Michael Manning - The Line of Illeniel

“Not many men are going to take your coin to join a lost cause,” Marc informed us, “especially when the king will also be opening his coffers to recruit for a far less suicidal battle.”

“I’m offering more than the king, remember? Land may draw men that money alone could not tempt.”

“That still doesn’t get around the fact that it won’t be enough men. Even the king won’t face them here. The terrain offers no advantage, leaving the battle largely a matter of who brings the largest army,” Cyhan said.

“We have something that they don’t,” Dorian responded calmly.

“What?” the older warrior asked him.

“Him,” my friend pointed at me across the table. “We have the only remaining wizard in the civilized world. We have magic… they don’t.”

“I appreciate your confidence in your friend,” Cyhan placated him, “but no amount of magic can stop an army of over ten thousand.”

“You weren’t there at Lancaster. I was. He killed over a hundred of them in one fell swoop,” Dorian replied, unshaken.

“And it nearly killed him,” Penny added. “Besides, I don’t think Vendraccus will be so kind as to gather his army all in one place where Mordecai could conveniently annihilate them all at once. At Lancaster he had the enemy confined in one room.”

“Hah!” Royce shouted. Everyone looked at him wondering at his odd exclamation. “Say that again girl.”

“It nearly killed him…,” Penny responded uncertainly.

“No, no, the last bit… about the room,” my father’s sharp blue eyes were piercing as he spoke. I knew the look. He usually got it when he had overcome a difficult problem crafting something in the smithy.

“At Lancaster he had the enemy confined in one room?” she repeated.

“Aye, that was it. You…” he pointed at Cyhan, “you said that the terrain here held no advantage, so the king wouldn’t fight here. That may not be true.”

“What are you talking about Royce?” Joe asked. A look of hope was forming on his face already. He had a lot respect for the smith’s ideas, especially after the fight with the shiggreth.

“The river… here see,” he moved a few cups aside and tried to trace out the terrain with his finger on the table top. “Bah, this won’t work! Someone fetch me some paper and a piece of charcoal.”

I got up to fetch it for him. Paper was in short supply so I doubted anyone else would know where to find a piece large enough. I happened to know where he kept his back at the smithy. He frequently liked to plan his work out with large sketches. Ten minutes later I was back and we laid a large sheet out on the table.

“Alright… look here,” Royce started drawing a rough map of the area surrounding Castle Cameron, including Lancaster and Arundel. To the north a long line of mountains formed a rough border between Lothion and Gododdin. South of that were my lands, with Lancaster to the east of us and Arundel to the west. A break at the western end of the mountain range was the common passage between Gododdin and Lothion. A road crossed there and went past the Barony of Arundel, leading onward to Cameron and then Lancaster before turning south to head into the interior of Lothion.

“Here’s where they’ll be coming from, and they’ll have to follow the road past Arundel,” he drew a line to represent the road. It went south from the mountains toward Arundel before turning to run eastward past Cameron and Arundel. “You’ll notice that the road is paralleled by the Glenmae River for most of its length.” He added another line a bit north of the road. “The river runs just a half mile north of the road for most of the valley before it leads back up into the mountains north of Lancaster.” The valley itself was very gentle, a sloping grassy plain that stretched for miles between the road and the mountains. A large part of the farming for the three fiefdoms was done there. It was bordered to the north by the mountains and rose again on the southern side where the road ran. Near the road the forest started, stretching for many miles to the south.

“So they follow the road, making short side stops to wipe out Arundel, then us, and finally Lancaster as they go. After that they follow it south into Lothion proper, unless they want to try to drag their entire army through the forest and then into the foothills of central Lothion. I’d say that was unlikely.” He looked up from his rough map, catching us with his sharp eyes, “You follow so far?”

I nodded but Cyhan stopped him, “You’ve laid out a map for disaster. There are no choke points, no bridges, and no narrow passes, just an open gently sloping valley with a road and a river. I don’t see how any of that is going to help us.”

“Well there is one bridge,” Dorian put in, “the small one where the road crosses the river before heading into Gododdin.”

“Not that it helps,” Cyhan remarked. “The river is shallow enough to walk across in most places. You could burn the bridge and it would hardly slow them. Even the road is almost a joke, most of that valley is so smooth and even you could march across it almost as easily as take the road.”

“Let me finish,” Royce groused. “The valley slopes gently downward to the river, from the mountains to the north and from the forest and the road to the south. Its source lies in the mountains on the eastern end, north of Lancaster. There’s a much smaller valley there, where the mountains come together around the river before it enters the main valley. There are rocky hills that come within a few hundred yards of each other on either side of the river there, roughly dividing that smaller valley from this one.”

Joe interrupted, “Not to be rude Royce, but I don’t see any reason why they would head up there? Assuming you’re suggesting we somehow try to defend ourselves in Shepherd’s Rest.” That was the name of the smaller valley; Royce had avoided using it for the sake of those who didn’t know the area.

“No Joe, you’re missing my point,” he pointed at the narrow entrance into Shepherd’s Rest that the river passed through, “Here… Damn it.” He grinned at us.

“Excuse me?” said Penny.

“Dam it!” repeated my father chuckling. He sometimes had an odd sense of humor and he was enjoying his joke.

“Oh! That’s genius Roy!” shouted Joe. “We dam it!” He looked around to see who else had caught on.

“You think we should dam the river there?” I said; putting an end to the confusion everyone was in.

“Yep, we dam it there, and turn Shepherd’s Rest into a reservoir. Then when those bastards march into the valley we unstop it and watch ‘em drown.” He put his thumbs in his belt and leaned back, obviously pleased with himself.

Cyhan still had concerns, “Not to get ahead of ourselves, there are still several large problems with your plan. One, the road is too far from the low part of the valley. You’re not going to have enough water to wash them away if they’re on it. Two, if you try to get them crossing the bridge; you won’t be able to time it properly. Your dam is over ten miles from where the bridge is. You’d have no way of knowing when they were crossing, much less figuring out how long the water will take to reach that point. Third, it takes time to fill up a reservoir that large and the Glenmae isn’t a very big river. Even if you could snap your fingers and have it dammed today it would still take over a year to fill. Fourth, you can’t build a dam instantly, by the time you build it they’ll be knocking on your doorstep.”

“I’ve already got that covered,” said Royce. “We don’t try to get them on the bridge. It’s too far like you said already, plus that many men will be strung out for miles on either side. We wait till they’re on the road, close to here,” he pointed at the map marking the point at which the road came close to Washbrook. “We set something up to force ‘em to leave the road, make ‘em march through the valley there close to the river. That way when we set it loose we catch ‘em with their pants down.”