Chapter 148. Links Zwo Drei Vier!
Aand... maybe it was not the best idea to let people watch my "aggressive diplomacy" live, because the general whispered sentiment (that I pretend to not hear) among the krainians is that I'm batshit crazy. Mostly because of my sheep comment. I mean, I could possibly show them ASDF... But I'm pretty sure that they would consider it a half-hour of unadulterated madness to begin with.
Oh well. Now I just wait for the response... And yeah, my lines are already well set. Regardless of where Stefan moves, I catch him in the crossfire. Well, unless he goes into the forest, but if he does, I can easily track him from the air and ensure lots of accurate mortar fire. Unless, I guess, he resolves to make a long trek through the woods to come all the way around us... But that will take a few days on foot and I will know he is trying that immediately.
Huh. They are advancing. Just straight up marching at me. WTF. Where's... What... WHY?! For reasons that completely elude me, they left horses behind in their camp and added the horsemen as archers. Advancing on me in the classic "pike and shot" formation... I mean, it SORT of would have made sense if they expected cossacks to do their usual cavalry raid, but they should have seen the earthworks and figured they were dealing with a siege situation by now. What is going on?
I move the airship over their camp to spy, but there is no visible clue there either. A bunch of people juuust enough to take care of the horses, and that's it. Some kind of movement in Stefan's tent, looks like he had some hapless shmuck cleaning it, given how this guy is running around with buckets and rags. Geeze. I don't like it when people do stuff I can not explain. It is either some sort of cunning plan or they had a bout of unadulterated stupidity. And I very much loathe it whenever it's the second. Because cunning plan? That I can prepare for, anticipate, scheme, counteract... but good luck figuring out what's on the idiotic mind and where it might go.
Fine then. I set the sights for four hundred meters. They don't tote any longbows, and the short recurves meant for horseback archery are only good for half of that in the best possible scenario. So I let them approach to the mark, take aim and start firing. Complete with verbal commands, simply to play it out properly... and to give observers something to build later on. Might as well "accidentally" seed around the concepts for more advanced forms of warfare among allies.
...WTF. Why do they keep on pushing? I could understand taking the first volley in stride. I could maybe see them being slow enough to understand until the third, but... Right now, my rifle teams are on their second mags, the machinegunners are swapping belts one by one and there were already three rounds of mortar shelling. To my estimation, their formation had lost over a half. They SHOULD be breaking - either to run away or to try and rush me. What is... Oh. FINALLY. I guess in the close formation, the press of bodies makes it less than viable to just run away, so I had to wait until the idea propagated to the flanks and rear. Whatever. Keep firing, the worse their losses are right now, the worse it will be for Vlad in the long run. You do not really take levees on raids like these. You take professional soldiers and mercenaries. So I won't really impact the agricultural or artisanal manpower of Basarab much even if I manage to completely exterminate this force...
Though really, 100% losses only happen in games. Technically speaking, medieval armies are supposed to break and run in complete rout with 30-40% fatalities. The current situation is close to 60% of the... Uh. Wait. A quick count confirms it. I took pictures, so... There are about a hundred men unaccounted for entirely. Where are they?... Shit, did Stefan have some mages capable of invisibility or... Or just a bunch of people really at home in the forest... Bleh. That confirms it. I need to take his camp ASAP and interrogate him on what the heck is going on. The pike wall was clearly there to tie everyone up to the trench, even if he did not expect me to shatter them like this.
Machineguns and mortars remain where they are, with their respective teams, while the rifleme all climb out of the trench and advance towards the disintegrating pike line firing from the hip, bayonets flipped up. Not too fast, I don't want this to devolve into a scrum. I mean, I could, but the more variety in actions I need to handle, the worse it taxes my focus. So I take my time and let them run, making sure to concentrate fire on those trying to get into the forest and ignoring the ones who just run back or try to reach the river. The area near the river is kinda swampy and they know it, so as soon as the hint about not going into the forest takes root in their heads, there is a mass rush ahead of me to the camp.
I keep advancing, even as the first stragglers reach the camp... and that's when I facepalm. The missing hundred? There in the camp. Laid out in the tents. I guess my opening act of terror hit way more people than I expected. They clearly aren't in the best condition, but as the broken leftovers alert the camp, everyone who can stand (about fifty more, even though they look like death warmed over) is trying to line up for another pike line. I see a lot of officers in that line. Well, I ASSUME they are officers, because their stuff is clearly more expensive and ornate, even though they themselves are clearly in ill health. The line of me spreads out in two rows. The first takes a knee and the second aims over their heads, presenting the camp defenders with a twin row of bayonets.
"Aim to disable!" - the "officer" me shouts, the distance being about three hundred meters - "FEUER FREI!" The din of rifle fire covers the shouts of men ahead for five seconds... then the line of defenders falls apart, most of them with leg wounds. I take special care to aim for archers with more prejudice, ensuring they are either shot dead or wounded critically or quantitatively enough to be incapable of using bows.
As I advance again, arriving at the former last stand line, I slow down, taking a gauge of their condition. A number of ailing officers are clearly hit with respiratory problems that are completely unrelated to gunshot wounds. Pale faces, blue fingernails, cold sweat, swollen necks... Huh. I guess they all got lungfuls of phosphine before it ignited?
Rifleme spread around the camp, awarding the feeble resistance with solid stock smacks and hefty kicks. I also consider the most heavily wounded and dispense some stabilizing healing magic. Just enough to make sure no one bleeds out or expires to organ failure within the day. Back near the trenches, half of machinegunners and mortar teams come out to do the same to the remains of the initial formation. The "officer" me with some "bodyguards" enters the tent Stefan was supposed to be occupying. He was not on the field, so...
Oh. Stefan was not on the field because he also got hit by phosphine hard. I guess he was stuck breathing it while being piled up on by his bodyguards in the wake of golem-me blowing up. The investigation suggests that I overestimated the likeliness of phosphine igniting - it was pretty cold and wet, so instead of a big flashfire all I got was a couple spots where it went off from the torches and whatnot... and a major poisoning of people nearby.
I lean over to check on him... and he is unconscious and actually dying. Given what I see, Stefan was among those most heavily hit, and that included the majority of his officers. The guy that I assumed was cleaning Stefan's tent was actually running around cleaning out the vomit bucket. I don't bother healing Stefan. He was experiencing lung edema for hours by now, his brain had been dying off from oxygen starvation. Even if I wanted to clean out his lungs now, he would be a fool or a veggie. Similar results can be seen on... nineteen people in total. Too far gone to heal. I rotate their heads out of humanitarian considerations. Death by broken neck is very quick, it makes more sense than letting them expire over the next few days from respiratory failure.
Recoverable cases are healed up to the point where they survive, but not past that. I want them helpless until I can get Mazepa and his people to take custody of the POWs. The head honchos are all dead anyways. Some quick questioning of thoroughly demoralized basarabians reveals that Stefan going down with most of his henchmen had been the reason for the weird attack - before Stefan's personal doctor lost conscience (from being gassed right next to Stefan) he was able to inform the people still on their feet that Stefan was poisoned. So for the lack of anyone with actual intel (I'm still unsure why they didn't just ask scouts to repeat what they saw) or brains, the collective decision between decanii (petty commanders, responsible for ten men apiece) was to just march over there and demand the antidote at the pike point.
Well... shit. For them, I mean. I inform Mazepa about the situation and he sends out a bunch of men with horses and carriages to ferry the captives. Meanwhile, I tally up the survivors. Out of a thousand and a bit, I killed about six hundred and fifty in assorted manners. That includes Stefan and others I've medically discharged on the grounds of becoming brainless. Another two hundred and fifty just didn't stop at the camp and instead kept running. I ignored them. That leaves me with slightly under two hundred of survivors in the assorted states of physical disarray to contend with.
After conferring with Mazepa some more, I collect everything that can be a reasonable weapon, including firewood logs and horseshoes, and move it outside of the area where I situate the POWs. They are, consequently, frisked over to make sure no one hides a knife or something, healed up to the point of being capable of walking, but very carefully NOT invigorated or fed to keep them weak and allowed to mill around in the bounded area under the watchful eyes of riflemes. A smaller camp of a similar purpose is made for the sixty or so survivors of the initial clash, the ones who did not bleed out or were trampled on by their fellows in the wake of the rout.
"Hello there, Vasil." - I offer as the front cart approaches. The villagers obviously had no fancy carriages, so the POWs will have to do with the hay-laden carts usually used to ferry around bags and haybales. He jumps off the carriage and salutes me with his sabre.
"Great victory, pani Gillespie!" - he proclaims loudly - "Great and brutal victory. Basarab will not darken our lands again for decades after this."
I shrug and gesture toward the stack I made out of the most notable corpses. Stefan's being in front - "I sincerely doubt Basarab will darken your lands again ever. As far as I know, he had no heir to speak of... Or any relatives who actually could take over after him. So my best guess is that Basarab lands will simply revert back to being a province of Vallah. For the time being, at least."
He... gets noticeably reserved once he takes a good look at the corpse and realizes that no, face and back should not be on the same side. I comment - "If you see a head backward, it means they were beyond healing. Speaking of... any suggestions as to what to do with the corpses? Because barring any better suggestions, I'm just going to reuse the trench I dug as a mass grave."
Given his pinched expression, there are problems with this. "There are, ahem... were notable people here." - he suggests - "They need to be given separate graves or even returned to their own lands for the burial."
I peer at him. "Vasil, assume that Tepes dynasty is extinct by force, with all the death and devastation among the nobility of Vallah that it implies. With that in mind, do you honestly think there would be someone left to make a stink over the corpses of those who started the whole mess?" - I suggest - "I mean, I won't stop you if you want to do it, but I'm in favor of dumping them all into same pit, commoner and noble alike. After all, it's not like Stefan declared a war, no? So as far as we are concerned, they're all nameless brigands."
___
In the end, everyone agreed with my suggestion. Of course, there were concerns about "disrespect", but I noticed that after seeing what I can do with an army, there was a notable decrease in arguing with me. And a qualitative change in it, while we are at it. While prior to that, Mazepa was more permissive of bold statements and insistencies, after everything he said was couched as advice or suggestions. I end up reassuring him that no, I'm not going to steamroll Kraina just because he happens to have opinions that don't dovetail with my views 120%. And so... here I am, performing his advice.
According to Mazepa, the way one handles the victory is about as important as actually winning. And so, the army of me is marching back to the village as an impromptu parade, followed by the caravan of carts holding POWs and spoils of war, led by Vasil. I had zero interest in assorted things Stefan's people had in his camp, but Vasil had quickly disabused me of the notion that it's just trash. According to him, this was actually a considerable windfall for the village. Metal things are valuable, it seems. They particularly liked the cart full of horseshoes and nails that Stefan brought with him apparently to keep his cavalry mobile. He also clued me in on why cavalry was dismounted and added as archers. Apparently, Basarab considered cavalry more important, so cavalry officers had much higher gas attrition, being closer to Stefan himself during my sabotage. So without anyone with the authority to actually take charge of horsemen, they were browbeaten by infantry decanii into stiffening an otherwise lackluster archer division.
Actually... since I am making this a show, why hold back? I might as well show off the whole "the army is me" thing by doing something synchronous. For example......
"...Links zwo! Links zwo! Links zwo drei vier! Links!..." - I sort of vaguely remember that was actually made as a political protest against being labeled fascists, but since this world does not have the concept of fascism to begin with, so far, it just is a nice song with a military feel to it. I wonder what Kathy will think of it.
