Valkyrie's Shadow

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 3, Chapter 14

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 3, Chapter 14

Chapter 14

“Wha–! So fast!”

Olga helplessly watched the last of her Zombies tumble down the slope. It flopped and bounced like a rag doll before vanishing beyond her goggles’ Darkvision range.

The Beastmen who beat them up didn’t even need to destroy her soldiers directly: they just had to send them careening back down the valley and the fall would break them apart. She could imagine one of the Elder Liches at home informing her that she had lost all of her points while her opponent had retained all of theirs.

She and Raul had been circling high above the Beastman forces for the last hour. It seemed that their opponents were unaware of their presence – though it wasn’t surprising given all the measures taken to conceal them – allowing Olga and Raul the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the battlefield unharassed.

Never mind seeing so many Demihumans in one place before, she had never even seen so many Humans before. The mass of bestial forms seemed to squirm and ripple with a life of its own, and she could feel a sense of primal fear scratching at the edge of her awareness with so many fearsome predators below.

Despite all that, she felt surprisingly calm. Maybe because they didn’t look like they could reach her. Lady Zahradnik was nearby, too.

“Did they even hurt one of them?”

“It does not appear to be the case,” the Elder Lich riding behind her said. “Such expectations for our forces are unreasonable in this situation.”

“Mmh…”

She frowned down at the Beastmen celebrating their victory over Olga’s soldiers. Though the Elder Lich said it wasn’t a big deal, the Beastmen were treating it like one. They raised their claws and roared in jubilation as if they had defeated an entire army rather than a handful of one-point Zombies.

The main battle hadn’t been joined yet, but small groups of Beastmen had crept down from their positions for some reason. Lady Zahradnik saw it as an opportunity to conduct a few skirmishes and learn more about their opponents. Olga and Raul had been assigned to two of the approaches and told to ‘poke around a bit’. Her first ‘poke’ had been slapped down so quickly that she wondered what the point was.

“How are we supposed to do anything if they win so easily?” Olga said, “Just tire them out by burying them with Undead?”

“That appears to be the most viable tactic,” the Elder Lich said. “Our current orders, however, are to probe their lines and collect useful data.”

?About half of our forces are across the river. Keep testing the Beastmen until further orders.?

Olga scratched her flight cap at Lady Zahradnik’s instructions. What were they supposed to figure out? It felt like the result would be the same no matter what they did.

Or maybe there was something else to it. When she was teaching them stuff, Lady Zahradnik rarely talked about combat strength, formations or special orders. Most of her instruction revolved around understanding their opponents, setting precedents, managing expectations and manipulating morale and sentiment.

As a Commander, one of Olga’s roles was to come up with effective strategies as they learned how to wage war on a wide scale. The tactical side of things was the job of the Elder Lich sergeants and any Captains under her command. Baroness Zahradnik said that, eventually, they might end up commanding her since she was more like a Captain, but that sounded way too crazy. It was the way the Royal Army worked, though.

Unlike the hierarchies of army officers in the books she read, one’s role was independent of one’s rank in the Royal Army of the Sorcerous Kingdom. Commanders like Wiluvien and Lluluvien issued orders to Captains like Lady Zahradnik, but Lady Zahradnik outranked them in terms of organisational authority. Lady Zahradnik was the chief of staff of the forces in the Draconic Kingdom, but the work of Commanders and Generals was done by her general staff and the general staff of the other army groups participating in the analysis and planning for the theatre.

Commanders issued orders to Captains because that’s what Commanders did, not because they were ‘above’ them. Captains were front-line field Commanders, but what they contributed to grand strategy was still weighed seriously. Rank was issued according to one’s competence and ability, not one’s role, thus every member of the Royal Army was expected to act optimally according to their respective positions.

Lady Zahradnik considered it the proper way to organise a country’s armed forces, stating that the structure of other militaries that ‘conflated vocation with authority’ was ‘fundamentally flawed’. In those militaries, Captains were promoted to Generals and assumed a different role, which crippled their development. Those who became Commanders tended to spend years or even decades acting as Sergeants and Captains first, which was even worse. In the Sorcerous Kingdom, a Captain always acted as a Captain and a Commander always acted as a Commander, no matter their rank.

In many ways, it was much like how Warden’s Vale worked. Social status was dependent on vocational expertise rather than the ‘place’ that one’s vocation had in society. A Noble was an administrator and they were granted rights and authority for the purposes of their role. Being a Noble did not make one inherently ‘better’. If a Noble popped up and acted like they were better than everyone else just because they were a Noble, they’d be laughed right out of the territory.

If it was reported to her, Lady Zahradnik would probably tie the offender to a couple of logs and send them floating back down the river. Whether Countess Corelyn would stop the logs before they entered the Katze Plains was questionable.

Olga eyed the Beastmen below, who were edging their way down the slope again.

“Have you done anything like this before?” Olga asked the Elder Lich.

“No,” the Elder Lich replied. “The behaviour of these Beastmen does not reflect the training received in the Southeast Army Group.”

“Same here,” Olga frowned. “Everything moves according to our orders when we have practice battles. These Beastmen just do whatever they want!”

“Indeed. Their formations and general discipline are irregular.”

They were more like gangs of thugs than an army. A gang of super strong thugs. She could see how the Draconic Kingdom could lose to them. Human soldiers and militia might have greater discipline and skill, but the Beastmen were so strong and numerous that they could just brute-force their way to victory.

After thinking for a bit, she sent a dozen Skeletons after the group closest to the bottom. Skeletons seemed to do a lot better than Zombies so far.

The Beastman-shaped Skeletons came clambering up the slope a few seconds later. Lots of roars and shouting drifted up from below. Four other groups of Beastmen edged closer, but didn’t join the fight. In the end, her Skeletons were all destroyed and the Beastmen were celebrating another victory.

“The enemy has broken ranks significantly on the other side of the ravine,” the Elder Lich said.

Olga looked out to the far side of the approach, which was a wide gulch carved by a creek flowing down from the plains above. Never mind breaking ranks, the entire line there had shifted forward. A dozen groups were far ahead of the rest as if trying to creep over to where Beastman tribes were celebrating their win. It was almost like watching a bunch of kids seeing some other kids having fun and being drawn closer.

“Do you think they’ll come all the way across?”

“There is no precedent for or against,” the Elder Lich said. “This one recommends that you explore your query.”

“Then…send two groups of Zombies up the same way as before, but make sure the groups are apart from one another.”

“Not Skeletons?”

“We should save them up. Those Beastmen use their claws and teeth when they go crazy. When we attack them for real, having lots of Skeletons will be better.”

Skeletal Undead were good against Slashing and Piercing attacks, which not only meant blades, but natural weapons that acted like blades as well. Zombies, on the other hand, were easily shredded apart.

The two groups of Zombies appeared out of the vegetation and shuffled up the gulch. Several bunches of Beastmen came down to meet them. Once again, the first ones that made contact fought while the others hung back. In the other parts of the gulch, parts of the Beastmen lines drifted closer.

“Send two more groups of Zombies after those guys that are fighting right now,” Olga said. “Maybe they’ll come all the way down.”

She expected them to come after the new groups of Zombies once they finished fighting, but the groups that weren’t fighting ran ahead instead. They barrelled down the slope and smashed into the Undead in a frenzy of fur, teeth and claws.

“Three more groups of Zombies!” Olga said hurriedly, “Do we have Skeleton Mages in the bushes nearby?”

“Our Skeleton Mages have been relegated to the rear of the formation,” the Elder Lich said. “We do, however, have Skeleton Archers in range.”

“Oh! Get them ready to attack once the Zombies are gone.”

Olga leaned forward eagerly as she watched the skirmish play out. Before the Beastmen could get in range of her hidden archers, however, a group of four different-looking Beastmen came running down. Shouts rose from below, going back and forth between the different groups and the newly-arrived one. Eventually, they headed back to the enemy lines above.

“Aw,” she pouted.

“It was a good try.”

She jumped at the new voice and found Lady Zahradnik flying beside them. The Baroness smiled at her reaction. Olga turned away to hide her embarrassment.

“I didn’t kill any of them, my lady,” she said.

“You lost two Copper-league armies’ worth of Undead, too,” Lady Zahradnik noted.

“I-I did?”

“Indeed,” the Elder Lich said, “out of a total of ninety-six points, you–”

“I get it!” Olga squawked, flapping her arms, “I’m sorry, my lady. I couldn’t get anything done.”

She glared down at the Beastmen. Especially the group that had stopped them from falling into her trap. All those losses were for nothing.

“On the contrary,” Lady Zahradnik said, “you’ve accomplished quite a bit. Not only did you develop enough of an understanding to exploit their poor discipline, but you drew out a group of their warriors.”

“The ones that came down and yelled at them?”

“That’s right,” the Baroness nodded. “We weren’t able to identify any up to the point where you brought them out from the enemy lines.”

“How do you know they’re warriors, my lady?” Olga asked.

“The weakest of them is about twice as strong as the average Beastman down there,” Lady Zahradnik answered. “I have a bit of Ranger in me and scouts can discern the strength of things at a glance. There are other ways to figure it out though: how individuals carry themselves and how others react to a subject don’t require them to directly demonstrate their strength. Since the other Beastmen deferred to that group of four, you can infer that they hold some form of authority or expertise that commands respect.”

“If that’s true, shouldn’t we have done something while they were near our lines?”

Beastmen were already strong, so she couldn’t imagine how good Beastman warriors would be against their weak little Undead. All of their strong stuff was held in reserve, so they were going to lose a lot.

“They’re not concealing themselves,” Lady Zahradnik said, “so we’re seeing where they return to. Beastmen might not be us, but they still have social structures and patterns of behaviour that can be recognised. The faster we learn, the more effectively we can devise our strategies and tactics. Commanders are in the best position to observe the broad behaviour of their enemies in battle – those fighting on the front lines are often preoccupied with what is going on in their immediate vicinity.”

“Is that why you told us to do this, my lady?” Olga asked.

“That’s right,” the Baroness answered. “Over the winter, you’ve become familiar with basic concepts in warfare. Now, you’ll be learning how to read a different sort of opponent and learn how to understand and influence the flow of battle. I didn’t even need to say much: both you and Raul started piecing things together on your own.”

“Raul did this too?”

“Not in the same manner as you have,” Lady Zahradnik said. “His style of command is quite distinct from yours.”

Olga was all too aware of this, having fought hundreds of battles against him.

“He’s reckless,” she said.

“Raul is aggressive,” the Baroness told her. “Because of that, it can be difficult to discern whether he’s being reckless or not. The reports of your battles over the winter show that there is often a degree of calculation to his aggression, which has more often than not led to desirable results.”

“I bet he wiped out ten Copper-league armies’ worth of soldiers,” Olga frowned.

“He did,” Lady Zahradnik smirked. “Since you’ve been his partner for months, I suppose it isn’t surprising that you could guess.”

“Isn’t losing a quarter of the Undead that he had bad?”

“It depends on how you look at it. One of the objectives of a skirmish is to discover everything that you can about the enemy and uncover potential problems with your own forces. We’re using weak, mindless Undead to do this, and the Elder Liches that run out of them will go back to the Katze Plains to get more. In essence, they are disposable skirmishers and Raul is taking advantage of that. The Elder Liches controlling them benefit from his actions, as well.”

Olga and Raul weren’t the only ones learning how to wage war. Every Elder Lich was assigned to control a specific set of Undead. When they were deployed to perform a task, they would try and figure out the best ways to accomplish that task with what they had. The eventual goal was to not only have Elder Liches that were highly adept at controlling specific contingents of Undead, but also to build up a library of knowledge for the whole Royal Army to learn from.

“So what did he do, my lady?” Olga asked.

“He ordered three Elder Liches to attack the Beastmen with their dominated forces,” Lady Zahradnik answered. “It was a straightforward fight, but it brought a number of interesting things to light.”

“Does that mean the way I did it was wrong?”

“What you discovered was different from what Raul discovered. Both of you succeeded in gathering useful information with these skirmishes, which was the primary objective. Rather than measuring battlefield results in terms of right and wrong, you should weigh what was gained against what was lost and whether it was worth it or not. Since our troops are what they are, it makes one part of that equation simple.”

The part that Lady Zahradnik referred to was sacrificing troops. If it was a Human army, they would have to worry about how people felt about losing friends and family or being treated as disposable pawns. Soldiers were supposed to understand that their Commanders might ask difficult things of them, but they were still people with minds of their own. Mindless Undead didn’t have that problem and the weak ones were easily replaceable since the Katze Plains kept spawning them.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Our forces have finished crossing the river,” the Baroness said. “We’re ordering them into their formations now. The Elder Liches will be carrying out the battle plan once everything is ready. Your job is to continue observing the Beastmen.”

“Are you going to join the fight, my lady?”

Lady Zahradnik shook her head.

“That would risk tearing apart the illusion that we’re trying to weave. If I join the fight, the Beastmen may conclude that the Undead are fighting for the Draconic Kingdom. Complications may arise as a result.”

“Like what?”

“The Beastmen still occupy the vast majority of the country,” the Baroness said. “They may threaten to slaughter what’s left of the population. We are operating under the authority of the Draconic Kingdom, so if their government gives in to the threat, we will be obliged to stand down.”

In other words, their strategy was centred around a huuuuuge bluff. As long as the Beastmen believed that they were fighting an Undead horde from the Katze Plains, they would react accordingly. The subjugated populations of the Draconic Kingdom would remain ‘safe’ because the Beastmen wouldn’t connect them to the Undead. They would push the Beastmen out in an Undead-y way and the Beastmen would think that the Humans overrun by the wave of undeath had suffered a fate worse than death. In reality, they would be untouched and return to their normal lives.

Whether the plan would work or not was yet to be seen, but nothing suggested that their Undead army was anything but what it appeared to be.

“Lady Zahradnik,” Saiko said, “our forces are ready to advance.”

“Let’s get started, then. Make sure we don’t apply too much pressure – our first objective is to ensure that they don’t eat up the remaining citizens on their way out, so we need to keep reducing their numbers here.”

Lady Zahradnik called Raul over. They watched as a smattering of Zombies and Skeletons entered the edges of their Darkvision. The advancing Undead were sparse and arranged randomly, presenting little threat to their opponents.

“Our soldiers are gonna get destroyed like this,” Raul said. “Shouldn’t we pack them in tighter?”

“We’re opening with a move derived from Olga’s findings,” Lady Zahradnik said. “The Beastmen here appear to be highly susceptible to the effects of ‘morale’. Not only does this mean that poor morale may make them flee prematurely, but good morale can encourage them to stick around and fight harder. What I really want to see, however, is if we can induce something similar to the collective ‘frenzy’ that we saw in Oriculon.”

Olga shuddered at the mention of the attack on the Draconic Kingdom’s capital. Half of the people there had been butchered and she heard that they would be burning corpses for weeks. The Demihumans here were even worse than the ones that would occasionally raid villages in Re-Estize.

“But those warriors appeared when the ones I was luring down went too far,” Olga said. “Aren’t they just going to stop them again?”

“Since they ran down to speak to them,” the Baroness replied, “they don’t appear to be Commanders. Things won’t be so easy to manage when the entire front is getting sucked into the fighting. There should be plenty of Lord-class Beastmen here, but we’ll only know what they’re capable of after they start using Skills and Abilities with noticeable effects. Speaking of which…”

A solid feeling filled Olga. She poked her palm experimentally.

“What was that?”

“An Ability,” Lady Zahradnik said. “A battlefield aura. Commanders can project them over their subordinates, but they’re relatively weak compared to Command Skills. This defensive aura will help make it easier for the Elder Liches to manage the flow of battle.”

Like many vocations, Commanders had Skills and Abilities. They were never mentioned in the books that Olga read, so she figured that they were something like military secrets. The Linum sisters were trying to teach Olga and Raul how to communicate over long distances, but, so far, they hadn’t figured it out yet.

“How does it help make it easier for the Elder Liches?” Olga asked.

“Though I say that it’s a weak effect, it adds up. When there are thousands of Undead and each Zombie and Skeleton takes a little bit longer to destroy, all of those ‘little bit longers’ add up and have the effect of slowing down the battle. This gives our sergeants more time to respond to developments and act more effectively with their troops. Most Undead are already more resilient than their living counterparts and they don’t tire, so augmenting their defences helps them to wear down their opponents more efficiently.”

Below, the leading edge of the Undead army was making contact with the Beastman lines, which had drifted forward as individuals rushed in to attack. As expected, the Zombies and Skeletons didn’t last long, but there were many more on the way.

“Hmm…let’s give them a bit of a nudge,” Lady Zahradnik said. “Have the Skeleton Archers mixed in with the vanguard loose arrows into the enemy formation.”

The Beastmen didn’t like that. Not half a minute after the order was given, groups of Demihumans charged down the slope to destroy the Undead pestering them with arrows. Nearby Undead closed in on them and a new front was quickly established as more of the enemy joined the fray.

“Lady Zahradnik,” Saiko said, “we believe we have identified several Beastman Lords using conventional orders to command their forces. How shall we deal with them?”

“They’re pressing the attack,” the Baroness said, “which is what we want. Leave them be for now, but keep track of them. Continue drawing the Beastman forces into the valley.”

When the front came halfway down from the top of the ravine, stronger Undead started to appear. Ghouls, Undead Beasts, Skeleton Mages and Ghasts were interspersed amongst the tightening lines of their forces. The Beastmen’s advance slowed to a near-stop close to the line of vegetation at the valley bottom, but their fellows from behind pressed them forward.

“Maybe that was a bit too effective…” Lady Zahradnik frowned down at the scene, “Reduce the rate of ranged attacks, including Magic Arrows, to a fifth of what it was and pull half of the Ghouls and Ghasts back. Keep pressing forward with the rest.”

They weren’t allowed to use Ghouls and Ghasts in league battles because of the Sorcerous Kingdom’s regulations, but Olga had studied them as potential summons to use in real warfare.

Ghouls were about as quick as a regular Skeleton and twice as tough with better offence. By Adventurer Guild standards, a regular Ghoul was Difficulty Rating 9. While they were physically unimpressive, their attacks had a chance of paralysing their victims for up to half a minute. The average Human adult had a fifty per cent chance of being inflicted with this paralysis, and further attacks also had the same chance of inflicting paralysis.

On top of that, their bites delivered a disease called Ghoul Fever, which made the infected grow sluggish and more susceptible to sickness. Like their paralysing attack, the average Human adult could resist it half of the time. Those who died from Ghoul Fever became Ghouls themselves. Individuals about as strong as Gold-rank Adventurers or higher became Ghasts instead.

Ghasts were a stronger type of Ghoul, with the basic Ghast being Difficulty Rating 27. Their paralysing attacks and diseased bite were much more difficult to resist. They also had a small aura that extended roughly three metres from them. The stench of death and corruption emitted by the aura – which counted as a poison effect – had a chance of sickening all who stood within it.

Naturally-manifested Ghouls preferred to lay in wait and ambush their targets, often hiding in shallow graves or pretending to be regular corpses. If the target was alone and the Ghoul’s opening attack paralysed them, they were probably dead. The Ghoul would feed on the paralysed victim, with each bite having a chance of paralysing their victim again until they succumbed to their wounds. Those who survived a Ghoul attack might still be inflicted with Ghoul Fever, carrying it back with them to wherever they returned to and potentially starting a new Ghoul infestation.

When used in battle, however, the threat that Ghouls and Ghasts presented was magnified tenfold. The Beastmen hit a wall of stench and faltered from its effects. Victims of paralysing attacks fell to the ground and were torn apart by Zombies and Skeletons. Though they weren’t individually overpowering against their Beastman opponents, their debilitating influence on the living made the Undead army far more dangerous than the sum of its soldiers.

“If they had ranged attackers,” Raul said, “this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Why don’t they?” Olga added, “Even Goblins use bows.”

“It might be because they’re so strong in the first place,” Lady Zahradnik said. “Their natural advantages give them everything that they need to thrive. Tools that we see as a necessity may simply be a luxury to them. Going by what we’ve found from their camps so far, only a few types of artisans are prevalent in their society. Some tradespeople that Humans see as essential are next to nonexistent. There’s also the fact that the bulk of what we’ve been fighting so far appear to be ‘civilians’. A real Beastman army may very well have everything that these Beastmen appear to be missing.”

Olga pondered the Baroness’ use of the term ‘civilian’. At least amongst Humans, attacking noncombatants was considered a terrible thing. How would the Beastman country feel about Beastman civilians being killed? On one hand, they had invaded another country and were eating its people. On the other hand, they viewed those people no differently than livestock. If a pig went and started attacking Humans, Humans would kill the pig and assume that there was something wrong with the pig.

Across the battlefield, the Beastman advance began to reverse. Well, it wasn’t so much reversing as the Beastmen at the front were dying. The ones in the back were still pushing forward, but not as far.

“Don’t they care that the people in the front are dying?”

“That’s easy to say from up here,” Lady Zahradnik said, “but I doubt they know what’s going on right up until the point when they’re the next ones in front. When Commanders and soldiers talk about the ‘flow of battle’, they’re not referring to some graceful sequence of events – they’re talking about the combined inertia of thousands of bodies moving in one direction. A single soldier can only go with the flow: if they try to move independently, they’ll be trampled.”

“Our soldiers don’t do that,” Raul said.

“They actually do,” Lady Zahradnik told him. “Back when they were taking turns entering the valley, one group of Undead would push into another group of Undead and knock some of the ones that were too close to the cliffs right off of them. When you have one Elder Lich controlling many Undead, they are all coordinated according to the Elder Lich’s will. Once you add more Elder Liches with their own groups, however, you end up with multiple wills that may or may not be thinking of the exact same thing. With a regular army composed of many individuals, that problem is orders of magnitude worse.”

“But doesn’t that mean it’s impossible to change what an army was doing once they start doing it?” Olga asked.

“It can,” the Baroness answered. “That’s where an army’s discipline and skill come in. It’s not something that those outside of military professions realise, never mind appreciate. To most, an army is one ‘thing’, as if it’s a single body that moves like a marker on a map. If a Commander issues an order, it is executed as if it were a man turning a street corner…but that can’t be further from the truth. Moving as a group, maintaining formations and performing manoeuvres with thousands of soldiers is not something achieved on a whim. I think these tribes are in the process of realising that.”

Olga wasn’t sure that they were. The Beastmen just kept going forward and fighting and there was so much noise that it would be difficult – for Humans, at least – to hear anything in the thick of battle.

“They made a hole,” Raul pointed at a break in the front. “There’s another one.”

“Is this happening anywhere else, Saiko?” Lady Zahradnik asked.

The Elder Lich was silent for several moments before answering.

“It only appears to be happening in this gulch and the one to the west. We are attempting to rectify the problem and prevent future breaches.”

“No, this is good,” the Baroness replied. “Let it happen. Let them push forward again.”

Olga and Raul exchanged confused looks.

“Why is it good?” Olga asked.

“Because it shows that they still have the will to fight. When they chose this battleground, I thought they would defend it from the heights. That made our task of reducing their numbers far more complicated. Instead, they’ve decided to funnel themselves into the valley.”

Lady Zahradnik slowly scanned the battlefield below. Olga wondered what she could see that they could not.

“When they get down to the bushes again,” the Baroness said, “we’ll start using Undead Beasts and Wights. Let’s keep this back and forth going until they’ve completely abandoned their defensive positions. If we can manage that, they won’t be able to escape what’s coming.”