The Bluerose Battalion, sometimes referred to as Bluerose lancers, was a cavalry unit from Bluerose armed with lances, which served as part of the Letherii Army. They were formidable, nimble fighters with properly functioning stirrups,[1] which was unusual for the Letherii Empire's generally poor cavalry.[2]
On campaign, they were organised in troops of a hundred[3] and wings (or companies) of five hundred.[4] They carried round-shields.[3]
Unlike other nations within the empire, Bluerose's loyalty remained an open question. Therefore it was Letherii policy to assign Bluerose units to distant parts of the the empire.[5]
The Bluerose lancers participated in the Awl Campaign from their headquarters in Drene.
In Reaper's Gale[]
In the waning days of King Ezgara Diskanar's reign, Preda Bivatt led an expedition from Drene to investigate a reported sighting on the northern coast of the Awl'dan. She brought two hundred soldiers of the Tattered Banner Army, a troop of thirty Bluerose lancers, four hundred support staff, and Letur Anict, the new Factor of Drene. They discovered four to five thousand war canoes stacked off the beach, which the Factor quickly estimated capable of holding upwards of half a million passengers. He could not fathom where the invaders had gone or how they had remained undetected in such large numbers.[6]
Bivatt later used Bluerose lancers in the Factor's extermination campaign against the Awl. She led two hundred lancers at dawn to surprise a camp of seventy Awl and their children. The lancers made quick work of the Awl and made sport of killing their fierce dray dogs before systematically looting the Awl camp and corpses. They scalped the bodies to cut jewelry from their hair and remove swathes of the Awl's tattooed skin to decorate their shields. The lancers also gathered up the tribe's herd of domestic Myrid and Rodara to present to the Factor.[3]
When the exiled Awl war chief, Redmask, returned to lead his people against the Letherii invaders, he began his crusade by infiltrating Drene to surveil Letherii military capabilities at the Drene Garrison. He noted the presence of Bluerose lancers, whose shields were still decorated with the stretched out blackened skins of his people. The lancers appeared far more formidable to Redmask than the foot soldiers he faced in previous campaigns. When his presence was discovered by Patriotist agents, the war chief killed more than twenty soldiers and city guards summoned by the garrison's bells to prevent his escape. Then he slew a troop of lancers to steal one of their horses and race away.[7]
Factor Anict sent the Eastern Army under now Atri-Preda Bivatt to destroy Redmask and the Awl. Her forces included 3,000 Bluerose lancers.[8] At the Battle of Bast Fulmar, Bivatt hoped to use the lancers to herd the Awl into a defile where they could be surronded and cut down. But the lancers in the north were ambushed by Awl war dogs and the lancers in the south were severely mauled by Awl skirmishers.[9] The Letherii were decisively defeated and forced to withdraw.
At the Battle of Pradegar, the lancers were divided into two wings on either side of the main Letherii line,[10] possibly indicating a third of their number had had been killed or wounded at Bast Fulmar. Later, when civil unrest in Drene disrupted the army's supply line, Bivatt sent 100 lancers to seek out the missing wagons for her starving army.[11]
At the final Battle of Q'uson Tapi there were fewer than a thousand Bluerose lancers remaining. They were dismounted, as their horses would be useless in the mud, and given swords and shields to serve as auxiliaries if the battle went poorly. Their horses were left saddled nearby to the east in case the missing K'Chain Che'Malle reappeared.[12] While the Letherii infantry slogged through the mud to attack the Awl at their prepared positions, Natarkas launched a surprise cavalry charge of 2,0000 Awl into the Tiste Edur guarding the Letherii rear. Initially successful, Edur spears quickly turned the attack into a panicked Awl withdrawal. The nearby Bluerose Lancers mounted up and led a devastating countercharge, killing Natarkas and sending the Awl survivors to flight. The Lancers pursued the fleeing remnants to the northeast.[13] After the Letherii infantry decisively defeated the Awl, Onos T'oolan's army of seventy thousand White Face Barghast, who had arrived on war canoes years earlier, took the field to slay all survivors. The lancers returned to join their comrades, but when the fighting was over at Q'uson Tapi, there were no Letherii survivors.[14]
Former members[]
Notes and references[]
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.70
- ↑ Midnight Tides, Chapter 19, US SFBC p.576
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Reaper's Gale, Chapter 1, US HC p.37-38
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.328
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 6, US HC p.147
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Prologue, US HC p.24-26
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 2, US HC p.64-70
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.327-328
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.328-329/330-331
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 16, US HC p.452
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 19
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 22, US HC p.667/684
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 22, US HC p.681-685
- ↑ Reaper's Gale, Chapter 22, US HC p.706-708