Carlo's army marched over the border into former Quaterain territory, where he was met by an interesting sight as they passed the Marais de Crapaud. A band of eighty or so longbowmen in leathers and brown and green mottled greatcloaks marched out of the marshes as if appearing by magic. At their head was a man in blackened chainmail armor with a longsword in addition to his longbow. Renard Armond, Seigneur de Quaterain, and the remnant of his forces approached and asked to speak to Carlo.
"The damnable Bastard of Savoie has confiscated my lands. Punishment for resisting his annexation of Quaterain, I was told. He gave them to one of his retinue of Foot Knights, a Guy de Gisoreux. Guy has been sending parties of levy troops to go around the outlying farms of the Seigneurie collecting taxes of food and coin for the army encamped in my hall. We have done what we could to ambush said parties and return at least some food stores and coin to the people, but my efforts are limited. You, on the other hand, may succeed in driving out the Duc de Bouellia altogether." Began Renard.
"What are you driving at Signore? If you have a request, speak candidly." Demanded Carlo.
"Only that should you promise to restore my lands to me in the event of victory, then I will swear fealty to you. It is clear that my ability to defend Quaterain is somewhat limited on my own. I would rather make an agreement with an Orc than with the Duc de Bouellia at this juncture, so that leaves you." Offered Renard.
Carlo nodded at that, it made sense. A pair of villages with a few surrounding farms wouldn't be able to provide much more than the woodsmen that Renard had already, and if it was a choice between him and Duc Ferenc, well, as the man said, he'd rather swear fealty to an Orc than the man who had invaded his lands and confiscated his hall. In the end, it was no choice at all. He would lose little by promising Renard his lands back and would gain the fealty of twelve hundred people for it.
"I promise that I shall restore your Seigneurie to you in the event of victory in exchange for your fealty. Your men and mine are both witnesses to this promise, as is Bellona Myrmidia, si?" Intoned Carlo.
"Of course, however, if it's all the same to you, I will wait till that promise is fulfilled to swear my fealty." Nodded Renard.
From there, Renard's eighty Longbowmen fell in beside Carlo's forces as they marched northwest to the Village of Quaterain Proper. Of the two large villages in the Seigneurie, Quaterain was the most populous, with six-hundred souls living in it. The other village was named Grenouille and was nearer to Marais de Crapaud than Quaterain, which lay along the northern edge of the Groenhout. Grenouille had five hundred people living in a village on stilts on the edge of the Marais. The remainder of the populace of Quaterain lived in scattered, small, farming communities of no more than twenty people, not even large enough to be called villages.
As the Army passed by Grenouille, heading for Quaterain, Carlo noticed a rider galloping ahead of his army on the horizon. With his Myrmidia-given upgrades, he could tell that it was a footman of Bouellia who had been mounted on a spare horse and told to watch the glorified goat path that passed for a road. As soon as the footman spotted Carlo's army, he turned right back around on his horse and galloped hell for leather back down the road. His horse's hooves tore up gobbets of mud from the muddy dirt road in its haste to speed back to Quaterain. Soon, even Carlo's enhanced senses could no longer see the rider. It seemed that the Duc would get forewarning of Carlo's attack.
The question was whether or not the Duc would offer battle, retreat, or make a stand behind Quaterain's wooden walls. The last would be foolhardy, as his entire army would be caught in a siege behind walls that would barely slow Carlo's army. The first would be less foolish, as if he could extricate his army from the battlefield in good order, the Duc may yet retreat to offer battle elsewhere, or even engage in hit-and-run tactics while avoiding battle. The second option was the most sensible and would be the one Carlo would pick were he in the Duc's predicament, probably in conjunction with the aforementioned hit-and-run attacks to bleed out the enemy of men, morale, and supply ahead of a more planned battle.
As it happened, the Duc chose to make a stand outside the wooden walls of Quaterain. Once Carlo got a look at the walls of Quaterain, he could see why. Instead of the half-timber-half-earth construction, he had been expecting, the walls of Quaterain were entirely made of wood. Only the craftsmanship, which was clearly of good quality and in good repair, kept Carlo from calling the wall a palisade. The wall even had crenelations that archers could hide behind to avoid counterfire in a siege. The problem was that times had changed, and while this might deter greenskins with their ramshackle catapults, or Bandits who often lacked siege equipment, a cannonball would shatter the wooden fortifications if there was no earthen rampart to better soak up the impact. Not that Carlo had brought any cannon with him.
Instead, the Duc drew up on the plain outside the walls with foot knights and men at arms anchoring the center of his lines, levy spearmen on the flanks, and yeoman archers in the rear. Behind even the archers, among the reserves, was the banner of the Duc de Bouellia and a banner of a gold chalice on a white field, which Carlo supposed was to represent the Brettonian Lady of the Lake. There, with the banners, was the Duc de Bouellia and his personal retinue of twenty foot knights.
To face this force, Carlo drew up his Guardsmen in the center, interspersed with militia crossbowmen. Militia pikes were on the right flank, while the left held Zwingli's Blue Banners. Renard's contingent of Longbowmen he had arrayed in front, to pepper the Duc's forces as often as possible as soon as possible. When the lines closed, the Longbowmen would retreat back behind Carlo's line and start firing volleys over the heads of Carlo's men and into the ranks of Bouellians. Carlo himself fought in the front with his Guardsmen, unlike the Duc, who seemed to be more comfortable among the reserves.
"You all know what to do! If you follow your training, stick with the plan, and do not falter, then we will emerge triumphant against those who would subjugate us! Renard, you and your men may fire when ready, everyone else, stand fast!" Ordered Carlo, channeling the power granted to him by Myrmidia into his ability to inspire men to fight.
In response, Renard went out among his forward-positioned longbowmen and gave the order to fire just as the Bouellians began to move forward to attack. Renard's Longbowmen loosed their first volley among the Bouellians and it had an outsized effect on the levy spearman compared to foot knights, men at arms, or what have you. Most of the Levies had little more than a padded jack or leathers in terms of armor, and while some contingents had kite shields and kettle helms, others had to make do with smaller targe shields and leather caps. The poor equipment and poor training were the death of many of those worse-equipped levies. Meanwhile, the men at arms wore brigandine over chain hauberks, had kite shields and kettle helms, and were able to defend themselves from volleys of arrows. The foot knights in their full plate armor barely had to try to defend themselves. Unless one of Renard's men was an extremely good shot and could put an arrow through a visor at these distances, they would have to get exceedingly lucky to down a foot knight in full plate armor.
Still, Renard was able to winnow down the numbers of peasant levies quite handily. The first volley downed fifty, the second seventy, and the third eighty, as his longbowmen switched targets to those less armored or trained. Of course, that wasn't to say that the Duc's archers were idle, only that they had been placed so far back that they could not return fire on Carlo's forces until after the second volley. All of Carlo's troops however were well-trained and had at least chain armor. The Duc's longbowmen had only killed or wounded thirty of Carlo's men, though, of those, all but four would live to fight another day. On the other hand, by the time Renard's men fired their fourth volley, and their last before needing to retreat, they had killed or wounded two-hundred-sixty-five of the Duc's men.
Of course, that was when the lines finally clashed and Carlo found himself in the thick of it. Channeling power to his armor and sword, he thrust his suddenly on-fire sword into the face of a Bouellian Man at arms fighting to get past the pike wall of his guards and succeeding until that point. The tip of Carlo's longsword pierced the shocked Man at arms' face just below the noseguard of his kettle helm, killing him and setting the man's head alight. He turned to see a foot knight in a green and white Surcoat with swans emblazoned on it bring his greatsword around on the haft of a guardsman's pike, chopping it apart and moving into the pike wall through the gap. Carlo attacked the man with a shout and managed to feint a strike to the head well enough that the Knight overextended his guard trying to parry the clearly magical blade. That allowed Carlo to instead, whip his blade around and bury it point first into the Knight's exposed armpit. His magic longsword slipped through between pauldron and breastplate, easily parted the mail and gambeson beneath, and killed the Knight.
Carlo engaged with a pair of Men at arms who had slipped into the pike wall from the simple expedient of having double-teamed one of Carlo's Guardsman, hamstringing the man. He had just struck out at the first Man at arms when he was alerted to the presence of a charging Knight to his right by the battle cry echoing from the Knight's throat. Fortunately, the Knight's battle cry died in his throat as a crossbow bolt pierced the man's neck between helm and gorget. The cry turned into a strangled wet gurgle as the Knight died. Attention freed up by the Crossbowman, Carlo channeled power into a strike that cleaved through one Man at arms' torso, chainmail, brigandine, and all, and carried on to batter the sword out of the Second Man at arms' grip. His follow-up strike did not have the godly power behind it but killed the man dead enough.
A pair of Knights rushed forward at one of Carlo's Guardsmen as Carlo turned to face a third Knight. One of them caught a crossbow bolt that punched through the breastplate and chain underneath and into his lung, while the other was impaled by the Guardsman's pike. A burst of power saw Carlo cleave apart the kite shield of his Knight and carve through the gauntlet and hand beneath, maiming the Knight who fell back clutching his ruined hand with a cry. Carlo booted the knight back and the man fell to the ground, in shock.
On and on it went, an hour and a half of screaming Men at arms, dying Knights, bleeding Guardsmen and snapping pikes. The Duc had to send in half his reserves around forty-five minutes in to avoid the collapse of his right wing after Zwingli's Blue Banners butchered most of the levies there. Eventually, however, the Duc's appetite for absorbing casualties ran out and he called a retreat back into Bouellia. Quaterain belonged to Ijssel. It only cost them around a hundred killed or wounded, seventy-five of which would eventually be fit for duty once again after healing up.
The Duc de Bouellia got off much worse. Three-hundred-twenty-six Bouellians had been killed or wounded in the brief, but intense battle, of which one-hundred-nine were dead or would die of wounds after the battle. It was over a three-to-one casualty ratio in favor of Ijssel. It also accounted for more than a Quarter of Bouellia's total army. Combined with losses from the battle near Eechlo, almost half of Bouellia's entire strength was now dead, wounded, or captured. The first two days of fighting were such crushing victories that even the townsfolk of Quaterain felt like throwing open their gates to Carlo's army. Carlo promptly marched the First Guardsmen Company, along with Renard and his Seventy-five remaining longbowmen up to the large fortified manor in the center of town and proclaimed Renard to once more be Seigneur de Quaterain. Renard knelt on the spot, swearing fealty to Carlo and the Counts of Ijssel right there on the steps of the manor. The townsfolk cheered, as did the forces inside the Village. It was a time to celebrate victory and liberation.
The campaign would resume in two days with the invasion of Bouellia itself. . .
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AN: Yeah, disproportionate casualties for Bouellia. What do you expect when one side has glorious solar bullshit and the other doesn't. It helps that both Zwingli and Renard count as Heroic Mortals for the purposes of the Exalted side of the crossover. Which added plus two to Carlo's army's might score.
Duc Ferenc really didn't have a chance. He barely had one before all his cavalry got killed or captured last chapter. Now? Well, it's a foregone conclusion how this war will end. All that remains is to see how it plays out.
Renard has a little of Robin Hood in his DNA. If Carlo knew the charm to do it, he'd be a perfect candidate for enlightenment. Unfortunately, Carlo does not even currently know that turning someone into an enlightened mortal is a thing he can do with the right charms. He is still figuring out what he can do at all right now. He's going to have to talk to the High Priest of Myrmidia in Myrmidens to even start making progress on stuff like that.
Before then, he is locked out of martial arts, sorcery, artifact crafting, and the other, more esoteric bits of being a Solar Exalt. That includes charms that let you enlighten mortals. By the time he does, some of the other various powers will have worked out exaltations as well.
At any rate, the next chapter will be the advance into Bouellia Proper including the battle of Castle de Estang.
Stay tuned