Chapter 17 - Part 12

The other Wardens of the Wood called him ‘the General,’ but he had never held a rank higher than major. He had been the youngest major in the Aundairian army when he had joined the nascent rebellion in the Reaches, and had brought vital intelligence with him. Last he had heard, the price on his gray-haired head was over two thousand pieces of gold. So far his razorclaw shifter bodyguards had killed three Thuranni assassins in the past year alone.

He stepped out on the battlefield, ignoring the stench of death in his nostrils. The Aundairians had held onto this beachhead on the west side of the Wynarn River for almost a month. Traffic between Riverweep and Redleaf had come to a dead stop, threatening the Reacher forces to the north with a choke on vital supplies. The Reachers had finally retaken their land, but at great cost.

“It’s a meatgrinder, General,” said his gnome attendant, riding up on a pony. “Every druid on the battlefield is dead.”

“Every one?” the General asked, his stomach clenching. There had been over fifty nature priests in the battle, and all of them had been powerful. The earth itself and the birds and beasts on it had fought.

“Yes,” the gnome said, reading from a report on which the ink had not yet dried. “We lost eight hundred and thirty-two men, sixty trained horses, twenty-three draft horses, sixteen trained attack bears, and the griffon. Fifty-six druids died in all, plus all their animal companions. Some twenty Brelish light infantry that were assisting us died as well, including that cleric of Dol Dorn. Aundair lost approximately a thousand men, numbers are not fixed yet, but we captured many horses and wagons. Among the Aundair dead were seventeen wizards –”

“Including that Ashbound leader, the very powerful one?”

The gnome blinked. “Yes, he came back in hawk form this morning from that mission that Oalian sent him on. He was tired and did not have his full compliment of spells, but insisted on –”

“We needed him,” the General said. “What of the siege engines?”

“We captured five ballistae, and destroyed six,” the gnome said promptly.

“And the catapults?”

“Catapults?” the gnome asked.

“Yes, the catapults!” the General demanded.

“No catapults were used by the Aundairians in the battle, my General,” interjected one of the shifter bodyguards.

“They had them,” the General said, staring between the trees, over the many bodies still on the ground, past the river.

On the other side of the river he saw the twinkle of sun off of glass, and he heard a twanging sound carry across the water.

“Scatter!” he yelled.

It did everyone little good. The Aundairians had left buried magical markers on the battlefield even as they retreated, and were firing in a perfect grid pattern. Barrels of acid came first, searing those working and looting, followed by heavy stones, each over forty pounds, and then followed by lit barrels of lamp oil. The General survived the first wave, but a heavy catapult stone crushed his neck in the second wave. The third wave destroyed his body in fire, and killed the gnome and the shifters as well.