Milc/C.J. Milnes
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Chapter 21 - I’m sure it’s there, somewhere
🕑 Added 2025-03-07 20:43:50 +0000 UTCThe thing that emerged from the Shape Soulbound Servant spell this time was markedly different compared to what I had done to Mulius. Marbo had eventually won the “opportunity” to let me turn him into an even more titanic monster than was his natural state of being.
Marbo was now ten metres long, perhaps fifteen metres tall, when he reared up on his hindlimbs. His long feline body looked ungainly standing on two feet but he could still move with a silent grace that was terrifying to behold. His four metre tail, glittering with metal scales, swished in the air behind him with a mind of its own.
“This… this I like,” he half growled around his sabretooth fangs, each of which was hung past his bottom jaw by a good half metre or so. “Where’s Mulius? I want to fight him!” I plucked on the bond between us and he flinched. He tried to fight it for a second, but even with his new form, the bond was buried somewhere in his soul, and there was nothing he could do. The metaphysical implications of souls being a real thing had never quite struck me before.
What would my Soul look like? Would that prick Thoth put my soul on a scale, only to confirm it was far heavier than a feather, and I’d be denied access to… heaven? Valhalla? I was living proof that the soul continued on after death. I laughed quietly at the thought of trying to explain that particular contradiction to a random stranger back on Earth.
“You and Mulius have jobs to do. You can spar – non-lethally! – after the battle. I want you on the right of the legion and Mulius on the left. You’ll have cavalry to cover your flanks. If you draw spell-fire fall back to where you can be protected by artifact shields! You are not unkillable, Marbo. Just remember that,” I told him sternly.
I had a giant armoured ape monster and a massive steel-scale covered werecat monster. This battle should be fairly straightforward so I wasn’t worried about having burned all my mana. If I needed to nuke anything I had mana potions in my belt pouch I could use. I activated my pauldrons recovery function again and my mana began ticking up at twice the usual mind numbingly slow pace.
I was sitting on Wilson’s back to one side of a lancer squadron on the centre-right of our formation. The nearest horses eyed the wolf with fear so I was forced to stay slightly apart. Four legions made up our centre of our line, with one held back in reserve in case reinforcements were needed. Mulius held his position on the left of them and Marbo was even now flowing sinuously into position on their right.
A caw floated down on the wind as I sent Glimpse off to check on the rest of my cavalry. In addition to the five thousand or so legionaries I had three thousand mounted nomads, two thirds of whom were archers.
Pertabon walked out of position and gave me a fist-to-heart salute as he stopped. His level stare lowered until he was looking down at me and he gave me a surprisingly boyish grin.
“This is a good trial, Legate. We can work on improving coordination between your kind and mine as well as responding to battlefield orders in a low threat environment. If you’re happy for us to proceed I’ll return to formation and we can get this fight started!” Another salute of armoured fist slamming armoured chest rang out as he straightened.
“Sounds good. Let’s see if the training has taken and if the captains were paying attention in the briefing!” I said. “Signalers! Sound the advance!”
Behind me waited three chariots, instead of a fighting man as a passenger they had been slightly modified to allow a man with one of the massive serpentine trumpets I’d had Klip work on all those months ago to stand comfortably. It was finally time to try and merge the highly disciplined legions and the nomads into a combined force with a simple and hopefully effective command and control mechanism.
A series of resonant blasts rang out. Three short calls followed by three long ones. The mouths of the trumpets were all shaped into ravenous brass wolves and the note rang out pure and clear.
The mounted archers on the extremity of our formation leapt forward like the were greyhounds that had caught sight of a rabbit. They raced ahead and then peeled off to the sides and circled away. As the first barrage of enchanted arrows fell among the undead horde white and orange fires leapt up to eat away at their rotten flesh. Before the fires burned out the archers had come full circle and were in position to launch another barrage before once more pulling away to maintain the separation as the walking corpses shambled towards them.
The legions and the lancers were advancing slowly. The legions maintained an almost perfect formation, the long lines with heavy shields and spears sticking up from the back two lines staying almost ruler straight across the uneven landscape when viewed from Glimpses perspective. The lancers were not quite as good, some units pulling ahead and having to stop and wait while the rest of the army caught up or lagging behind and being forced to hurry into positions they shouldn’t have left.
My pet monsters were clearly chafing at the restrictions placed on them. I could feel their eagerness and frustration, especially from Marbo, through the links but I held them back with a thought. From above the horde was an almost endless sea of rotting bodies stretching back for miles to the artificial barrow of Hellath. There were a lot of undead to kill. I shared the frustrations of my titanic minions. There were a lot of Souls to gather here but it would be more advantageous to have at least the core of my army get some experience of combined operations in a low risk environment. I would have some fun later mopping up stragglers and get some more Souls then.
Once the legions got to within seven hundred metres of the horde they pulled up briefly and with a rough battlecry the frontline slammed their shields into place, forming a solid wall of metal-bound laminated wood. Javelins flew out from the rear ranks and when they landed, in addition to the elemental attacks I was familiar with, spells I hadn’t seen before went off. Clouds of darkness smothered parts of the zombie mob in places, piercingly bright flashes blossomed in others that left Glimpse blinking and complaining in my head.
They fell into a steady advance, each Huskar stepping in time with the rest. The booms of their footsteps rang out and would have given any army of humans cause to break and run on their own. As the gap closed to five hundred metres a new barrage of artifact spells went off. Lines of light, fire, lightning and midnight blackness reached out across the gap and tore through the front ranks of the badly organised zombies.
“Second phase!” I called back to the signalers, who blew three short notes that echoed out across the field of battle. I stuck a finger in my ear and twisted it to clear the ringing. Note to self: stand behind the signalers next time.
I released my mental grip on my titans and they charged ahead. Mulius moved with a loping run whereas Marbo dropped to all fours and shot ahead to smash through the zombies and keep going. His tail flicked out bowling the merely human-scale enemies over like bowling pins where they didn’t burst like rotten fruit. Mulius reached the line and began kicking and stomping his way into the enemy.
“Third phase!” I barked and plugged my ears as the horns released three long notes. The lancers paused, organising themselves into a dozen or so wedges, their horses pawing the ground in frustration as they came to a stop.
With a roar the Legion upped their pace. Instead of a steady, world-shaking tromp they sped up into a jog and slammed into the devastated centre of the horde, falling back on brute strength and their marked size advantage to carve a path through after the titans who were breaking things already a mile or so deep into the horde.
The legion held formation even while jogging. It was like watching a snow plough clear a road after a heavy fall. The zombies were swept aside and all that was left as pulped bodies pushed out of their way or ground into mincemeat beneath their boots.
“Fourth!” I called out and once again the horns rang out once more, two short and two long blasts. Wilson snorted in annoyance at the constant loud noises. I watched from Glimpse's eyes as the lancers broke into a charge, the wedges slicing into the horde along the flanks of the legion.
Spears and maces flashed down from the riders, breaking skulls or piercing chests as the ponies bullied their way through the grasping throng. Once they caught up to the legion lines the riders wheeled and fell back, opening enough distance to briefly rest their horses before charging once more. After the first charge they cycled through the wedges, as they’d been trained by Trikilo and Jandak, launching less than half their number forwards at a time to give the ponies a break and extend their stamina as much as possible.
The mounted archers had begun circling farther around the flanks of the horde with the latest signal. They were cantering along the edge of the horde hurling enchanted stones into the fringes of the horde as they went. The dead shambled and crawled after them but this was part of the plan.
Fighting mindless, uncontrolled dead men was very different from what we expected fighting Mortimer’s main force to be like so we had evolved our tactics to match the thoughtless aggression of the horde. The archers were baiting the fringes to circle back on the main body of our enemy, eventually bringing them back into the line of the legions advance. This way we hoped stragglers and escapees could be kept to a minimum. I couldn’t take much credit for the idea. It had been the brainchild of Trikilo, who understood nomad tactics like no other, and Pertabon The Legions had faced the undead many times in what to us would be ancient history but was to them only a couple of generations ago.
We had started off being outnumbered perhaps eight or nine to one, but within half an hour, we’d equalised the numbers and the battle was turning in our favour. It was hard to gauge our losses from a crow floating over the battlefield but they seemed remarkably light.
An hour later and I was feeling out of place in the after action briefing. I hadn’t set foot on the battlefield at all so I was in clean clothes and the others were splattered in gore and dirt. The Fangs had led their squadrons, they were filthy and smelly from the undead viscera they’d been coated in as well as the sweat of their horses.
Pertabon, Mulius, and Marbo joined us in addition to the nomad kings and chiefs who had taken part, as well as Trikilo. The humans wore large grins and had indulged in a great deal of self congratulation as the meeting came together.
“That seemed to go well. What were our losses?” I asked.
“About thirty lancers are injured. Half that are dead,” Jandak ground out, clearly not happy about his section suffering the most deaths.
“Was it just bad luck or is there something we can improve?” I asked.
“Bad luck mostly. Breaking off from close engagement is trickier for us than the archers,” he admitted. “The strategy worked well enough. Perhaps only sending half the troops at a time might have helped? They mostly fell after the first charge. If fresh troops had been coming in to replace them as they pulled back it might have limited the losses even further though.”
“It’s a good idea,” rumbled Trikilo from where he sat cross legged on the grass. “A full charge should have a separate signal for use in dire circumstances. Against unknown opposition only sending in half the lancers will diminish the additional strike but it would allow us to support and cycle the wedges more efficiently.”
“We were fighting dumb enemies here. The impact of a full charge on the flanks of the legion against humans who can break and run should not be underestimated,” boomed Pertabon. “My father told me tales of the battle of Nalthask. The legion faced off against artifact equipped humans who could almost hold their own against us.” He said the last with a hint of bitterness. “It was Narbo’s Auxilia cavalry that turned the battle. They feinted a charge to buy us time then swiftly moved to the flanks before properly engaging.”
“The archers didn’t take any losses,” Mune said cheerfully. “We also didn’t have any glory hounds who ignored the fall back order so that’s a step in the right direction.”
“Agreed. Overall I think this was an excellent training opportunity. We’ll need to incorporate what we’ve learned into the wider army when they come together. Kril, are the Arch Dreamers in the camp?” He nodded to me. “Let’s get them and return them to Hellath where they belong.”
“Legate, apologies but while we finished off the dead at the barrow I felt something,” Pertabon said quietly. I raised an eyebrow to invite him to continue. “Like at the Pass. Similar to the Source of the Vialith.” He sounded almost reluctant to admit it.
“Another Source is there? Where? We didn’t get much time to explore it at the spring festival but I didn’t notice anything like the Source or the God-Forge. How did it feel to you?” I replied. Another Source to weaken another God? That would be a huge advantage. Hopefully it would be Hadesti’s or Kronos’ Source and I could weaken the patron of the two competitors I considered the most threatening.
“It felt like power, Legate. I couldn’t tell the difference between Velkit’s and Poseidon’s so I have no idea which god it might belong to but I’m sure it’s there, somewhere.”
