Valkyrie's Shadow - 5The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 13, Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Just run away please…”

The Beastmen couldn’t hear her, nor would they probably oblige her even if they could. High above the Royal Army’s front north of Eastwatch, Olga scowled down at her increasingly numerous opponents as they continued their stubborn resistance against the advance of the Undead. Twenty kilometres to the south, the fortress city loomed over its surroundings, a dark silhouette behind sheets of endless rain.

It wasn’t very far, even for a Zombie, but, since she had cleared her way to the fortress on the river that marked the eastern border of the Draconic Kingdom, her progress has slowed to a tiny fraction of what she had achieved before. Olga and her northern spearhead had arrived way before the others, so a fanciful part of her entertained the thought of taking Eastwatch before anyone else arrived. That was before she saw how many Beastmen there were…and how annoying they were to fight.

“Squad Six is ready to advance,” the Elder Lich riding behind her said.

She reviewed the features of the village below. If anyone were to describe it, it would be a ‘normal village’, but every village was different. Those differences usually meant nothing to anyone but the people who lived there, but they couldn’t be ignored when a village became a battlefield.

The collection of buildings rested on a gentle swell, but it wasn’t so high that it offered a good view of the countryside. A low wall of stone held together by mortar – not much more than a fence – enclosed it. The buildings within were wood-framed and walled with panels of wattle and daub. Every home was roofed with thatch and the village’s layout was organised around four wells arranged in a rough square.

In all, it was a village one could probably find anywhere. A normal village with three hundred of the Draconic Kingdom’s citizens still inside. Just shy of ten thousand Beastmen were lurking in and around it, treating it as a makeshift defensive position.

“Squads Five and Seven are ready to advance,” the Elder Lich said.

The three infantry squads were arranged in three groups facing the village. The Beastmen were arranged in a semicircle parallel to them. Each squad of Death-series servitors was enough to devastate a country, but things were more complicated than that in practice. At best, she would say that they could devastate a country, but that would take a very long time and rely on the country’s defenders standing around like idiots waiting to be killed in a long series of stupid duels.

In her case, collateral damage was also a very real and serious issue. Area-of-effect spells such as Fireball were absolutely out of the question inside the village. Stray crossbow bolts from Death Warriors could punch through the walls of buildings to kill their occupants. They had been playing an entirely different game from the Beastmen throughout their advance and the Beastmen were now unknowingly benefitting from the rules of that game. In addition to all that, there were the regular considerations that factored into warfare.

“Alright,” Olga said. “Let’s do this.”

The three squads steadily advanced through the muddy fields. A kilometre away, the Beastman ranks came alive with activity. Each squad was in a tight formation learned from the Azerlisian Mountain Dwarves for use against the Frost Giants, though these formations were much smaller than the original. They made a little box with their shields, in which the other members of their squad took shelter. Additionally, there were two ‘guest’ Elder Liches drawn from the ranks of the Undead controllers present for magical support.

Having the Elder Liches fly above the army for both safety and better visibility was quickly proven to be a bad idea against the new arrivals from upriver. They were far more numerous and organised, and their rank-and-file was generally stronger. This included their hunters, which resulted in vastly-improved battlefield awareness for the Beastman forces. Her Elder Liches were detected long before the Elder Liches could detect the enemy, and she had very nearly lost a few not long after she started pushing south. Even Invisibility didn’t seem to help.

Additionally, they had lost dozens of Bone Vultures before relegating them to high-altitude observation. As the Beastmen saw more, the Sorcerous Kingdom’s forces saw less. It was something that the legends never related: before a single drop of blood was shed, a war for information was already being waged. From the start of the campaign, Olga had taken the advantages they were enjoying in that regard for granted. Now that they were losing that war, she keenly felt why Lady Zahradnik adamantly called for more reconnaissance assets in the Royal Army.

In terms of visible changes, the most noticeable was that the ‘Undead horde’ was gone. They had been left in reserve because they were a distraction at best in skirmishes and the general staff wanted to preserve their numbers for storming Eastwatch. For the Beastmen’s part, they didn’t seem to care that the horde was missing. There was a war to be won and the enemy was the enemy, no matter how they appeared.

A cacophony of clanks and thunks rose from the advancing infantry formations. Since their melee weapons were useless while closing distance with the enemy, all of the Death Knights were wielding two shields, the second being a door, broken wagon bed, or even bales of hay that they picked up from the previous village.

“Can they go any faster?” Olga asked. “We need to get as far as we can before those temporary shields break.”

That was yet another thing that Olga swiftly learned upon arriving at the border. Despite how it looked, the Beastmen weren’t pointlessly flinging bullets of stone, clay and lead into a wall of metal. With the shields in the way, they couldn’t damage the Undead, so they simply focused on damaging the shields with ranged sundering attacks. Magic had mostly been a mystery to her before arriving in Warden’s Vale, but Martial Arts, ‘Skills’, and ‘Abilities’ were even more so. Just like magic, it seemed like they could do anything and their enemy had far too much at their disposal.

Three hundred metres from the enemy lines, their makeshift shields started to disintegrate. The Death Knights stopped so the Elder Liches could cast Fog Cloud between themselves and the Beastmen. The Death Warriors took the opportunity to send a few crossbow quarrels at the Beastmen that didn’t have buildings behind them, sending several sprawling to the ground.

The hail of bullets ceased a dozen or so seconds later, and the squads resumed their advance. Orange flares flashed through the fog as the Undead closed with the enemy lines. Fireballs exploded across the muddy fields. The Elder Liches were trying to estimate where the Beastmen in the surrounding fields were based on their last known positions, but it was all in vain.

“Save your mana,” Olga said. “They’re on their way out. Try to catch some in the village if you can. Watch out for traps and ambushes.”

She wasn’t sure if the warning at the end even mattered. Within ten seconds, a Death Warrior charging up the village lanes in hopes of finding something to fight triggered a trap. The simple snare broke, but not before making the Death Warrior fall flat on its face. From the far side of the village, bullets whistled in to pummel the prone soldier.

By the time a nearby Death Knight arrived to cover its squadmate with its tower shield, the Beastmen were gone. A Death Priest arrived shortly after to heal the damage. Nearby, a Death Knight kicked a tripwire made out of a very visible length of rope as it walked along. The sharpened stick that came out of the pile of refuse nearby bounced off of its armour.

Olga sighed. The Death-series servitors couldn’t detect any but the most painfully obvious of traps and sometimes not even those. The Elder Liches could detect traces of magic if something came within range of their Arcane Vision, but the Beastmen’s traps were completely mundane.

Dull thumps filled the air after several Blood Meat Hulks were summoned and sent around to spring anything else that the Beastmen left behind. After that, they were sent to sweep the nearby fields. Several were destroyed by Beastmen that lay in ambush.

“Don’t chase them,” Olga said. “Keep checking the area.”

They had tried, at first. The Beastmen’s hunters stayed in the mud-mired fields where the Undead suffered from difficult terrain that experienced Rangers ignored, making them impossible to catch. Pursuit only led to more and more ambushes – all of them performed at range.

“Did they leave anyone behind?”

“The investigation is still in progress,” the Elder Lich told her. “Given trends in our opponents’ behaviour, however, it is unlikely.”

As a part of her apprenticeship, Lady Zahradnik gave them a bunch of reading to do. Some books described how retreating armies would sometimes burn the territory they gave up to the enemy. Crops were burned. Animals were taken away. Stores of food and supplies were destroyed. This forced the advancing army to rely on its own supply lines.

The Undead didn’t need supplies, but the Beastmen were acting to deny them their ‘food’ nonetheless. Not long after Olga reached the border and started heading south, the Beastmen all at once started to carry the Humans off with them. Even corpses weren’t left behind – not even the bones left over from their meals.

It didn’t matter to the Royal Army that they were being denied corpses to animate, but it did matter that the Draconic Kingdom’s citizens were being spirited away by the same effort. With so many Beastmen on the front, they had no shortage of individuals to carry them off with. An endless string of ambushes awaited any attempts at pursuing those so burdened.

“Has the general staff said anything about this yet?”

“No recommendations have been made to our current procedures.”

“This is going to take forever.”

Olga’s northern front was fifty kilometres wide. There was a village roughly every two kilometres. Every village took thirty minutes to secure. Towns took hours. The change of pace felt like running into a wall since the Beastmen were only interested in fleeing in terror for weeks.

Before she came to the Draconic Kingdom, she always thought that people who razed their conquests and killed everyone were horrible, evil people. Now she thought she could empathise. Even their fake occupation was a pain in the butt. She couldn’t imagine how annoying a real one would be.

“Squads Two, Three, and Four are nearly in position,” the Elder Lich said.

Their Skeletal Dragon banked away from the recently-conquered village as the Undead continued its investigation. Olga twisted the Ring of Sustenance on her right middle finger. She had settled into a steady rotation between three sets of squads that went day and night as they methodically advanced toward Eastwatch. It was slower at night than it was during the day as no one could see beyond their respective Darkvision ranges, and she constantly worried that she might miss some Beastmen or a daring warband would sneak by and see what was going on behind the lines.

The next location was yet another ‘normal village’ about the same size as the previous one. She relayed any potentially problematic features to her sergeants before overseeing the assault. Each infantry squad formed up into their little shield boxes and the Beastman skirmishers retreated before the Undead advance.

This time, however, something else happened. Olga leaned forward with a frown as the infantry squads slowed down and stopped.

“What’s going on?”

“Our units are being subjected to crowd control effects,” the Elder Lich replied. “Judging by appearances, it is the First-tier Druid spell Entangle.”

“Ugh…”

Glasir could cast that one. It was annoying. Every plant in a designated area would come alive and try to entangle whatever got close enough. Even a blade of grass would elongate and become sturdier than rope. If a plant had thorns, was poisonous, or had any other contact effect, they would be included to deal damage and whatever else happened.

Those that broke free would be attacked by other plants. Even if one could evade everything, the effort would slow them down by about half. Combined with the muddy terrain, it would make movement painfully slow.

“The Elder Liches are stuck, huh.”

Elder Liches were neither nimble enough to dodge the plants nor strong enough to break free once caught. Glasir got Nonna one time with the spell while she was experimenting with it. The Elder Lich had to wait out the effect, glaring all the while at the apologetic Dryad.

“It is as you surmise,” the Elder Lich said. “They are receiving assistance from the Death Warriors and Death Priests, but it is a persistent field effect.”

“Hmm…are you timing it?”

“We are uncertain how long ago the spells were cast, but yes.”

According to Glasir, one could tell how strong a magic caster was by the duration of certain spells that were commonly used. Once one figured that out, the basic power and duration of any spell that they cast could be estimated.

Far below, the temporary shields of the Death Knights started to break. A Fog Cloud was summoned to obscure further attacks. Olga’s gaze went from the group behind the mist and the perimeter of the village. The infantry squads were a hundred metres farther from their objective than the previous group had been.

“When did these stupid Beastmen get so smart?” Olga muttered.

“The change in their tactics and overall strategy indicates the appearance of Commanders who are accustomed to fighting the Undead and incorporating magic into warfare. This event also suggests an understanding of broad mana logistics.”

A First-tier spell was being used to force the use of a Second-tier spell prematurely, and another Second-tier spell would have to be used to make up for the gap in cover created.

“If this happens in every village,” Olga asked, “will the Elder Liches be able to keep up?”

“Mana should not be an issue, but the delays will greatly impact our strategic situation. This also assumes that they do not employ any other alterations to their methods.”

Which was highly doubtful. Once the veil of ignorance was lifted, it would lead to all sorts of new ideas and thinking. As a former subject of Re-Estize, Olga was all too familiar with that process.

“Once they break out of the effect,” Olga said, “have the squads change their approaches to the village. Walking straight from where they are will probably get them caught in more Entangle spells.”

In addition to her precautions, the Elder Liches used Summon Undead II to conjure four Skeletons each. They were sent ahead to check for more field effects. Fifteen minutes later, the infantry squads were poking around the village. This time, a Death Warrior fell into a pit of spikes. Those types of traps were especially weird: no matter how fast the victim was going, they still fell in as long as they were travelling on the ground.

“Captain Zahradnik has called a meeting,” the Elder Lich said.

“When?” Olga asked.

“She will be arriving at the designated meeting place in two hours.”

The place in question was a major town on the southern bank of Oriculon just a few kilometres upriver from the lake. It would take about an hour and a half to fly there, so she left instructions with her sergeants to continue clearing villages before making her way over. The clouds had become dim with the approaching twilight by the time she landed in the town square, which had begun to fill with volunteer workers from the west. They gave Olga a wide berth as she and the Elder Lich walked over to the town hall.

“Over here.”

Raul’s voice came out from one of the corridors branching from the way to the main hall. Olga’s hands went to straighten her uniform as she went to join him.

“I thought I beat you here,” Olga said. “I didn’t see your Skeletal Dragon in the plaza.”

“It’s outside the west gate,” Raul replied. “I didn’t want to get in the way of the people working here.”

“Oh.”

He led her down the hallway to a side office. Within, Baroness Zahradnik was standing behind a table already set up with a war map. To Olga’s surprise, Queen Oriculus was there standing beside her.

What’s she doing here?

She eyed the Queen, who was both shorter and looked younger than her. An opaque black shawl lay over her shoulders atop a black one-piece dress. Her straight black hair glimmered with a sheen that appeared to devour the light of the room and Olga could swear that her storm-dark eyes were shifting in hue.

A wave of gooseflesh swept over Olga. Queen Oriculus was so cute and energetic-looking when Olga first saw her in Oriculon. Now, she looked dark and brooding. She couldn’t help but feel that there was some unfathomable danger lurking behind the Queen’s cold, pristine appearance.

“It seems you’re encountering all sorts of difficulties,” Lady Zahradnik said.

“Yes, Captain,” Olga replied as she went to stand beside Raul. “They’re doing all sorts of things to slow us down. Did Raul…”

Her words died on her lips as she took in the details on the map. The riverlands south of the Oriculon had been taken all the way to the border and Raul’s forces were positioned across the river from Eastwatch.

“What the–how did you do that?!”

“Uh, I just did the same thing as before?” Raul replied with a puzzled look.

“The Beastmen weren’t resisting our advance on the south side,” Lady Zahradnik said. “Raul was able to sweep everything up while they consolidated at Eastwatch.”

“It still feels like I did that all for nothing,” Raul grumbled.

That wasn’t the case at all, but Olga could see why he felt that way. A mix of roughly sixty thousand Beastmen warriors and civilians had escaped out of the corridor south of Corrin-on-the-Lake. This was in addition to another hundred thousand Beastmen occupying the southern riverlands between the city and the border. He may have gotten rid of most of them, but there were just as many Beastmen in the Draconic Kingdom now as there were when they had first arrived.

“That’s not all you’ve done,” the Queen smiled up at him. “Half a million of Our subjects have also been secured thanks to your work.”

Raul nodded silently in response. Olga stared down glumly at the table.

Feh.

She had read enough histories by now that she knew what it would look like. Raul would be credited with facing the most powerful Beastman offensive at the Battle of Corrin-on-the-Lake before moving on to get rid of over a hundred thousand more, saving half a million people and finishing his mission as the Commander of the southern wing. Meanwhile, Olga had snuck into the city through the river to strike at the helpless civilians during the battle, and then she returned to her side of the front and got stuck.

“More reports have come in since you left the northern front,” Lady Zahradnik said. “It appears that the Beastmen are employing all sorts of new tactics. They’ve been effective enough with them that the entire strategic situation is starting to change.”

“I don’t get it, Captain,” Raul said. “Why are they just doing this now? Things would have been way harder if they did it from the beginning.”

“That’s still a mystery,” the Baroness said. “Most would probably say that it’s due to the new arrivals, but even that doesn’t make sense. The warfare conducted so far is characteristic of raiding cultures, which should be expected of opponents of this nature. What’s going on now represents a drastic shift from that style. For lack of a better word, they’re fighting ‘conventionally’.”

“They did it at Corrin-on-the-Lake,” Raul noted.

“Corrin-on-the-Lake was very rudimentary,” Lady Zahradnik said. “Though they were amassed into ‘armies’, the warbands still fought in ways akin to raiding parties. From what the Intelligence Division could glean from the Beastmen that we’ve captured over the weeks, Corrin-on-the-Lake was the headquarters of the Clan leading the invasion, which was headed by what everyone calls a ‘Warmaster’. That Warmaster was apparently responsible for the swift and highly-organised invasion up to Rivergarden, but he fell to a teleportation ambush not long after. What we saw the other day may have been the vestiges of his influence.”

The invasion of the Draconic Kingdom was weird, in many ways. One could say that it was pretty nice as far as invasions went right up until the point that the Beastmen’s leader was killed. It was like that one guy was holding everything together and it all fell apart the moment he died. Some stories were like that, but Olga thought that they were a bit stupid. At least until she became a Commander and saw it happen first-hand on multiple occasions.

“Unlike raiders,” Lady Zahradnik continued, “who pursue tactical objectives and only happen to effect strategic change, the Beastmen now are pursuing strategic goals. They are functioning as a professional military in a developed state would. Does Your Majesty know about any other fronts that the Beastmen have that could cultivate this type of warfare?”

“We know little about their current state,” Queen Oriculus replied. “Over their long history with the Draconic Kingdom, they have only been ‘raiders’, as you put it. The most recent invasion was the first time that they could be considered an ‘army’ and that only lasted for as long as the Warmaster did.”

The Queen let out a sigh, and a tiny frown crossed her pale lips.

“In hindsight, ordering the death of that Warmaster fellow was a terrible thing. Killing off a leader in the hopes that the enemy would fall to chaos doesn’t work so well when that chaos happens to you.”

“I would almost say that we’re facing another one of these ‘Warmasters’,” the Baroness said, “but there are oddities even when one factors that in. Their mystics are straying out of the conventional ‘healer’ role that tribes tend to attribute to them and their countermeasures against Undead propagation feel almost standardised. Maybe their country is so large that different parts of it can have drastically different styles of warfare.”

An Elder Lich came up beside Lady Zahradnik and lightly cleared its throat. It presented a scroll in its desiccated hand.

“Orders from the general staff,” it said.

They waited in silence as the Baroness unfurled the scroll and silently read its content. She set it on an unoccupied corner of the map before speaking again.

“We’re to begin our assault on Eastwatch tonight,” she said.

“But the forces north of the Oriculon are still so far away,” Olga frowned.

“It’s going to be a long battle,” Lady Zahradnik replied. “The northern and western fronts will slow their approach. Raul will gain control of the Oriculon and begin interdicting all river traffic. No additional supplies or personnel will be permitted to reach the Beastmen at Eastwatch.”

“We’re laying siege to the city, Captain?” Raul asked.

“No,” the Baroness shook her head. “Intelligence estimates that there are still two hundred thousand of the Draconic Kingdom’s citizens under Beastman control. If we try to starve them out, they’ll eat the citizens. What we’re doing is applying pressure to their position. The reason why the assault begins now is that we’re being allotted room to manoeuvre.”

“It’s hard to manoeuvre at all with their new tactics, Captain,” Olga said. “They’re way more aware of what’s going on now, as well.”

Lady Zahradnik picked a plotting rod up off of the table, using it to move some of Raul’s pieces around.

“I spoke with Lord Mare about what’s going on,” she said. “On the magical side of things, they’re putting some simple principles to effective use. The spells that they are using are either irresistible or have secondary effects that cannot be resisted. Entangle, for instance, does not target our forces – it targets the ground. The affected plants then reach out to impede whatever they can reach, turning the spell into a physical obstacle for all intents and purposes.”

“That makes it sound even more annoying,” Olga said. “We can’t do anything about it aside from praying our forces don’t enter affected areas.”

“You and I won’t need to do all that much for now,” Lady Zahradnik replied. “The tactics that the Beastmen are relying on depend on us advancing into areas that they’ve prepared traps and ambushes in. With as many Beastmen as there are, it’s undesirable to shrink the battlefield much further anyway.”

“How many are there now?” Raul asked.

“Six hundred thousand according to the latest estimates.”

Raul’s mouth fell open. Olga actively resisted doing the same. The Baroness smiled at their reaction.

“Raul should only need one or two squads to secure the canyon,” she pointed at the markers placed at the entrance to the Draconic Kingdom. “The remainder will deploy as you see here. Those spells that you saw the Beastmen using do not work in the water, so we will attack from the rivers. As long as the enemy is close, Raul’s ambushes will be undetectable right up until the point that he strikes. We will be on the offensive all day and all night; any respite that the Beastmen gain will be at the expense of their comrades. Our enclosure will be adjusted as their numbers shrink.”

Lady Zahradnik used her rod to circle the six-hundred-square-kilometre area hemmed in by the Sorcerous Kingdom’s Royal Army. The very annoying situation that Olga had been facing suddenly turned into an utterly pitiful one for the Beastmen.

“This will be our killing field,” the Baroness said. “Let’s get to work.”