The Death Of General Vorbis

 Last time as you recall General Vorbis had retreated from the Battle of the Tower and he was supplying his men from the village of Womo when a a nearby castle garrison force arrived. Vorbis's small force of plate armoured cavalry and an undersized unit of Ebons faced two Beersteiner musketeer units and a mounted mercenary archer unit.

We decided by dice roll that the garrison force arrived in column on the road. The mounted archers were in the lead. Typically bold Vorbis organised his cavalry into column on the road, ready to charge the Beersteiners.

Despite having a general's re-roll for initiative I won for first turn and my archers shot at the plate armoured enemy achieving zilch wounds. My matchlock men were too busy deploying to shoot.

Mat wanted to bypass the archers and attack my musketeers arriving behind them but I pointed out they would be unlikely to ignore the immediate force to their front. We rolled the magic dice, loaded against such a move and he had to attack the mounted archers. My light cavalry managed to kill a small number of the enemy cavalry before being reduced to two figures that fled off the board.

The battlefield with two columns of cavalry facing each other.

     The Fezians charge, not a situation that light mounted archers want to be caught in.

  The remainder of the light mercenary cavalry retreat but they have bought time for the Beersteiner matchlock men. By now a cannon and crew has also arrived.

                                              The two units of musketeers prepare to shoot.

                          The Ebons join the fray and charge towards the artillery, even as the Fezian cavalry reforms for another charge.

                                The Ebons are cut to pieces by the musketry and the Fezian cavalry eliminated, except for General Vorbis! The cannon shoots into the remaining Ebons causing them to retreat.

  Despite Vorbis's personal ineffectual fighting in the recent melee against the light cavalry he singlehanded charged the musket men, impacting them before they could reload. Vorbis's old war wound was acting up but he decided, after the loss of his army to redeem himself in a heroic death. To return to the Sultan was to return to a worse fate.

At least one musketeer perished under the hooves of the warhorse before the two units of musketeers converged on the general. The horse's legs were cut with swords and Vorbis pulled from his mount where he was clubbed to death by musket butts.

Below: The remainder of the Ebons flee into Fritzerland. There they gratefully encounter no Fritz troops. The Fritz, jealous of their neutrality, may have considered such a Fezian incursion an act of war. The Ebons make their way back out of Fritzerland to the Bogavanian capital.

    The peasants hastily hide the food they had, only moments before, brought out for the Fezians. They feared retribution from the Beersteiner authorities.

                                                                     The fallen Vorbis