TIRDAAG
BATTAL DU YONSTONE
The Third Day
The Battle of Yonstone
Yonstone Field's Signpost Hill in winter, similar conditions to the battle.
After the raid, the Rebel council convened. They discussed the events, the seriousness of their situation finally dawning on them. Maps were brought out, men were armed and knights were mounted.
At first, many spoke of different plans. The Duke of Highmark, Johnothan Talain put forth the bold idea that they should strike quickly, with overwhelming force, and move as fast as they could without becoming lost and separated. Other Dukes –Haderic Reinhold and Mordred Kath, advised caution. Kath in particular was wary and sober now that nearly half his force had been taken out of the fight.
The decision was made minutes later. It was a bold plan. They would leave the baggage train, with the wounded, the siege engineers and the civilians, along with most of their supplies, and make a fast march into Yonstone and attack as soon as possible.
They marched at the Hour of the Hart (10 AM) and hoped to arrive before nightfall.
As they rode with the knights in the van, the Dukes spoke with one another, falling back into the companionableness that they had shared the night before. Duke Talain and Duke Van Der Meere were deep in conversation for much of the day.
The armies marched as fast as they could. Midday came and went without halt, as did the early supper common to most militaries. Night fell, as did the temperature. With it fell snow. At last light, as the hills began to thin, Duke Otto looked behind him. Heavy grey clouds were blowing in from behind them. The wind was in their favour. A storm was coming. It was the Hour of the Falcon (7PM)
Near Signpost, the Imperial commanders were still debating when the enemy army arrived. Resignedly, they formed up on the low slope of Signpost Hill. Alistair took command of the cavalry on the right flank, and ordered his skirmishers forward. A thick snow began to blow as his archers planted their shafts in the ground.
As they did, Alistair rode out in front of the lines.
“Men,” he said. “The foe has much more than us. They have more cavalry, more equipment, more men.” He paused. “But God is on our side,” he declared, his voice absolutely confident. “And with him, we cannot fail!” There was a loud cheer, weapons were thrust unto the sky and shook about, and mailed fists beat shields.
The rebel lines were arrayed radically differently. The infantry had the rear, with the horse in the middle and skirmishers ahead. The dukes had convened, and had decided that their cavalry could be used best in an all-out charge. Otto’s men, his two hundred feudal knights, had the center, where his two squires carried both the Blacke and Imperial banners. With a wave of his sword, the skirmishers advanced. The rebels were confident. They had the wind, which was blowing fiercely now, at blizzard proportions. The temperature dropped.
Green:Westmark
Blue:Seamark
Crimson:Havermere
Maroon:Lowmark
Black:Blacke
Gold:Arundart (Imperial)
Silver:Highmark
Grey:Greymark
Purple:Ridemark
Otto rode out before his army and raised the visor on his beakhelm. “I see foes out there, who would usurp the office of Emperor unlawfully.” He said, pointing with his sword. “Who would bastardize our Empire. They would murder Dukes who do not agree with their heresy. I see cravens and fools!” He turned back towards his army. “And here, I see friends and good lads, who are willing to stand by me, to bleed with me, that I may call them my brothers. Do not fear their arrows, for remember the truth…God send the right!”
“God send the right!” roared the massive Blacke army. It was heard in Yonstone, two miles away, and certainly by the Imperials on their low hill. Weapons were beaten against shield bosses and horses reared. Banners were waved, and trumpets sounded. Duke Otto lowered his visor’s beaked helm with a definitive clank.
The rebel troops unsuccessfully tried to light their arrows and quarrels on fire, but the majority of them went out in the wind. Nevertheless, the rebel skirmishers sent as many projectiles skyward as they could.
The rebel archers were firing with the wind to their backs, boosting their range
Meanwhile, the imperials were suffering from terrible luck. The heavy wind blowing in their faces whisked every one of their arrows off course and scattered them over the field. The archers cursed their luck and racheted their cranquins again.
Without warning, the rebel arrows rained down out of the blizzard on them, some of them dipped in pitch and burning. Though many hit the ground and stayed there, hundreds fell on the skirmishers. Padded armor saved some, but the lethal bolts and arrows pierced through in many cases. Some two hundred men fell shrieking and dying. Others caught fire as their thick cloth armor went up in flames, and they struggled out of it, or frantically beat at themselves. The next volley came while the imperial archers were still reeling from the first. This broke them. Those not felled turned and ran, many throwing down their weapons as they fled.
Alistair watched in dismay as the great bulk of his crossbowmen and archers routed in panic. He still had the reserves –seven hundred Seamark crossbowmen, as the men who had fled were from Avenon and Greymark, but they would do scarce little. Then, the arrows began to fall among his infantrymen. The rebels had adjusted their range. “Shields up!” he bellowed. The men scrambled to respond, holding their shields over their heads. They winced and trembled as arrows thunked into the wood and hide. Here and there, a man wailed as an arrow found a gap in the ragged defenses and sunk into flesh. They held firm however, and for ten long minutes they suffered the hail of arrows.
When it slacked off, finally, after nearly fifteen minutes, Alistair lowered his shield, raised his sword and ordered his Charani horse archers forwards. Mercenaries from the east, he hoped that the fast men would catch up to the enemy skirmishers and slay them.
As the rebel skirmishers fell back to their lines in high spirits, the Charani galloped out of the blizzard, loosing arrow after arrow. Dozens of men died, and more were injured. Whooping, the charani wheeled for another pass.
However, when Haderic Reinhold saw them turning, he gave a great shout, and hungry for battle, led the knights of Westmark on a charge. They trampled an entire company of their own crossbowmen in their haste to come to blows with the foe however.
Despite this embarrassment, the effectiveness of the charge cannot be understated. They smashed through the light easterners like a hurricane. Lancing them by the dozens. Then, they laid about with their war-swords, and battle-axes. Though the Charani fought back, for every one of the sixty six knights unhorsed or killed, the Westmarkers slew four. They put up a desperate defensive, but by the end, some four hundred of them were slain. Within five minutes of the beginning of the melee, the easterners were routed completely, and fled into the blizzard. The knights jeered after them, and some hacked down the fleeing ones.
As the knights returned, celebriant, back to their own lines, they were met with roars of encouragement and shaken weapons. Underneath his beaked helm, Otto smiled thinly. He turned to his squire “Raise the banner, prepare the charge once Haderic reforms.” He felt that, considering how well things were for the rebels, now would be the time to charge. Battles were won or lost on moments like this. His squire raised the imperial banner and the trumpeter brought the signal trumpet to his lips and puffed out his cheeks. Then his eyes widened and the call died in his throat. Otto’s head whipped around to follow his trumpeteer’s gaze.
Out of the blowing snow, the enemy heavy cavalry, six hundred knights, the assembled nobility of Greymark, Avenor and Seamark, were charging, screaming war cries and shaking lances. “Reform the line,” said Otto. He lifted his visor. “Reform the line!” He stood in his stirrups and yellwd to Duke Hadeirc, who was still re-integrating himself into the cavalry-line with his knights. “Reform the line! Take the charge, take the char-!” The imperials hit his formation, and Otto was flung off of his horse by a Greymarker knight’s lance. He hit the ground with a crash of mail. Otto coughed heavily, tasting blood. Confusedly, he got to his knees as chaos unfolded around him and dazedly drew his sword, calling for his squire. Then, a Greymarke rknight rode him down and trampled him. He was flung and tossed like a sack of grain until the knight rode on. He lay on the groundfor a long while. Blood dribbling from his mouth and into his beard. He had lost his helmet. Broken fingers grasped weakly for his sword.
The other Dukes watched Otto’s formation crumble in horror. They were stricken with confusion and indecision as their leader’s men were butchered.
In the end, it was only through the actions of the few of Otto’s knight-guard to survive the charge that complete disaster was averted. Either mounted or afoot, they hacked their way through the melee to Duke Otto’s stricken body, and defended it with such fervor that none passed them. Though many died, and in the end only twenty one were left alive, they kept the foe from their lord’s body.
Alistair, exultant, joy in hisheart, waved with his sword, directing the men. “Fall back!” He roared. “Fall back and regroup!” He knew if they stayed, they would be taken apart. The Seamarkers retreated in good order, but the Greymarkers fared poorly. They were hit from behind by the knights of Highmark as they withdrew, and every man of them was cast from his saddle or killed ahorse. Their duke, Douglas Skarner, his horse killed beneath him, slew four of the foe, refusing calls to yield until a Westmark knight rode him down and split his helm and skull with a battle-axe.
The rebels quickly convened, locating Otto among the great many dead and wounded, guarded by the pitiful remains of the knighthood of blackmark. They asked him to name their next commander, before he was given too much poppy syrup to be in his right mind. He named Haderic Reinhold acting commander of the rebel army, before he lapsed into an agonized sleep.
Alistair rallied his men. He had only four hundred knights remaining to him, three hundred of them landed feudal knights from Seamark, the other hundred his own personal guard. He debated for a long moment. Finally, he rode back to his lines, just as the blizzard was beginning to die down.
He reigned up in front of them. “Men…know that it is very like that we may die tonight.” He addressed his infantryman. “But let it be known that he that stands beside me this night shall be my brother! Should, by some happy chance, we prevail, I will to every man here grant a knighthood, for let it never be said that valor goes unrewarded.”
With that, he swung his leg off his saddle and dismounted his horse. He faced his men, drew his sword and knelt, clasping his hands around the pommel. To a man, the rest of his army joined him in prayer. Alistair intoned but the simple prayer that opened the temples on the holy day.
“Our Lord,” murmured Emperor and assembled soldiery. “King in Heaven, Blessed be the Saviour. Though we sin, we hold you ever in our hearts, for yours is the true path to glory. Save the innocent, and judge the guilty, as ever you have done. In the name of The Blessed Ortha, we pray” They were silent, each man sending his own prayer up to heaven. Then, he stood, and ordered his men into lines. Fifty long and two deep. He himself stayed dismounted and ordered his knights to as well. Alistair was a competent general, and knew that the advantages he had had while ahorse were now mostly gone, and his knights could serve better on the ground, aiding the men-at-arms. As he took his place behind Seamark’s armsmen, the first arrows began to fly. “Shieldwall!” he ordered, and raised his own. His knights as well rushed to protect him.
Duke Drekkar of Seamark, however, ordered his own knights to stay ahorse. He still had three hundred of the nobility of Seamark with him, and would use them as best he could, to blunt the rebel advance. Though the Emperor belived that they should dismount, Drekkar knew he had enough men to still prove useful in a cavalry charge.
The rebel advance itself was slow. Primarily infantry, with the demi-lancers of Ridemark on the left wing and the knights of Westmark on the right, the vanguard was held by Duke Van Der Meere’s Guildsmen, supported by Westmark’s crossbowmen and Lowmark’s archers. The bowmen kept up a steady stream of arrows up the hill as they advanced. They landed in the snow or thunked into shields. None of the Imperial soldiers were yet hit. As they waited, the snow stopped falling, and the moon began to shine through the clouds.
Duke Drekkar turned to his trumpeter. “Sound the charge.” The man eagerly nodded, put his lips to the mouthpiece and let out a long note. The Seamarker knights surged forwards, their hooves kicking up snow and beating out a thunderous rhythm as they neared the rebel vanguard.
Duke Josefys, who was marching with the vanguard of guildsmen, saw them coming through the moonlight and pointed with his war hammer. “The enemy is there, men!” he shouted. “Look to your weapons!”His heavy guildsmen hefted their heavy infantry spikes –massive wooden spear-clubs, whiel the lighter-armored guildsmen drew their swords and ran to the fore, placing their long shields on the earth and bracing them. Meanwhile, lowmark bowmen and westmark crossbowmen loosed projectiles at the approaching horsemen with amazing speed.
When the knights hit the rebel advance, it was chaos. Lances shattered against the makeshift palisade, tower shields shattered, horses fell, the wounded screamed. The light guildsmen had blunted the charge. Then the men with infantry spikes rushed forwards and began the murder. They took a perverse glee bordering on the unseemly in beating, crushing, stabbing, goring and killing the knights. Duke Josefys laid about with his war hammer bashing skulls and crushing ribs. Those battered seamarkers who remained –less than half of the three hundred who had began the charge, managed to withdraw, though they slew some dozen guilders before fleeing back to their lines. As he saw this, Alistair’s ever-present frown deepened.
Among the knights captured by the Haverish was the Duke of Seamark. His leg was broken and he had been dragged bodily off his horse and brought before Josefys Van Der Meere and put in chains. Then, Van Der Meere and his men were recalled by Haderic to the rearguard, and fresh troops, Duke Jonothan Talain’s five hundred shock soldiers, who wore heavy armor and carried two-handed weapons for breaking sheildwalls, replaced the haverish in the van.
While the rebel force stalled, rearranging its deployment, Alistair noticed something. The snow had stopped, and the wind had died down to barley a blowing whisper. Mind rushing, he turned and shouted for the seven hundred seamarker crossbowmen that were all that remained of his missiliers. They rushed forwards, shoving their way through the sheildwall, eager to exact revenge on the foe, and raised their crossbows.
The shocktroopers did not carry shields, and fought on the front, and so they were always paid double. As they advanced, many of them died. Perhaps fifty men were left behind, bleeding in the snow as the shock troops advanced. Several of their fellows dragged the wounded to safety. Finally, they drew close enough that the imperial crossbowmen retreated behind their fellows. Moments later, the shock troops hit the sheildwall. The melee was long and intense. Dozens of Highmarkers died within minutes, but what they gave was even more. Nearly one hundred of the foe were slain, and gaps began to form in their shieldwall. However, the rank behind them reinforced it. When one man died on the front, another rushed up to take his place. The shieldwall held, though, and the combat continued, a brutal shoving match that dragged on for ten whole minutes. Elsewhere, the men at arms began to advance on the rest of the shieldwalls. They held their shields up in front of them as protection, and insults and screams of rage are thrown over the twenty yarns of ground that separated them.
As Alistair watched this unfold over fifteen minutes of gory combat, he spent the last minute of it pissing in the snow. Then, he drew his sword and turned to his feudal knights. “Men, if a gap appears, hold it!”
The rest of the lines now collided, both having formed shieldwalls. Men shoved with their shields and tried to stab with weapons, but for eight minutes, no one gained any ground, nor died.
It is the small things that decide battles, however.
A seamark soldier stepped a pace back under the vicious shove of a Westmarker and his leg tangled in his scabbard. He fell, dragging his comrades to the left and right with him. With a shout of triumph, his foe, a Westmarker man at arms stepped forwards and thrust his blade through the man’s throat. The northerners rushed into the gap, compressing the foe, and toppling seamark men. Within moments, it was a completely one-sided slaughter. The entire regiment collapsed. Men fell and were stabbed or axed. Others, seeing them fall, fled in abject panic, only to be cut down by the hundreds of Westmarkers now rushing through the gap in the line.
Alistair watched silently as the battle line, and his empire with it, shattered.
The Imperial crossbowmen, seeing the chaos, turned and ran. Already outnumbered, men-at-arms saw the fleeing bowmen and joined them. Mass panic set in. Shields and weapons were thrown aside and men ran without direction. The Blacks pressed on, whooping and shouting as they cut down the fleeing foemen. Hundreds of seamarker infantrymen surrendered to Westmarkers, only to be butchered by the northerners, drunk on victory. Ivan Kuldinya and his riders broke formation and pursued, the Demi-lancers cutting down the fleeing. Jeffri, Marshall of the Empire for but a few short days, rode up to Alistair, who was watching the chaos numbly. “Your eminence,” he cried, “The men have been routed!”
Alistair turned towards Jeffri, and gave him a queer look. “I can see that,” he said calmly. He looked around him. All but fifteen of his knights had deserted him. He stepped back and addressed Marshall Jeffri and his knights both as the enemy approached. “We were born in order to die,” he said. He drew his sword. “You may do so in whichever way seems best to you.” He started towards the enemy, sword in hand.
Two of the knights followed. Others turned and ran, joining the rout. Most drew their swords and threw them down at their feet along with their gauntlets, surrendering and resigning themselves to capture. Jeffri looked conflicted. He was said to have gazed towards the town, where his new bride was. Then towards the utter mayhem of the former battle line, where the foe was pouring through to chase down and butcher the fleeing remnants of the imperial army. What he would have said or done is unknown, for he was one of the few men ahorse on the field, and bore the Imperial Banner, the Ornstandert, with the Imperial Eagle displayed proudly on it. He wa perhaps the most visible of all the Imperial forces.
Across the field, a Talain crossbowman named Mitton took careful aim at the bearer of the Ornstandert and loosed a bolt. Jeffri DuMath’s scream was cut short as he toppled off his horse,a crossbow bolt in his throat. A dozen Blacke knights ran up, moments later, to capture the surrendered knights. One is said to have looked down at the dying Jeffri, and put him out of his misery by smashing in his skull with a spiked mace.
Alistair and his knights went to die. They fought against the foe for several minnuites, and his companions died first. Alistair himself was brought low by a man at arms named Mortimer of Marchfold, who hamstrung him with his sword and then opened his throat without even realizing who he had killed.
The rout was total. The entire Imperial army had fled. Men were hunted down and lanced. Nearly three thousand men were killed as they fled. The rebel troops, chasing the foe, began to descend into wanton pillage. Signpost was burned to the ground and looted by Westmarkers, who found the terrified baggage train of the Imperial Army, where the wounded, the women, children and chirurgeons were hiding. The starving, blood-driven men pillaged, ravished and slaughtered with equal ferocity. Men broke into houses and took what they wanted, mostly food. Those who resisted were slain. Duke Haderic only saved the invaluable carts full of arrows and crossbow quarrels by ordering his knights to secure them before they could be set fire to or broken.
Ivan Kuldinya and his men forwent pilliage, and simply followed the fleeing army, killing as they went, driving a great many of them into the river to drown. When they were satiated with slaughter, many of the men bled off to steal horses from local farms, as in the Ridemark, a man’s prestige and nobility comes from how many horses he owns.
The Lowmarkers were mostly too depleted to play any particular part in the pilliaging, but their archers found the horses left by the dismounted imperial knights and pursued the rout, capturing many enemy nobles, planning to ransom them off.
The Van Der Meeres, the Blackes and the Talains descended on Yonstone itself together. The Blackes were furious, desirous of revenge. The Van Der Meere guildsmen (and their lord, who accompanied them) were looking for loot and plunder, in particular, they hoped to liberate the riches of Yonstone Motte’s vaults. The Talains simply were looking for whatever they could lay their hands on. They took wealth and women alike until dawn. Many of them had drunk their fill of the town’s wine and, exhausted from the battle, simply lay asleep in whatever home they invaded. The aged lord Yonn put up a resistance to the Haverish guildsmen, who allied with a party of Talain crossbowmen and knights in the mutual interest of plunder. They scaled the castle walls, fought the miniscule garrison in a brief and bloody battle (costing them only sixteen guildsmen and a single knight) and put the lord and his family to death before looting the vaults. The slain Marshall Jeffri’s new wife was defiled and nearly put to the sword before a prominent Talain knight recognized her and took her from them for her noble ransom.
Overall, the Battle of Yonstone was costly for all sides. Hundreds, if not thousands of Blacks and Imperials alike were wounded or slain. The fields were trampled by the armies, and the villages and town of Yonstone itself were depleted of people. An entire family line was ended. Though some citizens of the town had fled at the onset of the battle, but of those who stayed, many were killed in the senseless rampage that followed. The town of Signpost would never again be rebuilt, and today, a temple stands there, built by Duke Haderic of Westmark in penance for the atrocities committed by him and his men in the town. The nail-piece at the temple’s steeple is solid iron, in remembrance of the blood spilled in the name of the Imperial Republic. Duke Haderic, horrified by the slaughter of the Imperial army and the predations of his men, would never again take up the sword and go to war himself, preferring a peaceful life of books and quills.
After the battle, Otto was barely hanging to life. He remained lucid enough to speak the words. “Did we win?” but lapsed back into pained unconsciousness before a reply could be given. He was moved into yonstone castle, where the army waited for days, anxious for news of their leader. While they waited, riders were sent to the families of Lord Skarner and Lord Drekkar, summoning them and their knights to Avenon, but no formal spoils could be divided until the emperor was chosen. While they waited, the Eastmarker army arrived, and assured Duke Haderic, the acting commander, that they were coming to join the Blacks. Others doubted it, and ever since, the Eastmarkers have had a reputation for dubious honesty at best.
The army waited for a week, leaving the country un-administrated, until Otto fell into a state in which the chirurgeons said he would surely die. However, he lived, and awoke able enough to ride in a wagon to Avenon.
Here, when the token force that held the city refused to allow the Blacks entrance. Otto sent them a message, written in his own hand, that he would grant every man amnesty if they lay down their arms. The few men in the city complied, and were allowed to go back to their homes.
Then, the army entered Avenon, and the process of choosing a the next Emperor of Rudaur began.
Imperial troops Killed in the rout: 2171: These men were slain while fleeing, or ridden down by Ridemarkers.
Wounded in the Rout: 728: these men were wounded and left for dead, but lived.
Survived the Rout: 4804: These men fled, and over the following months, found their ways back to their homes, or else continued on with their lives, though the memory of their bitter defeat in the winter cold would be with them forever. Many of them escaped by swimming over the freezing cold Elster River.
Highmark shock troops killed: 3
Highmark shock troops wounded: 70: Many were badly wounded, but a great many highmark troops survived with wounds
guildsmen killed: 17: Every guildsman that was injured fighting the seamark knights died, whether instantly or of his wounds soon after.
139 Seamark Feudal Knights killed: The guildsmen took few prisoners among the seamarkers
30 Seamark knights captured by the Haverish.
2 Highmark knights slain: These two men were killed in the charge against the Greymarkers
3 Highmark knights wounded: These men were wounded in the same attack.
28 Greymark Knights killed: Around one eighth of the highmark force, including their duke, was slain.
98 of Otto’s personal guard killed by the Greymarkers
81 of Otto’s personal guard wounded by the Greymarkers
172 Greymark knights wounded or captured by the Talains.
26 Westmark Feudal Knights slain by the Charani
40 Westmark feudal knights wounded by the Charani
99 Westmark crossbowmen killed by being trampled by their own knights
1 Westmark crossbowman wounded by the same.
30 Westmark crossbowmen killed by the Charani
47 Westmark crossbowmen wounded by the Charani
98 Avenite crossbowmen killed in the skirmishing stage of the battle
102 Avenite crossbowmen wounded in the skirmishing stage of the battle (later killed by rampaging westmarkers as they lay defenseless in their wagons)
81 Seamark men at arms killed in the skirmishing stage
19 Seamark men at arms wounded in the skirmishing stage. (Later killed by rampaging westmarkers as they lay defenseless in their wagons)
GM’s notes.
I’d like to say that primarily, boy, those soldiers turned out rather undisciplined towards the end. Except in one case where troops were ordered to be brutal, but that’s neither here nor there. Well done, all of you. This is going to make things interesting indeed.
Also thte map turned out a bit crap.It's missing some commander's places and the blue block that reads heraldic knights of seamark is actually the Charani, but oh well.
Result BLACK VICTORY