V2Ch95-The Beastfolk Alone
Tybalt gave essentially the same speech he had given outside Grain in the town square of Dun.
There weren’t many healthy people there, but the very recently recovered, their husbands and wives, and their children made for a decent captive audience, at least. The reception was at least as warm as it had been in Grain, and people approached the necromancer about joining him as he finished, forcing him to begin delegating recruitment responsibilities to a dozen of those soldiers he considered more senior or qualified, whom he had directed to stay in the town and remain in charge of the undead there.
Soon I’ll create my own officer corps, he thought. These people will be the seeds of it.
Then the necromancer gathered the bulk of his forces and led them away from the town. It was on to the next target. He rode in the same cart he’d traveled to Dun on, but this time, instead of piles of bodies with him, he sat alongside his living companions and made conversation.
The group seemed to get more comfortable with each other every day. Vidalia had let Victoria have pride of place at his right hand side, and Vicky spent a lot of the ride holding his hand or leaning against his shoulder with a smile. Kistana spoke a little more than usual, and even Dero felt like she belonged when she eventually returned from her mission and caught up with them.
“No signs of something wrong in Whadesgart yet,” she reported. “Though I also didn’t find the specific zombie I was aware we were looking for. People did mention that the Royal Army was there taking taxes, though. I seem to recall something similar being said in the other towns we’ve visited.”
“Yeah,” Tybalt said. “I found it odd at the time. The Army might conceivably do it early, especially if there’s trouble in some other part of the country, and they need to raise funds. While I’ve been out in the desert, I’ve been out of the loop. It’s not inconceivable that the Walian Empire or some raiders from out of the Discontented Lands are causing trouble. Could even be good for us.”
“But more importantly, it offers an explanation for how your rats could have gotten to Whadesgart,” Dero said.
“Yes, it does,” he reluctantly agreed. “There’s always something you can’t anticipate…”
The conversation petered out from there. There was nothing to be done but follow and trust their existing plan.
***
Just two hours after the group moved out, they sighted another town’s walls.
“We’re agreed that the beastfolk will take this challenge on without assistance, correct?” Andric asked Tybalt. The foxman was seated on a camel they had captured in the previous town, dressed and equipped for battle with gambeson, spear, shield, and dagger - like one of the Kingdom’s own soldiers.
This town is Date, right? Tybalt tried to remember his last visit to the town. I’m pretty sure I actually saw the Mayor. Only briefly, but it was memorable. He was some lord’s son, callow and entitled, just placed here because of who Daddy was. Someone of good breeding has to be there to make sure the date palms flourish, or some such stupid crap. The date palm was the local staple crop.
The necromancer reached out to the town, felt that there were at least some infected there, and finally nodded. The place was hopefully weakened enough for the beastfolk to crack it on their own.
“If you think our side needs my undead, just shout for me,” he said.
“You could just have me join them at the front, master,” came Baldwin’s voice. Tybalt turned and saw the revenant walking alongside the cart. “That way, you won’t need to be listening for a yell that you probably wouldn’t hear over the shouts of fighting men.”
The necromancer nodded to himself and looked at Andric.
“That sounds fine,” the foxman said, though his gaze as he looked at Baldwin was far from kind. “Try not to accidentally kill any beastfolk while you’re here, revenant.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve never accidentally killed a beastman in my life!” Baldwin said.
“Then we’ll probably have no trouble,” Andric replied.
“Though there is a first time for everything,” the revenant sent to Tybalt telepathically.
The necromancer barely kept his face in check and shook his head at Baldwin instead of laughing.
“Behave,” he sent back soberly.
Tybalt watched over the next several minutes as Andric gathered the beastfolk fighters together and explained the mission to them. He had ordered the undead to slow their march and let the beastfolk build a bit of a lead, so now he could not directly hear what was being said. He could have listened in through Baldwin, but Tybalt trusted that Andric wouldn’t do anything that required his immediate attention or intervention.
Just please don’t charge, he thought. Not unless you do want me to intervene by opening the gates from the inside again…
But Andric hadn’t asked for that. And as the beastfolk approached the town to take it, they did so at a walk.
One of the watchmen inside the town blew on a horn, others closed the gates, and the number of heads poking over the top of their wall, watching the approach, multiplied, but none of that changed the beastfolk army’s movements at all. Perhaps it was all according to plan.
When they drew close enough, Andric and a few other mounted warriors rode forward, separating from the pack.
Andric shouted, loud enough for Tybalt to hear from around five hundred feet away, where he and his party members had settled in place to watch.
“The Grand Beastfolk Army has come for your town! Surrender, and you will not be harmed. Fight, and you will be punished for your Kingdom’s crimes against our people!”
Nice delivery, and I appreciate that you decided to use the name I made up for our force on the fly before, Tybalt thought.
Of course, Andric’s words only triggered a burst of arrow fire from atop the walls.
The foxman raised his shield and protected himself successfully, and the handful with him managed to retreat from the walls quickly without losing men or camels - though a couple of camels did get wounded, the arrows didn’t land in places that would disable or kill them.
As Andric and the others made it back to the mass of their forces - well over a thousand beastfolk and human recruits - the archers for the Grand Beastfolk Army launched a return volley, hundreds of arrows in exchange for the dozens their side had received.
Just like that, the battle for Date was joined.
Andric’s side kept their distance, for the most part, just loosing arrow after arrow at the town’s defenders. The substantial numerical disparity made it difficult for the humans inside to poke their heads up and shoot back, though Tybalt thought he only saw a few of them actually die.
At the same time, the beastfolk initiated their strategy for getting inside the walls.
A dozen harpies took to the sky, half of them holding onto other beastfolk, and they flew toward the walls. Those burdened with carrying their comrades flew slowly and laboriously, approaching the walls from the sides since they were basically sitting ducks for any archer who could get a shot off at them.
The other six streaked straight up to the walls in a line, forcing the archers behind to choose between poking their heads up to shoot out at them or letting them get to the town’s exterior wall.
Only three archers were brave enough to try and take aim at the Grand Beastfolk Army’s air force, and two of them received arrows in the neck and eye respectively for their courage. The third managed to shoot an arrow and drop back, and the frontmost harpy fell out of the line with an arrow through one wing.
Is that Tatiana? From what Tybalt had seen before, it would be just like her to place herself in the thick of danger.
One of Andric’s camel cavalry darted forward, already prepared for this. His beast dashed across the sand, the rider scooped the harpy onto his camel’s back, and then they shot back into the mass of beastfolk troops.
Tybalt saw that the rest of the beastfolk were preparing for a rapid advance now, expecting that at any moment the gates might open.
The half dozen harpies who had approached from the side had dropped off their passengers, and the five harpies who had streaked over the wall should now be in close proximity to the gate.
Most of the archers on the town’s side, however, now appeared to focus their fire inward. As long as they didn’t poke their heads out, it was impossible for the beastfolk archers to shoot at them. With a significant threat now on their side of the wall, they launched only a token number of arrows out of the town.
Andric didn’t let up the pressure, though. He had been giving some quiet instruction to the men on his side for a short time before this, and now Tybalt heard him issue a much louder command.
“Charge!”
Over a hundred beastmen charged the walls on foot. The archers on the town’s side seemed to freeze in response, and then a hundred beastmen were groping for handholds and footholds in the earthen walls, some of them throwing handmade hooks over the top, everyone trying to get over.
Then the gates began to shake.
Tybalt could hear the frenzy and panic from inside the walls now. Shouted vulgarities, muffled by the sounds of combat, managed to carry due to sheer volume and number. There was a din of metal on metal as the defenders within the walls clashed against the infiltrators, both harpy and otherwise.
The town’s gates burst open, and all those beastfolk who weren’t already climbing the walls or wrestling with the defenders atop the walls rushed for the relatively narrow opening.
Tybalt could see through the opening as the big doors shuddered out of their place.
Those who had been sent in to infiltrate looked to be dying, and the town watchmen weren’t the only ones who had been roused by the beastfolk army’s approach. The narrow town streets looked to be packed with men ready to fight.
It might only be a dozen or so, the necromancer thought. It was impossible to see deep into the town through that opening.
Then the beastfolk charged through it.
Tybalt’s vision narrowed as he stared through and tried to make out what was happening beyond simply clashing blades and spilled blood.
He heard shouting from behind the walls and recognized the voice of the town’s Mayor raised above the others immediately.
“Stand fast, men!” the man yelled. “Courage! This rabble will scatter as long as we do not break first.”
Great, the necromancer thought, suppressing a groan. Maybe this guy’s not as useless as I thought.
Tybalt reached out with his consciousness and found Baldwin, then simply looked through the revenant’s eyes.