Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.
Ambush
They soon reached the others, they had stopped in a depression, making it hard for them to be spotted. Caerel, Myrthe, Talathiel and Lieutenant Hieronymus had obviously been waiting for them to return.
“Lots of soldiers camped on the plain upriver from Thetwick. We got into a bit of an altercation with some Oakharrowers and some of those Mahr cultists, too,” said Ala.
Matt didn’t say anything, he was still lost in thought. Ala continued, “I expect they’ll probably send out a patrol now. Or as quickly as they can get it organised. It’s likely to be around the size of our force, perhaps smaller, since they only saw Matt and me. Unless they’ve heard of the events on the road, that is.”
“That could be a risky gamble. Though I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” said Caerel
“We could consider ambushing the pursuers? Get them to chase us? We can always just lose them if there’s too many,” suggested Ala.
Caerel nodded, “it’s a thought. Not certain we’d learn all that much more from it.”
“It’ll be a few less of them to fight later,” said Brugor, “no impressive strategy in it, but that doesn’t make it less true.”
“Though we should probably take a moment and consider what we expect to achieve by slaughtering a few more of them,” said Myrthe.
Caerel spoke, “from what you’ve described, we can’t dislodge the Oakharrowers and their allies, not with the forces we have. We could probably harass them, ambushes, raids, etcetera, but our supplies aren’t endless and we’ll have to spend considerable time foraging and hunting within a few days to keep everyone fed.”
“All good points,” said Hieronymus, making no useful contribution whatsoever, as was customary.
“If we do ambush them now, we will be showing our strength. We can never be sure no one gets away,” said Matt, out of his despondence for a moment.
“I feel we should take this opportunity to ambush again. It’s a chance to gather as much intelligence as possible” said Caerel. “Then we will go back to the Ford Inn, and dig in there. It’s the bottleneck into Taladaria, we can be supplied there, launch patrols and raids, and we can make certain that my grandfather knows what’s going on. We should neutralise the pursuers though, I have no desire to let them hound us all the way to the Ford Inn.”
Ala was impressed, yet again. It was sound strategic reasoning. She was pleased he wasn’t suggesting an attack they were unlikely to survive.
“A sensible course of action, in my opinion,” she said.
Everyone agreed that is was the best plan, including Hieronymus, who agreed with all consensus decisions once he figured out what they were.
Caerel rode off ahead, he was a swift rider and he was going to gather the men at the ruins and set up the ambush. The rest of them were going to try and draw in the patrol that was sure to come and investigate. They rode to the crest of the hill overlooking Thetwick where the corpses from Ala and Matt’s fight were still strewn. They made no effort to cover their tracks. The idea was simply to let the approaching patrol see them and then run for it, feigning problems if they threatened to get too far ahead. Hopefully Caerel would have the ambush organised in time. When they arrived at the top of the hill, they didn’t have long to wait.
They dismounted and let the horses graze a bit, but Ala soon spotted banners and horses gathering around Thetwick in the distance. There were around thirty horsemen gathered, and the group even flew banners, which was more open than they had seen thus far. She recognised the banner of Oakharrow and the same shape that the men had tattooed on their forearms was also flying on a long pole. The whole group was cantering towards them. They couldn’t pretend not to have seen it for long, so they mounted up in what was meant to look like a hurry and galloped off over the crest of the hill. They could just hear the pace of the hoof beats increase as the formation gave chase. Over the crest they slowed down a little not wanting to get too far ahead of the formation following them.
It went well, they galloped across the countryside with the patrol from Thetwick in pursuit. It wasn’t all that far back to the ruins, especially at a gallop. They didn’t really know exactly where Caerel was going to set up the ambush, but Ala assumed it would be near the ruins to give him as much time as possible. They had to ride the exact route they came by of course, otherwise Caerel wouldn’t know where to place his men. This resulted in a bit of an erratic course since she had been covering the exact route for the first time on the way to Thetwick and hadn’t taken the shortest path. Ala guessed Caerel would have sited the ambush at a gully about five minutes ride from the ruins, it was the best site that she could remember seeing. They had come through it on the outward leg of the reconnaissance and it was well situated for an ambush conducted as Bernard had taught her to do it. They rode through the gully and at the end of it, Caerel was standing there, waiting for them out of view of the pursuers, waving them over. Ala turned Fulgor towards him, riding their little troupe out of the pursuing men’s line of sight.
When the Oakharrowers had all ridden into the gully, Brugor’s horn call commanded Caerel’s archers to fire. Ala could clearly hear the sound of cavalry approaching. Caerel’s infantrymen sprinted across the gully, forming a line of pikes, cutting off the pursuers advance. At the same time the second volley of arrows found their marks. The archers were professional longbow men, they had fired their third volley by the time the first arrows touched ground. The far side of the gully was steep, but not impassable. A small stream ran along the base of it. Ala heard Talathiel speak, the words were familiar but unintelligible. The stream swelled, making the area around it a bubbling mire. Some of the more observant pursuers realised they were being herded and attempted to charge out of the area targeted by the longbow men. They spurred their horses towards the line of infantry, which appeared to be the weakest link in the trap.
Caerel was behind the line of infantrymen, yelling orders. “Steady! Set pikes! Remember, the horses will not ride through a closed line. The man next to you is depending on you to stand your ground!”
Some of the pursuers apparently knew this too and four made for the far end of the line. Ala, Myrthe, Matt and Talathiel were bunched at the other end, still on horseback, which explained why the enemy had chose the other end of the line of pikemen to attempt a breakthrough. The terrain on the far side of the infantry line was rough, but not impassable for an athletic horse with a practised rider. Ala told Fulgor to gallop to the that end of the line and arrived there in time to meet the first man who was manoeuvring his horse over the terrain. He was one of the religious warriors. She could tell now somehow, their eyes seemed… colder… there was a kind of craze to them which Ala could only describe as unnatural. The rest were behind him, all were the same warrior monks.
The lead man violently spurred his Braban\c on horse, kicking it hard. He was wearing a conical helm with an eye and nose guard, and he had a full brown beard streaked with a little grey. He wasn’t properly positioned to get his weapon in line, so he simply body slammed Fulgor with his shield, yelling something as he passed by. The next in line rotated his horse, to allow his sword arm access to Ala. That turned him in the wrong direction to make an escape. The Phansigar’s choice to attack Ala was sacrificial, with his horse now turned in the wrong direction, he was very unlikely to be able to manoeuvre out of the melee. He meant to occupy Ala so that the others could get away. It was the same tactic the men on the hillock had used. It took Ala a moment to recover Fulgor from the slam, but she quickly coaxed him into sword range, capitalising on a small mistake the expendable man had made. He had raised his sword to cut, but he hadn’t been properly focused on hitting Ala’s centre line, his attack wasn’t straight. She simply extended her sword tip towards him and urged Fulgor forward with her knees. Her sword went straight into the man’s face.
Fulgor’s momentum pushed the tip of her sword all the way through his head. She then urged Fulgor backwards, freeing her blade with a twist. It was too late though, the other three men had passed her by. Matt had apparently managed to rekindle his nerve, and he shot one of the men with his crossbow, but the Phansigar didn’t go down. The wounded man immediately slowed and despite the crossbow bolt sticking out of his back did his best to interrupt Ala’s chase. She couldn’t get around him without exposing herself and had to slow down to deal with him. By the time he slid, dying, off his saddle into the dirt, the remaining two men had managed to gallop out of sight.
Ala looked back towards the kill zone. What was left of the patrol had encountered Caerel’s cavalry and was being systematically cut down. The warrior monks fought to the death while the Oakharrowers gave up without too much of a fight. Now that Caerel’s men knew this, they were careful to give no quarter to the Phansigar. Only two warrior monks survived, their wounds making it impossible for them to fight on. All the Oakharrowers had dropped their weapons as soon as it had become obvious the situation was untenable. Caerel’s command lost three more men and another five were wounded. They wouldn’t be able to conduct another ambush with such losses. Among the dead was Lieutenant Hieronymus. Caerel could be heard yelling orders. Brugor was farther off, doing the same.
“Alright men, disarm these prisoners. Catch what horses have escaped, you have five minutes, leave any that are too far off. We need to move from here in fifteen minutes. Put the prisoners on horses, hands tied to their saddles. Check the saddles and saddlebags for weapons. I don’t want any surprises.”
Ala rode around, quickly doing a check of the corpses while Brugor was forming up their column. Once again, she didn’t think Gordon Marchmain was among the dead. They had gathered nearly two dozen prisoners in total now. Within around twenty minutes, they were indeed moving, with everything they could take with them. They set a hard pace, and Matt and Ala rode in the rear screen with the remaining cavalrymen. Their job was to spot anyone pursuing them. They were moving hard, the objective was to get to the Ford Inn before a proper pursuit from Thetwick could be mounted.
Ala counted out in her head. The warrior monks who escaped would need around an hour to get to Thetwick and perhaps another hour to put together a relief column. If they moved with mounted men only, they could be as little as three hours behind them. With the wagons and prisoners, the pursuers would gain on them quickly. It was going to be close if they didn’t abandon the wagons, something that Brugor and Caerel clearly wanted to avoid. The conversation Ala had overheard on the Hillock worried her. It meant that forces from Thetwick could have already passed behind them and already arrived at the Ford Inn, though the camp had still looked full. They could even send two forces in reaction to the men that had escaped the ambush, one of which could be sent to try and cut them off on the road.
The job of screening involved a lot of galloping around so it was switched among the riders so as not to tire out the horses. When she was relieved, she cantered over to Caerel, who was riding at the head of the column with Myrthe, Talathiel and Brugor.
“Caerel? With the wagons, we may be overtaken before we get to the Inn.”
He shrugged, “yeah, I know. We can’t really afford to lose them though.”
“It’s also possible that the enemy passed by behind us and has already moved on the Ford Inn. While we were camped at the tower.”
Caerel’s expression changed as he looked in the direction of Ford Inn automatically. “Now that I hadn’t considered. I bloody hope not. Why would they suddenly do that now, after several weeks?”
“Well, it’s just that some of the chatter Matt and I overheard on the hilltop gave me the impression something might be brewing. I’m not sure, it may have just been idle soldier talk, but one of them thought the Count of Oakharrow wanted to move on Taladaria itself. That means the Ford Inn.”
“There’s really no other way into Taladaria in the whole March?” Caerel asked once more.
“Unless they’re building a bridge somewhere, or have access to barges or the like, I suppose. The patrol we ran into on the way in might have given them the reason to act now. They may even have been sent to seize the Ford Inn in preparation. Those men also said something about monks dressed as farmers that left towards the Inn the day before yesterday.”
Brugor spoke up, “well, I don’t think it’s all that likely. But if we do get caught up just as we arrive at the Ford Inn and it is being held by more of the Count’s men. We’ll be in between a rock and a hard place.”
Caerel shook his head, “that would be a problem.”
Brugor continued, “again. It’s unlikely. But I’d rather be safe than sorry. If the Count decides to pursue us, the force is going to be large enough to wipe out our remaining men. He knows, near enough, what our strength is now.”
Caerel considered again, “I agree with you Sergeant-Major. Unless those men dressed as farmers are part of some different plan, not related to attacking us,” he frowned for a moment, mulling it over. “The day before yesterday? If those men were headed to the Ford Inn, they would have passed behind us and be at the Inn already.”
“We should scout ahead and find out ,” said Myrthe. “How about Ala, Matt and myself go? The four of us won’t look as immediately threatening if spotted.”
Caerel nodded, “agreed. We will continue pushing towards the Ford Inn in the meantime. Be very careful. Signal us on approach if something is amiss.”
Myrthe nodded to indicate she understood.
“I will join them,” Talathiel announced.
Caerel looked at her, obviously feeling as if his opinion was irrelevant to Talathiel, which was probably true.
“If you wish, Mistress,” he said.
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