The War for the Riverlands

For days now, the battle had raged throughout Kicoltinda. Though the Hellquilleans had surrounded them and pushed from all directions, that only meant they found themselves fighting the cossacks not over long ranges, but eye to eye. House to house and room to room the cossacks and the Sturmgreifen had danced for days now. They were both suffering terrible losses in what many times turned into chaotic, swirling melee combat where all order broke down: meaning just where the cossacks wanted their enemies.

Still, even the cossacks were only mortals, and as the days had passed they had kept being pushed. House after house had been lost, even as the cossacks clung to what they still held with all they had. As it was, they were pushed to the center of Kicoltinda, having fortified the plaza and the areas around it while making every approach a nightmarish slog to proceed through. Tanks could not cross the rubble that the collapsed buildings could provide and artillery could not fire without risking blowing up the Hellquillians as well as the cossacks.

Zelenka sat down heavily on a chair as he finally could grab twelve hours of rest before going back into the fight. His entire body was aching and he felt as though he had lived here a million years. Had truly only two weeks passed? He felt as though he had been here for months, years even. For all his bluster, Zelenka knew a cossack could not live off war and death, nor was the sound of gunfire something that restored vitality to tired limbs more than briefly. The war of the modern age was something new, truly. No longer patient maneuvers leading to a sudden detonation of steel and death, now it seemed more akin to a meat grinder slowly chewing you up.

Still, Zelenka smiled to himself. All of that was true, but the Hellquilleans were no better off, and if they had thought that the Cossacks had just come surging in blindly… well they didn’t know cossacks. Also… was that the sound of mortar fire he heard? Slowly, he began to cackle as further away, the sound of gunfire and explosions grew steadily, sweeping in towards Kicoltinda from every direction.

“Not a second too late, Razbeak you old crow…” he said. Zelenka’s forces, a few divisions strong, had only been the vanguard, the brave who had first jumped at the call when summoned. Their quick leap into battle had given the rest of the cossacks time to rally whatever warriors were not immediately available and organize another host; one armed with all the panoply of modern war. This included the things that came flying over the rooftops now.

A squadron of metal birds roared past the window, the middle of their wings blazing as they spat out trails of heavy bullets that rained down over the streets, tearing the vehicles down on the roads apart before sharply turning upwards, buzzing by with the roar like giant dragonflies and leaving death and destruction behind and throwing the Hellquillians into chaos.

The attacks on the besieged cossacks had already ceased and instead the Hellquilleans, who earlier had managed to catch the cossacks in a pincer, now found themselves locked in much greater pincer, one of tens of thousands of cossacks, led by the great Stephan Razbeak himself. They moved like the wind and struck like thunder, sweeping aside the Hellquillians as they surged into the town from every direction, cutting off exits and coordinating with the Coalition Air Force to level the buildings where the Sturmgreifen tried to put up resistance. The end of the siege was gruesome and swift: once again the cossacks took as many prisoners as the Hellquillians had.

------xxxxxx------

The Diamond dogs had to let go of the last strongpoint and were in full retreat. Sturmgreifen assault teams equipped with flamethrowers chased them through the tunnels, even as the dogs tried to hold the rearguard as well as they could, but they were only driven further and further into their own tunnels.

Gnasher, meanwhile, was being dragged by some of his soldiers away from the fight, bleeding heavily from the head where a bullet had grazed his cranium and left him dazed. And yet, even as gunshots and screaming rang through the tunnels, he couldn’t help but cackle. What a fucking mess it all was, what a complete clusterfuck of epic proportions. This was like two pups rolling on the floor, scratching at each other.

“What are you laughing about boss?” the dog that was half carrying him said now.

“I’m so smart,” Gnasher cackled. “I’m so fucking smart… tell the dogs… we’ll blow the Alpha line…” he ordered, the message travelling down the columns of retreating dogs. As they poured into the main cavern that served a the command centre, they were organized enough that when they came in they fell into positions around the entrances, stopping the retreat in its tracks and rallying the dogs. Gnasher, whose head still spun, was riding high on adrenaline as he was put down against an ammunition crate as dogs scrambled around the entrance, attaching the wires in the right places and making ready.

When the Sturmgreifen, who even had managed to get a tank down in the tunnel to chase them down with, came roaring at them Gnasher gave the signal and within seconds the ground shook and heaved, as if it was about to split open, and with a deafening roar the entire tunnel they had escaped through collapsed, burying hundreds of griffins alive.

“And FUCK YOU TOO!” Gnasher yelled as the smoke settled, still laughing before coughing in all the dust that had been kicked up. “Get Biter on the phone, was this enough time for him to get behind them?!” he asked when he had recovered. After a while on the phone, one of the dogs gave Gnasher a thumbs up.

Meanwhile, above ground, the tanks and artillery pieces were being assailed again, this time from behind. Major Biter’s forces had clawed up a large hole behind them and unleashed an army of howling troll hounds: abominations twisted by dark magic and crystal engineering into something no longer dogs but writhing engines of destruction. Princess Molly had ordered for no more troll hounds to be made upon her ascension, but they still had a lot of them, so why not use them? The creatures took shots that would have annihilated regular dogs and kept moving, flipped tanks over with sheer berserker strength and ripped griffins apart like paper.

Breaking earth once again, Gnasher led his forces to charge to the troll hounds’ aid. The dogs were hungry and exhausted but Gnasher whipped them on, reminding them that no bird was ever going to get the better of them!

-----xxxxxx------

The initiative was back with the Coalition now, if barely, and while they suffered heavy losses the Griffons and Diamond Dogs to keep pushing. That left Jezeragrad though, and though both the Diamond Mountain and the Kingdom of Zapzhia were mustering all they had, there simply weren’t enough soldiers to strike at the city as well, not without the ponies.

High Command knew that, and therefore they had decided to take the risk. At Blessedgrad, Field Marshal Lake Shield had organized a combined force of the Coalition's best: Ponaidhean’s Anam-Teine monks, Bakaran Marines, Nimbusian Somatophylakes, River Republic RZPO units, Deponyan knight, Wittenland mages and even the few available units of Changelings that could be mustered.

Supported by as many alchemists and mages as could be spared, the best medical staff as well as water from the magical springs in the north, they had entered the plague-stricken lands and assaulted Jezeragrad in force. They had to do something, and either they died here or died later, so they might as well die for a chance at victory. The entirety of the Coalition’s air force and what Diamond Dog and Cossack forces were available joined in and descended on the city from three directions to break the backs of the Reformisten there.

Jezeragrad - the prized jewel of the Riverlands - had in only a couple of weeks transformed into a hellscape. Death was everywhere and the destruction that met them bore silent witness to how just how hard the Lake City ponies had fought despite the plague and overwhelming disadvantage they had been in. Yet, despite all that, as the Coalition counter attack poured in, it became clear that Jezeragrad had not fallen completely. In the depths of the sewers and in the back alleys, there were still ponies left fighting and dying when the Coalition Air Force roared over the city, beginning to mark targets and attack strongpoints. RZPO and Somatophylakes Pegasi had been loaded into transport planes and as the air strikes raged the sky darkened with hundreds if not thousands of Pegasi diving straight for the ground, using their wings to bob and weave through the scattered AA fire and landing hard on rooftops all over the city. as the outskirts saw the roaring of over five hundred tanks rolling along the roads into the city followed by thousands upon thousands of onhooves infantry.

The airdropped pegasi and the onhooves companies all carried radios to coordinate, something Lake Shield had insisted on, and the full use of this became evident as the spotters on the rooftops could call out ambushes and traps, blunting the effect of the Hellquillians’ defenses and directing the artillery to obliterate the barricades and strongpoints that lined the streets and the plazas.

Like elsewhere, the Sturmgreifen and the Hellquillian soldiers put up stubborn resistance, but they were in a city that they had not yet managed to pacity. Jezeragrad still drew breath and if it would be the last thing she did, she would not go down without the fight of her life. Desperate survivors who had been huddling in the basements and sewers suddenly came pouring out, armed with whatever they could find.

As Biter’s men flooded into the city from the north, they were assisted by sharpshooters who had been lying in wait for days among the corpses of their fallen comrades. These hard-bitten snipers picked off machine gunners and officers wherever they could, wreaking havoc among the enemy. In the east, the last remaining forces of the Jezeragrad home guard charged out of the sewers to attack a tank emplacement from behind. Using improvised fuel bombs and grenades, they destroyed the well-entrenched machines. Even as they fell by the dozens and hundreds, they died without hesitation for their city and their people. In the south Razbeak’s cossacks were pouring into the city when a flak cannon emplacement managed to blindside them and drown them in heavy fire. An old mare came running up in among the guns, a bundle of grenades clenched between her teeth right before she vanished, along with the guns, in a massive cloud of smoke that grew into a huge fireball.

The sky blazed with fire as the Nimbusian guards leaped from house to house, covering the streets below and pinning the Hellquillians wherever they tried to move. RZPO fireteams went house to house, using shotguns and flash-spells to clear them one room at a time. Anam-Teine monks bobbed and weaved through the rain of bullets, too fast to be easily hit by anyone, and engaged the Hellquillians in close quarters combat. Down by the lake, a battalion of Bakaran marines who had swimmed underwater for almost three hours, rose silently out of the water to get in behind the main Hellquillian force. Witteland mages made the very air crackle with countless spells, blocking machinegun fire, clearing buildings with fireballs and patching up wounds. The last, tattered remains of Deponya’s Royal Guards had joined in with commoner soldiers and hunters and formed an ad-hoc unit that now fiercely contested the main bridge. The Diamond dogs were in their element, gleefully making use of the sewers to pop up all over the city and rip and tear at their enemies with hit-and run attacks and the Cossacks dashed in to cut the Hellquillians down beak to beak.

Maybe one day this would be called their finest moment: the day the Riverlands stood and fought as one, but right now it was like a vision of Tartarus. Time was not on the Riverlanders’ side: already signs of the plague had appeared among the soldiers and the ferocity with which they attacked stemmed from a simple truth: they either died fighting for Jezeragrad or they died wasting away from the plague. This spurred them on beyond their commitment to save the city, giving them the courage, or perhaps desperation, to to fight like possessed, and while they triumphed steadily, house by house, block by block, the casualties mounted fast as well.

-----xxxxxx-----

“Perfect…” Eisen said slowly as the news came in of the ponies having gone all out, ordering a mass assault at Jezeragrad with several of their best units. His colonel looked to him in confusion as Eisen trailed the map with one talon. “They just committed all they had,” Eisen commented. The thing about doing that was that when it failed, you had nothing left. “Order the reserves up to the front and deploy them to retake the city. I want them to focus their attacks here, here and here. We will stagger our attacks to keep hitting them and always keep some element of our forces resting. Three battlegroups at a time. Let’s see just how much they can endure.”

As he ordered, Hellquill threw the entirety of its reserves into the fray as well, calling up new forces from the homeland to shore up the flanks as waves of tanks and motorized infantry struck at Jezeragrad. Using their vehicles to maximum effect, the Hellquillians began to bait out the enemy out of Jezeragrad and proceeding to, when it didn’t help, begin to pound the city with all they had, surging in to attack and retreating out to strike elsewhere when the resistance mounted. Eisen knew that the enemy was already wasting away from the plague and while they had retaken the city, they were already starting to die by the dozens and indeed hundreds. Having crawled onto the battlefield only to be laid out on the Anvil of the Purple Plague, the Riverlanders would now be slowly broken by the Hammer of Hellquill’s soldiers.