Subjugating the Female General (9)
The vanguard under Count Hudin had entered Cadis Canyon and was advancing at a leisurely pace. Traversing the gorge would take roughly eight hours, which made a rest stop along the way essential.
"Make camp! Prepare to bivouac!"
Hudin had been scanning for a suitable site as they marched. The spot he chose was a place where the canyon folded back on itself and climbed, making it difficult for anyone on the ridgeline to attack. The greatest danger in passing through this gorge was always ranged fire from the heights above — but in this particular stretch, at least, there seemed little risk of an assault from the air.
Count Hudin's army set about making camp with practiced efficiency. Tents that would serve as barracks went up in moments, and slit trenches for the night watch were dug just as quickly. The Krantz Empire was a nation that made war as a matter of course, and Count Hudin's men were old hands at this kind of field encampment.
By the time dusk began to settle, the camp was ready — a bivouac large enough to hold a full ten thousand. Five sentry posts had been established well out from the main camp, insurance against a night raid that might or might not come.
Inside his tent, Count Hudin sat with his adjutants, laying plans for the siege to come.
"The siege equipment is all accounted for, I trust?"
"Yes, my lord. Prefabricated battering rams, scaling ladders, siege towers — everything. Even against the famed Cadis Fortress, this should be more than enough to take it."
Adolf Feller, his adjutant, spoke with complete confidence.
"The Rose Knights stand ready to punch through the enemy lines at a moment's notice."
Kurtner, captain of the Rose Knights and a vassal of House Hudin, was no less assured.
"In my judgment, tonight is the critical hour. The enemy isn't far. Be fully prepared for a night raid."
Count Hudin had a reckless streak, but he was a capable commander — which was precisely why Duke Balanos had wanted him in this campaign.
The words had barely left his mouth when a commotion erupted outside.
"Night raid!! Night raid!!! The enemy!!"
Someone was screaming himself hoarse. Count Hudin burst from the tent.
A portion of the troop tents were already on fire.
"What the hell is going on?!"
A field commander came running — the First Division commander.
"Roughly a hundred enemy cavalry appeared out of nowhere and loosed fire arrows."
"And the enemy?"
"They withdrew the instant they'd loosed. The Second and Third Division commanders gave chase immediately. We'll have them before they can reach the fortress."
"They gave chase? No! We're not familiar with this terrain yet! Send men after them — tell them to turn back, now!"
"Y-yes, my lord!"
Stung by the Count's roar, the First Division commander dispatched his scouts.
"The rest of you, assess the damage and get the men in order."
Even then, Count Hudin kept his head, pulling his forces back together.
Meanwhile, disaster struck the Second and Third Division commanders who had ridden out in pursuit.
The cavalry had nearly closed the gap — the enemy was almost in sight — when ropes suddenly sprang up out of the darkness. It was the dead of night; they never saw the lines that had been raised to the height of a horse's fetlock. The lead mounts went down in sequence. When the horses in front collapsed, the riders thundering behind them had no time to swerve and piled over the wreckage.
Men thrown from horses at a full gallop, slammed into the ground, and then struck by the horses and knights coming on behind them took catastrophic damage. Hundreds of mounts went down in a screaming tangle. Soldiers who had been lying in ambush deeper in the canyon moved among the fallen, driving spears into knights and troopers alike to finish them off — then spun about and raced for the fortress.
Four hundred cavalry of the Second and Third Divisions had been annihilated. The infantry and archers who came pounding up afterward found only corpses — men and horses alike. The soldiers of the Kairan Kingdom seemed to have been more intent on killing the horses than the men. A few of the wounded were still breathing, but every last one of the four hundred horses was dead. Leave the horses alive and the cavalry could be reconstituted. So they had butchered the mounts first.
"By the Count's order!! Return to camp at once!!"
Count Hudin's men, staring at the carnage in a daze, had no choice but to turn back at the scout's shout from the rear. They began pulling the remaining wounded one by one from among the heaps of the dead.
A hiss of fletching cut the air.
"Aaaargh!!!"
Dozens of arrows came screaming out of the darkness on the far side. The tangle of horses and corpses in front of them formed a wall of flesh that was nearly impossible to cross, and dealing with an enemy who was attacking with bows from unseen positions was all but hopeless. The Krantz Empire soldiers, many of them still carrying torches, stood out like lanterns in the dark — perfect marks for the archers.
"Retreat!! Fall back!!"
With arrows still coming, there was no time to recover the wounded. The men holding torches, terrified of becoming targets, flung the brands aside and ran. Thousands of troops dissolved into the darkness and fled without a backward glance. Arrows kept finding them from behind; anyone who took a shaft and went down was trampled without mercy under the hobnailed boots of his own comrades. They did not stop until they had put themselves beyond the arrows' reach, and only then did they dare to breathe.
Once every unit had straggled back to camp, the adjutant delivered the butcher's bill.
"Four hundred cavalry dead. Troop losses: twelve hundred men."
"Twelve hundred — from a single raid?!"
The Second and Third Division commanders could not lift their heads. A moment's error in judgment had cost them more than half their men. The loss of the precious cavalry, and of so many of the troops sent to rescue them under the arrow storm, was a blow that cut deep.
Count Hudin was seething, but he kept it off his face. A commander in name as well as fact, he swallowed it for the sake of the army's morale.
"Reorganize at once and get some rest. Tomorrow we push hard for the fortress."
He issued his orders to each commander and withdrew into his tent.
But the ordeal of Count Hudin's army was far from over.
They had barely finished putting the camp in order and fallen asleep when, two hours later, another night raid dragged them awake. This time a small infiltration party slipped in, silently cut down the sentries, doused the sleeping tents in oil, and set them alight. They put the horse lines to the torch as well, and Count Hudin's army lost half of its two thousand mounts.
"Fire!!! Fire!!"
While the troops lurched up in chaos, fighting the flames and dragging out the wounded, the elites of Marquis Cadis melted away into the night without a sound. Only some five hundred men had burned to death — but a thousand horses were gone, and the army that greeted the dawn had barely slept at all. Exhaustion was carved into every face.
Fortunately, they met no further attacks on the remaining march to the stretch where the fortress came into view, and so they took no more losses. Their stamina, however, had been gutted so thoroughly that a siege conducted by the vanguard alone — as originally planned — was now a fantasy. Still, they had arrived more or less intact before the walls and secured the ground they would need for a siege. The immediate objective, at least, had been met.
The remaining problem was whether the main force would arrive in one piece.
Duke Balanos received Count Hudin's report of the previous night. Knowing that the enemy's phantom tactics had already inflicted serious damage, he moved his own column with redoubled caution. So long as the vanguard held its position before the gates, there would be no sortie from the fortress itself — but the Krantz Empire's army did not know Cadis Canyon, and a careful advance was only common sense.
They had crossed more than two-thirds of the gorge when something began to rain down from the canyon rim.
"What in the hell is that?!"
Duke Balanos shouted at the objects arcing toward them. Men in the column were struck in the head and went down — but to everyone's surprise, they got straight back up. The projectiles were leather bladders, ranging from the size of a man's head down to the size of a fist. Soft as they were, they posed no threat to life.
Hundreds of the pouches came tumbling from a tremendous height. When they hit the ground they burst, vomiting their contents across the stone.
"I-it's oil!!"
"Get away from the oil! All of you!!"
Duke Balanos bellowed the order, but the hundreds of bladders had already scattered across every corner of the main force. There was nowhere left to run.
"Back! Fall back!!"
Seeing it, the Duke roared again. Twenty-eight thousand men turned about in good order and began to withdraw the way they had come.
That was when the fire arrows poured down from the canyon rim. Some found soldiers. The rest found the oil that had been spread so generously across the floor of the gorge, and the shafts that punched into the ground set the whole of it alight.
The fire caught in an instant and raced through Duke Balanos's main force. Those who could not get clear in time were trapped in the inferno and burned where they stood.
Duke Balanos had no choice. He pulled back once more, and retreated.