When Raven and Seris entered the mess hall of the barrack, immediately they heard a voice calling for them.
Turned out it was Owen, who was sitting alone at a table next to the window, his right hand holding a woonden tankard filled with beer. Seris and Raven decided to join Owen, they moved to sit at the same table with him.
It was in the evening, the troops were allowed half a day of R&R* time before beginning to get into actions the day after. Soldiers were having dinner, they were given extra rations, snacks and drinks. Here and there were groups of drunk soldiers collectively singing together a song.
_ You look like you're enjoying yourself, Owen.
Seris commented upon Owen who was taking a sip of beer, which he responded by simply nodding.
_ We were looking for you and I figured that we could find you in the mess hall, so we headed here...
Raven began to speak.
_ Captain, I must thank you for your uplifting speech just now, what a tour de force** of rhetoric delivered.
Owen said with a grin on his face while looking at Raven and not even trying to hide his sarcastic tone. Raven was caught off guard because of Owen's sudden remark, he smiled to buy time for thinking of an answer.
_ Ehm… I think the soldier's morale had sunk so low, so as a commander I found it was approriate to motivate them before we getting our hands bloody.
_ Well said and done. May I ask you a question, captain, what is a commander to you?
Owen asked in a trivial tone. Raven was surprised again because of the subject Owen mentioned out of the blue. He wondered was Owen drunk.
The dishes Seris ordered before were brought to the table by a food delivery staff, she began to dig into the porridge dish. Raven also took a hardtack, bit and crunched half of it before finally coming up with a reply:
_ I think a commander… is someone who guides his men to victory and helps them better surviving on the battlefield.
_ Is that so? Interesting. To me, commanders are merely the ones whose main job is telling their men where and when to die. Like, literally "hey Bob, go die over there".
Raven Cronwell was speechless because of Owen's unique interpretation of the subject. He opened his mouth to protest:
_ That's not really true, isn't it?
_ It has been so and will always be so. If you want to become an even better commander you need first to accept that truth without sugarcoating it.
Hearing out Owen's remark left a sour taste in Raven's mouth. That somehow made him forget his hunger which shortly before making Raven felt he could eat a whole horse. He inadvertedly observing around him, seeing his men who at some points in the future needed to get themselves killed in exchange for victories… No, even if it was true, Raven still felt it was horrifying to accept.
Sensing the mood becoming heavy, especially after Raven had lifted the morale of soldiers up, but thanks to Owen the morale of Raven himself was shaken, Seris – who even though was busy eating, still heard out clearly the exchanges between Owen and Raven – decided to speak out in a somewhat angry and impatient tone:
_ For goodness sake Owen! What the hell are you on about? Aren't we in the middle of having dinner? Is this the time for you to spit a thesis against Cronwell, tutoring him even? Remember who's your superior now, Felford!
Seris was one of the few persons who could shut Owen down. He didn't want to admit it, but he was intidimated every time when Seris raised her voices. From that point onward Owen would rather not risk attempting to influence Raven's mind and decisions whenever Seris was around.
While Owen was looking down at the table's surface and thinking, Seris turned to Raven then said:
_ Raven, why haven't you eaten anything? The meals are about to get cold if you don't start eating them soon.
_ I don't feel like eating.
_ Oh come on, who are you, a kid? Open your mouth, say aahhhh…
Seris spoke, and at the same time about to literally spoonfeed Raven with a spoonful of porridge. Owen's skin broke out in goose bumps because of Seris's lovey-dovey dialogues and actions. He only wanted to burst into laughter loudly, but tried his best to supress it, lying face down on the table to hide his face, but his shaking shoulders still betrayed him.
_ Seris, don't… people will see us.
Raven was embarassed, and afraid his subordinates seeing him being spoonfed, Raven had no choice but quickly eating his meals.
Later that night, the Crow Mercenary Knights Company's command staffs, together with elements of commanding officers from Lukas's army, were summoned to the barrack's war room to discuss the plan.
After a couple of persons having done speaking, it was Owen's turn to demonstrate his own version of the plan:
_ My main point here is simply we need to split our force as soon as possible. As you may have possibly figured out, at the moment Stahlfort is crammed, with three different armies occupying it. That put us at a very disadvantageous stance, and in the event enemies laying siege to it, we would be sitting ducks. I suggest, us Raven's army moving out of Stahlfort, about two miles from here to the north west direction, and we will construct a defensible base with walls, then we occupy and hold that position, right here…
Owen used a stick to point at the map the plot of land where the Crow Mercenary Knights would set up a new base. The terrains there were quite flat, but there was a ridge of rocky hill to the east, and a forest very near it to the North and North West.
Owen continued:
_ By splitting our force and simultaneously occupying two places at the same time, we would have far superior initiative and options in both defend and offense compared to us all continue holing up here. If the enemies attack that new base, the relief troops from Stahlfort will then sally out to help and the enemies will be attacked from two directions. The same thing will happen when enemies choosing to attack Stahlfort, the troops from the base will then move toward Stahlfort and enemies will be sandwitched between the defending force there and Crow Mercenay Knights relief force. Either way by that time the enemies will have already lost the element of surprise, and we can counterattack them using the force coming from the position not under siege…
_ What about the situation when the enemies simultaneously besiege and assault both the positions of the newly built base and Stahlfort, commander…uhm… ah, Felford?
Captain Lukas interrupted Owen and asked with a doubtful voice. Lukas looked like he was in better shape compared to the day before, probably not being drunk helped.
Owen answered Lukas with a somewhat unpleasant expression because he was interrupted:
_ Relax, I was about to mention that very situation. If the enemies attack or besiege both of our positions at the same time, they themselves will have to split their own force, while both defensive position having the advantages provided by fortifications. Stahlfort only needs the force the size a fifth of the total mumber of troops we're having here to occupy and operate its defensive mechanics, more than that will be redundant, and as a result most of the force won't even see combat, unless we open the gate to sally out and meet them on the field face to face, which only serves to negate the advantages fortifications provide us with.
So if the enemies attack both the base and Stahlfort, they will have to deal with a totally larger amount of troops who participate in combat at the same time, in both numbers and percentages, and we can inflict more damage upon them, all compared to the result we will get based on how we're currently positioning our forces. We will see their assaults waste against our walls like waves from the sea below crashing against a cliff!
_ Excellent! I know I can trust you, commander.
Raven openly praising Owen after he had demonstrated his plan.
Owen answered with a mischievous grin:
_ You think so? The plan can even be better than what I already described. We can improvise it if we do this…like this…
After having heard out the improvised portion of the plan from Owen, Raven couldn't help but exclaim:
_ Owen, only you can come up with this viciously cunning ploy. Good, very good!
The plan was adopted, after some small modifications being done to it - stemming from suggestions made by various commanding officers present there…
Suddenly loud sounds of alarms could be heard everywhere. The command staffs were surprised. The alarms annoucing an enemy attack, and the whole base was woken from their sleep.
It was a little chaotic outside, soldiers grabbing weapons and wearing armors then rushing outside without any sense of coherency or coordination….
After the situation was stabilized and brought under control, 43 men were found dead. The lizardmen lost only about a dozen of their number, the majority of them had safely retreated. Some buildings were torched but the fire was put out in time. The enemies decided to infiltrate in that night when many soldiers were drunk and tired after partying hard when they R&R, so security was much more lax, the troops also became more vulnerable targets than normal.
Raven felt angry because of dead soldiers caused by the lizardmen's daring raid. Again, they had shown themselves to be worthy enemies, not to mention they had still had the upperhand thus far. Raven observed when Corporal Frank Castor, leader of the recon teams, who was gathering the bodies of the perished soldiers and put them together in the backyard. Raven could hear Casor saying something to the corpses:
_ Rest in peace, brothers. I promise tomorrow we will avenge your deaths, tenfold!
In the morning, when the sun had not even risen, the Crow Mercenary Knights company had already departed. They couldn't sleep after the incident last night. The Company rapidly marched to the position the commanding officers had decided before.
When they had arrived, they proceeded to chop down the trees from the forests nearby, then used them as materials to build the base. Siegemaster Lysander directed the building process, resulted in the processes of constructions being executed very quickly and efficiently.
At dusk, Raven met up with Frank to hear his report as planned before. The hair and outfits of the leader of the recon teams having many leaves and small twigs on them – as if he had been lying idly in the bushes the whole day.
_ Captain, I'm here to report the results of my mission. As you have anticipated, I and my men have detected that the lizards did secretly spy on our tree logging and fortification construction projects. We told everyone to ignore the lizards even in the situations when they happended to spot one. Two times a wretched lizard creeped past right in front of the place where I hid but it couldn't spot me.
Raven nodded in acknowledgment and answered:
_ Well done, Corporal. Now relay this news to Commander Felford immediately. Tell him to prepare for the next phase of operation.
Raven sighed in relief. He would be worried if instead the lizardmen ignored the projects being done by his Company.
The constructions were completed after only a day. The four wooden walls and some wooden sentry towers were erected. The tents were set up. Many banners were also flew alongside the walls and on the roofs of towers.
When the sky went dark, Raven ordered the soldiers to put the humanoid shaped decoys - which they had secretly made inside the tents before - at everywhere: inside the sentry towers, in front of and inside of the tents… The decoys were made mostly by straw, they also wore soldier clothes and could even hold weapons.
Then the majority of the Crow Mercenary Knights was ordered to… secretly and silently move out of the base they had just built. The ordinary soldiers were surprised because of that order, but they obeyed and moved out of the base in darkness.
Raven Cronwell instructed the soldiers:
_ Remember to undress your armors and holding them on your hands, otherwise those armors would make noises as you were moving while still wearing them.
The Crow Mercenary Knights then moved a short distance from the base, and hid behind the rocky ridge located nearby. The soldiers were ordered to wear their armor again, and were told to rest at the same place.
A small portion of soldiers was ordered to stay inside the base, most of them stationed near the center of the base, surrounding a secret underground tunnel – the route which they could escape through.
The underground tunnel was secretly dug when the base was still under construction and the other exit led to half the way toward the direction of the ridge. The tunnel would provide the soldiers inside an escape route, or to the soldiers from the outside that would serve as a way to move to the inside of the base without being seen.
Late at night, suddenly above the base appeared two flaming arrows arched through the dark sky, signaled the base was under attack by the enemies!
The officers quickly roused the men up, the army began to lit their torches, then they were ordered to rush to the direction of the base in a hurry. The cavalry detatchment under Lieutenant Yves de Croix-Rivière was the first to reach the base and surrounded it, guarding the gates of the base.
Then the infantry followed and entered the gates leading to inside the base. They encountered the surprised lizardmen, who entered the base before, only to find it was vacant. Even though being surprised, the lizardmen didn't simply fell into despair and surrendered, instead they decided to put up a desperate resistance.
Many of those lizardmen having very different color compared to the "normal" ones. Their skin was black and white, they were extremely good at stealth, and they combated with much greater effectiveness than the "ordinary" ones.
Raven contemplated that the enemies had mobilized their elite units for this secret base raid attempt. When he turned around a corner, Raven could see a lizardman who was about to burn a pile of wooden crates with a torch. Raven coldly told the lizardman:
_ Please, allow me to help you.
Raven swung his sword, sending an air blade flying fast toward the crates. The shockwave sliced through two crates at once, revealed the content inside them: empty.
The lizardman realized the crates and other containers which it and other lizardmen had burned in this base before were in fact empty or contained nothing of value. The burned containers didn't contain the human's supplies like what the lizarmen initially thought. They were just decoys, and the human's supplies were simply not stored in this base to begin with.
Enraged, the lizardman quickly charged at Raven, and swiftly earned the deserving demise it asked for.
The Crow Mercenary Knights steadily moved together in large groups and taking down the much smaller teams of lizardmen en masse. The large group formations made the lizardmen's ambushing and sneak attacking skills became ineffective.
Desperate, the lizardmen who had survived thus far all gathered at one place to make a last stand attempt. They were surrounded by human soldiers with the odds of 6-to-1 against them. The lizardmen threw javelins at soldiers approaching them.
Owen ordered the soldiers to temporarily back down, away from the maximum range of enemy's javelins, but of course still maintaining the encirclement. Then he ordered anyone with a crossbow or bow to aim and shoot at the lizardmen.
The fighting had became target practicing. Many soldiers armed with bows shot fire arrows and the ones with crossbows shot the normal bolts. Both achieved their intended effects: the fire arrows burned enemies and dramatically demoralized them through shocks and pains caused by the combination of fire and arrows.
In contrary to the fire arrows, the bolts shot from crossbows didn't deliver flames, but in the darkness of night, the flying projectiles became near invisible, and so, in unison with the visible fire arrows, the invisible "night bolts" hit the enemies and they couldn't anticipate when would they be hit, which also shocked and demoralized them.
After a large number of them became casualties, not to mention the hopless situation they had found themselves in, the lizardmen finally decided that they had had enough. They threw their weapons away, put their empty hands high up, signaling they wanted to surrender. Raven Cronwell ordered the soldiers to stop firing their projectiles, then taking the surrendered enemies into custody.
After the fight, the Company only suffered neliglible casualties. It marked the first victory for Raven's army in this war. Even the better, they had beaten the lizardmen in their own game!
The whole thing was basically a plot within a plot. The plan worked based upon the assumption that the enemies would attack that night. The lizardmen had been conducting night raids thus far and there was no reason they wouldn't continue doing that. And what could be a better time to strike than in the same day the enemies just set up their new base – after a long day the humans had exhausted themselves because of the tasks such as materials gathering, materials transporting and constructing, not to mention other preparations to make the base usable.
And the lizardmen did just that, and then they found themselves entrapped, or in another words, getting ambushed by the very persons they tried to ambush. The twist was that whole elaborated base building project was a scheme which mainly served to provoke the lizardmen to attack it at the first place.
After that victory, however, everyone couldn't afford to celebrate for long. Intelligence reported that they had spotted large numbered lizardmen columns approaching. The size of that force was simply too big for either the Crow Mercenary Knights Company or the stationed army at Stahlfort to handle alone.
Even so, this course of action was still already anticipated. After such defeat which resulted in the total loss of the number of lizardmen committed to the raid attempt, they would get angry and bold, itching for a rematch.
Fully aware of the new situation, the Company's command staffs agreed to abandon the newly constructed base, burning the walls, then moved back to Stahlfort and rendezvoused with Colonel Sturm's garrisons and what remained of Captain Lukas's army.
The main army of lizardmen had arrived, the highest number Velder had ever seen since the Bethma lizardmen uprising erupted. They occupied the position opposite to Stahlfort, and stretched into a defensive line so long that it would be impossible to outmaneuver them.
The lizardmen's formation was not only long, but also had depth as well. There was a large amount of reserve units behind the front line.
In total, even after their previous defeat against Crow Mercenary Knights Company, they still outnumbered the human side as least 6-to-1, and that army didn't even include all of the forces the lizardmen had at their disposal, rather it only reflected the number of which they made themselves known thus far.
Raven was fully aware of the situations the human forces were in. The upcoming battle would be a decisive one, which could either turn the tide of the war effort in favor of the Velder side, or the end of this offensive and subsequently Bethma could be lost. The strength of the enemies looked intimidating, however Raven also realized they had thrown away their greatest advantages: they stopped employing the extremely effective guerilla warfare tactics and strategies they had followed thus far, to conduct a pitched, frontal battle against the Velder forces.
Maybe they had lost their patiences, because of their last defeat, they became skeptical of their own guerilla warfare doctrine? Or rather because of having such a huge amount of troops at their disposal, they needed to finish the war as quickly as possible because they simply weren't wealthy enough to feed and paying the wages for that many units in case the war dragged out further?
Either way, whether in guerilla or conventional warfare, Raven Cronwell felt he couldn't afford to underestimate the lizardmen. As what was shown regarding latest lizardmen deployments, there was almost nothing which could lead to the conclusion that the lizardmen were any less capable in conventional warfare than the asymetric warfare they had embraced.
The next day, the lizardmen sent a delegate - they wanted to discuss some terms. After some discussions, human side agreed to hear them out. Raven, Lukas and some officers, escorted by Yves and 50 horsesmen, agreed to meet the leaders of the lizardmen.
Each side moved to the neutral ground amidst Stahlfort and lizardmen army's position. The lizardmen's commanders had 50 Saurus with them as escorts – the bigger, but dumb as rock cousins of the lizardmen.
First they discussed the term of prisoner exchanging. Turned out that many of Bethma garrisoning troops and Lukas's soldiers were still alive, just that they were kept as prisoners in lizardmen's hands. After negotiations, they agreed upon the exchange rate of 3 lizardmen prisoners for each human prisoners. However Raven didn't have enough lizardmen prisoners to exchange for all of human prisoners. He wanted to postpone the prisoner exhange business to after the upcoming battle.
The lizardmen's leader then offered Raven a truce which they called "Peace with honor": all of Velder forces, including Stahlfort garrisons, would be allowed to retreat back to Velder in safety, then human civilians would be deported back to Velder as well, and Velder would revoke all territory claims it had regarding Bethma, and lastly, Bethma would turn back to be the territory of confederation of lizardmen tribes "like the good old days" – the lizardmen's leader termed it.
Raven Cronwell tried his best to keep his cool and rejected all of those terms. Raven frankly told them: to begin with he simply had no authorization to decide most of the subjects the lizardmen's leader offered. Raven even politely suggested the lizardmen's leaders sending a letter to the monarch of Velder to negotiate those terms.
Lastly they agreed to fight in a set piece battle the day after. The two parties departed back to their own side's positions.
The human troops were already well prepared, whether physically or mentally, for the upcoming battle. Some previously wounded soldiers from Lukas's army were also already healed and could take part in the upcoming clash. Raven's army was eager to fight and they were still excited after their last victory. Meanwhile Lukas' army wanted to settle the score with the lizardmen who had kicked them around last time.
A feast was organized, soldiers were allowed extra rations and snacks. Though this time the amount each allowed to drink was lowered, so that they wouldn't become too drunk and losing stamina for the battle tomorrow, moreover they didn't want a sucessful lizardmen night raid to occur again.
As usual, the commanding officers prepared the plan for the upcoming battle. This time Raven Cronwell came up with a detailed plan he had envisioned. Raven used a map, a stick and miniatures to demonstrate the maneuvers they would perform:
_ My force will be the main fighting force here. Lukas, your men will be the reserve. We will sally out of Stahlfort, to here. Because enemies have the advantage in number, they will form a long line formation, and we wouldn't be able to outflank them because of that. Not only so, we also will have to form a long line to match theirs so that in turn they wouldn't be able to easily outflank us, but our line will be thinner because we have less units.
We will form four lines. Yes, you didn't mishear it, I said four lines. The first line includes all of the cavalry. The second line includes all of the bowmen and crossbowmen. The third line includes all of the skirmishers and light infantry. The fourth line includes all of the heavy infantry. The second and third line will be thinner and looser than the fourth line, with gaps inside each of those lines, so in fact they resemble dashed lines instead of ordinary lines. Can you imagine in your heads what I have just said yet? Captain Lukas, your men will be in charge of forming the reserve, plugging any hole in the fourth line'sformation when the lizardmen finally breaking through them…
Suddenly a soldier came into the room and reported:
_ Sir, the transporting boats have arrived. They're docking on this side of the Liffey river, in the port of Stahlfort.
Raven was delighted upon hearing that news, he smiled and told a nearby commanding officer:
_ Tomorrow morning, before the battle starts, evacuate all of the wounded soldiers using those boats and transporting them across the Liffey and unloading them at the opposite riverside, then tell those boats to return to this riverside of Bethma and wait for my next order.
(To be continued)
Notes:
*R&R: abbreviation for "rest and recuperation", a military slang. The term is used to denote the time periods in which the soldiers are allowed to rest and free to do their private activities.
**tour de force: French phrase, literally meaning "feat of strength". The phrase is often used to describe an achievement or performance that shows great skill and attracts admiration.
Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading. I welcome and expect any feedback from you, so please do.
As for the content, initially I intended to cram 2 battles into this chapter, but the chapter became more lengthy than anticipated, so I only managed to fit 1 battle into it. If so then this series has a high chance to have 4 chapters instead of just 3.