Dark Healer (An Empire Falls Book 1)

by Harry Leighton

  “They can’t have anyone to use it though.”

  “Look again at the infantry and answer your question.”

  “Er…” She looked. “Oh, veterans. They have former imperials! In units, kept together, strong points in the line.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Why would they fight for rebels?”

  “Once this battle is over read some history. Legions have done many things, and only some of them involve what the emperors and empresses have explicitly ordered.”

  A few looks were exchanged.

  “So, we have archers, stakes, infantry with veterans and roughly trained civilians, we have artillery. We have a slope. What else do we have?”

  The aides looked out, and Garrow turned to them.

  “Nothing? You can’t see anything?”

  “I, er, we can’t sir.”

  “That’s because you’re looking at the enemy. Solely at the enemy. Which you think I asked you to do. But I said what can you see, and you should have had one eye on our troops which are deploying before you. What if that deployment was faulty? What if the enemy had moved and the troops needed moving? You’d be late. So look.”

  “We are forming a standard imperial battle line.”

  “Which is?”

  “Strongest troops on the right, medium in the centre, units with predominantly newer troops on the left. Aiming to crush the right side and roll up.”

  “That’s infantry. What else? Do we just have one line?”

  “Our cavalry are now forming up ahead of our line on the right, with room to wheel away and regroup. I presume you plan to test their ability to stand. One good charge and the peasants might run away.”

  “It has been known. But are cavalry force is small. A shock test will be all I want them to do until the enemy flee.”

  “We have artillery, manned by experienced crews, confident enough to fire over our own troops heads.”

  “Easy for us to say behind them, but continue.”

  “Our archers are in small groups and … well…“

  “We don’t have many. I know. Our reinforcements are late arriving. They are probably where we are supposed to be.”

  “And no skirmishers.”

  “Quite right.” Garrow paused. Generals were allowed flexibility in what they utilised in their army, and he chose not to use skirmishers. The aides were supposed to be learning, but none wanted to learn through an argument. Which was good, there was a battle starting.

  A horse was now riding up past the moving tide of imperials, and Garrow saw his aide had returned.

  “Yes?”

  “The stream which runs by the farm. It’s been blocked and diverted across the field between them and us.”

  Garrow looked through his eyeglass. “Interesting. They mean to make us march through mud. Stamina sapping mud. It would exhaust a peasant for sure. But our troops? We will not be slowed significantly.” Unless we have to march across it twice, i.e. backwards. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

  Garrow took the glass away and scanned the big picture. Imperials were moving in tightly packed blocks, masses of the same coloured symbols and their banners bright and fluttering. Light was glittering off the armour, from mail to pieces of plate, and the occasional wealthy show off had a helmet with feather flying. Perhaps he’d ban those if any of them survived.

  Garrow looked over at the rebels.

  “They are deploying behind their lines. There seems to be no effort to move forward, and with that mud I don’t believe there will be.”

  “Surely the stakes told us they wouldn’t move?”

  Garrow turned and smiled at the questioning aide. “Study your history. All of it, study it hard. It won’t tell you what an enemy is going to do, but it will open your mind to the possibilities of what they could do. Setting up one defence and then advancing beyond it is heard of. Generals then forgetting that defence is behind them is also a known event.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You might be here to learn, but I expect a level of preparation. If there wasn’t a battle I’d have one of you ride to collect all eighteen volumes of Exerch’s Imperial Military History.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “But stop looking at the ground worried. Eyes on the battle. The time for reading is over. And the order is we deploy as planned.”

  “Everything going as planned, sir!”

  “That won’t last long. Anyone can plan a battle. They’re won as you react.”

  They turned to the armies and watched in this early morning sun as they formed rival lines. As Garrow had suspected, the rebels stayed behind their preparations and his troops were efficient in forming theirs.

  *****

  On the other side of the field, four wooden structures were sat surrounded by a cadre of bemused rebels and a handful of experts.

  “Right, the target’s are starting to stay still,” said a tall man without a single hair on his head or face, “so it’s time to fire these catapults.” He looked at the volunteers who had decided to help him fire them. Him and the only other two people in the rebel camp with experience at such.

  “First we wind the mechanism back depending on how far we want these things to fire and…” He was trying to teach the volunteers what to do should anything befall him or the other two, or if they couldn’t run between the four machines quick enough. “…then you lot load one of these stones into there, stand back, and fire. Right?”

  “You keep telling us.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  The crew weren’t smooth, but they were keen and soon a call of ‘Back’ went up, everyone stood back, and the mechanism loosed. A rock bigger than a human head went flying into the air, journeyed through it with an audible whoosh, and went thudding into the ground behind the imperial line.

  “Excellent!” said the expert.

  “We missed,” complained a rebel.

  “No we didn’t.”

  “I’m not blind, that didn’t hit anyone.”

  “That was the first shot, it doesn’t hit anyone. Now we will fire one shorter, and from those two we will have gauged our ranges and the state of the machine, and we will start to hit the unit.”

  “Oh.”

  “So get loading!”

  Soon another rock flew through the air and landed with a thud into the battlefield.

  “They’ll need to dig that out before ploughing.”

  “So this one then?”

  “Yes. Watch this, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The preparations were careful but done at necessary speed, and this time when the rock hurtled through the air it slammed into a unit of imperial infantry. The sound was akin to leather being smacked, and brought a cheer from the entire rebel line.

  But as the hoots and hollers quietened, the rebels knew not if the enemy had broken, and only a few men were dead on the ground.

  “Right, all of you, to your machines. Fire as best you can. If no one’s with you aim for stationary units, if we’re with you we might work on moving ones.”

  It was at this point that the sound of a missile could be heard. The rebels, accustomed to hearing their own rocks whistling across, looked over in confusion, only to see a stone launched by the imperial artillery slam into the ground just behind them.

  Both generals were watching the impact, and they saw the rebel line convulse as if water had been punched, as leaders began shouting at their men to stand still and form the line.

  Garrow smiled. Would artillery alone make them flee?

  A duel now began, a duel where neither fighter aimed at each other but at the seconds instead. Lumps of masonry and rocks from the ground were hurtling through the air, and then smashing into turf and soil, and with a worrying frequency into flesh and bone.

  On the imperial side, the artillerymen and women temporarily left their machines and huddled together. Opinions were exchanged, and then one was tasked with taking a transport horse and riding to where Garrow was watching the last mom
ents of the deployment.

  Opinions were exchanged here too, and soon the messenger was riding back, dropping off the horse more out of breath than the beast, and conveying approval. The man who’d suggested this attempt, his head full of figures and guesstimates, now took over aiming one of the imperial catapults, and the whole imperial effort paused as the fellow experts looked on. Then the catapult fired, and a rock soared over the rebel line and smashed into the ground just before the rebel catapults.

  “Fuck,” the bald rebel said as he saw his volunteers back away. “You lot get back here and fire, you hear me, you fire, you hold your ground. If everyone held no one would ever lose!” Which wasn’t strictly correct but was the sort of thing that made unsteady legs move back towards their tasks.

  “What do we do?” a panicked man asked instead of helping move a rock.

  “If they want to distract themselves firing at us, let them, it helps our troops, right!”

  No one else looked convinced.

  They really didn’t look convinced when a particularly large rock smashed right into a rebel catapult shattering the wood and tearing limbs and heads off the crew. Now some of the volunteers ran and didn’t come back.

  “Two sides can play this game. You lot, we fire back at them!”

  Garrow watched the duel turn on the opponents and nodded. “I have watched these stones striking the land, and have decided the ground is too risky for the cavalry, I want you to go and recall them. We will deploy them where there’s better ground.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The aide kicked his horse and set off towards the cavalry.

  At the front of this unit, at the front of the imperial army, Captain Tate was watching.

  “Firing rocks, how pointless.”

  “Totally agree sir.”

  “They’re not even shooting at the troops now, but each other. Pointless.”

  “Actually, I think the idea is to draw the firepower away now we’ve established the rebels won’t run from rocks alone.”

  “Sergeant, shut up unless spoken to.”

  Tate looked at the rebel lines, and then back. Was that a messenger on a horse coming to give orders? Excellent time for them to charge and win this battle in moments. Those rebels wouldn’t stand a chance with imperial cavalry riding to them.

  “Probably means to stop any attack.”

  “I told you to sh… What do you mean, sergeant?”

  “The general has had men looking at the ground. Looks problematic. Might mean to keep us safe given who we’re attacking.”

  Tate turned and looked at the battlefield. A plain of grass, with some rather muddy patches. This seemed strange as it hadn’t rained. But it didn’t look like a marsh or a bog either, and Garrow wasn’t stupid enough to fight over one of them.

  Tate’s mind made that calculation in a second, and then took another to weigh up doing what he was probably being told and missing out on the glory of crushing these upstart farmers, or charging in before the messenger arrived, winning an easy victory and being promoted to one day command his own legion.

  It was an easy decision.

  Tate didn’t have a spear, such was his dedication to fashion, so he drew a finely crafted sword and raised it above his head. “Cavalry, we begin to charge. Advance!”

  Horses which had stood obediently waiting where now nudged into moving. The cavalry soon formed into three lines, each two horses deep. Each man or woman lowered their spears and made ready to thrust them into rebel flesh.

  The horses moved slowly at first, allowing the lines to form. Then they sped up, Tate screamed, and the gallop began. The rebel archers saw this, and began to retreat behind their infantry, but did so calmly and orderly, through prescribed channels, until they were safely behind. The archers weren’t going to cause a panicked retreat, or even chaos.

  Over on the imperial slope, Garrow watched the attack begin.

  “What is he doing?”

  “Charging, sir.”

  “That was a rhetorical question, but as you said something I’ll answer. He’s either winning a promotion or a demotion, depending on whether this works. And the rebels haven’t become disorganised either.”

  The advance was still on the flat with the slope ahead of them, but the blood was pumping through the riders’ heads. However the head was at the mercy of the feet, and they began to slip as the ground grew increasingly muddy.

  The first horse that fell caused the one behind it to crash into it, rupturing bone and muscle. These two were sprawling on the ground, sliding in the mud from momentum, mashed up riders beneath, when horses from the second line failed to jump over and went sprawling too. As several horses in each line fell so holes were ripped down the line, and horses and humans screamed in agony.

  Calls of “Hold the line!” could not be heard over the pounding of the hooves and the screaming of the riders.

  The cavalry were reduced, but they were still functional, in numbers, and charging a lot of scared peasants hiding behind small spikes. Tate thought the world and life would never get better, that this was the apogee of human existence, that he could win this battle and die satisfied, and now the mounts charged up the slope.

  Opposite them, a thick line of rebels felt their stomachs fall through their bowels, as tons of horseflesh and armour hammered towards them at great speed. Some began to turn and fall back—their nerves failing, their minds consumed by panic—and their commanders tried to steady the line.

  “They can’t get past the stakes, they can’t get past the spears!”

  A few more people running.

  “Hold your spears up, as we told you, a wall of spears. Do it! Spears UP! UP!”

  Tate was a fraction ahead of his fellows, sword pointing to the rebels, and his confidence was beginning to falter. Some of the enemy were running, but not enough to make the line collapse. Instead he just saw a wall of spears and stakes, held by people who had been convinced to stay. They had been told a charge couldn’t get through—

  Tate knew it too. It was a truth hated by cavalry officers that you could rarely convince an intelligent animal like a horse to barrel into a well-set body of enemy troops, and Tate had to either accept this and take the required action, or attempt to urge his beast into suicide.

  For a few glorious moments he imagined charging and never stopping, but he knew the horse would halt and throw him off if he didn’t act, so he signalled the order and the charge began to turn, just in time, and move parallel to the rebel line.

  Emptied bowels now closed, and the rebels cheered the astonishing sight of the horses turning away.

  “Steady, steady, don’t let them turn…”

  Tate was seething. How dare these peasants not run from his charge, how dare they make him turn to reset, how dare they… Oh.

  The woods were rising up ahead of them. Tate had made them bank towards the farm and clearer ground, which meant they had to complete a hundred and eighty degrees and go back down the slope to safety.

  Which meant every rider had to not tumble over down it.

  Gods be damned, Tate thought, we’re all going to break our necks.

  More than a few of them did, bodies falling beneath writhing horses.

  Garrow watched on with his hands clenched round his eyeglass.

  “I suppose he just got himself demoted.”

  “You will now ride, find wherever they end up, find the most senior person to have survived and you will convey my order in the strongest possible terms. They will fall back, reorganise, and be ready to pursue when the enemy line fails. You will make quite clear they will hold until I order them. And you will prevent Tate from coming here to remonstrate or apologise until I am calm enough to not hang him.”

  *****

  “Why are we on the flank, Sarge?” Finn said, resting the tip of his shield on his toes and fiddling with his spear.

  Brand sighed. “Do you want to be in the middle?”

  “Isn’t that where all the action is going
to be?”

  “Probably. Difficult to say really. They’re mostly farmers and will probably just run off.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’ve seen it before.”

  “You’ve fought imperials before?”

  Brand paused. “No. Just farmers.”

  “Not much glory in that is there?”

  “You in it for the glory, are you? You’ll learn.”

  “Well not glory exactly. But it’d be nice to be promoted, earn a little more money.”

  “Do your job first, and maybe if you do it well enough you’ll catch someone’s eye. That or just be around long enough to outlive anyone who deserves it more than you.”

  “That how you got to be sergeant?”

  “No, by doing my job. Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Not much chance of us catching the eye out here though, stuck near the woods.”

  “Listen lad. In my experience those who spend time wishing for battle nearly always end up wishing harder it hadn’t come when they get it.”

  “You saying I’m a coward?”

  “No. But get a couple of proper battles under your belt and you’ll understand things better.”

  “You’re not much of a motivational speaker.”

  “That’s probably why I’m in charge of you lot,” Brand muttered.

  “Sorry Sarge?” Finn said.

  “I said that’s probably why I’m not in charge of a company,” Brand said. “Now you lazy bastards, stand straight and get ready,” he said more loudly. “I’m not getting beaten because you lot got caught with your trousers down.” There was a noticeable straightening of shoulders and spears lifting. “That’s better.”

  Brand looked around. The Corporal hadn’t been wrong, they were stuck out on the left wing of the army and judging by the way the rebels appeared to have drawn up it wasn’t likely they’d see much fighting. Whilst it might have helped blood the men and make them a little more steady for the next battle, fighting farmers wasn’t what he’d signed up for, and especially not his countrymen. But for a few years and an accident of geography that could have been him on the other side. That made for uncomfortable thinking.

  He hoped the recruits proved to be a decent bunch. They trained well enough but until you got them into a proper battle it was hard to tell. That little scuffle at the farm had done little for anyone, especially not for the one of his men who’d been killed. And whose name he couldn’t now remember. He cursed. That was probably an ill omen. He started to have a bad feeling. The rebels had managed to get surprisingly close to the legion when they were destroying the food supplies. They must have pretty good scouts and be good at moving unseen. He glanced at the trees to their left. Probably not. They were just a few involved in sabotage after all. Where would the rebels have got that sort of an organised force from?