by E. M. Hardy
Machetes against horse! The khan of the Shining Horde expected Martin’s so-called ‘walkers’ to pull hidden pikes from their feet, to deploy an elaborate trap that would keep the charging cavalry in check.
No, the idiot just kept his walkers standing there in the open, outnumbered ten-to-one against the coming tide of flesh… and they were actually holding their positions.
Hobogetur sat slack-jawed on his mount, as did his two sworn brothers sitting on their mounts beside him. The Mud Men kept unleashing wave after wave of chi, disrupting the momentum of the charging riders and slowing them down in the process. They then dashed into the formations of the horsemen attempting to surround them, weaving in between the stampeding hoofs of the horses and slashing all around them.
The Mud Men were eventually swallowed up by the attacking Hordes, but this morsel was not going down the throat of the beast as it should have. No, the Mud Men looked like they were dancing as they dodged the stampeding hoofs while cutting the mounts down one by one. They jumped up in the air, launching themselves off the horses and spinning with their machetes extended—catching the riders by complete surprise with the boldness of their actions.
It was at that moment where Hobogetur understood why Martin chose a staggered formation and equipped his Mud Men with those machetes. The weapons were copies of the khukuri knives used by the Sahaasi Dominion’s elite ghurkas.
They were meant to be used for close, dirty fighting where you got into the face of your opponent before hacking his head into pieces. Their short reach was very risky to use and required a lot of space to properly swing them, give them the momentum they needed.
They were devastating if you didn’t mind losing your life, but the Mud Men didn’t have lives to lose in the first place. Some of the Mud Men were cornered and eventually struck down by hooves, lances, and heavy cavalry blades. Most, however, kept dancing with the riders—lashing out with their blades and force waves.
Thanks to their aggressive and agile counter-offensive, the Mud Men seeded themselves deep inside the attacking horde. They looked almost like they were flying dust devils, spinning wildly through the air like a thousand of the Empire’s more agile martial artists.
The riders began panicking, overwhelmed by the relentless and untiring aggression of their faceless opponents. They were used to infantry huddling together, presenting easy targets for archers to pick apart before a lance charge shattered their tired formations.
These Mud Men, however, fought like wild beasts—sowing chaos and disorder as they burrowed deeper and deeper into the Hordes.
A stray thought suddenly brought a chill up Hobogetur’s spine: was each Mud Man the equivalent of an Imperial martial artist?
“It’s a little tactic I picked up from a new enemy I’m currently dealing with,” Martin blurted out through the orb floating beside Hobogetur’s head, interrupting his thoughts.
“This enemy uses its superior mobility to jump up in the air, lashing out with powerful paws tipped with razor-sharp claws as they crash into my walkers. It’s murder against tightly-packed formations, especially since this new enemy of mine doesn’t care about its own losses.”
The orb nodded to itself at the thought. “I need to practice more, but it looks like it’s just as effective… at least if I could replace casualties as easily as those stupid, four-legged buggers.” Hobogetur couldn’t make out the rest of what Martin said as the orb grumbled quietly to itself.
Not that he cared, for he really wasn’t paying much attention to Martin’s complaints. No, he paid full attention to the unbelievable scene playing out before him. The Mud Men weren’t just holding back the attacking Hordes.
They were diving into the Horde, attacking this way and that. The horse archers were useless with the way the Mud Men mingled with their companions. They quickly swapped out their bows for the short swords at their hips, joining the ranks of the skirmishers and lancers.
Yet even this was not enough to repel the Mud Men. They clung to the horses, to the riders, and refused to let them go—chasing them as they tried to put distance between themselves and the relentless men made of mud.
They never let up, never gave the Khans a chance to reassemble their forces as they mingled within their formations. These walkers acted more like a massive pride of plains lions than foot soldiers, chasing down their prey and whirling their khukuri knives with abandon.
That’s when Hobogetur heard enemy horns blaring, watched the flags of each respective Horde designate a new rallying point for the blunted charge. Martin heard and saw everything as well—and promptly gave chase with his Mud Men, not giving his enemies a chance to regroup.
“Finally,” Martin sighed as his floating orb turned its eye toward Hobogetur. “Now all I need to do is keep up the pressure. These walkers here should buy a couple more hours, just enough for you guys to get to the safety of the Little Walls.”
Common sense told Hobogetur that this was not real, that there was no rhyme or reason to the scene unfolding before him. There was no way that this should be happening. He was prepared for the Mud Men to be trampled into dust, for him and his sworn brothers to launch one last desperate attack to slow the Hordes down enough so that his people could make it to Imperial territory.
And yet the Mud Men seemed to be actually doing it. They were few in number when compared to the Hordes assembled before them, but their impressive agility coupled with relentless aggression forced the Hordes to pull back.
The three sworn brothers didn’t even need to send their own riders in to check an advance. Everyone held their positions as agreed upon. In theory, they would only ride in to meet the attacking Hordes if they pushed in too deep, to repel them once they overwhelmed the walkers.
In reality, most of the riders were either shocked into silence or cursing out loud at the unbelievable sight before them.
Barely an hour of fighting passed, but more than a thousand horses and their riders lay dead in the open grasses. The enemy Hordes may have sustained casualties of their own, but they still had enough numbers to maintain the density of their staggered formations prior to the charge.
They could doubtless regroup and attempt to bypass the Mud Men if they truly wished to do so, but they would sustain even more casualties if they let the Mud Men rampage behind their lines.
If the Hordes pushed too far, if they committed forces to charge past the Mud Men, their riders would find themselves being ripped open from within by the Mud Men even as they slammed into the riders of the sworn brothers.
They also knew that they would never catch up with Hobogetur’s people before they made it to those strange little fences that Martin called the Little Walls.
Faced with the prospect of suffering needless casualties without achieving any discernable results, the Khans of the Verdant, Blooded, Resolute, and Plainsrider Hordes called for a general retreat.
To break the awkward silence in his army, Hobogetur raised a fist and matched it with a lilting victory cry. His call shook his riders out of their entranced state, and they joined their khan in whooping out victory—raising their assorted weapons in triumph.
Leave it up to Wise Todogen to throw water all over a victory such as this.
“I’ve heard many things about you and your Mud Men,” Todogen suddenly ventured with a cautious tone that cut through the cries of celebration all around. “I’ve heard that you are patient, tolerant, willing to reach a compromise even if it means absorbing casualties. You will forgive the greatest sins, even that of betrayal by the Empress you swore to serve.”
Todogen wore a strange expression on his face, a cross between a reluctant raising of the lips and an indignant furrowing of the brows. “I have also heard of stories about your brutality, of how you sundered the armies of Shogun Inagaki—scattered them like chaff in the wind in a haze of violence, all while laughing like a madman.”
Todogen turned to the orb that turned to him, its crystalline eye scrutinizing his face. �
�Tell me, Martin Fuller… why did you not do that to me and my brethren? Why have you gone through the trouble of sparing us, keeping the doors of negotiation open, when you could have easily wiped us out with your walkers?”
The orb tilted itself strangely at Todogen, and Hobogetur found his hand tightening around the shaft of his lance. In the corner of his eye, he saw Chuluun’s smile grow sharper, tenser, as he inched a hand closer to the sword strapped to his waist. The other horsemen were too caught up in their revelry to notice the tension of their Khans.
Hobogetur ventured a peek at the battleground and noticed the fighting tapering off. Having achieved their objective of repelling the attackers, the Mud Men reformed their own lines and began running back to their original formations. The Hordes, in turn, pulled further back, each horseman riding for himself before circling out to reassemble at the banners.
The orb’s eye focused first on Hobogetur then on Chuluun before finally resting on Todogen’s face. “You ask me why I didn’t just slaughter your people if I had the power to? Simple: I can negotiate with you, reason things out, and come to a compromise when we are done fighting.
“It might take some time, take a few headaches and a few lost walkers, but I’m pretty confident we can come to some sort of agreement given the right circumstances. I mean, we’re talking right now, aren’t we?
“At first, I was just sick of the fighting. I would much rather send my constructs out to work on infrastructure, build roads and bridges to connect this world together—anything and everything to prepare it for the coming disaster. The offers I made were originally meant to establish peace between your people and mine, to show that I meant no harm.
“I would have protected you, shielded you from the wrath of the Empress as you tended your herds and cultivated the land covered by my obelisks. Now, however, I am afraid that I can no longer give you that luxury. I need more warriors to help me against this new enemy, and—”
Hobogetur chuffed, spitting on the ground before stabbing his lance into the ground. The nearby riders caught Hobogetur’s sudden change in mood and began shifting restlessly on their mounts. The orb refocused its eye, shifted it to the sneering khan.
“I see where this is going. You spare me and my brothers now so that we will be grateful to you. You will promise many things, entice us with riches and glory. We will take up our arms and fight your enemies for you. We will shed our blood in foreign lands, blood that will nourish the grasses in a land our horses will never graze upon.”
His sneer morphed into a grimace, not bothering to hide his disgust. “And in the end, you will throw away those we leave behind—our spouses, children, parents, grandparents—just like what the tyrants of the Xi Dynasty did. What makes you different from them, hmm?”
To Martin’s credit, he didn’t immediately deny Hobogetur’s accusations nor hurl accusations back at him. The eyeball simply looked at the fuming khan up and down, taking a moment to think things over before responding.
“Your people will have land to farm, grasslands to feed for your herds—all behind the safety of the Little Walls. I have also secured an Imperial pardon from the Empress herself,” Martin said simply in response to the khan’s outburst. “You need not worry about retribution from the Imperials, for the threat of this new enemy is too severe to lose out on new allies.
“I, however, offer more. I will teach your people how to unlock the potential of chi and prana, strengthen them and make them even hardier. I will show you the secrets of blood-binding to arm your warriors, give them weapons to defeat this enemy and the other khans threatening your people. You may even learn new and innovative ways to harness these energies, as others have done after intense meditation under the obelisks.
“And do you know why I’m going so far for you and your people? Why I’m doing my best to bring you over to my side instead of just watching you get crushed by your rivals? Why I’m holding back the Imperials who want to wait for the Grass Peoples to grind one another to dust before they march in with fresh troops to take it all away for themselves?”
Hobogetur glared at the orb’s eye, holding his tongue and waiting for the orb to break first.
“That thing I did out there with my walkers,” Martin then stated as it turned its orb away, causing Hobogetur to win his petty contest of stares. “That’s a method of fighting that a new enemy taught me. No organized formations, no careful tactics, just relentless violence and the sheer weight of numbers.”
The floating orb swayed slightly, tilting its lens so that it pointed out at the retreating Hordes. “This enemy is not like you humans. This new enemy does not negotiate, does not show mercy, and does not care if it destroys itself. It is not an Empress that demands loyalty, or a League merchant seeking riches, or a Khan seeking land and space for his people.
“No, this enemy’s only goal is to keep marching relentlessly onward, crushing any resistance it comes across. Given enough time, it will reach up here, to the Grass Seas, and begin hunting your people down like pests. And you will be treated like pests—crushed underneath its inexorable expansion.”
The orb then hovered closer to Hobogetur’s face. The cold sphere of clay was a little too close for his comfort, especially if Martin stated the truth, but Hobogetur couldn’t back down—not in front of his people.
“And do you know what’s really frightening? This enemy is just a minor hindrance—toys, really—when compared to the ones that will come after them.
“This enemy will just kill you, end your life. The ones that will come after will take your souls, lock them in a never-ending hell where your torment fuels their power. This is why none of us can afford to burn out in our respective wars. You need my help to end the civil war among the Grass Peoples, and I need your help to quickly destroy this enemy before the next enemy comes along and wipes us all out.”
Whether this Martin spoke the truth or was merely making up stories, Hobogetur knew that his people needed protection. His own enemies had already taken his land and the land of his sworn brothers. Without the intervention of the Mud Men, the other khans would have trampled his warriors and taken his people as slaves. He did not want to admit it, but the fact of the matter was that his forces were too weak to stand on their own.
At least for the moment. Time and opportunity may change the circumstances. But for now…
Hobogetur maintained his glare for a few more seconds before sighing in discontent. “Always suspected your offers had a catch, and I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. So… what exactly do you need?”
Chapter 05
“NO!” Martin shouted out in helpless frustration, his target so close yet so far away. He watched his failure through the eyes of a thousand dying walkers, hieracosphinxes mauling them to pieces with beak and talon while the giant androsphinxes stomped them to oblivion. Only fifty more meters and his walkers would have reached the half-built pyramid, and perhaps gained valuable intel on these mysterious rogue constructs.
But no, the relentless onslaught of the sphinxes stymied his massed walkers.
Rows upon rows of ceramic pikes with layers of blades and mauls may work wonders when poking from the very limit of the rogue control radius. Using them while surrounded on all sides, however, was quite a different story.
The rogues were free to attack with ferocious abandon, taking full advantage of their mobility within the effective control radius. Each hieraco downed was replaced by three more as they crashed into his lines of pikes. Not only that, but the rubble of each felled hieraco served as a launching platform for others to leap from—meaning he had to defend against threats from both the ground and the air.
His walkers absorbed heavy casualties in their bid to open a breach within the hieraco formations. He had long shed his human reactions to injury, the jarring surprise of a ceramic limb being torn up or a head bitten clean off the shoulders. He fought as myriad now, registering only damage dealt and damage received—adjusting as needed.
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Thus Martin conducted his assault with iron discipline and coordinated advances, his eyes firmly affixed upon the half-built pyramid a few tantalizing meters from the control radius.
All his coordinated efforts to reach the half-built pyramid, however, ended up being torn down by the androsphinxes.
He thought that his archers with their blood-bows could destroy the lumbering giants before they reached his walkers. After all, they moved ponderously slowly—almost luxuriously, even—as his archers blasted their limbs apart with blood-arrows.
And he did just that to all the andros he could hit with his archers, clearing a path for his walkers to break through and hit their target. He figured he could make it to the pyramids as long as the androsphinxes moved as leisurely as they normally did.
Martin quickly learned the error of his assumptions the moment his army of walkers crossed into ‘their’ side of the border.
The second his walkers crossed the border and engaged the hieracos in pitched battle, every androsphinx within eyeball range began running toward the breach point. Three-story-tall andros from all directions loped toward the battle in great strides, crushing the smaller hieracos in their rush.
Martin witnessed all this with his eyeballs and prepared his archers, scrounging up every blood-arrow he could to bring them down before they decimated his walkers.
It worked… at least at first.
While his arrows found their marks, bringing down andro after andro after andro, there were simply too many coming in too quickly for them to take down. The big clay cats with empty human faces continued coming in from all directions, rushing madly toward his assembled walkers.
His walkers were able to lance a significant number of hieracos, bash them in with blades and mauls when they got too close, but their weapons simply could not do enough damage to the massive andros to turn back their charge.
The first andro to make it through the archers barreled into the walkers. It was missing a leg, sure, but its massive bulk was enough to disrupt the tight formation of the pike-bearing walkers holding back the onslaught of the smaller hieracos.