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

Chapter 5

“Report! The Undead have renewed their assault!”

“Show us.”

The Gao runner stepped forward at Rana Kizurra’s command, looking down at the map on the table. After a moment, he pointed a claw.

“Here,” he said. “They’re pouncing straight in. The Ranas on the front can’t make any sense out of it.”

“How have they responded?” Rana Kizurra asked.

“They’re using the spells that they were instructed to with great effect,” the runner answered. “Casualties have been limited. We’re targeting the Undead in the predetermined order.”

“Good. Hopefully, we’ll start seeing some results. Refresh yourself before you return to the front.”

With a nod, the runner left the parapet. The Undead had tightened their perimeter by four to five kilometres along the front, bringing them into view of Eastwatch’s battlements. Far to the northwest, the engagement that the runner described only appeared as a slight shift in their forces.

“The Undead will withdraw soon,” Saraca said, “if they haven’t already.”

“What if they keep pushing?” Rana Kizurra asked.

“They could,” Saraca answered, “but they won’t. Now that they’re operating in a manner closer to a conventional army with conventional problems, their valid options have become severely limited.”

“And if they revert to their old ways?” Someone asked.

“Then that huge mass of Undead standing behind the front lines will advance,” Saraca said. “They may seem like a substantial threat, but they’re nothing compared to the Undead on the front and relatively useless against us.”

“So they’ll continue using these ‘warbands’ as their main fighting force.”

“They’ll use their Elder Liches where they can, as well,” Saraca added. “And, just in case it hasn’t been made clear yet, each member of those ‘warbands’ is as strong as our side’s strongest champions.”

In all, Rol’en’gorek’s reconnaissance had identified a total of twenty-eight of those ‘warbands’. There was another force of undetermined strength in the river, but they were busy interdicting traffic.

The style of the interdiction had changed in the morning, switching from a complete blockade of the river to allowing inbound traffic to flow in. Since nothing was allowed out, they allowed the crews to moor their boats and shelter around Eastwatch instead of forcing them to sail to their doom. The macabre procession of derelict craft finally stopped drifting by close to noon.

Rol’en’gorek’s forces were relieved to have their supply lines re-established, but, to Saraca, it was as if the Undead had declared that Eastwatch’s defenders were being kept alive until they were ready to kill them. It would be in line with the way that they were already trying to extract as much negative energy as possible through the torment of the living.

A dozen more runners came and went, reporting developments from across the front. The Lords who were busy tabulating the results of the night’s fighting in the tower below finally came up to share their findings.

“As far as we can tell,” the Lup Lord at the front of the group said, “we lost sixty thousand last night, mostly from the two clans who were trapped by the first two enemy manoeuvres. The orders to withdraw to the new line kept an additional two hundred thousand from meeting the same fate.”

“I still find it strange that it would turn out that way,” Rana Saj said. “The Undead could have easily inflicted far more casualties on the withdrawing forces.”

“It only feels that way because Rol’en’gorek’s way of fighting is far more flexible,” Saraca said. “Never mind the Undead, many armies of the living adhere to orders, maintain formations, and limit unsanctioned, independent operations.”

“That’s true,” one of the Lords under Clan Torokgha said. “The Draconic Kingdom’s warriors were also as Saraca describes. They were curiously adamant about maintaining their formations and it was laughably simple to outmanoeuvre them. They did so until their defences broke down entirely and I don’t understand why to this very day.”

How should I explain this…

Both ‘set piece’ and asymmetrical warfare – amongst several other types – had their place in a conflict. Places like Rol’en’gorek heavily favoured asymmetrical warfare because there was little in the way of important infrastructure to defend, plus their operational areas were effectively unlimited. Furthermore, what was important to the Draconic Kingdom wasn’t important to Rol’en’gorek and what was important to Rol’en’gorek for most of its relationship with the Draconic Kingdom – namely food – was impossible for the Draconic Kingdom to fully protect.

Without powerful allies to aid them, most countries in the world in that situation would do the same as what the Draconic Kingdom had apparently done, which was to accept that losses were inevitable and continue to work toward a permanent solution. This usually involved some combination of diplomacy and internal development.

As far as Saraca could tell by the progress displayed in the Draconic Kingdom, that approach was working…at least until Rol’en’gorek suddenly decided to dump the excess population of a million square kilometre confederation onto their tiny country. There was absolutely no conventional solution for that – it was a problem that required beings on the level of Ancient Dragons to solve.

Ironically enough, the problems that Rol’en’gorek’s migrants were facing in the mountainous south against the remnants of the Draconic Kingdom’s population were pretty much the same problems that the Draconic Kingdom had for most of its long relationship with Rol’en’gorek.

“There is a certain strength to the way that they fight,” Saraca said. “Many powerful countries fight the same way. Battlefields can be prearranged and limited, or other types of warfare are undesirable due to economic and political considerations. In the case of the Draconic Kingdom, one could say that it is simply a bad matchup. The average member of the humanoid race that dwelled here is incapable of fighting a Beastman warrior on even terms, so they strive to even the odds in whatever way that they can. Unfortunately for them, you were not obliged to fight in the way that they needed you to.”

“That aside,” Rana Kizurra said, “we’re fighting that way right now. It is foreign to us, but the benefits seem clear enough. Territorial control is well-defined and communication is swift. Threats can be identified and champions can respond to them in no time at all. Different forces can take turns, exchanging places long before exhaustion becomes an issue. This may be something that the Humans used, but nothing says we can’t as well.”

“If the situation calls for it,” Rana Saj said. “I know for a fact that trying to do this on the Jorgulan Front would just get us slaughtered by Dragons. Anyway, is this all there is to this? Repeat the same steps and patiently wait for results?”

Their defensive scheme, while seemingly pedestrian, was an undeniably effective one. The downside of having a few, powerful combatants was that they were easier to account for and control than a large army. Furthermore, the mana of that small force was no match for the mana of a hundred thousand mystics.

So long as Rol’en’gorek’s combatants didn’t die instantly, they could be healed and refreshed indefinitely. Conversely, the damage inflicted by the many upon the few wasn’t something that the Undead could keep up with for long. The simple field effects employed by Rol’en’gorek’s mystics impeded the mobility of the few Undead in each ‘warband’ at every turn. Combined with the natural conditions of the fields around Eastwatch, the Undead couldn’t get very far very quickly.

Combined with the fact that Rol’en’gorek’s forces were accustomed to fluid, dynamic manoeuvres in battle, this created a highly adaptable and highly flexible defence that simply flowed around any attempted Undead offensive while endlessly harassing them with skirmishers. Normally, enemy casters and an army’s supporting magic item industry would act as a counter to that simple combination of things, but the Undead were not accustomed to war. Elder Liches were undeniably powerful magic casters, but they were arcane researchers first and the use of magic in battle was an afterthought. Anything that the Undead had that resembled a magic item industry was tiny and sluggish compared to those of living economies.

That being said, Rol’en’gorek was just getting started.

“Those are just standing orders for efficiently maintaining our lines,” Saraca said. “While the Undead are busy trying to figure out what to do about it, we need to make some moves of our own. Our offence needs to develop faster than their ability to keep up. What happened at the harbour this morning presents an interesting possibility.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, I’m used to it not being the case, but the Undead appear to have no countermeasures to taunt. With that being the case, we could just ‘fish’ for Undead. A champion on the front can just taunt a Death Knight to them and drag them deep into our forces to be disposed of the same way that Rana Saj got rid of the Death Knight on the wharf.”

The assembled Lords fell silent at his proposal, a furrow on each of their brows. He could empathise, as it was a silly idea that probably wouldn’t work against a regular living foe. A nearby Captain – or Lord, in their case – would simply break them out and nothing would come of the attempt.

“In any other situation,” Rana Kizurra said, “I would consider it a highly dishonourable tactic. But if it’s the Undead…”

Eh? That’s your first thought?

“I agree,” another Lord at the table said. “If what Saraca says is true, these things just appear out of thin air. There is nothing to respect; no effort, history, or cause to admire. They are merely enemies to be destroyed.”

It occurred to Saraca that they might have never thought of it if he hadn’t pointed it out. The ‘dishonourable’ thinking was literally unthinkable.

“Whom should we dispatch?”

“Rana Saj is a solid choice. He’s already done it once.”

“No,” Saraca said. “They might be keeping an eye out for him. Besides, I’m sure you have plenty of champions itching to get their claws on the Undead. The Death Knights also have a taunt, so make sure there’s a Lord around to counter it if it sticks. Also, make sure there are plenty of mystics to support them.”

“Rana Lofar was a good friend of Rana Ujin,” one of the Lords suggested. “He’s a bit stronger than Rana Saj, though his equipment isn’t as good.”

“That sounds fine to me,” Rana Kizurra said. “His mystics will be supporting him anyway. We should put together a list of candidates for this tactic. If it’s proven to work, we need to mercilessly exploit it.”

“Don’t get too ambitious,” Saraca rumbled. “Biting off more than we can chew opens us up to a potentially devastating retaliation. What matters is that we can steadily reduce their total combat power.”

Every powerful Undead destroyed represented a centuries-long setback for the Undead. It was something that they could ill afford; the forces of the living world produced individuals of equal strength with far greater frequency, and the only recourse for the Undead was to ‘save up’ their immortal assets for major offensives like this one.

A pair of runners were sent to convey their gambit to Rana Lofar. After preparing their list of candidates and sending runners to each, they went to the northernmost tower to await the results. Beastman camps stretched out for kilometres with many making what they could out of the muddy fields. The gentle slope leading up to the northern ranges offered them an unobstructed view of the front.

“I don’t suppose we’ve had any luck contacting the tribes in the north,” Saraca said.

“We haven’t,” Rana Kizurra said. “While we are a part of the same confederation, those tribes have always been detached from the rest of Rol’en’gorek because they’re not connected to the main river basin. Even if we did try to stage an attack from the north, the logistics of supporting such an effort would be exceedingly difficult.”

“But the call to arms did reach them, right?”

“It should have, but their response would be weeks behind.”

“Looks like they’ve started,” Girika said.

They turned their gazes to the distant front, but without a scout’s senses, it was difficult to tell if anything was going on at all. Saraca pulled a spyglass out of one of his pouches and scanned the wall of fog opposite Rol’en’gorek’s lines.

“Rrrrgh! Why are you being so annoying?!”

High above the battlefield, behind the Sorcerous Kingdom’s lines, Raul fumed impotently at the Beastman defenders. A bank of fog blanketed the fields, covering his forces’ withdrawal to Olga’s lines after another fruitless push. He was allowed to attack from any direction, but the Beastmen had adapted their defences to receive attacks from any direction. Instead of reeling from his offensives, it felt like they were watching them with mild disinterest.

Of course, they probably weren’t actually doing that. It was just how things looked. Raul’s forces were being hampered by crowd control effects that targeted the ground and not the Undead travelling on it, slowing his already-impeded forces to a crawl. This, in turn, afforded the Beastmen ample time to react to every move.

The Elder Liches had no direct counter and trying to counter so many casters was pretty much pointless anyway. As a result, each of his attacks barely did anything. On the bright side, the Beastmen hadn’t been able to do much beyond killing off the few Zombies and Squire Zombies raised from the few Beastmen his squads managed to reach.

Once his forces were safely behind friendly lines, he banked away from the front with a sigh, flying over to where Olga’s Skeletal Dragon was loitering.

“Figure anything out?” He asked.

“Not really,” Olga answered. “I think they got you pretty good.”

Raul was forced to agree. There was only so much that a small force could accomplish with minimal risk. For Olga’s part – and Captain Zahradnik’s – they were maintaining the encirclement and had obscured their forces with a perpetual mist to avoid taking damage from the Beastmen’s skirmishers. Captain Zahradnik had the additional task of keeping Queen Oriculus safe, so most of the attacking was up to Olga and Raul.

After seeing what the Beastmen were capable of, a general advance would probably work. Their orders were to maintain the encirclement where it was and make sorties against the Beastmen, however, so he was left to wrack his brain over what to do.

He eyed the fog left in the wake of his withdrawal. Fog Cloud lasted for a long time, so the morning’s efforts had left patches of it everywhere.

“Send Wraiths into that fog over there,” he pointed to the spot where he had attempted to raid the Beastmen an hour before. “See if the Beastmen went back to where they were.”

Though they were up in the sky, their position as Commanders still put the fog between themselves and the Beastmen. He couldn’t tell exactly where their lines were at a glance. A few minutes later, his adjutant reported its findings.

“No Beastman formations have been detected. However, we cannot say for certain whether any skirmishers have concealed themselves.”

Raul nodded in response. That made sense. So far, the Beastmen were wary of anything that might lead to unnecessary losses. Raul was fixated on the Royal Army’s lines, but that didn’t mean that the Beastman lines were organised according to them.

“Check the other foggy areas,” he said. “Move Squad Twenty-Nine into the one we just checked.”

If all of the foggy areas had become spots from where they could set up attacks, that would have been great. The more they attacked, the more fog there would be and the more confusing things would get for those fighting on the ground. Maybe they could trap Beastmen without needing to reposition their troops.

“Squad Twenty-Nine is in position.”

“Advance southeast,” Raul said. “Use the same parameters as before.”

‘Parameters’ was how the Elder Liches defined the orders they were given, and they adhered to acceptable conditions, various thresholds for mana, ‘health’, force ratios and some other things. As the fighting got more and more chaotic and more things demanded his attention, Raul eventually left a set of parameters for the Elder Liche sergeants to work with while he devoted his energy to broader command. So far, things seemed to be working out, but he worried that the Beastmen would figure those same parameters out and turn them to their advantage somehow.

Squad Twenty-Nine’s Death Knights charged out of the fog. The Death Warriors, Death Priests and Elder Liches lingered in the mist. After fighting them for so long, the Beastmen had unsurprisingly figured out which Undead to attack first. The Elder Liches had become priority targets, followed by the Death Warriors and Death Priests. Any Zombies that were raised were destroyed within seconds.

Entangle spells were immediately placed in the attackers’ path. The Death Knights lurched to a crawl, clumping together to defend themselves from the bullets coming in from every angle but behind. They retreated shortly after, leaving another patch of fog in their wake. He frowned as a thought occurred to him.

Why are we putting down cover after we attack?

They weren’t doing that before, but it had somehow become an established tactic since he started ‘raiding’ after dawn. They would attack, then lay down a fog in reaction to the Beastman skirmishers’ retaliation to cover their retreat.

“Pair up Death Knights with Elder Liches for the next assault. Have them come out and put down Fog Clouds as soon as they can see where they’re casting. Move Squad Twenty-Seven over there,” Raul indicated a spot a few hundred metres away. “For this next attack, the two squads will head for one another. Let’s see if we can trap some Beastmen.”

『The weather will be clearing up shortly. Prepare for the wind to pick up.』

Huh?

Raul looked up. The rain had stopped, but it was still overcast.

“What are your orders?” His adjutant asked.

“Um, continue the attack, but withdraw straight to friendly lines when the time comes. Olga, can you help out?”

“Uh-huh.”

Their attack started, but the Beastmen already knew what they were up to. The ones on the inside of the would-be pocket were evacuating en masse.

“Blanket the area with fog!” Olga ordered, “Mess them up!”

Olga’s Elder Liches came out of the mist, taking advantage of the nearby Beastmen’s change in stance. The triangular section of the field that they were trying to cut off was partially obscured in a blanket of white. Roars of fury and unearthly howls rose from the mist shortly after.

“…are they getting anyone?” Raul asked.

“Yes,” his adjutant answered.

That should have been obvious. The Beastmen wouldn’t trip up their own retreat with crowd control spells, so the squads in the fog were now free to run around and wreak havoc. Raul peered at the Beastman lines, adjusting the lenses of his goggles as he tried to figure out how many had made it through their incomplete trap. The first thing he spotted, however, was a Death Knight.

“Wait, what’s that Death Knight doing?”

“A servitor in Squad Twenty-Nine has lost control. The behaviour is characteristic of a taunt effect.”

This again?

Raul watched as the Death Knight chased a Con through the throngs of Beastmen, which parted in advance to let them through.

“…they’re doing it on purpose!”

“You dishonourable animals!” Olga screeched as she shook both fists in the air.

The Death Knight only continued to recede into the distance. How far were they taking it?

“Squad Twenty-Nine has lost a Death Knight,” his adjutant informed them.

A distant roar of triumph confirmed the statement. Raul clicked his tongue. What could they even do against that?

Before it had happened early in the morning, the idea hadn’t even crossed his mind. Never mind that, in both Re-Estize and the Empire, even basic flanking manoeuvres were considered dishonourable. Against other Humans, at least. The only reason why he didn’t feel terrible doing that sort of thing against the Beastmen was because they did it too.

“We need to move our squads,” Olga said.

Raul looked up at the sky again. Patches of clear blue sky appeared from behind the mountains to the east and the wind was starting to change direction.

“Pull back and get our squads back into the river,” he told his adjutant. “Their taunts won’t hit through the water, right?”

“Now, all of my soldiers are going to be taunted away,” Olga huffed.

“We can’t stay like this,” Raul agreed. “We need to attack or we’ll just be picked apart.”

The sun broke through the clearing weather, and a gust of wind blew their conjured fog up the slope. The Beastmen’s skirmishers immediately started pelting the Undead with bullets. Their squads took shelter behind whatever cover they could find. Raul bit his lip as he tried to think of what else they could do.

“A Death Knight from Squad Four has lost control,” Olga’s adjutant intoned.

“A Death Knight from Squad Twenty-Nine has lost control,” Raul’s adjutant added.

“Death Knights from Squads Seven and Nine have lost control,” Olga’s adjutant spoke again.

“No!” Olga cried, “Nonononono…Raul!”

“What do you want me to do?!”

『All forces, general advance! This experiment is over! Rip open those seams in the Beastman ranks!』

Or they could do that.

The mass of Undead behind their main line came alive as they advanced in unison. Far ahead of them, the infantry squads seemed to chase after their taunted comrades, spilling into the openings created by their passing and tearing into the shocked Beastmen.

“We-we’re in range?” Olga blinked, “Elder Liches, get your spells in! Target any mystics you can find!”

Fireballs started to blossom across the front, punctuated by the occasional bolt of Lightning arcing through the Beastman ranks. The first of the reserve forces – the Wraiths and other spectral Undead that were unimpeded by the difficult terrain – swept into the reeling defenders, adding to the chaos. The lines of the Beastman army started to buckle and disintegrate.

“Squad Thirty has entered the Oriculon and awaits your orders,” Raul’s adjutant informed him.

His gaze went to the glittering Oriculon, not ten kilometres to the south.

“What about the squads on the other side?”

“They should arrive shortly.”

“Wait until everyone’s gathered,” Raul said. “We need to make this as messy as possible. Olga, I’m going.”

Olga only continued to point her fingers everywhere while issuing orders, so she probably didn’t hear him. Raul tightened his grip as his Skeletal Dragon banked south to join the infantry squads in the south. He gaped as he crossed over Captain Zahradnik’s part of the encirclement, where the Beastmen were being utterly destroyed.

There was no better way to put it. A black wave of Death-series Servitors scythed into the Beastman ranks, seemingly uncaring of any retaliation. Occasionally, a Death Priest raised its smoking censer and dozens of Beastmen howled as they crumpled to the ground. The damage that the Undead had taken restored itself, but the Death Knights and Death Warriors took no note as their dark blades scythed endlessly to reap the fields of the living.

Closing in behind them was the Undead horde, a tide of rotting flesh, bleached bones and ghostly spectral forms. The Elder Liches were nowhere to be seen, but in their place was a new type of Undead he had never seen before. Two metres tall, they were covered in disintegrating rags that revealed emaciated bodies covered in weeping sores. Those sores oozed a black ichor that sizzled upon dripping into the mud. That same ichor flowed from their empty eye sockets, and their toothless maws wailed in gurgling sorrow as they shambled forward on lurching steps. Raul suppressed a shudder at the sound.

“What are those?” He asked.

“They are known as Weeps,” his adjutant said. “One of the selections available to Summon Undead V. They are potent melee combatants with high regeneration and poison attacks, but this one believes that they were selected for their aura, which inflicts the Shaken status.”

Just looking at them was creepy. He didn’t want to know what the Beastmen that they were approaching felt.

Raul didn’t see Captain Zahradnik anywhere along the way to the river, so he figured she had concealed herself above the battlefield somewhere. He turned his attention to his own forces, eyeing the Beastman forces as they surged forward to shore up their faltering lines.

“Is everyone ready?”

“All squads are in position and await your orders.”

“Alright,” Raul said. “Let’s make this hurt.”