by M E Wolf
SilverFox slipped a piece of parchment into the folds of his robe and then placed a rolled up piece of parchment into a scroll case and the scroll case into his message satchel. He was ready and he hoped that his men would also be ready. Just as he was done, his two captains, two heavy lancers, two horse archers and the four sergeants had arrived.
“Now that we are all here, we can discuss and formulate our plans. Come follow me,”
Said SilverFox, slipping his saddlebag with the message satchel in it over his shoulder.
He escorted them into an area of his tent that was more suited to the planning of this ruse that they were going to pull on the enemy. It was also the place where strategies and tactics were usually discussed. After everyone was seated he continued speaking,
“Most of the plan about our departure has been discussed, except for the odd case that any of us is captured.”
He handed everyone a rough looking piece of parchment that had strange writings on each of them and resumed,
“In the unfortunate event that you are captured you are to inconspicuously drop this parchment so that it can be noticed as a mistake on your part. You are to quickly attempt to recover it.
“It is written in the enemy cipher and should throw them in the wrong direction. Each parchment is different and each location will put the enemy into a compromising position that will give us the advantage of an ambush.
“If you can help it, don’t get caught because it will most likely result in death depending on which enemy commander is leading the capturing forces. It is already known that we are leaving at dusk, which is in about three hours.
“Make sure you get a little rest, not sleep, but rest. If you sleep you will be sluggish going down the road and that would be the death of you. We want everyone to be ready to fight if the need arises, but we will not go out of our way to wage a pitched battle.
“Not only that we don’t have the time for a stretched out battle or even a small one, we cannot afford to lose anyone on the road and we cannot afford to lose the message that I must get to our king. Until we are in the company of the king, we must act and respond as we are supposed to according to our given roles.
“Now to the duties of our sergeants and our elite commands. The elite commands will be split into four command units, which will give us two heavy lancer units and two horse archer units.”
SilverFox brought a blank piece of parchment and set it on the table. He drew two rough elliptical structures and one large elliptical structure directly across from them. Making a straight line between them and two arrows from the two smaller structures, he began to explain to them of how they were a representation of the two units of horse archers.
Those two units were to shoot volleys of arrows followed by a bombardment of crossbow bolts. He then continued to explain the plan.
“While the horse archers let arrows and bolts fly into the enemy, the heavy lancers will go on either side of the enemy like so,” Silver-Fox drew two more elliptical structures so that they sandwiched the larger elliptical object and continued his instructions.
“Timing has to be perfect in this operation, any slip-ups and some of our men could go down from a stray arrow or a bolt, even if it goes as planned do not be surprised about any casualties because there will be some.
“Our horse archers are to distract the enemy long enough for our heavy lancers to get into place. Once they are in their proper positions, the arrows and bolts are to cease and the horse archers are to draw their weapons. They are to close in on the enemy.
“At the same time that the horse archers begin to close in on the enemy, the heavy lancers are to charge into the enemy’s flanks. I know that you are going to say that their back is not covered, but there is a small river behind them.
“This means that you should be able to crush the enemy and get out of there before their reported reinforcements arrive. Once this is done you are to head in our direction because it could be possible that we might end up running into those reinforcements.
“On the other hand, they could be coming from the other side. The attack on the enemy should be done at the same time that we leave to deliver the message to the king. That way we are sure not to be noticed by the enemy as we leave the compound.
“You sergeants take these plans and study them. Once you are done with them and committed them to memory, burn them. We cannot have our plans falling into enemy hands.
“If, at any time, either one of you suspect that your plans have been compromised you are to alter your plans according to the situation at hand. That is the very reason you are to study these plans and make contingencies for the unknown factor of the allies joining the battle.
“Strategize and formalize what could go wrong when confronting the enemy thinking of possible changes to the plan to get the same outcome. Your outcome should be constant and that constant is to push the enemy into the river giving them no escape from the slaughter placed upon them. You also should theorize what you should do if their reinforcements arrive on time.”
After the sergeants had left the tent SilverFox discussed more of their plans, their formation and the way that they would leave the compound. They would go around the back of the tents in the compound away from the border between them and their enemy with SilverFox and Captain Greenwood in the lead.
CHAPTER SIXTY THREE
The four sergeants, Richard, Robert, Frederic and Bartholomew stood at a table in the sergeants’ command tent. On the table was the parchment of the deployment of their troops given to them by SilverFox. All four of them stared at it for a long time before any of them started discussing its ramifications.
Richard, being the highest-ranking sergeant, was the first to speak,
“My fellow sergeants, what I am concerned with is that we have made too many assumptions. It is all and well that we have been given this command together, but I do not trust our lieutenant’s command ability.
“After all he has only been in the military for no more than two years. On the other hand I have been here for more than fifteen years and they have only made me lead sergeant.
“The first assumption that we should not have made was that there was a river behind our enemy. What will we do if there is no river? Well for one thing we could have the heavy lancers spill into the back covering the enemy flank with half of their force and the other half would cover the back.
“Our second assumption was to believe that reinforcements would not arrive in time to assist our enemies. This assumption could cost us this small battle and result in costing us the war.
“Basically, we would lose the war, but not only that we would also be massacred. To this event, which would be unfortunate, we will have to reserve a third of our total force.
“This will allow us to attack the reinforcements after they have engaged us. It should prevent them from surrounding us. Half of these men will be horse archers and the other half will be heavy lancers.
“A tactic taught to me by my father long ago will be employed whereby our men will send volleys of arrows and bolts followed by a charge by our heavy lancers. The heavy lancers will pull back to allow our horse archers to send another volley.
“This will continue like this while there is still a threat from the enemy forces at the edge of the river. Once we have our expected victory over them, we will attack the reinforcements head on.
“At no time should our forces disperse or become disorganized. We must not engage the enemy reinforcements until such time that the other body of enemy forces has been dealt with.”
Richard paused for a moment to look at the shadow that the moon had cast on his rudimentary sundial.
“We have time for about thirty minutes more of discussion, anyone have anything they could add to this already brilliant plan?”
Richard scooped up a dangling hair placing it behind his right ear and then folded his arms with a sigh that was almost comical. Everyone knew that this was a good plan, but did not like Richard a
ll that much. In actuality no one liked him at all. It was unfortunate that they had to be under his command.
He was known to be a blowhard and it was known secretly by all why he had not been promoted from sergeant in any of his fifteen years of service. The story or rumour that has been started about him of his career as a soldier is in varied detail depending on who was telling it. It has been said that he does not deal well with superior officers, which meant that he would always be beneath them.
Richard did not take orders well. If SilverFox had have had more experience with him, he would not have left him in charge of such a large force or any force at all for that matter. His incompetence grew as time went by and along with it came arrogance towards his superiors.
SilverFox was not the first superior that he had disliked, in fact he hated nearly all of them because they advanced in their military careers a lot faster than he did. Richard just should have stayed at being a farmer like his pa instead of enlisting.
All in the army would have been a lot happier. Some of the other sergeants could be up for a promotion, but Richard would remain a sergeant because that is what he did best. In training men to be in the army, he was not bad. Most sergeants were better than him, but if they were better at being a superior officer that is what they would end up being.
Promotions passed him by the way black flies passed one on a hot summer’s day. Some bit him, he nearly squashed a few, but he never really made any headway. Most of those promotions that he might have been up for could not wait for him to fix his attitude with his superiors, so he ended up just being a lead sergeant. The sergeants with him this day had to be the only sergeants that kind of liked him.
What they mainly liked was his tactical ability. He usually called the situation right, but even they could only take so much from him as his arrogance was plain for them all to see. They happened to like the lieutenant even more than him and it was not right to insult someone when they had told him to study the plan. Robert, Frederic and Bartholomew made a silent nod of their heads signifying that they agreed with the plan.
After everything was agreed upon, it was noted that two sergeants should lead the force that was to attack the enemy force at the edge of the river. The other two sergeants should lead the force that was to hold off the enemy reinforcements. It was agreed that Frederic and Bartholomew would lead the second force that was to hold off the enemy reinforcements and Richard and Robert would lead the first force, the primary force. Frederic and Robert were leaders of horse archers and Richard and Bartholomew were leaders of heavy lancers.
CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR
SilverFox, Captain Greenwood, Captain McOrton, heavy lancers Ghost and Brisbane and horse archers Tree and BoneTac lead their horses and pack horses silently behind the compound. They walked for a good half hour away from the compound and then mounted their horses. At first they had made their way slowly through the forest and gradually made their way onto the road heading in the direction of their king’s compound.
The clashing of steel and the screams of dying men could be heard in the opposite direction of where they were heading. Each one made a silent prayer that it was not their men that they heard wailing. It sounded of torment and all of the men knew that whichever side was losing was being massacred. They continued to travel on the road for several hours before they stopped to feed the horses and eventually feed themselves.
Traveling throughout the night with very little rest was harder on them then it was on the horses. At times they would have to walk the horses to lessen the chances of laming the horses. During the first thirty-six hours they got no more than four hours sleep and the horses and them were extremely tired. From that point on they took turns sleeping, some would even sleep on the backs of their horses while being pulled along by another.
After three days of riding they were one day away from their destination. Captain McOrton sent one of the horse archers out to scout the area up ahead to see who was at the camp that they smelled the smoke of their camp fire rather than saw them.
CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE
Tree was tired, but took the opportunity to stretch his legs when his captain had given him scout duty. He was well used to this type of work and it was the main reason that everyone had taken to calling him Tree. It all started when he was far younger than he was now, young even for an elf at the age of one hundred and fifteen when he was called Morguelf after his grandfather.
His ability to blend in with the trees was discovered when someone decided to chop down his favourite sleeping tree. When he stopped melding with the tree and began to walk out of its heart the man with the axe fled in a panic, leaving the axe behind. News of this act traveled far throughout the city and then spread to other cities and eventually got to the king.
At first the king did not know what to make of the situation and sent out word for the reward for his capture or whatever it was that could mesh itself with a tree. This was before any of the short-lived races knew anything about or of the existence of elves. Now, times are different and Tree is old for an elf. Being long lived only made association with the short-lived that much more difficult.
Tree was widowed more than ten times and seen thousands of his friends die. He did not like it when the short-lived ones assumed that because he lived longer it took him longer to learn things. On the contrary, he just had more time to learn things and the short-lived ones were most likely upset because of that very reason. At six hundred years old he knew far more than any human ever could and unlike humans, elves did not lose any of their memories until they were well into their third millennium, if at all.
He had to swallow back his anger and bitterness and leave it for another time because he was approaching the camp that he was to scout. Slipping into a tree near to the north end of the camp, south of where he had left the others, he observed and noted everything in the camp. There must have been more than fifty men and women in the camp. They looked to be from some military unit or even some sort of militia or that was what Tree had thought after his first glance.
A closer or more precise inspection of their uniforms revealed that they all had emblems of a wolf’s head with a sword sticking out of it. Tree recognized this to be the symbol of a mercenary group called The Mercenary Clan of the Wolf, the sword being the mercenary symbol and the wolf being the Clan of the Wolf symbol.
It, the wolf’s head, was usually grey but this one was black, which meant that they were an assassin squad. Them being this far into the forest only meant one thing and that was that they were hired to do a job, but a whole army of them was a strange and queer thing. He now knew that this was a bad thing for him and for his comrades. They were obviously hired to stop their message from getting to their king and they would do it if he did not return.
The fact that they were on the road that him and the rest of those with him needed to get to their destination was not good. Just before he was about to leave he noticed one of the mercenaries looking at the tree that he was in. Tree’s eyes were locked with the mercenary and for some reason he could not pull away. He did not know what was wrong, but knew that whatever was happening to him was not good.
To him it was obvious that these mercenaries were more than they appeared to be. It never occurred to him that someone would do something to him that would immobilize him. His skills were so unusual to his people and the humans that he never figured on meeting anyone else that might have a skill that would be a match for his.
Tree could not get out of the tree that he was in no matter how hard he had tried. He had free movement to move or go anywhere inside the tree, but his energy was more than exhausted from the effort. Right now he did everything he could without losing consciousness, but in the end it was not enough.
CHAPTER SIXTY SIX
Richard, Bartholomew and Frederic were probably dead since Robert could not see them from the post that he was tied to. Robert had also seen at least two of them go down in the frenzy of the battle and chaos that their enemies h
ad caused by their numerous ranks. The battle was quickly over with most of his friends and comrades going down in blood drenched agony.
For one thing, he was glad that his son Tree had not been with them when they had made the attack on the enemy a few nights ago, but for some reason he sensed that something was wrong. Somehow his son was trapped and he could feel him powerless against a power that he had thought was destroyed a millennium ago. Robert felt bad for not warning his son of the dangers that once were in force long ago.
He should have told him of the millennium long war that their ancestors had to fight long before his great, great grandfather was even born who had died at the age of two thousand, four hundred and eighty-two years old, which was more than two millennium ago. Being stripped down to his breaches did not help him much. It seemed that all of his family had some sort of special gift passed down throughout the generations and millennium.
Natural abilities that were impossible to figure out why they existed. His son had a great ability that none in the hundreds of generations of their family had ever been known to have. This made it hard to understand how to use the ability. Robert had the ability to shift into any form he chose after long study of that form. His current form was of the man creature called Robert. The real Robert was a good friend of his that he had raised from birth, which had made it easy for him to assume his form after the fatal day that had claimed his life.
It was a matter of necessity that he was to act and look like Robert, even down to the scars and birthmarks that he knew all too well would be clear to identify him as the real Robert. Courage was a well-needed skill for a task such as this and it also helped that he had the ability to act like and mimic Robert in every way. He had been in this form for the last twenty years, which meant that he had to be careful to show Robert aging the way he was supposed to.