Chapter 9 October 405 Kush-Counter Attack (Patreon)

            General Alara smiled as he looked over the reports on the Paulsland incursion into Kush. The Paulsland army had followed the route General Alara set them up on better than he had expected. Clearly, whoever led the Paulsland force, some new general that Kush did not have intelligence on, expected their new weapons to easily win the day without the need for tactics or strategy.

            The new weapons were fierce and able to destroy any Kush fortress with ease. The steam weapons were just able to fire from a much longer range than the best war engines that Kush could create.

            That said, General Alara had spent some time in the mountains with his spyglass watching the weapons work. They were slow to move, slow to work, and they launched very specific ammunition, ammunition that Alara seriously doubted the army could make in the valleys of Kush. Almost anywhere else in the world, these steam weapons would be overwhelming, but the mountains of Kush would overcome this weapon like the mountains had overcome every enemy that had dared to invade them.

            The smaller weapons handled by the soldiers, the ones they called rifles, were powered by a fairly heavy steam vessel that required ten men to move, assuming the soldiers wanted to fire their rifles as they moved in battle. When they moved it on the supply train, they drained the steam vessel of excess water, removed the coal needed to make the water boil, disconnected the hoses from the steam rifles and steam vessel before finally putting it on a cart pulled by oxen. Those weapons took at least an hour to set up, although the Paulsland general had the good sense to make sure there were at least four rifle teams at the front, back, and sides of his formation as they moved to protect against ambush, although the men required to carry the boiling steam vessel had to be changed out every twenty minutes or so.

            The large steam vessel was much worse. It took a team of six oxen to pull it when it was empty, and then it usually took an hour to fill it up with water before another six or so hours to have enough steam pressure for the weapons it powered to work. Although they were slow, the large steam weapons were far more devastating than any war machine General Alara had ever heard of, but the Paulsland army had no way to use it while it moved.

            Their problem with bringing these weapons to the mountain of Kush was simple: their supply lines were completely exposed. Every battle, they used those weapons; they went through hundreds, if not thousands of gallons of water, tons of coal, and ammunition that had to be made with special tools. Although they could find water in most places and coal in some areas of Kush, their ammunition had to go through longer and longer supply lines.

            It was obvious to General Alara that this Paulsland army wanted this war to be over as soon as possible because they were heading on the straightest path possible to them to the capital. The straightest path possible to the Paulsland army was a winding path through the valleys, as General Alara had ordered over three hundred bridges destroyed, and had his men initiate landslides on mountainsides with roads he did not want the Paulsland army to take.

            Whether this meant that Paulsland was attempting to make Kush a new province in Paulsland, General Alara did not know. All their messages to Paulsland had been ignored, and Paulsland had been doing their ancient tactic, where they forced the natives to kill their local leaders. Kush was a Christian nation, and had been for nearly a century at this point, and so the Abuna, the head of the Kush church, under the command of the King of Kush, sent out envoys to every church allowing the people to know they would be forgiven for the death of their leaders, and that it was in fact evil of Paulsland to force them to kill their leaders with their children under the threat of death. The Paulsland army was not, in fact, threatening their children, but this bit of fiction was gladly embraced by everyone in Kush.

            What this meant was that everywhere the Paulsland army passed, they thought they had a docile population, because they thought the population thought they would be punished for the death of their leaders, and so needed Paulsland to shield them from their previous masters. Paulsland was misreading the situation because it had been centuries since Paulsland’s military had invaded a nation loyal to their leaders and culture, and the Paulsland general wasn’t clever enough to figure it out.

            At this point, the Paulsland army was two months into Kush. The army was made up of half a million men, but everywhere they went, they left a few thousand men to secure their supply route, and so at this point, between short battles, accidents, and mostly leaving men behind to guard their rear, the Paulsland army was down to just four hundred thousand men. General Alara wished it were more, as the more men they had, the more supplies they would use. With their steam weapons, nobody was going to defeat that army in a straight up fight, but the terrain of Kush meant that they did not have to. Now that the Paulsland army was halfway to the Kush capital, it was time to wipe out their supply trains.

            When Paulsland invaded, they started on the east side and destroyed the Uncanny Fortress, and so General Alara thought it would be fitting to start their counterattack there. Two months ago, Kush cut off every route out of this valley, except for the one the Paulsland army followed, by destroying every bridge and mountain road. Repairing the mountain roads in a short time was impossible, but building a temporary rope bridge to replace the centuries-old stone bridges that were destroyed was simple, especially when they had help on both sides of the bridges.

            General Alara was able to cross the gap on the temporary rope bridge with fifty thousand men over two days. It was simple to hide his men as Kush’s mountains had heavy forest, and his men were absolutely not allowed to light a fire.

            General Alara’s army was not the only one making a similar crossing. Three other generals were doing the same thing at different points along the path of Paulsland’s supply train. Alara’s was the largest army, as they had to dig in and defend this gap from any more Paulsland intrusions, but the other three armies were plenty large for their purpose.

            The Kush army waited until nightfall and the locals came to their camp. Each leader of five thousand men was led by a local to the Paulsland forces. Although the Uncanny Fortress technically overlooked the valley, and was still technically in a great defensable position, it was in pieces, and the few parts of it that stood were useless, and so the majority of Paulsland soldiers were camped out in ten small wooden fortresses across the valley that each only held five hundred men, and various parts of the supply train. Surrounding the fortresses were poles with lamps on them, and a small group of guards marched around the wooden fortress with their own lamps.

            General Alara led one group of soldiers to one of the wooden forts. Unfortunately, with so many men, the guards could hear their footsteps and sounded the alarm before they reached the temporary fort. General Alara sent the local with a message that read, “If you surrender your fort, then you and your men will be used as slave labor until the end of the war, when you will be set free. If you do not surrender, everyone in your small fort will be killed until the last man.”

            It was dark, and so the men in the Paulsland fortress could not see all the men arrayed against them, and so the fortress leader sent back a message, “We will not surrender.”

            The thing was that before the message reached General Alara, some of the other wooden forts were already being seized. They may not be able to see the numbers coming against them, but they should have known something was up, so the Kush force did not feel merciful as they made their way to the Paulsland fortification.

            Unfortunately, General Alara did not feel he had time to bring siege engines over the mountains and assemble them in the limited time he had, so his forces only had axes to take down the small fortresses. That said, there were ten thousand men with axes per wooden fort, which only held around five hundred men each. If this siege had happened during day time the Paulsland forces would have had better odds as they had ballistae and trebuchets, but in the dark, they could not see to aim their weapons until the Kush force was only forty yards away from the walls.

            When the Paulsland forces finally saw them once they reached the light, they used their war engines and shot their bows, but forty yards was not very far at all. Not even half a minute after the engagement started, the Kush forces were at the wall, and as teams, they were using their axes to take down the wooden walls. Six men were holding their shields up high to protect two men using their axes to cut into the walls of the fort, as the Paulsland soldiers tried to aim over the wooden walls, which was a problem because their fortresses were hastily constructed and did not have murder holes that allowed them to shoot effectively as the Kush force. The bows were so ineffective at attacking the Kush soldiers at the wall that they began using their slings.

            After a few minutes they realized their bows and slings were not effective, so, in desperation, the Paulsland soldiers began throwing down coal oil, but those hit with it immediately moved away, and before the Paulsland soldiers could light it, the Kush soldiers did, with the hopes it would catch the walls on fire. It wasn’t long before the walls on the wooden fort had caught fire. It wasn’t long after that the Paulsland forces began surrendering. Before the sun was up, all ten wooden forts had surrendered. Altogether, the Paulsland forces had lost about a thousand men, and General Alara had lost nearly three thousand.

            General Alara’s forces had no time to mourn. They immediately put the Paulsland forces to work digging trenches. Thanks to the new steam weapons, it was clear that tall stone fortresses were no longer effective, so instead the Paulsland prisoners of war and Alara’s soldiers were going to build a new low-to-the-ground fortress, with much thicker walls, and many more walls. It would be much easier for foot soldiers to overcome the walls, which means they would have to have a much larger garrison force, but it should hold up better to the new steam weapon. If this didn’t work, then they would try something else. And so for the next few months, they dug their fortress out of the ground.

            As for Paulsland, they found out at noon the next day, thanks to their communication network, and began preparing a second army to retake the valley to help resupply General Kitako. As for General Kitako, it would be another two weeks before he knew something was wrong, and another month before he learned of the scope of his problem.