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76. Creating an Image
🕑 Added 2024-09-30 23:39:20 +0000 UTCA line of shields and spears ran straight across the snowy clearing between two patches of trees at the top of a slightly incline. The position was perfect for what Mark wanted. The incline was subtle enough that the enemy would either underestimate it or potentially not even notice there was an incline. Still, when charging through shin-high snow, it would make itself noticed by the enemy as it sapped their stamina.
The army Mark had put together wasn’t a call-up of every able-bodied within Winterclaw. He had about 450 troops altogether. It was a significant chunk of what he could muster at that moment, but he maintained guards at all of the settlements he controlled. The army also consisted of about a hundred men from Frostwind, who would be fighting alongside Mark’s army for the first time.
Mark also involved his newly minted knights. Callum stood in the back because of his Imperator suit, and he had Radic command a squad near the front. As for Clay and Erin, he had them command a squad of archers each and armed them with crossbows.
The presence of the knights in his army was more symbolic than it was tactical. Mark didn’t have a long list of veteran commanders to put in charge of his soldiers, so there wasn’t much to risk by giving the command to his knights, which would further establish their image and provide them with much-needed experience leading.
As his men shuffled in anticipation of the battle, horns sounded across the crisp air; moments later, they watched the crooked army of mutants march into view.
Mark was relieved that the enemy army likely numbered twice their own. This would hopefully make them overconfident, and he was more concerned with his enemy trying to fight him on their own terms rather than he was sheer numbers. But perhaps more importantly, it was what he needed to make an image for himself. Destroying an army equal in size or smaller than his own would only provide so much prestige, and it might fail at the task of impressing the Western clans.
“The enemy is following the planned path of attack, my lord,” a warrior bowed at Mark’s side.
“I can see. Inform the sergeants that we open fire when they reach the markers as planned.”
Stakes had been buried in the snow, painting on the side that faced Mark’s army. It would be impossible to notice from the enemy line of sight, but Mark’s army could easily see the bright yellow paint that guided their range finding.
Hobbling along the snow in no discernable formation, the army of mutants shuffled toward Mark’s line, dressed in rags and the occasional piece of scrap metal bent around a shoulder or fashioned into a makeshift chest piece. Rat tails and extra limbs waved above the marching army. Some warriors among the hodgepodge army were armed with iron weapons, while others had nothing but sharpened sticks or even rocks.
“They call this an army,” Mark muttered at the pitiful sight.
“Apparently,” an archer beside him said.
“Still, don’t get overconfident. The enemy still outnumbers us by quite a bit. Let’s show them what it means to fight for the Kingdom of Winterclaw,” Mark said, his voice gradually rising into a roar, which was echoed throughout his army. He considered making a rousing speech, but it didn’t seem needed, and he felt it better suited for after they won.
Mark’s gaze narrowed as he spotted two huge figures marching at the center of the army. The rest of the warriors kept a birth of several yards from the two giant men, creating a circle clearing around them.
I guess those two are the brothers the scouts spoke of.
The two brothers must have stood at least seven feet tall and just as wide; however, not an ounce of muscle could be seen on their bulbous forms, although Mark assumed there must be quite a lot of it beneath the fat based solely on the fact that they could move their cumbersome, oversized frames.
Wait, this isn’t good.
Alarm bells rang as Mark realized that their ragged formation meant that the first troops to reach the range-finding stakes would be separated from the enemy’s main groupings.
“Hold fire until I command it,” Mark shouted.
The last thing he wanted to do was change plans at the last moment, but if they fired too early, they could lose their chance of inflicting maximum damage.
Whispers echoed through the army as soldiers wondered what was going on. Mark had told them to follow the plan strictly, and now he was suddenly changing it moments before they engaged the enemy.
The staggered army continued its march forward, its patchy formation of grotesquely mutated warriors seemingly stumbling forward like a horde of zombies. With every yard it covered, the army spread thinner and thinner in its disorganized stampede.
Damn it. They might look like a hopelessly rag-tag army, but this isn’t good. We need to hit them while they are together.
“Fire!” Mark shouted a moment later. The enemy wasn’t as tightly packed as he had wanted, but he couldn’t allow them to move any closer without loosening their arrows. He wanted to use most of their Greek fire on the enemy’s approach, setting the battlefield aflame and breaking their formation while causing casualties.
A volley of flaming arrows filled the air, and as they landed, several arrows exploded into flames, covering several yards in all directions and setting their enemy’s warriors alight.
Warcries could be heard echoing across the enemy’s ranks, and the mutated army broke into a charge as flaming arrows continued to rain down, turning men into human torches that flailed across the snow and set their companions alight.
The arrows were effective, as expected, but the spread-out nature of their enemy undoubtedly reduced their reach.
“Prepare for impact,” Mark shouted, and the line’s spears rose to the ready.
The enemy army’s loose formation might have surprised Mark, but its lack of organization and discipline was even worse than expected, and the mutated warriors charged straight into his spears without a second thought, skewing themselves against the weapons.
Stubbornly, the enemy pushed on, some warriors even pulling themselves along the spear that impaled their bodies until blood loss grew too great, and they slumped to the ground, taking the spears with them.
The first mutants to push past the spears hit the tightly packed shields and hammered their weapons against the defensive formation but soon realized their error as swords slid out between gaps in the shields and sliced up their unarmored bodies.
As more mutants slammed against the backs of their comrades that had reached the battle first, Mark’s light infantry released a volley of grenades across their enemy’s line, bursting across them with wild flames that sent dozens of warriors screaming in agony.
Next, blasts of lightning thundered out with crackling ferocity, smashing into the densest clumping of the enemy and frying men where they stood.
But the enemy continued to pack in, the two brothers at the center of the army barking insults at their warriors and even picking men up and throwing them into the shields of Mark’s army.
The heavy mutant soldiers pushed against the wall of shields, and some of Mark’s men began to fall to their pressure, but the arrows didn’t relent, causing more casualties as the mutant army compacted itself against Mark’s formation.
A horn sounded from behind the Winterclaw lines, and moments later, light warriors charged out from the surrounding forests, dressed in rags, light leathers, and armed with hatchets.
The light warriors bounded across the snowy battlefield with remarkable speed and leaped into their enemy’s flanks, swinging with wild abandonment and cutting into their ranks.
Most of the enemy soldiers appeared too stupid to truly grasp the dire nature of their situation. Still, it gradually dawned on them as they were forced to look back and forth between warriors, closing in on them from all directions.
“Forward!” Mark commanded, and the line of shields pushed back against their enemy, his spearmen collecting spare spears that had been provided and laid by their feet. With fresh spears in their hands, they stabbed forward to push the enemy back in rhythm with the frontline’s march forward.
The smaller, rattier warriors of the mutant army were the first to crumble, escaping between the legs of their allies as Mark’s army pushed through their weakening line.
The wall of shields lined by stabbing spears and swords quickly claimed the lives of anybody caught against its impenetrable barrier as it relentlessly pushed forward against the increasingly panicked army of mutants.
“Fight ye weak maggots!” One of the brothers shouted, grabbing a fleeing man and throwing him back into the line of death.
“Too predictable,” Mark said, almost feeling sorry for the enemy that had been perfectly caught by his forces and ground down with little effort.
Raising his hand, he aimed at one of the brothers. The enemy was on its last legs and essentially crushed already, and he didn’t need to save his lightning to crush their troops. Instead, he blasted the hulking brother.
The huge man was more resilient than expected and stumbled forward, and smoke drifted from his charred and now hairless body.
“Stubborn, huh?” Mark charged another blast and fired, shooting out a crackling line of lightning that burst against the giant man’s frame and sent him falling to the ground.
Callum had long exhausted his three lightning shots and now stood at the rear panting. Firing more would likely only hurt the boy, so Mark had commanded him to keep it to three. But it had provided enough assistance as it was, helping to break the enemy's left flank.
As the last of the mutant army crumbled around the last-standing brother, the huge man fell to the ground, weeping at the corpse of his slain brother. The remnants of his army were either slaughtered, surrendered, or in full retreat from Mark’s men.
As the slaughter continued, a squad of spearmen led by Radic surrounded the surviving brother in a circle, aiming their spears at the weeping man.
The spearmen parted for Mark as he walked toward the enemy leader.
“Do you surrender?”
“Brother… why do you leave me.”
“Answer me, scum who chose to follow the warg. Tell me, do you surrender?”
“I–I,” the huge man gulped, looking up at Mark with teary eyes. “Kill me. End me now. Send me to my brother.”
“Fine,” Mark raised a hand, and lightning shot out, sending the giant Neanderthal-like man into convulsions before he fell to the ground.
“It looks like we’re finished here,” Mark said, dusting off his hands as the spearmen rushed forward to check the corpses.
“My lord,” one of them said, raising a hand.
“What is it?” Mark’s brow raised as he turned back to the bodies.
“The giant men are still alive. What is your command? Should we finish them off?”
“Alive?”
How on earth… damn they are hardy bastards, aren’t they? Strong too. They could be useful if we could keep them under control somehow.
“No, wait. Do we have something to cuff them with?”
“I’ll find out, my lord. Soldier, send a runner to the campfollowers. Find out if they have something to cuff these giants with.”
One of the soldiers nodded to the other and ran off.
A minute later, the man returned with heavy ropes.
“Iron would be better for these big guys, but that should be a suitable temporary fix until we get them back to Winterclaw. Have them bound. Wrists behind their backs and the ankles.”
“Yes, my lord.”
I wouldn’t trust these two to fight in my army, but they could be valuable assets if I can use their labor within WInterclaw.
Mark was already imagining his shiny new keep being built with renewed vigor thanks to the help of the two oversized brothers; he just needed to force them to do it now.
