Chapter 2:
Battle of Samsooth City (Part 1)
Commanding Lord(s): None. Forces of Ylissean army under command of Grandmaster Robin.
First Generation Elibean Heroes serve as auxiliary troops under the command of Lords Eliwood, Hector, and Lyn.
The days following the battle at the Feroxi border were difficult ones for Grandmaster Robin, to say the least. Writing the reports for what was both the famed Tactician's first major loss, both Tactical and Strategic, the loss for an entire garrisoned force of troops AND the wanton slaughter and enslavement of an entire town was an unenviable task. Recent events being a significant blow to Robin's pride, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
The movements of the Rat-men, had been constantly moving southward after the taking of Seravant. The next city in their path was the old city of Samsooth, whose mountainous surroundings and steep walls promised to make for a defend-able location. Recording the first-hand information that the surviving Einherjars from the battle at the border recovered, Robin decided to keep tabs on the Rat-Men's movements via pegasus knights. Not wanting to risk losing more personnel than he had already, he opted to make use of the first generation Elibean heroes for this battle, so as not to sacrifice an additional regiment should the battle go south.
(Part 1)
The wind in the Samsooth mountain's sky was sharp and brisk, stinging the uncovered faces of the pegasus knights of Ylisse. Though few birds flew over these cold mountains, such terrain made for the natural environment for the pegasi and their riders.
There were around 60 Pegasus Knights in the reconnaissance company that had set out, led by their weathered Captain Mahnya, a veteran of the First Plegian war against Ylisse. Alongside them, but nevertheless removed from their overall formation rode the flying heroes of Elibe, merely three falcoknights and two wyvern lords. Though the numbers of their auxiliary forces were small, they had proven themselves in earlier raids, and each of the Einherjar fought with a strength above an entire squad of Ylissean fliers. Although at first the recon squadron had been led by the Einherjars, support for their usage and faith in their capacities as leaders dwindled when word of what happened in Seravant got out. Fiora and her companions were demoted to auxiliary troops to ease the soldier's worries.
The pegasus squadron had been tasked with running reconnaissance on the Rat-Men's advance through the Samsooth Mountains, as they had only recently begun to make their way towards the city. In preparation for any and all engagements between the forces f Ylisse and the mysterious Rat-men, this was taking advantage of the Rat-Men's lack of aerial troops, which Robin had noted as a defining factor in Eirika's survival in the border battle.
Captain Mahnya led the formation over the mountains, her pegasus fleeting over the air as if the frigid air was no obstacle to it. Gliding through turbulent air currents smoothly, she had a vantage point over the mountain range as the sun set over it. Over the distance, Mahnya could see the Rat-Men army's advance, they had little cohesion, and had many stragglers. As Mahnya considered whistling an attack formation on the stragglers, one of her forward fliers blew her air-whistle, which the knights used to communicate through the harsh mountain winds, calling her attention. When she turned to see her, she saw that a village on a cliffside overlooking the valley the rat-men were passing had ignored their summons to evacuate to the fortified city, and instead set up their own, flimsy, defenses.
Mahnya called down her fellow riders to descent upon the town, the radiant sight of descending milky white pegasi reflecting off the sunset, and diverting the amount of Rat-Men approaching the village to increase from a mere trickle of stragglers, to a significant force.
The pegasus knights were greeted with cheers upon their arrival. The villagers greeting the soldiers with open arms. Mahnya, who was wearing the regalia of command, then approached a burly man who seemed to hold some manner of importance, judging by how his fellows stood by him.
"You in charge here?" asked Mahnya, getting off her pegasus.
The man then said, "Yeah. As in charge as anyone can be in this predicament. What brings you to our village? We thought you'd forgotten about us when you holed up in the city."
"We ordered an evacuation!" said Mahnya sternly. "Why are so many of you still here?"
"We couldn't get out in time." said the man. "We have been hit by a plague. You'll see this is the reason I am in charge. Our elder was one of the first hit. His eyes became jelly, and his bones seeped through his skin. Too few of our men are still alive to get the women and children to the city safely. This is worse than the Risen. These rat-men fight too dirty."
"I understand." said the Captain. She then called forward her lieutenants to consult further action. Stepping away from the village representative she began to discuss amongst her comrades their next course of action.
"Lieutenant!" said Mahnya, calling her comrade to attention, "What news have you heard about the plague? Beyond that, have we enough Pegasi to evacuate the entire villace?" The captain had already made the sufficient mental calculations to come to her own conclusion, but she sorely wished to be proven wrong. The fact that they lacked a variety of options only made the situation even more uncomfortable.
"We don't, Captain. Even if we were to take three villagers each on our Pegasi, it would not be enough." she then leaned in and spoke in a harsh whisper. "Besides, I wouldn't want to carry most of these villagers. Many of the villages have been hit by plagues our healers have had no luck at all curing. Even the most advanced staffs cannot calm their disease. Taking them to the city would be a bad idea."
Mahnya contemplated her options in silence. If she and her knights left all the people behind, she would never forgive herself. Surely she could save at least the healthy villagers?
It was then that amidst her musings, her eye was caught by the Einherjars conversing amongst themselves. Phantoms conversing about long-dead topics. The captain suddenly had an idea then. She called them over to her position, as well as her lieutenant.
"I've an idea," she said to the gathered soldiers. The footsteps of the enroaching Rat-Men beginning to sound even behind the makeshift battlements of the villagers. "We will take your healthy. Pack provisions and the bare essentials. My knights will fly you across the mountains. We cannot take you near Samsooth City. It will soon be under siege. But we can give you a sizable distance from the Rat-beasts. Enough so that you can get to Menedy and then to Ysstol if need be."
"What will we do?" asked Fiora, the phantom Falcoknight who was the leader of the three legendary pegasus sisters, and had command over the two Wyvern Riders of Eliwood's army.
"Yours will be the most difficult job." said Mahnya. "Whilst I lead the evacuation of the village, you and your companions must ride against the Rat-Men and hold them back from the village walls for as long as you can. When I give the order, you will then fall back and accompany us on our final departure. You must hold them off until we can do at least two runs."
"Understood," said the blue haired knight. Before taking off alongside her companions. Their takeoff making a resounding 'thud' against the ground.
Mahnya then turned to her lieutenant and told her, "Gather the healthy children first. I'll go inspect the walls and see how long they'll hold. Fly over the mountains and head south," she said as she pointed at a mountain pass that while easily maneuverable in the air, was nigh impossible to traverse by foot as the Rat-Men were advancing.
As her subordinates had begun to take off after rounding up all the children they could, she heard a terrible thundering sound. No doubt the Rat-Men were already nearing the village's walls. In the time after she had ordered her knights to round up potential survivors, she had then proceeded to inspect the walls. She found the village's resident hunters and still-able fighters taking up defensive positions. Though she knew their position was a doomed one, she could not resist commending the thirty or so gathered men for preparing to throw themselves against the vermin-tide for the sake of their families.
When the pegasus riders took off with their charges, a terrible scream was heard from soldier and villager alike as they both saw the Rat-Men from their perch in the sky. Taking off into the air herself, Mahnya opted to forego aiding in the evacuation in favor of helping the Elibean heroes thin the vermintide. What she saw made her face pale and made her nearly drop the reins of her saddle mid-flight.
The beasts that marched towards the village were not the mere man-sized rats she had seen from afar. But rather a detachment of monstrous vermin that stood out from their few "normal" sized counterparts. These abominations were lead by odd, misshapen (for rat-beasts anyways) figures, who stood out from both the standard rat-man and rat-behemoth.
Mahnya the frantically sought out her comrades, quickly finding the trio of Pegasus Sisters preforming a concentrated attack on one of the behemoths, narrowly taking it down.
The two wyvern riders were having much less luck. The female wyvern rider was throwing her spears around desperately attempting to fell one rat-behemoth, whilst the male wyvern rider was running the smaller rat-men through with his sword, the Killer Lance he was previously wielding jutting out of a dead rat-behemoth's head.
Her spirits kindled by the efforts of the Einherjar, Mahnya blew her whistle and called a detachment of two knights away from evacuation duty to act as her guard. Mahnya wished fervently to fight alongside the Elibean legends, rat-ogres be damned. With that, the Ylissean pegasus knights descended from the sky and the trio struck as one at one of the charging rat-abominations who had begun to finish their ascent up the cliff. The three fell upon the monster feverishly, stabbing and slashing with spear and sword. Mahnya fought as she had never before in her life. She stabbed at the monster with a ferocity that had not been present when fighting fellow man.
This excitement would not last, however. As mere moments after the three riders managed to behead the beast, another one took it's place, grasping Mahnya's right guard from her saddle and crushing her against the ground. Mahnya's other escort was then thrown off her pegasus when one of the misshapen figures caught it with its stick. The pegasus rider barely had time to get on her feet before being torn apart by the smaller rats as they swarmed her. Upon seeing this, Mahnya pulled her pegasus higher out of their reach, and her spirits sank. In her grief, she neglected to notice the Skaven sharpshooter that had been taking aim at her since she had first brought down the first rat-ogre, and did not hear his rifle fire (Not that she would have been able to identify it). The captain would feel an intense pain suddenly erupt from her breast as she was then thrown violently off the saddle.
Her pegasus made little attempts at rescuing her, as it was caught off the air by a rat-abomination soon after. Mahnya was sent sprawling into the ground, nearly blacking out from the blow, but relatively unharmed save for the gaping wound in her chest. She attempted to stand on her feet, but was set upon by rat-men as soon as she had unsheathed her sword.
Though she was hurt, she was still a capable soldier, and so quickly got to work keeping the rats at bay. She was a bit put-off however by the fact that for all her efforts, she wasn't doing any real damage. None of the rats fell dead, some bled, and others still took to blocking her attacks with crude wooden shields. When she finally killed one, three more took its place, snapping and swinging their swords wildly. Suddenly, from amongst their ranks she saw they were pushing out units, probably a shift in tactics. Mahnya gripped her blade to prepare to deal with this foe, but was shocked to see that what came for where were not more rats, but shackled human slaves who proceeded to tackle her and pin her to the ground. As she prepared to resign herself to her death, as the rat-men were hungrily approaching her with their weapons bared, a spear fell from the air, impaling the rat-man closest to her.
Mahnya looked up weakly and saw that one of the Einherjar, Vaida the wyvern lord, had come to her aid. She then felt herself be pulled up into the back part of a saddle. When she looked, she saw the green hair of the male Wyvern Lord, Heath. With Mahnya secured, the two took off quickly, just as the rat-giants were coming in to strike at them.
"Have either of you seen how much of the evacuation is completed?" asked Mahnya, gripping her throbbing chest. "We cannot let them through until we've evacuated everyone!"
"They're nearly finished, ma'am." said Heath. It appeared to Mahna that the Einherjar were beginning to pull back. Though they were bound by the cards to follow orders, it seemed they had some level of self preservation. Mahnya shuddered, how many times did they die through history before King Chrom found them?
Her thoughts were violently interrupted though, when Heath's head then burst open from a bullet entering from beneath his right ear and shattering his cranium. sending the wyvern careening off the air. Mahnya knocked the lifeless, dissipating Heath off the saddle and attempted to take the reins of the beast. However, upon the Einherjar's death, the wyvern began to dissipate back into card form, falling from the sky as its wings ceased to exist. Mahnya pulled on the thinning reins and crash-landed the wyvern into the cliff-side a good 60 meters or so from the advancing Rat-Men.
Mahnya looked back at the oncoming storm and grabbed the Einherjar of Heath off the ground, running up the cliff, hoping to reach the village before the beasts. She looked back at the still-fighting Einherjar, but was distraught when she saw only two of them remained, the eldest of the Pegasus Sisters, and the female wyvern rider. The ratmen were no longer even slightly hindered by their opponents.
The captain then felt a pain in her chest. There was no way in hell her wound was not festering from the rat-men's damage. She felt her chest throb and knew she'd be dead if she didn't find a healer soon.
She eventually reached the village's gates, and they opened a tiny bit, just enough for her to pass through before slamming shut and the villagers opening fire on the rat-men who were following Mahnya. The captain looked around once inside, and was glad to see that the evacuation had been completed, her comrades in arms standing in the village center, searching for healthy stragglers. She rushed to join them. Her chest hurt bitterly, she coughed into the ground and felt a warm liquid eject from her mouth, blood. Not resigning herself to a pitiable death, she barked, "Healer! Now!" to her troops, calling her lieutenant over to fix her wound, as being a Falco-Knight, she had been equipped with a stave before heading out.
"Give me a situation report." said Manhya as she felt her wound closing up. She still felt internal damage, but that would have to wait for another time, if she could survive that long.
"The village has been evacuated of all healthy civilians, and they are on their way to Menedy as we speak."said the young lieutenant.
"Have any contingents of the rat-men followed them?"
"None that we've observed. But our own retreat seems to be a tad more difficult. The rat-men have set themselves up around the village and have aimed at the air around us. They seem to have rapid bows. The Einherjar have already been wiped out. We can neither stay nor leave without incurring heavy casualties."
Upon hearing this news, Mahnya only stared at the ground, and then at her soldiers. They looked tired, but not exhausted. Though they had seen little combat today, they had been forced into minor skirmishes for the past week with hardly a full night's rest. Half of their company had already been wiped out, with the Einherjar supposed to supplant at the very least 20 soldiers each. In Mahnya's eye, her surviving soldiers were in no condition to battle, much less fly through the bloodbath awaiting them in the skies. Nevertheless she looked her lieutenant in the eye and told her to gather the other commanding officers, as she had new orders for them.
It did not take long for the squad leaders to show up, and Mahnya began to tell them of her plan to retreat. They would fly out of the village quickly and in low altitudes so as to distract the fire from the rat-men. As soon as they were clear they were to reach as high an altitude as possible, circle around to make a final gauge of the enemy forces, and then retreat to the city. Having said the instructions, her officers saluted her and were off to relay the orders to their squads. Mahnya hitched a ride on one of the younger and lighter recruit's pegasus, hoping the young beast could manage both their weights.
As soon as the orders were relayed, the riders were off. And not a moment too soon, as the walls did not last long against the rats. The sick hunters and fighters were no match for the horde, and were defeated in minutes. Only about 25 pegasi had taken off when the rats began to near. The remaining pegasus knights broke formation and took to the skies hurriedly, getting hit head on by the Skaven snipers. Of the 60 Pegasus knights who had come to the village, only 18 got through the rat-man blockade.
Mahnya looked down at the carnage from her position in the sky, and mourned her comrades. She pondered if the information on the new rat-men units and the villagers they had barely managed to rescue were worth the loss of her soldiers and the Einherjar in battle. That was not a question she was sure she wanted an answer to.