Early
Spring, Y3090
It
was a cold spring morning in Whitetower province. The sea air lay
thick and salty over the marsh and woods around the village of Ceath
Cross. Gulls cawed overhead. But the sea breeze had not just brought
gulls, but wolves too. From the eastern marshes and the woods they ran,
horns and axes braying and clattering in the morning air. They came
not for blood but plunder, and hoped that such a raucous display
would clear the way. Made brave by cheap victories against
Whitetower's rangers on the road inland, they thought nothing of
making their presence known.
No
matter what the wolves wished, there would be blood. Prince Elion of
lost Geredwyn, commander of the army of Caerhenned, had received word
of the Wolves' advance from the ravens of Whitetower. Through arts
lost to the rest of the kingdom, the masters of Gungnir's tower used
ravens to communicate over far distances.
Such
blessed sorcery aside, Elion Greycloak had long been awaiting such an
unwise incursion by the Sea Wolves. He meant to fall upon them, to
break them and harry them back to the coast, that it might be long
years before they troubled his adopted shores again. From all across
Caerhenned his men had come, to stand beneath the white dragon and
prove worthy of their king.
These
were not the serried lines of a pitched battle: the Caerhennin and
Sea Wolf lines formed two sides of a square, with Ceath Cross as the
far corner. Far ahead of their main lines, Caerhennin boys ran with
slings, desperate to reach their homes and defend them from the invaders.
The local levy that formed Greycloak's left flank sped through the
woods, comfortable in their home ground. It was a desperate race for
the Caerhennin to turn their lines before the Sea Wolves struck them
in the flank – though they had come for plunder, glory would be a
greater prize.
Under
Anwyth Halfsword's hurried direction they managed it, though a
shieldwall was slow in forming on the rough ground. Seeing a hidden
group of Sea Wolves emerge from behind the Ceath Marsh, Anwyth left
the greatest part of his men in a shieldwall on the open ground south
of the village and led his retinue of warriors against the new
threat. The first rank of wolves were scythed down by his mad charge
and the rest fell back, shocked by the Caerhennin audacity.
Despite
his short stature, Jaetar Foxfriend was not a man easily cowed.
Rallying his much-diminished men, he charged back into the fray
without a second thought, seeking out his opposite number with grim
determination. He soon found the man he sought, a madman with a short
Quethani sword. As men died around them they locked eyes for a mere
moment, before Foxfriend's men began to retreat, dragging their lord
with them.
Such
cowardice was no salvation, and soon Jaetar was alone on the edge of
the marsh, his men dead around him, fending off his enemy with swift
and sudden stabs of his sword. It was no use, and as he saw men calm
the maniac with the small sword, he felt a crack on the back of his
head and a sudden darkness took him.
Meanwhile,
the Caerhennin boys reached the fields surrounding Ceath Cross and
began whipping their stones at the Sea Wolves advancing toward them
over the open ground. But these men were veterans of ten and of twenty
years' raiding, veritable masters of the Long Shore and the Burning
Coast, and they were not worried by such small nuisances. As youths
are wont to do, as they fought the obvious threat they missed Njall
Crowbone and his hearthguard charging from behind Loxsom Wood. The
fields blunted the initial charge, but restricted the boys' escape as well. They were trapped in a green hell with the best of Crowbone's
retainers, and all too soon joined their ancestors in the Green Hall.
Seeing
Crowbone's men in the fields, and that Foxfriend had successfully
drawn off part of the enemy strength, Thorvald Snowbane summoned up
the blood and led his main force in a devastating charge on the enemy
centre. He saw the white dragon flapping in the wind on its green
banner with a royal golden trim, and in that moment wanted nothing
more than to take it home as a trophy. He forgot gold, forgot
plunder, and saw only glory to be snatched from the enemy's lifeless
hands. It was a brave and daring gambit. A gambit that failed.
With
Halfdan Flintfinger at his side, Thorvald charged home. Like a
crashing sea the wolves attacked, and like the stony cliffs the
Caerhennin stood their ground. Elion and his champion Cei Wolfhand
were with them, and like angels of death they stepped forward.
Thorvald himself was saved a dreadful wound only by his bright
armour, now grey and buckled by the blow. Flintfinger, the bloody,
the bastard, tinkling in his cloak of bones, met Cei Wolfhand, last
knight of Geredwyn on the field of battle, and was smote a terrible
blow from his wolf-handled sword that left him gasping and dying in
the dirt, blood frothing on his lips. After a dreadful slaughter, the
lines fell apart, neither victorious and both soaked in the blood of
friends.
The
Snowborn however was nothing if not cunning, and as his tired
warriors goaded the Cairhennin captain's retinue, he assaulted the
other end of the line with his own Hearthguard, sending them running
in a mad panic. Immediate victory clearly unobtainable, the Snowborn
then retreated, hoping to double back into Ceath Cross and make this
mad bloodshed somehow worthwhile.
Resisting
the urge to despair as he saw the slaughter Elion and his men had
endured, Coiran Longfoot now led his levies in one great shieldwall
to take their place. As they advanced, the now-outnumbered Sea Wolves
began to give ground, their archers sending flights of
goose-feathered arrows into the approaching mass. Coiran and his men were
nonetheless heartened to see Anwyth and his retinue returning from behind the
marsh, loping across the open ground to bring the fight to the enemy
once more.
Greycloak
may have blundered, but he was no fool. Having blunted the Sea Wolf
assault, he realised their true target, and as Coiran began to
steadily drive the battered enemy from the field, he turned his
retinue towards Ceath Cross, determined to upset whatever the enemy
designs upon it were. As he neared the fields however, he came under
ambush from the wolven archers, and though he scattered them to the
nine winds, his retinue took many casualties – too many to risk
storming the village alone.
The
Snowborn reached Ceath Cross to find Crowbone and his men frantic and
frustrated. They had been turning the village upside down for quite
some time, and had yet to find anything. Snowborn's sympathy quickly
vanished as his own hearthguard began dragging bags of gold from the
village well. Swiftly they began to flee, but Coiran Longfoot was not
known as fleet for nothing. He led his levies across the fields and
into the village, slaying Thorvald's rearguard and sending the rest
running into the weapon-wielding arms of Elion Greycloak and his few
companions. In a few quick moments, both retinues hacked each other
apart, and Thorvald took to his heels with nary a groat upon his
person, leading Crowbone and his men in an inglorious retreat with
hardly a crown to show for their pains and Coiran Longfoot in hot pursuit with the Whitetower levies.
The
battle at Ceath Cross was the first in a long war. It bred the seeds
of anger and resentment in Thorvald Snowborn, and brought Caerhenned
the outright enemity of the Asvaldrson clan. Though the carnage was
great on both sides, the Sea Wolves lost more, and with no Caerhennin
gold to soften the blow, the Snowborn's reputation was sorely dented.
It would take him three months to rebuild a crew worth fighting
alongside, especially with both Jaetar Foxfriend and Halfdan
Flintfinger dead on enemy ground.
Elion
Greycloak was toasted in Rath Luin for a great victory, and the size
of his army swelled as patriotic young Cairhennin stepped forward not
only to replace his losses, but to add skirmishers to the force he
could wield. The prince of Geredwyn was glad, but much gladder was he when Cei Wolfhand began to recover from the injuries he took at battle's end. Such was the feasting at Greycloak's victory that men
began to call him Blessed, and to toast the gods in his name.
And
in the Queen's Tower at Rath Luin, the Ivory Lady, that pale
perfection called the Bone Queen by her detractors, began to plot his
downfall alongside her fiery priests. For the people of Jorsala knew
only one god, and he was jealous. If Elion Greycloak was to be
blessed, he would be blessed by fire - or by death...
Evocotive stuff, loved reading it!
ReplyDeleteThank you, that's very kind =]
DeleteI look forward to adding to the campaign once I finish painting up my mini-Dux miniatures.