It took the whole day for two little girls to finish all their errands given by Jericho. Well, it could easily take two, maybe three hours in total if they would just go to the stores. But no! Jericho ordered them to first order new training blades at local blacksmith, then move whole bloody merchant district to the farmers stalls to order new supplies for the inn, just to get few bags of leather from tailor… which was located vis-à-vis blacksmith. The poor girls really had a small adventure within the town, especially as you take into consideration that the city isn’t laying on completely flat ground. Every now and then they were forced to move up and down stairs.
Also, Elana asked for a break from time to time as she was simply losing her breath from carrying the not-so-heavy bags of clothing. The sun was slowing setting down and the whole city was basked in the afterglow of red light.
- “I think we have visited every shop.” Rus said gazing over young Scarlet. She smiled whilst weakly raising her thumb up despite the fact that her legs could refuse moving any further anytime now. “We could take one last break, El, there is cafeteria near.”
- “N..no! I am all... right!” She gasped.
She wasn’t all right. But it doesn’t matter for Rusiwel, for that was real full name of Rus, had her trump card ready.
- “Hee? Really? Ok then. I heard that mister Zariel liked that cafeteria and I wanted to see why he was praising it so much, but if El doesn’t want to…”
- “O…On the other hand I could drink s..something.”
Ah, so easy to see through. Still, you better pray to gods almighty that sister Gisele would never learn about your crush on mister Zari. For your own damn good. They quickly moved to cafeteria located at nearest street and ordered sweet drinks with cakes.
- “How are you feeling?” She asked.
- “I’m f...fine.”
- “Is that so? So you won’t mind if we would have a small training session? Nothing hard, just some running around?” El got pale all over her face. “See? You are not fine. El, why are you lying?”
- “I just don’t want to be a burden and…”
- “In this case you HAVE to speak when you are tired, El! It’s better to sit and have some rest than fainting and making other carry you, is it?! El, you are not a burden! You want to join guild, right? We are all family! We help each other! But you HAVE to be honest! Both with us and yourself!”
- “I.. I am so sorry…”
- “GOD DAMN IT WOMAN!” Rus raised from her chair. “Don’t apologize! You are resembling me from the time before I joined the guild too much!”
- “I… I do…”
- “Yes.”
- “So.. I also can become like sister Rus?”
Rusiwel heart skipped a beat just to start pounding like a mad in an instant. To be LIKE HER! HER! Someone wants to be like HER!
- “S..sure! If you would train a lot, that is… and eat well and…” she paused a few times gathering her thoughts. “What I mean is that all you need is confidence and perseverance. You will gain confidence as soon as you would finish few quests. So just keep trying your best!”
- “Your orders, young ladies.” The waitress came to their table putting slice of cakes and sweet drinks based on milk.
- “Thank you very much! Eh, the only sad thing is that these things cost half of our average mission salaries.” Redhead said with somewhat sad expression.
- “Then maybe it was bad idea to come here…” El said titling her head to the side.
- “WHAT YA EVEN SPEAK ABOUT!? No! Just like mister Zariel says – sweets are what we stay alive for! Also… there is a rumor that these drinks help woman to grow…”
- “Grow? Is that really a good thing?”
Magician sighed.
- “I am talking about breasts, Ela.” Up until now Elana’s face was red from [exercises], right now new shade of red joined previous one on her cheeks.
- “W…w..w..why are you bring it up!?”
- “You could use it a little…”
Indeed. Miss Scarlet was as flat as cute.
- “I…I…I AM STILL GROWING UP!” She said covering her chest area with her arms.
- “I hope that it’s true…”
- “YOU’RE A MEANIE!”
- “So… you don’t want it?” sSe asked moving her hand slowly in direction of rogue-to-be cup.
Yet her companion quickly grabbed it and pulled it closer to herself. Both embarrassed and angry.
- “Aww! That was sooo cute El-sis!”
She didn’t respond to that. For rest of the evening El was only huffing and puffing as responses for all tries of conversation from Rus. She wouldn’t talk to her even on her way back to Guild.
Only when she finally laid on her bed she understood that all mean words of Rus were said only for her own good. She fallen asleep with strong determination of apologizing her companion for her childish behavior.
Red Mountains
The battle of Briagr's Valley between [United Clans of Dwarfs] and [Greenskin Horde]Dwarfs Forces1 200Greenskin Forces3 000Battle OutcomeVictoryCalculating Experience PointsEnemies killed [personally]48 Goblins
21 Hobgoblins
4 Ogres
Enemies killed [assists]211 Goblins
44 Hobgoblins
116 Ogres
Commander's duty detected - Bonus points shall be added[Exp] gained:8 500
You have leveled upYou are now level [21]
The battle ended without me and Gis getting involved any further. In the end, we were only two little, fragile cute creatures that were thrown into this madness of chaos and… ok, ok. I am done.
What I meant is that me and Gis already played our part in this battlefield, and we did it quite wonderfully. I took down magicians before they were able to scorch squads of dwarfs. I warned them of the ambush and Gisele cut down quite few ogres by herself. I would love to say that army of dwarves lead by Ironblood had no bigger problems eradicating rest of the greenskin, but that would be a lie. There is no such thing like effortless battle. Yes, casualties on side of dwarfs were far smaller than one on side of goblins, but one have to remember that army of greenskin is far bigger. Also goblins can be treated as an “adult” and be send on the frontline when he is around 100 days old. Dwarfs? They need decades.
This is why dwarfs were fighting with caution.
When I finished healing Gisele I gulped quickly few mana regeneration potion that I brought with myself, told the queen that I want few dwarfs to raise a tent for me where injured warriors would be brought so I could heal them.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
I didn’t have to ask twice. When I only suggested that I could heal warriors queen’s eyes widened before she started yelling around to bring pieces of leather and wooden beams.
- “MY LEG!” One of the warriors cried in pain.
Indeed. Do you remember when I mention that goblins try to sneak under shields? That’s what happened here. They rushed at leg of the light-armored warriors and started biting his leg. And by biting I mean tearing whole chunks of meat with their razor like fangs.
- “My leg! My leg!” I mockingly repeated after him, mostly to distract him before painkiller would start working. “So what that leg hurts! Look at your friend over there!” I said pointing at bag filled with body of man that died on the battlefield. “He lost his head and does not complain like you do!”
The drug I gave him was supposed to be pote… forget about it. His eyes rolled back to his skull as he collapsed on fur that we were using as beds. Now, fumigate the wound, inject the regeneration potion, cast the regeneration spell on him, put a hex bag I made a moment ago under his pillow… and another patient.
I was not the only “healer” in the tent, still, medics of dwarves army could only treat wounds in magic-less measures. That meant that despite not being the only “doctor” here, I was the one who was… “exploited” the most.
Another case. A man got stabbed by thin blade of hobgoblin in the chest. He killed it quickly, pull the sword away and continued fighting. He thought that died.
He didn’t. He was slowly bleeding for rest of the fight, bah, he wanted to head back to have dinner with his friend, but because he was getting more and more tired his comrades brought him here, against his will.
I did my best. I really did… but… the pierced vein was too deep and he already lost too much blood. The in of itself was almost impossible to patch too. He died on my hands. The only thing I was able to do was to reduce his pain in the very last moment. I turned my head back to the soldier that brought him here.
But in the end I just got up and moved to another man. I didn’t know him and I couldn’t waste time for distractions. I couldn’t, or somebody else could join him in afterlife.
1200 soldiers left the city under the mountain. Around 70 died, around 150 were wounded. The only good thing was that most of the wound could be handled by other medics, such fatal cases like previous two were around 20. 20 people that I was personally responsible for. Four of them died.
Did I feel bad? Well, I was not crying, I was not depressed, but still, somewhere down there I was not pleased with the outcome.
- “Your share.” Gisele put wooden bowl with meat soup in front of me.
After those few hours in the tent I was too exhausted to even answer. Exhausted not physically but mentally. Each wound was different, each of them required different treatment. I was racing with time as I was trying to remind myself if the place that I am about to patch up was just bunch of muscles or if behind it some important nerve was hidden. Yes, blood covering wounds and hiding things you needed to see wasn’t helping much too.
It was my time to rest my head on Gis’s shoulder.
- “My, my! What did they do to you?!” She said with half joking half concerned tone.
- “Shh. Just lemme rest a moment or two.”
- “You want me to feed you?”
- “I am just tired, not dying!”
Oh wait. I could take advantage of her and...
- “A simple no would be enough!”
Damn it. I must be really exhausted if I refused being spoiled a little. Whatever. If I can lay here inhaling her scent, then I will be just fine.
But of course someone didn’t like me lazing around, for messenger came telling that queen and clan heads wish to have a conference and my opinion regarding few issues would be very valuable. In a few short words I encouraged him to go once again on the battlefield, look through the ogres bodies so he could find one with largest penis so he could use it to fuck himself, then I also start wondering if his mother wasn’t a hooker just to once again start wondering if he himself doesn’t prefers goats.
- “Forgive him, he becomes bilious when he gets tired.” Gisele apologize for me. “He will be more than happy to partake in the meeting…”
- “Tsh. Good luck with that.” I whispered to myself.
- “On which I will carry him myself.” She finished.
- “V..very well, then, excuse me, I will inform the queen that he will be present on the meeting.” The messenger said before turning back and leaving me alone, just with Gisele and bowl of meat soup.
- “Finish eating.” The dragoness ordered me.
- “No. I’m not going to enjoy every spoon and every bite of this tasteless goo…”
- “One, it is quite tasty as for the battlefield, our dried rations we take to dungeons are far, far worse. Two, you will finish it in this minute, or I will force-feed you.”
- “You wouldn’t dare!”
But she dared.
10 minutes later I was back on the hill where queen and few clan heads raised their tent. Same tent from which they were looking upon the battlefield. I entered it on my legendary dragon mount… or, if you prefer, Gisele throw me over her shoulder and carried all way here.
- “Ah, Zariel!” The queen smiled at me. “We are happy you came. Both your decisions and actions saved many lives, as on battlefield as in that hospital you asked for. Despite everything you two already did for us, I am afraid I have to ask for more…”
- “Tsk.” It was all I said.
- “Pardon me?”
- “Please, bear with him…” Gis started once again “… he will do everything that needs to be done, the level of sugar in his blood dropped so he will act for some time as spoiled brat…”
- “I see… well, victory was quite splendid, losses are acceptable, but we are afraid that it wasn’t main forces and…”
- “Of course it wasn’t.” Normally I would let her finish first. Normally I would be eating cake in bath filled with warm water. “I think it was nothing more than team send to slow us down. They don’t want us to reach the camp on the west. This is why they will be sending small armies. By small armies I mean small enough – so their loss wouldn’t hurt them that much, and big enough to hold us in same place for a day…”
- “The whole battle took just few hours…” The old Ironblood wanted to say something smart. Normally, I would agree and continue my point. [Normally] is today’s key-word.
- “And what with preparation? With forming a line? And after a battle with burying your comrades that has fallen? What with treating wounds of injured? That takes time, so in the end it's already an evening, you are giving away meals for the army and before you can see it is already night. Can an army march at night? Technically, it can, simply when the dawn would break somehow half of your forces would be missing. Got my point?”
- “So… what can we do?”
- “Nothing. I mean, we could risk, but we will not risk. Why?” I looked at the young Ironblood, he didn’t hesitate with the answer.
- “Risky action can be taken only in two scenarios – when you are completely winning and have lots of resources to spare, so you could try to quickly overwhelm your enemies and finish the war, if that would fail you would still have some basic advantage so you could continue war in old-fashioned way. The second case scenario is when you are completely losing. When you have nothing to lose you are free to try every means necessary.”
- “Well, not quite what I meant, but also correct. Risk is a bad thing. We can take risk only when he have at least partial information. The more information we have, the lower is risk itself. The only thing that we know is that further to the west there is a camp. Nothing more. It could be an ambush. Something to encourage us to take the risk, just to crush is with one attack. We know no purpose of this camp, we have no idea what is their goal as whole army, to finish with the fact that we know nothing about number of greenskins themselves.”
- “So… we do… nothing?”
- “Nothing? Taking care of your men is nothing? Taking care of their needs, morals is nothing? You said that yourself – losses were acceptable. Just continue steady march onward. That’s best we can do for now. Let’s stick to the main plan… until my other birdies would return with some more data.”
We were discussing for some more time, my grumpiness was slowly leaving as my body and mind rested. After an hour or so I was finally [allowed] to leave. I went looking for tent in which me and Gisele were supposed to stay. It was a nice thing that they managed to find one smaller tent instead of forcing us to sleep with rest of the soldier.
When I entered it I was welcome with truly divine picture.
- “Come on in, the water is still warm.” Gisele said from wooden bathtub that somehow magically appeared in the middle of the tent.” Also, one of the warriors had some chocolate with him, he said that it was to keep his spirits. I asked if he would trade it with me for something, but after hearing that it is for you, he just gave it away. Apparently you healed one of his friends.”
A bath and some chocolate.
- “Will you stand there just like there, or join me?”
- “Give me a moment. I am trying to decide what is more important to me: you or sweets.”
- “HEY!”
- “On the other hand, why should I chose?”
I quickly grabbed my portion of sugar-drug and jumped inside, splashing water around, and also on Gisele.
- “Honestly! Lately you act like a child!”
- “I wonder how you would behave if someone you love would jump into horde of enemies, so you needed to jump in, then exhaust your mana to separate her from even bigger group of enemies, just to spend next few hours patching up people that were literally dying on your hands so in the end you would be refused to rest of her shoulder. Still, it was worth it. For this little moment.”
I took another bite of candy to once again rest my head on her skin.
I didn’t notice when I drifted in long, peaceful sleep.
Edited by Cultivator