Rise of the Horde

Chapter 725 - 724

Haguk struck at midnight.

Not the combined force’s main body. The supply convoy that was moving south from the provincial depot under escort of six hundred cavalry and two hundred infantry, the convoy that carried the replacement arrow supply that the Tohr’terra had consumed at the ford and that the combined force’s archers needed before they could participate in the next engagement.

Four hundred and sixty warg riders, moving through the darkness at the pace that wargs sustained over distance, the loping run that covered ground faster than a horse’s trot and quieter than a horse’s canter, the animals’ padded feet producing none of the hoofbeat percussion that gave cavalry away at night.

The convoy’s cavalry escort rode in the screening formation that night march doctrine prescribed, riders at fifty-pace intervals along the convoy’s flanks, the interval wide enough to cover the approach routes and narrow enough that each rider could see the rider adjacent in the moonlight.

The wargs came through the intervals.

Not around them. Through them. The spaces between riders that were fifty paces wide were fifty paces of darkness that wargs crossed in the three seconds that the animals’ sprint speed covered fifty paces in, and the riders at the intervals’ edges did not see the wargs pass because the wargs were lower to the ground than horses and moved in the crouched run that their hunting instinct produced when prey was nearby.

The first rider to realize the wargs were inside the escort was the rider whose horse screamed.

The sound was not the sound of a horse being struck by a weapon. It was the sound of a horse being seized by a predator, the specific scream that horses produced when the thing their ancestors had been bred to outrun was suddenly beside them and had its teeth in their flank. The horse reared, throwing its rider, and the warg that had bitten it pulled it down by the rein with the casual strength that a predator used to bring prey to the ground where it could be managed.

"DUUM!" Haguk’s voice, quiet and precise, carried across the warg line in the specific tone that the Warghen chieftain used for everything. "No retreat. Take the convoy."

The wargs hit the escort from inside the formation, the riders emerging from the darkness between the screening intervals with the burst speed that put them among the escort cavalry before the escort cavalry understood what was happening. Warg jaws found horse legs. Rider swords found escort necks. The engagement became the close, confused, night combat that favored the side whose mounts could see in darkness and whose riders were comfortable fighting in conditions where visual orientation was limited.

A warg rider named Kelth drove his mount into an escort cavalryman from the left side, the warg’s shoulder striking the horse’s barrel and pushing the horse sideways off balance. The cavalryman’s lance, which had been lowering for a thrust, caught nothing as the horse stumbled, and Kelth’s sword found the cavalryman’s thigh in the gap between the saddle’s cantle and the cavalryman’s cuisses. The sword went in four inches and Kelth pulled it free as the warg carried him past, the momentum of the pass too fast for a second strike but the first strike sufficient because the femoral artery was four inches inside the thigh and the sword had found it.

The cavalryman slid from his saddle thirty seconds later. He did not know why his leg was warm and wet and why the warmth was spreading and why the wetness was more than the night’s dew could account for. He was dead before he reached the ground.

Beside Kelth, a second warg rider named Thursk drove into an escort sergeant whose horse was better trained than the others and whose horse held its ground when the warg approached. The horse held because the horse had been trained to hold. The horse stopped holding when the warg lunged and its jaws closed on the horse’s bridle, the leather snapping in the warg’s teeth, the bit pulling free with a force that wrenched the horse’s head sideways. The horse screamed and reared, the sergeant’s weight shifting as the saddle’s geometry changed beneath him, and Thursk’s sword found the sergeant’s neck in the gap between the helmet’s rim and the gorget’s top edge, the blade entering at the angle that the gap’s width permitted and severing the artery that the gap’s existence exposed.

The escort cavalry’s line dissolved. The darkness that was supposed to protect the convoy was protecting the wargs instead, the animals’ night-adapted eyes giving their riders the visual advantage that the escort cavalry’s horses could not provide. Riders who tried to form defensive groupings found the wargs already inside the groupings, the animals’ speed having carried them through the intervals before the groupings could close.

* * * * *

The convoy’s infantry escort formed a defensive square around the wagons. The square was the correct response. The square was what training prescribed. The square held against the first warg pass, the infantry’s spears creating the perimeter that the warg riders could not penetrate without accepting the spear points’ reach.

Haguk did not try to penetrate the square. He circled it. Four hundred and sixty warg riders orbiting the infantry square in the darkness, the sound of the wargs’ movement creating the specific psychological effect that circling predators produced in prey that could hear the circling but could not see clearly what was circling.

The infantry’s spears pointed outward. The infantry’s eyes strained in the darkness. The infantry’s hearts beat at the accelerated rate that proximity to unseen predators produced in the bodies of men whose training had not included the specific preparation for being circled by large carnivores in the dark.

One soldier broke. He ran. The warg that caught him did so in three strides, the animal’s jaws closing on his pack and dragging him backward into the darkness where his screaming lasted four seconds.

The square held after the screaming stopped. But the holding was different now. The holding was the holding of men who had heard what happened to the man who did not hold, and the holding’s quality had changed from professional discipline to the specific rigidity that fear produced when fear was the holding’s primary motivation.

Haguk waited. The wargs circled. The darkness continued.

At the third hour, the infantry’s commander made the decision that professional judgment required: he abandoned the wagons and marched his soldiers north, back toward the provincial depot, the square formation moving at the best pace the darkness allowed. He left the convoy’s twenty wagons and their contents on the road.

Haguk’s riders opened the wagons at dawn. Twelve thousand arrows. Eight hundred crossbow bolts. The arrow supply that the combined force’s archers needed to participate in the campaign’s next engagement.

The arrows burned. The fire was visible from the combined force’s camp.

"Morg," Haguk said, watching the fire from the ridgeline where his riders had assembled after the night’s work. The single word carried the specific satisfaction of a commander whose operation had achieved its objective without a single warg rider killed.

"Grombash krul," a rider beside him said. The strong have earned this.

"Zug," Haguk said. Acknowledged. The Warghen chieftain did not elaborate. Haguk never elaborated. The results elaborated for him.