Daybreak:Alpha Chapter

Chapter 6 - First Timers

[Unfinished save draft... 2/3]

With shortspear in one hand and partisan in the other, Kaleva tilted his skis into a sharp turn before zigzagging back into formation. It brought an opportune moment to gaze into the gentle flurry behind him, even as their column of hundreds continued their journey north.

The twenty-three year-old had left his quiet, farming hamlet two days ago, after the village seer announced the Jarl's orders. His fellows had been on the road ever since, merging together with men from several settlements along the way.

Kaleva felt uneasy about leaving his home behind, protected by only the older members of the militia. It was illogical that they should travel north to rally, only to ski back south for war. Would it not be easier to simply wait several days before meeting up with the brave army as they marched for glory?

Skied. Not marched. Only a foolish heathen of the south would march in this weather.

But watching the snowfall did alleviate his worries by a hint. After all, the wisen seer was right. The war was timely and just. With the blessing of the Stormlord, the early snow had already piled knee-deep, transforming every field of land into the smoothest highway. In this realm of heavenly white, the imperialistic Trinitians shall flounder and perish while the true descendants exacted revenge for an age of humiliation.

After centuries of encroachment and expansion into the north, the impertinent southerners were dissolving into internal turmoil once more -- brother fighting against brother like the abyss-tainted demons they were.

But this time, Skagen was not recovering from the scything death of epidemics, or preoccupied by the schemes of morally-corrupt traitors. This time, the Hyperboreans of the north shall seize the moment and recover what was rightfully theirs.

The southerners might mock them as barbaric 'Northmen' whose only occupation was to raid and pillage; but to the Hyperboreans, the North Sea and its fertile coast was their promised land. It was here, in ages past, where the blood of their ancestors shattered the most cunning abyssal offensive of the Dragon-Demon War. The divine dragonlords may have long since departed, but their legacy -- their gift to humanity -- would live on through mythic champions of yore...

Kaleva saw the commander raise his signal flag before tilting it to the right with a shake. Major Kaleva of Rimpi -- the name was proud and common -- called for the entire unit to bank right into a full stop.

As over a thousand skis scratching against icy snow came to a halt, everyone's eyes and ears extended outwards to sense what the Major warily sought.

Then Kaleva heard it...

A soft but frantic rhythm, as though thousands of feet stomping down on hard sand...

"FORM SCHILTROM! ANTI-CAVALRY!" screamed the Major, but it was already too late.

Kaleva was still kicking the skis off his snowshoes when the first black rider charged over the crest of nearby hills. Dozens, no, hundreds followed along the length of the ridge. The forward ranks pelted javelins and spells alike before drawing swordstaves from their backs. Meanwhile horsemen in the rear unleashed volleys of crossbow bolts with precise timing just as they peaked the hills.

Battle cries shouted in Imperial soon echoed from the other side, and the entire column of Skagen ski infantry found themselves pincered in between two flanking charges.

But the young Kaleva would never see the panic that ensued, or the butchering that followed which dyed an entire field of snow in crimson death.

His last memory came when the weighted tip of a heavy javelin pierced his back, just seconds after he retrieved the round shield that could have saved his life.

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Kaede had wanted to fight. It was an excellent opportunity to attune to the life that Pascal would live. She even spent every spare moment over the past day in preparation, adjusting the composition of the quicksilver bow she formed out of the 'morphic blade' Pascal gave her.

'Spring steel', actually, even if the enchanted alloy looked like mercury. Despite being a quarter short of her Yumi-Daikyu, the new bow was so strong she had to activate her runic Elemental Body just to shoot it. Pascal's willingness to refill those spells came a bit begrudging -- he thought she was wasting her time.

He might be right. Even Kaede felt rather obsoleted with it.

Hyperion bows had already evolved past their medieval equivalents on Earth. Rather than a traditional recurve composite bow, Weichsel's few -- and their far more preferred steel crossbows -- were of compound design. Like the bows of modern athletes, they used a levering system of cables and pulleys. The result bent steely limbs to store greater energy, yet required less of the draw strength that took traditional longbowmen years to build.

But equipment wasn't even the real problem right now.

Kaede's hands were trembling.

In fact, her entire body continued to quiver lightly as she watched on from the hilltop, mounted alongside two other signal officers.

The fighting across the fields was no skirmish. It wasn't even a bloody battle.

It's a massacre.

Nearly eight hundred Skagen ski infantry had been caught in the open by almost twice their number in cavalrymen. As though two-to-one odds weren't enough, Weichsel's forces managed to sandwich the enemy in-between, using the snow, the rolling hills, and some mirage arcana to remain unnoticed until the last minute.

The defenders' few mages had tossed runes out by the handfuls, attempting to raise pillars and walls of icy stalagmites in the wintry fields. But the Weichsen officers never gave them a chance. Swarms of Ether Seekers shot out to interdict the runes, disrupting their magic through the forced injection of hostile and unstable ether.

The few obstacles that did form were not enough to break the charge. Experience cavalrymen in black partial plate leaped over them with ease, driving wedge formations into the gaps of incomplete spear walls.

The results could not be more one-sided had a column of tanks plowed straight into a courtyard of assembling infantry.

From her vantage point and through familiar-enhanced senses, Kaede had a clear and far-too-detailed view of the grisly bloodbath. No less than five cavalry wedges had pierced into the loose column of Skagen ski infantry. Driven by momentum and muscle, the Weichsen chargers shoved through disorganized foot soldiers before trampling them underfoot. Meanwhile their riders sliced and stabbed with sabers and swordstaves, hacking limbs and severing necks even as bloody spurts dyed their armor and steeds in ghastly red.

Here and there a band of defenders rallied under the leadership of an officer, but these pockets of resistance were soon picked out by spotters. Mounted arbalesters and Reiters ringed the battlefield from higher ground. Like sickles through wheat, a sudden hail of missiles quickly mowed down those brave enough to hold their ground.

Kaede had thought that this couldn't be much worse than watching the most gruesome of documentary videos. She thought that her emotional detachment when observing history would suffice...

She had never been more wrong.

The scent of blood permeating every breath of air...

The crack of bones as ribs shattered under thunderous hooves...

The sound of slicing metal as keen edge met flesh...

The splattering of blood as yet another sack of meat struck ground...

This... is war.

Kaede felt as thought she was stuck in a constant cringe. Her fingers tightened around the not-quite-longbow; but even under the firm grasp of her right hand, her left arm continued to shiver and shake.

They said that only those who experienced battle firsthand knew hell...

Pascal had warned her that the first experiences often left a recruit shaken. It was why soldiers were repetitively drilled to perform their task with mechanical automation. But since she acted as an observer and not participant, there would be no such distractions for her.

His next words were "you will get used to it".

Used to it... of course, once my humanity desensitized itself.

She wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

"They didn't stand a chance," remarked one of the signal officers, a young, plain-faced Junior Lieutenant with flat blond hair, slate-blue eyes, and a tall, freckled nose.

Given the wintry conditions, this should not have happened. Not even the lightest cavalry could ride unimpeded in knee-deep snow. Had it been any other country, the horsemen would have struggled to merely keep up with the cross-country skiers, let alone outmaneuver them.

But Weichsel was different. More precisely, the Weichsen professional cavalry had a higher ratio of noble-to-commoners than any other. At least one of every four soldiers in the 'Weichsel Cavalry' formations was a trained battlemage, and the Reiters plus Phantoms were almost entirely spellcasters.

This magical saturation gave them an overwhelming advantage in arcane support. Such utilities varied from Climatize buffs that kept the soldiers warm and their armor from locking up, to Snowskimmer spells that allowed horseshoes to gallop atop snow as though firm ground. Periodically recasting these effects for hours would prove a constant drain upon their ether supply, but a mage-dominated army could afford such luxuries while retaining enough reserves for combat casting.

"Not even a single siphon," commented the other officer, a pale-skinned, lanky young man of the same rank who rubbed his nose with nonchalance. "Just a gaggle of dirty peasants from backwater villages, hardly a victory worth our time."

They had introduced their noble lineages earlier. But Kaede merely remembered them as Werner and Karl. It wasn't really fair to the former, who paid his respects through solemn words. But the latter was just annoying, if not callous to the point of inhumane.

"Eight hundred lives and not worth your time, is it?" Kaede spoke bitterly.

"Whose side are you on?" Karl tossed back, his tone still uncaring.

Kaede was tempted to retort, when she spotted a change in the slaughterhouse.

"They're trying to surrender," she pointed out to a small group in the northeast, lead by an officer who raised a jury-rigged white flag stained by blood. They numbered no more than sixty... then suddenly halved as a hailstorm of already-airborne bolts, both steel and ether, cut them down in a crossfire from multiple vectors.

Kaede sent the same words to Pascal through their link, and received only a mental tap in reply.

Werner's preoccupied gaze identified that he was also communicating to the headquarters staff, except through a maintained Farspeak spell. The concentration required to hold it steady was what kept forward signal officers out of battle.

"Orders from Colonel von Konopacki," Werner turned towards Karl. "Tell the Captain he is in now in charge of accepting surrenders. All officers and mages are to be executed..."

"WHAT!?" Kaede instantly went to glaring at the 'better' Lieutenant. That's a war crime! Even here!

"--But disarm and release the soldiers if they kept their hands up. We have no room for prisoners."

The implications were simple: kill their commanders in front of them. If their spirit lay broken enough to attempt nothing, then let them go. Otherwise, kill them all.

"Got it. YA!" Karl urged his horse to gallop down the hill, towards wherever his company commander was.

General von Manteuffel went ahead to personally lead the Phantom Gale company as a hunter-seeker vanguard, and Princess Sylviane left with him. They roamed ahead of the main force, eliminating patrols and outposts to keep Skagen's field surveillance in the dark. Meanwhile Colonel Kasimir von Konopacki, the former commander of Nordkreuz forces in Marshal von Moltewitz's absence, was given leadership over the main body. The General also left his intelligence officer of yeoman birth -- Lieutenant-Colonel Hans-Canaris Oster -- as second in command.

"This is wrong!" Kaede almost shouted. "The Articles of War require that surrendering troops must be taken prisoner and offered a fair chance for ransom!"

"The Articles of War wasn't signed by the Northmen," Werner replied, still solemn, although he continued to survey the field rather than meet Kaede's gaze. "They certainly didn't adhere to it when they broke through our towns' defenses."

"So we're to lower ourselves to their barbaric standards?"

"My job is to pass the orders, not to interpret them against treatise and philosophy," he countered without any change in expression.

"Kaede quit arguing with a Lieutenant and turn your focus back to the field," Pascal ordered.

She did, but not without complaint:

"Are you seriously agreeing to this?"

For nearly a minute he didn't say a thing, and Kaede simmered hotter in her saddle. Then:

"Get down there and tell Captain Walter Kempff to spare any officers who led a surrender. We should encourage the gutless wonders who willingly give up their commands, not warn them off."

"Surrendering isn't necessarily cowardi..."

Kaede trailed off as she realized what Pascal was doing:

He's rationalizing reasons to keep them alive.

"Quit being emotional and use your head," he reprimanded. "Inform them in Lieutenant-Colonel Oster's, and by extension, General von Manteuffel's name. Oster happens to agree with me."

"Yes Sir," Kaede heeled her horse to start moving. "And thank you."

Even if his motivations weren't entirely humanist:

"Colonel von Konopacki may be a skilled commander, but he is a political numskull and hence will never become a general. There is no purpose in igniting more anger when we could avoid it; only the Imperials would benefit from that."

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