Chapter 172: What the Forest Could Not Break

The skirmishes had continued for four days after the first confront, small groups from the forest, one section at a time, pulling back before the siege could close on them. The perimeter pushed back each time and the forest gave nothing back afterward.

On the fifth morning the Bulgars changed it.

Nameless Rider POV

He was in the center of his section when the forest shifted at six points at once.

The open ground stretched across the section’s full front, three large clearings showing riders at the same time, while movement appeared at the two far edges where bodies pressed through the thin margin of trees to extend the line further east and west.

He counted forty, then seventy, then more than a hundred and fifty riders coming out in a continuous pour, and their riders were already firing before half of them had come out the forest.

He shot at the nearest cluster, a group of twenty riders coming through the middle at a canter. The range was eighty meters and falling.

The rider in front of him took a shaft through the throat before he had loosed his second arrow. It came from the east, a flat shot from someone already in the open, and it entered the left side of the man’s neck and came out the right.

The man’s hands went up and he came off his horse sideways. His foot caught in the stirrup for a moment and the horse pulled him two steps before the foot came free and he went down.

He kept firing.

The distance closed as the arrows flew from both sides.

A Bulgar horse went down at forty meters between his position and the east assault, the animal’s front leg collapsing from a shaft through the knee. It went forward and the horse behind it broke left around it and kept coming.

A Bulgar rider in the middle took a shaft through the upper thigh. He stayed in the saddle, nocked and released again, and the man was close enough now that the thigh wound changed nothing in how he held his bow.

"East!" a rider to his left called.

The unnamed rider turned. The east assault was within fifty meters.

He fired twice. The first missed. The second found the nearest Bulgar horse in the neck, not fatally, and the horse veered hard right and threw its rider off balance.

Something cut across his left forearm.

He felt it before he saw it, a shaft that had come from the far edge of the exchange, not aimed at him directly but grazing the arm’s position at the moment he turned east. The skin opened across the outside of the forearm from elbow toward wrist, not deep.

He transferred the rein to his right hand for a moment, looked at the arm, and transferred back. The blood ran down across the back of his hand and he fired again.

The push continued for twenty minutes before it broke.

The middle pulled back first, losing riders to concentrated fire from the steppe riders defense. Then the west assault folded when the left flank pushed its rate higher.

The east assault stayed forty seconds longer than the others, pressing through the fire at thirty meters with the stubbornness that refused to give up.

A Bulgar rider took a shaft through the face at close range. The man beside him took one through the chest. The group turned and retreated.

"Hold position, don’t pursue!"

It came from somewhere to his right and everyone on the line heard it.

No one moved past the perimeter distance. The Bulgars were in the trees and the steppe riders stayed just outside their range. His arm was bleeding across the rein hand. He held the rein.

Jüken POV

Six sections reported contact in the first five minutes.

The relay was carrying reports from every direction simultaneously and they all repeated the information in six different voices. Total push. Full perimeter.

Jüken managed by the numbers the relay gave him.

The northern section was the worse, two jaghun leaders calling for support in the same relay cycle. He pulled riders from the western section, which had the lightest reported contact, and sent them north along a route that kept them behind the perimeter and away of the skirmish zones.

The relay from the eastern section came in fine.

The relay from the southeastern section did not come.

He waited one cycle. He counted the time with the horse moving beneath him on the rise.

The southeastern section’s rider had not arrived. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

A section under light contact sent reports. A section under heavy contact also sent reports because the system required it and his riders knew the protocol. A section that sent nothing either had a broken chain or had broken entirely.

Jüken had not heard any part of his formation collapse. His other sections were still reporting. The southeastern section was the only exception.

He sent eight riders from his personal reserve southeast with orders to reinforce whatever the section needed.

He sent the order to hold position through every relay simultaneously. No one is to pursue inside the forest.

He said it once and the riders moved.

The eight riders found the southeastern section under sixty or seventy Bulgars pressing hard at the formation right flank.

Two riders were down and the section had contracted, the formation thin where the gaps had closed, the archers working at their highest rate to fill the difference.

The eight riders from the reserve reinforced the right flank. The fire rate doubled where it had been weakest.

The Bulgars pressing that flank pulled back within minutes of the reinforcement arriving. Not because of the numbers alone but because the attack that had been finding weak spots found nothing when the formation was refilled.

Jüken rode the perimeter as the skirmishes ended section by section, perceiving each withdrawal from the changing sounds and the relay reports catching up.

The enemy assault had run close to two hours from the first emergence at the northern section to the last Bulgar group retreating at the southwestern. All six points of contact had been repelled.

He took the casualties count from every section leader.

Dorbei POV

Dorbei received the report from Jüken and the other mingan commanders before midday.

His tumen’s losses across the whole perimeter were forty-one dead, a hundred and seven wounded of which sixty-three could still ride, seventy-eight horses lost or too badly hurt to work.

The southeastern section suffered the highest cost among his tumen because the relay broke there and the formation had to fight for longer than it would have if reinforcements arrived at the appropriate time.

They weren’t the only force to suffer heavy casualties, though.

After the Bulgars pulled back, Dorbei sent riders near the forest to count what the assault had left behind.

A hundred and ninety one bodies on the open ground between the steppe riders and the trees.

The blood trails going back into the forest at each skirmish point meant the wounded who had made it into cover added to that figure substantially.

He put the forest cavalry’s dead for the day at closer to two hundred, and the wounded at more than that.

They had sent most of what they had.

They had committed the bulk of their force at multiple points across the perimeter at once and every mingan pushed them back. Two hundred dead from a body that had started the winter at one thousand and had been reduced further by short supply and the previous days skirmishes.

What remained inside the forest was less than a third of what had ridden out in the morning.

Another push at this scale was not something they could organize.

At most, individual groups would try to break out through the weaker sections at night or go around the forest and exit north. Dorbei assigned scouts to both.

Neither were a particularly difficult problem.

Dorbei composed the message to Batu before he had the rider brought forward.

Total push against the eastern perimeter, multiple simultaneous contact points, repelled at every skirmish. Tumen losses stated. Approximately enemy dead at the margin stated. Forest cavalry unable to repeat the effort at this scale. The forest siege approaching its conclusion. The perimeter was theirs.

The rider carried it west toward where the main force had prepared to push on Bulgar itself.