The Battle of Pridehall
Story Emits
The Compact has been steadily marshalling its forces at Pridehall under command of Duke Gabriel Bisland due to the growing threat represented by the Bringers of Silence. The Compact has in many ways been operating blind- they know there is a growing host led by the Bringers of Silence, steadily taking over a great many of the shav tribes and clans throughout the Gray Forest, but only had the most vague notions of where it was, its numbers, or its composition, and so scouting was the first order of business, led by many notables of the Compact...
Pietro, Vincere and Cara ride far out into enemy forces in search of Tolamar Brand. They ride out into the forest and through the trees, an escort of Igniseri troops beside them. It isn't until they're far deep into the enemy lines that they realize they've been cut off. The sounds of combat ring behind them, and ahead of them. Ring, furious, to either side. There is no forward, or backward, for them. No sideways. They're trapped.
They lead the Igniseri troops forward in formation toward an army of Shavs, toward a pair of Bringers, dark and terrible. There are too many. Too, too many. Seen through the trees, it seemed like there were only a hundred. Seen up close, there are far more: not a hundred, but thousands. So many thousands. Vincere looks back at Cara, beautiful and strong and fierce atop her horse. This will be their last fight. They all know it. But he sees her, and he knows this cannot be HER last fight.
As the Shavs surge forward, Vincere draws his knife. His lips form a prayer, unspoken. He drags the blade of his knife across each wrist, holds out his palms, and the world stands still. He bleeds out, and the first wave of Shavs is flattened. Crushed, in bone-breaking agony. Vincere falls from his horse; his blood pools in the grass.
Pietro cries out, as his brother tumbles down. With a shout that breaks upon the air like glass, he rides forward. In fury, he draws his weapon. In blind, incredible rage, he strikes the Shavs down. They fall by the dozen. By the hundred. But there are just so many.
Where Vincere's blood soaks the ground -- where the first wave of Shavs lies crumpled and broken -- the earth falls away, and the Shavs with it. Pietro is trapped on one side, Cara and the Igniseri troops on the other. There is no crossing this sudden chasm. No forward, anymore. And Cara knows it. Cara, who kneels beside Vincere's blood-drained body, who holds him in her arms, and weeps, knows it. Someone has to take those Igniseri troops home.
Cara rallies the Igniseri troops, and as they flee on horseback, the chasm follows them. It cuts off the Shavs behind them, and beside them. It clears their path home. It runs deeper still at the sound of Pietro's death cry. The earth trembles, pushing Cara forward. Ride! Ride! She can almost hear it in her ears: Vincere's voice. Ride! Live!
By the time Cara and the Igniseri troops reach the safety of their allies, she is bone-pale, sweat-bright. She jumps from her horse, shaking. "There are more," she says, gripping the reins of her horse tight. "There are SO MANY MORE. They are coming."
The scout missions were successful, discovering a massive force of twenty thousand shavs approaching towards Pridehall, but it did not come without those grave losses. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of the Compact skirmishers and scouts, the foraging parties of the far western shav forces were largely destroyed by the constant raiding, harrying the shavs relentlessly, and putting the remaining eighteen thousand shavs led by Bringers of Silence at risk of being starved out. This forced the shavs to increase the intensity of their march, and allowed Duke Gabriel Bisland to pick ground of his choosing- the Pridehall Ford, a crossing of the Gray River that would let the forty thousand Compact soldiers attack the shav forces from each side, with Thrax vessels sailing up the Gray River to take them in the rear. Now it was a matter of seeing if the gambit would work.
With Grayson and Lycene troops holding the center, the forces of the Compact waited patiently for the thousands upon thousands of shavs led by Bringers of Silence to cross the ford, an inhuman quiet over the shav forces, with no shouts, no battle cries, no beating of drums, nothing but the eerie silence as their ranks form for battle. As the last of the shavs cross the ford, they advance steadily, intent on smashing the Grayson and Lycene lines in front of them.
As Grayson and Lycene forces meet the shavs head on, it becomes clear that bringers are in the minority, and many soldiers thank the Pantheon for it. Few of the bringers can be identified- it seems only the minority are pale and tall, and many look like normal men- and are only identified after they grab soldiers and tear them apart with their bare hands, often laughing as they do so. As the Grayson and Lycene lines are fully engaged, House Redrain attacks from the North with withering archery fire, and the Oathlands finally make their charge, with Prince Edain leading thundering cavalry into the heart of the shav battlelines that wheel to meet him.
The battle is vicious. Thrax sails in along the Gray River, and Thrax and its vassals attack the Bringer forces from the rear, even as all the Compact forces close in from all sides. The shav morale seems impeccable, being caught in a trap but refusing to break until it seems their commander is finally cut down by Princess Marian Valardin, and the last of the Bringers begin to fall. Then it is finally a rout and a slaughter.
Over two thousand Compact soldiers of each great house are dead, but the shav force has been annihilated, with no shavs able to escape the trap and being cut down to the last man. Cheers erupt over the battlefield, with many in the Compact able to count personal triumphs over Bringers of Silence, among them Ansel, Zhayla, Tristram, Agnarr, Fiachra, Inigo, Victus, Rey, Luca, Dagon, Julea, Deva and others. The celebrations, unfortunately, do not last.
Not long after, the most distant scouts return with grave news. The force of eighteen shavs that were destroyed were one of potentially five converging with glacial slowness on Arx. A very slow and confusingly meandering march, perhaps over a month out, but a march none the less. Potentially eighty thousand shavs, with a now wounded and battered thirty eight thousand Compact forces under command of Duke Gabriel Bisland. What shall be done in the month or more time, of course, waits to be seen. ((Next update will be no less than a couple weeks out))
In the chaos of battle, it is hard to see people fall. Harder still to know who fell, even when you do see it. It is only when the battle has ended that the tally of loss may begin, and this one is a hard tally to take. Scattered across the battlefield, there are bodies torn in two. Bodies torn into more than two. There is so much mud, and so much blood -- some losses will never truly be known. But one, at least, is quite certain: Duchess Nadia stood in proud defense of the Nightgold troops, and though she fell in battle, she fell protecting her soldiers. They find her body, in the end, badly broken, bled out to practically nothing, but with hair that shines, in spite of all that mud, bright as gold. So passes Nadia Nightgold.