Anoston Farm and the Invasion of Caldonacia
This is a story set in 1328 during the run-up to a Ticetian invasion of Caldonacia that would eventually see the Caldonacia fall, then the unification of the lands.
King Hugo of Ticetia had been amassing his armies for invasion, training and equipping them for three years, and as winter faded in 1328 he began moving them across the wilderness eastwards. By the end of spring the army had passed by The Kathron Delve, and was entering the outskirts of the civilised territory.
Back in those days the lands to the west of the mountains were dotted with farmsteads, west Caldonacia reached much further to the south - a frontier that was curtailed by the arrival of the Ticetian forces. The army marched over the horizon, and the frontier towns and villages saw them and tried to raise the alarm. Nobody brings and army with good intentions, and they had only a day or so before the army was upon them.
Horses were saddled and riders went out across the lands - messengers were sent with all haste to Keal carrying a warning, while the peasants of this frontier land were hurriedly mustered. Some of the messengers travelled all night. The mustering point was a large farmstead away in the east, a farm where only twenty or so farmhands lived with their close families in a small community. This was Anoston Farm, which lay on the route this army would have to take if it were headed for Keal. The farmers immediately abandoned their fields and began to hurriedly build wooden defences.
Over the next day, as the army marched closer people began to gather at the farm. A large dike was dug, family weapons were cleaned and polished and bows restrung. All day long the army drew closer to the farm. Their vanguard reaching the outer dike before nightfall. The first Ticetian scouts arrived requesting parley, but were given none. The first few were sent back to their army with a message to turn back, but some did not. The war started in earnest when these messengers were slain. Their heads were mounted on poles and used to adorn the crude wooden wall.
The next morning, the bulk of the army turned up, but through this second night, more help had arrived at the farm. There were three hundred fighting men manning the dike, nothing compared to the ten thousand Ticetians, but enough to hold them off.
The Ticetians tried to march straight past, Caldonacians claim that it was Ticetian arrogance, but Ticetians say the Caldonacians were anonymous and irrelevant. Whatever the jibes that have been played out since, the Caldonacians on that day did not make it easy.
They pummelled the closest ranks of the Ticetian forces with a hail of arrows. This pulled the attention of the army back to the farm, and the Ticetians sent several infantry units to deal with the attack. The fighting was bitter. At this point the Ticetian army had not been involved in any real fighting - and they found it much tougher against the dug-in defences at the farm than they would have liked. The Caldonacians poked a hole in the invasion force, but themselves suffered heavy losses. Some estimate that two Ticetians died for every Caldonacian in that fight, and the battle raged on for a whole day.
Eventually, though, the farmstead surrendered. They'd made a mark on the Ticetian forces, and they'd slowed them down while getting messages out to the rest of Caldonacia. The brave defence of the farm, and the route to Keal, is told with some pride by the historians of Caldonacia.