Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 2

29th Day, Middle Wind Month, 1 CE

“Khorstaq? Hey! How big of a shit are you taking?”

Ludmila wasn’t sure how badly Khorstaq had to go, but he certainly wasn’t concerned about that sort of thing anymore.

The Nar shouting for his comrade approached the riverbank, following a foot trail leading down from the Draconic Kingdom’s central highway. He stopped at a stand of reeds, where he rose to his full height to look around. A Death Warrior lying under the water popped up and snatched him. They both disappeared back into the river with a splash. Somewhere under the surface, the Beastman was probably joining his comrade as a Zombie.

She looked up to where Raul was loitering just inside the low-hanging clouds.

『It’s nice and sneaky as far as Death-series Servitors are concerned, but, if it takes ten minutes to take down two Beastmen, we’re going to be here for six years.』

Maybe I should send them to apprentice under Gunnar for a season or two…

Ludmila wasn’t entirely sure if it resulted from her instruction or influence, but Raul and Olga both took actions that demonstrated a desire for controlled situations. Raul was more offensively-minded than his fellow apprentice, but he still took steps to ensure things stayed within a relatively tight range of expectations.

The problem was that doing things that way was slow. They also needed things to spin out of control because it was their enemy, not them, that was currently in control. Gunnar was very good at breaking apart orderly affairs – as he had proven so many times against her – and Ludmila was sure that he was the best choice for commanding the assault on Eastwatch.

That thought led her to another. There was a problem that wasn’t Ludmila or her apprentices’ fault: the general staff was getting greedy. Gunnar’s proposals were turned down because knowledge and experience had become the primary objective of the campaign in the Draconic Kingdom, while their foreign affairs objective had become a ‘secondary primary objective’ if that made any sense. Failure was unacceptable for either, yet the former was far more important to the Royal Army.

A high degree of control was favoured because it made it easier to isolate important bits of information. The fields surrounding Eastwatch had become their new and improved laboratory, and Ludmila was to create as many points of data as possible while at the same time fulfilling the Royal Court’s desire for a swift conclusion to the conflict. Doing that while also preserving the lives of the Draconic Kingdom’s remaining captive citizens caused expectations to cross the line into ‘unrealistic’.

Victory was ensured because Lord Tian was available if required, but the general staff wanted him to stay out of the battle unless his intervention was absolutely necessary. Hers was only one small opinion in deciding what was necessary, of course.

Well, there’s no point in moping about it.

At least one thing was made clear by their current deployment: not a single Beastman in Eastwatch would be going home. They were to be slaughtered for the sake of the ‘experience’ that the general staff desired.

She waited for a while longer to see if more Beastmen would come looking for their missing comrades. When nothing happened for five minutes, she flew up to join Raul.

“Come up with anything interesting?” She asked.

“Having the river to use as cover is nice, Captain,” Raul answered, “but it’s still hard to do anything in the dark. They can’t see us and we can’t see them, so it all feels kind of dumb.”

Ludmila could see everything that wasn’t physically concealed just fine thanks to her Truesight, but it was a problem that the Royal Army’s other Commanders would have to face in night operations.

“What you’re doing is basically raiding,” she told him, “so you should get into that mindset. You may strike wherever you can reach. Your goal isn’t to win back Eastwatch, but to bleed the Beastmen dry while constantly keeping them off balance. Eastwatch will fall into our hands after they fall apart.”

Aside from being able to stay underwater indefinitely, the Undead had several other advantages as raiders. Logistical concerns that made traditional raiding parties predictable – such as securing sources of water, food and safe places to rest – were nonexistent. Their limitless stamina allowed them to be ‘uneconomical’ with their energy whereas the living needed to expend theirs prudently.

“So I can be totally random and there’s no need to be sneaky?”

“Not unless you believe that there is a danger to your forces that can effectively respond to your moves. Also, being too conspicuous will inform your targets and any scouts that they deploy, though you may use that to your advantage as well.”

“Hmm…”

As odd as it seemed, Ludmila was actually better at raiding than nearly any other form of warfare. This was partially because she was a Ranger: a vocation that was peerless at skirmishing and operating outside of urban areas. Additionally, learning about how one’s neighbours conducted raids was part of the core of her education, making her intimately familiar with the topic and its nuances.

Raul, on the other hand, came from one of the inland territories. In terms of violent threats, the people there were more concerned with petty thugs who were often not that much superior to their victims.

“What about that?” He gestured at a cluster of campfires further east, “We’re not securing any villages, so I can just attack whoever’s standing outside, right?”

“Your proposal is not without its merits,” Ludmila said, “but are you sure you want to attack that one?”

The boy furrowed his brow as he frowned down at his selection.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“The purpose of this type of warfare is to exploit or create openings, keep one’s opponent off-balance, and cause logistical issues. By all appearances, Eastwatch is their headquarters – their centre of balance. The closer you strike to their centre of balance, the harder you’ll have to hit them to knock them off balance.”

“So the further away I hit them from their headquarters,” Raul said, “the faster and lighter I can make my strikes. Since they use runners and verbal communication to pass information around, their reactions become super clumsy.”

“That’s right,” Ludmila nodded. “They’re not conducting independent operations as warbands anymore – they’re trying to function as a cohesive army. They might look coordinated at a glance, but their instructions are being kept simple to not complicate things.”

“Stall the Undead…skirmish without taking losses…don’t leave any bodies behind? That includes the Draconic Kingdom’s citizens.”

“Something like that.”

Raul crossed his arms as he looked out over the left wing of his Skeletal Dragon. After a moment, he looked over his shoulder to his Elder Lich.

“Let’s go west,” he said, “close to the front.”

The Skeletal Dragon banked in a wide circle over the Oriculon and followed the river toward friendly lines. Roughly four kilometres away from Ludmila’s forces, Raul pointed to a village on the riverbank.

“What about that one?” He asked.

“How do you plan on attacking them?”

“Um, we don’t want them to run away so I guess we have to cut off their escape first. But there are Beastmen in the copses and windbreaks between the villages, so our squads will get spotted…”

“Why do you think that matters?” Ludmila asked.

“Because they’ll warn everyone nearby,” Raul answered.

“And what happens when that happens?”

Raul fell silent. His eyes rested on the collection of fires in the village. Beyond that, he wouldn’t be able to see much since it wasn’t safe to fly within his goggles’ Darkvision range of the ground.

“If we attack them,” he said, “some will die and some will run. If they give up their positions, what those positions used to be able to see becomes a hole in their information. After that, it becomes easier for us to do more.”

“Very good,” Ludmila smiled. “Sometimes, it’s just easier to create cracks in your opponent’s defences than it is to find them. This isn’t some puzzle that’s meant to be solved in the way that the Commander employing it intends to have it solved. It’s designed to be as unsolvable as possible in the first place. Once cracks start to appear, however, what was at first your problem becomes theirs.”

With the power of their infantry squads, any attempts at making cracks would probably result in holes instead. Now that they had ample time to question the Beastmen that had been captured, it seemed that Rol’en’gorek – what the Beastmen called their home – didn’t have any individuals significantly much stronger than the Lord that they captured in Corrin-on-the-Lake.

This made the general staff more confident in their threat assessments – and made Sigurd storm off in disappointment – but it spoke of several other things to Ludmila. First was that it was not the characteristic tribal culture that most Demihumans had in the region. It had evolved into a more organised, expansive entity: a tribal confederation.

The migration into the Draconic Kingdom wasn’t some disjointed effort driven by sheer inertia, but something that the entire confederation contributed to. A military force sufficient to make the venture a success was raised from all corners of Rol’en’gorek and placed under a unified chain of command. Substantial logistical support continued to flow from their home jungles, forging trade links throughout the eastern half of the Draconic Kingdom. Now that a major threat in the form of the Undead had appeared, they were provided with an overwhelming amount of additional military support.

Ludmila couldn’t help but wonder what things would be like if House Zahradnik and the other frontier houses had been offered the same support by Re-Estize. What was the difference? The dividing line appeared to be the fact that the ‘martial houses’ of the Beastmen remained prominent in their collective leadership, much like how the martial houses of the Empire evolved into the core of the Imperial Army. Re-Estize somehow ‘forgot’ that martial strength was required to protect the interests of a country…or was made to forget.

It all goes back to the Theocracy’s policies, huh…

She once vehemently disliked that conclusion, but there was too much evidence to support it. Re-Estize had fallen completely into the Theocracy’s cleverly-structured trap. They had become little more than a farm where the finest products were catalogued and earmarked for export.

The Empire was trying to break out of that trap, but the Imperial Army on its own wasn’t enough. Thus, the Theocracy could rest assured that its influence over it was secure. Roble was stuck between its wall and the sea, and the Demihumans of the Abelion Hills acted as a great whetstone that conveniently separated the wheat from the chaff.

The Draconic Kingdom faced the most extreme situation where a highly resilient, yet Theocracy-dependent population of Humans was being raised. She wondered how many promising Humans had been whisked away to the Theocracy instead of being allowed to help their country resist the Beastmen over the generations. Possibly the cruellest irony was that the forces sent to ‘assist’ the Draconic Kingdom likely contained former citizens of the Draconic Kingdom, and the Draconic Kingdom was paying the Theocracy for the strength that the Theocracy had stolen from them in the first place.

Once, Ludmila saw the Great Seeding after the Demon Gods as an inspiring venture to ensure Humanity’s survival in a hostile world. Now, it only seemed like an act undertaken for cruel and exploitative ends. Not only was each country robbed of its finest harvests, but the non-Humans of the region were constantly crushed under the Theocracy’s boot, never allowed to advance beyond a state of tribal subsistence.

That situation had changed, however. One by one, the Human nations of the region were being wrested from the Theocracy’s grip by the Sorcerous Kingdom. The Demihumans of the region were also finding themselves freed from violent oppression. Once they were finished liberating the Draconic Kingdom, all that was left was Re-Estize and the Theocracy’s carefully-laid plans would be all but dismantled.

One day, a great reckoning would come for the Theocracy, orchestrated by the god of justice Himself.

“Squads Twenty-One to Twenty-Four have assembled,” the Elder Lich riding behind Raul said. “They await your orders.”

Raul had gathered every infantry squad assigned to the Oriculon side of the enclosure. Two squads were in the canyon sinking ships while the remaining four were on the eastern side.

“Twenty-One will attack the village,” Raul said. “The others will move in to block the eastern side after the attack starts to catch the ones attempting to retreat. Don’t go after any Beastmen alerted east of their positions.”

The ‘sub-commander’ stared down at the darkness as he waited for his squads to take their starting positions. They were all in the water, so even Ludmila couldn’t figure out where they were.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She asked.

“Forgetting…? Oh. Summon some Wraiths to scout ahead…or will they get caught?”

“Have you been harassing them with Wraiths this entire time?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s no good,” Ludmila said. “You shouldn’t let Elder Liches idle with full mana pools in an active warzone. Not only will they help with battlefield awareness, but any damage or drains that they inflict take a toll on the Beastmen’s mana – the same mana that they’ve been using to place their magical obstacles.”

“…does this mean my attack isn’t going to work?” Raul asked.

“It’s going to hurt either way,” Ludmila answered. “Also, my Elder Liches have kept up Wraith harassment this entire time so a few more around this village probably won’t be seen as anything out of the ordinary.”

She waited as Raul issued orders to his forces. The Beastmen had adapted well to sets of Wraiths appearing to attack them now and then. Once, they slept inside buildings that the spectral Undead could slip into and kill without being noticed. Now, they rested outside under the watchful eye of their fellows.

A series of growls, roars, barks and yelps issued from the village and its surroundings as Raul’s scouts swept over the target area.

“This one has noted an anomaly,” Raul’s adjutant said. “The village’s buildings appear to be vacated.”

“Then where did the Humans go?” Raul frowned.

“Unknown.”

Ludmila scanned the scenery below, but she didn’t spot any Humans collected for safekeeping.

“Did any of the other scouting parties sent out come across any citizens?” Ludmila asked.

Several minutes passed before the Elder Lich provided an answer.

“They appear to be gathered closer to Eastwatch, but reconnaissance is incomplete due to interception.”

“That means there aren’t any Humans on the outskirts, right?” Raul said.

“None have been detected thus far.”

『Olga, have your Wraiths check the buildings along the front. Some of the Elder Liches are reporting that the Draconic Kingdom’s citizens have been relocated. Squads Fifteen, Sixteen and Seventeen, prepare to advance. Squad Sixteen will storm the village ahead of you. Raul, make sure your interdiction forces aren’t sinking ships loaded with Humans.』

“Right,” Raul nodded. “Uh, what do we do if we do find ships full of Humans, Captain?”

“Hmm…start breaking those paddlewheels of theirs instead of sinking the ships. Their rudders, too. They’ll lose control and the current will send them back this way. We have plenty of free Elder Lich controllers in reserve – they can use the dominated Undead to sink the ships that we don’t want getting past us. Get rid of the Beastmen operating any vessels loaded with Humans and mark those ships to be guided to Corrin-on-the-Lake.”

“Captain, sub-commander Olga is reporting similar findings on the northern front,” Saiko told her.

“It’s nice that they’ve become so serious about trying to starve us of corpses,” Ludmila smirked.

“Send our squads in,” Raul ordered. “Tell them they don’t have to worry about Human casualties here.”

“What about property damage?” The Elder Lich asked.

Raul sent a look in Ludmila’s direction.

“Don’t raze any villages to the ground,” she answered. “We might be able to reuse them later. Minor damage is acceptable.”

Far below, the infantry squads started surfacing from the river. The one approaching the village was spotted immediately. Low roars filled the air: an alarm that seemed to carry for kilometres around them. Thousands of Beastmen scrambled to respond to the attack.

A crackling blue arc of electricity exploded out of the darkness, reflected against the water on its way to punch through dozens of Beastmen who had taken up positions on the village pier. The ambushing Elder Lich ducked behind the shield of a nearby Death Knight, and bullets clanked off of the dark metal before both Undead submerged themselves.

『Squads Fifteen, Sixteen and Seventeen, commence your assault.』

After issuing her orders, she examined the aftermath of the Lightning ambush.

“About half,” Ludmila murmured. “Was that maximised?”

“Yes, Captain,” Raul’s adjutant replied. “It appears that the average Beastman warrior will not survive the spell if they do not dodge it.”

“I doubt they’ll line up so nicely for long,” Ludmila said, “but that may not matter with so many running around.”

The Death Knight resurfaced. It was immediately pelted by a storm of bullets. A bead of flame streaked in from the side, engulfing dozens of hunters attacking from the shore in a Fireball. The Elder Lich hadn’t appeared with the Death Knight, instead resurfacing to hit the distracted Beastmen from a different angle. It submerged again as soon as it cast its spell, leaving the Beastmen to run around in flames and confusion.

Ludmila’s lip twitched.

“Who thought that one up?” She asked.

“Um, we were trying to figure out how to get Elder Liches in range to cast spells without being smashed by bullets,” Raul said. “When we practised this, none of our ‘defenders’ could ever figure out which way they would be attacked from, so we figured the Beastmen wouldn’t be able to, either. Especially in the dark.”

“It should work for a while,” she nodded, “so long as there aren’t too many eyes on the water. An especially strong hunter would probably be able to react to retaliate to the real attack, as well. Once they learn about this trick, having more Death Knights pop up – one hiding the Elder Lich – would probably make this tactic very difficult to deal with.”

Another Lightning spell ripped across the riverbank before the advancing Death Knights stormed onto the shore with their Squire Zombies. They spread out to enter the village, cutting down Beastman warriors as they went. The Squire Zombies that were destroyed were quickly replaced, but they couldn’t seem to accumulate any regular Zombies.

The infantry squad wasn’t even halfway through the village before calls for retreat reached Ludmila’s ears. As expected, they retreated to ‘safety’, which happened to be straight into the three squads Raul positioned east of the village. She wasn’t sure if the Beastmen nearby warned the others of their presence, but the retreating forces certainly hadn’t noticed in the chaos of the assault.

“You might be able to keep some Zombies this time,” Ludmila said as she watched the bodies pile up. “But even the Squire Zombies don’t seem very survivable.”

“Captain,” Saiko informed her, “Squads Fifteen, Sixteen and Seventeen have completed their mission.”

“Should I just send them into the river, Captain?” Raul asked.

“Just the ones with a respectable number of Zombies,” Ludmila answered. “We can try again with the others. You should complete the encirclement, by the way.”

“Encirclement…? Oh. Squads Twenty-Two to Twenty-Four, head north to complete the cordon with the Captain’s forces.”

『Squads Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty and Twenty-One, clean up this pocket.』

“Raul,” Ludmila said, “go ahead and oversee the cleanup. I’ll stay here at the new perimeter.”

“A-are you sure? They’re mostly your squads…”

“I can spot Beastmen trying to slip by,” she told him. “You can’t. That will always be the case until we get a proper force of scouts to support our main battle line.”

Raul and his adjutant saluted before flying west. Ludmila repositioned herself to get a better view of the entire cordon.

“About ten square kilometres and twenty thousand Beastmen,” she said. “Not a bad start.”

As the encirclement shrunk, the gaps between each squad would get tighter, as well. She was still wary of Beastmen slipping through to attack them from the rear or just run amok in their reserves, so the faster it happened, the better.

“Will our objectives be achieved by repeating these manoeuvres, Captain?” Saiko asked.

“I doubt that the Beastman leadership will just sit there and let us do it over and over again,” Ludmila answered. “It will probably only be this easy tonight.”

“In that case, will you be attempting to gain as much ground as possible?”

“Ideally. I’d like to cut the encircled area by half so the gaps in our lines aren’t so huge. It probably won’t happen, though.”

A mix of Beastman noises drifted in from the west as Raul started his cleanup operation. She wondered how far the sound carried. A part of her hoped it would reach Eastwatch to unsettle the Beastman defenders, but it would also prematurely inform them of what was going on. More rain would probably fix that.

“Do you believe that they will conduct a counteroffensive?”

“It’s entirely possible,” Ludmila replied. “The fact of the matter is that we haven’t seen enough of this defensive style of theirs to say for certain. What we do know is that these Beastmen have traits that naturally favour offence so it seems like a waste for them to not take advantage of it.”

Of course, that might also mean that they defended aggressively, but that sort of Commander was rare. At least amongst Humans. She was the only one that she could think of.

A swarm of dots came running up the highway. Ludmila pulled a longbow out of the Infinite Haversack on her right hip.

『Beastmen approaching by way of the main highway. They’ll be coming up the rural roads as well. Watch out for hunters sneaking through the fields.』

“Help coordinate the forces at the highway,” she told Saiko. “I’m going to patrol our lines.”

Ludmila shed altitude, dropping to fifty metres over the fields. She nocked a glass arrow to her bowstring as she patrolled for Beastman hunters. It wasn’t long until she started spotting them.

『One pair heading straight east in Squad Twenty-Four’s direction. North side of the road.』

They didn’t seem to notice her as she crossed overhead, but that was to be expected. She was flying at around the limit of Ilyshn’ish’s detection, and Ludmila couldn’t imagine any Beastman present having keener senses than the Frost Dragon.

After reporting two dozen more sets of hunters, her flight slowed.

『Strong Ocelo hunter approaching Squad Seventeen through the vineyard northeast of the road. Approximately Difficulty Rating Eighty.』

Would they be able to detect it? With the vineyard as cover, probably not. She flew after it from behind, but it was faster on the ground than she was in the air. Thankfully, it slowed down, crouching low to improve its concealment as two Death Knights entered the vineyard, walking a few rows to either side. On the road that they came from, a Death Priest watched for signs of their target.

『Prepare a Hold Species spell. It’s about to cross the road.』

The two Death Knights doubled back. The Ocelo hunter paused at the edge of the vineyard, eyeing the Death Priest as if pondering if it could sneak by. Ludmila’s arrow shattered against its back and it jumped in fright, its fur standing on end.

A second later, the Alchemist’s Fire soaked into its fur ignited. A yowling screech filled the air and it twisted about in a panic.

“「Hold Species」.”

The spell froze the Ocelo in place. The two Death Knights came out to join the Death Priest, quietly watching the paralysed Beastman burn. The poor thing couldn’t even scream. An appetising aroma filled the air, and the Death Priest looked at Ludmila, sticking up its thumb in approval.

『I didn’t mean for it to turn out that way. Put it out of its misery already.』

A horrifically burnt Squire Zombie rose a minute later. Ludmila resumed her patrol, silently shaking her head. She always seemed to do the most atrocious things without actively thinking about them.

Three hours later, the Beastmen in the pocket stopped trickling into the squads awaiting them. She rejoined Raul above the river. Sweat covered the boy’s brow and his breathing was slightly laboured.

“Are you alright?” Ludmila asked.

“There was just a lot to do,” Raul answered. “I thought it’d be like Corrin-on-the-Lake, but it wasn’t. Beastmen were running everywhere and everything wanted my attention now. I couldn’t make sense of all the battles that were going on at once. Some of the squads got completely split up in the fighting. It was…it was…”

“Chaos?”

Raul nodded.

“I believe that was the point,” Ludmila said. “You are creating chaos to break apart order and transforming that chaos into a new order. Having a good idea of what that new order will look like will help you guide your troops more effectively, and those troops do rely on your guidance. Soldiers in the thick of fighting focus on achieving specific tactical objectives using whatever means are available to them. The general staff concerns itself with strategy overall. As a Commander in the field, your main task is to facilitate both sides.”

“I never read about any of this,” Raul said.

“Because the histories primarily concern themselves with the end result,” Ludmila replied. “I daresay that the result is all that matters to most because they believe that it is the only thing that affects their lives. If it doesn’t affect their lives at all, they’re not likely to care beyond what entertainment value it offers.

“That aside, the details of past conflicts tend to only be known by those directly involved because they are usually kept a secret by the belligerents. Telling others exactly how one fights isn’t exactly wise. Specific details will only be made known by a country if they can be used as a political tool. At some point, I should take you two to Arwintar to take a look at the Imperial Military Academy’s archives. You’ll see how different things can be from the ‘histories’.”

They would have to build up their own archives, as well. The limits of using publicly-accessible knowledge for education were all too easily reached.

In the fields and vineyards along the riverbank, Raul’s forces gathered, awaiting further orders. Ludmila cast her gaze over the battlefield, to the northeastern corner of their encirclement.

“We have one more chance to do this before dawn,” she said. “Let’s get more practice in while we can.”

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