David Weber - War Maid's choice

“Walsharno’s after agreeing with you, Vaijon,” Bahzell told the others. “He’s the scent of at least two. It’s powerful they are, he says, and it won’t be so very much longer before they’re up with us.”

“That’s good enough for me.” Trianal’s voice was like iron, and turned to his personal bugler. “Sound ‘Stand and form,’” he said.

“Yes, Milord!” the bugler replied, and the urgent notes flared across the muddy grassland as he sounded the prearranged signal.

Trianal’s augmented force had been moving in the reverse of a typical mixed formation of horse and foot. The standard clouds of mounted scouts had been thrown out, but instead of stationing formed cavalry on the flanks away from the river to protect the infantry from surprise attacks, the footmen had been formed on the army’s right in column of battalions, with the cavalry between them and the river. Hradani infantry was simply better suited to taking the shock of a charge of blood-crazed ghouls, and it was important to protect the horses which provided the Sothoii’s mobility. The mounted archers would be able to fire over the heads of even Horse Stealer footsoldiers, supporting the hradani while they held their shield wall; there’d be time enough for cavalry charges once the ghouls recoiled.

The supply wagons, pack train, and-especially-the mules loaded with additional arrows for the Sothoii moved along the very bank of the Hangnysti, covered by infantry and cavalry alike. There’d been some-not many, but a few-among Trianal’s men who’d felt his youth had made him overly cautious, even timid, to adopt such a cumbersome formation, especially now that he had almost twenty thousand men, horse and foot, under his command. None of his senior officers or battalion commanders had been among those critics, however, and orders rang out as the bugler sounded the signal for which they’d been waiting half impatiently and half anxiously for the last two days.

The infantry stopped in place and two thirds of its battalions faced right, and advanced two hundred yards further inland from the Hangnysti. The front ranks went to one knee, bracing their shields before them, and a triple line of arbalesteers formed in open ranks at their backs. Half the arbalesteers would double as pikemen once the melee was joined, and the wagons assigned to each battalion drew up behind them, unloading thickets of pikes and stacking them where they’d be ready to hand when needed. Each arbalesteer had three feet of clear space on either side of him; another man in the next line stood directly behind each of those clear spaces; and a metallic clicking rose above them as thousands of Dwarvenhame-built arbalests were spanned and quarrels were fitted to the strings.

The two infantry battalions forming the rear of the column wheeled in place, facing northwest, back the way they’d come, and deployed into a line covering the newly formed battleline’s right flank with their left while their own right was anchored firmly on the Hangnysti. The pair of battalions leading the column did the same, except that they anchored themselves to the battleline’s left flank and faced southeast, covering the main formation’s left. The remaining infantry battalions formed into solid, compact squares, half of them spaced evenly behind the battleline to simultaneously cover the supply wagons and form an infantry reserve at the middle of the three-sided rectangle.

Not all the infantry faced west, away from the river, however. The Hangnysti provided less protection against ghouls than it might have against most other foes, given how well the creatures swam. The river could still be counted upon to break them up, especially as they struggled ashore through the soft mud and sand along the banks, but it couldn’t be counted on to stop them. That was why the other half of Yurghaz’s infantry faced the river, not inland…and also the real reason for those heavily armed barges pacing Trianal’s army on the Hangnysti itself.

The cavalry moved just as quickly, coordinating with their footbound fellows with the precision and polish of long practice and mutual confidence. They knew exactly where they were supposed to be, and they went there. Four thousand spread themselves along the rear of the battleline, where they could support the infantry with arrow fire, and three thousand more formed in the spaces between the blocks of reserve infantry, ready to pounce on any ghouls which might swim the river and get past the infantry or to intercept any enemy penetrations of the battleline. A thousand more were held back in a reserve position under Trianal’s personal command, ready to be dispatched to wherever they might be most needed, They were also earmarked for quick exploitation if the enemy should break, of course…not that anyone expected the ghouls to be breaking anytime soon. And even as the infantry and cavalry formed, the missile-armed barges which had been pacing them on the Hangnysti began shifting position. Many moved downstream, towards the Spear, placing themselves to sweep the front of the short, heavy line protecting the army’s left, but most anchored a few yards offshore, where there missile troops could cover the bank against swimming ghouls as well as forming as a final reserve for their land-bound fellows.

The catapult-armed barges positioned themselves with special care, farther out into midstream, and the catapult crews had loaded their practice rounds even before their barges anchored. As soon as those anchors splashed down into the Hangnysti’s mud, the catapults thumped, hurling their inert rounds far over the heads of the infantry and cavalry. Those practice rounds had exactly the same weight and ballistic characteristics as the banefire rounds waiting to follow them, and Bahzell smiled with grim satisfaction as they thudded into the mud a hundred yards and more beyond the infantry’s front ranks. The gunners aboard the barges launched a second wave of rounds, making certain of their range and firing bearings. Then they loaded with banefire and stood ready.

The speed with which the entire formation shifted would have astonished anyone who hadn’t seen Trianal’s “expedition” turning into an “army.” This was a tightly integrated, smoothly articulated force, one with confidence in itself and in its commanders but no illusions that it faced an easy task because its opponents were “only” ghouls, and Bahzell felt a surge of pride not just in Trianal, but also in Vaijon and Yurgazh, for making it so.

Their march formation had been planned to make it as fast and straightforward as possible to shift into battle formation, and the fact that the river covered their backs simplified things immensely. But all the planning in the world wouldn’t have produced this result without the merciless, unremitting drill to which they’d subjected their men for just this moment. Even the Sothoii levy Trianal had brought down from the Escarpment had been slotted efficiently into their overall organization, taking its lead from the armsmen who’d been part of the expedition from the beginning. The newcomers weren’t as well drilled and disciplined as they might have been, but if all went well their primary function would be as missile troops, and any Sothoii armsman had literally grown up with a bow in his hands.

The same bugle calls which had shifted the army’s formation had recalled the troops of cavalry who’d been scouting beyond its right flank on the march, and individually designated companies of infantry opened access points in the battleline to admit them. They trotted quickly across to their own assigned positions, joining their fellows, and the scouting party Bahzell had seen galloping back passed through an opening of its own to reach the command group.

“Thousands of them, Milord,” the senior man said harshly, his face white as he reined his weary horse to a halt and slapped his breastplate in salute to Trianal. “Never seen so many of them in one place! Phrobus, I never thought there were so many of ’em!”