Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 6, Chapter 21

Winter's Crown: Act 6, Chapter 21

Chapter 21

“This is a bit different…”

As Ludmila examined the newly-exchanged forces, she soon noticed that each Elder Lich commander oversaw a full ‘standard formation’ – the Death Warriors were not excluded this time.

“Did Lord Cocytus include some sort of note with your contingent?” She asked the Elder Liches.

“Lord Cocytus has noted that developments in the upper reaches have afforded an opportunity for Death Warriors to perform roles that are suited to them.”

She nodded slightly at the response. With every exchange of Undead servitors, she also included reports of the night’s activities, complete with her thoughts on their progress, potential risks, and the various options that presented themselves for the next sortie. What to do about the main body of the Goblin army was a question she had been considering, and Lord Cocytus appeared to have dispatched the Death Warriors as an answer.

Death Warriors were something of the opposite of Death Knights, specializing in offence while sacrificing defence. They were swift and powerful but lacked the durability of Death Knights and their suite of Skills and Abilities. If one were to consider a tactical analogue in the Goblin army, they were akin to the Bugbears that were used as shock troops.

Frankly speaking, Ludmila had no experience commanding anything like them. The Fighters in the Adventurer Guild tended to focus heavily on defence in order to anchor their respective teams, so the closest in terms of position might be a melee striker like a Rogue or a Monk. She also wasn’t commanding an Adventurer party – she was commanding a contingent of the Sorcerous Kingdom’s army, and there were many more factors to consider.

“Head up to the eastern pass with your troops,” she told the Elder Liches. “Help the others up there with sorting out and stripping down the corpses for delivery. Keep your mana topped off, though – we’ll be headed down later this afternoon.”

They nodded and led their formations southwest. With the many nightly battles came a veritable mountain of corpses and equipment. The Elder Liches – both her own and those who arrived for training – worked nonstop during the times that they weren’t fighting. The tens of thousands of bodies were moved via Gate on a daily basis to be stored in Lord Cocytus’ frozen realm, while piles of weapons, armour and supplies were building up on the flats with her timber and stone.

Repurposing everything was work for a small army of craftsmen, but she didn’t have that yet. Smith Kovalev informed her that she would need a proper foundry to process all of the steel equipment if she didn’t want the process to take decades. Fortunately, it wasn’t perishable, and she had no need to deliver it anywhere: all she needed was time.

Finishing the last of her tasks in the village, she made her way up to the pass. Dozens of Undead moved back and forth, delivering corpses to inspection points, then taking inspected corpses to their respective outbound piles. Undead Beasts took their wagons up the slope to be laden with equipment, then back down to the flats. A clear trail had already been worn along their path.

Ludmila found Nonna at her inspection point, and she peeked into the box reserved for magic items. There weren’t many. As with Nonna’s theory about how the Goblin army’s equipment was distributed, magical items were much the same. Weak camps had poor yields, while the few elite camps turned out sets of accessories that one might find on a Gold or Platinum-ranked Adventurer. She caught herself trying to calculate the value of the container’s contents – the spoils of war were indeed quite a distraction.

How did commanders of living armies deal with soldiers who were driven by their individual desires? Ludmila imagined that if she had been leading an army of Humans, there would be more than a few that would be looting equipment and accessories for themselves without reporting their findings. Did their officers just end up treating it as a perk? She had read that mercenary companies basically operated in that fashion. It wasn’t something that she wanted professional soldiers operating under her command to expect, however.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” She looked up from the box.

“In my mind,” Nonna replied, “nearly everything identified in the past day has been out of the ordinary. Why would anyone expend the effort to craft some of these items? It is like using a dried-out leaf to shield yourself from a Fireball. If not for the value in collecting data for our statistics, I would consider the mana expended to identify these items a waste.”

“It is better than nothing,” Ludmila offered. “Besides, an Enchanter might be able to derive something useful out of studying so many magic items: new techniques and ideas…or something.”

Nonna sniffed dismissively. As with most things that did not come from the Sorcerous Kingdom’s mysterious place of origin, Nonna treated everything they found here with about the same enthusiasm as one might bestow upon a three-day-old pile of manure that she came across on a rural road. The other Elder Liches were even worse, and attitudes carried about any one particular thing would persist until proven otherwise.

Ludmila continued on her way, climbing up onto an outcropping that offered a commanding view of the central valley. The space cleared out for the Goblin army encampments was plain to see, creating a field that brought to mind the tales of epic battles spun for the excitement of audiences both noble and common alike. She sat down, dangling her legs over the cliff face as she considered her options over a piece of jerky.

The central valley was a mostly flat area where the Katze River was joined by the various smaller rivers flowing down from the surrounding mountains. The Goblin army straddled both sides of the river, clearing away the dense brush and forest growth to form an ugly scar that ran down a good portion of the valley’s length.

It wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened – there had been several attempts by Humans to settle the area, pushing back the Demihuman tribes that occupied the basin. This never lasted longer than a decade, however, as the tribes recovered in the rugged areas surrounding it and pushed the Human settlers right back out. Eventually, it earned a reputation as an indefensible position, and all thought of settling the place was abandoned. Lady Shalltear had put forward the notion that Ludmila should stake her claim for the Sorcerous Kingdom, but, for now, it had become a stage for conflict.

To Ludmila, the idea of just attacking the Goblin army out in the open felt decidedly strange. She was raised to command the limited defences of Warden’s Vale, using tactics and strategies that made the most out of their meagre numbers. Even her personal fighting style was conservative in nature. Fighting large, set-piece battles felt ludicrously wasteful and imprecise.

If it were Humans, at any rate. She now had tens of thousands of Zombies at her disposal and Death Knights who could constantly replenish lost Squire Zombies as they worked their way through the Demihuman ranks. The only thing she had witnessed that was able to slow them down were the elite formations of the first battle, where she had purposely sent single Death Knights to test their strength. A single Death Warrior could probably obliterate the same sort of formation in seconds.

What remained was her initial problem. She had no fear that she would lose the battle, but not losing in battle didn’t mean that she couldn’t fail in some other way. Her conditions remained the same: she had to destroy her enemy without any of them getting away and potentially causing problems down the line. Unfortunately, the encampments in the central valley covered an area of over five hundred square kilometres, and there was no way she was surrounding the entire thing without millions of Zombies that she did not have. Thus, her original plan was to simply allow starvation and infighting to take care of most of them over several weeks, then sweep up the remainder.

After an hour reviewing the last few days, she settled on her plan of battle and returned to convene with her commanders on the northern slope of the eastern pass.

“Nonna,” she said. “The encampments that have been cleared in the last few days are still intact, yes?”

“There have been no orders to dismantle them,” Nonna replied. “They have only been stripped of supplies and equipment.”

“Then we’re beginning our preparations,” Ludmila said. “First of all, mobilize half of the Zombies in the passes, and have them gather at the confluence below this pass.”

“Half of the Zombies is ten thousand,” Nonna noted. “It will also take a day for the ones from the western passes to arrive.”

“Then move all of the Zombies from the two eastern passes,” Ludmila replied. “Split the number from the western passes to cover for them.”

“Very well,” the Elder Lich said. “Will there be anything else?”

“Yes,” Ludmila nodded. “Send our Squire Zombies down to collect the wood stakes from all the barricades in the camps nearby. They can bring them to where the Zombies are being gathered.”

Nonna gave her a long look.

“Your orders deviate significantly from the actions of the past few nights,” she said. “There was also nothing of this discussed in the plans for the main army camp.”

“If our opponent changes their behaviour,” Ludmila said, “then we must adjust ours as well. Their shift into a posture that clearly indicates they plan on moving north necessitates a change in our own plans.”

“Then what is your new plan?” Nonna asked, “There is little to doubt when it comes to the power of our forces compared to theirs, but you have always made it a point to contain and eliminate all interlopers. Surely you don’t expect to fence them in with wooden stakes?”

“Those are for something else,” Ludmila smiled. “Their movements are forcing my own, and I have no expectation of being able to contain them with so little time to prepare.”

“Yet you have thinned the number of Zombies that you are using to block the passes. Are you certain that you will be able to manage the chaos that ensues?”

“The management on our part will be minimal,” Ludmila replied. “I am counting on the Hobgoblins to do the managing for us.”

“Counting on an enemy to do what you want them to do for you…” Nonna’s words took on a dubious note, “This is decidedly not your usual approach. Have you given in to wishful thinking? Or perhaps you have succumbed to the effects of this ‘aging’ that mortals are inflicted with.”

Ludmila rolled her eyes. The strategy for the coming battle had come to her after once again considering that it might be something similar to the ones that Bards would commonly relate to the masses. Like those tales, tailored to be full of the things that people anticipated, she realized that all she needed to do was have the Goblin army fall prey to their own expectations.

“Rather than that,” Ludmila told her, “They won’t realize what’s going on until it’s too late.”

Deep in the forests north of the Goblin army, a party of scouts picked their way through the tangled undergrowth. They were not far from the northernmost encampments – perhaps two hours away if their path had not been choked with vines, thorns and pits sheltering all manner of biting and stinging things – but the Goblins’ nerves grew with every step. A trickle of cold dread played over their skins.

You should not be here.

The leader of the party could see it in the faces of her Goblins; she could see the whispered thoughts reflected in their eyes. The local tribes all said the same thing. Don’t go north. Death stalks the land. Her footfalls felt heavy, weighed by a suffocating feeling that pressed down on everyone.

Turn around. Run away. Before it’s too late.

She gave her head a shake. They couldn’t turn back. If they returned empty-handed, they would only be beaten. Forward. Forward until they saw something worth reporting. Then they could run back and be safe.

A high-pitched shriek echoed through the trees. Everyone froze. She looked up from where she had crouched instinctively, sniffing at the wind. Another scream pierced the evening air, and whimpers rose from the Goblins cowering behind her.

An eternity passed. The wind rustled through the leaves. There was only the damp of the river nearby; the smell of earth and decay. She rose and moved forward again.

They came to a clearing, and she realized it was the old road that followed the riverbank. She didn’t like roads. Roads had people, and most people saw Goblins as enemies or food. Her party was oblivious to the danger, however, walking out past her and into the open. She hissed at them to come back, but they didn’t listen. Stupid. They were stupider than her.

“There…Gob?”

She looked up at the voice. One of her party was pointing up the road towards the north. Something stood there – about their size. Was it another scouting party? The Hobs had sent many dozens north to scout the way.

“Hey,” the Goblin said. “Hey!”

The figure didn’t respond. Scowling, the Goblin who had called out to it walked up and put a hand on its shoulder.

“I say ‘hey’!”

“Oooooooah.”

The figure turned around, and the Goblin let out a panicked shout just before arms reached out to grab him. They fell into a heap onto the dirt path.

Her other Goblins ran forward, voices raised angrily. If it was a Goblin, it was a bad Goblin. They reached to pull the two apart, then jumped back as one. Spears stabbed. Stabbed and poked and stabbed. When the stabbing stopped, she walked up to see what sort of bad Goblin it was.

It was a very bad Goblin. A deaded Goblin that undeaded. The Goblin that it had jumped on was deaded too, blood spilling from his torn throat.

Her ears pricked up. The sound of shuffling feet. The moans of undeaded Goblins. Not far away, more dead Goblins slowly came towards them.

“Z-zom!”

“Zom!”

“Zom!”

The other Goblins panicked, dancing backwards while shouting. She wanted them to shut up, but it was too late. More and more were now coming down towards them.

“Zom!”

One of the Goblins raised her bow, planting an arrow in the closest Zombie’s chest. More arrows followed, and the undeaded Goblin deaded again.

The Goblins howled in victory, but then one of the howls turned into a shriek. They fell silent, staring up at one of their companions, somehow hovering in midair. Her body shrivelled, turning withered and grey. It was as if the Dire Mosquito that had plagued her dreams of late had finally gotten her.

Her corpse dropped to the ground with a thump. Another Goblin appeared, floating over their heads. A winged Goblin? No. It had no wings. They could see right through it. It didn’t look very happy to see them.

The floating Goblin swooped down and picked up someone else. He shrivelled up too. The Goblin leader turned to run, and she heard the patter of footsteps as her two remaining party members followed in her wake. One set stopped. Another scream that shrivelled up like the others.

Run. Run run run run run run RUN!

The locals were right. The place was cursed, and death stalked the land. They should have never come.