An hour passed before the lead elements of the Aerdian main battle, as the central division of the army was called, arrived at Woodford. The place was quiet, the waters were still, and no trace of fighting was apparent. The troop of light horse saw a strong body of mercenary infantry spread about on the opposite shore, evidently on guard against any possible foe, but obviously relaxed and awaiting the arrival of the Grand Marshal’s army so they could push forward again to scout. Just visible on the road in the distance was the banner of General Lomor, the ensign surrounded by a small body of cavalry, moving westward away from the river.
Another small body of mounted men appeared from the trees along the east bank and waved to their fellows on the opposite side of the Harp River, signaling that all was well. The cavalry troop came across the ford first, keeping their horses at a slow but steady walk. The head of the Marshal’s long column of soldiers was marching swiftly toward the crossing place, and the horsemen wished to get clear of the ford before the soldiers arrived. There was no love lost between the cavalry, who were mercenaries, and the oncoming imperial and noble contingents.
The blue and gold tabards of the Overking’s Guard proclaimed the coming of the army. Although the noon sun was now being obscured by slowly thickening clouds, the crowned sun on each tabard’s deep blue field seemed to glitter without the aid of beams from the real one above. The leading regiment was of archers, a thousand strong, shortbows slung, short spears shouldered for the march. Behind them came a like regiment of crossbowmen equipped with great arbalests and swords. Together these two units composed the first brigade of heavy foot, for they wore chainmail and stood in close formation.
Behind them came the serried ranks of pole-armed infantry, imperial troops who bore glaive-guisarmes and fauchard-forks. After a suitable interval came the disdainful and haughty riders of Ivid’s Own Cavalry-light horsemen with small crossbows, bucklers, and javelins; then mounted sergeants in plate mail with lances, flails, and shields; and finally the so-called Knights of the Malachite Throne, in even heavier armor, bearing an array of heavy swords and axes in addition to lance and shield.
All of these horsemen held their slender javelins and long lances aloft, pennons astream, to proudly proclaim their presence. Although there were but three thousand of them, they considered themselves to be the finest and best soldiers in the army. In truth, these cavalry were indeed terrible foes in battle, but in a place such as the Adri Forest they were not of much use. They, and the pole-armed phalanxes as well, were much better suited for employment in the open terrain at Knurl and in the Blemu Hills.
At some little distance after the horsemen came a regiment of voulgeers, their long weapons surmounted by cleaverlike steel heads, and also proclaiming their imperial status by their bold colors. Thereafter came the train of artillerists, engineers, and sappers who marched with the baggage and supply.
A small company of mercenary light cavalry served as drab punctuation at the end of the Overking’s main battle.
A quarter of a mile farther back, the rear portion of this host was arrayed. This last division was a motley collection, composed of some two thousand infantry belonging to the noble contingents levied at the Overking’s behest. These footmen displayed a rainbow of colors and armorial devices, marking which lord they served. Weapons and armor likewise varied as widely, ranging from ranseur and halberd to axe and crossbow. There were relatively few infantry in this unit, compared to the total number of men in the force, because their noble masters deemed such troops to be fit mainly for use as a buffer to absorb missiles and even magical attacks prior to the charge of their more numerous mounted troops.
Farther back, a host of pennants, bannerols, and oddly shaped standards marked the noble lords, knights, and esquires who were riding before an even larger group of their mounted men-at-arms. As varied as the foregoing foot soldiers, this group of cavalry was as numerous as the imperial horsemen-although of questionable merit at times due to lack of discipline, for every baron, plar, count, or whatever felt himself a prince and peer to all the others. Nonetheless, once it was in motion, this mixed brigade was formidable in the extreme.
At a respectful interval came the last elements of the army, a tail of mercenary light horse and skirmish infantry totaling perhaps another thousand, placed to absorb any sudden surprise from the rear. This vast force, strung out for miles, was about to receive a blow upon its head that the body and tail would be able to react to in saurian fashion only.
The foremost riders were well across the ford and amidst their supposed counterparts before a sharp-eyed member of the mercenary troop alerted his fellows that the men around them were not friends. The resulting melee decimated the force and sent the survivors in rout, but served to alert the archers who were nearly across the river and the crossbowmen just behind, and thus the whole main battle soon knew what was happening. The Battle at Woodford now commenced.
The longbowmen of the woodsfolk were ranged for three hundred yards along the west bank of the river, hidden in the foliage and sheltered by logs and tree trunks. These archers opened a withering discharge upon their enemy counterparts, the devastation of which was only slightly lessened by the targets’ armor. Despite losses and disadvantage, the imperial troops held firm, slowly spreading out their formation to present a broad front so they could not be as easily hit, and so as to be able to reply in kind to the hail of arrows, bolts, and sling bullets pouring upon their ranks. They were brave, these men, and half were slain or wounded by the time they were stretched the entire length of the shallows of the Harp and were returning their own missiles in hopes of finding targets clad in colors that blended with the forest.
The disciplined sacrifice of the archers was not in vain, for coming at the double was the narrow column of pole-armed infantry. When their bristling mass of glaives and fauchards crossed the ford and struck into the lightly protected archers on the far shore, the sharp edges and points would pierce the woodsmen’s line and spread out along the river edge. Thus the onslaught of flying shafts would be assuaged, and the cruel tormentors plying their deadly bows would be slain.
Although arrows rained in arching fire over the heads of the screening shortbowmen and crossbowmen to fall upon the rushing brigade of infantry, these latter men were more heavily armored, with studded jacks of padded leather over chain-mail, and their front ranks were provided with steel chest plates and greaves as well. A few fell, but most came on unharmed. The screen of bowmen before them parted at their coming, glad at their comrades’ ferocity and lusting for the slaughter that their arrival portended.
This parting enabled the woodsmen to increase the effect of their archery upon the infantry, however, and whole ranks of the pole-armed imperials dropped before a new onslaught of arrows. Still, those behind came grimly on, lowering their weapons as they filled the front of the column, stepping over the fallen in their path. Had the water not slowed their advance, far fewer would have been killed, but this was not the case.
Finally, the ford was crossed by the leading men of the column, but their rush fell onto empty ground, for the woodsmen had fallen back before the imperial charge. A hundred yards away, a company of bowmen continued to stand across the open road, loosing missiles steadily at their foemen, while from the flanking woods came still more shafts.
As the full force of the pole-armed brigade came onto firm ground, its parts were sent left, right, and ahead to clear the trees of snipers. In such conditions, though, shorted axe, morning star, and sword are as good as, or even better than, the long-handled weapons the imperials carried. A raging melee swirled through the trees, as that part of the woodsfolk’s contingent without missile weapons no longer had to stand and watch their fellows work. They fell to with joy. At this point, the defending force had suffered losses numbering only a few hundred, while the invading army sent into the Adri by the Overking had lost thousands. The foresters’ hearts were singing, and their hopes were high.