Regrettably, the righteous and pure-hearted Anglish armies could not prevent the two forces of twisted and evil undead from meeting up in the ruined town of Wessex. This meant that the three armies of monstrous undead and the three armies of undead infantry were now joined, and thus could cover the weaknesses of the other. However, this was not what happened, as the undead cavalry split into individual units and sped off in all directions, leaving the undead infantry to face the full might of the Anglish army.

It seemed that the two leaders of the two different forces could not work together and the leader of the monsters left the infantry leader to their fate. Or, perhaps the cavalry leader was slain, and the leader of the foot soldiers could not control so many more undead. Whether either of these were the case was not something to be considered, as the scattering of the undead beasts left the Skeletons and Zombies in a precarious position. Heedless to the danger that the she faced, the Arch Heretic Bitch arranged her undead in a standard battle line, but with a twist. The front line was entirely made up of Zombies, which acted as a breakwater against the classic cycle-charges of human cavalry.

It was also likely that, due to having arrived a significant amount of time earlier, that the Arch Heretic had placed undead within shallow graves to be brought up to the surface in the middle of or behind formations. Thus, the advance was slower than it would have been initially. The Arch Heretic was showing a grasp of tactics and strategy that she had previously not had, actually arranging her undead servants in a way that would make it difficult for their counter to actually effect the Skeletons that made the backbone of her forces.

It appeared as though she had taken twenty units of Zombies from the three different surviving armies and made a single army out of them just to act as a wall of rotten flesh for the forces of man to break upon. Unfortunately for her, Zombies were egregiously slow and thus could be easily out maneuvered. Once behind the wall of necrotic flesh, the flanking cavalry could easily deal with the brittle-boned Skeletons, even with their spears!

As the twin pincers of cavalry went wide around the horde of walking cadavers and moved to close the gap between the rotten horde and the Skeletons, the Zombies simply began to march forward, heedless to the threat that now faced their fellows in their rear. By all rights the cavalry could have easily hammered into the backs of the morbid meat-puppets, but the Arch Heretic simply had her pawns advance towards the infantry that held a firm and stoic line of purity and justice. The line of Zombies slowly obscured the view between the Anglish infantry and their cavalry, but this was not a problem.

After all, without the undead cavalry to back them up, the time this scourge could exist upon the world was greatly limited at best.

It was the infantry that felt it first, or rather, they heard it first. From their rear came the howls and snarls of hundreds of horse-sized undead canines and as a few brave or perhaps foolish souls dared to look back they saw emerging from the forest a wall of Dire Wolves. The oversized necrotic feral dogs impacted the rear of the left flank of the infantry line and began to tear into the poor peasantry with tooth and claw. With horrible mockeries of canine sounds and a smell that could turn a hardened veteran’s stomach, the Dire Wolves made a mess of the left wing of the Anglish armies for a while before fleeing back into the woods behind the army of the living.

The attack of the Dire Wolves had distracted the peasantry for enough time to have them turn around completely and expose their backs to the encroaching Zombie horde. In their defense, the Zombies were far enough away that their shambling would have given the peasantry enough time to regain their focus. This WOULD have been the case with any ordinary Zombie horde, but Alistaira forced her undead pawns on that side to speed up and to keep silent. This lasted just long enough so that when the serfs turned back to face the foe that they thought was several meters away they found themselves face-to-face with a mass of grasping arms and gnashing teeth.

The panic that spread through the left flank spread through the middle of the line and began to creep into the right flank. Those peasant spearmen on the left who could do so tried to run for their lives, much to the dismay of the Anglish leadership. However, even as they ran into the woods they found no safety. The Dire Wolves still remained within the forest, and no man who entered there in fright could emerge alive. As the left flank collapsed into disarray, the rest of the Zombie tide made contact in a far less potent way than it had with the left. They now had to fulfill their purpose of keeping the living from reinforcing the floundering left flank.

When the last of the humans on the left side of the massive wall of infantry were torn apart, the wall of shambling cadavers simply kept marching forward, deep into the tree line. As the rear line waited and waited, the Zombies never emerged from behind them, and instead the sounds of battle came from the deep woods. It seemed that the undead were fighting each other, which gave the living time to push forward. Like the fools they were, they turned back to face the present problem that plagued them and pushed forward in a desperate attempt to hold back the ravenous risen cadavers. They became so caught up in their attempts to push forwards that they neglected to hear that the sounds of ‘battle’ had subsided.

As expected, the woefully inadequate and impotent undead were being pushed back. Slowly, the Zombie wall was being reduced in density and it would only be a matter of time before the sight of their glorious cavalry tearing the Skeletons to pieces could be seen. They did not know that such wishful thinking was a fool’s hope. It was not until the undead hammer once again struck the anvil that they realized that they were not in as good a place as they thought. From behind the right flank came the stench of rot, and the Zombies that had torn apart the left side of the line emerged from the woods and fell upon the unprotected rear of the peasantry.

At the same time, Dire Wolves emerged from behind the center of the line and began to ravage the leadership who had camped behind the center like they were taking the day off. Even men as skilled in combat as themselves could do little to stop the gnashing fangs and ripping claws of the monstrous pack of undead horse-sized wolves that fell upon them. Soon, the leaders of the combined Anglish force were nothing but torn chunks of meat and crunched up bones, and the Dire Wolves moved on to deal with the now terrified peasantry who knew not where to turn or where to run. Their only hope was that the cavalry comprised of the best men the nation had at its disposal were somehow able to slay the Blasphemous Bitch in time and cause her undead puppets to fall apart.

They say that ignorance is bliss, but in this case even the ignorance of the truth was not enough to be blissful for any of them. If they could see past the enclosing wall of undead bodies, they would see that the greatest men in Anglond to ride on horseback, the Anglish Knights, had been soundly defeated by mere Skeletons. It was quite the shame that none of them knew that once their vaunted cavalry was obscured from sight that they fell to simple traps, like spike pits and caltrops. They did not know that as the surviving knights tried a desperate charge into the Skeleton Warriors, the undead merely picked up massive sharpened logs and let the noble men on horseback impale their beloved steeds upon the fire hardened tips of those wood poles.

They were unaware that the now dismounted knights had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of Skeletons who then swarmed them like locusts upon a field of grain, tearing them apart with no care for their noble lineage or right to honorable burial.

Yes, in many cases ignorance was indeed bliss, but as the peasantry were slowly consumed by the ravenous wave of rotting bodies, the last bits of hope they had held died just before they did.