Battle · Book 12 · Arcanist · Mixed
The set-piece battle of Shakathet's invasion of the Magelaw, and the climax of Minalan's year-long con against Count Anvaram of Nion. Roughly a third of the "Magelaw" host on the field were Gilmoran knights who had marched north to make war on the Spellmonger and were conscripted in the field, as Royal Marshal Arcane, under threat of treason charges and starvation. Minalan removed Shakathet by single combat under the ancient Alka Alon dueling code; the rest of the host was destroyed on the field, though a 5-7,000-strong gurvani rump escaped east and was reinforced through a Korbal portal.
The Battle of the Eastern Bank is two intertwined stories. One is the destruction of a Nemovort army that had crossed the Wildwater at the Yellin ford. The other, far less obvious to anyone on the field at the time, is the climax of a year-long political confidence game Master Minalan had been running against Count Anvaram of Nion and, behind him, Prince Tavard.
The opening move was Astyral's sequestration of his betrothed, Lady Maithieran of Benfradine, under an obscure but valid Gilmoran customary law that allows a groom to "sequester" his bride during dowry negotiations. Astyral quietly moved Maithieran to Vanador. Anvaram, her kinsman, raised a row at the Royal Court demanding her return. King Rard ruled the sequestration lawful (the girl was being chaperoned by Tryggine nuns, as the custom requires). Prince Tavard, who wanted Minalan humbled, then paid Anvaram five thousand ounces of gold to press his claim by force of arms.
Anvaram duly marched five thousand lances and two thousand crossbowmen north into the Magelaw to make war on the Spellmonger. He brought no magical corps, on the well-meaning advice that "any warmage would betray him." Through the winter and spring the same warmagi he was about to fight were already eating his lunch: Atopol and Ruderal toured Anvaram's own estates with transfer-wands and emptied his hay and grain stores; Planus, in disguise, then sold Anvaram's own food back to him at Vorone; Atopol lifted Anvaram's signet ring from his bedside in a "well-patrolled" camp; Mavone's shadowmage cell rode pickets the Gilmorans never saw.
When Minalan finally walked into Anvaram's camp with twenty-five warmagi disguised as mercenaries behind a peasant's vegetable cart and was waved through unchallenged, the Gilmoran position was already hopeless. Anvaram just didn't know it yet.
At dawn the morning of the battle Anvaram's parley party rode out under a white flag to demand satisfaction. Minalan, Astyral, and Mavone rode out to meet them and informed Anvaram that, as Count Palatine of the Magelaw, Minalan held the standing rank of Royal Marshal Arcane of both Castal and Alshar. In a declared crisis, a marshal could conscript any lawful troops of the kingdom into the defence. Anvaram's five thousand lances were now, as of that moment, under Minalan's command.
The trap was that they couldn't refuse. To desert south meant passing through Vorone, where the Lord Steward had standing orders to arrest as traitors any man returning from Anvaram's army without the Spellmonger's written leave. To resist meant treason charges. To stay and fight was their only honourable exit; the forty thousand great goblins beating war drums a mile north made the case faster than any speech. Anvaram, ashen, accepted and asked what he was to do. Minalan tossed him back his stolen signet ring as a quiet hint of how exposed he had been the whole time.
Shakathet sent his herald out for the customary pre-battle parley and was met with another wizard's bargain. Minalan publicly invoked the ancient Alka Alon code permitting duels between principals during a truce: if Minalan won, Shakathet's host would peacefully withdraw; if Shakathet won, he could take the Magolith. Minalan was counting on three things: Shakathet's reputation as a warrior; his comparatively weak magical training; and the fact that the Magolith was the one artefact Korbal needed to be freed from his rotting body. Avarice over outrage, as Planus had reminded him.
Minalan privately admitted to his staff that he expected the Enshadowed to break the truce regardless. The real point of the duel was to remove Shakathet from the chain of command, since his designated successor was rated by intelligence as a likely disaster. Terleman had been briefed days in advance and endorsed the plan; the rest of the staff (Astyral, Mavone, Anvaram) thought Minalan was mad.
Minalan walked out alone with Twilight, Blizzard, and the Magolith. Shakathet's Dradrien-forged greatsword was built to absorb arcane power and convert it to necromantic energy. Minalan baited him with the Magolith and, while Shakathet swung at the orb, drew a pre-prepared wand from his belt and sucked the Nemovort and his sword into a hoxter pocket. Shakathet did not die (which would only have respawned him in Korbal's dungeons) but was trapped in timeless intra-dimensional space exactly as Khudoz had been.
The Enshadowed broke the truce as predicted. Minalan opened the battle with a wide-range telekinetic blast from the Magolith that obliterated the front ranks of great goblins. Warmagi (Astyral, Mavone, Tamonial, Buroso, Landrik, Caswallon) Waystoned in via the Waystone in Blizzard. The Gilmoran chivalry, now a Royal Marshal's conscripts, charged through the gap with a discipline they had refused to show all spring. Vanadori shieldmen followed.
The wider battle was three-sided. Sandoval brought seven thousand fresh troops south from the escarpment and hit the gurvani rear at dawn the next morning. Azar crossed the Wildwater on Carmella's magical bridge (Shakathet's own bridge, captured earlier in the campaign and turned against him) with five hundred riders and the Megelini Knights, striking the western flank. Mistress Marsden of the Hesian Order ran the field. Dara's Sky Riders worked the centre from the air. Minalan led a twenty-five-strong warmage strike team east around the line and punched through to the Enshadowed magic corps in the centre, destroying it once Wenek and Azar's reinforcements caught up.
The gurvani centre broke. Anvaram's Gilmorans took heavy losses (~1,800 knights killed) but earned the field. A 5-7,000 strong rump retreated east in disorder. Within hours Korbal opened a series of portals at the gurvani encampment, dropping rations, weapons, fresh elite armoured maragorku, fresh trolls in iron helms, and a new pale, tattooed Nemovort commander with a draugen bodyguard to take over the survivors. Minalan, Tyndal (whose Callierd Knights had arrived after the main fight), and Astyral watched the reinforcement from a wooded blind to the south while Terleman tried and failed to get fresh troops past the now-mutinous Gilmorans (who lost almost 1,800 of their precious knights in the battle and wanted to go home).
Shakathet was out of the war forever. The campaign as a whole was not — the resolution of the reinforced eastern rump is the business of the chapter that follows (Bova's Promise Fulfilled), and Minalan's reckoning with Anvaram and Prince Tavard is the business of A Chat with Count Anvaram.
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