Chapter 61 - Energumen
The War Hound leapt forwards, over the infantry, mouth open.
With supernatural speed, the horse reared, kicking the beast with its front legs.
Bafflingly, the War Hound reacted as an ordinary dog kicked by a human might, sailing backwards through the air with a yelp and crashing into their own lines, only barely evading Roderic.
The knight hefted his lance, staring at the creature masquerading as a horse.
Behind him, he could hear the shouts of Cyril and Bastan, marshalling the men.
The reserve Hound was already bounding forwards, the elven commander’s reaction speed as impressive as ever, but it would not make it in time.
If the horse reached the infantry, it’d be a massacre. He couldn’t let that happen. He prepared to charge, as foolish as it was.
“For the lion,” he muttered, and spurred his horse, the troops hastily getting out of his way.
His lance entered the creature as easily as it might have any horse, going straight through its torso and bringing Roderic next to its rage-filled face. The knight let go, drawing his sword.
Before he could use it, the creature bit his breastplate, tearing away chunks of metal and flesh.
Roderic stabbed it in the eye.
Then, something hit him in the chest, sending him flying through the air.
Roderic did not feel the impact.
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Cyril’s heart pounded in his chest. Ser Roderic’s flight ended with a nasty crunch, and now the devil-beast was staring down his infantry. Neither the lance going through half its body, nor the sword lodged in its head, seemed to bother it much, though its movements had turned noticeably jerky.
“HOLD!” he screamed, half for himself, half for his own men.
The first War Hound was still shaking off the hit, while Isengrim’s Hound was almost upon them. They just had to hold off for a few seconds.
Cyril didn’t rate their chances highly. Worse, he had not worn his brown pants for the battle.
Just as the demon beast charged, a dark tendril emerged from its shadow, coiling around one of its rear legs.
The devil-horse screeched. The sound was deeply unnatural. Half metal scraping on metal, half the screams of the damned, with some horse thrown in for good measure.
Cyril grimaced, his hold on his spear tightening.
It snapped its mouth towards the tendril, but was unable to twist its neck so far back. It paused for a second, some insane calculation in its mind, before it resumed its sprint towards his soldiers. The tendril held on, stopping the creature in place as it moved, before the rear leg tore.
The sun above his head disappeared then.
“Fuck!” Cyril swore, instinctively ducking, as two enormous shapes flew above his head.
The two War Hounds gave even the horse-thing some pause.
Then the brawl started.
Cyril did not have much time to watch the fighting monsters, as the Nazairi infantry began flowing around the three beasts, engaging the front line.
As spears stabbed back and forth, shattering on shields and piercing flesh, Cyril could only hope that the two hounds would triumph, and triumph fast. They were still outnumbered, after all.
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I swung my staff, bisecting the rock that had been heading for my head with a mage blade. The enemy sorceress was doing her best to be annoying, without properly engaging me.
The sorceress, irritatingly, flew high above my own position, well out of arrow range, and largely just threw rocks at me.
Despite her efforts being rather substandard, I had not managed to cast Saggita aurea, the golden arrow, again. The spell was deceptively complicated, though its effects were very simple - severing extra-planar connections of whatever it hit.
Were the energumen hit, it’d be instantly sent to whatever plane of existence it belonged. For now, it still fought, though the Hounds were keeping it in check.
I was not well-versed in goetia - not that anyone truly was - and so I had very little idea of what the being possessing the horse might be capable of. Energumen, more commonly known as demons, were massless beings from outside of this world, capable of possessing pretty much anything with a physical body. However, most scholars agreed that they formed a broad category indeed. Saying that the horse was possessed by an energumen was akin to claiming that we were being attacked by an animal. There was a world of difference between a rabbit, a bear and a trained knight.
While the reckless insanity of summoning a demon to a battlefield baffled and enraged me in equal measure, the frontline was stable, for now.
The energumen brawled with my War Hounds, while the enemy infantry tentatively engaged my own around the fighting monsters. The infantry battle was not particularly fierce, as both sides were quite reasonably worried about the monsters brawling right in their midst, which suited me just fine.
I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain that my Hounds would prove victorious, but they were pack fighters, outnumbering the demon. Their chances were decent.
On the right flank, the situation was in a stalemate. The enemy cavalry there outnumbered my own and was composed largely of heavily armoured knights, but my own men had a War Hound with them. Neither side was willing to engage. While the Nazairi had no good way to deal with the Hound, they could bog it down with only a portion of their men. Even if it took a hundred, their remaining numbers would still be enough to overwhelm my own forces, considering the disparity in equipment and likely training. Then they’d be free to smash into my frontline, or go after the archers, who were currently firing volleys into the enemy rear, suppressing their own archers.
On the other hand, the War Hound with the cavalry was capable of rampaging through their forces, and an unwise engagement could very well end up in a massacre for their side. A tense stalemate.
My only worry was the King. If he decided to command a glorious charge or some such, things might get tricky quite quickly.
I was on the left flank, with only my own guards, half-heartedly deflecting the sorceress's attempts to brain me with rocks.
Dhu Muire’s black tendrils moved with deceptive slowness around me, ready to react. The spell was Power-hungry, but thanks to the donation of foci from the previous Nazairi sorcerer, that wasn’t as much of an issue as in the past.
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The reason why I was not putting more energy into killing the enemy mage was the massing cavalry opposite my position, and the possibility that her companion would target the Hounds.
I could have used other spells, but Dhu Muire was one of my best, developed with Tissaia’s help, very compatible with numeromancy and largely flexible. Combined with my newfound reserves, it gave me quite a few options, ones I was ready to utilise now.
“Forward,” I commanded, spurring my own horse to ride out a bit further from the fighting infantry, a grin breaking out on my face.
The enemy knights could not be allowed to hit my soldiers. The frontline was stable, but over half of my number were levies. It was a fragile sort of stability, born more out of the wariness of both sides than any real parity. Unfortunately, the heavy barding present on most of the enemy horse meant my archers weren’t a big enough deterrent.
It was a good thing that the enemy commander was underestimating me.
Yes, over half a thousand horsemen were technically enough to overwhelm any sorcerer.
But I didn’t need to deal with half a thousand. Just the front rank of their little wedge. Physics would handle the rest.
I glanced upwards, the enemy mage was positioned near the sun, barely visible.
Of course, she wouldn’t just let me do that.
Unfortunately for the Nazairi, I did not plan to ask for permission.
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Gauthier Fitz-Morne rode in the backlines of the cavalry wedge, his illusions already in place. Their plan was finally coming to fruition. The demon just had to hold for a while longer.
As the cavalry commander, some barbarian noble whose name he had already forgotten, led the charge, Gauthier felt the adrenaline flooding his veins. Ironveil had told him that Degurechaff was likely capable enough to turn an attack even by such an overwhelming force into a massacre, but that was why he was here. Even if they lost most of the horsemen, it’d be a small price to pay for taking out Cintra’s ace.
“For Nazair! Charge!” The noble shouted.
He frowned when he saw the sorceress ride out to meet them. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Then, two massive black tendrils sprouted from the ground between Degurechaff and their charging force. They were taller than the tallest trees, towering above the battlefield, shrouded by dark mist. Small rocks swished around the Cintran sorceress, but it soon became clear that Ironveil’s tactic was not going to work as the sorceress either dodged or deflected the projectiles with ease.
“Illusion, surely,” he muttered to himself. The amount of Power was great enough that even he felt it, despite the distance, but it definitely was not enough for a spell of such proportions. Still, even that much was bound to exhaust the too-young sorceress.
Their charge did not slow, the men already primed to expect sorcery and experienced enough to know that aborting the charge at this stage wouldn’t lead to anything good.
He glanced upwards, at Ironveil, who seemed to be visibly hesitating. Gauthier could guess her thoughts, for they surely mirrored his own. If it was an illusion, then it was meant to bait Ironveil into attacking. However, if it was not, and Ironveil did not interrupt the sorceress…
The tendrils descended, one from each side. With titanic slowness, they approached their wedge, hitting the outer portions and shattering the illusion Gauthier had woven over the real force, which was behind and slightly to the side. Then, they continued.
Gauthier could only watch with dread as his question was answered and the tendrils approached the real force, closing like the jaws of a dragon.
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I smirked, watching the cavalry charge towards their doom. I had emptied all of my rings of Power, and even some of Tissaia’s gift, but numeromancy made the resulting spell even more impressive than I had hoped, though much less so than it seemed.
The darkness clinging to the tendrils made them look larger, but the real trick lay in the force that they could actually exert. The tendrils weren’t weak by any means, but they weren’t the army crushers they looked like either. I doubted they could pulp more than a few dozen horsemen each before running out of steam.
But I didn’t need them to.
The flying mage dropped out of the sky, stopping just above the point of the charging wedge, and the tendrils stopped.
I felt the resistance, as she did her best to prevent their advance.
Then something strange happened.
A rider on a black horse appeared between my own group and the charging cavalry. One second there was nothing, the next, she was there.
Despite my attention being almost fully in that direction, I had felt nothing. This wasn’t necessarily strange - the Power required for short-range teleportation or an illusion like that was not great. However, what would be the point of something like that?
The rider was someone I had not seen before. It was a woman, and I could make out her ashen hair, alongside a facial scar. Neither the horse nor the rider was dressed for battle, and the woman seemed fairly haggard.
I hesitated for a moment, the occurrence too strange, before strengthening my resolve. If the enemy had, for some reason, kept an extra sorceress up their sleeve, then I’d just kill her too.
I raised my staff, pouring more Power into the working.
I grinned as I felt the resistance snap. The Nazairi air mage flew away in haste, while the newcomer seemed to panic for a second before disappearing as quickly as they had appeared.
What followed could only be described as a slaughter.
Dhu Muire’s tentacles closed in, pulping the outer ranks - less because of their power, more because they sprinted straight into them. The knights tried to course correct at the last second, but they had nowhere to turn. The enemy commander had bet wrong.
The following ranks rammed into the backs of their compatriots. Both horses and men screamed, steel tore, and blood flowed.
I may not have had the power to crush the entire formation, but putting an obstacle in their way? That was more than doable.
Unfortunately, their back ranks managed to stop in time, resulting in something like a third of the force escaping unscathed. After a tense few seconds, they promptly turned their animals around and rode away. Hopefully quitting the battlefield, but most likely only as a temporary retreat.
Despite the success, my eyes never left the enemy sorceress, so I was not surprised when she began approaching me.
I was surprised when she set down in front of my group, and even more so when another rider materialised nearby. This time, I understood what had happened - the rider had been invisible, though some much more complicated version of the spell.
It was not the same person as the one who had so abruptly materialised between our forces. Instead, it was a tall, bespectacled man with a black ponytail, dressed in a scholarly robe and with a rapier on his belt.
The illusionist, I guessed. His appearance did offer a simple explanation for the strange rider - an ill-thought-out attempt at distracting me, somehow. I suppose the rider did bear a passing resemblance to the Queen, at least to someone who had likely never met Calanthé face to face. Not a terrible last-ditch effort, if still useless.
“Well, well, well,” The man with spectacles began, “It seems you’ve lost, Degurechaff.”
I tilted my head.
“You may have bested Tim, but he was the weakest of our number. As even a barbarian like you must have surely realised by now, both Ironveil and I here,” he nodded to the masked air mage, “Have conserved our strength. Unlike poor Tim, I am an accredited imperial mage, while Ironveil has her own charms,” he smirked.
I frowned, hearing the familiar term, before my face cleared. There were empires in this world as well, and the man surely meant Nilfgaard. Foreign interference neatly explained how Nazair had managed to scrounge up three fairly skilled sorcerers.
That he thought I was somehow exhausted was fairly amusing.
“If you kneel and surrender, you will be treated with respect, I swear on the honour of the Fitz-Morne family,” he finished.
My guards bristled, but I didn’t mind. Examining my two opponents before our inevitable fight was to my advantage, as I doubted either of them was running a potent reflex enhancement.
The masked sorceress, Ironveil, clearly had armour underneath her black robe. The Nilfgaardian seemed largely unthreatening in comparison, but I wasn’t about to underestimate him.
While he wasn’t completely on the mark, I had exhausted much of my reserves. While my own men compensated somewhat for the fact that there were two of them, it was going to be a dangerous fight. Even if I was fairly confident in winning.
“I see that talking will lead nowhere,” Fitz-Morne spoke up again after seeing I had no inclination to answer him, “Very well. Let it not be said I did not try!”
Then, he unsheathed his rapier, turned it around, and stabbed himself in the chest.
I stared. If the surprise on the man’s face was anything to go by, he had not intended to do that.
Then he collapsed.