“Knowing when is the right time to make your move is the hallmark of a good commander.” - Saying attributed to Xaliburnus the Conqueror, First Emperor of the Elmaiya Empire.

“Looks like the time’s about right…” muttered Reinhardt to himself under his breath. At the moment he was looking at the vanguard of the Podovniy army, a day’s march out from Aldenstadt. With the built-in spyglass function of his eye piece, he could see the exhausted looks on the enemy’s dwarven engineers even from his perch above a tree a good distance away in the forest. “Egil, Branka, Sal, let them have it.”

His words were carried over the artifact’s enchantments, which in effect spawned a miniscule portal to transfer the mana over to the recipient artifacts, where the air vibrated and repeated his words to the intended recipients. Said recipients were already deployed within arrow range of the main road the Podovniy troops were traveling in, and responded the moment Reinhardt’s command arrived.

Egil and his platoon started the barrage with a salvo of lead projectiles hurled by slings. The goblins were skilled – and experienced, as hunts in their jungle-infested homeland necessitated such skills – enough with their slings that they could do so from within the forest, which meant that they were still hidden behind cover while their foes would be hard-pressed to reply.

Mixed in with the lead projectiles were a few clay urns filled with the same bug repellant concoction Reinhardt had left Grünhildr some of. In this case, the intent of their use was less to incite disgust and discomfort on the enemy – though that was a nice bonus – but to serve as a distraction. After all, the first thing that people would think of when struck by the stench would be poison, more likely than not.

The moment the first barrage hit, a few of the enemy soldiers had the misfortune of catching the lead projectiles on their faces and died. Even then though, it was the stink of the bug repellant that caused a disproportionate amount of chaos amongst the enemy formation. As a result, the soldiers who were keeping the engineers guarded broke formation and caused many gaps to appear.

Which was when Branka and the second archer platoon made their presence known by raining arrows straight towards the coughing and gagging dwarven engineers now exposed in the center of the formation. The hundred or so archers of the second platoon loosed at least a thousand arrows at the surprised engineers in less than fifteen seconds, before the surprised enemy soldiers could regain control and reform their formation.

The chaos was further exacerbated by Salicia, who took it upon herself to snipe down anyone that looked like they were trying to get the panicked enemy soldiers under control. She took down no less than a dozen such people during the time in which the second archer platoon rained arrows at the engineers, further supplemented by a rain of lead projectiles from Egil’s platoon.

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Only when the last of the engineers fell to the ground – his skull shattered by an opportune sling projectile – and they loosed one last salvo for good measure did they stop as Reinhardt gave them the command to cease fire and withdraw.

Both the archers and the goblins swiftly retreated deeper into the forest, through paths that they had memorized beforehand. Behind them, the enemy troops sent some of their people to mount a pursuit, but it was too little, too late, as with the head start combined with their familiarity of the terrain, there was no way they would catch up to the escaping mercenaries.

Besides, many traps set by those same mercenaries and their volunteer allies awaited them within the forest, and groups of said volunteers lurked in ambush at certain spots to “welcome” any enemy that made their way deep enough into the forest. The enemy soldiers that went into the forest – likely due to an on the spot decision by their commander – had no idea what they were going into.

Legs were caught in nooses which then led to the flexible tree said noose was tied to straightening itself, hurling the unfortunate soldier into the air and a likely unsurvivable fall. Long, flexible branches with multiple stakes tied to it snapped out at thigh-height when another soldier triggered a trip cord, the stakes easily piercing through the unarmored thighs of several unfortunate soldiers at the same time.

A different tripwire resulted in a large log – suspended from the canopy with vines – to come swinging down and bludgeon multiple soldiers to death as it passed. Every now and then, screams came from other soldiers stepping into pit traps lined with stakes at the bottom. Morale quickly decreased amongst the soldiers who were sent into the forest, but they pressed on.

Then they ran into the first ambush Reinhardt had set.

The couple thousand enemy soldiers that had rushed into the forest soon found the archers and slingers they were looking for, or rather, found themselves to be the next target of said archers and slingers. A group of volunteer soldiers from Levain struck them from the side in a surprise ambush even as Branka’s archers and Egil’s slingers hurled projectiles towards them from the other side.

Before long, however, the Podovniy soldiers who had hunkered down in defense while expecting more enemies realized that the ambushers had withdrawn back into the forest, trading a handful of their dead for more than three times that number in casualties inflicted. At the same time, the barrage of projectiles also ceased.

Wary of splitting his troops deep within the forest, the commander in charge of the soldiers decided to pursue the ambushers, who were closer by compared to the archers and slingers. Unfortunately, that was the wrong decision to make, as within five minutes of beginning their pursuit, they fell into a second ambush while those archers and slingers made another return and pelted them with projectiles yet again.

By the time they ran into a third ambush in the forest, the Podovniy commander decisively chose to give up the chase, realizing that he had been played by the enemy all along. They painstakingly made their way back out of the forest – running into even more traps in the process – until the bedraggled survivors finally made it back to their army.

Out of over two thousand soldiers sent into the forest, nearly a quarter was lost somewhere within.