*I believe I must make a brief footnote and regress in
time somewhat for the benefit of those few for whom this book might be their
first
History of the early Prescience Wars and who may have little, or no, knowledge
of the strange endings of the Water-Horse Wars. I will make a small
description;
In two quite different wars, and three battles across two continents, cavalry groups, largely Pathist,
though only one, under Flax and his Conclave can be truly said to be
'Canticaleers' at least at the start of their battles, (though, arguably, all
three were by the end), faced opposing
naval forces, formations they
were unable to reach, let alone attack, and while the Naval forces, (some have
said proto-Auric though at this time it is more true to call them
"Secular" or simply "early" or "pre-prescience"
forces), were able to bombard or assault the Pathists, this was likewise
ineffective as the mounted warriors would simply retreat.
In three different and seemingly disconnected battles,
and on nearly, through not quite the same day, all the Pathist Cavalry forces
attacked and defeated the naval forces opposing them. It is this strange event
that gave the Wars their name.
The Three Stalemates As They Stood
In the North, at the bay of Hoöghst , the Peasant-General
Marshall Oderlane (Originally "Tom-Of-The-Lane", his story,
appropriately enough, now told only through a cycle of folk tales), with
perhaps between 5,000 and 20,000 Pathist Cavalry and Dragoons, faced the
Expeditionary Fleet of the Southern League (which was not Southern, or a
League), under Her Ladyship Vice-Admiral Fosse.
(These numbers may seem paltry but it must be remembered
that this was long before conscription en-masse, of even mortal and sentient
population, let alone the Dreaming, the Dead, the Imagined and the Other.
Artistic relations of later periods inflate the numbers and alter the nature of
the participants in accordance with their expectations drawn from the battles
of the Later Prescience Wars. Nevertheless, these somewhat Gogmagogic paintings
and engravings may well accurately represent the
psychological impact
felt by the participants. For most of those involved these were the largest
armies they had ever seen and, for those in the North, this was to be the first
of the Great Workings, though at the time they, the common soldiery at least,
remained blissfully unaware of the true nature of events.)
An Hundred miles South the Pathist Siege of Regaar was
fracturing. After flooding the lowlands around the Three Cities to, in some
way, make up for their own paucity of troops, unable to exercise an
encirclement, the "Iron Conclave" under the tenuous command of Flax,
found they had merely displaced their siege into a different form. Facing,
perhaps fifty to a hundred square miles of flooded lowland, interspersed with
islands of villages and mills, impassable for oceanic ships, near-impossible
for infantry and difficult for cavalry and river vessels, the Crafstmen of
Redgaar famously deconstructed many of their own homes, taking down the roofs
and re-purposing the beams and timbers into shallow-draught boats and canoes,
the famous 'House Boats' of Redgaar. This small fleet was used as a guerrilla
force to preserve communications with the outside world and to smuggle vital
supplies through the siege.
While the Redgaar forces were starving and demoralised,
the Pathists were little better off and the siege had decayed, or evolved, into
a semi-aquatic war with Pathist cavalry swimming their horses between small hills,
now islands, in an attempt to hunt and repress the Houseboats of Redgaar.
Much further South, at the ends of the earth, the distant
stronghold of the mountaintop Star Kingdoms, allies to, supplying, and being
re-supplied by, the southern League, a very different Proto, or Pseudo-Pathist
leader faced a very different challenge.
While the Warlord Milgar Reeve had somewhat unified the
Plains Tribes beneath the Star Mountains under a somewhat-Pathist creed, and
rampaged almost from sea-to-sea, he had been unable to either attack the Star
Kingdoms in their mountain fastnesses, being driven back by massed fire, or to
sever the link between the Kingdoms and the League. The continent-spanning
Pen-Meol river remained highly navigable
(Reeves forces attempts to block or damn it had been swept away or
easily destroyed by League ships) and the League was able to sail from Hoöghst,
across the world-ocean, up the deep Pen-Meol almost to the borders of the Star
Kingdoms themselves, blasting away with cannon at any attempts to raid or
hinder them
The Battle Of Meteor Falls
The Pen-Meol narrowed and branched as its tributaries
climbed and spread into the river-valleys at the base of the Star Kingdoms.
Here the Kingdoms must send down columns and carts to make the vital exchange
of materiel with the ships of the Southern League. This accomplished they could
quickly retreat into their networks of defensible valley cantons and
mountaintop temples, now converted into fortifications which had faced down the
bravest assaults of Reeves horde.
It was amongst this maze of valleys and winding
tributaries that both Reeve and his opponents identified their weakest point,
and it was here that Reeve concentrated his efforts, sending out riders into
the difficult country, looking for any sign that might indicate to him when and
how the forces of his enemies would meet.
Guided, perhaps by intuition, by signs (Apsanalan claims
"by the movements of birds") or perhaps simply by reasonable
prediction or good scouting, Reeve discovered the League forces in the rapids
above
the meteor falls.
This should not be considered as necessarily as ill a
position for the Leaguers as some have claimed. Commodore Schott, (claimed to
be corrupt, bilious, mad and drunk, though a careful analysis of his actions
belies this over-negative view), in charge of the Leagues small fleet, had ordered
the portage of all available small boats, up around the falls, to an island on
the brink of the falls themselves, and moved all necessary goods into them, to
be convoyed upriver, pulled by pack beasts on each shore and aided, and warded
from rocks by strong crews.
A risky endeavour but not without reason. Schott would
have known that if he were to await the Eagle Columns of the Star Kingdoms, who
would reinforce his efforts and guard any zone of portage, the movement of the
column itself would expose their position to Reeves riders, then a battle would
have to be fought, likely under complex and uncontrollable circumstances, and
perhaps the Eagle Columns would have had to fight, as well as carry cargoes,
all the way back to their nearest defensive line, losing men and materiel all
the while.
By porting his own cargoes he could do so un a so-far undiscovered
position, directly under the shadow of his own guns. Sending his forces up the
cliffs of the Meteor falls would have been supremely difficult, but Schotts sailors
had exactly the skills and equipment to attempt such a difficult piece of
vertical logistics, and the vertiginous and rocky nature of the cliffs meant
that, if discovered, it would be very hard for Reeves cavalry to directly
attack. He would be oing so, across a rocky cliff, while in range of Shotts
cannon. It was a risk, but a risk of like type would have to be taken somewhere
and this was the one Schott chose.
Neither was it a poor one. As Reeve saw the League convoy
carefully pulling and picking their way up through the rapids below him he
would have been aware of the steep banks of the bending river and the
complexity of the terrain which would impede any interruption from his
aggressive but under-equipped force. He sent forth skirmishers who were able to
overwhelm the shore groups on both sides, driving off and killing the draught
animals pulling the convoy upriver. This prevented their progress but the Leaguers
responded well, they immediately cut the cables between their heavily laden
boats and in an piece of fine watercraft, the whole group re-oriented and reversed
course, carefully fending off the rocks. No easy task in such difficult conditions.
This attempt to join with the Star Kingdoms had failed, but
by adding their oars to the rivers flow and navigating speedily, but with some
risk, downstream, the Leagues knew would reach again the isle on the brink of
the Meteor Falls, an imperfect defensive spot, yet one very hard for Reeve to
approach. The convoy could refuge there while mortars and cannon fire from the
ships below could disperse Reeves formations, already broken up by the
difficult terrain. Perhaps even waiting for the Eagle Columns to arrive,
turning the tables on Reeve and catching the notoriously slippery rough rider
between the guns of the League and the Columns of the Stars. As much as Reeve
had trapped his enemies in position, he in turn was trapped, he could not
afford to simply leave them be.
Wood relates Reeves subsequent decision
to the 'flokks of birds' seen earlier that
day. Wood claims that, as Reeve believed the League and the Star Kingdoms to
communicate via birds, that the Kingdoms may have already received a message of
the Leagues position and intent and that the Eagle Columns were already on
their way.
They were not. At least, not yet, but it is curious that
this slight over-estimation of his opponent, in a way, thinking ahead of their
strategy before they themselves had finalised it, impelled Reeve into his
suicidal course.
Another element in informing Reeves decision is the phycology
and the nature of the morale of the Plainsmen he lead. Hard riding, incredibly
tough and capable of journeys which would cripple more organised formations,
the Plainsmen wore almost no armour, carried only swords, light lances, bows
and slings, (short-ranged instruments, though with these they could be monstrously
accurate). They would hold to no steady defence, could not be left on guard
(they would leave or fall asleep), could barely be disciplined by anything
other than death or mutilation delivered directly from the hand of a superior,
and were almost impossible to organised on a strategic scale, needing to be
lead from the front, in person, by a highly charismatic and personally
dangerous general. Insanely greedy and rapacious when raiding, they eschewed
monetary pay as "cowards sweat". But, if lead directly, they would
attack anything. Plainsmen had jumped off cliffs to catch eagles flying below
and, though they died in the attempt, were accounted heroes for doing so, their
mangled bodies scraped off the rocks and untangled from that of the flattened
raptor, were propped up and feted in great ceremonies before being tearfully
burnt.
They were men of a kind such that, to turn back before
their friends, they brothers, from a risk, or a doom, with their sworn captain
visibly hurling himself into its teeth before their eyes, would have been a
deeper death than that of just the flesh.
All this must be considered when we examine Reeves decision.
And we must remember that, though educated, Reeve had been born, and lived the
first few years of his boyhood,
as a Plainsman.
As the League barges began to reorient and turn back,
Reeve gave a great howl and lead his force, in full and fully mounted, over the
lip of the river, into the rapids, and into the fleet of barges.
What death and chaos there ensued, the broken bodies,
screaming horses, cracked bones and moaning timbers in the roaring waters, can
barely be described. The river choked with the bodies of men and horses, dead
and alive, horses screamed and thrashed through swimming and drowning crowds of
men, men clambered over the backs of screaming close-packed horses while other
men were crushed between them. In all this someone cut the rudder of the lead,
now rear, craft. As crazed plainsmen clambered over its side, it listed and
began to spin. Desultory musket fire from the crew did not save them from the
plainsmens whetted blades and nothing saved either as the barge crunched,
splintered, capsized and was smashed against the rocks of the rapids, cushioned
only by the drowning bodies which covered its surface.
The barges were still closely arranged. A chain reaction
set in. The wreckage and chaos of one catastrophe piled with all the rest and
thundered into the undamaged, un-boarded boats, stoving in sides, crashing
against hulls, carrying like ants on flood-borne leaves their cargo of crazed
and screaming barbarians, mad to live, mad to die, mad to kill.
Reeve did not survive perhaps even the initial charge,
yet his last command as leader of what passed for the Iron Path forces under
the shadow of the Star, had yet to play out as the tide of blood and screaming
flesh surged downriver.
The Leagues Main ships, anchored in the deep tributary by
the Meteor falls, anxiously kept watch, awaiting news of their relief attempt
and trying to avoid sand backs in the river. Even largely unloaded the Galleons
were operating much further upriver than their builders had ever intended and
for their captains comfort. Only Schotts exuberant and damming speech of a few
nights previously had impelled them, out of shame, to proceed so far. They must
have realised that to run aground in such circumstances would mean their deaths.
Can we truly blame the reaction of Commodore Schott when,
as evening fell, the river spoke its truth and the Meteor falls vomited forth
the wreckage, the screamed-bloody horses, the bodies, the glot of foul and
bloody stuff that was the death of all their hopes? And, riding and clambered
onto the hulls of the capsized boats , clinging to barrels and clutching the corpses
of enemies and friends, the blood-man survivors of Reeves Last Charge? Swimming
now, beneath the ships big guns, crawling up anchor lines and rudders as the
river filled with wreckage. and in that foul and darkening bricolage, who
amongst the Captains could say how many there were or how much threat they
represented? or if this were the disaster it seemed or yet another of Reeves
mad schemes playing out?
Some have represented the retreat as cowardice, the ships
weighing anchor and, blasting off clinging plainsmen with small arms fire,
marking time downriver, as "fearful tigers fleeing half-drowned mice"
(Wood). In truth, with their supplies, barges and men lost, even if Schotts
fleet had met with the Eagle Columns, only now just setting off, there is
little they could have done but exchange letters.
Schotts tragic and epic journey back down the Pen-Meol,
across the world-sea, in search of home and the harbour of Hoöghst , would not
end well for him. he would return, but to a homeland he no longer knew.
When the Lords of the Star Kingdoms arrived, they found
the river empty but for the dead, the Pen-Meol had eaten their greatest enemy
and most of his army, along with all of their own needed supplies. But in the
place of Reeve, the river had birthed something even more dangerous - his
memory. The Last Charge of Milgar Reeve and his defeat of a Navy of the Living
with the Riders of the Dead, spread across the plains like wildfire.
In life Reeve had shown that the plains tribes could be
wielded, however tentatively, as a unified force. In death he gave the Plains something
more than a hero, unifying in deed and action, in ways a thousand scratched screeds
had been unable to accomplish, the culture of the Plains with the creed of the
Iron Path.
The War Upon The Flood
Far to the north, in another half-sphere of the world,
yet only an hundred leagues south of Hoöghst, Flax, and the Conclave, harried
their men in pursuit of the House-Boats of Redgaar. Moving by night and
silently going from hilltop isle to hilltop isle, the smugglers of the Three
Cities dodged the swimming cavalry patrols of the Pathists. The small remaining
population of the Hill-Isles was by firmly in favour of the Three Cities, the
humiliation and dispossession of their lands via flood and subsequent patrols
had destroyed most willing support for the Pathist cause and most of those who
might have supported it had already enlisted in the months after Albraneth. The
Pathists found few informers and the boats of Redgaar many allies. The damp,
cold and sick cavalry of the pathists struggled, walked and swam across the
fields they themselves had drowned, spreading out in small patrols.
The Redgaarese had, perhaps grown too casual in their
deceptions, or perhaps their plans were too far in advance. Winter was coming
and the forces of the Three-Cities realised they stood in nearly as much need
of heat and light as of food. Clearly they intended to take one great risk, and
to move a large amount of smuggled fuels, together, in a series of leapfrogs
from isle to isle. The Burghers of Redgaar must have realised that combining
their forces in this was a matter of extreme danger. Likely we shall never know
what prompted them to the decision.
It was at this time and on this night that they were
discovered by the Pathists. The location of the incident was unusual, two old
hilltops, close together, were now islands, and a stretch of water ran between
them, hidden by the curve of the isles from easy view. One patrol, under
Captain Mead, approached the larger of the two isles in question from the
opposite side and, perhaps by stealth, or by accident, and the foolishness of
their foe, encountered the nearly-complete transfer of goods to the House-Boats
of Redgaar, along with a substantial number of smugglers.
A battle broke out in the half-lit dark on the top of the
hilltop-isle. The Pathists quickly drove off the smugglers who retreated, down
the slope to their boats, leaving behind only a few barrels of pitch.
Realising that the smugglers must surely have completed
the majority of their work, and that all they now to do was escape into the
darkness, Mead, our one source on his thinking claims for religious reasons,
made a radical decision. He ordered his men to tip the barrels of pitch down
the hill and light them. Then, singing canticles, his patrol blindfolded their
horses and charged them down the hill, into the burning flood.
The utter chaos and terror they created simultaneously destroyed
the discipline of the houseboat fleet and also trapped the divided it as crew alternate
tried to escape the fire, before bravely rowing and punting back into range in
attempts to rescue survivors and recover material, itself usually flammable and
dangerous. The location of the fire itself lit up the smugglers fleet for miles
around. The Flax was not slow to summon his forces and all of the Conclaves
remining cavalry elements converged.
Firsthand accounts are lacking but Wood, Apsanalan and
Eastsource-Tan all include variations on the phrasing "They swam the smoke
on smoke-black steeds" or "on black steeds swam". (It is
unlikely the horses were truly all black though the Pathists, an irregular
force, had come to favour black armour and barding where they could get it.) The
Conclave forces were able to isolate and destroy one half of the surviving
fleet before riding through the smoke of the dying flames and assaulting the
remaining force
Winter, in the coming months, finished the siege for
them. With a major component of Redgaars supply, fleet, and able men, destroyed,
the Three Cities had little ability remaining to defend themselves, or even to
heat their homes, many of which now had no roofs, the joists being removed to
make boats.
Two of the Three Cities sued for peace before the winter
equinox and, seeing them possessed by the enemy, the last surrendered a few
days later.
Flaxes men recovered the bodies of "The Burninge
Charge" and valorised them, refusing to removed them from their burnt
black armour.
They must have been surprised indeed when one moved and
spluttered. The survivor, as historians of the Wars will know, was Ensign Day,
later Marshall and Commander Ovram Day, or "Burned Black Day" to his
enemies, of whom there is much to be told at a later time.
The Miracle Of Hoöghst
Oderlane and his army had entered Hoöghst with ease, able
to rampage at will through the town they were unable to control ground there,
lest they be blasted by the heavy guns of Fosse, whose fleet matured freely and
well in the Bay of Hoöghst.
At low tide the riders of Oderlane advanced into the
city,, but should they pause to fortify or make camp, signals would be sent by
means-invisible and as they tide came in any such hideaways would be imperilled
by the cannons of Fosse, creeping closer as the waves made safe the way, or
appearing as a sudden storm after the Admiral held her fire
Neither did the League fleet forbear from bombarding even
the wonders and treasures of Hoöghst , its great temple, ancient guild hall and
Library, all smashed to bits, raining stone and burning books upon the riders
of Oderlane
Nor did the people of Hoöghst
hesitate in signalling the destruction of
their home, such was their hatred for the Pathist forces that they eagerly
signalled to the fleet the exact location of any resting or fortifying Pathist
groups (It should be remembered that it was the citizen of Hoöghst
who had spiked and drowned their own guns as
Oderlannes forces overran their initial positions). Unable to defend their own
city they proved adept at making the same city indefensible for their oppressors
Oppression there was. The initial investiture of Hoöghst
had been accomplished by the standards of
civilised war for that perhaps, simple yet more enlightened time. The first
signal to the waiting fleet by partisans (initially only a small minority) and
the bombardment which collapsed the Library, Guild Hall and Guild stables where
the army of Oderlane had set up their initial billets (with possible strange consequences
later described), signalled also an end to the civil conduct of war. Oderlane
instituted a policy of summary execution foy any suspected of partisan
activity, as well as hunting parties set to rove through the town in an attempt
to stop signals to the fleet.
The incompetent and over-brutal effect of these orders,
in fact hugely stiffened and deepened resistance to his presence in the city.
Successive bombardments and repeated purges had cycled the investiture of Hoöghst
into an utterly brutal , personal and
close-quarters grind. The civilian partisans of Hoöghst , unable to directly
face concentrations of Pathist forces, could still signal their position,
should they pause to fortify any position to rest, and soon cannonballs and
mortar shells would rain down (if the tide allowed it). As the Pathists broke
for cover, the citizens of Hoöghst
would
worm from the ruins of their homes like rats, flocking isolated soldiers, inflicting
terrible mutilations and shameful deaths. This in turn provoked brutal punitive
raids in response.
So wound the war in Hoöghst , the city itself gradually
becoming more and more uninhabitable and both sides hardening and changing in
character so much that, if either were to pee across the bridge of time and
encounter their younger self, they would find themselves unrecognisable. (So
much for "Tom-of-the-Lane who, as a young man years before has been
startled by a vision of "A manne moste blacke and terribil, hewed well
wyth scarrs as cut wood, and he haubeurk and gorget blacke with bloode and
spirites did sircle him as whyrling shadowe mighte"- Tan. A vision which
had set him on his way even before the massacre of Albraneth. Such are the
ways.)
A third commander, and a greater army, haunted the
thoughts of all belligerents - General Winter.
Hoöghst, located an hundred leagues north of besieged
Redgaar, already suffered the cold which would collapse the defences of the
three cities in a month or so, and here as there, warfare had severely depleted
the Pathist forces. The same was not true of the ships of Fosse, they had been
prepared and equipped by the League to perform a trans-oceanic crossing and, at
the end of it, to lend the support of their guns to the settlement of Xap (a
thorn which would bedevil all sides for many year to come, see later chapters).
Exactly such a journey and support Oderlane had suspected and rushed to
prevent, (his forces minimal artillery would spend winter trapped in the
snowbound passes of Nihei and suffer their own tragic fate as described in the
song “Snows on Nihei”).
Well armed, well provisioned, well supplied, animated by
a state of righteous anger and soundly lead by the careful Fosse, the League
ships lacked the power to contest Hoöghst
on land, but, with the cities guns spiked and
drowned, they could tack and bombard at will and Oderlane could nether reach
nor hinder them.
Here, time favoured the League. The people of Hoöghst
had suffered and were prepared to suffer more,
but having no place to retreat to, they could equalise that suffering with the
Pathist occupiers. All things being even, Oderlane and Winter would annihilate Hoöghst
. In return, Hoöghst , and Winter, would eat Oderlane and his army, and when
all the spinning coins had fallen, Fosse would re-enter Hoöghst
and with her healthy and wrathful sailors,
complete the destruction of the Pathist force and succour what remained of any civilian
survivors.
Such is likely to have been Oderlanes calculation also.
The city untameable, his enemy unreachable and his forces whittling away as the
trap of his victory slowly closed around him. Perhaps he hoped for his slow,
small artillery, currently labouring in Nihei, but even if they were to arrive,
how would they perform in a duel with the ships of Fosse?
Here sorcery enters out history, with it come it baggage
train of sacrifice and the long, deep stain of ruin in its lee. This was the
'Miracle of Hoöghst '.
Of the true 'Great Workings before this time we know
little but that they occurred, that they happened long ago, as history is
counted by the chroniclers of these wars, they speak of them little, and then
as archea, legend, or myth. These myths would now be real once more.
Of where and how Oderlane, or whomever, or whatever, was
advising him, gained the knowledge and understanding to perform the Working, we
can only speculate. Eastscource-Tan outright sates that Oderlane was the
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, that his mother was a Witch and that he was fated
to bring about a black dawn. Wood produces the most detailed theory; he points
out that the first camp of the Pathists in Hoöghst
was its famed library (perhaps hoping that
Fosse would hesitate to fire upon it). The building was bombarded in the early
hours of the morning, with cannon, mortar and incendiaries. As the books burnt
and the library collapsed into its old foundations, the Pathists running for
safety, Wood claims that certain "ancien techts" describe an older
incarnation of the library at "Hoost", accepting many
"fragmentary recordings" and "strange device" from a
refugee group fleeing south (unlikely as no great cities or meaningful nations
exist in the freezing lands directly north of Hoöghst). Wood makes much of
little and interprets the terseness and paucity of his "techts" as a
deliberate act of coded secrecy, in that "Lay these by ye said that many
and speak not nor dream of what so lies" - indicating some old, sealed and
deliberately forgotten vault beneath the library in the old foundations,
exposed only by the chance of war and explored in foul and brief circumstances
- Pathist troopers being dumped into the cells below as the place burnet and
collapsed, with some of the more witful few grabbingg, in an opportunistic way,
what may have seemed like treasures or valuables, as they climbed to escape the
disaster. All of this he draws from a handful of lines in a source Wood himself
refuses to name "for thine owne care and cleen sleepinge". Apsanalan
says simply that "With Winters Knights a working came upon them" ..
"and was made". The reader may choose their preference for
interpretation, or even persist in the pleasing but foolish claim of a kinder,
more secular age, that of a "rare climatological event".
Very rare if so, for while little comes down to us from
the age of the Prescience Wars, the Ice of Hoöghst
is still there, and the keels of the Ships of
Fosse, still held within, though Hoöghst
itself is but a memory. The reader may visit
if they wish, though it is not a sight for kind souls, or those who desire
"cleen sleepinge".
On the 23rd night of the investiture of Hoöghst , (the
same night as the Burning Charge of Redgaar), the entirety of the Pathist
forces advanced their camp to just outside the range of Fosse's guns. Deep
enough into Hoöghst
that their pickets
suffered continual attack from partisan bands. They burnt there great pyres of supreme
scale and gathered around them in close order "In vile patterns" -
Apsanalan "Flank to flak and tooth to tooth" - Wood. A wind sprang up
from the shore but despite this, Fosse tacked against it, maintaining range and
watch on Hoöghst . Then began "A great winde and a tumulte which came done
oute of the empty aire" - Wood. Fosses' ships lost formation and nearly
scattered. “Then came Drythelms Men, Winters Knights" - Apsanalan.
The temperature around Hoöghst
plummeted quickly. As observers of the ice may
see today, fast enough to freeze some people in place, trapping boots and
horses hooves beneath its surface.
It must be assumed that Oderlanes fire-bound army
suffered the least for this, though even they must have taken casualties.
Then "the see kraked" - Wood. No simile is
inferred, all sources report the terrible crackling, smashing unearthly sound
as the waters of the bay of Hoöghst
froze solid in the time it takes to sing a
song.
The terrible noise had not ceased when Oderlane signalled
a full charge. The Pathists hurled themselves though Hoöghst
in a great mass, thundering and thudding,
smashing through the ruins of once great buildings, trampling any who stood
before them, crunching over frozen ash, followed by the chiming of tinkling
bells as the great gusts of their panted breath rose up over the charging army
and froze in the air, falling to the earth behind them as a triling rain of
crystals.
They did not pause even to kill but carried their charge
to the harbour and then out over the ice, towards the frozen fleet.
It is to the credit of Foss that several ships resisted
and overcame both the shock of the cold and the terror of the charge and maneuvered
their frosted cannon enough to bombard their attackers as they advanced across
the ice. They inflicted meaningful damage upon the Canticaleers, but not enough.
The weight in numbers and the prepared ladders of
Oderlanes troops were enough. As he rode his black horse back and forth over
ice so hard and so cold that some said his horses hooves "struck fire from
the ice", roving from ship to ship and screaming orders and imprecations
at his men, the Pathists surrounded, boarded and assaulted each in turn,
climbing their hulls like wooden walls.
One by one the ships of Fosse burnt in the frozen night,
a second constellation of bonfires to match that beyond the gates of the frozen
city. Of the Admirals fate, no record remains. Perhaps she is in the ice still.
Come daybreak and the ships no more than black columns of
smoke barring the air, Oderlane lead his remaining forces back across the ice,
into Hoöghst , cavalry coming from the sea. All remaining resistance was crushed.
Hoöghst
was denied to the League for the
rest of the war, and whatever became of it is little spoken of. The ice of the
bay, imperishable, still remains.
So fell out the last major battles of the Water-Horse
wars, those for which those wars are named. And happy indeed were the chroniclers,
though they laboured now under strange kings, yet at least, finally, they all
hoped and assumed, the cycle of violence which began with a scratched message on
the temple door of Albraneth was now closed and cut. Peace would reign.
O foolish hopes of mortal men.
It is interesting how intuition of Reeve (the Pathist) borders on prescience itself and how his observation of flocks could be compared to augury.
ReplyDeleteFosse's ships stuck in enchanted flash-ice is very vivid picture.
Did 'meeting your older/younger self' become more prominent in later wars?
"Did 'meeting your older/younger self' become more prominent in later wars?" I don't know yet but seems like it might do!
DeleteI stumbled in here from a link somebody carelessly left lying around on /tg/. So, forgive me for not dispensing an appropriate response in line with your usual readers (I popped in at the "40k is satire" post). They seem quite educated, verbose...and not a little bit quarrelsome. And I found myself agreeing with your article completely; you put my impressions in better words than I could hope to muster for myself. And there was a strange synchronicity with Sertraline. Auspicious.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this reads like the output generated by some AI crafted by a master dungeon master hobbyist. I confess, I have no idea what any of this is for. And I only read the first half. But, I quite enjoyed this chance encounter. Like opening a book at random in some cosmic library in a fever dream. Sorry if that is not constructive enough, but this is all rather abstract to me. At a glance it's all quite congenial however.
Merry Christmas! I may wander around here for a bit longer.