Vol.2, Ch.5, P.1
Scars of grey rose into the red night.
The smell of smoke—already had the Fiefguard sown fire within the first houses at Hensen’s west end. Likely the gate defences were breached with ease, a fault of too little time to muster against the march of Men… A march no doubt tasking its thousands of feet to Hensen’s very centre.
I turned. “Berta, the evacuation?”
“By this hour… the homes nigh the west gate should be well-emptied!” she confirmed. “And left in them: the folk’s valuables! Just as you proposed!”
Good. Some time was bought. Having marched all this way, the Fiefguardsmen were surely starved for spoils. Fair to say, theirs would be a march slowed by their own rampant ransacking and arsonry.
“Then the west gate is exactly where the Fiefguard must be dammed. Lest…”
Berta’s brows rose. “…Lest they flood into this very district…!”
The keen calculation of a war-chief. And quick: already did she foresee the Fiefguard’s projected paths.
The margrave’s swine could scarce keep a straight march now that they’ve filed into their feeding trough. Indeed, the chain of command leashing in the Fiefguard was loose at best: what should’ve been a coherent column focused on felling the fólkheimr’s heart was instead a splash of soldiers, disparate divisions now out to pillage as they please. A hazard of a guess, sure, but if the erratic smoke plumes were any indication, I’d say the horde’s own haphazardry had well-got the best of them.
Hence should Hensen’s centre remain reasonably safe in the meanwhile. But the same couldn’t be said of the other districts, where evacuations had scant time to start—districts, not unlike the one I stood within.
Braves were needed here, and soon, to protect the people in their flight from the Fiefguard’s warpath. The exigency was hardly lost upon Lise.
“This district is defenceless…!” she cried. “I must find my father! To sue for soldiers!”
Not a second later did she set off like lightning. Time was of the essence; the populace must be moved whilst the Men were yet mired in their own mammon.
“Volker and his spears are swift; already they make for the west gate, I think,” said Berta. “I remain here, to protect this plot and await the coming of my braves!”
“Then I’ll make for the west gate myself,” I said, before turning to head off. “Fates smile upon you, Berta.”
“Young fellow,” she called, “you mean to face the Fiefguard?”
I knew well what she wished to say.
Confront the kin of my kingdom—and what then? Cut them down? Me? An ungraced? With what? The sword I’d surrendered at the west gates?
Indeed. This fool’s path is fraught. Fatal, even. But a deed to be done, must be.
“That’s the plan,” was my answer as I broke off westward. “But I’ll join Volker before I do!”
“Tread light, lad!”
With Berta’s words a tailwind to my haste, I left the languished district, full-knowing that the end of this night would find my fortunes forever changed.
♰
I arrived at the west end, only to come upon cliff-faces of fire. What were once homes were now husks of blazing ash, for hardly any hewn stone had ever buttressed a hall of Hensen. Thus was the simple spark a fell foe to this old and oaken fólkheimr.
“There! In the left wing—sorcerers! Silence them!” cried a command from horseback. “Let not another home be torch’d!”
The voice of valiant Volker. Berta had thought right: he and his spears were keen to cut off the Fiefguard’s westborn advance right at the mouth of their flooding.
“Volker!” I roared above the raging battle. The nearby Nafílim fighters then fixed their fury upon me, a Man appearing anew in their midst. But with a hand raised high, Volker stayed their spite.
“Rolf! You are come!” the war-chief spoke, rounding his steed to my side. “Would that our quickness match’d your counsel’s correctness: the western defences we muster’d too slowly. And now we pay.”
“Nay, it was I who should’ve paid! More mind to the margrave’s bloodlust!” I reprimanded myself. “The evacuation! Is it done with!?”
“Here, yes. Elsewhere, no. What of it?”
In the war-chief’s words: a yet undiminished distrust for the wayward Man afore him. But for Hensen to stand in the light of the next dawn, cooperation was key.
“The fires!” I exclaimed. “Leave them to burn! And should the Men set flames anew, let them!”
Volker narrowed his eyes. “Let them what?”
“The Fiefguard ill-foresees how speedily the flames spread! Not before have they fought in so oaken a place as this! They know only the stones of Arbel!” I explained amidst a battlefield of embers and bellowing warriors. Volker kept quiet, training his ears to my every word. “The buildings ablaze—they’re more a labyrinth barring the Fiefguard’s advance than aught else! Have your braves form a deep column—draw back and let the Men give chase!”
Writ then on the war-chief’s face was not incredulousness, but calculated consideration: he let a hand alight upon his chin, and after a half-moment, turned to his spears.
“Change of plans! Harry not the sorcerers!” he ordered them anew. “Reform ’round the centre! Deep column, deep column!”
Volker—a commander swift of sense, a gust veering to every advantage. His spearmen as well; theirs were movements much honed. Likely the lay of the townscape itself was mapped in their very minds.
With precise paces, they spread and rearrayed themselves into a deep formation, contracting back in as the adjustment was underway. Their ranks were now almost as filled as their files.
“Get back ’ere, ye devils!”
“Hahaha! Be cleansed, filth!”
Grim glee from the Fiefguardsmen, mixed in with rumbling hoofbeats as they galloped after the reforming Nafílim. But their offensive would prove fangless: the Men’s indulgences in avarice and arsonry had left their formations fragmented.
With Volker’s warriors winding back whilst deeply ranked, only a few of the Fiefguard’s forces were in immediate position to bite at the bait that was the Nafílim flanks. And bite they did, though their craving was quenched with woe: overextended, the ambitious Men were soon skewered by bristling maws of Nafílim spears.
“Gagh…!”
“Uwagh!?”
The air of battle, newly delirious with death screams. The sights and sounds of their fallen fellows all but incensed the frothing Men. They had come, expecting more a campaign of ill-contested conquest than a hard-fought foray. And their sizeable headcount of a hundred-score was reason enough to expect a poor challenge, to say nothing of the fields of fire they had sown, the searing light of which had swollen their pride.
Indeed, they had full trust in their own triumph—an arrogance swiftly answered with Nafílim aggression. Felled, the too-foolhardy amongst the Fiefguardsmen were now as feed for worms, an indignance ill-suffered: the remaining Men next roused their steeds and swords both, and broke into a charge.
But Volker’s braves were undisturbed as they dealt back deathblows.
“Gwahagh!?”
Lag-wits, laid low by a lesson in humility. In fright and fury both, the surrounding Fiefguardsmen then pulled back their ranks to attempt a regrouping. The ploy turned no profit, for barring them now were fiery billows of their own making.
“Captain! We’ve lost footin’! Th’fires—they trap th’rear right wing!”
“Bloody shite!”
Confusion flashed through the Fiefguard’s files. Still, the art of soldiery was not wholly lost to them. Whipped into action by barks from their commanders, the Men immediately began fixing their formations. A moment, just a moment, was all they required.
But it was ungiven: Volker was void of charity. His foes baring their vulnerability to all nakedness, the war-chief issued his next orders.
“Wind-spells! Three volleys! Strike the front to the right flank! Fire! Fire!” Volker vociferated. “Horse-braves, to me! Charge! Cha—rge!”
Time and place were pounced upon to perfection. In their self-inflicted chaos, the Fiefguard’s right half was left conspicuously shallow, a brief opening into which were poured the spells of the Nafílim. Men were marred and unmade, as mercilessly did Volker and his cavalry next crash into their foes’ cracked columns.
“Draw back, men! Draw back!”
There: the Fiefguard regiment began retracting its pruned and panicked ranks.
“Hold!” the war-chief shouted. “Let them run! We regroup!”
His mind knew enough caution not to commit his foes’ same mistakes. His braves cut off the chase and reformed—a sound decision.
In spite of its success, Volker’s contingent could not compare to the Fiefguard’s numbers. Fighting in this flaming battlefield, harrying the Men into awkward corners, barring their advance with deeply formed ranks—these stratagems gave the Nafílim advantage enough to overcome the contest of quantity. An advantage dearly lost were they to wantonly pursue the scrambling Men into more open spaces.
No force of many files can so keep an unmanacled march through flaming, Byzantine corridors. Much consideration must be given to where clashes might occur. Like a well-tended garden, the battlefield must be as a thing curated and configured with all care. The Fiefguard stand to win by numbers, thus numbers must be made the source of their undoing. This was Volker’s thought, his way to victory.
But it was a way hard-trod. Having little, the Nafílim here were tested to their limits, and their faces showed it. All well and fine to fight back a larger force with tactics deft and devious, but to keep the fight with dwindled numbers dwindling on—that was a weight overbearing upon the braves’ few shoulders.
And that’s to say nothing of the folk they must defend. To leave the west end would tempt an end of a different sort for the districts yet to be evacuated of its citizens.
I approached the war-chief, having witnessed the winding back of the Fiefguard… and knowing it was soon that they would return for a reprisal.
“Your braves battle well, but I can’t see them lasting long—not with these numbers,” I warned Volker.
“I dread the same,” he confessed. “But there is hope: reinforcements come as we speak. Hold here, and victory vanishes not from us.”
Tidings a sweet solace to the ears. Numbers were these Nafílim’s most glaring shortcoming. Should it be shored up, they well-stood to smite the Fiefguard full-sore, enough to send the Men hence from Hensen’s sight.
I looked to where such reinforcements might come, till my eyes caught a distant glimpse of a Nafíl, collapsed and unconscious afore an unburnt house. One of the smallfolk, it seemed, one too late in vacating the area.
To the poor soul I ran, breaking away from Volker’s contingent.
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