The Battle of Kolopa

After the noggish invasion forces arrive at Kolopa they lay siege to it.

They initially use Lunarian shock troops teleported into the city.

There is later a large battle outside Kolopa when other forces from Enttland etc arrive. The battle is nearly lost but Vegan forces arrive just in time.

From the Portal of Returning:

*It all started on the morning of the seventeenth day of the siege, with the allied reinforcements arriving on the Lahtl plains. The nearest to them was the Lunarian army, and a portion of it was sent off to meet them, charging into battle on their white ponies. A minor battle occurred, and the Lunar cavalry were repulsed. We watch all this from the battlements on the south wall, cheering on the Lodz lancers as they chased the Lunarians from the field. Almost immediately Carris decided to send a large Vegas force to sally forth to meet them, and the gates were opened. A noggish force in turn attacked. Soon, more and more troops were committed to the battle, as the day progressed, which centred around three farms in the valley.  Some of this I learned about after the battle, some of it I witnessed first hand. The allied advance met the main body of the Lunarian army on the southern side of the river, and the fighting centred around the farm and mill right by the water. The Lunarians were no good at large manoeuvres though, and around one in the afternoon were finished as a fighting force, and their place was taken by noggish reinforcements. Carab, Apic, Boris and I rode onto the field at about three, and we ended up at the farm of Tallmount, which we defended for three hours, until the whole army was pulled back onto higher ground.*

*The farm was large and had stout walls. We joined a battalion of Vegan warriors, and a mixed brigade of Enttish yeomen and Lodz infantry regulars. The fighting was desperate, as the nog infantry tried again and again to take the farm. Each time, I was involved in the desperate hand to hand fighting on the walls. I lost sight of the others, but later Boris came to fight by my side, and told me the other two were helping defend the gates which had been piled high with overturned carts and bales of hay.*

*I was utterly exhausted from the fighting. My supply of magical power had been used up, and I was forced to use my staff to defend myself. I freely admit I am no fighter, and more than once I had to draw my revolver, and use one of my dwindling supply of bullets to defeat my foe. As Boris and I stood on the wall, watching the nog soldiers mill around in the woods, in a brief lull, Carab came up to us, and said, ‘We move now. To the higher ground. Follow me.’*

*It all seemed to be organised chaos to me, I had no idea of what was going on at all, I just followed the others as we jogged up the hill above the farm. We seemed to be joining other elements of the army, and everyone was frantically running around, trying to form up, back into their regiments. Commanders and captains were shouting orders everywhere, seemingly at random. It was six in the evening. I saw Boris rush past me, and grabbed him.*

*‘Hey!’ I cried at him, over the din of thousands of shouting men. ‘Have you any idea what’s going on?’*

*‘We are cut off from Kolopa,’ he shouted back in reply. ‘The army is forming up to meet another noggish charge. It looks like the Lunarians have regrouped, and we are expecting a cavalry charge any minute. You can see them in the woods.’*

*I looked to where he pointed, but didn’t see anything.*

*‘Come on!’ he said, and dragged me off. ‘I’m with Apic and the Vegan royal guard.’*

*We rushed further up the hill. Order seemed to be slowly returning to the thousands of men on the hill. They were forming up into squares. I saw Apic in one of them, dwarfed by the tall warriors he was stood amongst, holding a pike twice his size. He gave me a little nervous wave. We joined him in the tight ranks of the square.*

*The din was beginning to quiet down. We were right on the flat top of the hill, there were no trees here, but all we could see from where we stood, was a patch of grass, and about twenty steps away, the grim faces of the men that forming the square opposite. Boris put his sword back in his scabbard, and picked up a discarded pike. Minutes dragged by, and the hill was silent, but for the muttering of nervous men. More time went past.*

*Suddenly the silence was broken by a cry from further down the hill.*

*‘Here they come!’*

*The ground began to vibrate, with the hoof beats of thousands of horses. I gulped, and tightened my grip on the pike that I had just picked up from the battlefield. The sound of the cavalry grew louder and louder, until I thought it might go on forever, would they ever get here? Then cries went up, and I heard terrible crashes, as the Lunarian cavalry met the squares lower down the hill. I strained to look, but I couldn’t see anything.*

*Then they were everywhere, crazed Lunarian horsemen were charging right into our closed ranks and the battle became mad crushed melee. At one point I had my head pressed right up against the flank of a horse, and tall Vegan warriors pushing into my back. Then the crush broke and I fell to the ground groaning. I realised I had no time to lie around and leapt up and grabbed a pike. It was chaos, the squares had broken, and the battle had dissolved into individual combats. I looked around, and dodged a sabre as a Lunarian horseman charged past me. Another went flying past, and without thinking I swept him from the saddle with my pike, then stamping on his chest I drove it right through him. My system was flowing with adrenaline, and I looked around for another enemy. A call went up, and the cavalry began to disengage, and flee back to their lines. They had been utterly destroyed as a force, dead riders and horses were everywhere. Noticing the carnage for the first time I was suddenly sickened. In some places the bodies were piled in drifts. In one hollow of the hill, it was as if the cavalry had charged right into it, and filled it with their bodies, at least ten deep, and overflowing at the top.*

*‘Back into your squares!’ someone shouted. ‘Back into your bloody squares!’*

*I could barely hear him, my ears were ringing.*

*I looked for the Royal Guard and rejoined them. Boris and Apic looked dazed, but alive at least. There were a lot less people in the square this time. One of the warriors, a tall bearded fellow, whose mouth was a bloody from loosing some teeth in the battle, patted me on the back and I looked up at him and gave him a stupid smile.*

*For the second time that evening we stood and waited. Minutes rolled by. We rested wearily on our pikes.*

*Finally from the front someone called, ‘The nog infantry is forming up in the valley!’ and we all looked up.*

*Someone at the rear shouted, ‘How many?’*

*There was a pause, then the reply came, ‘All of them!’*

*Everyone started muttering nervously. One of the warriors by my side said, ‘There are still twenty thousand of them! We will never hold them back, not after the last attack.’*

*No one seemed to want to contradict him.*

*Down in the valley, drums began to bang, and I heard the noggish army stir into life. Twenty thousand booted feet all marched in unison, and if the first cavalry charge had sent vibrations up the hill, then this was like an earthquake.*

*Someone at the front shouted, ‘Here they come, form into lines!’ I think it may have been Carab.*

*Everyone started bustling around, but soon our battalion had formed into a long line. All the other squares had formed into lines as well, and all we could see were the backs of the men standing in front of us. I felt dangerously exposed and had a quick look round. I cursed, when I realised, that as yet, no one was running away. Apic shot me a glance that suggested he had been thinking the same thing.*

*The sound of marching feet grew louder and louder. Our line crept slowly forward to look over the crest of the hill. It was a truly awesome and terrifying sight. Rank after rank of red coated noggish soldiers advanced up the churned up, ruined hill towards our remaining ragged forces, seemingly as unstoppable as the tide of the sea. Drums beat out a marching rhythm, and slowly they got closer and closer, each step shuddering across the battlefield. It was a good tactic, and it was certainly making my knees tremble. For the first time that day, the Lunarian guns roared into life, and to add to our troubles, as if we hadn’t enough to worry about, we came under heavy artillery fire. At first I saw the plumes of smoke rise from the trees in the lower valley, then it took a second to dawn on me what they were, and suddenly cannonballs were landing in our ranks, sending up great clods of earth and men. People started screaming. I crouched down. It was awful, you could actually see the balls come hurtling overhead, like black streaks of death. I knew a little bit about warfare from watching things like the Discovery Channel, and I knew that if we stayed where we were, the guns would decimate our forces in minutes. That meant either retreating, or getting under the guns. I looked down the hill, I could just make out Carab’s head and shoulders, right at the front. He glanced round, to check the army was still behind him. I began to think again, as more cannonballs began to explode into the earth around us. Now, to get under the guns we would have to…*

*‘Charge!’ cried Carab, and suddenly everyone was rushing down the hill, like a tremendous human tidal wave.*

*I glanced at the terrified Apic and said, ‘Oh no!’*

*I grabbed Boris, who would have been off like a rabbit, straight at the enemy, otherwise.*

*‘No,’ I shouted frantically, utter coward that I was, ‘For the sake of our mothers. Hang back a little.’*

*‘Shiv!’ cried Boris, as a ball whizzed right past us, cutting a warrior in two where he stood in a shower of blood and vitals. ‘We are no safer here!’*

*That was true, I admitted, and screaming like a mad man, I raised up my pike and joined the charge.*

*There was a huge crush at the front, where the leading ranks were being pushed onto the enemy by those behind. It looked like butchery. Then I lost sight of the front line as we came down the hill, and all I could see were the backs of the men in front of me. I got that, ‘at the back of the concert and can't see a thing’, feeling again, and I was nearly growing tired of inaction, when the lines began to break, and as if a curtain had been drawn back, I saw the horde of the noggish army right in front of me. I screeched to a halt. They looked haggard and battle weary, but still stronger than us. Bodies of both forces lay everywhere. I looked around to see what was going on. To my surprise, everyone was retreating,*

*‘Don’t just stand there like an idiot!’ cried Apic at me. ‘That’s it, it’s all over!’*

*I turned on my heels, and joined the panicked rout. The nogs gave a massive cheer and rushed to follow us. I could here a group of them panting up the hill behind us, no more than ten strides away.*

*As we crested the hill again, I saw that our army had totally broken. Everywhere, men were running for their lives, in random directions. Panic and fear began to grip my heart. So it was all over. With the battle lost, Kolopa would fall, and what then? This was just another leather booted noggish step towards total domination of mankind by their evil tyranny. Seeing the futility of thinking about such things, I tried not to worry about anything other than saving my own skin, which might well prove to be difficult enough, I feared.*

*As we ran on, I caught a glimpse of a vast dark shape on the northern side of the valley.*

*‘Look Apic! Look! What’s that?’*

*I looked like a massive army was descending into the valley.*

*‘Reinforcements,’ he gasped. ‘But ours or theirs?’*

*‘It has to be ours! Has to be!’*

*And indeed it was, and just in the nick of time. As the noggish army was sweeping us from the field, the long awaited reinforcements from Ixnay had arrived. Many of the original army stopped in their mad flight, and joined the fresh army as it took to the field, just as the sun was beginning to set. I had seen enough for one day though, and Apic and Boris needed no great persuasion to find somewhere quiet to sit down and watch the rest of the battle. The nog were swept from the field like chaff. They had fought a hard battle all day, and had nothing left to give. Soon, they were the ones being routed. They had been so close to victory, and now the Vegans were chasing them back down the valley. By the time night had fallen, there was nothing left to see.*

*‘They have probably chased them right back to the coast.’ commented Boris.*

*I stood up and said, ‘Well I don’t know about you two, but I fancy a bed tonight. Let’s get back to the town and report in.’*

*Wearily we joined the ranks of tired warriors and trudged back to the city gates. Coming the other way, auxiliary forces gathered to attend to the battle field. Through eyes glazed with utter exhaustion I watched as the grave diggers piled the noggish bodies into funeral pyres. The bodies of fallen humans were taken away by their own forces to be disposed of as was the custom of each force. Other camp followers gathered weapons together and other equipment, or rounded up stray horses. And yet other, less official people, beggars and starving mendicants went from body to body looting.*

*A few hours later, more rested, we gathered on the battlements of the city gates, to watch the huge pyres burning in the night. We drank hot mulled wine. I gave Apic a meaningful look, but he didn’t say anything. Adea came up the stairs and put her arm around Carab who handed her a cup of wine.*

*I don’t remember falling asleep, on the cold stone firing step on the battlement, but I awoke the next day in my own warm bed.*