Hammer of Wolves, Part Two
(Written by
@Wade Garrett with my approval)
Markgraf Klauss Gausser was a man in dire straits.
The lord of Dieterschafen had risen against von Moltke for her flouting of Ulric's tenets, only to have his cause venomously condemned by Ulric's mortal represenatives. The Regent of Middenland had swiftly followed suite, declaring a neutrality that favored the entrenched Countess far more than the would be Count.
But the Markgraf was a weathered veteran of Nordland wars and Nordland politics, his experience with both leaving him all too aware of the fates awaiting unsuccessful rebels and their families. Surrender was never an option, and the thought of flying into an ignominious exile was more than the devout Ulrican could bear. And so Gausser began to draw on whatever support he could, trusting his destiny to steel and strength even as von Moltke began to draw a noose around his neck.
The Markgraf's illegitimate daughter Katrin Dieterschild, a former Riverwarden, was placed in command of the lowborn deserters who had rallied to Klaus' cause, tasked with forming them into an organized fighting force. And with keeping the tatterdemalion bands whose flight to rebel controlled territory left them looking more akin backcountry bandits than professional soldiers from looting the countryside bare. Mockingly referred to as Gausser's "Stray Dogs", they were hardly a comforting sight to Klaus and his allies, especially if one considered that almost twice their number in organized, well equipped, unshakably loyal soldiers were gathering at Salzemund. Fortunately for the rebels, these were not the only forces to answer his call to arms.
Jana von Moltke had fought her battles with archers, halberdiers, with axe wielders and spearmen, with soldiers drawn in the main from the doughty commonfolk of Nordland. But these redoubtable souls were not the only warriors her Province had produced. The knights of Nordland had seen their lances left on the rack and their armor to rust, their services unneeded and unwanted against the walking dead and Skald-Jarl Flametongue, their very existence ignored by a Grand Baroness enamored with smoke belching imitations of Wissenland weapons (as if anything worthwhile had ever come out of
Wissenland).
And so when Klaus called for aid, they came. They came for the honor of Ulric, to defend the traditions of the Lord of War and Winter. They came for glory, for a cause, to finally,
finally, ride to war. They came from all across Nordland, and from even stranger places. After all, everyone knew that Nordlanders had blood ties to many lands, some said every land of men. And so it was perfectly sensible that knights of Bretonnia, of Tilea, of Estalia and Araby and even Cathay, knights with their faces draped in scarves, knights wearing hats festooned with enormous feathers, knights draped with all manner of foreign adornments rode to Dieterschafen. No knights of Middenland, though. Perish the thought, Regent Todhbringer had made it clear no
Middenlander was to get involved in this quarrel. It was fortunate for Klaus, then, that so many Ulric worshipping knights from exotic foreign lands had chosen to visit their Nordland cousins just as war broke out.
The Markgraf had been a noteworthy warrior in his youth, but his campaigning days were long behind him. And so once again he turned to his family, appointing his eldest daughter and heir Sir Yvonne Gausser as Marshal of Nordland. Yvonne was young compared to many of the knights who had taken up her father's cause, but she was already forging a name for herself. It had been the eldest Gausser daughter who had slain the famed Norscan captain Torgold Tidestrider three years ago, driving her lance past his mighty clacking claws and into his throat, and in the rebel war councils she argued for a similar approach to their present dilemma.
An armada of Norscan raiders, an Ork horde, a herd of beastmen. They all rallied behind a single will, and if that one were to fall, they scattered like vermin fleeing a ratcatcher's dog. The same would hold true of the tyrant's hirelings should their blasphening paymaster be slain. And as fortune would have it, the vile Baroness was venturing North with her armies, marching at the center of the forces she meant to crush her enemies with. Yvonne proposed that they unite every knight who had rallied to her father's cause into one host and drive them into the heart of the foe, tearing out the the corruption that had taken root in Salzemund in one clean lance thrust. It was a bold plan, bolder than the Markgraf would have liked, but it was undeniably Ulrican and found much favor among the assembled knights, and even as he cautioned against it Klaus could not deny the pride in his chest. And so the course was set, and Yvonne donned her snarling wolfshead helm and rode south, bearing a banner of Ulric's symbol quartered with heraldry of Nordland.
Meanwhile, the first true blows of the war would be struck at sea. The Nordland armies might have seen large scale desertions, but the fleets had sided with von Moltke almost to a sailor, their resolve bolstered by the sermons of the Manannite war priests in their ranks. And so the Shark Hunters and Jarl Breakers raised their sails and set to work. The Second Fleets task was simple enough, intercept any ship trying to put into dock at Dieterschafen and convince them to sail into more loyal harbors. This the Hunters did with more dutifulness than enthusiasm, the Grand Baroness command leaving little room for them to seize prize vessels, with Gausser almost completely lacking in warships the greatest enemies they faced were storms and boredom. The appearance of a Marienburg trading fleet seemed like an answer to their prayers, but the Wastelanders proved almost fawningly eager to obey all instructions, speakingly tearfully of their Shallya inspired urge to deliver medical herbs to the suffering in Nordland.
Admiral von Konneth of the Jarl Breakers faced a much more thorny task. His ships were to fan out to seize vessels that might have escaped the Second Fleet's vigil, and to ravage the coastal regions around the rebel stronghold. Von Konneth was a man inclined to favor Ulric, and more accustomed to warding off raids against Nordland's coastlines than conducting them, but his subordinates were eager, the priests of Manann egged them on, and in the end he chose to focus on the first part of his mission and leave his captains to prosecute the latter. Their enthusiasm soon flagged as they discovered two things:
The populace and minor nobility were well accustomed to being targeted by raiders from the seas, and while her half sister had ridden south Katrin Dieterschild had remained behind, to guard against the possibility of von Moltke landing an army at the city gates
and avoid any conflicted loyalties her Strays might feel at facing their old comrades in arms. Against Van Konneth's sailors there was no such hesitation, but in truth the two sides could do little against each other, the captains unable to fight a battle on land and crew their ships, Katrin ordering forced march after forced march, trying to fall on sea raiders as they plundered their targets or outguess them and lie in wait. The most noteworthy engagement was when Dieterschild's vanguard fell upon a raiding party that had lingered in the burning ruins of Stregahopf, seeking a treasure that the piratical grandfather of the current Burgomaster was supposed to have concealed beneath the family manor. The would be treasure hunters were taken captive and then subjected to the traditional Nordland punishment for Norscan reavers, being staked out on the shoreline, dispatched by blows to the chest and limbs with an oar shod in iron plates, with their corpses hung from driftwood spars to warn away their comrades. Serving mainly to further stoke the hatred between the warring factions, if such a thing were possible.
It was further inland that matters would be settled decisively, as Yvonne Gausser's knights and Jana von Moltke's armies moved ever closer to one another. Sir Gausser's forces were mounted, with the Elector Countess advancing into their lands. She would choose the battleground, and she would choose one that favored her preferred tactic, the flatland between the Enchanted Hills and the forests that bordered Teufelswamp, along the Salzroad.
For her part, the Grand Baroness drew her armies into a single formation, dismounting to stand among her loyal Sea Wolves, and braced for the clash. There would be no drawn out manuvering, no Myrmidian game of stratagem and counter stratagem, von Moltke's troops would seek to hold their line and Gausser's knights would strive to shatter it. It was brutally simple and bloodily straightforward as that.
Both forces drew up in sight of each other, but Yvonne Gausser held hers at bay, riding up and down the line, chivvying them back into position when they strayed, waiting. Biding her time as the sun journeyed across the sky, until it stood at the rebel knights back, in the gunners eyes. Then and only then did she heft the standard of Ulric and Nordland over her head and roar for a
charge! sending the chivalry of Nordland and afar plunging forward like earthbound thunder. Riding for their faith, for their way of life, riding against one who sought to carve out the heart and soul of their land, leaving nothing but an empty skin worn over an imitation of Reikland or Marienburg like a heretic's mask of flayed flesh. Meanwhile, von Moltke waited. Her gunners hefting their arms uncertainly as they squinted into the sun, pikemen and halberdiers setting the butts of their weapons against the ground, all of them ready to kill, ready to die at their Elector's command, ready to give their lives for a new day, for a day when Nordland would cast off the shackles that had held it in the shadow of the South, when the province would stand on its own, and stand proud.
As the rebels couched their lances, just before the moment of impact, Jana raised one fist and gave the command to
fire! Guns roared almost in unison, a wall of smoke and shot unleashed at point blank range, striking down man and horse alike, and then the foremost riders crashed against the pikes. Against a forest, a veritable thicket of spearheads, outreaching their lances, slamming jarringly against breastplates and pauldrons, entangling them, trapping them as the gunners fired again and again, no rhythm or sequence to their fusillade, each man and woman reloading and firing as fast as they could manage it. Yvonne Gausser herself fell, her destriers brains splattered over her tabard by an arquebusier, the knightly banner falling with her, but she rose again even as the rebel charge halted and recoiled, seizing the bridle of a steed whose Cathayan rider would never have need of it again, raising the standard with a mighty cry of "ULRIC!", a rallying point amidst the carnage, and then she hurled her banner amidst the loyalist pikes and pressed forward to retrieve it.
And the knights followed her, a desperate, grinding press, the momentum of their first charge gone but still scratching, clawing their way forward, battering at pike shafts with the broken butts of lances, grasping at them with armored gauntlets, flinging themselves out of the saddle to drag down the points with their own bodies, halberdiers and greatswords crowding into the press, gunsmoke and dust erasing all sight, the screams of men and horses stealing all sound, the gunners firing, still firing, loyalists falling with bullet wounds in their back, and the rebel line reels, stumbling back like a prize fighter on the verge of collapse, reeling in despair as much as anything, men and women who have broken Norscan shield walls and charging gors unable to break the soldiers in front of them, unable to reach the slender figure at the center of the infantry, her Runefang still sheathed, as steady as the World's Edge Mountains themselves.
And then a sound cuts across the battle. Unmistakable. The howl of a great wolf, somehow echoing from a human throat. From Yvonne Gausser's throat, as she casts her helm aside, her dark hair trailing like the fallen banner, a sword in her hand. Defying, scorning the shot that flies around her, galloping her borrowed steed in a slow circuit. A cry that is echoed again and again, as knight after knight flings their helm away, throws their head back for a howl of their own, rallying for one last full measure, one final effort. Rallying for love and loyalty to the young woman who leads them, for devotion and faith of the Lord of Wolves and Winter, for teeth clenched, vision reddening hatred of the arquebusiers cowering behind that wall of pikes. Rallying when by any sensible metric they should route. Forward, one more time.
Forward, once more.
Now von Moltke draws
Crow Feeder, raising the sword of Nordland-in genuine salute? In mockery? Who can say-in a mirror of her enemy's gesture, her life guard gathering around her, Yvonne leveling the point of her blade in challenge...and then a shadow falls over the Ulrican knight.
Engil von Wallenstein has not made himself well loved on this campaign. Coarse mannered and overly familiar with the Grand Baroness, he has taken it upon himself to "scout out things from the air", which in practice means plundering manors and country lodges of all the coin, jewelry and other valuables his ill tempered mount can grasp in its talons, and for all that he tithes a portion of each windfall at the Sigmarite shrines Jana's army passes on their march, he is still treated, more or less exactly as one would expect an avaricious freebooter and possible dabbler in dark magics playing at knighthood to be.
And now he swoops down on Yvonne Gausser atop several thousand pounds of scales, foul odor, and fangs, and what could have been a dramatic rally and charge descends into farce as fast as the heir to Dieterschafen changes from a proud warrior of Ulric to shards of metal and scraps of meat. The rebels route, they route before a raging beast with a rider spurring it forward, firing a pistol in each hand, some will claim Wallenstein sought to have it take wing again, that his cries were panic, not battle fury and the creature's rampage through the knightly line was in spite of its rider rather than because of him, but as Jana's infantry break ranks to pursue, as every knight turns to their heels and looks to save him or herself, as Jana begins the herculean task of bringing her army back into order, preparing to exploit the victory she's won, none of that matters.
The Markgraf's heir is dead, the bulk of his forces are shattered, he has no allies, few resources, the end of his rebellion is a foregone conclusion, Sir Engil is dropping subtle hints about the qualities Jana should search for in a new Markgraf, and then a rider gallops into her camp and it all turns to ash in her mouth.
It appears the Admiral of the Shark Hunters has been visited by a Kislevite envoy aboard a caravel rigged for speed, a cheerful man with pleasant features bringing word that a great merchant fleet is departing Erengrad, escorted by the redoubtable Boyar Karelin, bound for Dieterschafen so that the Tzarina might fufill the trade pact Nordland has concluded with her previously. And the Admiral explained the current situation, that it would be simply impossible to dock at Dieterschafen specifically at the present time, but the Tzarina's merchants would find a fine market for their wares in...and without ever changing his expression or his tone the envoy repeated that Boyar Karelin would be escorting a merchant fleet to Dieterschafen. Per the terms of an arrangement that Nordland and Kislev had agreed to.
And at that point the Admiral had dispatched a messenger on the fastest horse he could buy or steal, to seek instructions from the Grand Baroness.
