Refuge: Book 3: The Legions Read online

  Telepathy was a wonderful tool. Kurt found his great strength and acuity with the ability a godsend. Most users could immediately tell if a sender was who the sender said he was. And they could send messages that could not be intercepted by an enemy, unlike radio. At least there was no evidence that the messages could be intercepted. They had picked up none of the enemy’s transmissions, though they knew that the foe used it.

  Behind the forward cohorts the archer rectangles spread out, each man knowing where he needed to go to open up the rectangular formation. Those near the center only had to take a step. Those further out ran for forty steps or so, while the shield bearers lowered their shields and squatted down. At a command the bowmen notched an arrow and pulled back, adjusting their arcs so that the arrows would fall on the enemy archers. At the next shouted command six thousand archers in six battalions loosed as one. Commands were barked, one after the other, in a rhythm that all of the swift Conyatoya archers could easily keep up with. Four flights of arrows were in the air before the first flight struck. It came down on the enemy archers like a hail storm, striking at random.

  The first wave of six thousand arrows must have hit almost a thousand enemy. Some received strikes to limbs or other non-vital but painful areas. Some took one arrow, some up to a half dozen. Half a thousand fell to the ground, while another half thousand howled in pain or clapped hands to wounds. No matter, even the wounded were taken from the fight. Some of those wounded became slain as the second flight came down, then the third. By the fourth the survivors were concentrating on arcing their own arrows down on the heads of the Legionary archers. But after the fourth flight those men had moved back into their protective formations, and were again warded by overhead shielding.

  The enemy archers continued to concentrate on those who had galled them, no matter the effect. This was the moment the Commanding General had been waiting for and the command came through the telepathic link.

  [Advance on the enemy.]

  Kurt sent back an affirmative response, then relayed the command to the cohorts. Horns sounded and standards, raised through the shield cover, moved up and down. The drums beat and the cohorts stepped off with a reduced step, maintaining the formation, moving the whole assemblage toward the enemy. From the shouting and gesturing that enemy saw them coming, and sheets of arrows began to impact the shield wall. Most bounced off. Some penetrated and stuck to shields. Some made it through the small openings in the mass of shields, or went below them.

  The men wore heavy greaves modeled after baseball catcher’s leg guards, including coverings on the tops of their boots. They wore Lorica banded torso armor with shoulder pads much like those worn by American football players, and rounded helms with retractable visors. Most of the arrows that made it through or under the wall of shields bounced off this armor. There were a few curses as vulnerable areas of arms were hit, and one gurgling scream as an unlucky shot hit a throat.

  Kurt borrowed the view from a few of the men at the front, looking at the mass of archers firing at his cohort. He sent a quick command and waited. Soon a swarm of arrows plunged down among the enemy, followed by several more. The enemy was confused and about to break. He could feel it. They had been stung badly and had not been able to strike back. The human line was within fifty meters and closing the distance. Some of the enemy archers had begun to arc their arrows high, trying to get back at the Legionary archers, while others continued to fire into the infantry wall, to no avail. At thirty meters Kurt decided it was time. [Now,] he transmitted, and all hell broke loose.

  * * *

  Martin Kruger had been waiting for this moment ever since he had discovered the powers he possessed on this world. On Earth he had been nothing but a psychotic, a severely disturbed Schizophrenic who couldn’t even process a coherent thought through the voices in his head. Here, that poorly wired brain was instead the organ of a gifted natural mage. And the voices were gone, replaced by a connection to the powers of nature. Martin was an Earthmage, able to pull the energies of the planet into his body and manipulate it to his will. He had practiced and trained for months to control those forces. Then he had gone through many more months of training to work with the Legions. That training had brought pride in himself, that he could aid his people instead of being a burden to their social systems. It had brought with it a desire to do something to aid in their survival. And now the time had come.

  Martin left his position by the right center rear cohort and walked forward. He glanced over to see the other mages follow suit. There were four other human natural mages assigned to the legion, and maybe a dozen from among the Conastaya and hires from other peoples. Not the numbers that the enemy had, but it was hoped that the raw power of the formerly mentally ill Earthers would tip the balance.

  Martin visualized what he wanted to do as he walked. A human soldier walked with him, using his great shield to form a protective barrier against arrows. A few came Martin’s way, and were intercepted by the alert soldier. But so far they didn’t seem to have attracted the attention they deserved. If things worked out this day as they had planned, that would change in the near future.

  Martin didn’t know a lot of spells. In fact, he only had good control of a half dozen effects. It was what he could do with those effects that made the difference. Now he was pulling energy from the ground into his body. More energy than most archmages could imagine in their wildest dreams. His body was growing hot, his robes were starting to smolder. He knew the energy would not harm him physically, but it might cause some other damage. Martin looked over at the soldier and waved him away. The soldier’s face was dripping with sweat, and the Mage knew it was not just from nervousness or the day’s heat. The man gave him a quick nod and moved away, keeping his shield between himself and the foe.

  Arrows started coming at him in swarms. The enemy must have realized what he was, and what threat he represented. Martin raised both hands in the air, palms toward the front, and said his concentration word.

  “Flare,” he said in German, and the incoming arrows all flared with fire as they got within twenty meters of the Mage. In less than two meters the arrows had turned to rods of white ash tipped with hot metal. They fell to the grass ten meters to his front, the ashed shafts disintegrating into motes, the drops of metal starting small fires here and there. The arrows kept coming, and they kept falling to the ground. He looked to the right, where Katherine Heidle was plying electricity. She was shocking the incoming shafts, warping and cracking them, and sending broken arrows to the ground. She looked over and flashed him a smile, then turned back to her work, the smile widening on her face.

  The swish of outgoing shafts came from overhead. Martin looked up for a moment, watching the arrows go over in mass, then another mass, as the Legionary archers fired at the enemy. Then came the call, both by horn and telepathically, and the German looked forward and waved his hands. Energy flowed through him into the big ball of fire that formed in the air to his front. Another gesture and it was away, between the two battalions to either side. It roared at it flew, throwing off flares and flames as it went. Straight into the mass of archers. As soon as it touched the first bowmen it exploded outward, a shattering concussion wave of flame that ignited everything within thirty meters of the ball. Ellalla and Grogatha ran as torches that flailed their limbs, colliding with others and setting them aflame, finally falling to the ground, twitching for a moment before going still.

  Martin threw another fireball, glancing over as Katherine pulled another lightning bolt from the sky to land among an as yet untouched group of enemy archers. Flesh flowed and hair melted as the enemy archers jerked and twitched on the way to the ground.

  Martin threw his third fireball, looping it into another part of the enemy mass, then brought his hands up to defensive position as he waited for the next order. Three had been the plan, so three it was. He looked over at his friend Lydia, also a firemage, and saw that she had also gone into the defensive. The horns sounded again and the formations to either side fell apart, infantry clutching spears and running full out at the panicking enemy. Some of the enemy continued to fire arrows at the humans, most of which fell from the shields or armor of the Legionaires.

  * * *

  Garios na Gonron, High War Priest of the Kingdom Under the Mountain, scanned the battlefield with the glasses the humans had gifted him with. He had not been sure about the armor the humans had ordered from his people, so different than any they had produced before. Now he saw the utility of it as their foot soldiers went into the attack.

  Each Legionary wore a torso covering of segmented armor the humans called Lorica, which gave the troopers unprecedented range of motion. On their shoulders they wore something called shoulder pads, reminiscent of the protection athletes wore in a sport the Americans called football, though the Germans disagreed with them on the use of that term. It provided stout protection to both shoulders and upper chest and back. More armor was strapped to the deltoids to protect the upper arms, and plate was also attached to their outer forearms. Their lower torso and upper legs were protected by leather straps fronted by thin metal plates, while their lower legs were protected by greaves with knee cops, and the tops of their boots boasted the same kind of segmented armor as their upper torsos. Finally, they all wore a rounded, open face helmet, also from the game of football, with a segmented neck covering and a nose piece that gave partial protection to their faces, and had a visor they could lower to cover their faces when undergoing an arrow storm. And of course the shields.

  The most amazing thing to the Dwarf was that the humans could run in the armor, Maybe not really fast, but much better than a heavily armored Dwarf could match. The shocked enemy archers could not get away fast enough from the thrusting spears of the legionaries,
and soon the bowmen were all dead or in total rout, their weapons left behind. The humans formed up into their rectangles again and stood there facing the enemy, looking as if they could wait all day for that foes next move. And then the enemy made the move he had been waiting for, and he held his breath to see the result.

  * * *

  “Let’s give them a cavalry charge, and see if we can break up these rectangles,” the Marshal ordered, raising a hand in the air. The Adjutant nodded and waved at the horn men, who raised the long instruments to their lips and belted out the required tune.

  The massed infantry started to move aside as cavalry filtered through their ranks. When several thousand lancers had moved to the fore they started down the slope of the hill at a trot, weapons couched forward, while more lancers came through from behind and joined the nascent charge.

  The Marshal smiled as he watched his cavalry move forward. He had twelve thousand horse, and even if the enemy killed some of them the mass should roll over the foot soldiers and mash many of them into paste. The enemy was moving, and the movement looked organized, but he couldn’t see how they could form to repel a cavalry charge. Infantry fought infantry, and died before cavalry. That was a basic rule of war, and he didn’t see how it was going to change just because some new people came to the planet.

  * * *

  [Form to repel cavalry] came the order from the Commanding General as the legions chased the last of the archers off the field. Kurt looked up from the archer he was finishing, pulling his God blade free of the Grogatha’s chest, to see that horsemen were starting to congregate at the enemy front, with more filtering through the infantry every moment.

  “Form to repel cavalry,” he roared, at the same time sending the telepathic signal to the troops. Banners waved and the buglers blew the signal, and the soldiers again dissolved into what looked like disorganized chaos, though every soldier knew where he was going. This is the moment of truth, thought Kurt, wondering how they would do. He remembered that the legions didn’t always do that well against horsemen, and most of those didn’t have stirrups to hold them in the saddle during a charge. But Taylor had added something to the mix that was supposed to work, and now they would find out.

  The first two ranks formed up, kneeling on the ground. The first rank placed their shields upright and braced themselves, while the second rank aimed their light crossbows at the oncoming cavalry. Ranks three through five were taking meter and a half long wooden rods off their backs and attaching them to the two meter spears they were carrying, turning them into six and a half meter pikes. Some of the NCOs were attaching a head that was a combination ax and bill hook to three sections of shaft, making their weapons poleaxes. Behind them the sixth rank prepared their crossbows, while the archers deployed as usual behind the legionary battalions, and the reserve battalions positioned themselves to the rear of the bowmen.

  Kurt was worried that they would not be in position in time, but they made it, and a bristling wall of spear points was leveled at the horses as they came across the last fifty meters. The second rank sent a mass of crossbow bolts into the oncoming cavalry, aiming for the horses. Scores of beasts fell to the ground with equine screams, unseating their riders and tripping additional scores of horses behind them. The archers behind the cohorts sent their arrows in high arcs to plunge onto the cavalry from above, killing hundreds of men and horses. In many cases the armor of the riders was of too great a quality to be penetrated, but once the horse was knocked down the lancer became a clumsy foot soldier.

  Some of the horses plunged into the wall of spears to recoil with screams, blood pouring from their wounds. Most fell quickly after the spears went deep. The majority of the horses reared and bucked when they saw the hedge of deadly points to their front. And cavalry piled up behind as they crashed into the stalled horses, while the arrows continued to rain down.

  When Kurt saw all of the cavalry had been committed on the enemy side he waved his large sword in the air and screamed the command, sending it telepathically at the same time. The lines moved forward at a trot, ramming their spears into the horses as they came within range, the men with poleaxes pulling enemy riders from their mounts, while the swordsmen attacked the downed soldiers before they could get up. The big German hated that they were having to kill the beasts, who had no fault in being where they were. He had always loved horses, and it racked his heart to see them so abused. And they treated the enemy horsemen, mostly Elves, no better, though he thought they deserved their fate. He reminded himself that this was total war, and the point was to kill as many of the enemy as possible, while losing as few of their own people as they could. With that thought in mind he charged into the press swinging the great blade, every stroke taking a lancer from his saddle.

  Kurt saw Jackie at one point fighting down the line from him, her swirling, twisting form avoiding thrust lances as her twin swords took men off of horses with flashes of fire and cold. He stopped for a moment, enjoying the spectacle of the beautiful warrior woman who was more than a match for any normal man, Elf or human. A lance striking his own armored chest and bouncing from the heavily enchanted armor brought him back to his own fight, and he cut through the lance, then backhanded the horseman from this life before moving to the next.

  What seemed like hours, but could only have been much less time, passed, and the enemy cavalry broke, as they had hoped, streaming back toward their own lines. To Kurt’s practiced eye it looked like maybe a quarter who had come at them in the charge survived to retreat. The ground was covered with dead Ellala and horse, with here and there a dead or wounded legionnaire. The auxiliary attendants were busy getting those men on stretchers and removing them from harm’s way, and looking at the mass of enemy infantry Kurt knew that harm would be coming at them again, and soon.

  “Form ranks,” bellowed the former Wehrmacht Panzergrenadier Officer, sending out the telepathic equivalent. No counter commands came from the General Commanding, so Kurt had to figure he approved of the First Legion Commander’s actions thus far.

  The men moved quickly. Kurt knew they were tired, but they couldn’t stop now. They still performed as they had been taught, the first six battalions moving back while the next six fresh formations moved forward. These men had none of the protected among them, and the Immortal hoped that the enemy didn’t realize that and try another magic attack. If they did it would be up to the men using their magic chant, along with the mages, to ward them. Watching the enemy infantry begin to come forward at a trot he thought it unlikely they would try a magical assault, and seeing the way they held no kind of formation reinforced the belief that they would be fighting a mob. A mob that outnumbered his force by five to one, but a mob nonetheless.

  The battalions formed up, and Kurt positioned himself in the small gap between two of the formations, knowing that Jackie would be doing the same down the line, and Paul, Levine, and the two new arrivals as well. The enemy let out a roar and charged their way, and Kurt let out his own battle cry, echoed by the men around him as they let their voices overcome their fear. Looking at the snarling faces coming toward them was enough to scare anyone, even the Immortal, who recalled the fear he had felt on the Russian front seeing hordes of Soviet troops heading his way.

  Arrows began to fall on the enemy when they were fifty meters away. The first rank of legionnaires braced their shields while the second rank held their tightly gripped swords. The third rank held their sharp spears in an overhand grip, pointing downward. And ranks four through six stepped back and spread a bit, their pilums gripped in their hands.

  At forty meters the back ranks pulled their arms back, stepped forward, and released the javelins, which flew through the air to strike the first rank of the enemy when they hit the thirty meter line. The enemy saw the cloud of throwing implements coming their way and raised their shields, many shouting in triumph as the javelins struck and penetrated, but not enough to cause harm to the warrior fending them off. Some bounced from well made or enchanted shields, but most stuck. The shouts of triumph turned to cries of dismay as the javelins’ shafts bent and pulled at the shields, making them hard to hold. A second wave of pilums came over to strike the men behind the front rank, with the same effect.