Chapter Ten - The Second Round, part 3

The clash of claws on shields. The caterwaul of tigers as they chased the soldiers with ferocity. Hywel waited impatiently as they approached the barricade. He had long given command for the archers to prevent the bear’s advance so that was still under control but the speed of the soldiers were no match to the tigers. The spearers had to turn around every few steps to deflect the incoming lunges. If there was one good thing about this, it was that so far there were no more casualties.

“Now, spears and shield ready! Archers aim for a single monster coming closest, aim for the face!”

Their distance was well-apart now, and so even if the bears were left to advance they would still take time. His plan was to let the archers take care of each beast one at a time while the other soldiers would take care of the tigers. The problem with this was the bears were a huge threat to those fending off the tigers but now, there was time before any of them can come in reach.

The rain of arrows accurately fell on the first bear. Most of them fell on the beast who howled in pain. Soon another bear was in the lead, for the first bear had stopped in its tracks. The arrows rained on the second bear this time, also pausing it for a few minutes but long enough to let another bear go before it.

As a doctor, Hywel’s main area of expertise was in surgeries and operations. What aided him the most of this job was how he was able to observe things in detail - a single error in observing could lead to treating the wrong place in the patient’s body - as well as his ability to quickly find a possible course of action from the information at hand. As such, he had picked up a peculiar trait of the monster bears of the first horde; the way it ‘learns’ of the soldiers’ attacks.

The bears were able to learn that the arrows were a threat only after they receive attacks from it. Once that information was processed, they would use their sturdy forearms to protect themselves and others. He however observed that the bears do not protect each other, so even with a mass of bears in one place the arrows would only be deflected by the one being targetted. Another fact was that after the barrage of arrows stopped falling, the bears seemed to ‘forget’ this piece of information, judging from how Hywel was able to hit the boars again after a while. Piecing these two facts together, he came up with the current method of dealing with the bears.

The first bear which fell was the bear who had first received this method of barrage. Like Hywel had assumed, after it had recovered from the pain and upon seeing that there were no more attacks it dumbly progressed with the march once more. The second time it was the closest to the barricade, it was attacked once more and disappeared into smoke.

The third piece of information that Hywel knew about the bears was that they also ‘learnt’ when a fellow bear dies. This was what made the bears so hard to defeat during the first horde. The bears were wary of the air now, their eyes focused upwards.

Hywel planned to change the method of barrage when this happened, but soon realized it wasn’t necessary. What he wasn’t able to observe from the previous horde was the fact that the bears did not attempt to move when it was wary due to the fall of a comrade.

“Stop the arrows, but when they start advancing again, attack again.”

He gave a different instruction to what he had planned, then focused on the tigers.

The five spearers were facing the tigers, their backs to the forest in a fan-shaped formation. The horseless lancer and the horseman were aiding them from behind the wall of spearers. The tiger count was still eight, but only six were able to attack at a time due to the way they were surrounding the soldiers; this had been a huge factor for allowing the tireless soldiers to survive without any deaths just yet.

“Horseman drop your weapon and armour, then try to lead away some of the monsters!”

Hywel attempted to instruct the horseman after seeing the speed at which the horse gave to fall back. He mused that if the horseman got rid of the weight plus the fact that the horse, too, did not tire, they would easily outrun the tigers. If the amount of the tigers focused on the spearers dropped, they may be able to kill them. The problem was he wasn’t sure whether the horseman could unequip their gear, which made him reluctant to try anything of sorts until now.

With a heavy thud, anything metal fell to the dirt path. The horse gave a whinny at the release of so much burden, drawing its front legs into the air. With that motion it jumped over the spearers and the tigers, softly landing on the other side with ease. Upon such an action, the heads of the tigers turned. Hywel saw with a tired smile that the tigers were licking their lips at the sight of the horse, now completely defenseless. The spearers did not lose this opportunity and attacked the tigers in unison, provoking the attention of the tigers back to them.

Hywel cursed at their stupidity.

If there was a plus side, the tigers were noticeably wounded now. Several were limping, their robust skin in tatters. Even so, their claws and fangs could easily rip a soldier in two.

The horseman circled the tigers but they gave no attention. The horseman could not attack either since their weapons were far away. Hywel sighed, but moved on to the next command now that he knew his soldiers were capable of parting with their gears.

“One spearer, throw the spear at a monster with the most injury. Lancer, back him up.”

The lance were mostly made of metal, however the spear were merely wooden poles with a steel blade on top. Hywel was reminded of javelins when he saw the spears, so this idea had been sitting in his mind for a time. The problem with such action, excluding the prior doubt of being able to let their weapons go, was that the spearer would not be able to attack afterwards. A spearer got into position, holding the shield in front with the spear overhead.

As his mind reeled for other ways to win this, the spear left its owner’s hand, flying with an incredible speed towards the incoming tiger. It was magnificently skewered and became a puff of smoke in moments. The spear kept flying in the air until it was buried in the ground a few distance away. The empty space was quickly filled by another tiger, but the plan had worked. Seven more to go.

With a smile, Hywel gave the next command, getting used to how the battle’s flow.

“Okay, take the lance from the horseman on the ground and continue attack and defending. Horseman, try to use the spear.”

With that, he glanced at the bears. They were advancing once more, but only three were visible. Things were going smoothly, though this time Hywel did not lose his focus.

The battle was over with two horsemen, five spearers and ten archers alive, but the fight with the tigers lasted way longer than Hywel would have liked.

“Hywel Inmos. I enjoyed watching the way you commanded your men. You showed a better control over the battlefield as well as evidence of learning and applying tactics from previous battles. This time however the other candidate has the lead. You may choose six more men to recruit for the next horde.”

Once again Hywel’s vision was taken to the soldier selection, the prince’s evaluation accompanying him. The amount of soldiers he could choose did not change despite being unable to finish before Fabre, most likely due to the prince’s high evaluation.

The new soldier that was added to the list were mages - their robes and the staves gave away their specialty. As Hywel observed them, they nonchalantly summoned sparks of fire and ice while a few others were creating wind or earth which seemed to suggest that they were elementalists. Elementalists, he remembered from the lessons,  weren't as strong as sages but they were versatile with their ability to utilize all four elements. They require time to prepare the magic to be used as they draw the Mana from their surroundings so each blast of spell has a considerable down time. The plus side was that their magic did not run out like that of archers’ arrows as long as there were Mana in their surroundings. Their spells can give various effects, from fire which has burning properties to ice which can slow or freeze opponents.

"Two spearers, one horseman and three elementalists."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Hywel recruited six more members. He instructed them to be at the frontlines save for a single elementalist, though a question popped up in his mind; ‘What kind of spells are the elementalists capable of?’

He knew the general information of them but when it came to the type of spells they can make, he did not know. From literatures in the past, things like ‘Fire Ball’ seemed to be the most common example of a fire element spell, but surely that was not their extent?

“Elementalists, what spells do you know?”

Hywel asked without expecting a reply for until now these imitations haven’t spoken a single coherent word at all. The elementalist who was standing the closest to Hywel opened their mouth.

“Magic Ball, Magic Bolt, Magic Blast, Magic Cage and Magic Shield with elemental properties of fire, ice, air or stone.”

The young master nodded slowly in understanding; basically, he gathered, they were mainly capable of providing ranged support for the most part. He was interested to know more details on cage and shield, but that moment the trumpet sounded for the approach of the next horde.

He looked down at his small army and saw that their supplies were replenished once again. The horseless lancer had regained a mount as well. There were three horsemen, seven spearers, three elementalists and ten archers, with the archers and a single elementalist at the barricade to provide covering fire.

"Alright. Spearers at the front for defence. Elementalist support attack. Horsemen attack monsters that comes to elementalist mainly but if there aren’t any then support attack. Elementalist at the barricade follow orders given to archers. Archers shoot when monsters in range."

By the third wave, each soldier’s place was settled in Hywel’s mind which allowed him to command them with more confidence; his side had suffered losses, but he had gained that much knowledge about them..

As Hywel observed the incoming wave, he noticed that there were no recurring beasts this time. To make things slightly harder, there were shadows approaching from the sky; aerial monsters.

"Archers attack the flying enemies first."

He commanded swiftly as the enemies closed in at a fast pace. Soon they were close enough for him to make out exactly what they were: abnormally huge bats with a wingspan longer than Hywel’s height, screeching and shouting their way towards them. Their talons were just as big and vicious.

Arrows were let loose in the air with a ‘woosh’, along with a needle of fire. They relentlessly attacked the bats, impaling in various places. Two out of the twelve that Hywel counted fell like stones as the arrows impaled the skin of their wings. The rest kept flying towards the barricade whilst suffering the brunt of the arrows. The bats were very fast, but they had little to no way of defending themselves; every time the barrage of arrows landed at the flying beasts, the ones who received the arrows on their mighty wings fell from the sky. Even so, a handful of the bats managed to reach the barricade. Their appearance was much uglier when Hywel could see one up so close; their eyes were mere black lids on their pig-like face, their body covered in dirty coarse hair. Their wings consisted solely of skin and bones and the stench - Hywel could smell one before they were even at the barricade walls.

The archers were forced to stop their shooting as the five bats screeched together; the noise was so great that even the human imitations had to crouch with their ears covered. At that moment the bats each grabbed an archer by their talons and flew up and away with them, only to drop them from high up in the sky. Almost in no time, half the archers were dead.

When the bats came back, the remaining archers were ready with their arrows ready in bows. They aimed at the bats before they could screech again, the arrows easily piercing the bats' vital parts due to close proximity and turning them into smoke. Hywel sighed in relief, but as he did so he smelt the dreaded stench of bats filling his nose again. His body moved before he could think, taking the sword out of its sheath and the shield gripped in his hand. The hairy figure popped up from below with a screech, having climbed the wall of the barricade, and lunged towards Hywel. The shield made a grating noise as the bat’s talons clashed and while the impact was great, the young master managed to hold his ground albeit slid a few distance. 

At that moment the bat burst into flames, disintegrating into smoke. Hywel looked up from his shield in bewilderment, and saw that the elementalist was there with their hand stretched out; he was rescued. Hywel muttered a word of thanks but the elementalist took no notice of that, already moving towards the wall, looking down the barricade. He also did the same, and saw what had happened; the bats whose wings were shot down earlier did not die, but rather used the time when the soldiers' attentions were at the flying ones to crawl their way to the barricade. Three of the remaining six were already latched onto the wall, evading or blocking incoming attacks from the archers. The elementalist was also chanting and casting spells of fire as fast as they could, but the bats were using their useless wings to absorb the arrows and quelling the flames towards them.

Hywel dared to glance away from the wall to the spiders. The spearers were still standing firm while the other soldiers were slowly culling the spiders. They were putting up a good fight, being able to maintain the defenses while successfully killing a fair few. Hywel wasn’t able to count all the spiders earlier due to the swift attacks the bats gave them but he knew there were at least forty spiders. Now, he could count half that. As he watched, an elementalist who was focused at chanting raised their hands and summoned a huge boulder in the air, throwing it to crush countless number of spiders in one go. The other elementalist provided support to the soldiers with a strong wind current when the spiders would shoot webs to hinder them, proving to be an invaluable asset. Seeing that they were dealing with the monsters well on their own, the young master's attention returned to the bats.

“Try ice magic on the monsters on the walls.”

Hywel instructed the elementalist who was engaged with the bats. The sparks of flames which danced around their hands flickered out, replaced with a fine mist of cold air. Once their chanting was over, a brilliant blue ball appeared. The blue ball, which was surrounded by the same icy mist, sped towards the bats. It hit a bat on its wing, freezing it solid. Shrieking with surprise, the bat lost its footing and fell, the ice shattering at the impact and heavily damaging it. A few arrows from the archers easily finished the defenseless bat off. The next few rounds of Ice Ball were evaded by the nimble bats, realizing they would suffer more from attempting to block it, but instead it covered the walls to make it more difficult for them to climb up. By this point all five remaining bats had reached the walls and were scaling it, but perhaps due to their habit of travelling as a group, they were all attempting to scale the same length of the wall as others.

When they came up to the strip of the wall covered in ice, they dug their talons in deep to crush the slippery parts; their inept control of power however drove their talons into the wall much deeper than the thickness of the ice, making it difficult for them to take it back out. Using this chance, the archers rained their arrows at the bats to finish them off.

"Alright, let's aid the spider hunt now."

Hywel commanded his soldiers with an exhausted expression. The archers obliged, their arrows flying straight and true towards the remaining spiders.

A trumpet suddenly sounded at that moment.

As Hywel observed, another group of bats and spiders were approaching from the distance; twelve bats and countless number of spiders. The young master muttered in defeat; the spiders they may be able to fend off, but the bats were a different story especially with only five archers and an elementalist.

"...I guess this is the end."

[Author's Note: I haven't slept since last night doing assignments so please comment if there's any weird sentences and/or mistakes. ]