Stone of Tears

The smiles were all gone as she finally spoke again. “These men, the Imperial Order, are led by and are mostly D’Haran troops. D’Haran soldiers are trained from the time they are half your age. They fight internal conflicts in their land, put down riots and rebellions; they do not simply practice battle tactics, they live them day in and day out. They know only a life of fighting. They have been exposed to it in every form. I have taken the confessions of many D’Harans. Most do not know the meaning of peace.

“Since spring, when Darken Rahl sent them against the Midlands, they have been at what they do best: war. They have fought in battle after battle. All who have come before them have fallen.

“They relish fighting. They delight in it. They are as close to fearless as men come. They hold contests, often lethal, to win the right to be in the van of battle, to win the right to be the first to strike a blow at the enemy, to win the right to be the first to fall.”

She surveyed the young faces. “You have confidence in your training, your battle tactics?” The faces nodded, looking to one another, smiling their knowing confidence.

Kahlan pointed to one, a sergeant by the look of his coat’s braids. “Tell me then. You are now in the field of battle, having chased down these men, and here comes the enemy, back at you. You are in charge of the pikes and archers. Here they come. Thousands of them, yelling, running, coming to rend your force in two, to break your army’s back. You see they have heavy spears, called by them argons, with long, thin barbs. If they pierce you, they are nearly impossible to remove. They cause ghastly wounds that are almost always fatal. Here they come, with their argons. Thousands of men. What is your tactic?”

The young man held his chin out, knowingly. “Form a tight rank of the pikes formed into a box or wedge to protect the archers. The pikemen face the pikes out and overlapping the shields, present the enemy with a tight, impenetrable wall. The shields protect the pikemen, who protect the archers. The archers take them down before they can get close enough to use their argons. The few who do fall on the pikes. Their drive is repelled and, in all likelihood, they have lost a good many men in the failed attempt, making another less likely.”

Kahlan nodded, as if impressed. “Well stated.” He beamed. The men around him grinned with pride in their knowledge of their business. “I have seen some of the most experienced armies of the Midlands use those very same tactics when the D’Harans first came over, last spring, when the boundary went down.”

“Well, there you have it,” the man said. “They lose their charge against the archers and on the point of our pikes.”

She gave him a small smile. The D’Haran van, those men I told you about, the biggest, the fiercest, the ones who won the right to be the first at you? Well, they’ve developed special tactics of their own, for use against your plans. First of all, they have arrow shields, so as they run in, they’re protected from the brunt of the archers” work.

“And I guess I forgot to tell you one other thing about those argons of theirs. These spears have iron-sheathed shafts for most of their length, and a unique purpose. As the enemy is charging in, mostly unaffected by your archers, they heave their argons at you.”

“We have shields,” the man pointed out. “Their argons expended, they will be on the point of our pikes.”

She folded her arms, nodding to him. “The van, the men who won the right to be the first wave, are big men. I doubt the smallest has arms less than twice the average of yours.

The argons are needle sharp. Thrown by those powerful arms, they penetrate and stick in your shields. The long barbs prevent them from being withdrawn.”

The confident smiles were fading as she looked from face to face as she went on. “You now have argons stuck solidly in your shields. You drop your pikes, drawing swords to hack the heavy spears away. But the shafts are covered in iron, and don’t yield. The spears are heavy, and the butts drag the ground. D’Harans can run almost as fast as their spears fly. As they reach you now, they jump on the shafts of the spears stuck in your shields, dragging them to the ground, leaving you on your knees, and naked to their heavy axes.”

Arms still folded, she leaned toward them. “I have seen men split from scalp to navel by those axes.”

Men glanced sideways at one another, their confidence shaken.

She nodded mockingly as she unfolded her arms. “I am not giving you conjecture. I’ve seen a D’Haran force take down an experienced army nearly ten times their size in just this fashion. In the space of an hour, the battle turned from a rout of the D’Harans to a rout of their foes.

“A D’Haran charge of the argon is almost as devastating as a classic cavalry charge, except they have far greater numbers than any cavalry. And their own cavalry is anything but typical. You don’t even want to know about them.