This is why he sent armored and shielded troops with lots of Communal Protection from Law and Communal Protection from Evil and Communal Resist Fire and Communal Protection from Arrows spells! His undead warriors bear axes and shields as they go out to clear the abbatis, under fire from the Razmirani and Ustulavi soldiers.

There is a problem with the New Razmiran army, and it is this: It was created by an evil genius who had never, actually, fought in a war. He consulted his advisors, most of them wizards who had adventured up to fifth-ish circle rather than getting their experience by fighting battles, on army design, but his force is not the product of military evolution, it is the product of trying and failing to copy what the scary people down south were doing.

New Razmiran does not therefore have light infantry who are maneuverable in rough terrain and good at hand-to-hand individual fighting out of formation. Razmir didn't think of it. His army was a vast wall of pikemen augmented by wizards and Razmiran Priests and cavalry, suited for an endless broad field on which a battle could be fought. When his generals had to find someone to do it, they hired local mercenaries, and all these deserted in search of better pay and less death when Razmiran fell. and so it is local Odranto men-at-arms who are trying to fight the undead trying to clear the obstruction in hand-to-hand while the Razmiran troops rain arrows and crossbow bolts and spells from their absolutely ridiculous number of cheap wands down on them.

Unfortunately for the Odranto men-at-arms, the difference between 'feudal lord's retainers, equipped with what he could get the castle blacksmith to make' and 'corpses of former adventurers, tribal champions, elite warriors and Hellknights, equipped by master dwarven blacksmiths and animated so as to be supernaturally quick and proof against slashing and piercing weapons' is rather like the difference between these same men-at-arms and angry peasants unhappy about tax increases wielding converted farming implements.

This fight isn't going to go the way the Razmirani want it to. At all.

Except in the obvious sense that they can direct massed archery and spell fire at targets who are busy laboring to try to clear obstructions, even if these targets "are" "better" "fighters" than their own troops.

Except in that sense, yes.

Then while the champions may push the Razmirani obstructions (men and trees both) out of the way, they'll suffer heavy losses.

Channel, cycle out injured troops, shrug off arrows and live with the fireballs. They can take the hits if they must.

Still, they may control the beachhead on their side of the ford, but as they tear a path through the obstructions, roll the trees into the river, and try to put themselves into some kind of real fighting order - 

- The walls of pikes and poleaxes will roll forwards. One force from the northeast, one from from the northwest, with the light infantry falling back to fill in gaps between them and take the soggy ground too soft for the infantry.

This is an archetypical example of the sort of battle that a clever general prefers not to fight. A defending army of inferior numbers and inferior quality, but possessing the advantage of terrain, is unlikely to win, but it can inflict heavy - and, in his case, irreplaceable - losses on the attacker. Pikemen are not hugely effective against his skeleton warriors, but their defensive ability and talent for delivering bladed death from three rows at once still lets them buy time for the Wands of Fireball to inflict their deadly damage.

Which is why his commander is not fighting this fight.

That tower where the militia were hanging out with their arrows and slings? The bulk of the enemy army is now engaged, right?

... Yes...

That tower was where they put all the militia troops they didn't want in a brawl, who couldn't take fire from skeletal archers or wizards. The one that is off to one side of the place he forded.

Yes...

There's a reason he waited for nightfall before attacking, and it isn't better night vision.

Among the Grand Prince's necrofeudal vassals are certain incorporeal undead, spectres and shadows and wraiths searched out at great expense or created by dark magic to serve him. On their own, none of these undead are... plotters. Ambitious. Undeath so often dulls the mind, weakens the convictions; it takes a necromancer a hard hand and stern mind to bind them to service, to drive them out of their petty dens and into the hunger of the night. 

But give them life to feed on - life that is huddling behind physical walls, life that was left without its clerics because they were more desperately needed in the front lines, life that is weak and physical and ill-trained, militiamen with none of the magic weapons the finest soldiers of a true army would bear to protect them from this -

- and they can replicate themselves, the greater making the lesser, each bound to their creator's service to the limits of its powers.

In the darkness, the ghosts of men are invisible, especially to an enemy with poor night vision. And so now the spectral tide rushes the barred gate, passes through and there is life, life unending with little wood bows and little wood crossbows, all crammed into so little, little space -

HELP HELP HELP

The troops are committed and the troops don't matter - New Razmiran's most powerful adventurers, wizards and "clerics" and clerics and anyone with magic items, rush towards the tower - 

Too slow, too slow! The gate is barred against the rescuers as against Ksiaze's dark knights, and mortal flesh so soft and weak, and the spectral dead so swift to kill. If the adventurers had been ready to guard against this blow, it would have been one matter. But this - this is another. It takes spectres mere moments to kill and create and kill again, and though great hosts of them are lost to his command, the rest will surge out under their masters' orders, augmented with great, great numbers of the new-raised slain.

Well, that does it for the morale of New Razmiran. They already lost one battle, and a vast tide of spectral undead swarming down on them from a flank they thought their allies had covered will not do great things to convince them they can win another. Some units start retreating in good order, others in worse. (The cavalry, always at an advantage for fleeing, will do so quite rapidly.) Their Ustulavic allies are running first, but when you see people start to flee, even the best discipline will have trouble holding troops to their positions.

Another victory! Wielki Ksiaze will teleport off to the next trouble site, and let his under-lich Kasimir Konor finish up the pursuit.

(The pursuit is nasty. There were a few survivors from the tower - people who threw themselves from the top and got lucky enough that it wasn't their legs they broke - and most people can die, and don't really want to go after people who can fight back when there's someone routing to chase, and so, well - some of the Razmirani troops get away.)

They are aided in this by the fact that he wants most.of the troops who just won this battle to go southeast into Barstoi. With Lastwall distracted, he can finish subjugating Odranto with the Army of the West, which means he can send enough troops down to Barstoi that he can track down and destroy their army without needing to abandon any sieges.

Barstoi, however, has had some time to prepare.

Yes, the undead don't tire or sleep, but even undead oxen can't haul wagons that fast, and the undead need storage for their arrows just as much as everyone else. Ksiaze divided his forces and now his army is going to have to match from one end of Ardeal to the other; he can't do everything all at once.

And this means that the Order of the Pyre has time to hire mercenaries to augment their forces.

... But not, like, good mercenaries, or mercenaries from far off places, not unless they want to pay for a teleport. They are dealing with an enemy army that travels all night at walking speed. Really there's only one group of mercenaries they can hire.

Armag Twiceborn, Chosen of Gorum, would cheerfully rip the guts out of whoever made that slander. The Tiger Lords are very good mercenaries. That is, they are very, very good at killing things. Unlike the soft sellswords of the River Kingdoms, they don't just run away if the enemy outnumbers them. They kill.

Armag is Chaotic Neutral.

And proud of it.

So, are you going to pay me to fight someone else or do I invade Barstoi?