Chronicles of the Asturien

Battle in the Valley of the Winds

The air itself was tainted with the stench of… death. The way the smell was unique reminded him constantly how death was so final, and yet universal to the point that even a young child could know its smell and the meaning of it.  Smoke rised from several houses where bodies lay, sprawled in the floor the murderers made no distinctions between children, women, old, young, or even pets for the matter… “- Sir? Are you felling alright sir?” Uther Di Asturien looked down from his horse into the face of his young squire whose name was Cerval. "Poor thing" Uther thought to himself, "young as he is and already the cold truth of war has come to haunt him. “- I’m fine Cerval, go and bring me Sir Robert here will you?” Uther said to which his squire was all to happy to comply. When he looked back to see his squire vanishing in the mist in the direction of their encampment he once again laid his eyes on the rotting corpses of the people in the village around him… The winds howled in this valley, it gave him Goosebumps for they seemed like screams of agony and death, he wondered if it was his imagination or if it was the screams of spirits haunting these lands, he dismissed these thoughts as he turned around to see Giselles approaching.

Uther glanced towards Arakasi, knowing that most the other knights in the tent did as he, what the man was asking for was pure suicide, nobody doubted that, and most of them complied with an honorable death, but the tactics this man wanted were not reasonable at all, even tough everyone knew that this was an intelligent man, and as such, they blamed the fact that he had not slept for days since they had discovered that one of the burned villages was from his own land.   “- What you ask for Arakasi is madness! The peasants will never hold the right flank alone against a force that number! Have you forgotten what our scouts told us?!” Said a knight called Etien from the north, from Bretonnia. Uther was sure he had not forgotten the frightened reports the scouts had given them. His words where not to be trusted, yet his description implied well over a hundred thousand marauders and mercenaries in this army they had been tracking down since they had attacked several villages in the border princes, many near the land of the Asturien, that was mostly the reason why these knights had been gathered, most of the experienced knights at the table were veterans from Bretonnia who had settled in the border princes, yet some, such as Marcel, Ferran, Giselles, Montgallion, and others were Lords from Bretonnia and been called for by a messenger sent to the castle of the round table to make sure that this army would not cross the Border into the east of Carcassone, where coincidentally was the land of the Asturien, which was only one more reason for Uther to answer the call to arms with all the men he could get, yet he had not gathered all the men he had, and he knew that nobody of the other knights had, simply because despite their teachings of tactics, they had underestimated their enemies, they thought that it was surely only a couple of thousands of weak rebels and such, it was one of the worst mistakes Uther knew they had made. He had been called himself by his comrades, he answered the call with nine hundred men at arms, two hundred bowmen and at least sixty young knights eager to earn a small parcel of land. Yet even all the Elder knights owning lands at the table , which were thirteen in total were not enough to bring the numbers to fight in these odds, their army consisted of fourteen thousand men at arms, three thousand bowmen and roughly six hundred knights. “- What if we put a thin line of twenty men deep in this middle section , yet in a manner that they are so close to each other that the enemy will not be able to distinguish it from the other sections in the middle, thus we may gain at least eight hundred men to reinforce the right flank.” It was a radical tactic proposed by Sir Guillaume, yet all the knights knew that he had not earned the title "courageux" for nothing and he had lived until today using most of his improvised tactics, yet it seemed reasonable enough to work considering that the terrain where they were going to station their middle was very plain. “-Well, if that tactics does work to let us support our right flank while we go with our knights by our left  how will we know that twenty men deep will hold them long enough for us to hit deep in their centre and hopefully panic their army?” It was a reasonable question which was answered by another knight called Chretien. “- If we leave at least a detachment of knights, lets suppose, two hundred knights lined behind that section of our middle force and make that section even more thin, thus giving us more reinforcements for the right flank and when the enemy eventually breaks trough our line of men the knights charge into the fray.” It was a good tactic, yet all knew that it mean they had less chances of hitting deep enough inside the enemy. After a series of debates regarding the tactics most of the knights settled for the two combinations of tactics described by Guillaume and Chretien, and so, with only some hours away from dawn and from the day of the battle they dispersed throughout the camp.