(Author’s commentary); I know, I promised you a battle in this chapter, but it took me a while to get everybody ready to go… so… next chapter… I swear…

Also, I really had fun writing the part of this chapter where our main hero, princess Hildy, tries to give the men some rousing words to incite them for the battle to come… let’s just say it wasn’t quite as stirring King Henry the V’s speech on Saint Crispin’s Day in Shakespeare’s play… but it was fun to write.

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The Seven Kingdoms

Chapter Twenty Five

Hildy had a brief moment of panic. They weren’t ready for this, and the Skulls weren’t landing troops in the harbor as they had expected them to. They were landing them on a beach outside the bay. She took a deep breath.

“Girls, put your food down,” she yelled to the triplets. “Run to the nearest camps, and tell every man you see that the Skulls are landing. Tell them to spread the word to get all the troops ready and lined up for battle.”

The girls did as they were told without a word.

Hildy turned back to the messenger boy. “Has the fleet been notified?”

“Yes, commander,” the boy assured her. “All of us were sent out, all the messenger boys, I mean. Not only to the fleet, but to all the nearest towns. They are telling the soldiers to start marching towards Smilingmantown, and for the townspeople to take all the military gear they can move and hide it and themselves in the woods.”

Hildy wasn’t sure if having troops rushing towards Smilingman town was a good idea or not. “Which side of the bay are they landing their troops on?”

“This side, commander,” he answered, after pausing to get a mental picture of the area. “The very first beach on this side of the mouth of the bay.”

That concerned Hildy immensely. The last thing she wanted was for small groups of her soldiers to stumble into a large force of enemy troops. “Seevan, I need you now!” she called out.

The boy was already standing right behind her.

“I have a job for you. The most important job you have ever been given.” She knelt down, grasped his shoulders, and looked into his eyes. “You need to run like the wind. Our men will be marching down the roads leading to Smilingman town. You need to stop them, tell them to cut through the woods and come here, to the camps. If we have left already, you can tell them to follow us towards the coast.” She grabbed his hands and led him to the big table. She took the big map of Smilingman from a shelf nearby and unrolled it, showing him where to go. “Can you do it, my loyal friend?”

“I can help, commander,” said the other young messenger.

She turned back to him. “What’s your name?”

“Tarn,” said the messenger.

“Very well, there should be three groups of our soldiers that are in the most danger, coming down these two roads from these three towns.” Once again, she pointed at the map. “There will be others following, but I doubt they will get here in time for the battle. After you stop the first groups, stay by the roads. Hide in the woods. Send any of our soldiers to the camps first, then to the beach.” She knew that she might have just delayed potentially valuable reinforcements who might well be needed at a critical moment, but she couldn’t have it both ways.

She walked quickly into her room as the boys ran off to carry out her orders, and began strapping on her newly-dyed leather armor. She put her helmet on her head. Zar had followed her to the door.

“What should I do?” Zar asked the commander of the army.

“You are going back to the castle, and taking my three staff assistants with you, along with any other women and children you see on the way there.” Hildy grabbed her spear and pushed past her.

“I want to fight with you!” Zar said through clenched teeth. “They killed my husband.”

Hildy turned and her face was stern. “Do you want them to kill you and his unborn child?”

Zar had no answer to that.

Hildy went on relentlessly. “A lot of my friends might die in this battle. We might not win it. If we don’t, you can decide to fight when they attack Smilingmantown and the castle. And if we do win, it won’t be because we had one more person in the battle lines.”

Zar didn’t argue. She gathered up the three ladies who were still sorting and filing reports, and began to herd them towards the door. She stopped and turned suddenly. “The triplets! You have to send them to safety too.”

“Of course I will, now go.” Moments later, Hildy followed them out the door. Zar and her helpers were hurrying away down the lane to the main road. Coming in the other direction was a large group of people. She saw Lawry and Sanara, king Aluff and prince Nudge, as well as the Caster brothers, and they were all in uniform and armor. There were also about forty men, some of whom were pushing three wooden carts. These men all wore the yellow patches of the fire troops. The carts were loaded with oil jars and flame balls.

“Thought you might like a few of these with you,” Sanara said with an ecstatic grin.

“You didn’t think you were going to fight without us, did you?” asked Tull mischievously.

“We are getting quite good with these little spears,” added Tolly, reaching around to pat the spear carrier on his back.

“We are ready to fight!” agreed Aluff, brandishing his own spear.

“We are with you, commander!” shouted Nudge, also thrusting his spear into the air. The rest of the men, men whom she had never met, and yet were trusting her to lead them into battle, all gave a cheer. Hildy felt their strength being added to her own.

“Well, let’s get to it, shall we?” she shouted back at them. She realized immediately that this was not exactly a rousing speech with which to send men off to war, but she figured she would do better next time.

They set off down the lane and back onto the main road, and soon they could see the army gathering in ranks beyond the fields of young breadgrass. They cut between two of the fields and made their way between rows of tents, and there was Kellum Bloom, getting the men into line. Hildy considered the fact that he still didn’t really have an official rank in the new army, and reminded herself once again to fix that as soon as she possibly could.

The sight of row upon row of soldiers, grim faces and nervous, but prepared to risk their lives along with her, was incredibly moving and more than a little terrifying. She knew all too well the price to be paid for failure. She went and stood beside commander Bloom in front of the center of the long ranks of men, as those that had just arrived with her took their own places in those lines.

Her army stood five ranks deep, and stretched quite a ways to either side of her. She new from the reports roughly how many men were in this, the main camp. Four and a half thousand, give or take. The rest were spread across the kingdom, and manning the forts and guarding the queen and her castle.

Some of the men before her wore the new uniforms, some were still in their old uniforms that hadn’t been dyed yet. A few of the newer troops wore only white tunics. Some men had leather armor, and she saw some in the new cloth armor, and quite a few with no armor at all. A number of the men had the iron spear blades affixed to their staves, and the rest didn’t, but, she was gratified to see that every man at least held a staff, and that the vast majority had a sling and a bag of stones slung to them. A very few of the men had quivers full of the new throwing spears as well. She had no way to know how much practice each man had had with the weapons that they held.

The men she had brought with her to Smilingman were spread out amongst the troops they had been training that very morning. She recognized the familiar faces that were close enough for her to make them out. She realized that this made sense. To separate them out now would cause delay, confusion, and perhaps, resentment.

She was again struck by the fact that she had absolutely no plan of battle. She had thought that there would be more time. She should have been walking the ground, looking for good places from which to fight. She should have made multiple contingency plans based on what the enemy might do. She had been naive to think that the enemy would just sail into port, giving her time to move troops to help the fleet fight in the bay.

Kellum Bloom, the former commander of the army, seemed to sense that Hildy was overwhelmed. He touched her arm, and she turned to him. He smiled at her, a very nice and very calm smile. “Commander, I just spoke with an elderly gentleman, a woodcutter, who saw the Skull fleet landing troops from the top of a hill where he was working. I’m sure they thought they were being very clever, but they really picked a very bad spot to land. That beach won’t allow them to bring their big ships close to the shore, and the waves on that beach are particularly bad. No doubt they are finding that out right about now as they try to get their men ashore in longboats. It is going to take them a while to build up a large force.”

“You know the beach well?” she asked hopefully.

“Indeed I do, commander. I wasn’t allowed to swim there. Too dangerous, as I said,” he replied lightly. “But my friends and I used to run wild all through the hills around that beach when we were young.” He paused and turned to a soldier standing behind him. “Jaff, give me number two,” he told the man.

The soldier reached into a large, wooden box he carried on a strap over one shoulder, and pulled out one of the many rolled pieces of paper inside, handing it over. Kellum Bloom unrolled the bark paper and turned it so that Hildy could see it too. It was a map of the area around Smilingmantown, done in tremendous detail. She held one of the edges so that he could use a free hand to point with.

“Here is the beach, commander,” he said, and then moved his finger directly inland. “And this is another reason why I said that they made a mistake picking that beach. The beach is the outlet for this valley, an old riverbed, actually, that cuts through a low range of hills that is directly beyond that range of hills.” He took his finger off the map to point at the hills behind him, that formed one side of the valley where the army was camped. “I assume that their plan is to land, and then march on Smilingman and the castle, using the road that runs right down the coast. But we will be in this valley above the beach,” he returned his finger to the map,” well before they can land a large force. They can’t very well ignore us, and let us come in behind them. They will have to fight us first.”

“We should send out scouts,” Hildy said, realizing she hadn’t even thought to have men assigned to this duty.

“I picked a small group of men who know this area well, and sent them to observe the enemy, and to send reports back as soon as they know anything useful. I took it upon myself, only because I was closer to the beach than you.” He sounded worried that she might think he was taking to much upon himself.

“That valley looks like a good place to fight,” she said. “If we get there before they finish landing all their troops, we can march right down and hit them while they are still disorganized and outnumbered. If not, we can lure them into an ambush farther up the valley.”

“My thoughts exactly, commander,” he replied.

“We will place our main force across the valley where they can be seen, but also put forces on the ridges to either side to sling rocks and flame balls at them from both sides as they advance to meet us. Is the valley narrow enough for that? Can our men climb the ridges, and are there enough trees or bushes on the ridges to conceal our men?” She could almost feel this spot on the map calling to her.

Commander Bloom had a look of excitement in his eyes. Without ever seeing the land in person, you have divined the perfect plan and the perfect place to carry it out.”

“Then let’s get the men moving, commander,” she said calmly. She turned to the ranks of soldiers awaiting her orders, and, raising her spear point high into the air, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “let’s go show the Skulls what we’ve learned!”

The men closest to her cheered and shouted and raised their weapons. Her words were repeated, moving off in each direction, the cheers and shouts following them. Some men tried to yell her words, turning them into a chant, and get the men around them to join in. Unfortunately, her words did not lend themselves to this attempt, and it died away in a somewhat anticlimactic manner.

I really need to come up with a short, simple, catchy phrase for the men to shout while going into battle, she considered to herself. She gave a mental shrug, turned, and pointing her spear towards the coast, began walking.

Behind her, the army followed.