Chapter 13

The sound of a thousand men, gathering equipment and falling into formation was plenty loud the next morning, but it was the sound of 18 horses and their riders which cut through the morning. The arrival of the wounded scouts caused a ripple of silence and sudden stillness. Garth got down off his horse as Narn approached the group, a grim look on his face. “M’lord. The Sorcerer’s army has started moving. And he’s left behind most of his human troops to push ahead with the demons and his cavalry. He’ll only be 3 or 4 days behind us at most. And he’s got demon hounds patrolling the area around his army constantly. We lost Rilen and another trooper to the damn things.We would have lost more if they hadn’t stopped to devour the bodies.” A look of revulsion crossed his face as he spoke and he looked back, “I’ve got several wounded as well though we did manage to kill one of those things before getting away from them.” Narn nodded said, “Take your men to the healers then. I’ll come to talk to you some more later. See that they get treated though.”

Galdacil spoke as he approached Narn, even as the scouts moved away towards the infirmary, “This sounds like an ideal opportunity to hit him. He’s left behind most of his footsoldiers, we don’t have to worry about hitting humans now.”

Narn shook his head though, “No it’s not. Those demons can move faster than your cavalry if they really choose too, short term anyway. And we wouldn’t have the time to play games with them out there. If he’s smart and we tried too he’d just force march to the castle itself and leave us with our best troops stuck outside the castle and too few to break through to the castle itself. It might not be too bad with a smaller group but if the three of us got caught outside the castle itself would be in some dire straights.”

Erimbril had quietly joined the two, “He’s right. On the other hand perhaps Narn can take his scouts out and ambush them a time or two. Morale here isn’t going to be great but if we can sting the army before it gets here it’ll do a lot of good to keep the men here fighting.”

“We can sting them, some ambushes against the demons and then fading back into the woods around here. I’ll need at least one healer to come with us though so we can take care of our wounded.” Narn looked back over the troops and sighed, “And I don’t think we’ll be able to stand by ourselves. We should really consider whether we can convince some of the towns further out to turn against their Sorcerer’s and join us. We are going to need help against these forces if he can bring up his human footsoldiers while the Demons keep you pinned inside.”

Tel’mar spoke up, “The town of Khratoum is only a week away by horse. And it’s one of the Sorcerer Terimak’s towns. He’ll likely have left other troops there and it’s traditional for the troops to surrender to another Sorcerer if the demons in the town are defeated.”

Narn nodded at that point, “Our best bet is to hit the army before it gets here and then head for the town. We aren’t going to be much help here once things settle in. And if it wasn’t for how low morale was I’d suggest just leaving the castle and making a run for it. Do you think you can hold out long enough?”

Galdacil looked around the castle and it’s walls, “We should be able to last at least a couple of weeks. When this is over though we are going to have to sit down and really put togethor a strategy. The rest of the Sorcerer’s aren’t going to sit around waiting for us to come to them and we need to figure out what we have to work with.”

Weldan grunted in response to that as he and the rest of the captains came up, “Let’s get through this first. The troops want to know if they are moving out or not.”

“Let them stand down Weldan, but the scouts will still be going out. We’ve go preperations to make though.” Galdacil nodded to Narn, “Take care out there.”