Squad six had spent most of the morning preparing all the supplies they would need for a month in the field. Lyse was tasked with acquiring the supplies from the camp quartermaster while Amelia and I poured over the maps we had been given at our chosen route. We were to head east deep into the eternal forest until we came across an old trading route that was no longer under use. The eternal forest was named so as it seemed to stretch endlessly through more than half of Eter and deep inside of Norx.
The recent political state of the Norx border had led to the route being mostly unused on this side of the border. Following the map, we would take the trading route some twenty miles north, then turn west and try to enter Grove from the north through the Grove of Giants, a part of the forest known for its massive and old trees that could grow as high as five hundred feet tall and live for hundreds of years. We were to avoid all contact with the enemy scouts with our primary objective being to locate any survivors of the advance army or find the enemy main encampment.
All of the recently graduated squads were tasked with these routes that would take us far out of the likely path of combat, leaving the riskier ones for the more experienced squads. It should have been unlikely we would make contact with the enemy if they were pressing south down into the mainland of Eter, but that did little to improve our spirits.
No one spoke as we gathered our packs and began to walk to the marshaling field. Amelia spoke up from the back of our group “I just never thought it would start like this, so much death and disaster before our careers even started”.
I shared the same sentiment and gave a grunt in agreement, the most I could trust myself to say without my voice shaking. I spotted my mother standing off to the side and pivoted over to see her.
“You can’t leave me like this, you are all I have left!” She cried out.
My heart broke with every tear that fell from her once beautiful, now piercing blue eyes. The disappearance of my father had hit her hard. She had stopped working, stopped leaving the house and signed up as a camp follower as soon as the Eter King had announced the reformation of the 3rd army.
“I’m not leaving you, I'm looking for him, I’ll find him and we’ll both come back to you”. I said holding her close. “You need him here with you, not just me.” I cried with her, tears falling unbidden.
“I can’t live without you Syl, if you die, I won’t have any reason to live!” She bawled her fists, banging them against my chest. She turned to leave and slipped my grip. She stormed off back towards the camp designated for camp followers and workers.
The marshaling field was full with the eleven squads lined up in a rough square. The most experienced squads at the front with the new ones at the back. General Rale was standing at the front of the crowd, staring out over our heads into the distance.
He abruptly began speaking in a strong, stable voice “Stryker squads of Eter, we ask you today to brave the dangerous terrain ahead of you and find evidence of anyone still alive from our advance army, or find the location of the enemy encampment. A dangerous task with as little as we know, we have created routes that should cover the majority of the possible avenues Norx can take, but we can not know for certain what lies down which. We urge you to take extreme caution, do not engage with superior numbers, information is what matters right now. We have requested reinforcements from Etes and the 1st and 2nd armies but as you know they have a long way to travel. If we turn now we risk being hit from behind, if we advance we risk being surrounded.”
“Well he’s not painting a pretty picture”, Brutus mumbled beside me.
“Once we know the enemies’ location we can begin to plan our next move, we intend to dig in here and create defensive fortifications while we await the return of your squads” general Rale finished.
After the general's speech, we waited our turn in line before departing out east, crossing a grassy plain and moving towards the forest in the distance. Amelia took the lead as our designated scout and ranged a couple hundred feet in front of us. Once we got under the cover of the trees we closed to a tight formation with Cass in the lead, followed by Lyse, me and then Brutus in the rear.
This was a formation we had practiced many times during our training and we fell in with a small sense of normalcy. Our planned route to the Giant Grove should take us around a week with a day to search around and a week to get back to base camp. Our spirits seemed to lift the farther we moved away from the camp, the reality of it all starting to slip away. Just the five of us in the woods was a familiar feeling and we enjoyed it in silence.
Every few minutes we would pass a marker placed on the ground by Amelia to let us know we were both heading in the right direction and clear of enemy scouts. The marker was a type of fruit that had a bright yellow color that was easy to spot but would spoil within a few hours, effectively camouflaging any that we did not retrieve. It helped that they were also tasty.
That night we camped in a small clearing well off the path. Amelia found it and established that no one was within sight lines of the clearing, so we made a small cooking fire. Lyse had her training as a cook, often a role served by the logistics squad member. While she did not enjoy it, we certainly enjoyed the warm food to settle our bellies and nerves. Dinner was root vegetables common to the area with meat from birds Brutus had been able to shoot down during the march.
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We had enough dried meat and vegetables to last us the week there, we would need to forage for the return journey. Many of the supplies needed for the 3rd army had been lost when the advance camp was taken. Talk was still sparse, we were all lost in our own thoughts trying to process the many events of the past few weeks.
My mind drifted to my father, was he out there sitting around a small fire, thinking about me? My departure from my mother weighed heavily on me. She had sequestered herself in her tent with the camp followers and refused to see me as we left. I hoped to get back to her quickly to amend things.
Amelia cleared her throat and looked around “Today we covered around five miles, tomorrow we need to cover ten to give ourselves cushion to move slowly around Grove. I will set the pace early with breaks as we come across safe places. In this dense canopy it will be difficult to tell where the sun is but I will try to find another campsite before dark.”
We left before sunrise, my pack weighed roughly forty pounds, a heavy weight for my one hundred and ninety pound frame. My standard issue stryker uniform was mostly made of strong leather of a deep green in two layers. It covered my chest and back, with pants made of linen covered in leather. Bracers and shin guards covered other weak points with thick sturdy boots for my feet.
As a wildcard I was allowed to pick my focus during training, in the ideal scenario I would have been placed with an advanced stryker squad to learn different styles and pick what fit me best. We could only work with what we had, so I was left to pick my focus without guidance.
During training at the academy I excelled in finding unorthodox solutions to problems and using equipment and the environment to my benefit. I took classes on trap making for both offensive and defensive purposes as well as advanced field craft, local fauna and archery. I had my standard issue bow and twenty arrows as well as my fletcher kit which would allow me to craft more arrows, they would not be as good as a professionals but they would do in a pinch.
Inside my pack I had some of the Eter army standard traps. Ten trippers, long thin and strong wires that could be used as a trip wire between trees. These wires could be combined with any trap requiring a manual trigger. I had seven poppers, small gray cubes that emitted a harsh, loud sound when crushed. Ten knives that could be affixed to spears to serve as stakes or thrown, not that I was particularly good at throwing them. Seven manglers, metal contraptions that could be leveraged flat and placed on the ground, when stepped on they would snap shut with force mangling the foot and rendering most out of the fight. I had five clay spheres that could be lit on fire and would create orange smoke, useful for signaling, and lastly five small blue boxes. Inside the blue boxes were three different powers, when mixed these powders were extremely explosive and had to be handled with care.
Using the tripper, or any other fuse source, I would plant these boxes and they would explode violently once exposed to fire or triggered by pulling a small metal divider out and allowing the powders to mix. It made me nervous to carry these inside my pack even though I had been continuously assured they were harmless and inert without fire or exposure to the air.
The chemist with the army called these fire induced explosive devices, but most in the army just called them bangers. In my class on fieldcraft I learned how to find the natural materials to make these powders if I needed more raw power, the exact mixture needed professionals back in camp, but adding more grayson root would expand the explosion.
Three or four hours into the march my back was on fire. My legs were more used to this from the running but I had never traveled like this with so much gear. I was close to asking for a break when we hit two of the marker fruits on the ground, a sign that a safe space to rest was up ahead. I had never been so glad to remove my pack, very carefully setting it on the ground.
“You know they keep all of that stuff in the wagons, they bump all over the road, you wont set it off just setting your pack down” Cass stated from across the clearing.
“Yeah well you are free to throw it around as much as you want, just not near me” I replied. Cass grinned and Lyse let out a small laugh, it was nice to see some emotion on my friends faces.
Amelia let us know that by her guess we had covered about half the distance we needed to cover today. I groaned audibly as I thought about putting my pack back on and continuing.
“We should go through a round of kata before we load up again and start moving,” Brutus added.
Kata was a stretching routine that we did every morning for physical training. As much as my back hurt, the idea of stretching did sound nice. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and began to settle in a deep squat to stretch out my hips. I heard a shout from the other side of the clearing.
“Ahhh I’ve been hit! I’ve been hit!” Amelia screamed, pain lacing her voice. I heard the tell tale whistling of arrows as they tore through the clearing, missing me but not by much. I dove to the ground and crawled to a tree for something to put my back too. I took the scene in, a large man was in close combat with Brutus, swords flashing in the light, while Cass was chasing a man he had apparently injured with his spear. Lyse was nowhere to be found and Amelia was rolling on the ground with two arrows stuck out of her thigh.
I grabbed my bow from my pack and began to search the area for more attackers, seeing one about to fire into the back of Brutus. I was a passable archer at best, and currently terrified, I missed my shot by five feet over the assailants head. Thankfully it was enough of a distraction to get the archers attention and he fired at me instead of Brutus’ back. I saw another arrow fly towards the archer from the other direction and hoped it was Lyse.
With the archer turned towards her, I began to sprint towards him with one of my throwing knives in my hand. He heard me coming and turned and released an arrow point blank into my chest, the pain was immediate and intense. I saw Lyse screaming as she released an arrow that hit the assailant in the back of the neck, coming out the side. I tasted metal in my mouth and the clearing began to darken. I tried to stay on my feet but consciousness was fading fast. I heard Lyse say something and then I knew no more.