Firefly Light

Chapter 9

They had lain in ambush for over three hours. It was well past sunrise, but nothing was heard on the road and the scouts watching it from the trees had given no signal yet. The scouts they had joined, who had been watching the town, were at least able to confirm that the main enemy force had not stirred to this point, so they were still inside the walls of Deephaven. Had he guessed wrong? Joseph asked himself. Would it be a day or two more before they started to move, or were they even now waiting for reports to come back from their scouts? That would just screw up everything. The odds that this large a force would remain undetected were dropping by the hour. The attack had to come today. If nothing happened by noon, they would have to redeploy and march directly on the town, even if it were fully manned.

.........But no, one of the scouts finally dropped a pine cone and when he had the attention of the officers made a hand signal that meant the enemy was in sight, marching in our direction. The scouts slithered down out of the trees and rejoined their units in order to take part in the attack. Word spread through the soldiers lying on the ground and they gripped their swords and shields tighter, soon the enemy would be theirs. The tension and excitement in the air were palpable. Joseph had the 23rd Regiment and half of the 24th Regiment on his side of the road and Diana was commanding the 25th Regiment with half of the 24th Regiment on the opposite side. They could not see or hear each other, which is the way they wanted it. Joseph would blow two whistles, one immediately after the other. He would blow the first time to alert her and the second to actually start the attack. She would sound off after she heard the first whistle, so the attacks would start simultaneously. The other officers, company commanders and above, were also to blow their whistles at that moment all along the lines. He assumed the same thing was happening at this very moment at Morgans Retreat, at least he sure hoped so.

The enemy came trudging up the road in no particular formation, led by several men and women on horseback. They were the only horses the bandits apparently had, except for the ones their scouts had taken, and those used to pull the supply wagons. They were an unkempt bunch, unshaven and dirty, dressed in crude, homemade clothing for the most part, but they had decent looking armor and arms. For all the world, they looked exactly like old images of the ancient Vikings and probably had the same level of coarseness and cruelty. Hidden merely yards away, Joseph's soldiers saw glimpses between the trees of the mangy bunch as they plodded on, obediently trailing their leaders.

Silas and his band were positioned at the opening of the trap to anchor the line. Joseph had placed himself and the Praetorian company at the very end of the line in order to take out the leaders. 'Cut off the head and the rest of the snake will die' was one of the axioms he had learned in the Royal Otani War College, and he planned for the head to die at the very beginning of this battle. He had selected a part of the road that had a little bit of a clearing around it and had his archers ready.

They were moving at a walking pace and it seemed to take forever for their entire line to crawl though the length of the trap. Finally, Joseph spotted the group of leaders slowly approaching his position. There were four men and three women. The leader was a large, vicious looking man with a full beard and a bad scar on the left side of his head that crossed his lips and distorted his face. He was clearly a dangerous man. It occurred to Joseph, that, in a heroic world, their armies would be meeting in a field in open battle and he would be battling that brute, mano-a-mano. But this was the real world, and this was how war was conducted in the real world. That man would never see Joseph's face and his army stood no chance.

He whispered and made hand signals to assign specific targets to his men. Everyone would get their fair share of arrows.

As the enemy party came into the firing zone, the king placed the metal whistle in his lips and raised his right arm. The armored Praetorians around him tensed and one hundred arrows, tipped with bodkin points, armor piercing arrowheads, were silently drawn in their eastern recurve bows. All Guards are elite archers, there would be no misses. Those seven leaders would be pincushions in a second.

Things were about to happen very quickly. Time seemed to slow down. Joseph drew a deep breath. His arm dropped, the bow strings hummed, the air instantly filled with arrows whining the short distance to their targets and thumping home in mass. He put the lungful of air through the whistle and drew another breath for next blast. Seven arrow packed figures started to slide off of their untouched mounts. They had not been able to utter so much as even a whimper. He blew the whistle the second time and heard it repeated at the same instant all along the line on both sides of the road. The regimental drums and bagpipes split the air with the driving beat of the Royal Otani Army war song. Cries of alarm were now coming from the milling and stunned enemy.

As a single beast, its training now taking over and removing all thought, the gray and steel clad army rose from its place of hiding and charged forward, screaming its war cry, crashing into the flanks of the enemy at full speed. The world exploded in fury, screams, blood, death.

With the din of battle becoming heavy in the air, Joseph and his company drew their swords and charged past the bodies of the fallen leaders to attack the confused enemy soldiers that had been following them. They were quickly and hotly engaged in brutal hand to hand combat.

Confusion reigned in the hot air of the July morning, the clamor of metal upon metal, the orders of the officers and sergeants, the screams and cries of the fallen and dying, the beating drums and shrieking bagpipes all combined to create the roar of war. But this was not going to be over as quickly as the Otanies would like. Although taken utterly by surprise, in an impossible tactical position and now leaderless, the enemy had no cowards in their ranks. These were hard men and women, forged into human iron by a world of pain and suffering. They did not break. The brigands rallied and fought back. Steel rang on steel, swords split shields, sundered flesh and splattered blood.

While they fought back ferociously, and bloodied the Otani army, the outcome of the engagement was never really in question. Fighting back to back against a better trained and equipped foe attacking them from either side they had no chance and finally started to fall in large numbers. They fought to the last, defending from dwindling pockets, trying their best to make their attackers pay for their deaths in blood.

Finally, the last of them went down and the slaughter ended. Tired Otani soldiers looked upon a blood covered scene of carnage, bodies on top of bodies, something that you might expect to see in Hell. The attack and battle were over in forty minutes........but it had seemed like hours. The army, realizing the victory was theirs started to cheer all along the road.

The mission, however, was still not finished. This was only the first part, the town was next. It was still morning, they had time left in the day, so Joseph ordered for the regiments to reassemble and take time for a late breakfast, bind wounds and to rest. The supply wagons were to be brought up and the assault ladders constructed at the bivouac deployed to the units to carry them. He ordered a staff meeting for company commanders and above and sent word out for them to meet at his present location as soon as possible.

It took a while to reach the officers and get them to join him due to some of the chaos and the length of the battlefield. Diana showed up early, excited and talkative from the victory. She was quickly followed up by a loudly celebrating Silas. He was covered with blood, but, thankfully, none of it was his. After they were all assembled Joseph congratulated them on a job well done. He asked for a casualty report and was very satisfied to find that they had suffered only light losses. The ArmaCloth had performed very well in addition to the regular metal armor.

After that he wanted a report from the commander of the cavalry force, Major Han. Han's cavalry had been hidden behind a hill at the end of the Otani line nearest the town. They had been placed there to run down and eliminate any enemy troops left out of or escaping the trap. He did not want any of them escaping to warn the town and give them more time to prepare a defense. "Well, Major Han, what is your report?" Han cleared his throat, "We moved out of our hiding place when we heard the whistles, as ordered, and wheeled around the hill we had been positioned behind. When the road came into view, we could see that the enemy's line had been longer than our trap. At least two companies of the enemy were outside of our attack. One of their sergeants was starting to organize them to counterattack against Prince Silas' rear. We charged immediately. My troopers engaged and destroyed them. Against charging cavalry, some of the enemy broke and ran, but we chased them all down.....none escaped." Joseph was clearly pleased, "Very well done, major, thank you." He looked over the gathering of officers, ".....and thanks to all of you for a great victory. Now, let's finish this job." The assembly broke into a cheer, which was spontaneously picked up by the nearby troops and in seconds the forest was echoing with their victory cries.

G