Assault on Drakenhof, Part 2: Forlorn Hope
[*] Plan Two: We can't leave the 'Countess' in play. Strike at the town of Drakenhof.
[*] By Van Hal's side, whatever happens.
[*] By Van Hal's side, whatever happens.
---
"Dwarves," you interject, breaking into the debate, and all eyes turn to you. "We've got almost fifteen thousand dwarves, including miners and engineers. Unleash them on the problem and they'll have a bridge up better than the one in Pfaffbach inside a day or two."
There's a moment of silence as the others consider it. "And your opinion on our target?" Van Hal asks.
"The town. The castle might be the base of operations of this 'Elector Countess', but the town is her base of power. We don't want whatever garrison she has there acting freely."
Kasmir nods at you from across the table. "Well said. There's a dozen things an unfriendly town left to act freely could do, all of them bad for Stirland."
Gustav scowls. "I don't like giving the Castle a warning."
"Would they get one, necessarily?" Van Hal asks. "We don't have the light cavalry to round up any escapees, but we do have five thousand halfling skirmishers that could act as a picket."
Gustav nods, reluctantly. "They could probably get into place without being seen... but it would only take one to get by them, and then we're rumbled. No way they'd be able to catch up to a runner, let alone a horseman."
"Nothing in life is guaranteed." Van Hal looks to Schultz. "Thoughts?"
He sighs. "I suppose I'm building another road, then."
Van Hal smiles. "We're at an agreement, then. We march on the town of Drakenhof. Remember: outside of ourselves, the generals, and the leaders of the foreign troops, everyone believes we'll be purging the eastern fringe of the hills this season. Don't do anything to give any other impression."
---
An army on the march, you feel, should be a dramatic sight. Tens of thousands of men marching in lockstep, banners flying and songs being sung and enemies quaking in the distance. What you've learned is that for an army, 'marching' isn't a state so much as a process. An army doesn't go from bed to the road: an army marches on its stomach, and breakfast is far easier said than done when you're cooking for fifty thousand, which consumes ten wagons of foodstuffs from storehouses in Southern Stirland and the Moot. Then tents need to be struck and units assembled to check that everyone is accounted for and a hundred other little tasks that need doing and by the time the army is ready to start marching, the sun is already high in the sky. Then they march, on foot, over the broken ground of the Haunted Hills, and on a good day they could be expected to make fifteen miles. Fifteen miles. You could cover that in half an hour! And they're not all travelling as one - in fact, they're so spread out that by the time the first men arrive at where they'll be camping for the night, the last men are only just leaving the previous day's camping grounds! And then ten more wagons of food are poured into the stomachs of the army, and sentries are posted, and tents are erected, and that's a full day's work done and it all repeats again tomorrow.
On a map, Nachthafen and Drakenhof are practically next door, but it still takes the army three full days just to skirt the northeastern fringe of the Haunted Hills and make their way to the final staging point before the fording of the river and the assault on the town of Drakenhof.
The river, which eventually turns into the Stir but here is called the Draken because of course it is, flows worryingly swiftly, but scouts have found a point where it widens and flows no more than thigh-deep. So on an uncharacteristically clear morning, the combined forces set off not for a day of marching, but for a day of battle.
You had no trouble crossing the river, nor did anyone else with a horse, but the bulk of the army are not so fortunate. Progress across the river is agonizingly slow, as it seems the best that Stirland, Zhufbar and Karak Kadrin have to offer have forgotten how to stand upright - the halflings having already swum across and left to scout the terrain. Ropes are strung across the river for those crossing to steady themselves upon, but so many end up drenched that Van Hal is forced to allow for fires to be lit to let the men dry out. There's no possibility of getting the artillery over - not and have them dry enough to fire.
It's nearing noon when enough of the army has crossed, and a team of dwarves set to work on erecting a permanent bridge as the army prepares to march to battle. The halfling scouts haven't seen any sign of sentries that could have spotted you, but that's of little comfort to Van Hal. But though the men are soggy, the knights remain undaunted and the dwarves refuse to show weakness. If there was any time to march on the town of Drakenhof, it is now.
---
Meanwhile, not far away...
To be a sentry on the gates of the town of Drakenhof is not an onerous job. The skeletons, tireless and omnipresent, do the bulk of the watching and the guarding; all a human sentry need do is provide the thinking. Traffic on the road is almost non-existent, and the occasional cart from nearby farms and villages needs little examining. So the two men at Drakenhof's southern gate are already deep in their cups when the sun nears its zenith.
Thunk. Thunk. The skeleton watching the road is tapping its spear on the ground, in the only communication it has ever shared with them: traffic on the road. Twin groans answer, as the two men have a short and pointless argument until the loser is forced to find his feet and stagger out of the gatehouse.
He peers down the road, the sun piercing the Sylvanian gloom with uncharacteristic vigor. Down the road, a column of night-black figures riding equally black horses are riding in silence. "Hey, boney," the man says, jabbing an accusatory finger at the skeleton. "Those're your type, not mine." The skeleton gives no comment on the matter, as its limited programming tries to come up with an answer to what it is seeing, and eventually it stands in the center of the road, spear extended towards the oncoming figures.
"What is it!" cries the man still inside.
"S'just the black knights," is the watchman's reply, with technical correctness. "Boney's getting upset at them for some reason."
"Skeleton's broke again," is the input from the seated figure. "We'll report it later. He won't do no harm."
The watchmen squints down the road at the figures, now advancing rapidly. Underneath the alcohol, some part of his brain is starting to clamour. "'Ere," he says at last. "Do you remember the Mistress having that many knights?"
And those were to be his final words, as the Black Guards of Morr couch their lances in silence and charge through the still-open gates, neither skeleton nor man slowing them for an instant.
---
"They're through," says Thori as he tucks the spyglass back into a pocket. "Now they just have to hold."
"If anyone can hold it, the Knights of Morr can," Van Hal states, and nods of agreement come from the gathered leaders of the army. "Gustav, the floor is yours."
"And no finer stage could a man hope for," replies Gustav with a savage grin, and hurries off to where his men are waiting - sword and spearmen gathered from every regiment in the Army of Stirland, hand-picked by their officers for their level of fitness. "Last one there buys the first round!" is his rallying cry, and Van Hal just rolls his eyes as Gustav charges, the men hot on his heels as they rush to join the knights holding the gatehouse. You notice flashes of orange in the crowd; the Slayers have joined this wave, it seems.
Van Hal looks to the dwarf. "Sir Thori, the third wave is yours."
"Right you are. Alright, lads!" he calls, his voice booming. "Are we going to let a bunch of manlings kill all the uzkular?"
"Nai!" comes the response from a thousand throats, and in seconds you're treated to the rare sight of a Dwarvish charge.
"The fourth is us," Van Hal states. "Assuming you're not to be swayed."
"Of course not," you reply. You draw your flamberge, letting the familiar sensation of flowing Ulgu calm your nerves.
He claps you on the shoulder, and walks to the assembled men; the rest of the army of Stirland, or at least those that have crossed the river and are dry enough to march and fight in the Spring chill. "Army of Stirland!" he calls, his voice carrying across the field. "No more do we wait for Sylvania to spew horrors into our land. Today, we shove our fist down Sylvania's throat and throttle the life out of anything we find!"
There's a cry of agreement, though muted; Van Hal's not one for speeches at the best of times, and hasn't cultivated the love of the men that signifies a true leader. But these men are professionals, honed by a year and a half of constant skirmishes, and they don't need encouragement to be ready for the fight, and everyone you look hands tighten on hilts as the army awaits only the order. You notice some of the troops returning your look; you've always drawn looks, but the army recently has been treating you with something like awe, and you're not entirely sure how you feel about it.
But that's something to consider another time, because Van Hal has given the nod to the generals, who have given nods to subordinates of their own, and eventually that'll filter down through gods know how many layers and lead to sergeants bellowing that now is the time to march. And in front of them all is Van Hal, sword in hand, and at his side is you.
"How was it?" he asks casually as you begin the march down the road. You itch to break into a run, as you know the men behind you do, but the fourth wave is to arrive fresh and ready to relieve those that ran to the gate. So you approach in the most infuriating walking pace of your life.
"Not bad," you say vaguely. "It's a good note to hit, Sylvanian proactivity. But reaching down the throat to throttle something inside that throat is a bit confusing."
"I should just plagiarize," he says with a sigh. "'Remember, when you build a wall to shelter behind, you are also building a trap,'" he begins, and you smile as you recognize the quote.
"'If the wall is strong, and flanked by towers, the enemies will be trapped. But if the wall is carried...'" you continue.
He finishes the quote. "'Then the other walls will hem in your defenders, and leave them ripe for massacre.' Magnus the Pious."
"May the earth rest lightly on him," you say, with feeling.
There's a pause from Van Hal, before he says, "I suppose wizards have even more reason than most to venerate him."
"Two hundred years ago, you would have been burning me at the stake," you state, managing with effort to keep the emotion out of your voice. Up ahead, the unmistakable clamour of battle can be heard, though it is almost drowned out by the thousands of feet marching in time behind you.
"Then I am thankful we do not live two hundred years ago," he replies, drawing Orc Hewer.
"As am I." The wall towers above, a daunting and terrible obstacle - except the gate was open. Silence stretches between the two of you, intruded on from both sides by the din of fighting and the tramp of boots.
"Once more into battle," he says.
"And then one more once more, and then another," you observe. You can see inside the gates, where a wall of backs holds back whatever inside is trying to fight its way back to the gatehouse, and to the windlass that would shut the portcullis.
"Such is the world we live in."
You murmur a few familiar words, and the Ulgu flowing through you rises to the surface, hardening into a protective layer. "Today we change the world we live in."
"Damn right we do," Van Hal replies. "Men of Stirland, charge!"
[Charge of Dame Mathilde Weber: Martial, 86+18=104]
[Charge of Elector Count Abelhelm Van Hal: 53+28=81]
[Charge of the Army of Stirland: 1]
At long last you break into a run, Van Hal at the side, and men catching up to you on either side. The ranks filling the gateway part to allow you through, and you've a moment to glimpse a bleached-white skull grinning at you before your sword, propelled by instincts ingrained into you by months of training, has smashed into it, tearing it free of the spine it rested upon and propelling it over the ranks of skeletal warriors. But you've no time to admire the arc of the projectile because another has taken its place, and you strike it down like the first, and then another, and another. Too many, too many. You and Van Hal had discussed this beforehand, after the charge the two of you were to let the push of the men overtake you, a bit of showmanship and minimal risk to buoy morale, and besides the Greatswords would be coming in not far behind. But the push just isn't there, you cannot spare even an instant to look but every glimpse you catch is of rotted spears and rusted swords spilling blood, and the only human left in a sea of foes is Van Hal, his sword caught up in a ribcage, and in a motion that owes nothing to training and all to instinct, your bare knuckles connect with the shoulder of the skeleton about to impale him upon its spear, and only your magical armour protects you from shattering the bones in your knuckles but nothing protects the skeleton from the shattering of its clavicle.
[Survive in the melee: 23+18=41 vs 59]
You were a wizard, for Ranald's sake, you shouldn't be here. You should be leisurely forming spells to fling at these accursed, literally accursed skeletons from a battlefield away, not smashing through skeleton after skeleton until your muscles ached, and it seems barely minutes have passed but the ache is worse than any from your countless hours of practice. You can parry blows, you trained until you bled, but you can't block two blows at once and you choke back a cry as rust-red iron penetrates magic and robe and skin and scores a line of agony across your ribs, and seconds later you've smashed him asunder with your blade but there's always more to take their place, and the rest of the army is nowhere to be seen.
"VICTORY OR DEATH!" cries Van Hal, the ancient battlecry of Stirland, and as the deafening noise of the melee drowns out his cry you fear you know which it will be.
[Van Hal surviving in the melee: 1]
And as though your thought was prophecy, Van Hal lies bleeding on the ground. One moment he was at your side, Orc Hewer tearing through bone with contemptuous ease, and the next you were straightening from your cleave through two of the skeletons and he's down.
[Fight on: 18+18-2(wounded)=34 vs 46]
You stand astride him, yelling in fear and defiance at the top of your lungs with breath you don't have, and pain shoots through your body time and time again as blows slip past your guard. There's nothing that can make your sword be in five places at once, and the skeletons just keep on coming, and some corner of your mind not lost in the battle wonders if that's why the army was able to purge the Haunted Hills, because they were all here instead of there. Is this where the Purge ends, in hubris? Is this the final chapter of an overambitious Elector Count, a harsh lesson to be handed down as to why one doesn't underestimate Sylvania, in which you exist only a footnote?
[Is anyone coming to the rescue?: 8]
[Fight on: 70+18-6(wounded)=82 vs 42]
A second, a second, is all the lull you get between the endless onrushing of skeletal fiends, but it's enough to scoop Orc Hewer from where it fell. You can feel magic humming under your hands, and not wild, dangerous, treacherous magic you know so well but magic that has been broken and tamed and used against the enemies of man for thousands of years. It doesn't threaten to twist free of your grip if your attention wavers, but hums eagerly in your grip, and where you were battering the skeletons away you are now tearing them apart where they stand, and those that replace them stumble on fallen bones, the fell magic animating them too crude for them to be anything but clumsy. Contempt rises in you, contempt for the wizard who crafted these abominations - they fell to the temptations of dark magic for this? They succumb to the lure of Dhar and this is the best they can do with it? Ulgu envelops Orc Hewer, and though it can do nothing to add to the ancient power of the blade, you need your magic to be tearing through that of the so-called Elector Countess who can manage no better than these pathetic, mindless automatons. Blasphemy twice: once for falling to temptation, and once for doing so little with it.
[Anyone at all? 46]
[Fight on: 81+18-6(wounded)+3(Runefang)=96 vs 9]
You're yelling again, but in rage this time, as the skeletons fall faster than their plodding march can replace them. Blood, your own and Van Hal's, coats the hilt of the Runefang but if anything your grip is surer for the reminder of the stakes, and for the first time in what feels like an eternity there's no white of bone in your peripheral vision, and the only skeletons are the ones directly before you. You itch to advance to meet them, but to do so would be to abandon your vigil over Van Hal, so you let them come to you, wading through piles of shattered bone to get to you only to be struck down like all the rest. If this is your doom then so be it, a hundred have fallen before you this day and a hundred more will be broken by your hands before they drag you down.
[Anyone?: 68+10(previous roll)]
[Rolling for who...]
"KHAZUKAN KAZAKIT-HA!"
For an instant confusion floods through you at the alien battlecry, but though the call is unfamiliar the charge that accompanies it is unmistakable. Thori Stoneheart, Thane of Zhufbar, and a relentless phalanx of dwarven warriors smashes through the amassed skeletons, pushing not so much through them as over them. You look left and right, and there's no animate bone left within striking distance, just the shattered remains of skeletons and men alike. You don't know what to do, robbed of all thought but that of combat.
Two dwarves approach, and you blink at them confusedly. "Easy, lass," one of them is saying, approaching like one would a wild beast. "Your thane, we need to get him to safety."
Oh. You gather what will you can, and stumble away from your stance astride Van Hal's fallen body, truly taking the sight in for the first time: the bloody leathers, the spear through his gut. The sight sets off a storm of emotion in you, but it's a storm you watch numbly from a distance, power and fury raging a long way away. You feel Orc Hewer slip from your fingers.
"Hup, two!" the dwarves say, and Van Hal is lifted atop their shoulders as the motion jars the spear from him, and he is taken at impressive speed towards the gates you came through so long ago, and nothing in the world could stop you from following after.
[Trait gained: Badly Wounded]
---
The tent for the wounded and dying in a military camp is a terrible place; Van Hal, thankfully, is spared that, as he's brought to his own tent that some obliging camp follower had put up on the Drakenhof side of the river. Doctors are called for, such as they are; men who barely have the ability to wrap bandages around wounds and put food in someone until they get better or finish dying. One of them tries to eject you from the tent, and you grope for your absent flamberge for a moment, and are about to settle on punching him before his fellow pulls him away, whispering urgently. You let them hold their mumbled conversation, and sit by Van Hal's side.
He looks gaunt, but he's always been thin; he looks pale, but you're not sure if it's more so than usual. His breathing is steady, though marred by the blood dripping from what looks like a broken nose - you wipe it as best you can with the sleeve of your robes. If he's dying, he's doing so peacefully, which completely fails to provide comfort.
His leathers are cut from him by the doctors, as are his clothes, and you wish this was under circumstances where you had the attention to spare for that. But your entire focus is on the gashes criss-crossing his chest, and on the bloody wound in his stomach. The wounds are looked at, and the level of bleeding judged to be not dangerous, but they're bandaged anyway because the other alternative was their being murdered by you. And that's it, that's the limit of medical care that can be given; stomach wounds, one of them says with a shrug that says it all. He'll be fine, or he'll be dead. Only way to find out is to wait.
You vaguely recall that Hysh can heal, so you send a runner to find the Light Wizard you recruited, though you haven't seen him since Nachthafen. The Amethyst Wizards are near the town, standing ready to counter any hostile magics that could be thrown into the fray, but their brand of help would be nothing of the sort. Jade Wizards. Why hadn't you insisted on Jade Wizards? They could be fixing this now, but instead they're all in Altdorf or gods know where, days away even for you, and by the time you could make a round trip it would be over, one way or the other.
A battle is still raging. Where do you go from here?
[ ] By Van Hal's side. Whatever happens.
[ ] A battle still rages. Throw yourself into it.
[ ] Somewhere in that town-turned-battlefield is Brother Kasmir. Leave Van Hal's side. Find him. Sigmar will heal Van Hal.
[ ] The plan exists independently of Van Hal; if necessary, it will outlive him. Take command.
[ ] Dhar lies thick in the air. You just need a little. Just enough to give a Grey Wizard the power to heal...
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