Today Five Cave Village was quite noisy. This was, of course, because they were preparing for battle.
Everyone had something to do; they needed arrows, medicines and troops had to be trained.
Most of the women looked for the needed medicinal herbs in the nearby forest, it was quite safe as the hunters had long cleared any nearby danger. The rest stayed in the village, grinding the herbs into paste.
The hunters were split into two groups, the first group was led by Ferlin and kept hunting, and the other one was trained by Berg in guerilla tactics. Every day the groups would switch tasks. Chris was quite pleased as he couldn't offer much more than what he learned playing video games. They only had a few days to train but at least they would be able to attack together and flee when needed.
The disabled and children worked on making more arrows. Chris noticed they were all working on their own arrows from start to finish. As a modern man how could he not use this chance to introduce the concept of assembly lines? As it turns out they were not complete strangers to the idea as it was used in some aspects of their lives, but it was more happenstance than planning.
The task was divided in four parts: finding good wood, carving the arrows, making bone arrowheads and assembling the arrows. The first arrows were made with copper heads, however their stock was limited and there was no blacksmith to forge more. So they had no choice but to make bone arrowheads. Luckily the villagers already knew how to make them, after all in their current situation they couldn't hope to rely on copper heads forever. Their instructions were to make the bone arrowheads long and thin. This time Chris didn't need the arrows to do much damage, he just needed them to have high penetration.
Titus led a small group of soldiers into the forest. Chris requested them to find anything that could be used as poison, the stronger and faster acting the better. They left with small nets, which intrigued Chris.
And finally, a small group of scouts kept watch at the Kunall Scout Camp, their job was to alert the village as soon as a patrol left. They chose a good vantage point, reasonably far from the Scout camp, but close enough to see anyone leaving. They would then alert Five Cave Village with a smoke signal and leave right away, in case the Kunalls came to check the source of the smoke. The Kunalls were 2 days away from the refugees, Five Cave Village was 1 day away so this would leave plenty of time for Chris and his troops to reach the refugees.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Everything was in order. Chris could finally breath a little. Berg left the hunters to their training and joined him.
"Sire! I am ready to give you my report!"Said Berg.
"Sure. Go ahead."Answered Chris.
"Five Cave Village has a total population of 1520! We have 670 able adult males, 540 able adult females, 160 children, and 150 elderly and disabled people.
Of those people, 264 are hunters, 25 are scouts, 160 are soldiers protecting the village..."
To Chris' surprise, Berg just continued shouting numbers in a loud voice.
[Huh? Can't he just write it all down? Does he expect me to remember it all?]
But then he understood... [The only map they had, was drawn on leather. I haven't see a piece of paper since I got here! Where is a good computer when you need one?]
"Wait wait! I can't remember everything like this! Just tell me, how long can our current stock of food last? How many copper arrows do we have? And is there any one that has a particular skill or job?" Asked Chris
Berg was a little sad as he could not show off all his hard work, but then he thought for a while and answered: "Currently, we have five days worth of food. This might seem a lot but I'd recommend keeping our current hunting efforts. Our hunters will be unavailable for a few days, and many might be injured during the campaign... not to mention we might have new mouths to feed. I'd recommend stockpiling at least 10 days worth of food... "
"Very well, let's move the herb picking squad and arrow crafting squad to the gatherer squad once we have enough of each." Said Chris.
"Very well Sire" said Berg. "We have 150 arrow heads left, including those already mounted and in use for hunting. This will not be enough to kill 20 Kunalls.... Even if we do not count the misses."
"This is less than I hoped... No matter, I have asked Titus to prepare something to help us on that. And our people are making piercing bone arrows as we speak." Said Chris.
"Most of our people do not have any particular skills outside of working the fields or working in the army. But we do have 13 cooks, 1 tailor and her 2 apprentices, 3 leatherworkers, 2 carpenters and their 5 apprentices, 7 masons, 1 herbalist and her 3 apprentices..."
The list was rather long which surprised Chris. "How come I have seen almost none of those people?"
Berg was a little red when he answered: "I am embarrassed to say they probably had to abandon their craft for more pressing matters. We cannot build as we are forced to hide in caves, most crafts require tools and workshops which we cannot take with us when fleeing from the Kunalls, even standard crafts will be left behind and will most likely profit our enemies as war loots. Their skills are currently useless... Unless we start to rebuild."
"Tell them to refresh their skills then. The day we build the first city of the Sun Kingdom isn't far away !"
Berg answered delighted "Yes sire!"
As he was leaving, he suddenly stoped and asked: "Sire, forgive me for asking, but did you find out what your divine power is?"
"Gnu? Did you say divine power?!"Shouted excitedly Chris. [Is this my cheat? Is this my time?]