Tag: war

There is another detail that recurs on many stones, almost the only exception to the otherwise crude depiction of the heroes’ bodies. Time and again, the fingers of the warrior-hero’s hands are shown outstretched, explicit and bigger than-life-size. His hands seem to matter more than any other part of his body, perhaps because they were the part of him with which he imposed his power on the world around him. The hand is the agent of the burning warrior self, the essential instrument of the weapon-wielding man. That is also the role played by hands in the Homeric epics. Both Hector and Achilles have "manslaughtering hands," and it is Odysseus’s hands that are steeped in blood as he exacts his final revenge on the suitors. It is as if the hands had concentrated in them all the destructive power of the warrior-hero. And when, in the Iliad‘s culminating scene of mutual accommodation, Priam, the king of Troy, comes to Achilles in the Greek camp, it is through the hands that the drama is played out: "Great Priam entered in and, coming close, clasped Achilles’s knees in his hands and kissed his hands, the terrible man-slaughtering hands that had slaughtered his many sons."

— Why Homer Matters, pp. 138-39

…The horse is also a fighter, unlike many other herd animals and antelopes and deer, their wild distant relations. These animals rely on their numbers for protection, but individual horses defend themselves vigorously against attacks by predators: wolves, mountain lions, and even cheetahs. This is especially true of stallions and mares with foals. For a prey animal, the horse packs quite a kick and delivers a dangerous bite….

— Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, Chapter 1

…In Japan the great monasteries have always tended to accumulate possessions owing to the freedom from taxation and control by the civil governors that they enjoyed, and the right they had of affording refuge to those who wished to escape from the oppression of the competitive world outside. These rights needed guarding in a land like Japan, where the military were not much inclined to be frightened by the ghostly terrors with which the monks tried to threaten them, and so the soldier monk consequently eventuated. Since the temples had so much property there would be no lack of volunteers for the honor of guarding it, and the great groups of temples like Hieizan and Nara (Tendai and Ritsu sects), and later the Amida and Nichiren sects, not to speak of the Shingon of Koya and Negoro, not only resisted the military government, but fought viciously among themselves, in all cases for loaves and fishes, or fish and saké rather, and not for any particular belief in the efficacy of their doctrines….

— Shogun, Chapter 4

The eighty thousand people living in Uruk by 3000 [B.C.E.] sheltered behind walls that were forty feet high and six miles long. Archaeologists estimate these to have cost over five million man-hours to build. The fourth-millennium city occupied about 1.7 square miles, a little bit less than imperial Rome at its peak (2.1 square miles) and larger than classical Athens.

— Land Between The Rivers, Prologue

It is noticeable that the introduction of firearms through the Portuguese made it easier to get some sort of an army of comparatively untrained farmers, though the matchlock did not prove such a great asset as they may have hoped, since it was not very convenient to use when the weather was wet, as it often is in Japan, and its range was possibly not greater, and its accuracy not as great, as the bow and arrow. It is here that there is some difference between conditions in Japan and Europe, for in Japan the samurai was an archer, either horse or foot, and did not trust so much to his armor as the European knights did, neither did he advance in the massed charging formation that would be more vulnerable to gun fire.

— Shogun, Chapter 4

[Anegawa in 1570 C.E.] was a real feudal battle judging by the account in the Mikawa Fudoki, which gives a vivid picture of the bands of retainers fighting in groups, the lopping of heads by sword and bill, the confused mingling of the armies, the clouds of black smoke and dust, and above all the streams of perspiration that bathed the combatants, for it was the hottest season of the year….

— Shogun, Chapter 6

Burnished and shiny like a mirror, the sword, usually about three pounds, was a double-edged instrument of death. For most of the medieval period, at least north of the Alps, its main use was for slashing and hacking, a method that may have given the best results against chain armor. In the Mediterranean, probably due to Roman influence, the thrust was more common. It required less physical strength and stamina and could be more deadly, for a single hit on a major organ would kill.

The design of the sword did not change much in the period 800-1350 [C.E.]. The emphasis was on sharp edges more than a sharp point. But by the fourteenth century, as mounted soldiers switched from chain to plate armor, the old system of slashing was revealed to be insufficient. The tendency was to emphasize the point, which would exploit the joints in plate armor. Its length depended on the holder’s stature, but normally it was about 100 centimeters. According to L. Tarassuk and C. Blair, the typical sword of a fourteenth-century knight was long, with the blade itself being almost 1 meter.

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 134

The military hierarchy of ranks still used in the twenty-first century was already in place by 1600 [C.E.]. A colonel was assisted by a lieutenant-colonel who commanded in his absence. A major supervised training and administration and could command part of the regiment if it became detached from the rest of it. These three ‘staff officers’ were supplemented by secretaries, chaplains, doctors and a provost in charge of punishment. The same pattern was repeated in each company, with the captain assisted by one or two lieutenants, together with an ensign (called a cornet in the cavalry) responsible for the flag. There was generally also a company scribe, a barber surgeon and a number of non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Together, these senior ranks were known as the prima plana, or ‘first page’, on account of their names being listed before all the others in the muster register. The overall size of foot companies fell from three to four hundred, to two to three hundred over the sixteenth century, with cavalry companies averaging around half these sizes. The number of officers remained the same throughout, reflecting the growing emphasis on hierarchical order and enabling more complicated manoeuvres to be carried out….

The officer-to-men ratio remained relatively static after 1590, because of the technical limitations of the available weapons that required them to be used en masse. Around one officer or NCO could supervise about fifteen soldiers, but captains found it hard to command more than three hundred, as the smoke and noise of battle limited their ability to see what was happening and to shout instructions. This was another reason why infantrymen were packed close together in large formations, since it kept them within the sight of their mounted colonel. The flags and drums would be grouped in the centre and used to signal commands to the rest of the unit. Command problems also placed a premium on experienced men and it was reckoned at least a third of the strength had to be veterans to provide cohesion and sufficient old soldiers to teach new recruits the rudiments of drill and how to survive the rigours of campaign….

— The Thirty Years War, pp. 94-95

The composition of the baggage train varied greatly, depending on the time and place and the structure of the army to which it was attached. In [medieval] Iberia, for example, few wagons were used. Instead, each man-at-arms would have a mule carrying four to eight days’ provisions for himself and his servants, and the townsmen would have their own mules in smaller proportion. In England, France, and Germany, large wagon trains were the norm. A provision of one wagon for ten horsemen seems to have been fairly typical. Municipal militia contingents as well as lords had their carts, wagons, or mules. These might be numerous or few, depending on the anticipated duration, range, and purpose of the expedition, as well as the expectations of dearth or plenty in the campaign theater and the wealth of the community from which the force was drawn. One Swiss force of 440 men going to help break a siege marched with only two carts (though they were large, five-horse models): one packed with bacon, dried beef, oatmeal, barley, butter, and salt and the other with cooking gear, dishes, and tools, including scythes and sickles, as it was late June, time for the wheat harvest. A much higher ratio of wagons, around one per twenty or thirty men, was not uncommon, especially when tents had to be carried. The contingent sent by Arras to the French royal host in 1340 had six wagons drawn by nineteen horses for 200 footmen and two mounted constables, for example. Horsemen, especially nobles, required more baggage, both to support their more luxurious lifestyle and because of the need to carry a rolling reserve of bulky fodder and oats for the horses. Hence, considered as a whole, a mixed army, especially one with a large proportion of mounted men, might have as many as one baggage wagon per ten combatants, or even more.

— Soldiers’ Lives Through History, pp. 74-75

At the bottom of the scale is the small fief of a single knight. As a rough estimate, it takes the labor of fifteen to thirty peasant families, working a holding of forty to one hundred hectares, to support one knight, his family, and his warhorse. (A hectare is 10,000 square kilometers, or about 2½ acres.) On such a small manor, the knight lives little better than his peasants.

— Who Lives In That Castle?, Dragon Magazine #80

The [Spanish] Armada’s new Captain General was Don Alonso Perez de Guzman el Bueno, the seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia. He was a country aristocrat of 38, short in stature, broad-shouldered, with brown hair and beard, and a melancholy countenance. His name was one of Spain’s oldest, and his fortune was considerable: He owned orange groves in Andalusia and controlled the revenues of the local tuna industry. In his role as a provincial overlord, he was known for diligence and tact. But his talents as a military leader were largely untested; when Francis Drake had raided Cadiz harbor the year before, the Duke had hurried in with troops to defend the town—but the town had never come under attack. And nothing seemed to mark him for naval leadership. He had never captained a fleet of ships. He had never seen a battle at sea.

The last thing Medina Sidonia wanted was to conduct the Armada to England. While [the Marquis of] Santa Cruz still tossed with fever on his deathbed, [King] Philip wrote Medina Sidonia a letter that hinted at the forthcoming command; the Duke’s response was prompt and plaintive. “I wish I possessed the talents and strength necessary for such a great task,” he wrote. “But, Sir, my health is too poor, for I know by my small experience afloat that I soon become seasick, and always catch cold. I am deeply in debt. My family owes 900,000 ducats, and I have not a single real to spend on the expedition.”

Medina Sidonia’s letter did no good, for Philip had made up his mind. “If you fail, you fail,” the King wrote back, “but the cause being the cause of God, you will not fail. Take heart and sail as soon as possible.” Undoubtedly the King placed special importance on Medina Sidonia’s possession of a great name. In an age when ancestry counted for much, the Duke would command automatic respect from the proud and jealous sea captains at Lisbon. No lesser nobleman could quiet the squabbles over honor and precedence that were bound to develop after the death of the Marquis of Santa Cruz. And no doubt the King reasoned further that, despite his cries of poverty, the Duke would contribute handsomely to the Enterprise. In that the King would prove correct….

— The Armada, pp. 63-64

…[Nobles] brought with them to war a variety of noncombatants, including heralds, musicians, clerks, chaplains, cooks, body servants, smiths, carpenters, miners, barber-surgeons, physicians, and so on. In addition to these members of royal and magnate households, armies would usually have with them very substantial numbers of unattached camp followers—prostitutes, butchers, women selling provisions, shield merchants (shields being prone to demolition in combat), cobblers, and washerwomen, among other groups. Guillaume Guiart gives a nice picture of them in a French army camp of 1304 [C.E.], crying their cheeses and breads, dispensing wine from casks, baking tarts and pasties, and getting into trouble of various sorts. The number of noncombatants marching with the baggage was always large and could in fact be greater than the total number of fighters, though the army of the Free Companies in 1368, with 20,000 pillagers and women for 4,000 combatants, was doubtless an extreme case. Because all these people added as much as fighters to the logistical burdens of the army, and because some of them tended to cause disorder in the host, commanders often tried to keep them to a minimum, and it is interesting to note what that minimum was considered to be. The Crusaders against the Hussites ordained that no one below the rank of knight should have more than one servant and that no women should be permitted in the army. Charles the Bold ordered that no soldier in his ordinance companies should keep a woman privately in his quarters; instead, there were to be a maximum of 30 women “in common” for each company of 700 men. Richard I, for one difficult march, ordered all women to be left behind the army, except for 300 elderly women, considered necessary for washing clothes and heads and removing lice from the soldiers, at which task they were as skilled as monkeys.

Along with carts, wagons, and camp followers, the army would typically also be accompanied by large quantities of food on the hoof. For the start of his Murcia campaign, for example, James the Conqueror provided himself with 1,000 mule loads of wheat, 2,000 of barley, 3,000 cows, and 20,000 sheep. This would, of course, require large numbers of drovers and muleteers. The sources offer little clue as to how exactly these vast herds and flocks were managed, but they can hardly have been allowed to separate the rear guard from the main body; that would have been begging for defeat in detail. Most likely, the livestock, and often also the noncombatants who were not attached to the households of particular soldiers or contingents, were left to trail behind the army proper. This would have left them very vulnerable to attack by enemy cavalry, but they were probably usually given some protection by small escorts of men-at-arms detached from the army, and of course, despite being so-called noncombatants, wagoners, sutlers, and muleteers were normally armed and would fight to defend themselves, with some advantages provided by their wagons themselves.

— Soldiers’ Lives Through History, pp. 75-76

On the first day of January 1544, Yagyū castle was brimming with secret activity, and it wasn’t just for the New Year’s festivity of O-Shogatsu. That evening Ieyoshi had convened a council with the headmen of his shinobi, the ‘secret men.’ Trained in the art of stealth, their main task was the gathering of information. For a clan the size of the Yagyū, intelligence meant survival. Ever since they had joined Emperor Go-Daigo’s cause, the Yagyū had relied on intelligence rather than brute force to achieve their aims. Go-Daigo’s defeat at Kasagi had taught them an important lesson: it had been the stealth of their night attack rattier than their superior numbers that had made the enemy victorious.

The Yagyū were one of the few clans to have their shinobi. Powerful chieftains simply hired mercenaries to do their dirty work—spying and winning by stealth wasn’t part of their mindset. Proud of their martial prowess, they relished the challenge of testing it in battle and poured their heart in the strength and valor of their armies. The spies they hired were of low stock, shallow, unreliable men who massaged their message to suit their client and were known by a large number of names: rappa, suppa, toppa, dakko, all of them derogatory.

Being only a small clan, the Yagyū knew they had to rely on more than just military might. For almost two centuries now, they had maintained a small force of shinobi. Recruited from local clans, these men of stealth passed their skills on from father to son, forming a large regional network of spies who could be mobilized at the drop of a hat. They had proven their effectiveness in the recent battle for Kasagi-dera when they had helped both to anticipate and trace the attack from Iga.

The Yagyū shinobi had developed skills surpassing those of the average spy. Called ninjutsu, or hidden technique, it was a skill-set that embraced a great variety of disciplines. They were able swimmers, could go on next to no food for days on end, and could climb the steepest walls. To do this they used a so-called uchikugi, a small iron anchor attached to a long rope, which they would hurl over a defense until it caught. Even without it, they were able to scale a castle wall making use of the crevices between even the most tightly laid stones.

Unlike regular warriors, who had just one or two weapons of choice, shinobi used a large range of weapons, including the popular shuriken and makibishi, but also a variety of farm tools like the nata (billhook) and kama (sickle). Their sword was the shinobigatana, long enough to hold its own against the regular katana, short enough to carry on one’s back. Their favorite weapon was the kusarigama, the notorious chain sickle, after the piece of chain that connected the sickle to a small weight. Whipping the weight forward, they could entangle an opponent’s weapon or limb and draw them in to strike with the sickle.

There was a strict hierarchy among the Yagyū shinobi, and each group had its own specialty. The secretive Kitanoyama, who lived among the mountains on the eastern edge of the Yagyū domain and had served them since the very beginning, specialized in teisatsu, reconnaissance. They could make their way into any stronghold and memorize troop numbers, weaponry, down to the place where a harness had been made. Only the teisatsu wore the typical dress of the shinobi, a dark, short-sleeved uwagi tucked into a dark karusan hakama, the hakama with trouser legs, but tapered down to fit tightly around the shins. In winter they would wear warm, padded garments, but never any form of armor. Nor did they wear the regular headgear. Instead, they wore a dark cowl, leaving only their eyes exposed. Their sinister appearance and exceptional ability to disappear soon gave rise to outlandish rumors that spread among a superstitious populace who came to believe shinobi could fly through the air and walk on water. The last one had a kernel of truth, for one of their shinobi had once escaped by staying under water and breathing through a reed.

The Obo, who lived a few miles south along the road to Uda, were different. They had specialized as kanchō, spies who mixed with the troops of hostile clans, thus extracting valuable information on troop movement and influencing morale. The best of them were able to insinuate themselves into the highest ranks, gaining direct insight into an enemy’s strategy. Their’s was one of the most dangerous roles, but also the most valuable.

The Sakahara, whose village lay a few miles down the Yagyū Kaidō toward Nara, had developed a special talent for kakuran, ‘agitation.’ They were masters in stirring up resentment and spreading rumors among the subjects of enemy warlords. They were looked down upon by the other shinobi, but not by the Yagyū chieftain, who knew how to value psychological warfare.

Only the shinobi from Iga and Koka rivaled those of the Yagyit in stealth and subterfuge. Yet, as the recent events at Kasagi had proven, when it came to a pitched battle, the Yagyū warriors amply made up for that.

— Victory Through Endurance, Chapter 2

…What if the best ratio of supply to demand [for materials of war] is not found in the big city, which has to stay peaceful and organized to attract trade and reap taxes, where the state is strong, and men, arms and magic are regulated…? What if instead the deals are to be found on the borders of civilization, where swords and mail are regularly looted from the slain? Stocks in the house of war have to be high, for any day now a warlord could strut by looking to garrison a castle or equip a company. And if magic items are bought and sold, the ones useful in a fight are more likely to command a good price in a place where the line between life and death is as clear as the sea’s horizon.

— The Price of a Hauberk in Gomorrah – Roles, Rules, and Rolls

From Leonidas to Alexander the Great to Wellington to Stonewall Jackson to Rommel, the very core of leadership has always been to set an example and let soldiers see that their leaders care about them, share the same risks and conditions. In the old [U.S.] Army horse [cavalry], the leader’s creed was: “Take care of the horses first, then your men, then yourself.” The best way to get this message across is by living as the troops do, leading them up front, and always, always setting the example: first up, last to eat and last to lie down.

— Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts, Chapter 5

Firearms upset the balance between offense and defense. More mobile versions of the cannon that had proven their worth in France in the mid-1400s entered Italy with a bang in 1494 [C.E.]. Charles VIII of France swept down the length of the peninsula to Naples in a matter of weeks with an army of 18,000 and a horse-drawn siege train of 40 or more cannon. Fortresses that were expected to resist for months were taken in a matter of days. Strategic planning changed overnight. Everything now depended on stopping the enemy in battle before he reached the walls of the city.

— Firearms: A Global History to 1700, p. 62

Marangan led us out of the office and down the hall. Double doors were propped open to reveal a large, high-ceilinged place. There was a faded sign over the entrance that announced the Kapatiran Marangan Kali. I didn’t understand Tagalog, but I knew a training hall when I saw one.

These places are all different and all the same. Spaces empty of embellishment or ornamentation stripped down and filled with the smell of sweat and the lingering psychic charge of effort and adrenalin. A Japanese training hall may be matted or have a hardwood floor. There may be some weapon racks hugging a wall and a small Shinto shrine tucked into a corner. But those are the sorts of details only a novice focuses on. The real essence of these places is something more subtle.

Marangan’s training hall had a dingy floor and smudged gray walls. Wiry young men in black T-shirts and sneakers worked alone or together, some with rattan sticks, others using their hands and feet. The wooden floor thudded with their movements and the sticks filled the hall with clatter. If you listened, you could pick up the grunt of effort, the hiss of breath, the emotional give and take of attack and defense. It didn’t have the understated geometric precision of a Japanese dojo. But I knew this place….

— Tengu, Chapter 15

Emphasis mine.

“…Yamashita Sensei is a master of the sword and other arts,” [Ueda] began. But Marangan jumped in. If he were a cobra, his hood would have swelled out in excitement. “And you are his student,” he told me with a slight air of satisfaction. “Come to rescue your master.” He smiled then, and you saw that his teeth were crooked and stained and long like his face. “I honor you for the effort.” Marangan stood up. It was a smooth motion, like a spring uncoiling. “Perhaps you would be interested in my art as well.”

“We gotta waste time with this?” Micky hissed in my ear as we followed Marangan.

“Yeah,” I told him. “Shuddup.” I knew Marangan. I’ve spent most of my adult life with people like him. When he had described himself as a mandirigma—a warrior—it sounded a bit over the top. But people like him lose themselves in a world of their own making. It doesn’t matter whether the art deals with fists or feet or sticks or blades. The pursuit of the art takes hold of you if you do it long enough. It becomes in many ways a reality bigger than reality itself. Everything is judged in terms of it. Including people. Marangan would need to know how I fit in his world. It would tell him how far he could push me and how far I would push him back….

— Tengu, Chapter 15

Author’s emphases in italic. Mine are in bold.

The cavalry action was a technique of warfare seldom practised any more, except on some feudal or xenos worlds. It was a throwback to an antique age of conflict, when military superiority was weighed on a different scale.

But the technique had not disappeared entirely. It had evolved, and disguised its true nature under a veneer of modern technology.

That was what this was, the raw truth of it. A cavalry action. A charge. The simple rules had been laid down long ago, before man reached out to the stars.

The first: maintain formation. Start steady, and do not race ahead of your fellow riders.

The White Scars ran out of the ground smoke in a wide, blade-edge fan. A perfect formation. They came from the south-eastern end of the Colossi outworks, sweeping around north in an arc like the swing of an axe. Three hundred and thirty jetbikes, gunning together. The roar of them was like a scream. Slow smoke tumbled in their backwash, accelerated, whipped, tortured into streamers and whirls and even halos, as the White Scars punched through thicker banks. Crimson pennants bent and cracked from the red-and-white vehicles: Bullock-pattern, Scimitar-pattern, Shamshir-pattern, Hornet-pattern, Taiga-pattern.

Burr stared.

The second: put your spur to your steed only when the enemy is in range.

The formation, already moving, as it seemed to Burr, with dazzling speed, somehow accelerated. The agony-howl of the massed engines intensified. The enemy line, shield wall and extended storm-force had broken step and slowed. They had seen what was coming. Weapons drew up. The jolting gun-wagons began to turn, or stopped to traverse their pintle-mounts. Maintaining the arc line, the formation bore down on them, unfaltering, unyielding, low-level, a racing blur, like a pack of target-locked missiles. The stained light glinted off the blades of the ordu: lances, drawn tulwars, glaives. At the heart of the line rode the Khagan, the Khorchin Khan of Khans, astride his monstrous voidbike. His sabre rose.

Time slowed down, as time always seems to do when something terrible is about to happen. The enemy columns started shooting frantically. The Great Khan’s sabre swung down.

The White Scars began to fire.

Bike-mounted bolters, heavy bolters, some in pairs; rotary guns housed in the nostrils or chins of their snarling steeds; plasma and lascannons; volkite culverins. A raking hurricane of destruction. Contrails and streamers of grey and black weapons-exhaust dragged out behind the bikes like banners. The discharge of it was heart-stopping, the continuation of it numbing. The roar, a frenzied drumming of heavy bolters, sounded, to Burr, like the thunder of hooves, the stables of a god unslipped at full gallop.

There was no ranging fire. The White Scars already had their targets. The first gun-wagons exploded. Others lurched, hammered, buckling. Fireballs lit off across the extended enemy mass from east to west. The storm troop lines began to fracture. Some broke. Some ran. Some tried to retreat towards the sally gaps in the shield line. Whole echelons were mown down where they stood, bodies twisting and lifting, and disintegrating in clouds of churned earth and stitching impacts. A few, unscathed, tried to fire back.

Rule three: shock is the action’s best weapon.

The White Scars ripped in, never for a second breaking formation, despite the gunfire that clipped at them and tore at their armour. One jetbike cartwheeled, gushing flame, rider lost. No one looked back. The bikes crossed the line of the already-dead, the blackened bodies littering the ground, and their anti-gravitic down-force bent, tossed and flipped the slain as they rushed over, their kills jerking and dancing.

Impact. The first ordu riders reached the standing lines. Their guns were still reaping the enemy formations down. They punched through the breaking ranks, crushing through upright men, running over them, smashing them into the sky. Broken forms were thrown up and back, spinning slack and disjointed. Others burst against speeding armoured prows, washing the white ground-smoke red with puffs of aerosolised gore. Lances impaled, glaives scythed. Swords flashed, hooked, slashed. Burr saw one White Scar streak across an overturned gun-wagon. A traitor on its flank aimed a volkite pistol. The White Scar’s back-extended tulwar met his fist before he could fire, splitting the pistol end to end, the hand at the thumb, and the entire extended arm lengthways to the shoulder, where the blade-tip dissected the man’s head too. A kill from the saddle. All in one forward rush. The jetbike was past and on, even as the man spun and fell, sliced through, the cell of his pistol detonating like a flash grenade.

They reached the shield line, slaughter in their wakes. At close range, the bike guns fractured and crumpled the thick sheets of storm-plate, but they could not break them. They broke formation instead, rushing in through the wall gaps or over the shield line, entirely.

Then they fell upon the vast host sheltering behind.

The fourth rule: if you break the enemy line, you are in the heart of them, and war becomes the melee of hand to hand.

From Emplacement 12, Burr could no longer see the White Scars. The shield wall and the smoke screened off the havoc that followed. It was, perhaps, a blessing he was spared the sight. It becomes hard to trust as brothers, those you have seen capable of unbridled savagery.

For the White Scars, the rapacious V Legion, the far side of the wall was another world. Speed, shock and rate of fire had swept them to the shield line with devastating effect. But crossing the wall line had robbed them of speed and line discipline, and the odds were reversed. They were inside the choking enemy mass. Each rider, in a second, had passed from the bright smoke of the open field into a vast back-line of standing infantry. The rain seemed heavier, a curtain unfogged by the blanket of smoke. The assault host was immense: thousands of storm pikes, dripping with rain, ranked for assault; hundreds of thousands of traitor infantry; ready lines of armour, engines revving; monstrous formations of the Death Guard.

The Death Guard. Of all the Traitor Legions, the Death Guard was the one most despised by the White Scars ordu, and the feeling was mutual. The war between the XIV and the V had become a blood feud that would never be cooled. Hatred was too small a word. Even on this precipice of history, the White Scars were known as wild hunters, carefree killers, warriors who laughed in the heat of action, delighting in the fire of war.

There was no laughter now.

Nor were the Great Khan and his warriors fazed. They had done this before. Indeed, they had all known, from the moment they committed to the charge, that this was the goal. Unless enemy fire brought them down in the charging line, this was the highest purpose of a charge action: to reach the enemy, to meet his main strength, to engage, to be in his midst. They knew what to do. Physical momentum had been lost, but a momentum of mind took over.

They broke into individual actions, maintaining as much speed as they were able, preserving what collective forward movement they could. They thrust through the waiting ranks, or dropped into them. The bikes themselves were weapons: their armoured prows, their mass and motion, the crushing downward force of their repeller systems. The traitor host, far larger than even the Great Khan had been expecting to find, was war-ready, but it was not prepared. They were drawn up in deep, pre-battle cohorts. Their sight lines generally blocked by the shield wall, they had no idea what was coming at them. Only the roar of guns and the scream of engines had suggested that anything was.

The White Scars riders slammed down into them. Many came nose up, rearing, allowing their lift-systems to hammer the first rows off their feet. Their guns cycled, chewing into the bountiful, waiting lines of targets. Some shots passed through two or three lines of bodies. This was greedy killing. They were spoiled for targets, because they were vastly unnumbered, surrounded on all sides by armed, but as-yet undeployed enemy combatants. There was a kill to be made in every direction.

The enemy mass collectively flinched from the points of attack, the host rippling like a pool of oil as it recoiled. Men fell against, and into, other men as they scrambled away from the killers entering their positions.

But the White Scars were truly outnumbered. Traitors mobbed them from all sides, blasting weapons point-blank, heedless of their own kin, striking and battering with whatever blades and mauls were in their hands. Riders and bikes became mired in scrums of attackers, fighting from the saddle in the driving rain, lopping off every hand and head and pole-blade that came at them. Thickets of pikes speared two of them from their steeds, punctured in a dozen places. Gunfire destroyed the engine of a running jetbike, and its rider leapt clear, allowing the burning, tumbling machine to power into the enemy files, killing a score with its shredding mass, and then another score with its detonation. But the rider, Kherta Kal, was on foot, alone, encircled and rushed.

The Death Guard surged forwards, fighting through their own dazed foot troops to meet the White Scars. They were driven by transhuman reaction, sheer outrage at the audacity of the assault, and, more than anything, hatred. The desire to close with and punish their arch-foes, who had been fools enough to ride in among them. The brute horror of the Death Guard was plainly visible, a spasm of sadness to the heart of every rider. They beheld their once-brothers, pitifully transformed: massive armoured thugs, their grey-green plate greased with rain, streaked with rust and seeping fluid, rank and diseased, their armour swollen as though expanded by infected bloat within, jet and ebon-iron visors formed like howling beasts and wild-wood predators.

Legionary met legionary, dots of gleaming white engulfed by tides of mottled verdigris. Tulwars and sabres slashed down from saddle height, splitting dark plate like rotten squash and pumpkin, spraying ginger and yellow gouts of pestilential matter. Filthy spears, black as charcoal, plunged into burnished white ceramite, squirting scarlet into the rain, unseating riders, carrying them down under weight of numbers, some White Scars taking eight or ten fatal blows before they hit the mud.

The ground beneath was a deep mire, a liquid black morass, thrashed up by the shield tractors and the advancing host. It spattered and clung to the boots and legs of the churning Death Guard, and splashed the flanks of the wallowing jetbikes.

Wild chaos. The deepest and most intense melee. No rules, no order. A frenzy. An overwhelming din of blows and impacts, bolter blasts, shrieking engines. A tulwar splitting a houndskull helm and the skull inside. A dirt-crusted warhammer breaking chestplate, bone and muscle, pulverising heart and organs. A White Scar lifting clean from the saddle, impaled on a dark serrated lance. A Death Guard squad leader mangling against the snout of a surging bike, knocked down, shredding in the repulsor field. Flying flakes of armour. A spinning visor, torn off. Dismembered limbs, spinning aside, some still clutching weapons or parts of weapons. Gore splashing up to meet the hellish rain.

In the heart of it, the Great Khan. Almost unassailable in his might, but the greatest focus of the traitor wrath. He had dared to come among them, to enter their heart. He had wounded them savagely, broken the day’s assault, but it would cost him. His was the trophy-head they most desired, the unthinkable kill they suddenly craved. A chance, an opportunity no traitor heart had dared imagine.

They swarmed.

But to take their prize, they had to kill him, and Jaghatai Khan was not in the mood to meet death. The vast and feral melee in the traitor back-lines was not a dismal misadventure to end a glorious cavalry action. It was just the far-point of the rush, the true price demanded of the enemy when the charge began.

Rule five: if you have driven through the enemy mass, turn and charge them again from the rear.

The Khan swung his dao, cutting through armour like fat. The war-calls of Chogoris bellowed from his lips, drowned out by the impossible deluge of the battle.

Yet they were heard.

Jetbikes gunned. Engines rose at the sound of other engines shrieking. Bikes turned, ramming through bodies, swinging sideways to fell others with deliberate and brutal sideswipes of the flanks and rear ends.

The White Scars broke back. One by one at first, following the Khan’s lead, then en masse, breaking free, accelerating, retracing their rush back to the wall. They turned high to break out, but then swept low again, prow-rams, chattering gun mounts and raking blades slaughtering any who had survived their outward run, or any who had been foolish enough to try and surge in at their backs.

Almost as many traitors fell to the rear-charge as had died during the in-rush.

The White Scars raced towards the rear of the shield wall. Kharash riders split sideways as they approached the shields, running the length of it, tossing saddle charges into the unprotected backs of the massive field tractors.

None had been set with more than a cursory fuse. The mines began to detonate, some only seconds after the Kharash rider had sped past. Tractor mounts blew up, shearing apart in searing clouds of flame, bodywork splaying, stanchions fracturing, frames collapsing, engines bursting, splintered axles spinning clear from each inferno.

Shield sections fell. They remained, true to their construction, for the most part intact. But, torn from their supporting frames, they toppled forward flat into the mud, a wall no longer.

Eight tractors died. The advancing rampart was broken, like a broad smile with teeth missing, black smoke swilling from the gaps. The White Scars burned through the heavy smoke, taking full advantage of the clear passage provided by the annihilated sections. Some Kharash paused as they turned out of their breaking action, halting to haul fallen or wounded brothers up onto the bikes beside them. Yetto of the Kharash found Kherta Kal still alive, drenched in gore, standing alone with enemy dead heaped around him. He pulled him onto the flank of his steed, and bore him out of hell.

Burr saw the first riders punch out of the seething smoke. He started to cry out, a whoop of joy and shock, but it died in his throat. There could only be a few of them. The glory of the charge had gone into the darkest pit of the enemy. Precious little could return from that.

But more appeared. Then more still. Not all, but a startling number. Dozens. Hundreds. Their return ride, harried by parting shots from a wounded enemy mass, had little of the original discipline in its formation, but formal discipline no longer mattered. Some riders were wounded. Others, running more slowly, carried wounded men with them, clinging to the sides, or even held limp across the hulls in front of the saddles.

“I’m dreaming, surely,” Burr murmured. He looked at Raldoron. “How could any of them have survived? Not just any, but so many?”

“Are you awake, Konas?” Raldoron asked. He had removed his helm, and was staring out at the ruined enemy line and the returning riders. There was no expression on his face.

“I am, lord,” said Burr. “I’m sure I am.”

“Then know, you have seen the White Scars do what the White Scars do,” said Raldoron. “It is rare for any to witness it. I confess, I have relished it every time I’ve been lucky enough to watch it happen.”

“It’s not…” Burr began. “This isn’t a game! A…display!”

“No,” Raldoron agreed. “It never is. And certainly not here, in this time of darkness. What you just saw, Konas, was fortune favouring us for the day. But you should still enjoy it for what it was. Great art must be appreciated, no matter the situation.”

The first riders were approaching the outworks.

The entire cavalry action had lasted six minutes.

— Saturnine, Chapter 4

Emphases mine.

Master Lo:

You have learned only half of what I teach, Jeff. You’re strong. You’re quick. But you’re only a tiger, not a dragon.

The tiger does not think, therefore it cannot act. It can only react, respond. The tiger is strong and fearless, but it cannot initiate action. That is the difference between man and tiger.

Jeff:

Tiger is what I know.

Master Lo:

The dragon is also very strong, but full of wisdom. The dragon fears what its strength can do….

The dragon always has a choice; the tiger, never. I have shown you the dragon, but you have not seen it….

— “The Perfect Weapon” (1991)