Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 6, Chapter 24

Winter's Crown: Act 6, Chapter 24

Chapter 24

The dull rumble of tens of thousands of booted feet filled the night air, and a swell of pride filled Avod’s breast. Though their adversary had shown themselves to be disappointingly ineffectual, momentous feelings still carried through the hearts and minds of the Goblin army. Rank upon rank marched forward armed with grim steel and a sense of greater purpose.

This is what you were born for, the world around them seemed to whisper. You, who were once weak, will rule the battlefield. Nations shall tremble before you.

For Avod, who had seen her tribe fall and suffer under the whims of Jaldabaoth, it was a turn for the better. The Demon Emperor might eventually bring the world to an end, but at least her army would make their mark on it before that end. They would fight and die on their own terms…or perhaps they might eventually grow strong enough to turn around and face Jaldabaoth head-on.

After scanning the field ahead one more time before climbing down from her command platform, Avod and her bodyguard joined the rear of the advancing force. The scattered Zombies left behind in the Elder Liches’ retreat were no obstacle, and the army marched forward at a steady pace. She raised her head, trying to look over the front ranks.

I hope we find a pack of Worgs one of these days. A General shouldn’t be tiptoeing to get a view.

While Goblins were small enough to ride Wolves, Hobgoblins were not. There were several magical beasts that they had come across, but none were suitable as mounts, or they had been too fast to catch. She imagined how wondrous it would be to have a Griffon or a Hippogriff, riding on swift wings and commanding the field. Of all the tales she knew, none had ever spoken of such a thing – perhaps she would be the first.

?General.?

The voice of one of her officers interrupted her fantasizing. She looked ahead to where he was directing his formation.

?What is it??

?We’re approaching the second ring of encampments. There’s more Undead up ahead.?

They were fighting a Zombie horde. Of course there would be more.

?You mean more than expected??

?Ah, yes, that’s right, General. A lot more. It looks like they’re gathering out there.?

?Gathering? Not moving forward??

?Nope, they’re just standing there.?

?Distance??

?Just under 500 metres.?

Avod brought her army to a halt. She jogged up to the front line to see what had been described for herself. In the distance, a line of Undead stood parallel to her own. Above, the three Elder Liches were floating silently against the backdrop of stars.

“They trying to copy us?” She mused.

“Who knows,” the officer nearby shrugged. “If they are, I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish.”

She grunted in agreement. Zombies were slow to move and slow to respond. They didn’t have any Martial Arts or Skills. Or intelligence, for that matter. They were just lumps of reanimated flesh. If these Elder Liches thought that creating a rough imitation of formations made out of real soldiers gave them parity, they were in for a rude awakening.

“Do the scouts see anything out of the ordinary?” She squinted out into the distance.

“Nothing reported,” the officer said. “Ah – they’re moving.”

Across the field, the line of Zombies started to shuffle forward. The damn things were so slow that they looked like they were just swaying back and forth.

“Ugh…are they really trying to make them move together?” Avod said sourly, “This is going to take forever.”

“Should we send skirmishers forward?” The officer asked.

“May as well,” Avod sighed. “I hope there’s something left for our main line to fight.”

?Skirmishers forward. Don’t wait to volley – loose arrows at will. Watch out for Wraiths.?

The Goblin skirmishers came forward, using their shortbows to pelt the makeshift Zombie line. As expected, the Wraiths came down, driving the archers back after one or two arrows. Like before, the Undead only got as far as the main line before being torn apart. After that, however, a new set of Wraiths came down to loiter in the field between the two armies.

The skirmishers that were returning to the front stopped partway, loosing their arrows at them. The projectiles mostly missed, and the few that were on the mark passed harmlessly through.

?Stop that – you’re wasting arrows. Get back behind the lines and keep thinning out those Zombies once they get in range.?

“Weird…doesn’t look like they did as well as before,” the officer frowned.

Avod was forced to agree. In the previous skirmish, they had nearly obliterated the Zombies in range. Now, they looked nearly unscathed. She grabbed the arm of a Goblin that was passing by.

“Hey – those arrows barely did anything. What’s going on?”

The Goblin looked up at her, brows drawn together in the monumental effort of answering her question. She looked back out to the approaching Zombies before looking back at Avod.

“Zom!” She started, then paused as if she had forgotten what to say. “Zom…Zom…Iron Zom?”

“Iron Zom?” Avod exchanged a look with the officer.

“Iron Zom!” The Goblin squeaked.

The skirmisher pointed at Avod’s shield, then her breastplate. Armoured Zombies. Avod waved the Goblin away.

“Some Zombie variant?” The officer offered.

It was possible. Undead often mysteriously manifested with weapons and equipment of their own. There was a range of possibilities, but the type of Undead dictated what it tended to appear with. The ones they had fought previously were all unequipped; formed out of the corpses of Goblins, which were plentiful in the basin.

“Maybe that’s why they thought they could copy us.”

“Your orders, General?”

She guessed it was a waste of time trying to take them down with arrows. Her Hobgoblins and Bugbears would be the most effective in this situation.

“Looks like it’s the main line’s time to shine,” she said. “We–”

?Left flank reporting: we’ve just made contact with the enemy. Holding fine, but it’s a helluva lot!?

Avod froze at the report. She looked across the field.

Their fucking line is crooked!

Those stupid Elder Liches couldn’t even get that part straight. She stewed in her boots, incensed that this mockery of an army should even be allowed. The clash of the two lines rose far to the west.

?Hobs and Bugs, forward! These rotting shits can’t even manage a straight line. Quick march! Officers sound charge at fifty metres.?

Their formations advanced, rapidly closing on the crooked Zombie line. One by one, each formation raised their voices as they charged, a wave of steel that washed up against the enemy Undead from west to east. Rather than the two masses pressing together in the push of melee, the first two ranks of the Zombie army instantly crumbled on contact before the charge fully stopped.

Avod snorted derisively. They might be Zombie variants, but they were still weak.

“General!”

She looked up at the voice. In the formation directly ahead of her, the same officer was waving her over with his spear.

“What is it?” She asked as they advanced to where he stood over a fallen Zombie.

“This armour, it’s…”

A flash of fury washed over her when she realized what he was bringing to her attention.

“Those evil…”

She looked across the press of soldiers. Now that the enemy was within range of her Darkvision, she could make out the details of the Zombie ‘variants’. They were adorned in plate mail, wielding spears and shields of Dwarven make. They were her soldiers.

?I want these Zombies put into the ground NOW! These evil assholes have gone too far!?

Spurred by her rage, the Goblin army roared and pushed forward with sudden fervour.

It was to be expected, she told herself. Undead were the purest manifestation of evil: enemies of all who lived. The rationale failed to calm her, however.

Avod glared at the Elder Liches silently flying out of range overhead. When did they get the chance to kill and raise her soldiers? Her gaze drifted over to the northern peaks. The report from Zrol arrived three days previous. The follow-up report was delayed, but not unreasonably so. Was that where it had started? If so, they would have over 20,000 Zombies to deal with.

The Hobgoblin lines continued their northward advance, taking down thousands of Zombies as they went.

?Left flank reporting: we got a big one here!?

?A big one??

?An Undead...champion, I guess? About that strong. My Hobs are trying to pin it down, but he’s a real pain in the ass!?

?What is it? A Vampire? Some super Zombie??

?Erm…a Skeleton of some sort. Bugbear-ish in size. Black Armour. Ah, shit – another one popped up a few formations away!?

Avod turned her head to see if she could see what was going on. She ended up turning far more than she expected to.

?Wait, how far back are you guys??

?We’ve barely moved from where we made contact!?

Unearthly howls started to rise across the front line. She scanned her surroundings, trying to make sense out of what was going on. Over the land awash by bright moonlight, her front line had formed into an echelon, with the river to the west.

?Bugbears on the right flank: gather and punch through! We need to roll around this Undead army and finish it off, quick!?

Anxiety washed over her. Something was very wrong, and they needed to clean up before whatever it was happened to them.

A spray of dirt erupted in front of her. She winced away, covering her head. When she looked up again, she found a ballista bolt buried in the ground. No – it was a wooden stake. The officer of the formation ahead of her lay impaled upon it. Another stake streaked in, punching through two plate-clad Hobgoblins before driving itself halfway into the ground.

She fell back behind the protective cover of her bodyguard, who gathered around her with shields raised. The Hobgoblin army had strong cadres of elite soldiers, but they didn’t have any champions to deal with enemy champions. Avod herself was the closest thing to it, but she couldn’t even remotely compare with Qrs or even Ysvrith. She urged her right flank to make their breakthrough: they needed to find whatever was sending those stakes into their lines like ballista bolts.

Another attack whistled by, travelling through two Bugbears and a dozen Goblins before smashing into the ground and tumbling end over end. At least it didn’t take down another one of her officers. Were they targeting them on purpose somehow?

Avod glanced up again towards the night sky and frowned. The Elder Liches that she thought might be directing the unseen attacker were gone.

Over on the western flank, Ludmila frowned down at the ongoing battle. Was it going as planned? Or was her plan about to go awry? At the current juncture, it was difficult to tell.

As fresh Zombie reinforcements crawled out of the river to join her after their journey from upstream, she arranged her army into oblique order. Rather than a traditional oblique order, where a heavy concentration of forces was focused on one side of a battle line in order to quickly secure dominance on that flank, she was just piling up Zombies to slow down one side of the Goblin army. They certainly wouldn’t hold out in the long run.

She couldn’t bring her personally trained Death Knights into play too early, lest the enemy commanders reacted to their appearance and stopped moving as she wanted them to. All she could do was watch nervously as thousands of Zombies were mulched in a matter of minutes by the enemy’s heavy infantry. When the two lines finally locked into place, some parts on her side were so thin that she had to rearrange her Death Knights to shore them up.

?Elder Liches, head over to the end of the west flank.?

As she waited for them to get into their positions, Ludmila scanned the battle below once again. On the opposite side, where the Goblin army’s echelon had made their furthest advance north, two diamond formations were gathering behind the main line. The Wolf Riders used the formation earlier in the night, but she was only aware of two groups of Wolf Riders: one on each flank. Worried that they were being gathered for a potential breakthrough, she repositioned the nearest Death Knight to stand opposite to them.

The Death Warrior she left behind was nearby as well, pulling up the stakes that served to obscure the Zombies coming out of the river. It lobbed them randomly into the mass of the army, some of its attacks travelling over five hundred metres before skewering the Demihumans that got in the way. She redirected her makeshift Undead ballista in an attempt to disrupt the diamonds on the eastern flank.

“You could just have its attacks directed against the enemy General,” Nonna offered. “It should be in the midst of that defensive formation behind the main line.”

“In our case, we need the enemy commanders alive for as long as possible,” Ludmila replied. “They need to keep their formations from breaking for as long as possible after we close our little pocket. Hm…I guess we need to start now.”

To the south, the Death Knights and Death Warriors sent to ambush the Goblin army’s eastern detachment were spread out in a long line, rapidly making their way towards the main battle. She signalled the three Elder Liches beyond the far western flank to begin.

In unison, the Undead mages raised their arms over their heads.

“?Triplet Widen Magic – Cloudkill?.”

A yellowish-green mist rose from the ground below the line of Elder Liches. It formed into a bank of noxious fog 180 metres wide that started rolling southeast.

?Keep going – we need five more.?

The Elder Liches moved south, continuing to place the Cloudkill spells until it formed a wall over a kilometre long. It didn’t move very fast, but it was more than enough to serve her purposes. Just before it seeped over the western flank, she ordered the Death Knights there to release the attention of the Goblin army.

Demihumans turned their attention to the advancing mist, eyeing it warily. When it touched the edge of their forces, two thousand Goblins collapsed, screaming as their bodies turned black and swollen. Their cries did not last long; they were dead within three seconds. Many Hobgoblins fell and died as well, while those who survived fell to the ground, gasping and retching.

As one, the entire western edge of the Goblin army flinched backwards in alarm. Ludmila’s Undead forces were immune to the spell and fell upon the defenceless few that survived.

?Roll up that flank! Southern force – close the lid.?

The western flank started folding eastwards. It was slow at first, but gained in momentum as more and more Demihumans scrambled back from the slowly advancing Cloudkill spells while trying to defend against attacks from Zombie Squires and Death Knights. The regular Zombies were being left behind, but it hardly mattered anymore.

The southern force swept in from the rear, completing the trap that had suddenly formed around the Goblin army. While the Death Knights and their army of Squire Zombies were intimidating enough, the Death Warriors were on an entirely different level altogether. As they charged in, they fired crossbows and hurled the numerous javelins, throwing axes and daggers hanging about their forms. The projectiles each sliced through dozens of Demihumans as they closed the distance.

At fifty metres, the Death Warriors catapulted forward, brandishing twin greatswords. Blood and body parts severed in every way imaginable arced into the air as they turned into veritable whirlwinds of death, weaving their way through the Goblin army. One of them made it all the way to the front line in less than two minutes, where it cleaved through a formation of plate-wearing Hobgoblins. Eighteen of the Demihumans – stacked three deep – were bisected in a single swing, shields and all.

Double the level does not mean double the strength.

Lady Shalltear had mentioned this shortly after they met, but seeing it was an entirely different thing altogether. The offensive power of a Death Warrior was clearly more than twice that of a Death Knight.

As all sides closed in, the Death Knights fell back onto their filtering tactics, using their skills to arrest the attention of nearby opponents while picking off those that broke and ran. Ludmila continued fixing potential weaknesses in their encirclement.

?Cut off the riverbank – I don’t want any swimming away. Once our encirclement is secure, slow down a bit. Make sure you pick out the Squire Zombies that you want to take back with you.?

What followed could only be called a slaughter. Ludmila quietly watched from above, and her eyes eventually fell to rest upon the Katze River. It appeared that Entoma was right in the end, after all.