Outside Edessa, 1276
“And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.”
- Revelation 9:7
“Kill the locusts,” Conrad Salier said to himself as he put his Bible down.
The prayer session was over. He walked around his tent, collecting the items he would take with him in battle today. There was his sword, originally his father’s but passed into his possession when Mandorf had died. It was still unmarked. There was a special pad for his bad leg, crafted by Outremer’s finest scientists after he had nearly died killing the Egyptian Sultan some years ago. There was his Crown of Thorns, taken from Damascus in order to provide extra protection on this day.
He walked around the tent once more. His rosary was complete, his breakfast (bratwurst) eaten, his Bible read.
He was ready.
The enemy today was, of course, the Horse Lords, back for a third round against the forces of Outremer. The word was that this batch was stronger, smarter. That this batch was aiming specifically for the Imperials, bypassing Mosul. It didn’t matter. They were still stupid by engaging the Imperials in the first place. They, like the first two waves before them, would learn that lesson the hard way today.
He walked over, fully-armored, mounted his horse, and headed to the battlefield. The rest of his escort fell in, and eventually the entire army did as well.
On the battlefield, a godforsaken heap of sand that was hot to the touch of foot, boot, and horseshoe, Conrad gradually realized that something was terribly wrong: There were no dust clouds in the distance in any direction. His reserve army, led by Count Jan von Hamburg, was nowhere to be seen.
“Fine then,” he said, “We’ll wait for them to come to us. These savages over there have pressed forward all the way here,” he continued, his voice gradually rising, “Let them press further on! Let them press on and meet Imperial steel!” A cheer rose up among the men. “They will wear themselves out, just like with Elberhard! And then Jan will have shorter to walk and easily finish them off!” Another cheer. People were whistling, clanging on their shields, and generally making as much noise as possible.
But the Horse Lords refused to move. Their army stood, in a professional fashion, observing the Imperial noisemaking with something resembling stoicism. Evidently they had changed, at least this much.
The Imperial cheering gradually turned to silence at the sight of their enemy being so statuesque. Eventually the battlefield was completely quiet. There was no marching, no cheering, no fighting, not even the sound of the wind blowing, providing relief to the soldiers standing still in full armor as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky. All traces of movement had left the place.
After about an hour of silence, Conrad finally broke it.
“Enough,” he said. “Runner. Ride back to Edessa and see what’s taking Jan so long and how far away he is. I’m not feeling too well, and I’d like to get this battle over in case my condition worsens. Go!” The man he was speaking to spurred his horse in the opposite direction, kicking up dust on the way. Conrad watched him go, wiped his brow, and spoke to the entire body of soldiers again.
“All right men, these cowards refuse to march out and face us. So we shall come to them and bring the might of the Lord with us! All units… FORRRRRRWARD… MARCH!”
Conrad watched as his men marched as one across the hot desert sand to their target. As the march wore on, he found himself having to squint more and more often. Not because he was walking directly into the sun (although this helped), it was because he was feeling slightly faint.
Lord, if you are to take me today then I only ask that you wait until the battle is over before doing so. Conrad tightly clenched the grip of his sword, and closed his eyes…
…
…he opened them and looked around. The skirmishing had begun. He widened his eyes in surprise. Evidently he had lost consciousness. This would not be good. After sizing up the situation, he gave his orders, praying that nobody had noticed his condition.
“All right, men! Infantry, you know what to do!”
Once again the men cheered and charged into the fray. There was a resounding crash as steel met steel and man met horse. The battle line was unexpectedly straight, almost as if two civilized peoples were fighting back in Europe.
…back home…
Conrad found himself increasingly unable to control his thoughts as the battle progressed. He wheeled his poor horse around every two seconds, first observing the melee, then checking for signs of Jan, then marking the position of the Mongol horse archers, then going back to the melee, which had absolutely no change in it aside from the fact that more bodies on both sides had dropped, then back to Jan, still no sign of him…
Make it stop, he thought, getting dizzy, and closed his eyes…
…
… “My King! I said we’ve created a breach!”
“A breach?” Conrad said instinctively, for his eyes were still scanning the battle and what had progressed in his loss of consciousness. “If there’s a breach, then by all means, let’s exploit it! Forward!” he said after a second, still without thinking. If his head was clear and he knew about his condition then he clearly would have hung back and sent another cavalry regiment forward, while he stayed back and took on the less-life-threatening job of marking the horse archers.
However, this was not the case, and Conrad’s escort charged into the breach. Maybe we’ll win without Jan, he thought. He hoped.
He soon realized in his deteriorating condition that he needed more men to exploit this breach. The Horse Lord general had thrown three whole regiment’s worth of infantry into the hole in order to force the Imperials back. With the absence of Jan, his force simply lacked the punch it had enjoyed in the battle where Elberhard had arrived on time.
“Spears, kill this mess! My men, fight your way through! We aim for their general!”
Instantly his escort angled east and began to slog through the mass that was the Mongol infantry. His men had no momentum but more weight. It would be slow work indeed…
…he took a blow on his leg, his bad leg. It dislodged his padding and his leg cried out in pain. Gripping his sword tightly from it, he closed his eyes…
…
…he found himself alone, surrounded by men. They were not of his command. Looking around, slashing wildly, he found the majority of his escort still to the east, trying to engage and catch the enemy general.
“And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.”
“Kill the locusts,” Conrad said, as the sword that had slain so many Turks, Saracens, and Horse Lords without getting a scratch began its dance once more.
He was completely unaware of the greater battle around him; unaware of the fact that his men were putting up an extremely good fight, killing at around a 1:1 ratio. He was unaware of the horse archers advancing unchecked on his crossbowmen, unaware of the fact that his runner had met up with Jan and the young Count was now making his way as fast as he could to the battlefield, cursing himself for his slowness, unaware that the rest of his bodyguard was being annihilated by the enemy’s own escort and yet more reserve infantry. All he knew was that the poison that Abdullah had put on his bratwurst before breakfast was flaring up to its deadly potential in his body, and that he would kill as many people as he could before it took him completely.
He was gradually losing consciousness, this time for good, and desperately focused all of his remaining energy on attack with right, defend with left, and for a time it was working, he was smiting all of the infantry in reach with his wrath…
…finally, the poison took the use of his limbs away from him. Conrad, paralyzed, could only watch and chuckle silently as his final pose was him, raising his father’s sword, still gleaming and unblemished, high in the air, and then he fell, finally overwhelmed by the enemy’s numbers. He felt a box, containing a valuable item that he couldn’t quite remember, spill out from somewhere, and then he felt no more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To the west, Jan von Hamburg, whipping his tired forces onto the battlefield, observed what was going on ahead of him. He had finally arrived, hoping that he wasn’t too late to help kill the enemy.
“Faster!” he kept yelling. “Do you want to help out the King or not?” His men marched on, eager for some shared glory or a piece of the enemy, depending on how chivalrous or dreaded each man was.
However, as he drew closer and closer to the engagement, Jan quickly revised his thoughts. It seemed as if the Imperials were losing. Not just losing, but… running away. What had happened? Could he have been there to help turn the tide earlier?
He signaled an Imperial cavalryman, running past him in the opposite direction. “You there. What is the meaning of this?! There are still enemies to kill! I am here now, with a fresh army!”
The cavalryman took off his helmet and gave Jan a look that he would remember until his dying day.
“Salier has fallen,” he said simply, and galloped away.
Salier fallen? He didn’t know whether he said it to himself or out loud. He, like Conrad, grew temporarily unaware of the battle, lost in his own thoughts. He was, unfortunately, unaware of the his men’s reactions. It cannot be. He is King! He survived two other waves, he personally killed the Sultan that took Jerusalem, he’s been King forever! He can’t just die! But, as more people ran by, screaming the news, harming his army’s morale, he came to the grim realization that it was true.
Before he had any time to think (he had not expected to face an entire army, albeit a blooded one, alone), the remainder of the Horse Lords, triumphant, charged his position.
“Hold them here! Drive them back!” he screamed. “For the King, hold them here!” A dark mass thundered in around him, closing on three sides. “You!” He grabbed the last of the routers passing by. “Where is the body of the King?” The man pointed, somewhat reluctantly, and continued to flee.
“My men, forward! Forward through this mess! Follow me!”
One of Jan’s men game him a look, that, even through his helmet, suggested that his general had lost his marbles. “My Lord, what you are suggesting is suicide! The Reich has already lost one general today, please, don’t make it two!”
“I have to get the body,” Jan said, in a tone that reassured no one. “I owe that much to him. Forward!” Still, no one charged. Jan looked around wildly.
“Forward, or don’t bother coming back to Edessa!” Finally, his escort charged into the dark mass that was bearing down upon them all.
Being mounted, Jan and his men looked down as they rode through the mass. The endless uniformity that was the desert sand that Conrad saw was gone. Instead, they saw death. Footprints, blood, corpses, and live soldiers that were their targets instead filled their fields of vision.
Quickly his men lost their momentum as the mass of the Mongol infantry swarmed them. Almost immediately his men started to drop as they began to fight.
“Don’t fight!” Jan screamed. “Ride! Keep pushing forward! Only kill those that are in front of you! Forward!!!” His voice was at a hysterical pitch by now, and still he kept pushing. Every second he got farther, his men got farther, and they became less. He now realized the folly of his move, the battle was out of his control, he would never reach the body…
But I’ll die trying, he thought, as he felled another enemy with his own sword.
He looked ahead, and gasped, for it was there, but he would never be able to pick it up, it was too heavy and he would never make it back alive…
He arrived at the corpse, reached down, picked up a box, and veered off, and that was it. Time to go back.
Now he had to go through that hellish ride through the enemy all over again, although this time it would be a little easier since his men would be going the same direction as the Horse Lords. It was still a nightmare, however, for he had to view the footprints, blood, corpses (including those of his own escort this time) and live soldiers all over again, his men were screaming, they were going down, he would never make it out alive…
Daylight. He had made it. After putting some distance between him and the horde, he looked back. Nobody else came out.
Shuddering, Jan held the box tightly as he took a look at the situation. All over the place was chaos. The Horse Lords, knowing no fear, were overrunning his men’s positions. Numbers be damned, they would head straight to Antioch and run over all in their way. His men had no chance.
They have momentum and morale, and we have neither, he thought. The day was over. He was kidding himself. He himself had barely survived, the only one in his entire escort to return from that silly suicide mission. He had inspired no bravery in his men, only demoralizing them further, making them think that their general was going off to certain death.
“Withdraw! Withdraw to Edessa!” he panted, repeating the order over and over again until all parties obeyed it. “Withdraw to Edessa! We fight later!”
Some regiments remained, desperately holding off the victorious Horse Lords while the rest of the army escaped the debacle. Jan was not one of them, mindlessly directing his horse west while his head swirled with thoughts.
I came too late, I could have saved him…
…First Fredricus and now the King…
…Outremer is defeated, we can’t face this and survive…
…back to Franconia, surely, as I am no longer protected…
…I came too late, I came too late…
…
He continued in this state, unaware of his surroundings, until his horse, nearly shot from exhaustion, had deposited him at his residence. Jan shook himself to consciousness, paused, and opened the box that he had taken from Salier’s corpse.
Inside it was what appeared to be a crown, made from wood. It looked like a crown of thorns.
Jan collapsed off his horse and landed spread-eagled on the ground, his face to the sky. He slept in that position, on the street, for the next eighteen hours, all of his dreams about locusts.
Re: Battle reports thread - King of the Romans PBM
Originally Posted by TosaInu
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