Chapter 13 – The Battle of Black Marsh
Gideon, Black Marsh
"Camri!"
Camri froze as he heard his name being called by a familiar voice. He turned round and saw two people stepping down from a horse-drawn caravan that had just pulled up outside the city gates. The gates were still open, since Argonian soldiers and labourers were constantly running in and out of the city, building makeshift defences and preparing for battle. Him and Ariel had just arrived in the city.
The two figures walked towards him. It was Eldred and Assurrani.
"Good to see you, Camri" Assurrani said. Next to him, Eldred placed a large leather bag that he had been carrying on the ground and opened it.
"What have you got there, Eldred?" Camri asked.
"Are you familiar with the work of the Buoyant Armigers?" Eldred asked him. Camri shook head.
"I specialise in going into dangerous places to recover artifacts belonging to the Tribunal Temple that have been lost over the years. House Dagoth bases, Dwemer and Daedric ruins, that sort of thing. They're good places to find high-quality weapons and armour, which the Temple keeps. I thought you might want a decent blade to fight with"
Camri peered inside the bag and pulled out a glass longsword, forged from an immaculate ingot of the green crystal, with a handle made from beautifully-decorated silver.
"Thank you very much, Eldred" Camri said. "Does the Temple need this back?"
"I explained our situation and they donated a few weapons to our cause" Eldred replied. "I've got a sword like yours for myself and a Daedric mace for Areen"
"Areen… I should go and find him. I'm already running late"
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Camri and Ariel walked into the Deer's Leap Inn and saw Areen sitting at a table with Sudana and two Argonian soldiers.
"Good to see you" Areen said, standing up to greet them. Camri handed him the Daedric mace that Eldred had give him.
"Here you go, a present from the Tribunal Temple courtesy of Eldred"
"Camri, a group of soldiers is going to take cover out in the jungle and try to ambush the Third Battalion soldiers as they attack. What do you know about guerrilla warfare?"
"I've set up a few ambushes in my time" Camri replied. "I know what to do"
"I could come, and let you know when the Third Battalion are approaching" Ariel said. "Although I won't be much use in the battle. Camri tried to teach me how to use a blade but it didn't exactly come naturally to me"
Camri picked up an almost-empty glass bottle of mead off the table and drank the rest of its contents, then smashed the bottle on the table. He carefully scooped the shards of glass into his coin-purse, now empty after the caravan trip from Leyawiin, and handed it to Ariel.
"Stick to telekinesis, then"
"You've just given me a fantastic idea…" Ariel said. "Areen, can you get me into the armoury?"
"No, but I can go there on your behalf" Areen replied. "What do you need?"
"Daggers, throwing stars, anything you can find that's small and sharp"
Camri smiled and looked at Ariel. "I can see what you're getting at here…"
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Cyrodiil/Black Marsh border
General Rakat of the Argonian army approached Camri.
"Mr Everlight, you are the only one here who knows anything about the Imperial Legion. Any idea what we're up against?"
"I'm guessing five hundred men" Camri said. "The First and Second Battalions are both five hundred men, so I don't see why the Third would be any different. Steel armour, fighting with melee weapons and archery"
Deep in the forests of Blackwood, General Rakat was preparing for the incursion by the Second Battalion. They would literally be crossing the border in a matter of hours, from when Rakat would have a further half-hour to organise the second line of defence after the border.
There was an obvious trail through the dense woodlands that would be the obvious route for the Third Battalion to take. However, in the deep grass of the trail Ariel had laid a trap. The daggers and throwing stars that Areen had fetched her from Gideon's armoury had been scattered around the trail, covered by the grass. In a position where Ariel could make every single one of them simultaneously leap up into the air.
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One hour later
The soldiers at the border didn't stand a chance. The five hundred-strong Third Battalion simply ploughed through them. Some of the Argonian soldiers stood bravely to face the Third Battallion but most began retreating into the dense forests.
The Argonians had just lost forty men.
The Third Battalion had lost none.
General Rakat scanned the horizon constantly. Then, he saw it. A glowing, white object soaring vertically up towards the sky then bursting in a brilliant white flash of light. It was a light spell, bright but completely silent. There was a chance that the Third Battalion wouldn't know it had been cast.
"The border's fallen!" Rakat shouted. "Take cover! Prepare for battle!"
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Half an hour later
"Someone's coming!" Ariel whispered. But as she prepared to set off her trap she stopped. "It's not the Third Battalion. It's the soldiers from the border"
General Rakat overheard her and began to creep out of his hiding place in the undergrowth, his sword drawn. He crawled through the dense, long grass until he could see down the trail. A group of Argonian soldiers, around twenty of them, were running towards him.
"Get off the trail!" Rakat called to them. "How far behind you are they?"
"One league, if that" one of the Argonian soldiers said to Rakat. "They're heavily armoured so they're slower than us. We couldn't hold the border for long"
"Don't worry, I knew the border would fall" Rakat replied. "Camri, assemble the archers!"
Camri heard the call. He climbed down from the tree he was hiding in.
"Archers!" he whispered loudly. "Positions!"
He saw Assurrani and a group of Argonian archers emerge from their hiding places, and motioned them onto the trail beyond Ariel's trap.
"Ariel, come on. I feel safer when you're near me"
Ariel got up off the floor and stood next to Camri as he drew his bow and watched the trail. He could see Rakat silently moving groups of soldiers around using hand-signals, so they were surrounding the trapped area of the trail. Rakat's plan was to cause as much damage as possible with the ambush then retreat to Gideon, where the majority of the army was stationed.
"Camri, any ideas who will be in charge?" Assurrani whispered to him.
"Well, we killed Seminus' second-in-command, so probably just a high-ranking soldier. Not a dedicated tactician, that's for sure"
"What about Seminus?" Ariel asked.
"He's a remf, he'll be sitting in his office with a glass of wine waiting for a messenger"
"Remf? What does that mean?"
Camri's face turned slightly red as he turned to face Ariel. "Rear-echelon motherfucker"
"Charming" Ariel laughed.
Suddenly, they began to hear a loud rumble approaching. The sound of hundreds of boots hitting the ground.
"Prepare to fire!" Camri ordered. The archers all loaded arrows into their bows and drew a line of fire. "Fire in a two-part volley! Let's hold them off for as long as we can!"
Ariel cast a spell on herself then fixed her eyes on the horizon.
"What range do you need, Camri?" she asked.
"Five hundred yards" Camri replied.
The next few seconds were the tensest Camri had ever felt in his life. Five hundred heavily-armed soldiers bearing down on his group of lightly-armed guerrilla fighters. But he had one thing they did not – Ariel.
"Five-fifty yards" Ariel whispered.
Camri raised his hand. Half of the archers stepped forwards and aimed. The Third Battalion men were in view now – a surging wall of steel bearing down on them.
"Front row! Fire!" Camri shouted. A volley of arrows soared over his head, over the trap, and slammed into the front line of the Third Battalion soldiers. Several of the arrows pierced through the soldiers' poor-quality, bulk-manufactured steel cuirasses. One unlucky soldier was hit right between the eyes. Immediately, they were thrown into disarray. Orders were shouted. Soldiers began to raise their shields to defend themselves from arrows.
"Back row! Fire!"
The rest of the archers fired as the front row ducked down and reloaded. Arrows once again rained down on the Third Battalion.
"Keep doing that!"
Camri had noticed that the Argonians were all trained as field archers, trained to all fire at once in vaguely the right direction. But himself and Assurrani specialised in well-aimed shots at specific targets.
"Ariel, who's in charge?"
"There. White helmet, on the front line"
Assurrani spotted him first. A soldier in a white ceremonial helmet, wearing visibly higher-quality armour than the other soldiers, leading his men into a charge. Assurrani fired his bow, nailing the officer right between the eyes and killing him before he knew what had happened.
"Damnit, they're charging!" Camri shouted. "Fall back, but keep firing!"
The archers obeyed Camri's orders, backpedalling down the trail while still keeping to the two-part firing order Camri had dictated. General Rakat was clearly in command of some very good soldiers.
Soon, the soldiers passed Ariel's marker – she had carved into one of the trees on the side facing the Argonians, causing sap to drip out of the tree. That particular tree marked the end of the trap.
Ariel held her hands out in front of her then quickly threw them up into the air. The effect was devastating.
A wave of razor-sharp objects burst up out of the grass like lava erupting from a volcano. Ariel had made sure to twist the daggers mid-flight so they were facing upwards. The hundred or so Third Battalion men caught in the trap didn't stand a chance. They were literally cut to ribbons as the daggers and throwing stars, moving at tremendous speed, simply sliced through their armour and ripped their flesh to shreds. Almost in perfect synchronisation, one hundred Third Battalion soldiers fell to the ground, dead.
"Do it again! Take out the next wave!" Camri shouted to Ariel, firing off another arrow.
"I can't! It drained my magicka!"
Camri swore to himself.
"Get off the front lines. Find a tree with green leaves with red veins running through them. Eat as many of the leaves as you can then cast that damn spell again!"
With that, Ariel turned and ran into the forest. Camri drew his sword and turned to Assurrani.
"Come on then, let's see what you can do!"
"Godspeed to you, Camri" Assurrani replied. Camri turned to the archers.
"Aim high, hit the soldiers at the back! I don't want to end up with one of your arrows sticking out of the back of my head!"
Camri and Assurrani charged forward, leaping over the hordes of dead Third Battalion men. Perfectly on cue, Rakat gave a hidden hand-signal. Then all hell broke loose.
From both sides of the trail, Argonian soldiers armed with swords, spears and axes leapt from the undergrowth into the flanks of the Third Battalion. Soon, the Third Battalion were surrounded. Not outnumbered, but surrounded. Rakat had just pulled off a perfect ambush. For a short time, the Battalion was in chaos. The Argonians carved their way through the Battalion's ranks, cutting down the soldiers as the ambush threw them into disarray.
But then, orders were shouted by officers and the Battalion began to regroup. Many Argonian soldiers were cut down by a sudden burst of ferocity from the Battalion.
Camri heard Rakat shout something in a strange, guttural language – the native language of Argonia. He didn't know what it meant, nor did any of the Third Battalion men, but the Argonian soldiers understood. Camri guessed it meant something along the lines of 'Draw them out into the forest', as the Argonians began routing away from the trail into the dense woodland.
Someone caught Camri's eye as he fought off two Third Battalion soldiers.
"Areen!"
Areen turned round in time to duck away from a Third Battalion axe being swung at his head, then he leapt up and slammed his Daedric mace into the soldier's face. He heard the sickening crack of breaking bone as the soldier fell to the ground, a look of horror frozen on his destroyed face.
At this point, Areen noticed Camri and Assurrani. They were standing back-to-back, literally carving their way through Third Battalion soldiers. He knew Camri was good, but not this good. He was swiftly ducking the soldiers' attacks, then plunging his sword into them before they could react. Assurrani was doing the same. Most of the soldiers didn't even get chance to attack before a sword was thrust into their chest.
Then, there was the other secret weapon, now coming into play, in the form of Eldred. He had stocked up on naphtha in Gideon and filled a sack of phials with it. Camri saw him out of the corner of his eye, climbing through the canopy until he was almost directly over the large group of Third Battalion soldiers. Then, he took one of the phials of naphtha and lit it with a weak fire spell, then cast it into the soldiers. The fire ignited the naphtha in mid-air, spraying burning oil all over the soldiers.
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Ariel raced down the trail, constantly scanning for the type of tree that Camri had told her about. Then, suddenly, she tripped over something and fell clumsily to the ground, landing roughly on her elbows. She groaned in pain as she got up to see what had tripped her. It looked like a tree root until she looked more closely.
It was a wooden pipe.
The wooden pipe that made up the early-warning system.
Ariel remembered something about the early-warning system from when she had overheard Areen telling Camri about it. When it was activated, it would tell the soldiers in Gideon that the border had fallen. However, if it was activated a second time, it had a different meaning. Send reinforcements.
Ariel still had the sword that Camri had given her, even though it was useless to her until now. She swung it hard downwards at the wooden pipe, splitting it open. Water began to squirt out of the crack in a powerful fountain. Ariel placed her hands over the crack and concentrated. She could almost feel the water in the pipe surging away from her, towards Gideon.
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Camri saw Ariel running towards him and Assurrani. He tapped Assurrani on the shoulder.
"You're on your own for a bit, alright?"
Assurrani nodded as he swung his blade horizontally, hewing a soldier's head from his body.
"Ariel, did you find the leaves?" Camri called to Ariel.
"Better than that" Ariel replied. "I called for reinforcements"
"Why?"
"Camri, look. We can win the battle here if we have more men. It's better to fight here than to put the citizens of Gideon in danger"
Camri ran over to one of the Argonian archers, firing his last few arrows high up into the rear ranks of the Third Battalion.
"Soldier, how long will it take reinforcements to get here from Gideon?"
"Twenty minutes, maybe less if they move quickly" the archer replied.
"Right. We've got to hold them off for twenty more minutes before we get some extra help"
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Eldred cast another naphtha bottle down into the group of soldiers, killing several of them. Suddenly an arrow slammed into the branch he was sitting on – they had spotted him. Eldred leapt to his feet and jumped from the branch, grabbing hold of a higher one and swinging away from the trail beneath him, as another arrow missed him by inches. Then he noticed they were aiming at the branches that were supporting him. They were trying to bring him down.
Eldred saw no other solution. He let himself fall, landing on one of the soldiers and breaking his neck, then diving for the undergrowth. But as he did, he felt a sharp, searing pain shoot through his shoulder. He had just been shot!
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"Camri! Eldred's down!" Assurrani shouted. He had seen his fellow Dunmer get struck in the collarbone by an arrow and fall to the ground in pain. Then, to his horror, he saw a Third Battalion soldier draw a sword and race towards Eldred.
Vvvvip!
An arrow sailed through the air and struck the soldier in the temple, killing him instantly.
"Eldred! Make for cover!" Camri yelled. "Someone cover him!"
Two Argonian archers who had been hiding in the trees near Eldred dropped their bows and leapt down, drawing their melee weapons – a sword and a spear. One soldier raced forward to try and get to Eldred but found himself skewered horribly on the Argonian's spear. The other Argonian helped Eldred to his feet and led him into the forest in search of a healer.
Camri scanned around, looking for Ariel. She was twenty yards or so behind where Camri, Assurrani and some other Argonian soldiers were fighting the dilapidated front line of the Third Battalion.
"Ariel, come here!" Camri called. He drew his sword from a soldier he had just killed and ran towards her.
"What is it?" Ariel asked him.
"How can we stop them retreating?" Camri asked. "If any of these men escape, General Seminus will still have an army"
"We'll have to cut them off from the rear when the reinforcements arrive"
Camri paused for a second. "Go and find General Rakat and tell him what you just told me"
A few minutes later, the reinforcements arrived with a vengeance. Fifty elite Argonian soldiers, who Rakat had wanted to keep back in Gideon to do as much damage as possible there, had come to the front lines. As soon as Camri saw them, he ordered Assurrani and the Argonian soldiers fighting with them to feign retreat and clear the trail. As they leapt into the undergrowth, the Third Battalion advanced, and were met by fifty arrows, all fired at once, slamming into their ranks and causing absolute devastation. That narrowed the Third Battalion down to thirty men, if that.
Then, Rakat gathered as many soldiers as he could find and burst out of the undergrowth all around them. They were totally surrounded.
One soldier who was clearly an officer, with a ceremonial headdress on his helmet, dropped his sword.
"We surrender"
Camri gasped in amazement at what had just been achieved. The Argonians, outnumbered 5 to 1, either lightly armoured or not armoured at all, had defeated the Third Battalion.
"By the Gods, we did it!" Camri said to himself. Ariel ran up to him and threw her arms around him.
"No, Camri, you did it"
Camri held Ariel tightly. "You know when you told me that you think the three of us fight best when we are near each other?"
"Yes?"
"I think you were right"