Chương 12: Chapter 10: Battle of Starpike - Part 2
As the sounds of the huge bells began to resonate around the battlefield, Lord Alester Florent reigned in his horse, and took stock of the situation. The 1st wave of the Tyrell infantry charge had been totally wiped out, and Lord Branston Cuy, the chief commander of the Vanguard had already been slain as was his nephew, Ser Emmon. The battle had not started well for the forces of the Reach. His men were similarly bewildered at the strange occurrence of these sounds, and at the seeming retreat of the Dornish cavalry.
"That noise!"
"W-what on earth is that ruckus!?"
"W-what's going on!?"
"The hell is that?"
"That's sounding more like a gong than a bell, my lord," Merrel Florent replied, pausing to tie up a strip of cloth he had torn from his tunic to bandage a wound on his left shoulder.
"No, it's a signal!" Alester Florent replied with a curt tone, his face becoming grimmer as each minute passed even as he looked at the enemies charging in on his position.
"Signal!?"
Meanwhile, on the other side, Lord William Dayne reeled in his attack, as he too heard the sounds made by the ringing bells.
"Tsk! That's a bit too early! I guess the Prince does not wish to play around anymore! Our 2nd wave is here."
"They're coming! Brace yourselves!" Alester Florent shouted as he noticed the catapults lining up on the walls.
The first few jars smashed into the open ground a few hundred yards in front of him, and a thick smoke began to spread around the field.
"Hold! Hold the lines! You must hold!" he shouted desperately as he tried to rally his men through the unceasing bombardment from the walls of the castle.
"Tch! A smokescreen on this scale! Enough to cover the whole battlefield? What is that boy playing at?" Aerys Oakheart wondered as he watched the scene playing on the battlefield below alongside Lord Hightower and his son from their headquarters.
In the field, the situation was getting out of hand. "Uncle!" Merrel Florent shouted aloud as he rode up to his Lord, "Are you unharmed? Damn it! We have been outplayed, this smoke has robbed us of our vision and our men cannot move!"
"And just when we had managed to halt the rout as well, this is an enemy scheme, no doubt," Alester retorted even as he moved back with his nephew.
The majority of the Tyrell cavalry which was made up of many landed knights was becoming agitated. Having their charge broken in a spectacular fashion, the ignominy of being made to retreat by a force less than half their size was sorely rankling the men, who were shouting at their opponents in a bid to vent their frustration.
"Hah! You think something like this will be enough to stop us?"
"Don't think that a momentary break will help you! The moment this smoke clears, we will …"
"Hmm, it appears that they are quite angry over there," William Dayne smirked, even as Manfrey Martell nodded in agreement.
"The poor fools! The real terror of this formation starts now!"
Hidden by the smoke, the six thousand archers in the formation drew and aimed their arrows as one and targeted the Tyrell Army, both the charging cavalry, and the infantry behind them.
"FIRE!"
For a second, it appeared as if a black haze ascended into the air and then descended just as quickly.
Hearing the sound of the bows being drawn, Alester Florent shouted out in genuine alarm, "Get down!", but he was too late.
The hail of arrows descended squarely upon the cavalry formation with deadly precision.
"Aah!"
"Gaahhh!"
"Guooh …"
"Damn it!"
Men and horses went down by the hundreds, but the assault did not cease despite the lingering smoke which obstructed their view.
"Are they mad?" Merrel Florent whispered in shock and fear, "Their own soldiers are also still in the field, they will end up hitting their own people as well!"
He turned around and paused as he took in the scene before him, "Those 500 Dornish cavalrymen are all gone! Only we are left in the field! Not good …" he realized in a flash that the Dornish cavalry had acted as bait to force the Tyrell cavalry to remain in the field, and at the first sign of the bombardment retreated behind their own lines, using the smoke as cover.
A combination of soldiers and a smokescreen. Are the Dornish intending to fight inside this smoke?
"Let us move from this position! The enemy has memorised our location and is firing at it" Merrel Florent shouted out to his men, as they turned around and made to retreat.
"Thanks to this smoke, if we move, they should lose track of us as well!" Alester Florent agreed and gave the order for the retreat.
"Alright! Move out!"
"Hooaahh!"
"Be on your guard! Due to this smoke, there is a possibility that we might end up running into a Dornish Ambush!"
"Go! Go! Go!"
It was not just the Tyrell cavalry, but the Tyrell Infantry which had moved behind the cover of the horse was also pulling out. Due to being on foot, and the nature of the terrain, they were a lot slower than the horsemen.
From the Dornish position, they could not actually see the Tyrell's figures, and it was impossible to pinpoint their location using footsteps alone.
"Halt! Regroup!" William Dayne ordered his cavalrymen, who paused and retreated to regroup, thankful for the respite.
But there was one thing which did not change. Despite the heavy smoke which covered the battlefield, the Dornish archers were still able to target the Tyrell forces accurately.
"Draw! Aim!"
"FIRE!"
The arrows continued to rain down upon the Tyrell forces, who were not given any respite. Men and horses alike continued to fall down in staggering numbers. A real panic had begun to set in amongst the Tyrell forces now.
"What!?"
"Gwah!"
"Ugh!"
"Gods damn it! What the hell is going on?"
"H-How is this possible!?"
"Ha-ha, yes, they're in chaos alright! Just as planned! I guess we won't be needed anymore!" William Dayne smiled as he beheld the carnage being inflicted on their enemies in front of them. "After all, the moment you are caught in the Prince's trap, you will never be able to escape!"
In the centre of the formation, Quentyn watched the progress of the battle with a steely gaze. I guess using Master Gen-po's trap was too much for the Tyrell's. The only one's who managed to break it in the entirety of China were the generals of Qin. The Tyrell's cannot even dream of approaching that level of competence in a thousand years.
"My Prince! We still have yet to receive any reports of anything being amiss!" one of the infantry commanders standing next to his tower, reported to which he absently nodded.
"I know that already! Stop reporting every little thing!"
"This is not even a challenge! Is there no one with even a little bit of brains on their side!? Enough, send them out!" he ordered, at which the commanders below him were taken aback.
"S-Sir! So soon!?
"Stop repeating every last thing I say! Hurry up and send them out! Good grief! No matter the kingdom, some armies will always have idiots I suppose," he reflected quietly, as his men scrambled to carry out his orders.
Meanwhile, on the Tyrell side, Baelor Hightower had ridden out into the battlefield to assume command in these dire straits. As he approached the battlefield, he paused for a minute, and gazed around the battlefield. After a few minutes, his eyes widened as he saw the Dornish contingent and witnessed what they were doing with his own eyes.
I see, so that's what is going on …
"On me!" he roared, and charged inside the fray, and made his way to Alester Florent and his nephew.
"Shit! What the hell are we supposed to do? Where the hell are we meant to go? Those damn archers are always hitting us!" Merrel Florent roared in anger even as he parried aside an incoming arrow with his blade.
"It will be the same wherever we go!" retorted Baelor, even as he and his men approached them quickly.
"Ser Baelor!"
"What do you mean?" Alester Florent asked in a hurry, even as he too swatted away an arrow.
"The Dornish are transmitting our location using sound!"
"SOUND!?" the Florent leaders and the men around them whirled around in surprise, as they looked around their surroundings.
"The Dornish have quietly sent out small groups of soldiers with bells and gong signals to surround us. And by keeping track of us by moving in tandem with us, they are able to relay our movements to those infernal archers using sound signals."
"What!?
"C-come to think of it, every now and then I catch a hint of a gong in all of the ruckus around us!" Merrel reported, even as his eyes held a wild look about them.
"So, all we need to do is kill those bastards beating those bells and the arrows should stop hitting us," Alester growled, and turned around to give the order when Baelor stopped him.
"The enemy will have taken that into consideration! Even if we cut down all those sound teams, they will have replacements ready on hand and we will still be in the same situation. What's an even bigger concern is the fact that we have lost contact with majority of our men inside this smoke. While on the other hand, the Dornish army is completely aware of the positions of both friend and foe alike. All those pockets of men who have been isolated will be massacred! I recommend that we pull out now and order a wholescale retreat! We have lost this …" Baelor paused as suddenly a deep rumbling sound permeated throughout the whole battlefield.
"Kuh! What's that sound this time? This doesn't sound like a bell!?" Alester Florent whirled around as did all the men around them looking for the source of that sound.
"No! Wait, that's not a signal! That's …" Baelor replied in alarm even as the ground began to shake wildly, and his horse began to buck around, and he tried to calm it down.
"Whatever it is, it can't be good!" Merrel Florent replied, and he was proven right soon.
Through the haze of the smoke, they could see large shapes rushing forward at an alarming pace. Then out of the smoke a column of humongous War Chariots, each being pulled by four horses, and having a driver and a spear thrower within burst out of the smoke.
The Tyrell's and for that matter, no one in Westeros had yet seen a chariot let alone conceived the thought of one, and Riboku or rather Quentyn had gambled on that point heavily. In the last three months, every single carpenter in Dorne had been ruthlessly pushed into building these war wagons. After drawing up the designs of these chariots, based heavily upon the famous war chariots of the Kingdom of Wei, Riboku's men had managed to build a hundred of these chariots, and these were now his ace in the hole, so to speak. This was the first time in the history of Westeros that a chariot had been used.
And the Tyrell forces, which could not comprehend what they were, watched in unmitigated terror, as the columns of those chariots ran down their soldiers with ruthless aggression.
"OH SHIT!"
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE THINGS!?"
"DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!"
Watching the disaster with horrified eyes, Baelor Hightower was the first commander to recover his wits.
"Oi! You infantry over there! Get out of the way!"
But his words fell on deaf ears, as the said soldiers in blind panic, began to run wherever they could to escape, ignoring any orders they received. They did not care at that point, they just wanted to survive. However, it would be for naught. In front of the horrified eyes of their commanders, those men were literally crushed beneath the hooves of the horses as well as the wheels of the chariots, with their bodies being crushed and mangled beyond recognition.
In perfect synchronization, the column of chariots turned around, and retraced their path backwards, running over the already mangled field of flesh, subjecting it to another round of death. The few lucky soldiers who had survived the initial charge were now caught up in the charge again and were quickly killed.
"Gwah!"
"Ugh!"
"Shit!" Baelor cursed as he watched his men being wiped out. "What the hell are these things?" he looked around, only to see those massive horse-drawn wooden wagons crushing all men before them.
"Protect the Lord!" his men gathered around at his spot, even as he began to rapidly devise a plan to stop this rout.
"No! I am fine! More importantly, look to our foot soldiers…," he ordered as he began to move.
On the other side, from atop his siege tower, Quentyn watched the slaughter dispassionately. As his uncle Manfrey looked at him to express his wonder at the scene before him, he just shook his head and replied, "the battlefield provides a sort of 'pleasure' that is difficult to find elsewhere. And for a strategist, that pleasure is the sensation of controlling thousands of men with only your mind to one-sidedly butcher the opposition."
Just as Quentyn had said, his tactics were able to control the entire battlefield as easily as if he were moving pieces aboard a board game, efficiently striking down masses of Tyrell soldiers. In that chaotic scene of combat, the Dornish army had actually positioned themselves in such a way that they had split the field into a number of sections. While on the surface, it looked like the archers were only trying to kill the Tyrell soldiers, in truth, their real goal was to herd the Tyrell forces closer together. Thus, allowing the war chariots to rampage through the path strewn with Tyrell troops.
Naturally, the Tyrell host was not aware of this at all since they were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. They could only weather the attacks of chariot after chariot. Though it was not visible from outside the smoke, the Tyrell's had already sustained massive casualties, meaning mountains of corpses.
"Lord Florent!" Baelor shouted towards the cavalry commander as he made his towards the weary cavalry commander.
"I have a plan to stop the enemy!" Baelor shouted out, even as all the leaders converged on his spot.
"We will make noise ourselves to confuse the enemy," Baelor pointed out, even as the eyes of the other leaders widened.
"Confuse them?"
"That clanging sound which we can hear occasionally is the thing that's relaying our position to the archers and to those cursed wooden battle wagons. So, all we need to do is to let off a similar sound to interfere with their communication. What's more is that if we are able to decode the rules for their signals we might be able to control and redirect the momentum of their archers and battle wagons ourselves and force them to turn upon their own forces!" Baelor finished quickly, and as the other leaders heard his plan, a flicker of hope came within their eyes.
"All right! You heard him! Look around for anything that can make a similar sound and have them go to town on it! Or find one of those damn Dornish sound teams and kill them all and take their bells! Go! Go! Go!" Alester Florent ordered as all his men raced out in different directions trying to find the elusive Dornish sound teams.
"Speaking of which, what on earth is that low ringing sound we have been hearing from the start?" Merrel Florent asked with consternation, as he strained his ears to listen to said sound.
"It's probably instructions from the commander of the Dornish army. Chances are it's sending out signals for even more large-scale orders."
At that Alester Florent jerked and stopped in his path, his eyes wide in realization.
"Baelor!" he whirled around, with tension rife in his tone, "did you just say that's a signal coming from the commander of the Dornish army?"
At the blank look on the Hightower heir's face at his question, Alester replied with a savage grin, "In other words, if what you are saying is true, the place that is giving off that sound is the location of the supreme commander of the Dornish army?"
At that, the eyes of everyone widened.
Could it be?
Does he intend to target Quentyn Martell himself during such dire straits?
Alester turned around to his nephew, "Merrel, you have spent your life hunting in the mountains of the Reach! Your hearing has got to be better than ours! Can you figure out where the Dornish commanders are sending out their signals from?"
"There is no need to ask, uncle, my fellow hunters call me 'the ear who hears even the flapping of wings'. I can take you there, I only wish this had occurred to me sooner," Merrel replied, with a look of exultation upon his face.
At the Tyrell headquarters, atop the mountains overviewing the battlefield, the mood was tense.
Just a few moments ago, news had come that Lord Branston Cuy, the overall commander of the Vanguard, had been slain in the very initial moments of the Dornish charge, and that the battle had been purely held solely due to the presence of Alester Florent's cavalry. Lord Hightower was staring grimly at the smoke covered battlefield, even as there was a steady stream of messengers bringing in news of disasters one after the other.
"Is our 2nd wave just going to remain here? It's true that we can't see the situation, but there is no doubt that our men must be struggling," Ser Axell Florent, brother of Alester Florent asked in consternation, even as Ser Aerys Oakheart watched the battle with a grim visage.
"It's hard to say," replied Ser Aerys. "As long as we are unable to see what's going on, we won't be able to discern where or how to send the reinforcements. But that smoke is no ordinary smokescreen, is it? If the Dornish soldiers are able to fight within that haze, it must serve some purpose. To have used a tactic like that, this Prince of Dorne is quite peculiar. Most likely, Lord Hightower is not debating whether to send in the 2nd wave or not, but rather to have the 1st wave pull out or not, is the main question in his mind right now."
At the opposite end of the field, on the Dornish side, within each unit were men specifically trained to discern the sound signals being emitted throughout the battlefield.
As Manfrey Martell began to hear sounds that were contrary to pre-arranged signals, he realized that their trick had been found out.
That's not the right rule for the signal. So, the Tyrell army has started making their own signals to confuse us. Curse them…
"Send the signal to switch our sound signals to all units," he ordered his men, when a sudden sound interrupted his thoughts.
"What the …," Manfrey Martell could not even gather his thoughts as Baelor Hightower's sword cleanly separated his head from his body, while his men were set upon by the bloodthirsty cavalry unit of the Florent's which galloped out of the hazy smokescreen and were massacred to a man.
The infantry unit assigned behind Manfrey Martell's cavalry raised the alarm as they noticed the Tyrell cavalry.
"T-Tyrell horsemen!?'
"On your guard, we have run into a Dornish infantry unit!"
"Hoooah!"
"Go! Go! Go! Break right through them!"
"Uoooh! Stop them! Stop those horsemen here!"
The battlefield descended into a chaotic melee, as the Tyrell horsemen began to hack through the Dornish infantry unit which had been demoralized upon witnessing Manfrey Martell's death.
As they made their way forward, Baelor's mind recalled the plan which they had made.
"We will take all the remaining cavalry with us! With the death of Lord Cuy and his nephew, the infantry has been stopped cold, and with the assault of these battle wagons, they are too disorganized to be of any use. Instead, the infantry will use the corpses all around them to build up a temporary barricade behind which they can take a respite," Alester Florent decided quickly and decisively.
"A moment, Lord Alester," Baelor spoke out.
"What is it?"
"Even if we are able to reach Quentyn Martell, our cavalry number 1000 at the most! Not to mention, we have no idea how many men will be defending their command post. In the event that we are unable to break through the enemy forces to reach their commander, even our cavalry will not be able to return back with all this smoke around us. And if that happens, then we will be completely split up and at the mercy of the Dornishmen."
"In this instance," he continued, "We should instead send word to my father and ask for further cavalry reinforcements…"
"We don't have time for something like that," Alester retorted harshly, "If we waste our time in sending a message to Lord Leyton, the messenger would have to successfully make his way out of this death trap of a battlefield first, and by the time the reinforcements arrive, the entire 1st wave will have been wiped out to the last man!"
"But …"
"Baelor! A force of 1000 cavalry is not something to be brushed aside so easily! It is an existence that can upset the tide of an entire battle if utilized properly. Now is that time! We will lead our forces to victory in this opening engagement with our own two hands!"
"Fuu, it seems that I cannot stop you," Baelor sighed, even as Alester replied back, "Yeah, even if you men will not join us, we will still go ahead!"
"Surely, you jest, Lord Florent! We are the men of the Reach! We will follow our leaders wherever they go, no matter the cost!" Baelor replied, even as all the men around gave a lusty cheer. Soon, the entire force reorganized itself and began a ferocious charge.
"Do not stop!"
"Forward!"
"Kill the Dornish scum!"
Leading the very front of the charge, Merrel Florent was guiding them slowly but surely at the exact location of Quentyn Martell's location, by divining the location of his post, by listening to the sounds of the battle gongs. And thus, the leaders of the Tyrell army finally came face to face with the leaders of the Dornish army for the first time during the battle.
"Gah! The smoke's getting thicker and thicker around here!" Baelor spoke out even as he covered his nose and mouth.
"It means we are drawing close to the source of the smoke!" one of the Florent soldiers replied with a savage grin on his face.
"Ha-ha! Who would have thought that this trick of theirs would backfire like this? I am looking forward to seeing the look on the face of that Martell brat when he sees us suddenly pouring out of the smoke," Lord Alester replied, even as he urged his horse forward faster.
"We do not know how many defenders they still have…" Baelor cautioned, even as he too moved forward.
"We will know soon, we are here…," Merrel Florent mentioned, as the entire force burst out of the smoke into a clear area.
Immediately, their eyes widened in shock as they noticed a wall of infantry, more than a thousand at first glance, holding and manning a wall of wooden palisades, forming a block around the entire Dornish formation. Inside the box were archers beyond count, all aiming their bows at them.
At the centre of the formation was a single siege tower, and standing atop it was a boy, who could only be Quentyn Martell.
"FOOLS," they could clearly hear the words and the contempt coming out of the boy's mouth as a black cloud of arrows descended upon them blotting out the very skies.
Author's note: Next Chapter, The Deadly Conclusion!
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