B3Ch84-The Allied Legions Assault (Patreon)

The sentries challenged him twice before he reached the foot of the outcrop.

The first was a pair of legionaries dug into the snow behind a rock at the mouth of the valley, spears leveled and challenges already in their mouths before Mors cleared the bend. The second was a full section on the slope above, with a crossbow pointed at his chest until the sergeant recognized the banner. He gave the countersign both times. Both times they made him wait while a runner went up the hill to check.

Harold didn’t mind in the slightest. Hale had taken his warning to heart.

The rear of the army was covered three ways. There were pickets out on every approach, a reserve cohort sat in a hollow behind the outcrop with its shields stacked and its men sleeping in their armor, and a line of stakes had been driven into the frozen ground across the mouth of the valley at an angle a charging animal would hate. The Blackjaws loved to hit the rear. In his first life, he’d watched them do it a hundred times, warg riders coming out of a side valley nobody had scouted and tearing into the baggage and the wounded while the army’s whole attention was on the walls. More than once, they had turned a lost battle into a won one that way.

Not this time, by the look of it.

He looked up the outcrop. It was a great broken knuckle of gray rock jutting out from the valley wall, and on top of it, Hale had pitched his command tent. From there he would have a clear line of sight across a kilometer of broken ground to the goblin town, and Harold could see the long glint of telescopes set up along the edge on tripods.

It had taken them three days to get here from the Bronzeshoulder hold, longer than he’d planned. Getting the rest of the clan to stand to forsake the Bronzeshoulder blood had taken a whole day by itself. Some held out, the elders wept, and a few of the young swore and were talked down by the son. Then there was the business of organizing nearly five thousand dwarves, their goats and carts and children, onto the long road south to the Basin. Those who survived the road would be taken into the Gemheart in name and blood. Bram would appreciate the manpower. Five thousand dwarves weren’t something to sneeze at.

He swung down off Mors, handed the reins to Ren after reminding Mors to not be a dick, and started up the trail with Carter at his back and Balfiel and Jampa on either side of him. The rest of his people stayed at the foot of the outcrop, picketing the horses and looking for someone with a pot of anything hot.

The TOC was a long tent of oiled canvas staked against the rock, with one side rolled up to face the town. Inside, it was crowded and loud and warm. Clerks sat at map tables covered in slates and pins, runners went in and out at a jog, and signal officers stood at the open side with flags furled in their fists. The moment Harold ducked under the flap, a staff officer near the door straightened.

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!”

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!” Every voice in the tent echoed back.

“Count Harold arriving!”

“Shut up!” Hale didn’t turn from his telescope. “There’s a battle going on. The Count can entertain himself.”

Balfiel snickered under his breath. “I like that man.”

“Knew you would,” Harold grumbled.Jampa murmured, “His heart is remarkably settled for someone with so much violence in him. Very interesting people you keep, Harold.”

Something soft brushed his cheek. Adeline had come up the trail behind him and slipped into the tent at his elbow, wrapped in her fur coat with her folio under her arm. She kissed his cheek, walked straight past him to a free corner of a map table, sat down, and started sorting through the stack of reports waiting there as if she’d been working in the tent all morning.

Harold watched her go. Then he turned around to find Mark coming toward him through the crowd with his own adventurer team at his back, still in their fighting gear and splashed to the knee.

“Mark.” Harold took his hand, then pulled him in and pounded his back. “How’s it going here?”

Mark snorted. “It’s a rough one. These troops have been getting their teeth kicked in.”

“Indeed they have.” Halloran had come up beside Mark, and he said it in the clipped Irish coming through the vowels. “’Tis a mercy we’re fighting them here in the close confines of these mountains. If this lot had come down out of the passes into the lowlands among our villages, the dead would number past counting.”

Harold looked at him a moment. Then he nodded and put out his hand, and Halloran took it.

“Good to have you on the team, Halloran.” He looked between the two of them. “I see you’re already working with Mark. Good. I need you two working together. I want you to be two sides of the same coin.” He turned to Mark. “Mark, you’ll lead the guild adventurers in adventuring. Dungeons, quests, monster dens.” He turned back to Halloran. “Halloran, you’ll integrate adventurers into the Legion and lead them in the line. Over the next few years, I need the well-rounded powers adventurers have. Their abilities are too diverse to waste. Which means Hale will be your boss. If that's an issue, this won't work.”

“I anticipated as much with Colonel Hale, sire, and I’ve already begun.” Halloran tipped his head. “So long as my people get the same benefits as the guild, I’ll be glad to fold my forces into yer Imperial Legion. I’ve broken my contract with the merchants of the coast and paid the forfeit.”

Harold nodded. “Give Adeline the figure, and I’ll reimburse you. Some of it may come as material support rather than coin.”

Halloran inclined his head. His boots were somehow crisp and polished, Harold noted, though his armor was nicked and dented across the pauldrons. He had been out in the fighting.

“Excuse me,” Harold said. “I need to see Hale.”

He worked his way down the length of the tent toward the open side. By the time he got there, Balfiel was already standing at Hale’s elbow, and the two of them looked to be getting along famously.

Harold sighed a little and walked over.

“—watch your right flank,” Balfiel was saying. “It’s bowing inward.”

“I see the flank.” Hale didn’t take his eye from the glass. “The commander there’s already moving his reserve up to fix it. My people know their business.”

Balfiel snorted. “These troops are weak, and you know it.”

“Well, we don’t all have five thousand years to live and accomplish nothing, like you pointy-eared bastards.”

The two of them glared at each other. Then they both broke out laughing at the same moment, and turned together to look at Harold.

“Glad to see you’re both getting along,” Harold said dryly. “How’s this going, Hale?”

“Nice of you to join us for some work, sire.”

“Cut the sarcasm, Hale,” Harold said, and jabbed him with his aura.

Hale flinched like he’d been stuck with a pin. “Ow. Shit. Stop it.” He glared at him. “Don’t do that.”

Low in Harold’s chest, the nail chuckled to itself. It had been in a fine mood for days, ever since it drank Thane Toki’s blood. Beside him, Balfiel chuckled with it. Hale glowered at the pair of them, then turned back around to the battle.

“We’ve made good progress since we set off,” Hale said. “This is the second town we’ve had to take. The first fell easily.” He nodded out over the field. “This one’s a tougher nut.”

Harold looked out at it.

The town sat atop a broad rocky plateau that rose from the valley floor like the stump of a felled tree, and the only way up was a long ramp of rubble and packed earth that climbed the near face. It looked a little like the assault they’d made during the Lord’s Trial. Except this time the ramp was choked with goblins. There were thirty thousand of them, near enough, formed up in a great dark mass at the foot of the walls, and from the walls above, archers were raining arrows down on the Allied Legions grinding their way up the slope. Harold’s ballistae thumped steadily from the valley floor below the outcrop, pounding the archer positions along the plateau’s lip in spouts of stone and fire.

“The Blackjaws are a good deal tougher than the goblins in the Basin,” Hale went on. “Their regulars are about on par with the lizardmen regulars from the Trial. Around our mid tier-two.”

“A horrible way to judge strength,” Balfiel put in.

Harold rubbed his brow. “We’ve talked about this, Balfiel. It’s something I intend to fix.”

“Should have done it right the first time. I keep telling you, boy.”

Hale glanced at the elf before he went on. “What that means is that only our own Legion can beat them at even numbers. The troops out there need a lot more engagements before they make up the perk deficit. As always, the great equalizer is our mana blades. The goblins can’t stop them.” He pointed. “So we send a formation forward, and it fights while empowered with mana blades going. When that formation’s spent, we rotate it out and put in a fresh one. For now, it’s working.”

Harold followed his finger down to the ramp and saw a cohort doing exactly that. It disengaged in good order, stepping back rank by rank, and through the gaps it left, a fresh cohort came forward at the run with its blades already lit, hitting the goblin line before the first cohort had finished clearing out. The goblins never got a breath. The Allied Legions were keeping almost constant pressure on the line with men at full strength, and slowly, the goblin front was giving ground.

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!”

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!”

A signal officer had turned from the field with a slate in his hand. “Second Corps reports warg cavalry attacking their rear. They’re requesting support to cut the wargs off from their retreat.”

“Dispatch Lord Fitch,” Hale snapped without turning. “Tell him to try and run them down.”

“How far is Second Corps?” Harold murmured.

“The next pass over.” Hale’s voice had gone testy. “Their wargs have been harassing us constantly. Rough count, they’ve got anywhere from five to eight thousand of them. They rush in, kill everybody they can catch, and run. Lord Vayle’s had to fight his way out of more than one ambush after giving chase. We don’t follow them anymore unless it's Fitch. The kid can kill them at a distance with his Tarantines.”

“You don’t expect them here?”

A wolfish grin spread over Hale’s face.

“On the contrary. I’m hoping they do hit us here.” He tapped the side of his telescope. “I’ve got a little something for them. From their side of it, the goblins have to make us pay for this town if they’re going to have any hope of beating us.”

His head came up sharply.

“Berserkers. Making their way to the front.” He swung around to the signal officers. “Explosive arrows from the archers, centered on their frontage two ranks back! Break up that formation!”

The flags went up. Harold watched the Allied archers on the lower slope shift their aim.

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!”

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!”

“Fourth Corps reports a successful advance along their IV line to Phase Line Four. They’re prepared to assault the next town on your word.”Balfiel leaned over to Harold. “What's an IV line?”Harold leaned back and whispered, “Intervisability line. Its line they can take and remain hidden.”Balfiel nodded as if he understood.

Hale grunted. “I don’t trust it. But I’ll have to trust Garrick over there. That terrain’s riddled with places to hide, and most of the adventurers are over there screening and skirmishing.” He thought for a breath. “Initiate the attack. But at any hint of warg cavalry, they close ranks.”

The runner went.

The mountainside beside the ramp exploded.

A whole section of the valley wall blew outward on the left flank of the assault in a spray of rock and dust, and out of the hole came a platoon of mountain trolls. There were twenty or so of them, each half again the height of a man, gray-green and slabbed with muscle, carrying clubs made of whole trees. They walked out of the dust into the flank of the Fifth Allied Legion and started swinging.

“Send the knights and the lords!” Hale’s voice cracked across the tent. “I want those trolls dead before they can retreat to their lines!”

The order hadn’t left the tent yet, and the knight cohort was already moving. Harold could see them from the outcrop, coming out of their position behind the Fifth at the run with their mixed weapons up. Carter had his people on top of their game. A spread of arrows and javelins went out of the knight cohort ahead of the charge and burst against the trolls, and one bolt took a troll almost square in the neck, nearly tearing its head from its shoulders. The troll clapped a hand over the wound, roared, and the flesh knitted closed under its fingers.

Balfiel clicked his tongue. “Those are not normal trolls.”

“No, they’re not.” Harold’s eyes had narrowed. “Hale. Those are from the Troll King’s court. Berserk trolls. They heal better than mountain trolls, and they won’t retreat. They’ll dive into the formation and do as much damage as they can before they die.”

On the other side of the field, a goblin horn went off.

The mountainside on the right flank collapsed. Out of it, at a dead run, came five hundred warg cavalry, the great gray wolves low and fast with goblin riders clinging to their backs, pouring straight down the slope at the flank of the assault.

At the same moment, the archers’ volley came down on the berserker formation. The explosive arrows fell two ranks back from the berserkers’ front, exactly where Hale had called it, and the berserkers came apart in fire and smoke a heartbeat before they hit the line.

Horns went off all across the goblin army.

“Here we go,” Hale muttered.

The wargs were driving at a single cohort posted on the right flank, set there to guard it. Harold could see the cohort’s shields, a small dark block on the slope in the path of five hundred wolves.

“Uh, Hale. That cohort’s going to get crushed.”

“Suck an egg, sir. Let me do my job.”

Under his breath, where only Harold could hear it, the Colonel was muttering.

“Come on. Come on. Come on.”

The cohort set itself to meet the charge. Then, all at once, the shields went down, and every man in it bent and came up with a pike from the snow at his feet. The pikes came up and braced against the ground in a gray hedge three times the height of a man, and the hedge leveled at the wargs.

“Shit,” Harold breathed. “How the hell did you pull that off?”

Across the field, the knights hit the trolls.

It was ugly and fast. The knights went in at a dead run with their blades lit and took the trolls apart, hacking limbs off at the joints and leaving the pieces for the regulars of the Fifth to finish while they moved to the next one. The trolls had already smashed one of the Fifth’s cohorts flat before the knights reached them. Nearly five hundred men in high tier two and low tier three made short work of twenty trolls, and the knights avenged that cohort.

“Signal the knights to continue the attack,” Hale ordered. “I want that flank crushed!”

The flags went up. “Signal the Corps to attack!” Hale shouted again.

The wargs hit the pikes.

The charge stopped dead. The pike shafts bent inward under the weight as the wargs drove onto them, their natural toughness almost too much for the shafts to take. Then the heads of the pikes began to explode one after another down the line, cratering the wargs that had driven onto them and throwing riders and wolves alike back up the slope.

“Interesting,” Balfiel said.

He was watching the pikes with his head cocked, and he muttered the rest of it under his breath to Harold. “How did you do that? You separated the fireweed mixture and a second mixture, with cleargrass, I think. A hollow pike head, and it shatters on impact, so the two mix and then go off.” He nodded slowly. “An ingenious and original use of alchemy.”

“I’m so glad you approve, Master,” Harold said sarcastically.

Out on the slope, the warg cavalry broke off. They had lost two hundred, maybe more, against the layered pikes, and they wheeled away from the pikes and streamed back toward the hole in the mountainside they’d come out of.

“Signal the crafters!” Hale barked. “Now! Cut them off!”

A flare went up off the edge of the outcrop and burst high over the army in a bright green flower.

Balfiel watched that with interest too. Down on the right flank, the mountainside the wargs were running for shuddered and fell in on itself, and Harold watched the tunnel mouth collapse in a slide of rock as the Legion’s earth crafters brought it down in front of the wargs.

The wolves paused in confusion. Then they wheeled again and ran for their own lines. The lines were already coming apart. All across the ramp, the Allied Legions launched a full attack, every cohort at once, and within moments Harold was watching the goblin army break and rout.

Harold nodded slowly as he put it together.

“You had the Legion’s crafters survey these mountains ahead of time,” he said. “You found those tunnels before we ever got here. That’s why the knights were already sitting behind the Fifth, and why that pike cohort was standing exactly where the wargs would come out.”

Hale grunted. “I told you. I know my job.”

Balfiel looked at him sideways, and for once there was no sneer in it. “That was a well-thought-out battle.” He turned to Harold. “I am interested in these tactics you have brought from Earth. It seems the elves have something to learn after all.”

Harold looked at him. “You and I need to talk,” he said quietly. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what’s happened these last few days.”

The old elf’s face went stern, and then it fell.

“I know,” Balfiel said. “Give me some time, boy. It is not an easy story.”

Hale looked between the two of them, confused, and decided it wasn’t his business. “How did your task go? We got the report that a column of dwarves made it to the supply depot. They’re heading down out of the Blackjaws now.”

“Bram should be happy,” Harold said. “The nearest dwarven colony is gone, and his numbers ought to more than double. But that’s the only easy fight against the dwarves we’re going to get.” He nodded toward the plateau. “I got us the tunnels we need, though.”

Hale grunted. “Good. If the city’s anything like this, we’ll take horrible losses going at it head-on.”

Harold grunted back. “It’s far worse.”

“The Blackjaw goblins have been a stain on these mountains for centuries,” Balfiel said. “It’s only in the last hundred years or so that they’ve grown so prolific.” He looked at Harold. “The knowledge you hold makes you invaluable for these early moves. It is good you are using it. I have never seen a lord accomplish so much so early in a cycle.”

Harold looked at him a long moment. Then he nodded.

“We both know what the later years bring,” he said. “I don’t intend to let us stay here on Gravesend like the other races.”

He looked out at the field a moment longer, at the goblins pouring off the plateau and the Allied Legions pouring up it. Then he leaned toward Balfiel and muttered, so low the old elf could barely have heard it.

“I need your help.”

Balfiel’s face turned smug. “What?”

Harold gritted his teeth. “I need your help.”

“I knew it.” The elf pointed a long finger at him. “That ball of death energy got away from you last night. I felt it come loose from the other end of camp. I don’t know what you were trying to make, but you need my help, don’t you?”

Harold sighed. “Yes.”

“Ha.”

“I was trying to brew a potion that attracts death-mana monsters,” Harold said. “But I’m running out of ingredients, and I can’t keep failing at it on my own.”

Balfiel nodded, but his face had gone stern again. “Death mana is tricky to work with. You shouldn't have tried that without me there. I don’t let my apprentices touch it until they’ve got a good twenty years under their belts.”

“Good thing I do,” Harold said dryly.

Balfiel smacked him across the back of the head. “Don’t be a smart ass.”

“Like you’re one to talk!”

“Harold!” Adeline called from her table. “Message from Margaret!”

Harold turned quickly. The notifications for the battle were already stacking up in the corner of his sight, and he ignored them and crossed the tent to her. She held up a slip of paper with the decoded message written out under the cipher in her neat hand.

The Concord is making moves. I don’t yet know what they intend, but the rumors I’m receiving point to a credible threat to your life. Be careful. M.

Harold read it twice. Then he set the slip down on the table and looked at Adeline, who was looking back at him cheerfully.

“You’re not worried?”

“Nah.” Adeline waved a hand. “We have Robin.”

The Redcap was suddenly standing behind her chair with a cup of tea, although Harold would have sworn there had been nobody behind her chair a moment ago. He set it down beside her.

“Thank you, sweetie.” Adeline turned in her chair and gave him a quick hug around the middle.

Robin let her. Then he looked over her head at Harold and smiled, a wide, slow smile full of sharp teeth.

Harold walked a little way off from the tables to the open side of the tent, where the wind came up the outcrop, and nobody needed him for a moment, muttering under his breath.

“Stupid Fae—”

He stopped, because the notifications were still stacked at the edge of his sight and blinking at him, and he pulled them up.

PERK AWARDED Warlord’s Standard (Rare)

You led a host of more than one hundred thousand to victory in the field. Men fight harder beneath a banner that has already won.

— Forces under your command gain +12% morale.

PERK AWARDED Grand Battle (Rare)

You commanded a battle in which more than fifty thousand fought. The larger the field, the steadier your hand upon it.

— Forces under your command gain +5% damage and Discipline in battles exceeding 50,000 combatants.

PERK AWARDED Cunning Commander (Rare)

You outwitted and outmaneuvered your enemy through deliberate deception. They saw only what you meant them to see.

— Feints, ambushes, and concealed positions ordered by you are 13% more effective.

— Enemy commanders find your intentions harder to read.

PERK AWARDED Irregular Muster (Uncommon)

You brought adventurers into the line of battle and made them fight as one.

— Adventurers fighting under your command gain +8% coordination with regular formations.

PERK AWARDED Clear Signals (Uncommon)

Your orders crossed mountains and reached every corner of a vast host intact.

— Orders relayed through your chain of command travel faster and are 8% less likely to be misunderstood.

PERK AWARDED Long Road (Rare)

You kept a great host fed and armed along more than one hundred kilometers of hostile road.

— Supply under your banner suffers 12% less spoilage and loss.

— Beasts of burden in your service tire 12% slower.

PERK UPGRADED Honor the Ancestors → Honor the Ancestors II (Epic)

Your host won a great battle, fighting just as your ancestors did. From Ancient Egypt to the steppes of the Mongols, as they did on the fields of the Republic, the old ways answered.

— Soldiers under your banner learn the formations, drills, and weapons of historical human warfare 16% faster.

— Formations fighting in a historical human doctrine gain +16% cohesion and discipline, and break 18% less often under shock.

— Allied forces trained in your doctrine share in these bonuses at half strength.

— Soldiers under your banner have an increased chance to manifest perks drawn from the military traditions of their ancestors.

He read down the list twice and frowned at the two uncommons. Every low-tier perk he took on watered down the quality of his mana a little. He needed to use a few perk combination tokens and combine his common and uncommon perks.

Then he looked back over his shoulder into the tent. The increased mana was making itself known now. When they had first arrived on Gravesend, an uncommon perk would give 5 or 6 percent, while a rare would do about 8 percent. But now rares gave around 12 percent bonus. And the numbers would only increase as mana rose.

He let the panel drop and stood a moment with the wind in his face, watching the Allied Legions climb the ramp over the bodies of goblins.

Fair or not, he would take it. Every one of those perks would reach every man fighting under his banner. But he was going to make damned sure Hale got a bottle of the good stuff tonight, and Lord Ariske a crate of it.