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Summer, 1343
The Siege of Stanton settled into a stalemate lasting weeks.
The worst part of a siege was not the fighting, it was the waiting. Constantly being on edge, waiting for a surprise at any moment. Rations, mostly bread and cheeses with whatever vegetables could be scrounged from home plots, gradually grew smaller and smaller in portion. Long-range skirmishing continued incessantly: an exchange of arrows, an occasional javelin or spear, a periodic lob of a ballista bolt or stone projectile. Always minor, but always a risk, and not a day went by without someone being brought to the hospital or the old tavern cellar, now serving as a morgue.
Stanton’s defenders had remained active, sortieing out to harass the Freeland Brothers as the rebels slowly set up siege engines, dug trenches, and slowly extended the noose around the town. It was vicious, nasty work. The Freeland Brothers tended to be lax on the watch, and so Logan’s forces tended to infiltrate easily, but that did not prevent the town's defenders from slowly accumulating losses.
Similarly, every so often Colonel Addison would send out a reconnaissance-in-force to test Stanton’s defenses. Logan was not sure if those wild, angry masses of rebels- charging unsupported through fields littered with traps and fixed defenses to the responding volleys of arrows-knew that they were being sacrificed or not, but he knew the colonel was testing for any sign of weakness. It was an uncomfortable feeling of being evaluated by someone, an unknown figure just waiting for your failure somewhere.
***
Then one day the tower appeared. Upon a prominent hill the Freeland Brothers began constructing a huge firing tower, two hundred feet high to shoot over the town's walls, and for over a week the defenders had watched its construction, log by log, just out of crossbow range. Logan fought to make sure that the structure was never completed. Siege weapons were directed at it, and in the midst of a violent artillery duel, a lucky stone slammed into the incomplete and unprotected scaffold and sent the tower-and its two score construction crew-tumbling down to the cheers of the townsfolk.
Still only a day later construction recommenced, now with siege weapon support and mantlet and hide armor. Even after Logan directed springalds to fire upon the structure the bolts simply embedded themselves within the protective screen.
As the tower completed, looming over the town’s defenses, morale plummeted.
Clearly more drastic measures were needed.
***
In the early morning darkness, a cloaked face peeked out from behind an incomplete line of stakes. Atop a low embankment, a lone guard sat on a stump trying to keep warm, her spear resting upon her shoulder. Woden aimed his arrow, then lowered it. Before the guard knew what had happened a hand went around her mouth, and a knife across her throat. The threat eliminated, Fink beckoned back to the palisade, and Logan and the rest of the strike team crept forward.
This morning was a dangerous task. The plan was simple: sortie and destroy the tower manually. Easier said than done, The Forester prepared all he could, threatening other sectors with attacks, decreasing general counterfire, and acting like his attention was focused elsewhere. Two days later, he struck.
Logan attended to this attack personally, and accompanied by Woden, he selected some of the best warriors he had for close quarters combat: Fink the Farmer and pugilist, Mansker, boar hunter, Guyot, fast and agile, Jackson the scout.
Also joining them were Sarangay and four of her warriors. The Roja and her minotaurs were often at the forefront of the fighting, sowing death and terror every time they appeared, so the Forester reserved them for important tasks essential to the safety of the town. Sarangay's troops were similarly hand picked by the minotaur leader: Kerdan, Lemas, Gnerwa, and Proteria.
Karlen also joined in.
“Ach, Logan.” The Duregaren exclaimed, lowering his helm and hefting his warpick. “You can't leave me behind. I am a fighter! I'm sick of being stuck like I'm in a hole in the ground.”
“I thought your people liked holes in the ground.”
Karlen grinned. “We do, but we like mischief more.”
Upon what everyone now dubbed Tower Hill, the tower was guarded by three rings of palisades with four guard posts and six mangonels nearby, standing over every hill and covering a half square mile. It was a good position, built with some forethought. However after scouting, Jackson and Guyot found some weaknesses the attackers would now be exploiting.
“The Ninth Post on Gracie's Hill is the strongest position guarding the tower, but it also is the hinge.” Liza had reported. “Strike fast and hard, overwhelm the defenses there, and you can follow the palisade down Gracie's Ridge and hit the tower from the rear.”
The strikeforce set off an hour before dawn, carefully picking their way through the palisades and entrenchments. As the sky began to brighten the warriors eliminated the advance pickets and proceeded into rebel lines. Two dozen soldiers were posted at Ninth Post, but only half were awake and only five were keeping watch. In rapid succession, Woden killed those performing surveillance before Logan, Mansker, Fink, Karlen and the human fighters rushed in and slaughtered the rest before any alarm could be raised. After Fort Brecas, the endeavor against minimally trained and focused humans was simple, but it remained brutal, bloody work.
The killing temporarily done, the Forester cut the lanyard for the manogel and gestured for the minotaurs to join them. Archers Hana and Bixler were left with the minotaur Proteria to guard the position.
More Freelander guards were posted along the transverse palisade radiating away from the outpost. One by one they were picked off by the expert marksmen from Stanton, and Logan’s team quickly worked their way through the trench, crouching to limit visibility. Next came Eighth Post, where the two dozen-strong garrison there were similarly efficiently slaughtered. Now Logan and the others descended from Gracie's Ridge into the gully below, leaving behind Fink and Jackson with the minotaur Kerdan.
So far so good.
The group was quietly hacking down the rope holding up palisade stakes below Tower Hill when the alarm was abruptly raised by a lone patrolling rebel.
“The Stantonites were attacking!” Immediately bells began to ring all around the encampment.
“Ach you guys suck at this!” Karlen grumbled. Immediately he grabbed his rope, looped it around a half dozen stakes, and with a grunt pulled them all out at the root. Logan stared at the Duregaren in shock. “Come on!” Karlen was already climbing the knoll, swinging his pick at the fifty alerted Freeland Brothers of Tower Hill who were grabbing their weapons and attempting to respond to the attack.
{For Zamar!} Moments later Sarangay and the remaining three minotaurs charged up the dismantled defenses, and before the defenders could properly prepare they were brutally torn to pieces by the Duregaren and cow folk.
Logan and the other humans scrambled up the slope behind them, taking cover behind the open ended palisades that now served to protect them as a flurry of arrows rained upon them. Without hesitation the Forester continued to lead the others into the tower itself, stabbing rebels who had taken refuge there and were attempting to fire down upon them from above. The bottom floor was quickly cleared; Logan’s awlpike had reach and was soon covered in blood, while Mansker and Guyot fought right behind their commander, ruthlessly killing any guards who got past his polearm.
Ascending the ladder to each successive level took harder effort: Woden and the other archers shot down any enemy who attempted to try to hold the trapdoors at point-blank range, before those with polearms rushed up, blindly jabbing to clear the entryway before sliding up with shields raised and weapons poised, allowing those behind to ascend and together finally overwhelm the next floor.
Room by room, ladder by ladder, the Stanton militia fought their way up, until suddenly there was only the sky. A score of dead Freeland Brothers lay scattered across the five levels below. They had fought well, and if there had been more defenders or were better prepared Logan’s party would have been caught and destroyed, but they hadn’t and now the Forester was at the top amid the incomplete flooring, half completed parapet and scattered mantlets, the pole of a disassembled manogel standing nearby with the arm below it. The tower had been seized in five brutal minutes.
Logan took a deep breath and looked at the panorama below.
He could see for miles around him. The Freeland Brother Encampment below had come to life and was in chaos, thousands of rebels were flooding down from all corners through the entrenchments.
“The enemy! Where are they?” Voices echoed out.
It was all confusion in the early morning darkness. Two mobs of Freeland Brother soldiers collided into each other in brutal fighting. “There! Those filth are there! Kill them!” Screams and the clash of arms wafted up. Most enemy troops however milled about in confusion. The alarm had been raised, but there was no direction, and were wild rumors were rife.
“They’re trying to break out!”
“No! They’re raiding our larder!”
“We have traitors in our midst!”
Stanton had come alive as well on Logan’s standing orders, lobbing onager stones widely into the Freeland Brother encampment when commotion broke out, adding to the general chaos.
Despite the alarm, things were still going well.
Mansker looked around the tower, its incomplete weapons poised at the town. “Now how do we destroy this monster?”
Logan nodded, bringing his large satchel from behind him and opened it, revealing thick, viscous black liquid.
“This was from Glib, may the Heavens bless his soul. We soak the structure with this oil. Glib’s writing says it is easy to ignite and unquenchable.”
“That sounds…dangerous.”
The Forester nodded. “Desperate times indeed. Everyone go back down and I’ll soak this thing.”
Quickly Logan spread the dangerous liquid before joining the others descending back down the tower, where Karlen and the minotaurs were hiding from the Freelanders, as were the two other garrisons guarding the two posts in and out. The Forester left a long trail of the goo to the bottom, then circled around the structure twice.
The twenty warriors breathed deeply behind the barricade.
Logan pointed at the black substance, dripping and pooling around them. “One of us will have to ignite this dangerous thing, because as soon as the tower lights up it will alert every Freeland Brother for miles where we are. We’ll need to run.”
“I'll do it.” Sarangay stated without reservation. “That someone needs to be able to blow through groups of enemies if necessary.”
“Thank you. We’ll try to keep you safe.”
“We’re all trying to keep us all safe, though the thought is certainly appreciated.”
“Maroney! Do you see anything atop the tower?” A voice called out from the twilight.
Logan looked at the others. Humans, minotaurs and Duregaren nodded back.
“Maroney?” The voice called louder.
“Go!” Logan yelled.
Everyone immediately ran down the hill.
Sarangay ignited a torch and turned and tossed it, which landed in the middle of the pool of thick dark liquid. Immediately the naphtha ignited, traveling up the stream to burn the center of the tower in a fiery ring. Instantly friend and foe stopped to gawk at the illumination breaking the predawn blue.
Logan and his warriors had already fled the hill, heading back up to Eighth Post. Still, they were only halfway across however when Rebels began flooding in from every direction.
“There they are, kill them!”
“Schiltron!” Logan ordered. Though they lacked training together, the members of the strike team were all experienced fighters and knew the ground. Immediately humans, minotaurs and Duregaren assembled into a shield wall, the fighters in front, archers in the back. A tide of Freeland Brothers crashed against the prepared defenders and were smashed to pieces. Logan and Mansker jabbed out with boar spear and awlpike, taking down an opponent with each strike, while Guyot cut down a swordsman that managed to get around the polearms and Karlen embedded his pick into the skull of a particularly aggressive rebel wielding a scythe. Woden shot down every single commander they could see, ensuring that the Freeland Brothers could not coordinate their response. However the greatest slaughter was done by the minotaurs, who ruthlessly cleaved their way through the enemy ranks, each warrior easily bowling through dozens of opponents. Sarangay's fan-axe sang as it swept through the air, blood flying off its gold and blue metal from sheer inertia.
“To Gracie's Ridge! One step to the East!” Logan yelled. Shields locked and weapons poised to strike, the schiltron made one step East, fighting off Freeland Brothers in their way.
“Step!” Logan repeated. “Step!”
Slowly, glacially, the unit crawled over to Eighth Post, battling off hordes of enemies attacking from every direction. As they approached the fort it came to life, the manogel flinging stones rapidly, killing or injuring dozens of rebels while scattering many of the rest. Fink appeared, smashing a way clear up the slope with his club.
“Come on!” The farmer yelled, “They're coming up the other side!”
“Sarangay! Karlen! Mansker! With me!” Logan yelled. “Everyone else up!”
{Lemas, Gnerwa with me!} Sarangay yelled. Together the six defenders held a half crescent rearguard as the remainder scrambled up the banks. Halfway up however, Joyce was struck by an errant arrow and crumpled.
Logan cursed. “Archers, covering fire! The rest of us, go!” As Woden, Jackson and the others shot down approaching enemy forces, Logan, Sarangay and the rearguard scrambled up, Logan and Karlen dragging Joyce behind the protective barricade. Some of the minotaurs grabbed nearby rebels instead and hoisted the screaming humans behind their backs to deter further enemy fire.
“Joyce, are you alright?” Logan asked. The farmer was already unconscious and bleeding profusely from her abdomen. She lasted only a few more minutes before breathing her last.
Twenty two individuals now crowded into the fortified post, archers dueling with their enemies, while others manned the manogel, flinging devastating shots into the rebel masses below. Gnerwa had run back with a fustibalus and was also slinging projectiles at the enemy. Just then, finally realizing what Stanton militia were doing, a large force began attacking the other end of Gracie’s Ridge to cut off their line of retreat.
“Back to Ninth Post!” Logan ordered.
As those manning the artillery lobbed stones at the new wave of attackers, the raiders ran back across the ridge behind the protective trench to find Proteria, Hana and Bixler were heavily engaged with the enemy, the large red minotaur delivering violent sweeping blows from her guandao covering the expanse of nearly the entire post- severing a half dozen weapons and limbs with each swing- while the humans picked off those looking like the greatest threat and guarded their companion’s back. Even so, the trio were just about to be overwhelmed when Logan’s reinforcements rushed in, awlpike, boar spear, fan axe, saber, axe, hammer and club slamming into spears, pitchforks, woodaxes, billhooks and scythes in a brief clash of arms, then breaking through to strike the wielders behind. Fink fell with a blade slash on his shoulder before Mansker killed the opponent and dragged the farmer to safety. Woden leapt atop the trench to fire his arrows only a dozen feet from his enemies. Sarangay slammed her spear into a with a raised maul, neatly severing him in twain, before carrying through to cut down a trio of other enemies. Finally the attackers were beaten back, those not dead fleeing before the onslaught. Logan breathed a sigh of relief.
“No time to rest!” Karlen yelled as he rushed past. The Forester turned to see thousands more Freeland Brothers charging up Gracie's Ridge, already overrunning the burning and abandoned Eighth Post.
Logan immediately pointed back towards Stanton.
“Run run run!”
The entire sortie party fled before the oncoming enemy, dodging arrows and javelins.
“There!” Logan pointed to the gap from which they had come. Even widened, the egress was dangerously narrow and the squad held their breath as they clambered over the palisade and down the hill. Then with all hope of formation lost the Stanton militia fled at all haste towards town.
The gullies provided protection but were also a confusing maze of wooden and earthen barriers. The strikeforce worked through them as best as they could as the defenders back in town covered them by firing arrows and bolts at the Freeland Brothers.
Finally Logan got through the earthworks, but the final 1000 feet were the most dangerous, completely exposed to the foe. The Forester ran through as fast as he could, his lungs screaming, yet still a sharp pain struck him in the back. Staggering, Logan nevertheless made it through, throwing himself behind the protection of the mantlet, back against the protective wall as a storm of projectiles beat against it.
The raid had been close, a bit too close to Logan’s liking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9erLsEHAZRI
From
TheDinosaurMann
The Siege of Stanton settled into a stalemate lasting weeks.
The worst part of a siege was not the fighting, it was the waiting. Constantly being on edge, waiting for a surprise at any moment. Rations, mostly bread and cheeses with whatever vegetables could be scrounged from home plots, gradually grew smaller and smaller in portion. Long-range skirmishing continued incessantly: an exchange of arrows, an occasional javelin or spear, a periodic lob of a ballista bolt or stone projectile. Always minor, but always a risk, and not a day went by without someone being brought to the hospital or the old tavern cellar, now serving as a morgue.
Stanton’s defenders had remained active, sortieing out to harass the Freeland Brothers as the rebels slowly set up siege engines, dug trenches, and slowly extended the noose around the town. It was vicious, nasty work. The Freeland Brothers tended to be lax on the watch, and so Logan’s forces tended to infiltrate easily, but that did not prevent the town's defenders from slowly accumulating losses.
Similarly, every so often Colonel Addison would send out a reconnaissance-in-force to test Stanton’s defenses. Logan was not sure if those wild, angry masses of rebels- charging unsupported through fields littered with traps and fixed defenses to the responding volleys of arrows-knew that they were being sacrificed or not, but he knew the colonel was testing for any sign of weakness. It was an uncomfortable feeling of being evaluated by someone, an unknown figure just waiting for your failure somewhere.
***
Then one day the tower appeared. Upon a prominent hill the Freeland Brothers began constructing a huge firing tower, two hundred feet high to shoot over the town's walls, and for over a week the defenders had watched its construction, log by log, just out of crossbow range. Logan fought to make sure that the structure was never completed. Siege weapons were directed at it, and in the midst of a violent artillery duel, a lucky stone slammed into the incomplete and unprotected scaffold and sent the tower-and its two score construction crew-tumbling down to the cheers of the townsfolk.
Still only a day later construction recommenced, now with siege weapon support and mantlet and hide armor. Even after Logan directed springalds to fire upon the structure the bolts simply embedded themselves within the protective screen.
As the tower completed, looming over the town’s defenses, morale plummeted.
Clearly more drastic measures were needed.
***
In the early morning darkness, a cloaked face peeked out from behind an incomplete line of stakes. Atop a low embankment, a lone guard sat on a stump trying to keep warm, her spear resting upon her shoulder. Woden aimed his arrow, then lowered it. Before the guard knew what had happened a hand went around her mouth, and a knife across her throat. The threat eliminated, Fink beckoned back to the palisade, and Logan and the rest of the strike team crept forward.
This morning was a dangerous task. The plan was simple: sortie and destroy the tower manually. Easier said than done, The Forester prepared all he could, threatening other sectors with attacks, decreasing general counterfire, and acting like his attention was focused elsewhere. Two days later, he struck.
Logan attended to this attack personally, and accompanied by Woden, he selected some of the best warriors he had for close quarters combat: Fink the Farmer and pugilist, Mansker, boar hunter, Guyot, fast and agile, Jackson the scout.
Also joining them were Sarangay and four of her warriors. The Roja and her minotaurs were often at the forefront of the fighting, sowing death and terror every time they appeared, so the Forester reserved them for important tasks essential to the safety of the town. Sarangay's troops were similarly hand picked by the minotaur leader: Kerdan, Lemas, Gnerwa, and Proteria.
Karlen also joined in.
“Ach, Logan.” The Duregaren exclaimed, lowering his helm and hefting his warpick. “You can't leave me behind. I am a fighter! I'm sick of being stuck like I'm in a hole in the ground.”
“I thought your people liked holes in the ground.”
Karlen grinned. “We do, but we like mischief more.”
Upon what everyone now dubbed Tower Hill, the tower was guarded by three rings of palisades with four guard posts and six mangonels nearby, standing over every hill and covering a half square mile. It was a good position, built with some forethought. However after scouting, Jackson and Guyot found some weaknesses the attackers would now be exploiting.
“The Ninth Post on Gracie's Hill is the strongest position guarding the tower, but it also is the hinge.” Liza had reported. “Strike fast and hard, overwhelm the defenses there, and you can follow the palisade down Gracie's Ridge and hit the tower from the rear.”
The strikeforce set off an hour before dawn, carefully picking their way through the palisades and entrenchments. As the sky began to brighten the warriors eliminated the advance pickets and proceeded into rebel lines. Two dozen soldiers were posted at Ninth Post, but only half were awake and only five were keeping watch. In rapid succession, Woden killed those performing surveillance before Logan, Mansker, Fink, Karlen and the human fighters rushed in and slaughtered the rest before any alarm could be raised. After Fort Brecas, the endeavor against minimally trained and focused humans was simple, but it remained brutal, bloody work.
The killing temporarily done, the Forester cut the lanyard for the manogel and gestured for the minotaurs to join them. Archers Hana and Bixler were left with the minotaur Proteria to guard the position.
More Freelander guards were posted along the transverse palisade radiating away from the outpost. One by one they were picked off by the expert marksmen from Stanton, and Logan’s team quickly worked their way through the trench, crouching to limit visibility. Next came Eighth Post, where the two dozen-strong garrison there were similarly efficiently slaughtered. Now Logan and the others descended from Gracie's Ridge into the gully below, leaving behind Fink and Jackson with the minotaur Kerdan.
So far so good.
The group was quietly hacking down the rope holding up palisade stakes below Tower Hill when the alarm was abruptly raised by a lone patrolling rebel.
“The Stantonites were attacking!” Immediately bells began to ring all around the encampment.
“Ach you guys suck at this!” Karlen grumbled. Immediately he grabbed his rope, looped it around a half dozen stakes, and with a grunt pulled them all out at the root. Logan stared at the Duregaren in shock. “Come on!” Karlen was already climbing the knoll, swinging his pick at the fifty alerted Freeland Brothers of Tower Hill who were grabbing their weapons and attempting to respond to the attack.
{For Zamar!} Moments later Sarangay and the remaining three minotaurs charged up the dismantled defenses, and before the defenders could properly prepare they were brutally torn to pieces by the Duregaren and cow folk.
Logan and the other humans scrambled up the slope behind them, taking cover behind the open ended palisades that now served to protect them as a flurry of arrows rained upon them. Without hesitation the Forester continued to lead the others into the tower itself, stabbing rebels who had taken refuge there and were attempting to fire down upon them from above. The bottom floor was quickly cleared; Logan’s awlpike had reach and was soon covered in blood, while Mansker and Guyot fought right behind their commander, ruthlessly killing any guards who got past his polearm.
Ascending the ladder to each successive level took harder effort: Woden and the other archers shot down any enemy who attempted to try to hold the trapdoors at point-blank range, before those with polearms rushed up, blindly jabbing to clear the entryway before sliding up with shields raised and weapons poised, allowing those behind to ascend and together finally overwhelm the next floor.
Room by room, ladder by ladder, the Stanton militia fought their way up, until suddenly there was only the sky. A score of dead Freeland Brothers lay scattered across the five levels below. They had fought well, and if there had been more defenders or were better prepared Logan’s party would have been caught and destroyed, but they hadn’t and now the Forester was at the top amid the incomplete flooring, half completed parapet and scattered mantlets, the pole of a disassembled manogel standing nearby with the arm below it. The tower had been seized in five brutal minutes.
Logan took a deep breath and looked at the panorama below.
He could see for miles around him. The Freeland Brother Encampment below had come to life and was in chaos, thousands of rebels were flooding down from all corners through the entrenchments.
“The enemy! Where are they?” Voices echoed out.
It was all confusion in the early morning darkness. Two mobs of Freeland Brother soldiers collided into each other in brutal fighting. “There! Those filth are there! Kill them!” Screams and the clash of arms wafted up. Most enemy troops however milled about in confusion. The alarm had been raised, but there was no direction, and were wild rumors were rife.
“They’re trying to break out!”
“No! They’re raiding our larder!”
“We have traitors in our midst!”
Stanton had come alive as well on Logan’s standing orders, lobbing onager stones widely into the Freeland Brother encampment when commotion broke out, adding to the general chaos.
Despite the alarm, things were still going well.
Mansker looked around the tower, its incomplete weapons poised at the town. “Now how do we destroy this monster?”
Logan nodded, bringing his large satchel from behind him and opened it, revealing thick, viscous black liquid.
“This was from Glib, may the Heavens bless his soul. We soak the structure with this oil. Glib’s writing says it is easy to ignite and unquenchable.”
“That sounds…dangerous.”
The Forester nodded. “Desperate times indeed. Everyone go back down and I’ll soak this thing.”
Quickly Logan spread the dangerous liquid before joining the others descending back down the tower, where Karlen and the minotaurs were hiding from the Freelanders, as were the two other garrisons guarding the two posts in and out. The Forester left a long trail of the goo to the bottom, then circled around the structure twice.
The twenty warriors breathed deeply behind the barricade.
Logan pointed at the black substance, dripping and pooling around them. “One of us will have to ignite this dangerous thing, because as soon as the tower lights up it will alert every Freeland Brother for miles where we are. We’ll need to run.”
“I'll do it.” Sarangay stated without reservation. “That someone needs to be able to blow through groups of enemies if necessary.”
“Thank you. We’ll try to keep you safe.”
“We’re all trying to keep us all safe, though the thought is certainly appreciated.”
“Maroney! Do you see anything atop the tower?” A voice called out from the twilight.
Logan looked at the others. Humans, minotaurs and Duregaren nodded back.
“Maroney?” The voice called louder.
“Go!” Logan yelled.
Everyone immediately ran down the hill.
Sarangay ignited a torch and turned and tossed it, which landed in the middle of the pool of thick dark liquid. Immediately the naphtha ignited, traveling up the stream to burn the center of the tower in a fiery ring. Instantly friend and foe stopped to gawk at the illumination breaking the predawn blue.
Logan and his warriors had already fled the hill, heading back up to Eighth Post. Still, they were only halfway across however when Rebels began flooding in from every direction.
“There they are, kill them!”
“Schiltron!” Logan ordered. Though they lacked training together, the members of the strike team were all experienced fighters and knew the ground. Immediately humans, minotaurs and Duregaren assembled into a shield wall, the fighters in front, archers in the back. A tide of Freeland Brothers crashed against the prepared defenders and were smashed to pieces. Logan and Mansker jabbed out with boar spear and awlpike, taking down an opponent with each strike, while Guyot cut down a swordsman that managed to get around the polearms and Karlen embedded his pick into the skull of a particularly aggressive rebel wielding a scythe. Woden shot down every single commander they could see, ensuring that the Freeland Brothers could not coordinate their response. However the greatest slaughter was done by the minotaurs, who ruthlessly cleaved their way through the enemy ranks, each warrior easily bowling through dozens of opponents. Sarangay's fan-axe sang as it swept through the air, blood flying off its gold and blue metal from sheer inertia.
“To Gracie's Ridge! One step to the East!” Logan yelled. Shields locked and weapons poised to strike, the schiltron made one step East, fighting off Freeland Brothers in their way.
“Step!” Logan repeated. “Step!”
Slowly, glacially, the unit crawled over to Eighth Post, battling off hordes of enemies attacking from every direction. As they approached the fort it came to life, the manogel flinging stones rapidly, killing or injuring dozens of rebels while scattering many of the rest. Fink appeared, smashing a way clear up the slope with his club.
“Come on!” The farmer yelled, “They're coming up the other side!”
“Sarangay! Karlen! Mansker! With me!” Logan yelled. “Everyone else up!”
{Lemas, Gnerwa with me!} Sarangay yelled. Together the six defenders held a half crescent rearguard as the remainder scrambled up the banks. Halfway up however, Joyce was struck by an errant arrow and crumpled.
Logan cursed. “Archers, covering fire! The rest of us, go!” As Woden, Jackson and the others shot down approaching enemy forces, Logan, Sarangay and the rearguard scrambled up, Logan and Karlen dragging Joyce behind the protective barricade. Some of the minotaurs grabbed nearby rebels instead and hoisted the screaming humans behind their backs to deter further enemy fire.
“Joyce, are you alright?” Logan asked. The farmer was already unconscious and bleeding profusely from her abdomen. She lasted only a few more minutes before breathing her last.
Twenty two individuals now crowded into the fortified post, archers dueling with their enemies, while others manned the manogel, flinging devastating shots into the rebel masses below. Gnerwa had run back with a fustibalus and was also slinging projectiles at the enemy. Just then, finally realizing what Stanton militia were doing, a large force began attacking the other end of Gracie’s Ridge to cut off their line of retreat.
“Back to Ninth Post!” Logan ordered.
As those manning the artillery lobbed stones at the new wave of attackers, the raiders ran back across the ridge behind the protective trench to find Proteria, Hana and Bixler were heavily engaged with the enemy, the large red minotaur delivering violent sweeping blows from her guandao covering the expanse of nearly the entire post- severing a half dozen weapons and limbs with each swing- while the humans picked off those looking like the greatest threat and guarded their companion’s back. Even so, the trio were just about to be overwhelmed when Logan’s reinforcements rushed in, awlpike, boar spear, fan axe, saber, axe, hammer and club slamming into spears, pitchforks, woodaxes, billhooks and scythes in a brief clash of arms, then breaking through to strike the wielders behind. Fink fell with a blade slash on his shoulder before Mansker killed the opponent and dragged the farmer to safety. Woden leapt atop the trench to fire his arrows only a dozen feet from his enemies. Sarangay slammed her spear into a with a raised maul, neatly severing him in twain, before carrying through to cut down a trio of other enemies. Finally the attackers were beaten back, those not dead fleeing before the onslaught. Logan breathed a sigh of relief.
“No time to rest!” Karlen yelled as he rushed past. The Forester turned to see thousands more Freeland Brothers charging up Gracie's Ridge, already overrunning the burning and abandoned Eighth Post.
Logan immediately pointed back towards Stanton.
“Run run run!”
The entire sortie party fled before the oncoming enemy, dodging arrows and javelins.
“There!” Logan pointed to the gap from which they had come. Even widened, the egress was dangerously narrow and the squad held their breath as they clambered over the palisade and down the hill. Then with all hope of formation lost the Stanton militia fled at all haste towards town.
The gullies provided protection but were also a confusing maze of wooden and earthen barriers. The strikeforce worked through them as best as they could as the defenders back in town covered them by firing arrows and bolts at the Freeland Brothers.
Finally Logan got through the earthworks, but the final 1000 feet were the most dangerous, completely exposed to the foe. The Forester ran through as fast as he could, his lungs screaming, yet still a sharp pain struck him in the back. Staggering, Logan nevertheless made it through, throwing himself behind the protection of the mantlet, back against the protective wall as a storm of projectiles beat against it.
The raid had been close, a bit too close to Logan’s liking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9erLsEHAZRI
From
TheDinosaurMann
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fantasy
Species Human
Size 2500 x 2000px
File Size 3.62 MB
This is a mantlet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantlet so built for this purpose.
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