The Fall And Rise Of Reggio Perino

Reggio Perino led the weary rebels back north to their homes. The campaign had been a bloody failure, and as much as he was willing to fill up the holes with their Laurian dead, the supply of warm bodies was going to run out eventually. The wounded were recovering slowly on the march north, although the bumpiness of their carts probably wasn’t helping matters. Juan Batista was complaining about the staleness of the bread and the hardness of his saddle and the cowardice of his army, and Reggio was getting a bit sick of it.

It was therefore with annoyance that Reggio greeted the news brought by one of the remaining outriders: that Lord Francis was alive and well, for the moment, although engaged in desperate battle against a loyalist army with ten times his numbers.

It was clear that it was a lost cause. Reggio turned to his lieutenants to order the army to skirt wide around them, just in time to see that backward idiot Juan Batista spurring his horse onwards, yelling “To me, men of Lauria! To me and to glory! Tally-ho!”

Lord Theobald, Lord Pelayo, Lord Cortez… all of them charged onwards with swords lifted high, and their men, battered as they were, gave a great shout and broke into a stumbling run after them. Reggio’s mouth worked for a moment, as he considered the odds of him succeeding in this rebellion with only twenty able-bodied men after all the others in the army got slaughtered, and with a heavy sigh he led his own men into battle as well.

Lord Francis’ thirty remaining men had fallen back towards their reinforcing saviours, and Reggio arrived just in time to stop Juan Batista from leading them straight back into an uneven contest. He ordered the rebels formed up in their usual formation, but with a skirmish line of arquebusiers ahead of the pikemen this time.

The loyalist musketry took its toll on the ragged rebels, but Reggio ordered his men to wheel around to let the pike formation pass, ignoring the enemy gunners for now. As the enemy tercio marched past, he unleashed the cannon fire, and fully half of the loyalist pikemen were snatched backwards in a hail of grapeshot and iron fragments.

The surviving enemies, shocked by the concussive force of the shot, pushed on, but were whittled down by a volley of arquebus fire and then finished off in a swift and brutal melee. Reggio looked back to the pike formation, and what he saw was not encouraging.

The standard bearers and officers had been killed, and the tightly-packed formation had dissolved into a loose line. Reggio pushed his way to the front of the formation and ordered the survivors to form on him – he disliked putting himself quite so much in danger, but he had no choice. These morons in morions needed some more direction if any of them were to survive this. The rebel reserves were ordered forward, and quickly arrayed behind Reggio.

With fresh troops at his back, Reggio saw that Imelda’s loyalists had pulled back after their bloody nose, and were holding a hill a quarter-mile away, silhouetted against the sky.

The loyalists must have learned their lesson, for they made no move to attack Reggio’s forces; nonetheless, a withdrawal was out of the question. The bloody fighting earlier had evened the odds, and perhaps they were wary of these desperate rebels who pressed attacks despite their condition.

Reggio hit upon a famous plan to draw the enemy down from their position. Keeping the tercio in place, he sent the light infantry forward unsupported, in a loose mob. They would be the very definition of cannon fodder. Setting the main formation to a walk at a safe distance, they followed the poor footmen, who were under orders to feign a retreat the moment the loyalists broke rank to engage them.

The footmen did this, and Reggio was pleased to notice that only one of them was killed in the process; he hadn’t dared to hope for such a good ratio. The stupid bastard loyalists charged forward gleefully, and were met by levelled pikes and handguns. Their officers were killed, the nobles captured, and the battle drew to a close as the last loyalists turned tail and ran, or were encircled and cut down.

Things had gone better than Reggio dared hope. Their casualties had been heavy, with only 120 rebels left alive after this last battle, and the majority of them having sustained even more wounds. Lord Francis had only 3 able-bodied men under his command, and Juan Batista would be indisposed following his victory booze-up, undoubtedly. It was time to hunker down behind castle walls and lick their wounds – Reggio fancied he could find a few willing and impressionable revolutionary women to do the licking for him.

At that moment, a messenger rode up to their makeshift camp.

Oh, come on.

Butcher’s Bill: 51 men dead, 31 men captured.

Meet Reggio Perino, famous Laurian mercenary.

Reggio Perino, mercenary extraordinaire

Veteran of a hundred battles, expender of a thousand bullets, nemesis of all Queen Imelda’s enemies. Starting with nothing more than the shirt on his back, his father’s perfectly-balanced sword, and breath stinking of smoked fish, he decided to make his fortune. When he left his home in Lauria across the sea, his father had handed him the sword (which had been his father’s, and his father’s before him), and spoke words of sage advice:

“Be true and honourable, Reggio, for if a man cannot sleep at night then he is nothing. Fight for the side of good, for honour is its own reward. And always remember where you came from, when you raise this sword. Think of me.”

Reggio remembered these words the day he sold his father’s sword to a craftsman in Nibelheim, smiling as he clipped his new masterwork sabre to his belt and slid a heavy purse of Calradian denars across to the smith. War had been good to Reggio Perino, and he had made sure it was good by putting his native cunning first and foremost. The first time he’d used his father’s sword on a fellow human being, it was to kill a merchant to safeguard the Lord of Tihr’s reputation. He had blooded his mercenary recruits putting down peasant revolts while collecting taxes. He had sat back and grinned as his men stormed castle walls for 40 denars a day, without Reggio having to lift a finger. Queen Imelda of Lauria had praised him and his men, and had even deigned to offer Reggio lands of his own.

The bustling centre of Fearichen, the village that always sleeps.

The village of Fearichen was poor, but a steady source of new recruits for Reggio’s Banditti after that time that Reggio had driven had some bandits out of the village and secured their devotion (despite taking their every worldly possession as payment for this service). The poor bastards couldn’t wait to die for Reggio’s dubious cause, although dying wasn’t often on the agenda. No matter who came up against his Banditti, they were shot down.

Sea raiders…

I know you can fire three rounds a minute. But can ye stand?

Disciples of the Lion Throne…

Where is your god now?

Even the heavily-armoured Ellisian legions fell before the guns of his Banditti.

Close formation proves ineffective against firearms. A valuable discovery!

In every battle, he was victorious.

That's right, boys, cheer.

His reputation was immense, but Reggio knew not to bite off more than he could chew. He made sure to stay close to the larger Laurian armies, and was not averse to running away when it was prudent. But then things went south.

The mission sounded simple enough – scout the area around Grunwalder Castle, on the border of the territory of those fundamentalist nutjobs, the Lion Throne. Reggio knew that he had to get close in order to scout, and he definitely couldn’t count on the support of the main Laurian army, who were buggering about some miles to the north-west, around Etrosq Castle (which Reggio’s men had been instrumental in taking and defending against massively superior Lion Throne armies, much thanks he’d got).

Things did not go according to plan.

Oh dear.

Two Lion Throne brigades had surrounded his men, and they were faster than his foot-bound mercenaries. He had no choice but to fight it out.

Men of Fearichen, stop your dreaming! Can't you see their spearpoints gleaming?

His men had faced worse odds before, though admittedly with the safety of castle ramparts to hide behind. Reggio Perino unshouldered the Ormeli hand cannon he had taken from those janissary bastards to the south, and opened fire.

Boom! Groundshot.

His pistoleers and arquebusiers followed suit, as did his four lieutenants. The volley was shattering, but the Lion Throne kept coming, their cavalry and skirmishers acting as a screen for the heavy infantry formation behind.

They're coming out of the goddamn fog!

When the two forces clashed, Reggio kept his men wheeling backwards from the phalanx of Brigadiers and Propugnators, while his men fired pistols on the move and cut down the cavalry who attempted to break up the formation.

The chaos of battle.

Reggio kept firing, taking out clumps of men with the hand cannon at fairly close range, but his men were being chipped away and the Lion Throne’s reinforcements kept coming. As he was overwhelmed in hand-to-hand combat, the last thing Reggio Perino saw was his lieutenant Marnid swinging away with his halberd, going down fighting.

Cutting four men down with one swing. Not bad for a merchant.

But it was not enough.

God dammit.

Butcher’s Bill: 22 men dead, 31 men captured.