AN: Sorry about the delay
ooOoo
We crested a hill near Selhorys to find the Golden Company arrayed before us with mathematical precision. I had to admit, it was impressive. They had known we were coming for a few days, true, but they hadn't had more than an hour's warning of where we were headed in particular. Despite that, they were well enough organized to march onto a parade ground and put on a show. It was a sobering reminder that these men knew their business.
The ground they had chosen for the battle was flat enough to serve as a parade ground in a pinch. Today it would be killing ground. There would be no defensive positions to hamper the efforts of the victorious army. There would be no broken terrain to impede the advance of the Golden Company's elephants. There would also be no real advantage for us to try to march around and approach from a different angle. The Golden Company was not looking for a chess match of siege and counter siege tactics. They were offering a single decisive battle, confident in their ability to win the day.
The early morning had seen a light sprinkling of rain. Not enough to affect anybody's footing, although it had come as a relief to some hot and dusty soldiers on the march. The clouds had since burned away and the bright sunlight reflected off the armor and the jewelry worn by the Golden Company, giving the whole formation a sort of shining halo.
The Golden Company had placed their war elephants in the front of their formation. Between and around them were their masses of archers, crossbowmen, and other missile troops. Their heavy infantry was organized into tightly packed squares behind, the sun glinting off their shields and their short spears just visible from this distance. Light infantry strung out on either side to form a skirmish line, while they were holding their cavalry in reserve.
All of this was consistent with what the Tattered Prince had told us to expect. The Golden Company liked to wear down its enemies with volley after volley of missile fire. Once their opponent was sufficiently demoralized, they would unleash their war elephants to charge and destroy any remaining cohesive enemy units. The heavy infantry would follow, smashing into the resulting chaos with coordinated force. When the enemy was decisively put to flight, the cavalry would be released to run them down.
If the plan was predictable, it was because it worked. The Golden Company had a sterling track record, littered with examples of opposing companies destroyed after a single engagement. In all the time the Tattered Prince marched with them, he never saw their tactics turned back on them.
Our lines, by contrast, looked a little ragged. The Sunset Legion was as well disciplined as ever in our usual three staggered columns, although many of our halbierdiers had traded in their polearms for lit torches and now marched near the front of their columns. The first two columns had each also acquired two new leading rows made up of little teams of Windblown. Each team featured a collared pig controlled by two lines held by men marching on either side of it. In front of that group were three men carrying oversized shields. The rear half of the pigs had been smeared with a combination of pine resin and lamp oil.
On physical attributes alone the elephant was a phenomenal killing machine. Its thick skin shrugged off all but the most formidable attacks while its massive size and strength meant that it could trample men underfoot while hardly breaking stride. The elephant was even capable of running down men who attempted to flee before it. The only weak point lay between those oversized ears.
The Tattered Prince had observed that elephants seemed to fear pigs and fire. We had elected to try both.
While setting pigs on fire would certainly be entertaining, as a military weapon they were somewhat imprecise. In order for them to be useful they would need to be fairly close to the enemy before we lit things off. That thought, and a rousing drum beat, sent us marching into bow range of our enemies.
Walking through volleys of arrow fire is a unique experience. The arrows hissed down around me, punctuated by clangs as they hit armor or soft thuds as they slammed home in the dirt. It wasn't dangerous, exactly, not with proper armor on, but it still wore away at me. And I was catching a much lower volume of fire than the men at the front ranks. To their credit, none of the Sunset Legion broke stride as they advanced through the incoming storm.
The initial volleys were fired from too far away for direct shots. Instead our enemies were lobbing arrows up into the air with the hope of unnerving us and perhaps landing a lucky hit. Really, though, there weren't many weak points to be had. Even the unfortunate arrow to the knee was unlikely to penetrate the gambeson armor each Sunset Legionnaire was wearing and inflict any real damage. That's what it was there for. I certainly wasn't making my men march around Essos wrapped in thick quilts because it made for good athletic wear. It was a soldier's saying that was old by the time I arrived on Westeros: if you're comfortable, you're wrong.
A few men stumbled and fell under the onslaught of arrow fire, but as far as I could tell they were all able to scramble back to their feet and get back in line as the formation continued marching forward. As we got closer, the character of the attack changed. Instead of launching great volleys from a distance, the Golden Company archers were now taking aimed shots at individual targets. The vast majority of these still bounced ineffectively off of armor, but saw a few strike home in elbow joints and one unlucky pikeman took an arrow through the eye.
By now we had closed within a hundred paces or so of the enemy lines, and the elephants stirred into action. Our men kept marching, the gap now closing quicker thanks to the elephants' deceptive ground-eating lope. I was just starting to feel anxious when I saw that Petyr, commanding the first column, had come to the same conclusion: it was time for us to strike back. The shouted command was just reaching my ears when the torches in the column were lowered in near unison.
Each pig lit off with a pillar of flame. A second later their shrieking squeals reached us. Many of the men around me flinched despite knowing what was coming. The effect on the elephants was more dramatic. By and large they ceased their forward motion, and several of them began to edge backwards.
Once each pig was well and truly on fire its surrounding team of Windblown started running forward. As soon as they had worked up some momentum they dropped the leashes and split off to the sides. The idea was to get the pigs moving forward in a straight line while the Windblown trickled off to reinforce the Tattered Prince's reserves. It worked pretty well. One of the pigs started running around in circles, squealing its head off. Another pair ran off to the side. But the bulk of them kept running on the same course, heading straight for the elephants as they tried to outrun the flames on their backs.
The smell of well-cooked bacon started wafting over the battlefield. More tactically relevant, several elephants turned to run in the face of the charge of the flaming pigs. Many of the Golden Company's archers had shifted their aim to the animal attackers, but to little effect. On most days an arrow wound was the worst thing an animal had suffered and inflicting one would make it run away. When the animal was on fire an arrow barely registered. Only killing or crippling hits would do anything. A couple of pigs went down, turning into delicious smelling funeral pyres, but most of them continued onward.
At this point one heroic elephant was still moving forward. A good chunk of them were in full retreat, while the majority were stuck in place, wavering between the orders of their handlers and their primal fears. The battle hung in the balance as a glass sphere arced out of the line of Legionnaires and smashed into the face of the advancing elephant.
The first time I was told that Volantis is a city where one can buy anything I assumed it was self-promotional puffery. I had maintained that healthy skepticism when a merchant who had heard of my interest in buying all things flammable approached me with a promise to access to a certain special substance. I started to become a believer when he led me down into the basement of his shop and through a doorway to a small room. Its floor was covered with sand several inches thick and in the center of the room was a pillar supporting an elevated aquarium. Instead of aquatic wildlife, the water was filled with small glass vials, each carefully attached to the glass at a healthy separation from its neighbor.
The price for a single vial and a specially outfitted carry pack was obscene. But that was only money. The real problem was finding a soldier crazy enough to carry the thing. That was when I remembered the crossbowman who had shown such zeal for reckless slaughter in our previous two battles. It was only after he had volunteered-insisted, really-that I made the purchase.
Once the pigs were lit he would have removed the vial from his pack, slotted it home in a specially made glass ball filled with lamp oil, and then made the throw of his life. All of that money and effort paid off beautifully as the glass shattered against the elephant's forehead.
Wildfire doesn't need a fuse. It barely needs an excuse. It could have been the stress of impact, the elephant's body heat, the touch of the sun... anything. In the very instant of contact it burst into an eerie green flame, eagerly feeding off the lamp oil and the elephant's flesh. The elephant shrieked, sounding almost human, then wheeled about and stampeded away from us.
Petyr gave the enemy a moment to stare at the unmistakable glow of wildfire before commencing the barrage. The follow up projectiles were not quite as insanely dangerous as the first. Glass bottles, filled with a combination of lamp oil and high proof alcohol and stuffed with rags that had themselves been doused in booze. The rag was touched to the nearest torch before the bottle was to be chucked in the direction of the enemy. Most of our crossbowmen had traded in their usual weapon for a bandolier of grenades which they threw with gleeful abandon.
The bottles crashed against the elephants. The bottles crashed against the ground. Some of the bottles crashed against enemy archers. All of them that I saw lit up beautifully. The elephants were in full retreat, stampeding in mass panic with many of them sped along by fires burning on their backsides. The bottles that hit the ground created eerie pools of flame among the damp grass. The unfortunate archers that were lit on fire just screamed.
It's probably worth mentioning at this point that Volantis offered a few different varieties of high proof liquor. I had chosen the one that happened to contain impurities that caused it to burn with a green flame. Now, logic would dictate that an entire company of hundreds of men couldn't possibly be armed with that much wildfire. Moving that much of the stuff without burning to death is basically impossible, not to mention the expense. Sharper eyes would also notice that the wildfire grenade had had no fuse while the later grenades were lit on fire before being thrown.
The thing is, logic tends to fall by the wayside when you've been set on fire. Or face the imminent prospect of same.
With the elephants in full retreat, and seeing the terror and suffering of the men on fire, my men responded as you would expect: by trying to set more men on fire. The next few rounds of grenades were targeted directly at the formations of archers. By now many of the archers had given up on killing the flaming pigs as a lost cause and had started trying to pick off our soldiers. Their aim seemed significantly worse, no doubt affected by the screams of the dying and being under attack themselves.
I gave a signal and my drummer sounded the general advance. The barrage stopped and the Legion made ready to attack. While I was sure the ongoing rain of fire was having a wonderful effect on enemy morale, it was something of a waste of ammunition. The enemy archers were never going to hold the battlefield. Indeed, as soon as my men brought their pikes to bear and started to advance the archers began to retreat.
After all of the stress and shock of the battle what should have been a smooth withdrawl instead became a pell mell scramble for safety. The archers had more or less ceased firing as they raced to reach place the bulk of their heavy infantry between themselves and us. The infantry itself was rather the worse for wear. The fleeing elephants had carved great furrows in their ranks. In some cases the Golden Company men had managed to scramble out of the way of their war beasts, while in others they had been trampled over. They were trying to sort themselves out and get back in good order while a stream of lightly armored men, some burned and some still burning, ran by in a near panic.
And, of course, instead of attacking a demoralized enemy worn down by arrow fire and elephant charge, they were going to have to defend themselves against a well drilled, cohesive formation of pikemen on the charge, men who already had the taste of victory on their tongues. It was almost enough to make you feel sorry for them.
Instead, I found my feelings matching Petyr's, shouted out as he urged his column on: "Get moving! We're going to rip those bastards' guts out and feed them to the pigs!"
ooOoo