//------------------------------// // Chapter 11; At river's edge // Story: The War of 1002 // by Fireheart 1945 //------------------------------// James was pleased that the army obeyed him so quickly; the forces under his command moved forward that night, under cover of darkness, to the river crossing. The crossing itself seemed easy enough to defend; any Changling that chose to walk, march or run rather than fly would have to ford through a decently thick river, while those that would try to fly would have to deal with angry pegasi troopers, who could use clouds as well as spears and crossbows to attack them. A number of things were nagging at him though; what if the Changelings had detected their movements anyway? It might be possible, indeed, likely that they could see better in the dark than humans or ponies could. And their number alone could overwhelm anything sent into the air against them. And, first and foremost, could the units under his command succeed in the massive ambush they were set to make? He shoved his worries down; he, and the army, had made it's move already, and were committed to it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three hundred and eighty effective soldiers; that was what was going through the human's mind as the final touches of the ambush were set up. Three wounded soldiers had been too badly wounded to join the fight this time around. More to the point, his small force was once again going up against hordes that outnumbered it severely; if this failed, he probably wasn't coming back alive. If they won... if they won, they would have delayed the enemy and given Appleloosa more time to evacuate Unicorn magic had been effective in helping to conceal the positions the soldiers were using, and foxholes and small trenches had been dug where natural foliage and boulders were scarce; these had been hidden as well, by means magical as well as natural. James shook his head to clear it and refocus. The Changelings had come forward from their positions, but they had moved slowly and cautiously; the queen seemed to be reconsidering. He hadn't expected that, and it was disconcerting; it proved she had a working brain in her head, and was using it. The enemy wasn't going to come forward, not yet, not from their own exertions. So, he had to hope long range artillery fire would provoke them into doing something rash. The only other option would have been to launch a ground attack of his own, which he refused to do. The guns were set, and ready to fire; all he had to do was give the command. Silver Shield walked over to him and saluted. "Sir, artillery crews report all guns loaded and ready to fire." "Hmmm, good." He raised his sword, knowing that a pony behind him would notice and give the word to fire once he lowered it. "Sir, are you sure about this?" "No." He lowered the sword. The guns all roared as one; even with only twelve of them total, they produced deafening noise, and James could feel the ground shake as they went off. Several seconds later, he heard explosions some distance to the north, in the direction of the enemy army. His scouts had reported that it had made camp maybe a mile and a half away... if what they had set up could be called a camp. To the pegasi scouts, it had resembled a hive, only above ground. He hoped the artillery was successful in damaging it, or at least the relatively small portion of it they were attacking; it was a very large encampment, stretching for miles in either direction, east and west. The guns fired for several minutes. James took out a pair of binoculars; he could just see the hive-like structures from here. As he watched, one was hit by high explosive rounds, and fell over. A number of dots swarmed around the collapsed structure, without anything he could describe as a formation; apparently, they hadn't been expecting this. That confusion didn't last long; the dots began to gather into formations, from what he could see over the forest treetops and what made do for desert structures. Clearly they had received orders to some extent. "Get ready boys, they're coming!" he shouted, and loaded his revolver and cocked a long crossbow he had acquired from a wounded soldier who didn't need it for now; it was more accurate at long range than the pistol. Shield looked at the sidearm. "Nice piece, if I may say so. Where did you get it?" James looked up. "I got this 1860 Colt revolver from someone from the internet. Don't ask," he said, lifting a hand to forestall the question. "I'll tell you about it when we get back to camp." He couldn't bring himself to say, if we get back to camp. He could see many Chagelings coming, both in the air and on the ground. He looked over at a nearby cannon. If only I had anti-aircraft guns, I could knock most of them out of the sky before they got close enough to cause problems. James felt a bit like a fool. He hadn't considered that seriously before leaving the camp. The pegasi were ready, though; some were in the clouds even now, waiting for the command to attack. Their ability to bring lightning down on the enemy was more a makeshift tactic than anything they had learned in training. It would work here. It had to work here. Now the black horde emerged from the treeline, heading for the river. The ones in the frontline splashed into the water. That was the signal for the guns, now refocused on the river, to fire. They proceeded to do so; explosions dotted the water and the opposite coast, and black, hole-filled bodies flew through the air. Some Changelings in the water, struck by fragments, stopped moving forward and were carried eastward by the river's current; some struggled futilely against the tug, used their last remaining energy, and slipped under the surface. Again, the enemy seemed to ignore their casualties; apparently dying was just part of the job for them. Some of the soldiers began to fire their crossbows as the Changelings closed in on the southern shore. More of the enemy fell, some shot through the head and no longer living, others sustaining wounds and drowning. James looked nervously into the sky; fortunately, the pegasi were doing their job. A few were dogfighting bravely against the skyborne enemies; most simply manuevered clouds into place to blast the invaders with lightning. Some of the airborne Changelings tried to attack the Equestrian ground positions, but few came anywhere close to hitting. Only the artillery was easily visible from the sky, and unicorn soldiers were trying out a new tactic; they would shoot off their crossbows, then fire beams from their horns. The strategy proved effective. Many black bodies crashed to the ground, either pierced by crossbow bolts or magical beams. The enemy dive bombing squadrons, severely depleted, withdrew back into the sky. Meanwhile, back on the ground, a number of Changelings managed to gain a foothold on the southern shore of the river, and began moving forward, green beams flying from their horns. Fortunately they were bad marksmen; few of them hit anything, and since most of the Equestrian army was in fortified and camoflaged positions, many of them weren't even shooting in the right directions. Artillery fire decimated the enemy warriors on the ground, but for every one that was hit or shot, two or three more seemed to take it's place. They kept moving forward, the rear ranks taking the places of those before them. James lifted his own crossbow, took aim at a particularly tall Changeling, and fired. The enemy warrior started to lift a porous hoof to it's forehead, then crumpled with the movement uncompleted. He began the reloading process; it was tedious in any sense, but especially while lying flat of the ground. Enemy beams filled the air, and he didn't want to risk being seen and shot. Thunder roared; lightning began to strike the Changelings in the river. Even more Changelings were shocked by the electric charges that hit the water, and were electrocuted; most died, although a few survived, and a small number of survivors from the lightning attacks managed to swim or ford their way to the river's edge and continued to move forward, weakened and crawling but still determined. Suddenly, the Changelings on the northern shore began to pull back; they turned tail, without another look back, and fled back toward their encampment. I wonder what's eating them; it's not typical behavior for them to retreat. The ponies still had to deal with the enemies on their bank of the river; apparently they hadn't gotten the message to fall back. The Changelings still in the river kept going as well. James got another unexpected but nonetheless welcome surprise minutes later; the enemies in the sky began to fall back as well. Those still on the southern bank of the river kept going forward, oblivious to their comrades' retreat. However, without a flow of reinforcements, they failed to advance very far before being cut down, by ground fire as well as lightning. In a few minutes, the remaining enemy warriors had been mopped up; a few injured Changelings were taken prisoner. They chattered away at their captors in some insectile-sounding language; James didn't think they were offering endearments, especially when they tried to resist their captors when they could muster the strength to do so. He got up from his position, and took a look around; there were no more live enemies still in arms on the field. His own forces seemed, at first glance, to have sustained very little damage, which, considering they were fighting from behind cover or in trenches, which were all camoflaged. The artillery crews had suffered most, but they had suffered no fatalities. As the pegasi began landing, he breathed a sigh of relief; the flying ponies had perhaps been the most vulnerable units in this battle, and they didn't appear to have sustained heavy losses. He took a closer look. He couldn't see Silver Lining anywhere. Oh God, please, no... He heard wings flapping, and looked up to see a silver-coated pony being carried between two pegasi, who landed a few feet away. He ran over to them. "What happened?" "He was shooting lightning at the enemy, when one of the flyers nailed him in the right side", one of the ponies bearing Silver said. "At least I managed ta blast one outta tha sky with that lightnin'," a familiar, Scottish voice said. Silver turned his head to look at his commander. "Dinna worry sir, I'll be back befor' long." James nodded. "Good to see you're alright." Silver's smile slipped. "I wish I could sae tha same for some others; saw 't least two pegasi fall outta tha sky, and I hate ta sae et, but they won' be coming back." The human winced. That was the problem with any battle; you could do everything right, and still die or lose members of your command anyway. "We'll find them." "Tha's good." The pony groaned. "Now someone get me ta the medics, I hate havin' this damn hole in me side." The ponies holding him carried him away. While glad his friend was still alive, James knew he had a job to do. Silver Shield ran forward, just as he had before the start of the battle, and saluted. "Sir, we beat them. We beat them, and sent them running home with their tail between their legs. I suggest we pursue." "No, Shield, that's begging for trouble. We're going to fall back. They know where we are now, and their queen will be trying to find a away to hit back. We're going back to the camp." Shield looked disappointed, but didn't argue. "As you wish, sir." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The army drew back immediately, even faster than it had come forward. They had good reason to; less than half an hour after they pulled back, the Changelings launched a massive airborne attack on their former positions; James enjoyed the sight of them blasting the now unoccupied positions. A number of ponies actually laughed upon seeing them demolish an area for no purpose. It was made even funnier by the fact that the enemy didn't seem to notice that no one was shooting back until it was much too late. James had taken stock; they had lost eleven pegasi dead, with nearly half of the survivors having sustained various wounds. The ground forces, mercifully, had taken few casualties, with no dead. He had no reliable estimates on the enemy's losses, but he assumed they were in the hundreds, perhaps over five hundred. The artillery and the lightning strikes had accounted for a large proportion of those casualties, with crossbow quarrels and magic beams accounting for the rest. He had changed his mind; the army would entrench itself on a hill about half a mile from the river crossing; from there, they could monitor the enemy, and bombard them if they tried to cross again. From this height, he could get a much better view of the Changeling hive, and so could everyone else who was keeping an eye on it. It looked even uglier and nastier from here, although he was two miles away and could make out little. The Changelings hadn't tried coming forward again since the withdrawl, but a few of them could be made out in the trees, if anyone looked hard. After two stinging defeats, it was about time that they tried gathering intelligence of their own. A gun boomed off the James' left. He didn't want the Changelings to get any nasty ideas, such as imitating one of his soldiers and infiltrating the camp through such a method. To that end, he was trying to keep them as far away as possible. The cannonball slammed into a tree not far from a Changeling picket; the tree collapsed immediately. The cracking and snapping of wood could be heard easily. The Changeling didn't move, indeed, barely flinched at the tree's fall. "Hey Jim." Bright Star walked up behind James, with another pair of hooves being audible as well; he suspected they belonged to White Knight. He turned around, and found his suspicions to be correct. "What's with the cannon fire?" "Hmmm. I'm hoping to keep them at arms length, to far away to try infiltrating the camp. Every one of their scouts we knock out is one that can't report what it has seen." "Ah. I wish we could hit their camp from here." "No, you don't. That would make them charge us again, and we're not prepared for it yet. In any event, we haven't got anything out of the prisoners we took." That was nothing but the truth. The prisoners taken in the first two battles of the war had refused to speak to anyone, with the exception of throwing insults at their captors and screaming their queen's glory and that Changeling victory was right around the corner. "Mmmph." Bright sounded - and looked - disdainful. "They don't seem to get that we smashed them twice. We can do it again anytime we want to." James didn't nod at that, but he was glad the army's morale was high. They had won two battles against a foe who outnumbered them to a massive degree, and had lost relatively little in exchange. However, while it was true that victories generally taught less than defeats, he had learned a few things from this one. They had won because the enemy had pulled back for some reason known only to them, and because they had improvised at the scene. The foe had thrown in an aerial attack that had made things harder, and if they had put more of their strength into it, they would have overwhelmed the Equestrians through sheer force of numbers; if they had thrown their full force into the attack, they would have overwhelmed the ponies sent against them. He had also reformed his theories on how the Changelings communicated; it didn't seem to be a mental link of any sort, as he believed the forces in the air and in the river - and on the river bank - would have pulled back at the same time. He decided it had to do with the language he had heard from prisoners; it didn't look as if they used English when talking with each other. In any case, the army had proved it was smart, reliable, and ready to fight like heroes to hold back the invaders. They would be ready to fight again, when and where they had to.