- Location
- United States
[X] Head for the hill.
Either we get a brutal flank, or we interdict the foe's elite. Either way, glory!
Either we get a brutal flank, or we interdict the foe's elite. Either way, glory!
Si Deus Nobiscum: A Polish-Lithuanian Scion Quest
- Thread starter Rolman
- Start date
- Mature Historic
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Head for the hill.
Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] Head for the melee.
[X] Head for the hill.
[x] Head for the melee.
[X] Head for the hill.
“Zawadówka.” Pt. IV. August 9, 1575. Upwards.
- Location
- United States
Yes… Yes, indeed, there must be a good farmer's field worth of space between the melee and the hill from which the armored Tatars are emanating. Capturing that hill and seizing their banners – and perhaps their chief mirzas, maybe even a bey – the appearance of their enemy behind them could turn the great scrum into an easy rout.
"Toward that hill! Bear right! Let's claim those wondrous blue flags, eh?" you shout out to your closest men. As yourself and your standard-bearer make the gentle, curving turn, so too does the rest of your force, however much the battle-line has been broken and replaced with a loose column. You look over your shoulder and wave them on with your saber, a mass of now-dulled armor trailing behind you with their own blades held high. Bóg nam radzi – maybe there could be some glory in this. It's hard to really say if that's what you're feeling or rather the thrill, as one could maybe call it: the joy of still living, the throat-choking and heart-pounding urge to save Christian lives, the odd sensation of knowing that hundreds upon hundreds of fighting men, many of whom your elders, look to you to show them a mighty victory. You are a prince, a very alive and even buzzing one, caked with dirt and blood and reeking of sulfur and metal and survivor's stink. That camp has been slaughtered by your hand, at your command. You steer your new horse around some of your killed men, struck by the arrows volleyed from within the camp itself during the initial assault.
Onward through the fields, bearing down on that hill of chainmailed foes, capped with banners that almost disappear in the beautiful summer sky. A lovely day, either tarnished by death or made shining with valor as you once more feel the rush of wind, the sun on your face. You notice that a few of the armored figures stop in their tracks as they were making their way down the hill; it looks like they may be pointing. A few turn around and begin to head back up.
Fleeing already? You certainly hope so. Either that, or rallying to brace for impact. In any event, there's no turning back now, as the figures draw closer and closer.
A few horse archers peel off from around the melee in your direction – not friendly! Another bee-swarm of arrows whizzes by, and one of your bodyguards slides out of his saddle to be trampled by his own friends. "Forward! Forward!" you scream, half-mad again, under and on fire.
You ascend the hill facing next to no resistance, the few Tatars standing their ground quickly lanced or shot or cut down with sabers or merely bowled over by the wall of horseflesh. You shoot a man for the second time in a day. But as you reach the top, you find a mass of chainmail and pointed helms running at you from the non-visible slope before you, on horse and on foot, running and riding around their flags planted in the ground. You're among the first to make contact with one of these armored foes, and find yourself deafened again by the pistols going off around you.
My lance! By God – Hellfire – you left it somewhere in the madness of the camp battle, and forgot to ask for another one. You beat on the shoulders of the Tatar to no effect, before realizing that you've got to defend yourself; you desperately force his spear to glance off you with hacks and blade-flat slaps from your saber, unsure of what to do. Back at Orsza, you caught that boyar on the wrist, but this heathen's lance is keeping you at bay. You fear that any second he'll shift his attention to your horse, and reaching down to grab your second pistol from the saddle holster would be a distraction too great.
He indeed goes for your mount, stabbing the poor beast straight through the neck, eliciting a screaming neigh-gurgle. Your first thought is on death. Your death. You feel yourself falling, and you feel cold and afraid and like nothing all of a sudden. It won't be the Tatar that kills you, but the unfolding battle around you. Stomping hooves and falling horses are deadly things indeed. Your steed is falling onto its side, you realize, and you rip your foot out of the stirrup but groan as you hit the ground hard and your leg is crushed by the beast.
Your senses are screaming at you to live. You throw your hands up to shield your head and try to make yourself small, to survive the lance or the horseshoe bludgeons or whatever it is that's about to happen to you.
But men all around you are screaming: the Prince! The Prince! You're not forgotten in the murderous shuffle. You start laughing and you don't know why. You can just barely, through your still-hurting ears, the throat of the Tatar open up with a splutter. You stay curled up. Voices are calling out and asking men to protect them; through your half-covered eyes you see boots on the ground.
A familiar voice yells "push-push-push-push!" and to grunts of exertion you feel the terrible weight on your leg travel down, down, knee to foot and then off of you. Several sets of hands hoist you to your feet, and you're shoved behind Marszowski and your bodyguards.
You somehow have the presence of mind to remember who you are. You rip off your helmet and turn around to your side. "I'M ALIVE!"
A roaring cheer to that – cries of Saints' names and appeals to the Lord – and you turn around to see the Tatars balking. Not running, but backing up. Your men's pistol fire is at point-blank range, and the holes being punched into their bodies and battle-line are having quite the effect. This may all be over soon. A thought springs to your head, and you lean forward to yell into Marszowski's helmeted ear. "Do you know what's happening down the hill?"
"Nope!" he laughs. "And you now owe me a horse, lord Prince!"
You manage to scoff, despite the clamor all about you. "God keep you, Andrzej Marszowski!"
"We'll see if He will!"
It seems that you get to take a breather; you're very little good on foot in a mix like this, even though some of the Tatars are desperately fighting without their horses. Marszowski and your lieutenants mount up once more. "Keep pushing, men!" Your voice is turning raw. The Radziwiłł banner flies high over your head. "Push! Push!" You bend over and grab a pistol from your fallen horse, firing through a gap in your own men into the mass of Tatars, unsure if you hit anybody. Indeed, the deafening gunfire that defined this second – no, third – bout is dying down as your troops exhaust their weapons.
You hear a new thundering through the clashing of steel and the screams of the dying. Distant, but there. Tatar heads turn and their chant of Allah! begins to die down, replaced instead with the odd sound of hundreds of men suddenly stammering and yell-speaking amongst themselves. Of course, the front of the battle-line remains locked in a terrible struggle, but then the oddest thing happens: hands reach out from behind the foremost Tatars and grab their shoulders, the men on foot and on horse, grabbing through the tangle. And a heathen throws down his blade. And another. And another. Many still fight.
They're… Oh, my God! "Give me your horse!" you shriek to the closest man. "I am your Prince – give me your horse!"
He obliges and you throw your hands up in the air and swing them downward, over and over, trying to get the message across. "They're surrendering, stop fighting! Hold back, by Christ!"
A bilingual cry of stand down! ripples through the ranks and slowly, slowly, the clamor turns to nothing. You hear men distantly and you think – it's hard to tell with such terrible ringing in your ears – behind the Tatars echoing the command. An encirclement! That's why they didn't just break and run. People are screaming down the hill, not battle-cries and death-groans, but wailing. You begin to hear volleys of gunfire. You feel nothing, but in your mind's eye see Moncontour again, when three thousand men all died at once, on their knees. The Huguenot made into a pincushion, mocking his killers all the while: am I your Sebastian? You clear your throat.
You remove your helmet and push your way to the very fore of the battle-line, your borrowed horse shuffling carefully over the dead and dying. You stare down your vanquished foes, chainmail dusty and blood-soaked and looking not unlike your own men. Scowling faces stare up or at you, their sabers in the dirt below the quivers on their waists. They're silent, and look ready to listen. Nobles recognizing nobility, you suppose, even if they're murderous savages. God, it's quiet. Up here, that is.
"Do any of you speak a Christian tongue?" you ask in Polish. You try again in Latin: nothing. But when you speak Ruthenian, you're answered with a smattering of phrases and broken sentences, and the Tatars part for a tall man in a frightful silver mask – now-tarnished and dirt-caked and flecked with blood – bearing the visage of a mustachioed fighter. You can't see his eyes, but you know he's staring. "Well, who are you?"
A murmur through the Tatar ranks. The masked man shakes his head. "I am the leader of my people," he says with a rustic peasant's accent, mixed with something foreign and lilting.
"That doesn't quite answer my question," you say, feeling as if the bastard is trying to be smart. "Who are you? And take that thing off." Everything you've seen today makes it easy to say: "or shall I send you to Mahomet?"
The Tatar's shoulders sag, and after a moment he removes his helmet. He's as young as you, maybe younger, with short brown hair and a clean-shaven face, high cheekbones, and dark, almond-shaped eyes. It's strange to see a face so clean on the battlefield, after all this. "I am Saadet Mirza, lord bey, grandson of the Great Khan and, how do you say… These are my people, they serve me."
"You speak Ruthenian well, mirza."
"My mother was a slave. She was of the Qazaklar – a Zaporozhian – and she taught me her tongue from the cradle, for my father was kind enough to let her bring me up," he says. "And I ask your nobleness for parlay." He stares at you steely-eyed. "Though I do not beg, for we all are prepared to see Paradise on this day. We never offered up a mercy to your people, even though they are of the Book. So why give it to us?"
That's a brave man; you scratch your chin. Perhaps they all ought to die for what they've done, for what you've seen at their camp, for what you've seen across all Ruthenia. It would send a message. But with their weapons at their feet, and in their armor? It'd be better to bring them back to camp, strip them down, and then do it. But on the other hand… ransom money, a hostage Tatar prince…
"We shall collect your weapons and armor and take you prisoner," you say, to the groans and swears of your men. You may or may not be telling the truth – at the moment, even you're not quite sure, but this is the way it will be for now.
You excuse yourself as the Tatar nobles begin to strip down into their underclothes, and take in the scene from this hilltop vantage point. Behind you, one voice begins to sing, then all of them. Bogurodzica, the hymn of Grunwald, the song of holy victory. The Lady placed Her mantle upon us on this day, praise be to God and the Spirit and Our Lord Jesus Christ.
But what is it you're looking out upon? A tangled mass of people, their souls out of their bodies, crushed under horses. The foot musketeers, at last on the scene are leading the tunic-wearing Tatars like flocks of sheep into great clusters, the heathens' hands pleading and outstretched and their faces to the summer sky. A thundering volley sends them to the ground. Sabers are drawn for the survivors. Noble hussars cut the throats of the dying and pick through the heaps of dead, probably looking for loot. Horses writhe on the ground, trying and failing to lift their heads, to stand. You look down from the scene, and unmoving eyes stare up at you with a mouth agape. Like he just saw a shooting star. The man draped on top of him makes it impossible to know what side he was on. The Tatars look more like you than you expected.
Meanwhile, the heathen camp is beginning to burn. Little figures with torches run from tent to tent, and a gray-black miasma blows in the southerly direction, obscuring the blue of the river. Flames are licking the horizon from the center of the place, emanating outwards and outwards as more of the white tents go up quickly, aided by the unaccounted-for. Bastards.
You're not sure if you're feeling that glory anymore. The Lipkas were bloodied badly, what with their lack of armor. From your detachment of two thousand, a horrendous quarter is gone, mainly lost to the ambush at the camp, your lieutenants estimate. Konstanty's flank barely held on, and sustained similarly brutal losses; Zamoyski's relief force lost around one in ten – much more typical – while the musketeers never even saw the fight proper. Many more groaning men are draped over the backs of horses or carried on makeshift stretchers or are even left in the field, awaiting the tabor to be broken down for its wagons. You want to go home, but all you've got is the camp from which you embarked that late morning, around noon. The light of the day is now golden, but it felt like you spent weeks shedding blood out there. You cannot wait to sleep, if your mind and body allow it.
You ride with Zamoyski and Janusz and a surviving, wide-eyed Prince Konstanty at your side. The young Ostrogscy do not speak. You won't press them; you know how it feels.
"You made it in the nick of time!" says Zamoyski, "I was getting quite worried they'd overwhelm us. Damn those horse archers, peppering us all the while – they all got away!"
"But not the men we kettled," you say grimly, thinking of the fusillades.
"No, no, and they were well taken care of," grins Zamoyski, looking almost pained. "Nasty work, but deserved."
"But deserved," you echo, quietly unsure. You wanted those Muscovite raiders to live, so they could atone for themselves. But perhaps they got what they deserved, too.
Screaming begins anew as the surgeons begin their amputations and arrowhead removals, wafting over what should be a friendly place, a place of respite. Instead, it just sounds like the day. This is the sound of the day. There is no denying it. Glory? There's that word again. Perhaps at court, perhaps before a Sejm. One must live it to understand it – how can people like Krzysztof and Marszowski handle it? Jokes and drinks, you think, making you laugh despite yourself. A simple way of handling it.
There's something you must handle, of course, too: the fate of the stripped-down Tatar mirzas. No matter what you decide on, you don't expect to sleep tonight anymore.
[] Kill them all.
Every dead Christian ought to be answered with ten slain heathens, but this and the massacre on the field will have to do. It's only right for the terror and slaughter they've unleashed on these peaceful lands, and wiping out a few hundred Tatar noblemen – including one of the Khan's grandsons – may settle things down for up to a generation. A strong message.
[] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.
The princeling is worth too much alive – emphasis on worth. Your hussars and mercenaries will be expecting a pretty penny for such a terrible fight, and you'd like to compensate the families of your fallen sworn men, too. Dispatch messengers to Bakczysaraj with gifts for the Khan: a couple severed heads and a handwritten letter from his grandson, begging him to withdraw.
[] Spare them all: hold them for ransom and as hostages.
There's lots of money and bargaining power to be gained from such a menagerie of mirzas. The only problem? They may come back someday, and that day could be soon, especially if the election goes… poorly.
"Toward that hill! Bear right! Let's claim those wondrous blue flags, eh?" you shout out to your closest men. As yourself and your standard-bearer make the gentle, curving turn, so too does the rest of your force, however much the battle-line has been broken and replaced with a loose column. You look over your shoulder and wave them on with your saber, a mass of now-dulled armor trailing behind you with their own blades held high. Bóg nam radzi – maybe there could be some glory in this. It's hard to really say if that's what you're feeling or rather the thrill, as one could maybe call it: the joy of still living, the throat-choking and heart-pounding urge to save Christian lives, the odd sensation of knowing that hundreds upon hundreds of fighting men, many of whom your elders, look to you to show them a mighty victory. You are a prince, a very alive and even buzzing one, caked with dirt and blood and reeking of sulfur and metal and survivor's stink. That camp has been slaughtered by your hand, at your command. You steer your new horse around some of your killed men, struck by the arrows volleyed from within the camp itself during the initial assault.
Onward through the fields, bearing down on that hill of chainmailed foes, capped with banners that almost disappear in the beautiful summer sky. A lovely day, either tarnished by death or made shining with valor as you once more feel the rush of wind, the sun on your face. You notice that a few of the armored figures stop in their tracks as they were making their way down the hill; it looks like they may be pointing. A few turn around and begin to head back up.
Fleeing already? You certainly hope so. Either that, or rallying to brace for impact. In any event, there's no turning back now, as the figures draw closer and closer.
A few horse archers peel off from around the melee in your direction – not friendly! Another bee-swarm of arrows whizzes by, and one of your bodyguards slides out of his saddle to be trampled by his own friends. "Forward! Forward!" you scream, half-mad again, under and on fire.
You ascend the hill facing next to no resistance, the few Tatars standing their ground quickly lanced or shot or cut down with sabers or merely bowled over by the wall of horseflesh. You shoot a man for the second time in a day. But as you reach the top, you find a mass of chainmail and pointed helms running at you from the non-visible slope before you, on horse and on foot, running and riding around their flags planted in the ground. You're among the first to make contact with one of these armored foes, and find yourself deafened again by the pistols going off around you.
My lance! By God – Hellfire – you left it somewhere in the madness of the camp battle, and forgot to ask for another one. You beat on the shoulders of the Tatar to no effect, before realizing that you've got to defend yourself; you desperately force his spear to glance off you with hacks and blade-flat slaps from your saber, unsure of what to do. Back at Orsza, you caught that boyar on the wrist, but this heathen's lance is keeping you at bay. You fear that any second he'll shift his attention to your horse, and reaching down to grab your second pistol from the saddle holster would be a distraction too great.
He indeed goes for your mount, stabbing the poor beast straight through the neck, eliciting a screaming neigh-gurgle. Your first thought is on death. Your death. You feel yourself falling, and you feel cold and afraid and like nothing all of a sudden. It won't be the Tatar that kills you, but the unfolding battle around you. Stomping hooves and falling horses are deadly things indeed. Your steed is falling onto its side, you realize, and you rip your foot out of the stirrup but groan as you hit the ground hard and your leg is crushed by the beast.
Your senses are screaming at you to live. You throw your hands up to shield your head and try to make yourself small, to survive the lance or the horseshoe bludgeons or whatever it is that's about to happen to you.
But men all around you are screaming: the Prince! The Prince! You're not forgotten in the murderous shuffle. You start laughing and you don't know why. You can just barely, through your still-hurting ears, the throat of the Tatar open up with a splutter. You stay curled up. Voices are calling out and asking men to protect them; through your half-covered eyes you see boots on the ground.
A familiar voice yells "push-push-push-push!" and to grunts of exertion you feel the terrible weight on your leg travel down, down, knee to foot and then off of you. Several sets of hands hoist you to your feet, and you're shoved behind Marszowski and your bodyguards.
You somehow have the presence of mind to remember who you are. You rip off your helmet and turn around to your side. "I'M ALIVE!"
A roaring cheer to that – cries of Saints' names and appeals to the Lord – and you turn around to see the Tatars balking. Not running, but backing up. Your men's pistol fire is at point-blank range, and the holes being punched into their bodies and battle-line are having quite the effect. This may all be over soon. A thought springs to your head, and you lean forward to yell into Marszowski's helmeted ear. "Do you know what's happening down the hill?"
"Nope!" he laughs. "And you now owe me a horse, lord Prince!"
You manage to scoff, despite the clamor all about you. "God keep you, Andrzej Marszowski!"
"We'll see if He will!"
It seems that you get to take a breather; you're very little good on foot in a mix like this, even though some of the Tatars are desperately fighting without their horses. Marszowski and your lieutenants mount up once more. "Keep pushing, men!" Your voice is turning raw. The Radziwiłł banner flies high over your head. "Push! Push!" You bend over and grab a pistol from your fallen horse, firing through a gap in your own men into the mass of Tatars, unsure if you hit anybody. Indeed, the deafening gunfire that defined this second – no, third – bout is dying down as your troops exhaust their weapons.
You hear a new thundering through the clashing of steel and the screams of the dying. Distant, but there. Tatar heads turn and their chant of Allah! begins to die down, replaced instead with the odd sound of hundreds of men suddenly stammering and yell-speaking amongst themselves. Of course, the front of the battle-line remains locked in a terrible struggle, but then the oddest thing happens: hands reach out from behind the foremost Tatars and grab their shoulders, the men on foot and on horse, grabbing through the tangle. And a heathen throws down his blade. And another. And another. Many still fight.
They're… Oh, my God! "Give me your horse!" you shriek to the closest man. "I am your Prince – give me your horse!"
He obliges and you throw your hands up in the air and swing them downward, over and over, trying to get the message across. "They're surrendering, stop fighting! Hold back, by Christ!"
A bilingual cry of stand down! ripples through the ranks and slowly, slowly, the clamor turns to nothing. You hear men distantly and you think – it's hard to tell with such terrible ringing in your ears – behind the Tatars echoing the command. An encirclement! That's why they didn't just break and run. People are screaming down the hill, not battle-cries and death-groans, but wailing. You begin to hear volleys of gunfire. You feel nothing, but in your mind's eye see Moncontour again, when three thousand men all died at once, on their knees. The Huguenot made into a pincushion, mocking his killers all the while: am I your Sebastian? You clear your throat.
You remove your helmet and push your way to the very fore of the battle-line, your borrowed horse shuffling carefully over the dead and dying. You stare down your vanquished foes, chainmail dusty and blood-soaked and looking not unlike your own men. Scowling faces stare up or at you, their sabers in the dirt below the quivers on their waists. They're silent, and look ready to listen. Nobles recognizing nobility, you suppose, even if they're murderous savages. God, it's quiet. Up here, that is.
"Do any of you speak a Christian tongue?" you ask in Polish. You try again in Latin: nothing. But when you speak Ruthenian, you're answered with a smattering of phrases and broken sentences, and the Tatars part for a tall man in a frightful silver mask – now-tarnished and dirt-caked and flecked with blood – bearing the visage of a mustachioed fighter. You can't see his eyes, but you know he's staring. "Well, who are you?"
A murmur through the Tatar ranks. The masked man shakes his head. "I am the leader of my people," he says with a rustic peasant's accent, mixed with something foreign and lilting.
"That doesn't quite answer my question," you say, feeling as if the bastard is trying to be smart. "Who are you? And take that thing off." Everything you've seen today makes it easy to say: "or shall I send you to Mahomet?"
The Tatar's shoulders sag, and after a moment he removes his helmet. He's as young as you, maybe younger, with short brown hair and a clean-shaven face, high cheekbones, and dark, almond-shaped eyes. It's strange to see a face so clean on the battlefield, after all this. "I am Saadet Mirza, lord bey, grandson of the Great Khan and, how do you say… These are my people, they serve me."
"You speak Ruthenian well, mirza."
"My mother was a slave. She was of the Qazaklar – a Zaporozhian – and she taught me her tongue from the cradle, for my father was kind enough to let her bring me up," he says. "And I ask your nobleness for parlay." He stares at you steely-eyed. "Though I do not beg, for we all are prepared to see Paradise on this day. We never offered up a mercy to your people, even though they are of the Book. So why give it to us?"
That's a brave man; you scratch your chin. Perhaps they all ought to die for what they've done, for what you've seen at their camp, for what you've seen across all Ruthenia. It would send a message. But with their weapons at their feet, and in their armor? It'd be better to bring them back to camp, strip them down, and then do it. But on the other hand… ransom money, a hostage Tatar prince…
"We shall collect your weapons and armor and take you prisoner," you say, to the groans and swears of your men. You may or may not be telling the truth – at the moment, even you're not quite sure, but this is the way it will be for now.
You excuse yourself as the Tatar nobles begin to strip down into their underclothes, and take in the scene from this hilltop vantage point. Behind you, one voice begins to sing, then all of them. Bogurodzica, the hymn of Grunwald, the song of holy victory. The Lady placed Her mantle upon us on this day, praise be to God and the Spirit and Our Lord Jesus Christ.
But what is it you're looking out upon? A tangled mass of people, their souls out of their bodies, crushed under horses. The foot musketeers, at last on the scene are leading the tunic-wearing Tatars like flocks of sheep into great clusters, the heathens' hands pleading and outstretched and their faces to the summer sky. A thundering volley sends them to the ground. Sabers are drawn for the survivors. Noble hussars cut the throats of the dying and pick through the heaps of dead, probably looking for loot. Horses writhe on the ground, trying and failing to lift their heads, to stand. You look down from the scene, and unmoving eyes stare up at you with a mouth agape. Like he just saw a shooting star. The man draped on top of him makes it impossible to know what side he was on. The Tatars look more like you than you expected.
Meanwhile, the heathen camp is beginning to burn. Little figures with torches run from tent to tent, and a gray-black miasma blows in the southerly direction, obscuring the blue of the river. Flames are licking the horizon from the center of the place, emanating outwards and outwards as more of the white tents go up quickly, aided by the unaccounted-for. Bastards.
You're not sure if you're feeling that glory anymore. The Lipkas were bloodied badly, what with their lack of armor. From your detachment of two thousand, a horrendous quarter is gone, mainly lost to the ambush at the camp, your lieutenants estimate. Konstanty's flank barely held on, and sustained similarly brutal losses; Zamoyski's relief force lost around one in ten – much more typical – while the musketeers never even saw the fight proper. Many more groaning men are draped over the backs of horses or carried on makeshift stretchers or are even left in the field, awaiting the tabor to be broken down for its wagons. You want to go home, but all you've got is the camp from which you embarked that late morning, around noon. The light of the day is now golden, but it felt like you spent weeks shedding blood out there. You cannot wait to sleep, if your mind and body allow it.
You ride with Zamoyski and Janusz and a surviving, wide-eyed Prince Konstanty at your side. The young Ostrogscy do not speak. You won't press them; you know how it feels.
"You made it in the nick of time!" says Zamoyski, "I was getting quite worried they'd overwhelm us. Damn those horse archers, peppering us all the while – they all got away!"
"But not the men we kettled," you say grimly, thinking of the fusillades.
"No, no, and they were well taken care of," grins Zamoyski, looking almost pained. "Nasty work, but deserved."
"But deserved," you echo, quietly unsure. You wanted those Muscovite raiders to live, so they could atone for themselves. But perhaps they got what they deserved, too.
Screaming begins anew as the surgeons begin their amputations and arrowhead removals, wafting over what should be a friendly place, a place of respite. Instead, it just sounds like the day. This is the sound of the day. There is no denying it. Glory? There's that word again. Perhaps at court, perhaps before a Sejm. One must live it to understand it – how can people like Krzysztof and Marszowski handle it? Jokes and drinks, you think, making you laugh despite yourself. A simple way of handling it.
There's something you must handle, of course, too: the fate of the stripped-down Tatar mirzas. No matter what you decide on, you don't expect to sleep tonight anymore.
[] Kill them all.
Every dead Christian ought to be answered with ten slain heathens, but this and the massacre on the field will have to do. It's only right for the terror and slaughter they've unleashed on these peaceful lands, and wiping out a few hundred Tatar noblemen – including one of the Khan's grandsons – may settle things down for up to a generation. A strong message.
[] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.
The princeling is worth too much alive – emphasis on worth. Your hussars and mercenaries will be expecting a pretty penny for such a terrible fight, and you'd like to compensate the families of your fallen sworn men, too. Dispatch messengers to Bakczysaraj with gifts for the Khan: a couple severed heads and a handwritten letter from his grandson, begging him to withdraw.
[] Spare them all: hold them for ransom and as hostages.
There's lots of money and bargaining power to be gained from such a menagerie of mirzas. The only problem? They may come back someday, and that day could be soon, especially if the election goes… poorly.
Last edited:
Zawadówka Wikibox
[X] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.
They come here and they will pay the price for it
They come here and they will pay the price for it
Hmmmm. Reputation. Money. Or a lil' bit of both.
Issue with sparing all of them is that we gotta house and feed them, and it isn't guaranteed for the lower grade soldiers to even get ransomed out of our custody. It also might, in the eyes of the Ruthenians who suffered the majority of the damage from this raid season, make us seem like we aren't concerned for them. Or care about them. If we just spare the people who, the day before, were kidnapping their women and children, killing the men, and stealing away the wealth of their lands.
I think the middle option is the best here... Send a clear message that we won't tolerate any more raids on our lands, whilst keeping the important people alive for ransoms and leverage. It's just how it was in those days, those without the right relations or connections were just expendable, especially if the army they were captured by doesn't have the means to house all of them prisoner.
[X] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.
Issue with sparing all of them is that we gotta house and feed them, and it isn't guaranteed for the lower grade soldiers to even get ransomed out of our custody. It also might, in the eyes of the Ruthenians who suffered the majority of the damage from this raid season, make us seem like we aren't concerned for them. Or care about them. If we just spare the people who, the day before, were kidnapping their women and children, killing the men, and stealing away the wealth of their lands.
I think the middle option is the best here... Send a clear message that we won't tolerate any more raids on our lands, whilst keeping the important people alive for ransoms and leverage. It's just how it was in those days, those without the right relations or connections were just expendable, especially if the army they were captured by doesn't have the means to house all of them prisoner.
[X] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.
Astra Myst
Do you want a wish?
- Location
- Milky Way Galaxy
[X] Kill all of them except for their commander, Saadet. Hold him for ransom and as a hostage.