FallQM
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Tanya's Third Life as a Barbarian Queen, Chapter VI
🕑 Added 2024-11-17 20:49:52 +0000 UTCI will have the chapter as links to download at the bottom of the post. As well as a link to the Google Document page.
Five miles from the Imperial Forward Camp
Tanya, Queen of the Tanaoi.
A battle line is more of a mutually agreed upon delusion between two enemy armies than a tangible reality. Even in an era where a battle line would stretch a mile or so at most. For a pitched battle, establishing a battle line is rather simple. At least for the tribal conflicts I had been engaged with before Zorzals campaign.
About a dozen women would form a warband, these were often sisters who would fight together, share a tent and supplies, a cooking pot. They would delegate responsibilities between each other and look after each other if one is wounded. It was the Lepus way that when marching across the steppe they would form a long line with the oldest walking to the right of the group and the two best fighters standing in the front and the back with the rest between the two of them.
When presented with an enemy the oldest person in the warband and the best fighter standing at the front would turn and walk to the right until stopping, then the entire group would turn left, presenting a simple line to the enemy. The Lepus did not, for some reason, employ the use of multiple ranks, when more then one warband operated together they would just line themselves up next to each other making one long line that could wrap around any enemy formations.
The hight of Lepus tactical sophistication would involve some Queens who would have a bodyguard or would have some of the warbands wait for a while before they joined the battle as a sort of ‘reserve’. Often when a battle was joined however the reserve warbands would ignore their orders to wait and join the battle wherever they could.
It was a simple system and manifestly effective for the purposes of tribal conflicts and raiding as a Lepus army would practically organise itself. But it offered no tactical flexibility. If one part of the line was breached then it would be up to any reserve warbands to respond to that breach, or for parts of the line to turn around and fight the forces trying to encircle them. Something Zorzals Legions had taken advantage of in the Campaign against Tyuul.
The fact of the matter was that learning how to move a group of people from one position on a battlefield was very much a lifelong vocation and effective strategies in doing that very thing had taken centuries of experimentation to become established. Then, once you had the knowledge on how to march about where you wanted you had to train officers in how to do it, what to look out for and how to communicate with the people who were marching. The more sophisticated the tactical manoeuvre the more likely it was to break down and how to regain control should that happen.
Then you had to train the soldiers themselves. When you have to do something more complicated than following the person in front of you things like the length of step you took, where you are moving your arms, how you are holding your equipment, where your head is pointing at, who you are listening to and the distance between yourself and the people around you. All of these elements factor in as to why my Army looked like a scattered mess.
Reducing the size of a warband to just ten persons and organising them into companies had seemed like a rather simple administrative adjustment. At first it had indeed seemed like it was. But there were hundreds of small problems the Lepus had adjusting to even this small change.
I sighed, only barely able to keep my forces in view with nothing but the moon to illuminate the rolling hills I was trying to march an army over. It was a mess, my entire army looked like one big snake wiggling this way and that across the grasslands as companies tried to bypass other companies that seemed to have some sort of delay or issue walking in a straight line while officers ran about trying to keep the entire thing moving in the right direction.
With the children of the Tanaoi, it was a simple matter of making a routine where the older girls would be ‘responsible’ for waking up all of the younger ones and getting them to all stand in a black an arm's length apart before they would be marched to the breakfast tent. They did not question why they were being told to stand in a line and wait to be told to walk forwards the same way many older warriors did.
It was one of the many strategies I was employing to build up the competence of the Tanaoi. From the lessons on literacy and mathematics presented by Cato and some of the other slaves to drill presented as a game, the Children of the Tanaoi were, day by day, becoming more knowledgeable, disciplined and educated than their elders.
I found myself smiling despite the utter state of my army at the moment.
Quite frankly it was galling that if my army had been made up of children we would have already reached the Imperial Campsite. As it stood I would have to stop well before we reached the Imperials in order to reorganise the lines, each moment making my forces more tired and putting us at risk of discovery.
I should be used to it honestly, any movement of people larger than a company functioned with the grace of a trainwreck. It was quite frankly miraculous that no one had been injured yet, or the Company commanders were keeping any injuries incurred from our nighttime march quiet.
A runner approached me and presented a note to my bodyguards who in turn presented it to me. I pried open the wax sealed velum and squinted at the abysmal handwriting as I held it up to the moonlight.
‘Twenty thousand, Wyverns missing.’
The officer who wrote the message had failed to write their name on it but I had a good idea as to who it was. Regardless, the Wyverns not being at the campsite were a problem. With air mobile assets I very much wanted to keep track of them but if they had relocated overnight there was genuinely no way to spot them moving in the darkness and they could rapidly strike a target since they flew silently.
I set aside my trepidation, even if the Wyverns had moved I could not do anything about that, I had dedicated myself to the nighttime strike now and had to commit. That the campsite had roughly twenty thousand people in it was concerning. A legion did not normally have an excessively large Cavalry element unless they could raise a Cavalry Auxilia, with my raids against Centaur settlements on the way to Kontia raising that Auxilia would be very difficult. So where exactly was he getting so much cavalry? I knew he had brought roughly three hundred thousand men from three legions to battle Tyuul and they had suffered considerable casualties before they had caused the Lepus to surrender outside of the Pomi hillfort.
After Tyuul’s surrender many camp followers, veterans and the wounded were released from service with only the core of each legion remaining deployed to collect slaves and loot from the Steppe. Already hundreds of thousands of Lepus had been marched towards the Augustine wall, a fortification that extended two hundred and fifty miles from the Glauci mountains to the glass river.
There were also encampments to secure the Lepus who had not faded away to the north and the east to escape Zorzal. All of these factors served to diminish the operational capacity of Zorzals legions. The fact of the matter was that twenty thousand horsemen was a huge number for him to amass and deploy when the vigour of the campaign had already begun to fade with the expectation of easy victory.
Regardless of how improbable I had to act as if I was approaching a force more than twice my size and utterly crush them. My timetable for Kontia was slim and any delays could cascade into an inglorious defeat.
I directed several runners forwards and gave them orders they were to deliver to my scouting parties. I wanted the Wyverns found. They, like Kontia, were a priority objective.
With that I had my temporary headquarters disassembled in a few moments by my attendants, girls no older than fourteen who had taken to reading and writing better than most. A modern nation would have dismissed them as close to illiterate but I did not have the luxury of being so discerning.
The last object to be packed away was wrapped in goblin weave cloth with only its handle sticking out. Not trusting it with my subordinates I grasped the handle and slung the almost forty stone weight over my shoulder once more marvelling at the prestigious strength this body offered me.
With a nod to my bodyguards I joined my army as we marched upon the Imperial’s forward campsite.
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One hundred and thirty miles north of Kontia
Rei of the Tanaoi, Cadet Corporal of the Lepus
“Wake up! Get up idiot!” I grabbed my sister's ears and yanked on them as she let out a squeal and pushed me back as she tried to pull the warm furs back over her body. But I refused to give in. Eventually she stopped being such an idiot and got out of her bed and got her shirt, spear and sling ready with the rest of our squad.
“Attention!” I snapped at the nine girls assembled in front of me and was quite pleased when they all presented their spears and stood up straight. Even if Lily was still blinking sleep out of her eyes.
Asuka was just glaring at me, probably for yanking on her ears, but she deserved it.
Probably.
“Motoko, Lilly, you will be dismantling our tent and preparing everyone's packs for tomorrow, everyone else, we will be baking bread for tomorrow's march from now until sunrise.” I informed my sisters. Earning a round of stupid and insubordinate groans that I ignored. “I spoke to one of the grown ups and they told me that we should be at Kotea by the day after tomorrow or maybe the day after that so we only have a few more days of marching and we can play with the other squads.” I informed them with a nod.
“Kontia.” Asuka grumbled at me and I scrunched up my face at her.
“Whatever, dismissed, you have until I get back from the Quartermistress with our flour and salt to use the cesspit and then wash up your hands and face. If you get me in trouble I will punch you.” With that I stomped my foot and saluted my sisters and they did the same and then I left the tent at a jog hoping to see the Quartermistress first before any of the other Cadet Corporals could and take the good stuff.
I rushed through the camp as it was starting to wake up with some of the tents being taken down and a lot of the people up overnight climbing into wagons so they could sleep on the move. I hated sleeping on the move because you could never actually sleep because the sun was stupid.
I saw Pellia leave her squad’s tent with a big yawn and waved at her as I ran past and she gave me a wave back before heading off to the cesspits. I giggled at how slow she was, I bet her squad was not even awake yet.
I was just at the tent when the hew and cry sounded out in the camp and everyone started running around and shouting. All of the slaves were shouting at each other and rushed over to the pretty tents and started carrying everything out of them and I bounced on my feet as I thought about rushing over and seeing if I could get some nice food in the chaos, but I did not want to get my squad in trouble so I just kept going to the Quartermistress.
I was just about to reach the tent when a giant dragon started breathing fire all over the street and burning up all the tents.
I bolted away from the line of fire as grown up squads bounded across the camp and started to sling at the dragon and the person sat on top of it but they flew up into the sky and got away. A goblin rushed over and hit me with a bucket and began shouting at me and I wanted to cry but a corporal never cries or lets anyone know they were sad or scared so I joined him and a bunch of other people carrying water from the river to the tents and throwing it at the fire.
Even though I was very hungry and got up before all of my squad, I still got so many buckets and threw them at so many fires. Eventually the fires were all killed and everyone had started to calm down even if we had not killed any of the dragons.
And then the sun started to wake up too even when my squad had not even started to bake any bread.
But even still I did not cry, the Queen told us that if we wanted to be officers we could never cry in front of our girls even when we wanted to. Especially when we still had work to do. And I had to get flour and salt.
I gave my bucket back to the goblin and rushed off to find the Quartermistress and gave a little prayer to Miritta so that I would find some flour. I then looked around to make sure no one was looking and gave a prayer to Emroy too just to be very sure I got to eat bread today. And so my squad could eat food today too.
Just as I opened my eyes I saw a bird falling from the sky in the east, landing behind a hill.
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I want to give a special thank you to my supporters:
Xodarap4, Old Hammer, dark king, Guerinology, Hrvoje Barac, Amerdism, wawabi, W01F
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17CuFaqLTptUqpL3AlWSITunNwYCX28FnCxts8AbZJY0/edit?usp=sharing
Comments
Old Hammer
Great world building for how the BW traditionally fight. I like how Tanya has essentially made the BW version of the Boy/Girl Scouts to train up the young. I am very excited to see where the attack leads. Wonder if she will catch Zorzal or if he has already headed back towards the Augustain wall. Also I noticed a lot of Japanese names ( or what looked like Japanese names to me ) amongst that group of young BW. Perhaps some of Tanya’s kids?
Amerdism
No way, dragons would likely have wiped the encampment out.
FallQM
Not Hardy at least.
Xodarap4
Was that Hardy and her apostles making chaos for the mortals again?
