to deploy the trebuchet,” I explained, excitedly. “If it’s half as good as Carmella promised, then this should be entertaining. Attend to the north, gentlemen,” I commanded. “Magesight might be beneficial.”
It only took a few moments for Penny to relay the instructions to Carmella, who was overseeing the firing. Then a shape flashed overhead in the late afternoon sun as the powerful engine hurled a missile from a hundred yards behind us to several hundred yards in front of us, sailing over the gap between the redoubts, over the fields, and landing just shy of the remains of the causeway. There it smashed a half-dozen of the goblins who were clustered around the construction effort, and threw their mates into chaos.
“A little short,” Curmor noted. “But impressive. I’ve never seen a siege engine fling a rock so far.”
“It’s no ordinary siege engine,” I explained, proudly. “It’s magically reinforced at every joint. The counterweights are magically augmented. There are charms covering every aspect of use, each one adding to the effectivene
ss of the whole weapon. Carmella things we can heft as much as five hundred pounds five hundred yards with it, if not more. Those little fifty-pound boulders they seem to grow around the Timberwatch like saplings, those she can drop into the Dead God’s chamberpot, had he seen fit to give himself an arse for his resurrection.”
As I spoke two more boulders went flying overhead, each one accompanied by a growing cheer from the infantry. They were both better shot, and landed precisely where they could do the most damage, sending dozens of gurvani to their doom in a tangled ball of blood, fur, and stone. Hundreds more abandoned the effort to restore the causeway until something could be done about the rocks.
The shamans responded by throwing a few rocks back at us, but none were as large or reached as far as those thrown by trebuchet. For the next ten minutes Carmella’s engineers launched rock after rock at the repair crews, until the whole area seethed like a stirred-up anthill. True, their efforts were crude to begin with, basically one long line of gurvani carrying rocks and dirt to rebuild the ramp. Our missiles, while spectacular, weren’t killing large numbers of porters, either. But it’s hard to keep a work crew on the job when they watch their comrades get dashed to pulp. Within an hour of the first salvo, the goblins stopped trying to fix the devastated center causeway.
After that, our spotters kept a careful watch for the center causeway, and if it looked like anyone was making progress toward re-building it, they got some more rocks dropped on their heads. We couldn’t do anything about the repairs they were making on the eastern causeway – it was too far out of the range even of the trebuchet, and it was by far the most sparsely attended means of descending the escarpment – and no one seemed to be trying to make repairs to the western causeway, but anything that happened in that center, we sent a few rocks at them. Otherwise, we left them alone. We wanted them to feel safe there.
That’s why, just before dusk, the cavalry on the western flank got the order to move. It wasn’t exactly a traditional cavalry charge, where everyone takes their horse up to a gallop, lowers their lances, and destroys anything unlucky enough to be in the way. Instead the cavalry units moved forward more leisurely, but relentlessly, sweeping any isolated pockets of resistance ahead of them. It was like a charge in slow-motion, with a few hundred troopers pressing forward, then holding, and awaiting another unit to move up to their flanks.
The goblins resisted, of course, especially the less well-trained skirmishers from the Kuline mountains. The more disciplined ones from Boval and points west retreated in good order in the face of that wall of lances, while their eastern kin tried to stand and fight, and mostly got trampled or speared for their trouble. A specially-designated unit of warmagi, led by Azar and Horka, broke away from the main body and captured the camp that had sprung up at the base of the westernmost causeway, defeating a band of nearly a thousand goblins who had been tasked to guard it.
I watched in detached horror as Azar’s men, mostly warmagi and Megelini knights, thundered over the crude obstructions the gurvani had begun to build and laid into the mass of black-furred hatred with lance, sword and wand. Azar himself stood atop the pile of logs the gurvani had tried to hide behind and used an extravagant and devastating number of spells to snipe at the retreating goblins, a savage grin on his face.
Oh, the most militant of my warmagi was having a ball. Azar’s men were eagerly hacking off heads and slaughtering the defenders while Azar and Landrik and Horka and the others were blasting, burning, and freezing whatever resistance didn’t easily yield to steel. I watched in fascination as Horka cleft four goblins through their midsections with one massive blow of his mageblade, then used his left hand to yank a wand and whip a magical tendril of force across another knot of resistance that made his foes contort with agony. To complete the demonstration of power, Azar used a battle staff to pick off unfortunate goblins above on the escarpment who had the temerity to lean over the cliff and gawk at his victory. Sometimes he’d get lucky and three or four would plummet down to their doom at once, while the men cheered fanatically. Show off.
Yes, Horka, this was the bloody part. Enjoy it, you bastard.
The ultimate goal of the cavalry charge was to push the edges of the goblin advance back on itself, forcing them more densely toward the bend in the center. As such it was ultimately successful. From the goblins’ perspective, I could see the allure. Cut off from their reinforcements and an easy means of escape, they consolidated their forces and prepared to dig in for a defensive battle while they found some way to re-establish contact with the main horde. By dusk the bulk of the goblin horde that had descended to give battle were bunched up just out of bowshot between the third and fourth redoubts – directly in front of the infantry.
Directly in front of me. Right where I wanted them. I think.
Most of my men had been milling around behind the shields of the resting Orphans they were among, snacking on rations, stealing sips of water or wine, and trading war stories and the like. When Pentandra confirmed what I could already see – that the gurvani were as bunched up as they were ever likely to get, I sighed into the gloomy twilight.
“All right, gentlemen . . . time to armor up again. The sun is going down and they’re digging in for a long night of running attacks. We’ve got work to do.”
They all gave a ragged cheer as I got in psionically got in touch with Pentandra.
If everyone is ready, lets go ahead and start this, Penny, I told her. And between you and me? I’m just as curious as everyone else as to whether it will work.
Chapter Thirty-Nine:
The Fire Elemental
Timberwatch, Autumnal Equinox Night
We got the idea for the grand spell, ironically enough, from the goblins.
Our goal for this battle was to kill as many of them as possible while facing fewer numbers than they truly had. Our biggest advantage had been our fortified position, choosing where to meet the gurvani horde.
We chose this spot, and this method, because when you’re going to slaughter a whole mess of goblins, then it’s much easier to do with magic when they are all clumped together, not spread out. The apparent respite from arrows made the central causeway area a natural place for them to congregate in under pressure. No matter how many rocks we threw at their work parties, eventually they would find a way to allow the fifty or sixty-thousand of them north of the escarpment to join them.
They knew it, and we knew it. They just had to be patient. Hell, they could get every goblin above to drop two fist-sized rocks down the escarpment and they could eventually have a ramp big enough to let even their trolls come down without fear of injury.
Until that time, however, they were essentially trapped in an ostensibly defensible spot. They were hopeful and defiant. They were well-trained and decently led. They had high spirits and the cavalry-resistant high ground. For the gurvani north of the escarpment, it was only a matter of time before they were able to join their forces and defeat us.
The ones below seemed less brash but more determined. Pressed into that bight as they were, they were densely packed enough to be the perfect target for a powerful offensive spell.
They had given me the idea for the spell on the battlefield outside Tudry. The shamans had put together a warspell that harnessed the power of two magically-spinning, contra-rotating discs of air to generate static electricity to produce a potent blast of lighting that had ripped through the mail-clad warriors that faced them. When your army wears metal, then lighting makes perfect sense as a weapon against them.
And when your army is covered with sticky black fur, the obvious elemental weapon of choice is . . . fire.
The entire army watched with interest as every catapult and mangonel – and Carmella’s massive trebuchet – flung wave after wave of pumpkins over our heads, past the front lines, and deep into the massed goblin infantry. A few at first, and then dozens, as the engineers found their range, but for a half an hour the dying rays of the sun over the mountains showed skies st
reaked with big round orange missiles being flung far further than the rocks we’d favored them with so far.
A full load of pumpkins weighed far less than the smallest of rocks we’d thrown, which extended their range significantly. Where our boulders had fallen just short of their front line, the pumpkins mostly sailed into the center front of the horde, near to a large pile of treetops and brush left over from the construction of the redoubts. At first the goblins shrank from the attack, as they would have the usual boulders we had been flinging. But as the first ones landed and exploded at the impact, they were revealed to be harmless. Soon the goblins were laughing loud enough for us to hear, as the contents was a mixture of honey from Honeyhall and alcoholic spirits from the Pearwoods.
They laughed at the missiles, and many eagerly shook off the sticky droplets and stuffed the raw chunks of pumpkin into their mouth – I’m given to believe that they were a delicacy to the gurvani. But they took little heed of the pumpkins, and a few even tried to rescue the shattered gourds and drink the contents. I was amused by that. The gurvani brewed meads and beer, but they didn’t have much experience with spirits. It didn’t take long for a few of them to get tipsy enough to begin cavorting, tossing around pieces of pumpkin and trying to catch them whole as they landed.
When I saw that happen, I figured it was time to start.
Give them the hot ones now, Carmella, I commanded my artillery captain psionically.
I pray to Ishi this works, she said in my mind, nervously.
Wouldn’t Breega be more appropriate? I pointed out. She is a fire goddess.
I stand corrected, she said with a mental sigh. I was always rotten at theurgy. Breega it is, then.
She’s my patroness, I reminded her. My dad is a baker. She’ll look out for us. Just aim for that big pile. Penny reports that there are a couple of shamans around there. And some glass. It would be nice to get that, and keep them from countering our spells.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 70