SBMS150
The field hospital went up swiftly in the fields and farm-yard of the abandoned homestead, the nailed-shut farmhouse's doors yielding swiftly to the pry-bars of the Verdebaie rankers assigned to aid the establishment of my forward infirmary and surgery. I sent the militia-medicos inside to see what could be used in the empty house, along with an armed guard. Never could tell where dead-enders might have forted up, or a dead body might have gone revenant unattended in a basement.
The surgery tents went up across the way from the newly-opened farmhouse, and the barn across the way. I rearranged my supplies and tools as the assistants put together the cots and the surgical tables. Listening in my mind, I heard the Princess-aspect relaying the reports of her sister in the field, and calculated the timeframe of any casualties on their way to my rapidly-assembling hospital.
The fight for the line of communication had been fierce, but concentrated, and they were already on their way here, most of them being dealt with during the delivery process. Few – no, none of the pegasi or griffins had been injured in the night's festivities, leaving only ground-pounders and rankers to be retrieved via chariot here to my field hospital in the rear of the advance, and Rye Daughter's less-advanced hospital in transit.
I pondered making arrangements for all the wounded to be sent here, behind the Reserve and the few units of the Left Division shifting southeastwards towards our position here in the fore of the advance. The Middle Division was actually furthest forward of all of us, but had the longest road to travel. But Rye Daughter insisted via Spirit-relay that her ponies would be in position soon, and ready to take their own wounded less than an hour after finding their forward position. I estimated the travel times of stretcher parties towards our easterly site, versus the wait-time that might result if Rye's ponies dropped their stitches, and let it slide.
The Middle Division had started hitting their targets. Two companies were discovered, poorly posted, and were quickly overrun, according to the two regimental Company sections reporting back. More defensive garrisons were overrun or driven off as the regiments of the Middle rolled over the long road between the White Rose and their logistics base on the distant Housa. Not so distant for the Middle Division, and her supports advancing swiftly to her right. The Spirit and the Company's commanders expected the Middle Division to reach the town walls of Levittown by noon, at the current rate of advance.
Clots of prisoners were being herded into the rear towards what would be the first of several stockades. A Rennet regiment's third battalion from the Right Division had been designated as MPs and rear security, and by default, the prisoners of war fell into their purview. Two Company mares were detached from that regiment's support sections to oversee their operations.
In the meantime, the Reserve and her own supports had worked feverishly on digging preparations for successive defensive lines along the expected line of retreat for the White Rose. They had come this way over a month ago, blasting through the poorly-prepared defenses of d'Harcourt's army, and would no doubt re-trace their steps if and when they realized the difficult position we had placed them in. The expeditionary force of the White Rose was cut off from their supports, from their supplies, and their mighty riverine flotilla. They could cast loose and try to swing around us - and most likely starve. Or they could try and fight through us - fight and die, or bleed their way to victory if they could break our lines.
How quickly would the Rebel realize they were in a victory-or-death situation? It was perilous to put any enemy in such a position, especially when you weren't entirely gathered yourself for the counter-blow. The more quickly the Middle Division could accomplish its task, and destroy that logistics-base, the less danger the Reserve and our supports would be in, the less likely it was that a desperate Western push would crack our defenses and push aside the Reserve and whatever else we could scrape together to reinforce the General herself.
For the General and our Captain were commanding the defensive preparations north of the Wirts, the Captain's purple coat and the General's vast grey-brown bulk were distantly visible, overseeing the construction of the main line of defense within view of my field hospital. The plan had been to lay out three successive lines of resistance along the most likely line of advance, the one which the enemy themselves had used when they bypassed that idiot d'Harcourt who tried to fortify the main road through the marshy Wirts. As if a trained military force would have let itself be lured into that watery death-trap. He had scrambled to throw his army across the line of advance the rebel had chosen, and ended up offering battle in the open. Where the White Rose had trampled him and his, and shattered them into pieces.
We had a company detailed to hold that causeway through the Wirts, but no more. A company would be more than enough to hold any rebel flanking movement along that line of advance, dotted with smoldering and burning heliographic towers.
No, north of the marshy Wirts, was a flat, slightly over-watered plain, cut repeatedly by shallow streams converging and splitting apart, drained everywhere by the local farmers' levees and shallow dykes and aboiteaus. It was here that the White Rose had flanked the Army of the Housa and obliterated a third of that loyalist force. Third Cohort and a supporting battalion from a Hydromel regiment were in the process of driving off a rabble of rebel necromancers and just-raised ghouls from that battlefield. The White Rose had apparently been treating the mass graves like they were a supply dump for fresh undead.
While command was waiting for Third Cohort to finish clearing our front, the regiments of the Reserve were converting dyke-complexes and levees into improvised field fortifications west of the residue of that first, terrible battle. Command had summoned all of the Humus clan from their respective assignments, and they were being collected on the Reserve front to begin preparation of the ground and more importantly, the ground-water in front of our intended main lines of resistance.
The Clearances were ground tailor-made for the Humus clan. If they could pull off what the Captain had in mind, the White Rose would be stopped dead, elbow deep in the muck. Especially if they did as expected, and tried to 'flank' our obvious prepared positions.
As the day wore on, trains of supply-wagons pulled into the growing support-camp spreading out over the local fields behind the growing line of resistance, fields overgrown with volunteer grain-plants and random weeds. Carters hoofed carefully around the weedy, neglected fields, testing for solid footing. Those that found their footing, parked their wagons and shrugged off their traces, and got about the business of setting up their depots.
Engineers were getting organized and collecting their wagon-loads of planking and logs, and several were in my farm-yard, eyeing the more rattle-trap shacks around the edge of the yard. I took a break from oversight on the now-active surgical ward, to go chase off those vultures before they tore down my prospective recovery wards. Then I got a better look at the chicken coops I had been thinking about using, and changed my mind, and told the engineers to take the coops, but leave the sturdier cowsheds in place. No sign of either cows or chickens, by the way - when this farming family bugged out, they took everything not nailed down.
My ambulances rolled out, to retrieve the stream of casualties the skirmishing in our front were producing. Third Cohort and its supports had driven off the necromancers, with some losses on both sides, but several companies of rebel ground-troops had come forward to continue the festivities, attracted by the noise and the screaming.
A pegasus listening post over the entrance to the causeway reported a company-sized probe coming down that well-established route. Orders were passed from the General, busy scrawling pony-sized runic incantations across the face of eastward-facing dykes in front of the planned main line of resistance, to the company posted along the causeway the better part of a day's march away, via the ‘princess radio' relay. They fell back as ordered, to meet two support companies drawn off from the Verdebaie regiment which was digging out the positions and fighting platforms of the main line.
We worked through the casualties of the night before, and made them as comfortable as we could in the now-cleared farmhouse. The rankers seconded to my hospital cleared out the barn and the outlying shacks that the engineers weren't tearing down, getting them ready for heavy casualties when they came. If the General and the Captain's plans came to fruition, the drainage ditches of the Clearances and the marshes of the Wirts would be fertilized once again with the life-blood of the innocent and guilty alike.
The evening hours brought with it heavier skirmishing on our front, and reports of the storming of the walls of the castra in front of Leveetown, and the walls of Leveetown proper. They never got their defenses organized, and the Middle Division just surged over the clots of defenders like an incoming tide, by-passing their spears and pikes, only to swarm them from behind from both flanks at once. No little platoon or isolated company could stand for long in the face of that sort of onslaught, and the fighting was brutal but brief.
Rye Daughter's second field hospital was established in time, and close enough for our mutual purposes. I listened in via a set of twin-Cheries, doing my best to support my apprentice as she dealt with a flood of casualties, mostly militia caribou and donkeys from the sounds of it. Fourth Cohort was on that front, but hadn't gotten tangled up in any of the frontal fighting. It sounded like they had found an undefended gate on the western side of the town, and swept the walls clear of defenders almost without losses.
As evening fell, two red glows dominated the western limb of the world, as the fires over Leveetown fought to rival the fury of the setting summer sun.