The Fireseed Wars

The scout's horse was lathered and blowing like a bellows. The man wasn't in much better shape. As soon as he caught his breath, he said, "Your Majesty, I just returned from the West Gate. The Army of Hostigos has attacked King Theovacar and they have sent the Grefftscharri into full retreat!"

"How many Hostigi did you see?"

"Sire, I was several marches away so I can't give good numbers. However, they outnumbered the Grefftscharri and were riding through them like willows. These Grefftscharri soldiers aren't even good cannon fodder!"

"As I feared. Demnos, sound the horns. We need to relieve our allies before they're completely routed."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Demnos said as he rode off at a gallop.

FORTY-TWO

From his perch on the top platform of the watchtower to the right of the gatehouse, Tortha Karf watched the Hostigi Army pour out of the West Gate toward the quickly approaching Grefftscharr Army. He had asked the closest Kalvan Study Team, which was now based in Thagnor City, to run a sky-eye up over the city to record the battle. Prince Sarrask was rash and impatient and Tortha hoped that he didn't betray Rylla's trust. If Sarrask lost control of himself, or his men, the Royal Army could be caught between the advancing Grefftscharr Army and Great King Lysandros' twenty to twenty-five thousand reinforcements.

From his position, Tortha could now make out the Grefftscharr Army's formation. Behind a thin screen of light horse skirmishers, the Army had a thick ribbon of crossbowmen in front of four squares of spearmen, with mounted knights and crossbowman at both flanks. This was the traditional formation of a Middle Kingdoms army which had only a few handguns. He suspected that the Grefftscharri calivermen and arquebusiers would be near the middle of the ribbon.

He took out his pocket visiscreen, camouflaged as a soap stone writing tablet, tapped out the combination that made the fake cover recess and, with the screen visible, used the remote to focus the sky-eye on the Greffan missile infantry. The high-resolution eye was capable of depicting a wart on the end of a pikeman's nose, so he had no problem discerning individual weapons. Theovacar was either smarter than he'd have credited, or didn't have much faith in his new fireseed smoothbores, as the calivermen were interspersed among his crossbowmen.

Certainly the King could not have been happy with the pitiful collection of rusted battlefield leavings, mostly obsolete arquebuses and calivers, he'd received from the Grand Host. On the other hand, a Middle Kingdoms' ruler might not see these in their true light, having little knowledge and experience of firearms. Nor was it easy to convert soldiers who were long familiar with true and tested weapons to new and less reliable types. Tortha estimated that there were about three thousand soldiers with missile weapons of which less than a thousand had handguns.

The four blocks of spearmen were of roughly equal size, each made up of around fifteen hundred men. The Grefftscharri were all proven veterans of numerous nomad invasions, but as of yet untested by firearms. It was too bad that Kalvan had taken both flying batteries with him to Greffa, as they might have had a spectacular impact on the battle to come.

The men-at-arms were mostly armed with lance and sword, only a select few showed pistol holsters on their mounts. There were around fifteen hundred men-at-arms at each flank with a reserve of another thousand, primarily the King's Companions and Theovacar's high command. In the van were several hundred skirmishers, light Urgothi and Ruthani cavalry armed with light bows and spears.

Prince Sarrask had most of his units out of the City now. He had the Hostigi infantry formed into nine pike blocks with each block consisting of roughly five hundred pikemen. Each pike block had roughly eight hundred musketeers who overlapped the pike blocks at the flanks, creating a sleeve of musketeers at both ends. As the last of the mounted cuirassiers and heavy horse left the gatehouse, the Hostigi line began to move forward with the cavalry flanking both sides.

The twelve-marches wide no-man's-land that Kalvan had created beyond the outer walls of Thangor was mostly prairie farm land with only some slight depressions and small rises. Kalvan had removed most of the higher terrain for his embanked earthworks. Thus, this battle would be that rarity in real life, a chessboard set piece, since there was no cover for maneuvering and surprise attacks. It would be interesting to see how much of Kalvan's tactics Sarrask had soaked up. While a loss here wouldn't be fatal to the siege, it would certainly cripple Kalvan's future plans and further erode morale, already dampened after the long Trail of Blood from Hostigos.