Princil's Magic : Ch.11 : The Invasion Of The Cromil Valley

Chapter 11 : The Invasion Of The Cromil Valley

 

 

     Valdark rode behind the warriors. This had been a mistake. There was nothing up this valley. They had come to a small town along the river. The black ships rowed up the river Cromil, using the slaves they had captured in Cromilil. The knights and mounted warriors rode up the river banks. After the first farms and settlements were burned and the inhabitants killed they found the town empty. The quayside and merchants buildings were emptied of anything useful to the invaders.

 

     Valdark and others were of the opinion that there was little point in chasing a retreating population up this unimportant valley. The goals of Bricas and other cities central to the society of Shalirion were far more important. The rest of this valley was small towns and countryside, and empty forests. As always King Guthelm would make the decisions. He gave the orders to continue. He had committed his people to this campaign and was in no mood for them to stop now.

 

    The paths near to the river were impassable. Thick forest came to the shore and there were rocks between the trees. The riders strung out along the small paths away from the sight of the boats, because the forest and bushes were so thick. Higher ground overlooked the paths which were there. When scouts went ahead they saw nothing, but Valdark and the three sorcerors with him suspected the presence of onlookers. That would make sense for the enemy in this difficult country. The sorcerors were in a state of heightened anticipation.

 

    Leaves trees and rocks led them into paths they would not have chosen. Where they wanted to go the paths ran out and became obscure. Further inland from the water the paths opened up, inviting them away from the river and the boats.

 

    Valdark suspected magic could be at play here, but he searched for sources and methods known to him. He could sense no overt magical influence, but his suspicion continued. Scouts came back having seen nothing. Even a wizard who went forward came back having found nothing.

 

 

The Resistance

 

    As Shalirion normally had no need of a standing army of any size there was little formal structure for defence. In the north, further up the coast towards the northwest there had been attacks from the barbarian lands in recent years, so there a defensive structure had been developed. No one in Shalirion had expected the black ships to come so far south, because they had never done it before. Only powerful sorcery had brought them so far so fast, to the soft belly of Shalirion. Very few Shalirionites knew the arts of war, and even those that knew of some of them had little experience of them.

 

     Alos pushed himself and all the Shalirionites in the Cromil Valley to learn as much as they could and practice what they needed. He admitted his lack of knowledge and took advice from anyone who had ideas or knowledge to offer.

 

     “We cannot stand against them in formal battle,” Alos argued, and none disputed this. We must withdraw up the valley, or into the forests. We will draw them out beyond their food supplies, harry them when we can, and cut them off. We will hide from them, but perhaps there will be ways in which we can waste their energy and lure them to death or capture.”

 

     “We will pay them back for what they did to Cromilil,” said another survivor.

 

     “I lost all of my family and most of my lovers and friends,” said another. “We should kill as many as we can. If we can we should punish them all. Let none of them return to their families!”

 

     “To protect ourselves and our land, and our way of life we must certainly learn the arts of war,” declared Alos. “If possible we will punish these marauders, but first we must seek to save ourselves, and not to waste our lives. We will do what we can.”

 

     To hear the terrible desire for vengeance on the lips of fellow Shalirionites was a sad thing to hear. His happy and pleasure seeking fellow citizens would never have uttered such words before the sack of Cromilil. It had changed them all. And he felt it too.

 

 

 

 

 

Reinhold saw them through the trees. He saw the loveliest women a man should ever wish to possess. The Shalirionite women took their clothes off slowly in front of the Grumandrian soldiers, amongst the trees. “Come closer and look,” they called out, while their breasts hung out for all the soldiers to see.

 

    “Do you want to touch me?” said one particularly beautiful woman with long luscious brown hair, smooth shoulders and slender legs.

 

    Some of Reinhold’s brothers went out there together, armed in case of danger.

 

    “You can have us if you want!” they called.

 

    Reinhold was worried this might be a trap. He stayed back, watching and wishing he had the guts to go to those angels, wishing he could have one of them. He was as excited by them as any of the men who went forward.

 

    He saw the women greeting the soldiers, kissing them and encouraging them to take out their cocks. More than a few of the Grumandrian ‘lads’ did as they were asked, and took out their stiffening cocks. The women bent forward raising their behind quarters for penetration, or stooped before the soldiers, encouraging them out of their armour, ready to lick their cocks when they gained access. More of the soldiers left the path and went out to the naked women.

 

    Then suddenly, when enough of the soldiers were out of ranks and amongst the trees, disarmed and without their armour, the Shalirionites struck. Men of Shalirion, who had been hiding behind trees or up trees, or behind bushes, loosed arrows or jumped down upon us. The women too picked up knives from the undergrowth with which to kill Reinhold’s brothers.

 

     Reinhold related the tale to others of Grumandria’s soldiery in Cromilil weeks later. “And we died, many of our brothers; Gurst, Bornhold, Esterag and many others, some who I had known from my own village. Men like me who wanted a bit of adventure in our lives, and to become rich, in the service of our King. Grumandria had been poor enough for too long. It was time for us to feast from the fat continent, the Empire of Shalirion, and they died instead!

 

     “Our mistake was to think we had crushed them already by taking Cromilil and punishing them hard. We really did become masters of that city, and the women we caught in Cromilil were ours to enjoy as we wished. We should have known better than to accept what the women in the forests of the Cromil valley seemed to be offering. They were too confident. We should have read the signs. The signs were that they did not appear to be afraid of us. They did not run and have to be caught. They let us take them, they encouraged us so they could trick us into leaving our lines.

 

     “The survivors, myself included, banded together, and we refused to be lured out again. After that we stayed in well armed groups, and the only women we fucked were the ones we had captured, which were very few and far between.

 

     “There wasn’t much we could do after that. There weren’t so many of us left. We argued. Where were the wizards? They should have been able to warn us!

 

      “Valdark was up ahead in the vanguard at the time, searching for the treasures of Crallion, a town which had been completely abandoned by its inhabitants, by the time we got there. There were good pickings in the warehouses and homes of the prosperous merchants. Indeed most of the people of this strange land seemed to have lived comfortable lives. In all the houses were signs of plenty, even if they had taken much of their food with them when they left.”

 

 

     The horsemen were strung out to get up the tangled path, and were well out of earshot of the black boats. A strangled cry went up ahead, thuds of arrows into flesh, the shouts of Grumandria. The alarm was given, but where was the enemy. Valdark cast his mind to discover the enemy’s whereabouts. They were there, all around them – ahead, up the rise to the left, and amongst them in the forest. He shouted out his knowledge to the riders and sent messages mentally to the wizards on the boats.

 

     The Great Sorceror found concealment! Many of the positions of the archers were concealed. He sensed their presence, but direction and exact positioning was confused. He was at a loss to counter the concealment quickly. His only way of countering the concealment was to concentrate hard on each position in turn, but by the time he made progress the positions changed. What magic had created this? They were arraigned against some creative magic. Rarely had the sorcerors of Grumandria come up against magic as effective as this.

 

 

     To Valdark’s horror he sensed the numbers of Guthelm’s warriors declining as they were caught by longbow arrows and crossbows. The enemy took the warriors on in small groups, unable to bunch. He sent distress signals to the boats, but one boat ran aground near the edge of the river. There was no quayside here. The men who came on small boats created a defended haven while the cavalrymen retreated towards the boats. Their horses had to be left behind with those horsemen who persisted in returning on the narrow forested paths. Those who returned downstream near the banks of the river were chased and few returned to Cromilil with their lives.

 

 

    Princil encouraged the men and women to meld themselves in sexual combinations. Swiftly he could raise the magic of concealment, sufficient to confuse the invaders and prevent awareness of the men’s positions.

 

 

    The Black Fleet returned downstream to Cromilil, wounded and reduced. The proud cruel Knights were no longer so strong. Many of them talked in whispers of the fruitlessness of the recent raid up the Cromil River. Guthelm had overreached himself. There was nothing worth attacking up there. The people of Shalirion had retreated from the valley, and warriors waited in the woods to entrap the Knights of Grumandria. The King should be attacking targets which were worth raiding, cities, fat provinces, not empty places and forests. Raiding was a sensible use of Grumandrians, but annexing and keeping territory was not necessary, They should always raid in force and never be defeated.

 

     They began to talk about King Charlerion and his Pelancirians. They wanted to hold this territory. They were forging a colony. They had a plan and were following it successfully. Some of the Grumandrians admired Charlerion! He did not waste cities, he wanted to use the populations as servants or slaves, profitably. They wished their King had a better plan and might make constructive decisions again. Some of them could see that while Guthelm was growing weaker, Charlerion was getting steadily stronger.

 

     There were many Grumandrians back home who wanted rid of Guthelm. Until recently no one had dared to voice it, but now the whispers against him became stronger, although most still feared him more than they disapproved of him.

 

 

    “Guthelm is driving us to disaster,” said Ethred, one of the King’s foremost Generals. A whole army went up the river, only stragglers came back. What purpose was there in going up the river anyway? We burned some towns and villages, and lived off the land. We could not catch any local people. They all fled from us and withdrew into the forests.

 

     “We kept seeing naked women in the trees at night. Some of our soldiers followed them, so desperate had we become for a wench, only to find ourselves ambushed by bowmen. We stayed where we were after that. We did find some gold and silver in houses we ransacked. There were no people to capture. That is what we usually do. We capture a town or a village, take prisoners, and kill a few of them – to frighten the rest. Then we demand the goods they have been hiding, and they give them to us.