Chapter 20

Signs of Retreat

Freeman got his men moving at a regular pace. He wanted to set a pace that they could maintain for an extended period and still be fresh enough to fight when they had to fight. They traveled long each day with frequent breaks to rest. They got several farms evacuated in the first couple of hours. They go the farmers out of bed and heading south as fast as they could move. They also conscripted as many men as they could.

They had their first battle at another farm site. When they approached the site had seemed normal enough, but the farmers had attacked the first soldiers to enter the yard. If had cost them four men an over an hour of time to clear the farm yard.

Freeman had the men rest for most of the night at this site. Freeman called his men together and told them what they faced and what they would have to do.

“The enemy we face is out to totally destroy us.” He waited a moment for that to sink in. “This is not an enemy we can negotiate with. We can not have peace with them. The powers in the corrupted lands has finally moved against us.” He waited again.

The called form the crowd started.

“What should we do?”

“Can we out run them?”

Freeman knew he could mold this group to his purpose. He paused and allowed the crowd to build up their fear. To build to a point that he could then wrestle to his purpose. He waited until they had worked themselves up and then stepped in to calm them.

“Quiet!” He yelled. “Quiet! All of you.” He had to wait while they quickly came to order. “We are going to defeat this foe. We will force them back to there own defiled country and take the battle to them. First we need to save as many of the people in this area as possible. We will move south for the next several days. We will save all that can be saved. Once we have gathered a sufficient force we will return to the north. As we will crush them.”

The crowd, his men, erupted in a cheer.

Freeman smiled. This was exactly what he needed. He needed this force to be his, completely his, if they were to defeat this undead army. He had to know these men would follow where he lead.

He dismissed the men and had his command group set up a rotating guard schedule.

Freeman sat down and ate some cold rations with Willard and Thrash.

“How far south of the base do you think we are?” Willard asked.

“Fourteen maybe fifteen thousand paces.” Thrash answered.

“That gives us about four more hours to rest.” Willard mused.

“What makes you say that?” Freeman asked him, he had thought they had at least ten more hours until the undead got to this point.

“Well, “ Willard started, “if you consider that they move at a fairly slow walk it would take them about three hours to walk form the last point we saw them to this spot. They have enough men to have at least eight battle forces equal or bigger than hours. They have a lot of options for which way we could have went. I don't think they will care if we headed back to the corrupted lands. So if they travel south following us they will be able to be here in force without having to deviate from a pretty direct line. So figure no more than an hour lost to scouting and we have four hours to rest before they hit us here.”

Freeman nodded. He could not argue with his logic. He had based his figure on an enemy resting and slowly covering all the possibilities. His men needed two hours here to continue, so he had assumed that the forces following him would also need two hours rest. He should know better.

Freeman finished his food and got up. He knew what he had to do but he was not sure how he could accomplish it. If what he saw was true. If commander Luuk was leading the undead army he would not be able to make any mistakes if he wanted to live. Luuk was a brilliant commander.

He got up and started to walk among the men. He made special effort to talk to the new recruits they had picked up during the day.

He made sire to also talk to all the men who had been in campaigns with Luuk. He listened as they told stories about how he had taken certain defeat and turned it into victory. It did not fill him with confidence.

Freeman knew he was going to have to get this group moving again in a couple more hours. He had the duty rotations shortened so that every one would have at least three hours of rest time. He also had all the wounded quarantined, just in case.

Then he found himself a spot and grabbed some sleep.

When he awoke in just over an hour he noticed that a lot of the men were getting ready to move. Obviously his plan was not a secret as he had thought, or the men were smarter than him.

Freeman got his kit packed and within a half hour the men were formed up and ready to go. They marched off to the south as fast as they dared. Whenever they saw a farm site they would go an warn the residence. They would accept volunteers and they would try to provide them with whatever assistance they could. They would not allow anyone to remain behind.

A couple of hours after they had marched out of the farm site they came to a village. It was not a large village. Really just a handful of farm houses all near each other. There was a store and a large manor house but no inn or tavern. They gathered everyone together and told them to head south as fast as they could. While Freeman was giving them his no well practiced speech on what they faced and how critical it was they traveled light and fast one of his lieutenants reported that a large force of the undead would be in the village within the next half hour.

Freeman had the men start putting up a defensive barricade. They would hold this village for as long as they could and allow the villagers to flee. They set up walls force the enemy to approach them from certain spots. They set some of the houses on fire to give them better visibility.

The villagers all left on the run. Freeman wished others they had warned moved at half that speed. His men were ready for only moments before the first of the undead army cleared the trees and were in the village. The front line remained steady as the archers rained flight after flight of arrows into the ranks of the dead men.

The first rank of the undead simply moved forward and died. The second rank followed the first. The third rank picked up the dead bodies that the archers had dropped and used them as shields. The archers continued to land arrows but less than half found the target. The undead had nearly reached the front racks of Freeman's troops when the third rank of the undead carrying the first two ranks as shields threw their formerly human shields into the massed men of Freeman's defensive positions. The sudden move had both a physical and physiological effect.

The flying bodies killed about one in twenty all along the front line. That was the good news. Almost half were knocked down and were no longer able to hold the line. Freeman had only a moment to watch the effect and then the undead were at the front line. The men on the front line that had not been hurt, killed or knocked down by the hurled bodies exacted a heavy toll on the undead. They brought their blades down on the undead, skulls shattered under the force of the blows. Many on the undead raised arms to ward off the blows, but that only mean that the blow cleaved the limb before the blade bit deep into the heads of the approaching creatures.

Once the men had dispatched the first wave, Freeman knew that his force was in excellent shape to completely destroy the force that they faced. They had taken considerable casualties but had inflicted far greater damage to their opponents. The second wave fell mush like the first, except that the men were ready for the shielding tactics of the undead.

When the third wave was approaching Freeman had the archers switch to fire arrows and started firing into the massed undead behind the advancing group of undead creatures. It had the exact effect he had hoped for. The advancing creatures were committed and were dropped much like members of the previous attacks had been. The big effect was that the massed troops that were hit with the flaming arrows quickly spread the fire to others in the tight groups of undead.

The undead were forced to relax their formation. As the next waves went forward the archers would take out entire groups before they could use the shield tactic. Quicker than Freeman had anticipated the entire undead force was finished.

“Set the bodies on fire and lets get moving.” He told his command group. With in five minutes they were heading south to the next farm site.