“With the emphasis placed on formation warfare in this day and age, individual prowess mattered less, while cooperation and discipline became the king of the battlefield. That said, this only applied when the combatants on both sides were relatively equal in general prowess.” - Gareth Magna Grusius, Military Strategist for the Clangeddin Empire, circa 502 VA.
“Four. Left elbow, left shoulder, head, right shoulder,” reported Hannah to Salicia after she heard the screeches from high above.
Hannah and Salicia had worked out a system to point out the location of targets spotted from above relative to themselves. They basically imagined a human body laid down in a circle, with lines drawn from the center of the circle towards the perimeter in the direction of the targets. The body part the line intersected indicated the direction, with the head being the direction they themselves were facing towards.
“Got it,” replied the one-eyed archer as she stepped foot on the large shield set on the ground before her. Her left hand went to the quiver slung across her back and grabbed a quartet of arrows by feel, one between every two fingers. Even as the shield began to rise up – lifted by the hands of two burly mercenaries – she nocked the arrow held between her thumb and index finger on the string of her bow.
The act itself was entirely second nature to her. Her eye already scanned the crowd of enemy soldiers in the direction Hannah indicated, as she had no need to look at the arrow in her hand to nock it properly. Her fingers already knew what to do by feel, a skill born from decades of constant practice with the bow in her hand.
Even as she noticed the target Hannah had reported to her, her arms moved in unison, her left arm pulling the string of her bow even as her right arm pushed the bow itself forward. The knotted muscles on Salicia’s back strained as they contracted and lent their strength to the process, the bow reaching its full draw even within moments, moments she used to aim.
Then the arrow was loosed barely a moment after the bow reached full draw, her right hand instinctively flicking the bow slightly to the right to allow the arrow to pass clearly.
The enchantments carved into the Yew Heartwood frame of the bow did their part in the process. When Salicia drew the bow, the enchantments lightened the load into half of what it should have been. When she released, they turned around and amplified the force which propelled the arrow and shot it out with double the force that the bow itself gave to the projectile.
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Moments after the arrow was loosed, before it even reached its target, Salicia’s left hand nocked the next arrow to the string. Her left thumb hooked around the bowstring and pulled even as she pushed with her other hand, the taut string digging into the thickly callused flesh of her digit. Most archers who drew their bow with their thumbs favored some sort of thumb ring to protect their hand, but Salicia favored going without, as she was able to exert more control this way.
Her eye tracked towards the right even as she pulled her bow, spotting her next target in line and adjusting her aim accordingly. Her second arrow was loosed before the first even struck its target, and Salicia pivoted her torso further to the right as she repeated the process for the next target. Her arms repeated the well-rehearsed dance of motions as she did so.
The first arrow landed just shortly after the third left her bowstring. The heavy arrow, easily as thick as one of her fingers and topped with a bodkin head meant for piercing through armor, struck the Warforged commander she aimed for right on the head. The man happened to look down at the moment her shot reached him, so the arrow landed on his helmet instead of his eye.
Not that it did the man any good.
It turned out that the helmet worn by the man was nowhere near enough to protect him from the sort of heavy arrow Salicia used, the force behind the projectile so great that it simply punched through the metal and into the man’s forehead. The arrowhead even pierced through the back of the man’s skull and went halfway through the other side of the helmet behind it before it finally stopped.
By the time the burly mercenaries who lifted her up started to lower the shield back down, Salicia had already loosed her fourth arrow and dropped all four of her targets. She was only raised above the crowd for a few seconds, too short a time for the enemy archers to even notice her presence, much less aim and shoot her way. Those that did notice and reacted, did so too late and their arrows only landed on the shields raised by the mercenaries around Salicia.
Salicia had accounted for at least thirty such commanders by that point of the battle, as she had also taken the time to loose a few shots at the Warforged units the Free Lances ran through. The resultant lack of coordination due to the loss of such officers helped the Free Lances break through the Warforged formation with more ease.
Even a few of the Warforged formations further in the back found themselves suddenly falling prey to her arrows, as she ran out of closer targets.
As a result, the once-tight formation of the Warforged showed signs of disruption, especially the ones under a pincer attack from the Free Lances and the Algenverrian Legions. Although the slave soldiers were very well trained compared to most, they still faltered when they were under attack from two sides without a commander to rally and command them.
In a way the strict command hierarchy of the Warforged backfired against them, as their soldiers were unused to independent actions and thus took a moment too long to come to a decision on how to face the enemy. By that time, it was far too late as their foes had exploited the chance and pounced on them like a predator pouncing on a wounded prey.