Jace walked towards the leaders who would be in command of this expedition. Ruminar, the marshal, was placed in command of the troops and no one had resisted the decision. Apparently Jisa’s grandfather was well known for his exploits on the field of battle.
The knights would take, two rows thick with two hundred men per row. The dwarven iron legion would follow behind them, with the elves behind them. The rest of the warriors were placed in the middle, the empire was trusted with the rearguard. Despite protests from the allies, Ruminar had harrumphed and ignored them. Stating that he would prefer having proper veterans watching his back. The empire men had grinned at that, proud of the statement.
Jace asked for a spot on the frontlines, he explained his inexhaustible skill to Ruminar who had assented. He knew that was where he would be most effective, but he still felt like he was lying to Sarai because of it. He shook it off, now was not the time to dwell on other matters. The other knights he shared the frontline with were experienced veterans, the fresh recruits like Vivianna were in the middle.
The plan, such as it was, was simple. The knights would kill as many of the dravu as they could and when they tired they would switch with the dwarven legion who would then switch with yet another group and so on. Jace looked to both sides, the veteran knights were grim faced. They were veterans and knew how bad this could get. He nodded to the man beside him, a knight called Edgard, on the other side a female knight with greying hair introduced herself as Elle.
They made some small talk, they were speaking more out of nerves than any interest in each other. Jace rolled his shoulder, his half-plate feeling less than adequate. He tapped his shield, and looked behind him. Between the row of dwarven warriors lay Carmine, a sight that was strangely comforting. Something about a sixty meter long snake on your side made monster hordes slightly less unnerving.
Tyrant was left in the city, the tunnels were no place for mounted combat so all units were traveling on foot. It took another half hour before the preparations and the supply lines were in order. Then they started marching down into the dark tunnels, a few mages were tasked with keeping light spells up that covered the entire company. Jace marched with the knights at his side and the dwarves at his back.
The march was silent. Most of the warriors too nervous to talk, nerves were strained. Jace kept walking, he had to admit he was unsure about being on the frontlines. He knew that was where he would be most efficient. The memory of Aziva and her clutching fingers, of Sarai and her pale worried face stayed with him. He breathed out heavily, Elle looked over at him, “Nervous?”
Jace nodded, then rolled his head. “For the first time in my life I feel like I have more to lose by dying than I have to gain from fighting.”
Elle chuckled and ran a finger over the edge of her axe, “You have a family now I presume. it makes a difference. But us knights we have a duty, we bring the stability and peace that our families enjoy. Duty is heavy as a mountain and family the anchor to our lives. I’m an old lass now, my children have children of their own. Should I die, they will miss me but I have lived a good life. You younger warriors have more to lose.”
Jace chuckled, “You know that’s a death flag right?”
Elle blinked, “A what now?”
Jace looked further down the tunnel, “Back home there are certain phrases that are common in stories, that are a prelude for death. When characters tell you they have a brand new wife and they miss her. Or when they tell you about their family or their dreams, or when then tell each other this will be easy we will be back by dinner.”
Elle laughed, “Now that you mention it, they do say those things often in fictions.”
Jace smiled, “Let’s not throw around death flags shall we? I’d like as many to get out of this alive as possible.”
Elle smiled, than turned grim. “Realistically speaking I expect us to lose at least half.”
Jace rolled his shoulders, “I expect to lose even more. I just plan to make it as few as possible.”
Edgard on the other side of him sighed, “The rookies and the adventurer’s will have the highest death toll. They always do.”
Jace frowned, “They lack training, the elite are sent into danger most often. But when it comes to war, they are more likely to survive. Which means we should be ok!”
Elle laughed, “ I’m certain that right there is a death flag.”
Jace smiled, “It does sound like one. I should make a list of sentences I’m not allowed to say during war.”
The three of them kept talking to each other as they started marching deeper down into the dark. It didn’t matter what the topic was as long as it kept their minds off the task at hand. While they spoke of everything and nothing, their eyes were peeled and never once looked at each other. Any sign of movement and all of them would be ready to react within in an instant.
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In reality nothing happened for the first hour, or the second. They would have to travel quite far into the tunnels to find their adversaries.
People grew more tense the longer nothing happened. It was a strange thing for people to be more troubled by the quiet before the war than the fighting itself. Jace understood the sentiment somewhat, during the wait you did not know what would happen, when in battle your only focus was survival or the completion of your goal. In this case their goal and focus on survival were one and the same.
Carmine’s tongue slithered next to his ear, he turned around and patted her on the head. At first a few of the knights had flinched when her head appeared over them, over time they had gotten used to the humongous snake. A whistle suddenly sounded, the knights stopped. The few scouts they had sent out ahead of them rushed back, they ran fast, faster than Jace had ever seen a human run. They were focused on their escape but shouted, “Big wave coming!”
The knights lowered their center’s, shields went up and created a wall of steel. They left a couple of small gaps in their shield wall for the scouts to slip through. In the distance Jace heard the pounding and scratching of claws on stone. His blood divided and created shields for each of the knights on the frontline. Elle beside him grabbed her axe and Edgard had mace in hand.
The dravu raced around the corner a distance ahead of them, claws tearing up dirt and piercing stone. Jace searched the horde but found no second class or higher dravu. The other knights must have done the same because they collectively relaxed slightly. While the amount of dravu was a danger without phase two or higher the knights were at little risk. Nevertheless they put their game faces on as the monsters drew closer.
Jace put his left leg forward and readied his shield. With a murmur an incorporeal wall of shields appeared above them, making sure the dravu would not simply overrun their position. Jace clutched his sword in a tight grip and tried to estimate the amount of drave, fifty thousand perhaps? A relatively small group.
The monster horde rushed forward and Jace flexed as they crashed into his shield, the wall held, the abilities of some knights strengthening the shieldwall as a whole. His feet slid back in the dirt as the pressure of the sheer amount of dravu pushed him back. Carmine’s head shot forward and snapped up a few dravu and swallowed them whole. Jace pierce forward and cut a dravu in half. Elle swung with her axe and cleared an entire swath of the creatures. Edgard swung his mace and smashed straight through the first monster, the ones behind it were sent blasting up into the air.
Jace let his sword shoot forward in a series of quick thrusts, the dravu fell without issue, the blood gathering around him. The offense of the other knights were stronger than his own, as each swing of their weapon killed over a dozen of the monsters. Jace himself killed a dravu with every move but it paled in comparison to the other elite’s. Then the blood started gathering around him and his kill rate went up. Blood spattered his face as he tore through more and more of the monsters.
The fight was surprisingly anticlimactic. After ten minutes of fighting the last of the dravu lay slain. The knights took a collective breath, rolled their shoulders and moved forward. They stepped over the corpses, with a quick stab or a slash here and there to make sure the creatures were not faking their deaths.
The dwarves and elves stepped over the corpses and ignored them as the knights did, when the group of adventurers reached the corpses they started dismantling them, gather the parts that were useful or valuable and putting them into bags. Jace saw none of it as he kept his gaze focused ahead of himself. The scouts once more slipped through the ranks and ran ahead of the force. Looking for more of the dravu groups.
The procession continued steadily, ever half hour or so they would run across a ‘small’ group of dravu. Earth mages kept sending vibrations through the tunnels every hour or two to look for the largest concentration of dravu. According to them the monsters were retreating away from the city. They weren’t moving fast but were steadily moving further away and into the mountains.
The dwarves muttered with grim faces when they heard the news, the dravu were headed towards their homes. They weren’t that worried, the dravu would have a hard time pushing through the hardened and heavily enchanted stone that surrounded the dwarven cities. But wandering and traveling dwarves who were going through the underground highways may fall as casualties against the dravu. The dwarven king had sent a magical missive to the cities that lay in the path of the dravu and ordered them to lock down the cities and recall everyone on the highways until the horde passed.
The alliance army pushed further and further but came across less and less groups of the dravu. The leaders were pondering if they should pick up the pace, if they did it would impact their security and they would have more losses should they be ambushed. Scouts would be less effective the faster they moved. At the current pace however they weren’t catching up to the dravu.
In the end they came to the agreement that they had to speed up despite the risks. Orders were sent towards the front and Jace and the line of knights broke into a slow jog. Everyone who joined this expedition was considered high level and would have no trouble keeping up with the pace. Jace stayed at high alert now that they moved faster.
The other knights tensed up as they ran. They knew things could more easily slip past the scout’s notice, despite their skills. The scouts were sent out in waves and ran in near full sprints to get as much intel as they could manage. When they ran into the next group of drave the army kept up their jog and used the momentum to tear through the dravu. Not all of them were killed by the knights this time and the dwarves had some work to do as they killed of the stragglers.
A few more hours passed and the knights switched with the dwarves. Jace backed off as well, although he could easily keep going he would only be a liability in a dwarven shieldwall. He would switch back in when it was the republic’s turn for holding the frontline. The frontline would switch between those three groups, as they were the only ones armed and armored in the way of heavy infantry.
The elves mostly used a mix of magic and arrows to assist the frontline, although they as of yet had used nearly nothing. It was important to keep resources in reserve for when the bigger battles happened.
Jace fell back and met up with Weira and her team, they had decided to join as they were stronger and more skilled than the average silver team. He walked up to them and waved, Weira smiled as she saw him. “Long time no see.”
Jace nodded, “Haven’t really seen you guys since they kidnapped Aziva. I should honestly have dropped by at least once.” He scratched the back of his neck.
Weira put a hand on his shoulder, “We know the last week has been busy for you, don’t worry we can survive a week without you.”
Jace laughed, “Of that I have no doubt.”
The rest went through their own greetings as they walked over to him and made some small talk while marching. A few minutes later Collin fell back and joined them with Miya. Jace grinned as the man fell into step next to him. “I have to admit Jace, I still hate these conferences, It’s a pain in the ass. I’m glad I brought Keklan my advisor, he is much more suited for this stuff.”
Jace chuckled, once a soldier always a soldier. Those were the words he would use to describe his old captain. The rest of them looked over at Jace with questions in their eyes, the man who had joined them was equipped in much higher quality armour than nearly anyone else who had joined the expedition. Jace chuckled at their gazes, “This is Collin, my old captain and current Emperor of The Empire.”
Weira rolled her eyes, “Of course you know the emperor, I’d say I’m surprised but… I’m really not.”
The others looked at each other and shrugged, Collin raised an eyebrow and looked over at Jace. “They don’t seem very impressed or anything.”
Florian grinned, “We are used to Jace meeting and befriending all manner of people, each more strange and impressive than the last.”
Collin laughed, “Guess he hasn’t changed that much after all. I remember how we were hired to guard this famous person one time, and she fell in love with Jace. The woman broke into his house and stole his laundry. Good times, Good times!”