Over the next ten minutes, Nick and the tribe were able to hold on, despite a handful of casualties inflicted on their line.
They watched from the hillside as the beasts warring below fought and died. He estimated that between the lemurs, the pack, and the spiders holding the other hilltop, a third of the komos in the eastern valley had been slain. It was a promising development, although there were still hundreds of beasts to deal with, not to mention the army of lizards in the other basin.
However, this moment of equilibrium would prove to be the calm before the storm. The eye in the hurricane of battle that would break over their heads. A moment that was fated to end only a handful of heartbeats later. When Nick saw a second bonecruncher fall beneath a swarm of komos, their alpha turned to look straight at the tribe. It growled out an order to the pack, and Nick’s stomach dropped to his ankles, weighed down by a bone-chilling mantle of dread.
He yelled to get the Elder’s attention, but the lemurs’ leader had already spotted the problem. Half a heartbeat later, the hyena-boars disengaged from the komo forces, bounding up the hill in a river of tawny fur, powerful bodies charging straight for the lemurs’ line. The tribe shrieked in terror but held firm for now.
Nick sensed that their resolve would only endure a moment longer; that their morale would collapse once the slaughter began. By this time, most of the pack had spread out to charge the spear wall in a long line, lowering their heads to use their tusks as lances. The rest of the crunchers broke into two groups of three and started racing up opposite sides of the hill.
Oh shit. I forgot that the pack could use tactics too. The crunchers in the middle are going to engage our line, while the rest wrap around to tear into the spear wall from behind. We have no chance of holding out once they do. Nick looked over his shoulder and saw Bandit cresting the hilltop, leading a squadron of spearmen that comprised most of the tribe’s remaining forces. The newly arrived lemurs unleashed a fierce barrage of stones the instant that the pack entered their range.
Bandit must have decided that the situation warranted burning through their limited stores of ammunition. Nick couldn’t agree more, as the distraction would help slow the crunchers down, blunting the force of their charge and buying the tribe a few minutes to adapt to the emerging threat. Not that he could see any way to salvage the situation at this point, despite his furry friend’s foresight and ingenuity.
Hopeless or not, he intended to go down fighting. Every minute that they could delay their defeat was a precious resource. A chance for the flow of battle to shift. Despite the odds, Nick was determined to find a way to survive the bonecruncher’s relentless onslaught.
While he searched for such an opening, he raced to reinforce one flank, using the final seconds before the battle began to decide how to deploy his own limited resources. Although he had been hoping to save his Mana Darts, wand charges, and final flashbang for whatever awaited him on the summit, this situation had reached the level of a genuine emergency.
While Nick struggled to come up with a ploy that could save them from the crunchers’ jaws, the pack continued racing up the hillside, heading straight through the rain of rocks. While most of the hyenas sported injuries from their previous battle, it wasn’t enough to delay the powerful creatures for long. Nick’s tactical brain estimated that he had somewhere between thirty and forty-five seconds before the pack was upon them. Their only chance of surviving the assault was if the lemurs were able to hold the line. That wasn’t going to happen unless the crunchers heading for their flanks were thwarted before they could disrupt the tribe’s formation.
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Fortunately, the Elder had come to the same conclusion. She barked out an order to the club-wielders, then gestured to the smaller lemurs who had been throwing rocks and resupplying the warriors holding the line. Both groups bent down to grab spears from the pile and joined the spear wall, doubling its thickness as the lemurs braced themselves to receive the pack’s charge.
Good. The clubs were poorly suited to facing off against that species. If the spear wall can stymie the initial charge, the line can take full advantage of the high ground and stand firm for at least a few more minutes. But none of that matters if the hyenas advancing along the periphery of the battlefield break through and flank us.
All things considered, it was a grim, borderline hopeless situation. But Nick had no choice other than to do what he could and hope for the best, not unless he wanted to die without fighting until his last breath. He sprinted to take on the crunchers following the contour of the mountain, while Bandit and the Elder raced to shore up the side closest to the waterline. He pressed himself into a greater burst of speed, heading toward the sheer side of the mountain.
At least I can fight with the wall guarding my back. He estimated that it would take him another ten seconds to reach that location. That the pack would arrive another fifteen seconds later. As he ran, he conjured a pair of Mana Darts into existence, intending to save the third for a later emergency. When he cast the spells, Nick realized that there was enough energy in that weird spot below his heart for another two darts instead of just one. I must have leveled up during the fight. It’s too bad that I can’t use the obelisk to spend my free point. Not that it matters if I don’t survive the next ten minutes.
Arriving at the strip of earth where he had chosen to make his stand, Nick fished out the final flashbang from his toolbelt, then squeezed his body between a pair of terrified lemur spearmen. Using the final, fleeting seconds at his disposal to judge the hyenas’ vector of approach, he steeled his resolve. He was ready to fight to the death but praying for deliverance.
Unfortunately, the handful of heartbeats it took him to reach the flank had not been sufficient to devise a novel battle plan, even for someone as resourceful as Nick. But that didn’t slow him down. While the war would likely end in his death by dismemberment, this engagement fell neatly into one of his contingencies.
Operation chargebreaker. Step one: throw the crunchers off their game and disrupt their pack tactics. He raised his sword in one hand and picked out a path for his first dart, aiming for the chest of the closest hyena, which had outpaced its brethren by a couple of body lengths as they bounded up the hillside. Drawing on the lessons he had learned during his stay on the Searing Isle, Nick followed the beast’s gaze to judge its intent. He immediately realized that there was a problem. Rather than looking at the lemurs’ formation, the hyena was gazing over their heads. It wasn’t going to stop, and it wasn’t going to hit them head-on, leaving only one possibility.
It's going to leap over the line. Two seconds after Nick deduced its intention, the powerful predator bounded down low, gathered its strength, and prepared to unleash a mighty leap. A weaker version of the ability the Cruncher Alpha had used during their fight. It would have been too late to do anything had Nick been a hair slower in reading the beast’s gaze. But thanks to his foresight, he had already fired his dart. He was gambling that, like the other beasts on the isle, the hyena-boar wouldn’t react to the intangible missile until it knew the dart was dangerous.
Like a miniature silver comet, his dart flew straight and true, plunging into the beast’s haunches just as it poised to pounce. The painful magic caused its legs to spasm a heartbeat before it sprang. As a result, instead of flying over his head, the hyena howled and stumbled, its momentum carrying it straight into the spears of the lemur tribe.
The beast desperately tried to roll out of the way, but it was already too late. Four spearpoints and the tip of Nick’s sword plunged into the hyena’s chest half a second later. Three of the crude wooden weapons shattered before doing much damage, causing painful flesh wounds but failing to penetrate the cruncher’s dense layer of muscle.
But the fourth spear, along with his blade, sank deep into the beast’s flesh, severing nerves and arteries before puncturing both lungs.