The enemy

The Arien Immortals (Amrita, Amrit or Amata in Lavos the Arien tongue) also known as simply the Immortals was the name given to an elite unit of 10,000 soldiers in the army of the Arien kingdom. This force consisted mainly of pureblooded Ariens, but also included the inferior Crothains and Lunaodittes.

Historians describe the 'Immortals' as being specialised calvary, segmented into corps of a hundred men led by a 'Blooded' Arien noble; it provided the professional corps of the Arien armies and was kept constantly at a strength of exactly 10,000 men. It is stated that the unit's name stemmed from the custom that every killed, seriously wounded, or sick member was immediately replaced with a new one, maintaining the corps as a cohesive entity with a constant strength.

Their armament as follows: dual forty-one-inch long dragon steel sabres, a large steel dagger fastened at the waist, slings and a bow and arrow. They wore flowing brightly coloured coats over wrought iron cuirasses and rode the Varkise breed (Lavos for Lighting) renowned for their speed, endurance and agility.

The coats of the common soldiery were flashy but not too elaborate; to differentiate commanding ranks, the 'blooded' nobles' wore coats embroidered with gold threads at the seams.

A cloth or felt cap that could be pulled over the face to keep out wind and dust in the arid Arien plains was also worn. They adorned themselves with hoop earrings and gold jewellery, though these garments and accessories were mostly worn only for ceremonial occasions.

The obvious extravagance the Immortals exhibit stems from age-old Arien customs, but despite this, they possess enviable ferocity compared to their Udorian counterparts, sometimes even exhibiting suicidal traits- committing acts of great valour even at the expense of their very lives.

...

Excerpt from a journal on the Arien immortals- Source unknown.

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Willow Town,

Hertalese.

.....

Two hours later.

Timothy stood beside an artillery squad as held his rapier in his sweaty palms and gazed apprehensively at the partially fortified gateway.

They have been waiting here for the past few hours, but haven't seen even the shadow of the enemy. The entire town was shrouded in eerie silence as the tension in the hearts of the soldiers and townsfolk alike reached its peak.

Willow town's bastioned walls, just like many others of this era were low structures, about five meters tall, constructed of stone bricks lined with earth ramparts that would absorb and disperse the energy of cannon fire. Walls exposed to direct cannon fire were very vulnerable, so the walls were sunk into ditches fronted by earth slopes to improve protection.

On both sides of the wall, there was a strip of clear ground immediately adjacent to the wall.

Stripped of bushes and building, the external clearing gave defenders a clear view of what was happening outside and an unobstructed field of shot, while the internal clearing gave ready access to the rear of the curtain wall to facilitate the movement of the garrison to a point of need.

The wall was topped with parapets that offered protection to defenders, allowing defenders to throw stones, boiling water, and so forth, upon assailants below. Soldiers were positioned atop the wall and armed with any variety of weapons, ranging from bows to crossbows to simple rocks.

The entrance was previously protected by a timber gate that would have been sufficient to protect the town under normal conditions, but under the sustained assault of the enemy's field cannons, the supposedly sturdy protective barrier came tumbling down like a loose pile of twigs.

While the gate which was damaged during the last attack was only partially repaired, wooden barricades and metal caltrops were scattered across the floor to impede infantry charge, while six four-pounders were positioned facing the gateway in order to deal with enemy heavy cavalry that might think of barging through.

Willow town wasn't in any way prepared for a sustained conflict of this scale, because to all the town's inhabitants the sudden assault of Aries on their homeland was nothing short of a surprise. After such a prolonged period of peace nobody, not even Duke Farger was prepared for a conflict of this scale.

In Udoris, after the Great War a century ago real conflict between kingdoms was very scarce and never escalated beyond a few scuffles at the border regions. It was not that the Royal families of the seven kingdoms didn't have any hostilities against each other or that they didn't covet each other's lands which led to a peaceful period since the Great War.

Rather, the main reason there was such a prolonged peaceful period was that major wars required that the armies got larger than they currently were, but that tends to mean logistical support for them would tend to be inadequate. This meant that armies tended to devastate civilian areas in an effort to feed themselves, causing famines and population displacement in all the participating kingdoms.

Usually, kingdoms in Udoris tend to maintain a reserve force of around ten thousand to twenty thousand men that would be trained, sheltered, and managed by the kingdom's nobility, with the royal families burdened with the task of personally managing a third of that figure in order to maintain the status quo as the rulers of the kingdom.

Although the kingdoms could retain a force many times larger than that, the astronomical amount of resources and the logistical support needed to maintain a reserve force that size could easily bankrupt a kingdom if maintained for an extended period of time.

So rather than training such an absurd number of troops, the kingdoms stick to managing a fraction of that figure as it's reserve force, and in times of major conflict it would conscript untrained members of the civilian group to buffer up its military force.

While civilians might not have the expertise of a well-trained knight or the discipline of a veteran soldier, no veteran could possibly survive the assault of a swarm of pike-wielding commoners on a chaotic battlefield.

Not even the best knights would attempt such a thing, because all that is needed is for one spear-wielding peasant to get a lucky strike in a gap in a knight's armour to kill even the best fighters.

But while the peasants and commoners could be used to buffer up a kingdom's military force, they could never truly replace the trained soldiers that serve as the core of all armies and could be nothing more than just cheap cannon fodder.

So despite the fact that a kingdom's force usually averaged at around fifteen thousand during peacetime, in times of war that number could swell all the way up to around a hundred thousand when untrained commoners and hired mercenaries are conscripted to join in the kingdom military force.

Another reason for the lack of major conflicts was the indecisiveness of conflicts of this era. Armies in this era are slow-moving and field battles were relatively rare as armies could manoeuvre for months, with no direct contact for conflict.

In addition, battles were often made irrelevant by bastioned fortifications like the great wall Maria that surrounds Algrim. To control an area, armies had to take control of fortified towns, regardless of whether they defeated their enemies' field armies.

As a result, by far the most common battles of the era were sieges, hugely time-consuming, and expensive affairs. Storming a fortified city could result in massive casualties, so while there might always be a victor at the end of every war both garrisons and besiegers often suffered heavily at the end of each conflict, a hard learnt lesson from the previous war.

The indecisive nature of conflict meant wars were usually long and endemic. Conflicts could stretch on for decades and the results were usually particularly scarring for all parties involved.

It was because of all these reasons that there hadn't been any real conflict. It was also why King Tukhus didn't go by the usual method of conscripting the commonfolk for the invasion but instead sent only his reserve army in a blitzkrieg style assault that Algrim didn't anticipate.

Although Hertalese had previously used such an assault during the events of the Great Rebellion, Leonard didn't believe that Tukhus would use that old trick again especially since the results were beyond depressing for Hertaleans.

. . . . .

Aries's invasion of Hertalese has been going on for a few weeks now and has finally started to simmer to a stop. Unlike the invasion of Algrim, Aries's goal wasn't to conquer Hertalese but instead loot as much of its resources and leave before Hertalese could properly react.

This was the only reason Willow town and a few others like itself could survive this long despite their small sizes. Unlike the way, Hertalese pierced straight towards Greystones concentrating its forces in one direction, obliterating everything in its path. Aries and the blacksails instead fanned out towards points of interest that enough assets to make the invasion profitable.

With the Arien troops spread out so thin across Hertalese, there was a limit to the number of soldiers that could be deployed to any particular region at a certain time.

Willow town has particularly negligible resources (grain farms, piggeries, and a few other agriculture assets) a fact which in turn meant that the size of the military force allocated to raid it would also be a particularly negligible force that was just slightly enough to capture it.

Assuming enough troops were sent to conquer the town, regardless of Duke Farger's machinations the town would have been long lost. But by some odd twist of fate, the fact that willow town wasn't particularly wealthy meant that the invaders didn't place too much emphasis on capturing when they first arrived, only sending what they assumed should just be enough to easily conquer such a tiny town.

But despite the fact that the enemy hadn't been treating them seriously all this time, Willow town was already in such a dire state with its walls showing extensive signs of damage due to extensive enemy cannon barrages, the gate hanging precariously on its hinges, and the loss of about four-fifths of its soldiers.

Although the Duke tried to downplay the levity of the situation, any soldier still possessing a healthy amount of brain cells could clearly see that their chances of surviving till reinforcements arrive was still quite uncertain.

Timothy sat quietly beside the artillery squad watching his fellow colleagues fidgeting as they constantly cast their depressed gazes at the gates, waiting for the enemy to arrive. He could faintly feel the oppressive aura in the air as everyone worriedly waited for what could very well be their last battle.

*HONK!*

Just when the thought that the enemy probably no longer had any interest in Willow town and had long fled started creeping in the minds of the soldiers a loud horn blared from the watchtower.

Timothy glanced beyond the broken gate and saw faintly among the tree past the clearing, enemy formations setting up for battle. From heavy cavalry to light infantry units, there were even small batteries of field cannons that were being pulled into position by workhorse, slowly creeping into the firing range of the town's walls to begin their bombardments.

Although the troops that were sent this time around was much less than the one previously sent before, numbering at just over two hundred men, given the state of Willow town's walls and the condition of the hundred-odd men that were burdened with the task of defending, the sight of two hundred fresh, well-rested assailants was enough to further diminish their already weakened morale

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Glossary

Parapet (or breastwork): is a wall of stone, wood, or earth on the outer edge of a defensive wall or trench, which shelters the defenders In medieval castles

Caltrops are area denial weapons made up of two or more sharp nails or spines arranged in such a manner that one of them always points upward from a stable base (for example, a tetrahedron).

Bastioned walls: are defensive polygonal walls with bastions at their corners. These outcroppings eliminated protected blind spots, called "dead zones", and allowed fire along the curtain from positions protected from direct fire.