Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories

by Vox Day

  Unlike the elves had done, we waited for them to come to us. They charged at us, their sharpened wooden poles aimed at our midsections, and they screamed like banshees. But the lads wasn’t intimidated—even the greenest among us had seen it before in the pass.

  With my shield, I turned aside the first pole to come my way, then I held my sword out and let the gobbo run himself onto the point. His momentum caused the blade to go all the way through his neck with more than two hands of steel jutting out behind him. Eyes wide with shock, he dropped his weapon and clutched at my sword with both hands, as if to pull it out. I booted him in the stomach and pulled. My sword came out nice and slick, and he collapsed at my feet. It don’t get much easier than that.

  I glanced down the line to see how things was going, and I was pleased to see their charge hadn’t knocked us back a step. We might not be dancing, but we wasn’t retreating neither.

  A pole knocked against my shield three times, so I slapped it aside with my sword and sent the gobbo holding it reeling with my backswing. I killed him with a stab. Then I killed another one with an overhead swing, and another by bashing it in the face with my shield, then pinning it to the ground. I’d killed four gobbos and wounded three more before I even started to breathe hard. But the gobbos kept coming, more scared of the whips behind them than the blades in front of them, most likely. They wasn’t soldiers. They wasn’t even warriors. None of them seemed to have any idea what to do with their rude wooden spears except poke them at us in a half-hearted manner that was less hazardous to your health than most of the whores I’ve known.

  A couple of times some of our men got excitable and started to advance against the crumbling goblin line. I shouted at them to fall back in line, but when Colart pushed out too far and got hisself surrounded, I had to order the whole line forward, while being careful not to go so far that we’d open up a gap and lose contact with One-Eye in the center.

  “Left Wing, march by front! Fifteen paces, fifteen on my command. Fifteen!” I shouted. “March!”

  Fifty against near two hundred, but we threw them back, smashing our shields into their ugly mugs and cutting them down wherever they tried to stand. There was still four gobbos between our line and Colart, but Gille la Guillée stabbed one, sent another sprawling with a kick in its arse, and then Colart swept the third aside with the flat of his sword. The fourth had the sense to scramble back to the rest of its mates, narrowly avoiding the blades thrusting after it.

  “Do we fall back now, Sarge?” someone yelled.

  “We took this ground, we hold it,” I shouted back, and the men roared their approval. I was fit to burst, I was so proud of the bastards. But I made sure to catch Colart’s eye, and I glared at him. He was smart enough to look ashamed of hisself.

  The goblin right was still falling back, and it wasn’t long before the falling back turned into a retreat even though we wasn’t chasing. The run fever rapidly spread to the enemy center, then to the left. The gobbos knew they couldn’t even push us back, let alone crack us, no more than they could crack the elves. It seemed the fact that, even outnumbered, we could push them back at will was enough to break them. I let the boys shout abuse at their retreating backsides while I went through the ranks, seeing who was hurt and how bad. Turned out Colart was the only one who took more than a few bumps and bruises. He’d taken two nasty cuts from a blade to his right side, so I sent him back to the capitaine and the reserve.

  I was just about to tell the men to finish off the goblin wounded and pile the dead in front of the line in a sort of makeshift wall to slow up the next wave when Heimert showed up, dragging four pigstickers with him.

  I cursed, knowing what they signified.

  “The orc is sending in his boars,” Heimert told me unnecessarily. “Capitaine says two ranks, pair ’em up. Front man goes for the rider, second man for the pig. If they break through, leave them go, the king is sending over a hundred of his elves to reinforce our depth and deal with them. It looks like the infantry might be following the boars.”

  “Orc or gobbo?”

  “Orcs.”

  I nodded, figuring as much. This was it. This was the real assault. Ulgor was brave enough to throw the bones after all. Five or ten riders breaking through the line here and there was something we could handle ourselves, but if a whole section of the line was smashed, the orc would be quick to exploit that by sending his infantry through the gap. His real infantry, not that pathetic sword fodder we’d been chopping up all morning. I sent half the men back with Heimert with instructions to bring back two pigstickers apiece, then ordered the rest to fall back to our original position, in line with the center and right flank.

  Then the four horns sounded, just to confirm what everyone already knew.

  The boars was in sight now, looking like a deadly wave of black water rising up from the sea and making its unstoppable way toward the shore. They came on faster than the goblins marching, but not a whole lot faster. They would wait until the elven war machines loosed on them, then their riders would kick them into a full gallop, and they’d come crashing into our line.

  I steeled myself against the fear that was rising from the pit of my belly, remembering how easily the one warboar had knocked me down the night before. I could still feel the bruise where its shoulder had struck me. How could we think to even slow them down with nothing more than long pieces of wood with a bit of metal on the end?

  Most cavalry shied away from infantry with pikes, so long as the infantry had the sense to hold its line. Boars was smarter than horses, but it was said they was so evil-tempered that once they got their mad on, they’d charge a brick wall. So, we couldn’t count on the sight of all the sharp ends of our sticks pointing their way to scare them off. And after last night, their riders would be out for blood. All the riders who was stuck marching with the infantry now that their pigs was cooked probably wasn’t in the best of moods neither.

  The men got back with the reinforced spears and into the formation the capitaine wanted just after the elven archers began loosing, much further out this time than before. I was glad to see it. If they waited as long as they did with the goblins, they wouldn’t have had time for more than two or three volleys before the beasts would be on us.

  As the bows snapped behind us and arrows flew over our heads, I had the men digging out holes about two hands deep where they was to brace their pigstickers. We was all wearing our shields slung around our backs. The pigsticker was a one-shot weapon, and once a boar broke past them we’d be down to our swords. I saw the elven infantry taking up their places behind us each had a pair of normal spears. I didn’t take one myself. I wanted to be able to move among the men until the very last moment.

  As the black wave came on, growing ever larger, I could see that even if we won, we was going to take a beating. The elven bows wasn’t having much of an effect on either the boars or their riders, although I did see one orc jerk upright and fall from his saddle. Looked like he took one right to the eye. Like I said, those Silverbows was good. But that orc’s boar was quickly retrieved, and another orc, probably a pigless rider, climbed upon its back and kicked the brute into a gallop to catch up with the others.

  A horn sounded, and the elven war machines finally made themselves useful. The men cheered as one ballista bolt neatly hurled one rider from his saddle and another buried itself right in the armored chest of a particularly large boar on the far flank. The beast stumbled and fell forward, pitching its rider off backwards in a wild, flailing somersault as its tusks dug two furrows into the ground. Giant boulders cast from the catapults smashed into three more boars, breaking their skinny little legs and crushing one unlucky beast’s skull.

  Then the four warhawks plunged down from the sky towards the onrushing cavalry, two on each flank. Four columns of fire lashed the orcs, burning boars and riders alike. Behind me, the company cheered. But before the elven mages could strike again, two beams of smoking scarlet light rose up from the infantry behind the wa
rboars. One of them narrowly missed a hawk that was forced to drop one wing and roll to avoid the shaman's attack. They must strap those elves in good, I thought, half-expecting to see a mage falling to his death. A high-pitched horn sounded and all four warhawks broke off the aerial attack at once, curving around and retreating behind our lines.

  Dammit, it was as the captain guessed. Orcs might be filthy subhuman breeds, but they wasn't entirely stupid when it came to making war.

  The elven machines kept up their barrage, but they wasn’t enough to slow the orc assault down, forget stopping them. Worse, none of it was hitting the cavalry coming right at us. By hitting both flanks, the elves was funneling the charge right at us. Sure enough, the wave began to shape itself into more of a wedge than a line, with its point aiming right at One-Eye’s men in the center.

  The lead rider, a huge orc holding a twin-bladed axe with a head about the size of a goblin in one hand, raised it above his head and shouted. The orc to his left raised a horn, and it blared out an ominous, low sound that was met with bestial howls from the rest of the riders. The ground thundered with the sound of almost eight-score warboars breaking into a charge.

  “Brace yourselves, men,” I shouted over the howling of the orcs and the thunder of the hooves pounding toward us, running between the men and patting them on the back or swatting them on the backside to encourage them. “First man, orc! Second man, pig! We stand! We hold!”

  The elf king still had a few tricks left in him. It turned out that one catapult was aimed at our front. He’d saved it and loaded it with caltrops. This one loosed now, and the spiky bits of metal sailed over our heads and clattered to the ground not thirty paces in front of us. The sharp metal would pierce through the hooves of the pigs that stepped on them, maybe slow a few of the beasts down and reduce force of the charge a little.

  But it turned out some of them wasn’t caltrops after all, they was magic stones akin to the ones me and Shady had laid the night before. As the warboars hit the caltrops running, a wall of flame erupted and set on fire the bristly hair of about half the beasts charging through it. I didn’t know if the elf mages thought the fire would panic the pigs, and maybe it did, but the problem was that if they was panicking, they was doing it in the direction they was already running. The warboars squealed and shrieked, and their riders screamed, but they was still coming right at us.

  “Sacre Immaculée!” I heard Gille la Guillée swear as a giant boar, its sides wreathed in flames, bore down on us like a fiery demon from Hell. Or maybe he was praying. I was doing a little of both myself.

  I grabbed his pigsticker from the other side to help him brace it, but I held it loose, put my shoulder to it, and let him aim it at the big, armored orc on the boar’s back. Just behind us, I could hear young Aubelet hyperventilating as he aimed his greatspear at the squealing, panic-stricken monster. I probably should have helped Aubelet hold his sticker instead of Gille, but there was nothing for it now.

  I think we was all five screaming—the three of us, the orc, and the boar—but I couldn’t hear nothing. All I saw was the orc and its small, piggy eyes, the dark tattoos on its face, and the jagged tusks that stuck up and out from its ugly lipless gash of a mouth. It was wearing an iron breastplate over a leather vest, and its powerful arms bulged with veins and muscle as it tried to get its fire-maddened mount back under control.

  I saw the sharpened metal of the pigsticker punch through the leather just under the breastplate into its belly and disappear, and I saw its squinty eyes widen as its facial expression transformed from a grimace to disbelief. Then I could feel the full weight of the orc in my arms, and with Gille I shared the force of its momentum suddenly coming to a stop. I squatted and coiled my legs under me as I tried to take the blow without being knocked from my feet. But it was no good. Whether Aubelet had misplaced his sticker, whether it snapped, or whether the boar’s momentum carried it through despite being mortally stricken, I never knew.

  I was still holding onto Gille’s pigsticker and the orc impaled on the other end when the boar smashed into us and sent all three of us flying backward. After that, everything descended into confusion and chaos.

  I wasn’t knocked out, but I was stunned and I wasn’t entirely sure where I was when I regained my feet and found myself surrounded by blood, fire, and murderous violence on every side. Instinctively, I bent down and picked up a pigsticker lying nearby, just as a huge, spiked club passed through the space where my helmet had been. A boar flashed past me, then an arrow took its rider in the throat and it threw up its hands as it somersaulted off the backside of the pig. The beast didn't even slow down; I doubt it noticed. The orc wasn't dead, it was chuffing and choking, so I smashed the butt of the big spear once, twice, three times into its face. That did for it.

  I looked up and saw another boar right in front of me, digging its tusks at a man desperately trying to defend himself with his too-small wooden shield. I charged the beast and drove the pigsticker into its side behind its shoulder as if it was a lance. I must have pierced its heart when I stuck it, because the boar collapsed and rolled away from me, crushing its screaming rider's legs beneath its massive body.

  I realized I was still wearing my sword and drew it. “Form up, form up!” I shouted, loud enough to sear my lungs.

  But the formation was too shattered and the situation too chaotic for more than a few of the men to hear me and respond right away. It had been only a moment since the heavy cavalry hit us, and already there was bodies lying everywhere. The huge black bristly bodies of dead and dying warboars was surrounded by the broken and bloody bodies of men and orcs alike, red blood intermingled with green on the torn-up grass.

  “Form up!” I shouted again and again. “Form up, damn you!”

  Slowly, men began to recover their wits and rally to me. First five, then ten, and then another ten. Of the fifty that stood against the charge, less than half was in formation. The rest wasn’t all dead, but they wasn’t in no shape to fight no more.

  The battle raged behind us now, as the boars that had ridden over us was surrounded and engaged by the elves. Split up and slowed down by us, they was getting rapidly chopped to bits. I could see the front line of the orc infantry coming closer; they was nearly in range for their own charge. The elven archers was already picking off a few of them, but they was better armored than the goblins, and at least their first two ranks was advancing behind upraised shields.

  “It’s no use,” I heard a frightened young lad, Alard, shout. “There’s too many of them! There's too many of them!”

  “Shut your mouth,” I slapped him, hard. Then I raised my voice. “You’re wardogs, men. You took the coin. You made your choice. Now you’re going to stand and fight, or I’m going to kill you myself!”

  I pointed to the center and the Company’s right, where the two caporals was screaming at their men and getting the survivors still battle-ready back into line to await the orc infantry. Both of their sections had been mauled badly too. One-Eye’s men maybe a little worse, Bigarse’s not quite so bad. I could see the capitaine was sending the whole reserve to One-Eye, so that meant we was down to about a hundred men total. Against five hundred armored orcs only fifty paces away. No wonder the men was ready to break with the orcs tromping steadily toward them. Plus half of them was still in shock from the cavalry charge. I played my final card.

  “Who wants to be the first to run? I ain’t dying by the side of no bitches,” I said. “If you want to run, then get your cowardly arse out of my face and run!”

  There was a lot of swearing at that, but as I hoped, no one was willing to be the first. They had enough experience to know that our only chance was in standing together. Then Jérôme cracked a joke, and I knew they’d hold.

  “Can you at least confess us all before they get here, Sarge?”

  The men laughed.

  “No need,” I told him. “Didn’t your maman tell you all wardogs go to Heaven?”

  Some of them laughed, some o
f them groaned, but I could tell they was steady now, even though the orcs was breaking into their charge. Damn, but that was close! They was six or seven deep to our single rank opposing them. I took a deep breath and told God I would really appreciate it if He would consider taking it easy on me on account of my being dumb enough to sign up with the Company.

  “Shields up, everyone,” I barked and turned to face the incoming orcs. “If I don’t see you in Heaven, I’ll buy you a beer in Hell.”

  But just as the men brought up their shields, horns sounded, and I heard a commotion behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the elf king himself, wearing gleaming green glass armor and a horned helm with a gold circle welded to it, pushing past the men behind me. I could see his inhuman eyes behind his helmet—they was green too—and I don’t think I imagined the respect I thought I saw in them as he looked at me. He was followed by about a hundred elves, all wearing some sort of shining glass armor and wearing two swords at their belts.

  The elf king drew his sword and said something in elvish. I don't speak none, but I'm pretty sure he was asking if we minded a little help. I nodded and gestured with my sword toward the howling orcs, who was barely twenty paces away now and coming in hard. No, sir, I didn't mind at all.

  The elven warcry was high-pitched, inhuman, and it made more than a few of the onrushing orcs stumble as they suddenly discovered they wasn't attacking a half-broken line of cavalry-shattered infantry, but the elf king his own damn self. The elf king didn’t wait for them either, he rushed out to meet them!

  I glanced to the right and saw there was more elves coming to the aid of the right and center, maybe another hundred total. Three hundred against five? That was fair. It was maybe even survivable. The men looked at me, I looked at the center, and when I saw the capitaine raise his sword, I knew what his decision was even before I heard the horn.

  We was exhausted, outnumbered, battered, bleeding, and more than half of us was wounded or dead. The men was barely moments away from breaking and running.