Fifty students made a mad scramble for the same part of the hill. So many plans had been made for building defenses, but no one had ever thought about how an attack should be responded to.
“Go back!” Sven yelled down the hill, shouting at the 6 people running up to join the defense. “Spread out and keep watch for more attackers.”
The students stopped their uphill sprint and hesitated for a moment, before turning and running to the opposite end.
“They need to spread out more,” Yaric said with concern, running besides Sven.
“They will realize what’s happening, I can’t micromanage.”
Thirty students were already standing between the main palisade in front and a much smaller one three feet back. More were joining every second.
Yaric picked up his own spear on the way up, and joined his classmates in the defensive line. Delmar was right – their attackers were an entire team. And they had their own flag with them.
“Where’s your bow?” Sven asked, causing Yaric to wince.
“In my room.”
“We’re so unorganized,” Sven admonished himself. He appeared to be very annoyed, but his negative emotions were obviously directed toward himself.
“This is a good chance for us to learn what we need to do better,” Yaric encouraged him, watching fifty students charge up the hill. They were already more than halfway, and about to engage.
“This has to be all of them, should we call the others back?” asked Yaric.
“No. They’ll be too late.”
“AHHHH!!!”
“GET THE FLAG!””
“ALALALALA!”
War cries erupted as the attackers arrived. Several leapt up and over the vertical face that had already been dug, launching themselves over the defenders’ heads. Most of the others lunged forward to pressure the defenders at the same time, in a clearly coordinated assault.
A few defenders still raised their spears to thrust at the attackers overhead, but most of them had shields flicker into place immediately; some were amber, most were red.
Only 2 of the twelve attackers were hit. The other 10 landed behind the defensive line in a well-organized maneuver.
Unfortunately for them, there was a second row of palisades directly behind the defenders, impossible to see from below. Every single one of them landed on the upturned stakes.
They all fell to the ground. Three lay motionless with a constant red shield over them, while the other seven fell with amber shields, ‘mortally wounded’. Simulated injuries to their legs immobilized them long enough for some to turn and finish them off.
Over 20% of the attacking force had been taken by surprise and eliminated in the first seconds.
Three more attackers made the leap up the defensive line. These students each held a tower shield, and instead of aiming to go over, they launched themselves straight into the barricades.
Wooden stakes flew back into the defenders as the shields barreled through, propelled by the 6th year students taking cover behind them. Two Team Flagbearer fighters were knocked back into their own defenses and had shields of their own flicker to life. Simulated injuries made them slow to stand, but there was no danger.
The first jumper was struck twice in the back before he could recover. The second found himself under attack from both sides, with only an oversized shield to defend himself. He was struggling to keep from being overwhelmed.
The third jumper had mistimed his jump, and the bottom of his shield clipped the top of the wall. His shield pivoted around the bottom edge and flipped onto the top of the palisade, sliding him over the top, through the gap, and into the second line on the other side, without doing much more than shift the defenses slightly back.
Assault groups racing up behind them now found themselves in trouble.
The first and second groups both jumped through the gaps their shield bearers had created, but found themselves blocked by the second palisade, and under attack from both sides. Only 3 spear wielders were needed to effectively block the narrow passage between the defensive lines, and Team Flagbearer took full advantage of it.
The third group had no gap to jump through, and had to abort their jumps at the last second, creating comical thumps as they hit the wall instead.
A total of 15 jumpers were already out, and most of the 2 eight-man groups that followed were out as well, with the few survivors already being overwhelmed. The rest of the attackers stayed below, trying to clear the defenders off the wall with their spears.
Then Gerrick arrived with Yaric’s bow, and started shooting down at the attackers from almost point blank range. The slope of the hill, the steep wall at the top, and the barricade immediately above combined to give him excellent cover. All Gerrick had to do was take a step back, and he disappeared from view. No one below could see far enough over the top of the wall without jumping and making themselves easy targets for the defender’s spears.
Gerrick kept nocking arrow after arrow; simply stepping forward each time with bow already drawn. A quick glance over the lip was all he needed before the arrow flew into someone’s face. The range was so short that he couldn’t miss.
Even better, once he stepped back and out of sight, he could move freely up and down the line, constantly popping up in unexpected places. Seven arrows and seven ‘dead’ attackers later, the assault petered out completely.
Gerrick got 2 more as they ran back down the hill. Only 5 fighters joined the 2 who had remained behind to protect their own flag.
There weren’t even any injured left, only ‘killed’. Somehow, the entire attacking force had been practically wiped out.
They weren’t unscathed either, but with only 8 ‘dead’ and 17 showing signs of simulated wounds, they had come away far better. Against a 6th year class. And even with their crappy base!
“Hold on, there’s only seven of them left!” Anton pointed out.
“Yes. Well done, it’s definitely over, we’ve fought them off!” Sven replied.
“No! Their flag! We need to get their flag!”
Anton jumped down onto the hill slope as he said this, and several students started to follow.
“Wait!” Sven shouted. He pointed to the largest grouping of students. “You guys stay here with the wounded; we could still be attacked by another team!”
With that, Sven jumped down as well, followed immediately after by Yaric. Thirteen students in all were running down the hill, chasing after the escaping team. They ran through the forest for several minutes, following Anton, before they saw him stop in a shallow streambed, looking up and down.
Yaric spotted movement up the hill on the other side. At least four or five members of the other team were running through the trees.
“They split up here,” Anton panted. “Some followed the stream down and around the bend there, the others ran up the other side,” he gasped. “I couldn’t see who had the flag.”
Yaric didn’t even hesitate. He turned and started running down the stream bed, making for the bend just ahead. Running uphill was slower. It also kept you in line of sight for longer and always made you feel more exposed. Not to mention that larger groups were easier to spot.
The flag was most likely going downstream.
Most of Yaric’s teammates followed him, either trusting that he knew something, or choosing the option that didn’t involve chasing people uphill.
It worked. Yaric spotted the loosened dirt were someone had climbed up a steep bank on one side of the stream. The broken patches in the leaf litter stood out clearly on the forest floor. They found him 2 minutes later, hiding under some dense bush.
“They’ve found me!” the kid screamed, desperate for someone to come to his rescue.
The bush might have made him harder to spot, but it made it impossible for him to defend himself, lying prone on the ground and surrounded by branches. It did nothing to stop spears though.
Team Flagbearer left him there, glowing faintly red under the bush – proud new owners of a lime green flag decorated with a snarling black dragon. Yaric found that the trip back was surprisingly tense. No one wanted to lose their new flag so soon. Who knew where the other teams might be hiding?
They made it back with no issues and started celebrating on the way back up the hill. Sven held their new flag high, waving it back and forth excitedly. The rest of Team Flagbearer saw them almost immediately, greeting them with cheers of their own.
No one had been idle during the chase. The injured all had the inscribed bandages applied, and most of the damage from the attack was already repaired. Some of the additions they had been working on when the attack started had already been resumed as well.
“Well done everyone!” Sven shouted when the cheers started quieting down. “We got our second flag on the 4th day, without assaulting anyone!”
More cheers rose up all around him.
“I can’t believe we fought them off like that!” Anton exclaimed.
“That’s what proper preparation can do. And it’s why we need to do more.”
“I don’t think so,” Anton replied thoughtfully. “You think we didn’t prepare defenses last year? I know we were put on the backfoot when they hit us so quickly, but still. This fight shouldn’t have been so easy.”
“What was easy about it?”
“Well, not exactly easy. What I mean is, we fought them off with only 8 of our fighters knocked out, and knocked out almost every one of them at the same time. The results are too skewed for what we had prepared.”
“And don’t forget that they were all 6th years,” Yaric added.
“Exactly!”
“Well… We can’t argue against reality though. We did fight them all off.” Sven paused for a few moments, looking off into the distance while he thought the situation through. “Let’s get everyone together for a quick meeting. We should discuss what happened and work out a proper plan to go forward with.”
Yaric ran off to round everyone up, leaving 6 of the ‘wounded’ fighters to act as lookouts. No one wanted to go all the way down to their base camp, so they all congregated around Sven, right where they had just been attacked. Yaric was sure that his team was also still on edge after the assault, despite their success, making them feel safer on top of the hill where they could see an attack coming.
“We need to decide how we build going forward. And what we prioritize. To do that, I thought we should first go over the attack. What went well, what went wrong, where we can improve. For example, we made a lot of plans for building our fortifications, but we had no plan for actually responding to an attack. Everyone just ran straight to where the warning came from. Some of us also had to go fetch our weapons.”
Sven looked meaningfully at everyone. “That can’t happen again - we won’t get lucky a second time.”
Everyone remained silent for a few moments, hoping for someone else to speak.
“We need more bows,” Gerrick suggested. “I only found the one.”
“Yes, that was Yaric’s,” Sven smiled. “No one else brought a bow. I’ll make a request for some when we get the next supply drop in 2 days, but we won’t get them for another 3 days after that. What else?”
“The wall worked really well,” Yaric pointed out. “Cutting a wedge out of the hillside stopped them in their tracks.”
“It wasn’t really the wall, they jumped over easily,” Delmar countered.
“The wall did help though,” said Sven.
“It was mostly our second line of stakes,” he corrected. “They did all the damage.”
“That’s not even what they were for,” added Yaric. “We chose to add them in case the first line was breached. These guys jumped over the wall and landed straight on top of them. No one planned for that to happen.”
Most of the team joined in the discussion at that moment. Everyone had an opinion on which was most effective and which part should be reinforced first. They all experienced the attack differently and found different things to improve. The wall could be made larger by cutting a deeper wedge, while the secondary line could be made thicker. It was Anton who ended up breaking the stalemate.
“I think that might be why the fight went so well. Nothing we built should have been such a big advantage, but both of those features worked together to be far more effective than they are on their own.”
“What do you mean?” Sven inquired.
“The wall blocked them and made attacking us awkward. Their best option was to jump over us. But the wall also made it impossible to see the second line. They would never have jumped like they did if had known it was there.”
“Which they will when everyone goes back as reinforcements,” Sven mused.
“The wall also can’t be taken down. It’s dug into the side of the hill,” Chelsea added.
Chelsea’s comment helped Yaric to realize an important aspect of the wall as well. “It’s also an obstacle that ties them up even when they get past it.”
Sven looked skeptical, prompting Yaric to explain further. “Even when people did get on top, the second line blocked them from going forward, but the wall kept them from going back. They got stuck in a narrow line.”
“Ahhh… Yes, they definitely worked well together. But will they still work well when the attackers know what to expect? And how can we make them better?”
“We can dig a deeper wedge maybe? Make the wall higher?” someone suggested.
“No, cut another slope into the hillside,” Delmar replied. “We built the wall by cutting a wedge, and it’s great. But anyone who attacks us also has a small flat area in front of the wall. We should dig that out, so the slope goes all the way up the foot of the wall. Then every step back takes them further away and lower down.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“You want to make it harder to get to the wall somehow?”
“No, I want to make it harder to jump over the wall.” Delmar saw everyone looking around in confusion. “Right now, there is a nice flat bit in front of the wall. It makes it easy to jump. And you can jump lower if you’re jumping from further back, because you can use a flatter trajectory. Then you will also land further behind the palisades. But you have to jump much closer if there’s a slope, and it will also force you to jump at a higher trajectory, or you won’t clear the wall. If they are forced to jump at a higher trajectory it will mean they can't land as far beyond the wall as they could have.”
“That’s a good point, let’s do that,” Sven agreed. “What else?”
“We could build a proper palisade at the top of the wall?” Anton suggested.
“But we have a palisade there already.”
“No, you’ve built a palisade meant for temporary marching camps. They're just barricades, crossed over stakes with a 3rd stake lashed over the middle, almost like a hedgehog. I mean that we should sink vertical logs into the ground and make a full wall.”
Most of the team disagreed very strongly with that.
“It would take us a week if we did nothing else!”
“That’s a lot of work for something so easy to get around.”
“How are we supposed to get so many trees up here?”
“Do you know how long the wall needs to be? That would need hundreds of trees!”
Sven raised his hands to quieten everyone down. “Ok, ok. We are just making suggestions. He is right though, some of the barricades we built were knocked back by those guys with the shields. How did that happen anyway?”
“Oh, that’s easy. They jumped from underneath, so the palisades were lifted up by the impact. They normally can’t be pushed back because the forward-facing stake also digs into the ground at the back,” explained Chelsea.
“So should we tie them together?” Sven asked.
“No, that would make it worse. One of the pieces already got caught on the other pieces next to it; the whole lot was knocked back together. Maybe we should rather sink some poles into the ground, but just a couple behind each piece? Anyone who jumps into the palisade after that will have a really bad day,” she said with a wicked grin.
The whole team murmured their agreement with her on that one.
“Alright, here’s where we are. We’ll first finish repairing everything that got damaged. Then the priority is the flat section in front of the wall. We need to dig that away as soon as possible. The dirt can just be shoveled downhill, so it’s not as bad as it looks, even for 50 people. I’m sure that will throw them a bit when they attack the second time.”
“How do you know they’ll be back? We kicked their ass the first time!” Everyone cheered.
“Because we have their flag. They will want it back. And they’ll want revenge, and this time they’ll know how our defenses work. That’s one of the reasons why I want to change things up a bit. We need to keep them guessing or making false assumptions.”
“Then I also want some stakes driven in behind the palisades," Sven continued. "I agree with that idea – reinforcing the barricades so they can’t be knocked back will make them even more effective and take these guys by surprise.”
“Also, I want that second line made wider. One way that they might change their plans is to try and jump further. We can’t rely on them landing in the right place next time. Those barricades were built into a shallow trench. We will dig that trench 5 feet wider and just add more stakes. That part isn’t to make it difficult to move across, it’s to make it deadly to land on.”
“But there is one more idea I want to discuss with all of you, because if we go ahead, we have to make it quick. And I mean that we need to finish before the next supply run in 2 days. It needs to be completed without anyone seeing anything. We will even need to post lookouts in the forest to make sure no one takes a look before we are done. Yaric? Can you explain your escape plan?”
Yaric was startled by the request. His tunnel had completely slipped his mind after fighting off an assault and then winning a flag in return.
“Ah… sure. It’s not really complicated. I want to make a 3 yard wide path from the front door of the building, all the way up the hill, and down the other side.”
“Not the whole way down the other side,” Sven interrupted. “I don’t want the exit hidden from view. It might be discovered without us knowing, and don’t forget that people are likely to hang around just inside the forest.”
“Exit?” someone whispered.
“Oh, ok. Then down most of the way. We can stop a few yards from the forest so it’s always in sight,” Yaric looked to Sven questioningly, and continued when he received a nod in agreement. “The idea is to first dig up a few inches of dirt - just enough to lift the grass up without damaging it too much. Once it’s out of the way, we can dig down for another foot, across the whole width of the path. Then we dig a proper trench that’s only 1 yard wide, right in the middle of the shallow trench.”
“What would be the point?” Anton interrupted impatiently.
“He’s getting there,” admonished Sven.
“Right, so, once we have the whole trench dug, we can place logs across the top. The shallow part on top would be 3 yards across, so we can easily cut each log to the right size. And because the proper trench is much deeper and only one yard across, the logs will lie over it and form the roof. Then we can fill in the dirt again and cover it back up with the grass.”
“An escape tunnel!” someone realized. Everyone got excited at the idea. The feeling of vulnerability that they had wasn’t only due to how difficult their camp was to defend, but also due to how difficult it would be to escape if their defenses failed.
“What about the fortifications at the top?” Anton asked.
“We’ll have to dig a bit deeper there,” Yaric acknowledged.
Sven stepped forward again at that point. “It will need to be much deeper; we need it to be under the wall. And most if it will be the whole 3 yards, I’m not risking everyone getting buried alive. The ceiling can’t be too high or there will be a risk of the walls collapsing.”
“Aren’t tunnels dangerous?” Chelsea asked, concerned at the idea of being buried. After all, a magical shield wouldn’t stop you from suffocating.
“We aren’t digging a tunnel, we’re digging a trench. I know that it still makes a tunnel, and it sounds like the same thing, but this is much safer, trust me. It will be much quicker too.”
“What about the survivors? Won’t they be watching us?”
“That’s exactly why I want people placed in the forest to fight off any curious scouts. And also why we have to be quick if we want to go ahead. But I think they will stay away from us for now, they’re so outnumbered.”
“The tunnel has to be finished quickly or the grass will die. It will make the tunnel easy to spot,” Chelsea said.
“And the dirt from digging will mark the route. We can’t clear up every spot of dirt,” someone else pointed out.
“We can do it,” Anton said, changing his mind. “We just need to get all of the logs cut first. Then we can place them as the trench moves along and cover it straight away. Some people lift the grass, others dig. And as the trench moves down the line, more people place the logs and cover everything up. Don’t do it one stage at a time, do it one area at a time.”
“That’s a good idea,” Sven agreed, smiling.
“We need to start at the exit and work our way back,” suggested Delmar.
“What difference would that make?”
“That’s the part we can’t let anyone see us building. Who cares if we’re still busy with the part on our side of the hill? No one can see inside the hollow.”
“Great point!” Sven exclaimed. “That makes the whole thing so much easier! And the exit is also right by the trees. We can cut some nearby, so the logs don’t have to go far. Just not too close, I don’t want a bunch of tree stumps right at the exit,” Sven added.
“We can make some trails with the dirt from digging in front of the wall. No one will be able to figure anything out we dug a trench if there are lines of dirt spread everywhere.”
The whole team was nodding along with these ideas.
“So, we all agree?”
Team Flagbearer was eager to have an escape plan, and they all agreed enthusiastically. Everyone got started at once, undeterred by the midday sun. Trees were cut down all around the base of the hill, with some cut into stakes, but most chopped into logs just over 2 yards long. It had been agreed that an extra yard on each side of the main trench was overkill, so they cut the shallow trench down to 2 yards wide, leaving one and a half feet to brace each side of the logs that would make up the tunnel’s ceiling.
Dozens of trees had been felled before nightfall. Almost all of them were processed as well, since each team processed the tree that they themselves had cut down. Minor repairs to the wall and palisade were already completed, and the path their tunnel would take was already marked out.
They only real hiccup had been storing the cut logs. They couldn’t be piled up by the planned exit location, and it would waste a lot of time and effort to carry them up the hill and then back down again. In the end, they decided to just risk leaving them in piles near where they had been cut. The only risk then was sabotage, which they all felt was unlikely.
The next morning saw 35 students working hard at the bottom of the hill. Some were digging up grass and gingerly placing the square pieces to one side, while others moved forward to dig the initial, shallow trench. Yet another team followed behind them, digging the main trench that would be their tunnel. More students hurried behind those, laying logs over the trench and refilling the hole, before carefully replacing grass on top. Scouts stayed on top of the hill and in the forest, keeping watch.
Finally, one of the injured students got to sit around in the shade, waiting inside next to the flags. His job was to get the flags out of their base camp if they were attacked while everyone worked on the tunnel.
Yaric was grateful for the fact that they had already learned a basic augmentation spell. Digging trenches was so much easier when you could enhance your strength. It was also good training.
The tunnel had been dug over half way up the hill by lunch time, and late afternoon saw Team Flagbearer reach the flat section in front of the wall. And their first problem.
“How deep do we need to dig here?”
“I don’t know, it depends on how we dig out the area around the wall.”
No one was sure how to proceed, but Sven had a simple solution.
“We’ll just start digging out the flat area like we already planned, but only the part around where the tunnel will go through. Then we can dig the trenches after it’s done.”
The sky was darkening by the time they had finished, but most of it was already completed. The parts that could be seen anyway.
Only one more challenge remained. How do you dig down through the wall, and cover it back up again? The side of the refilled trench would be part of the exposed wall.
There was no good solution. The best that anyone could come up with was to dig out a whole bunch of random sections, just a few inches in, and refill it again. Then large sections of the wall were compacted for a second time. Hopefully the tunnel area wouldn’t stand out from the rest of the wall.
The second day of tunnel construction continued much as the first day had. Everyone was still highly motivated and excited to be building an escape option.
Yaric was on scouting duty this time. He found himself patrolling quietly through the dark forest long before the sun had peaked over the horizon. The predawn was exceptionally quiet, boosting his confidence in his ability to detect any intruder.
Sven came to fetch him personally, and together they collected all of the patrolling scouts that were roving about below the camp.
The tunnel had crested the hill. No one could see it anymore, so they could now all join in with the work.
Their new priority was now the flat section in front of the wall. It needed to be dug out urgently, not only because it would go a long way to improving their defenses, but also because there really was a lot of dirt still spread amongst the grass around the tunnel. They needed the dirt from in front of the wall to help disguise the inadvertent trail they had already left behind.
Sven’s idea to hide the exit had worked well, however. The end of the tunnel was dug first, as that was where they had started, but Sven had instructed them to pile the dirt uphill, along the path of the tunnel. The first 5 yards was dug this way before the pile of dirt started getting too big. There was no loose dirt around the exit point.
That was critical, as that point was also a lot shallower. The logs there had been laid across the trench just like everywhere else, but a second layer had been lashed on top of them, perpendicular to the lower layer, forming a solid door. The door was also a lot shallower than the rest of the tunnel. There was only one inch of dirt between the door and the grass. The entire tunnel had been made with a slope up to the exit by simply starting with a very shallow trench and gradually digging down to the proper depth as it moved away.
Yaric looked around the exit point as they walked past. Everything had come together spectacularly. 'The exit is easy to get out of, and it’s practically invisible. I can hardly see it! It’s hard to see even if someone notices the rest of the path and figures out that there’s a tunnel here. Actually, who’s going to see some dirt on the grass and go, ‘The other team must have dug an escape tunnel’? At worst, someone might think we have dug some traps. Come to think of it, we should probably dig some traps!'
Yaric was very satisfied with their progress as he joined the rest of his team in digging out the flat ground. They actually had some fun with scattering the dirt around. Some people were having contests to see who could fling the dirt the furthest. Others took some of the bags their supplies had been delivered in and used them to carry large amounts further downhill, where they used the dirt to make patterns and lines amongst the random scatterings.
Sven made sure that they also scattered patterns over where the tunnel had been dug.
Forty physically augmented students finally finished on the third day. The ground in front of their wall had been cleared out all the way around by mid-morning, and the much shorter trench down the inside of their hill was finished just after lunch.
A big celebration was held when their 8 KIA teammates returned to the camp with the supply drop. Everyone else had a lot of fun showing them the extra defenses, but most of all the almost finished tunnel. There hadn’t even been a mention of a tunnel on day 4, when they had been forced to leave, and now there was a tunnel about to be completed on day 6. A tunnel from one end of the hill to the other.
Sven gave up on trying to keep the team quiet. He gave over his list of requested supplies for the day 6 drop, ensuring that they included another 20 bows, and quietly joined the others as they showed off what they had done.
Then it was back to work. The trench was dug right up to the door, with an incline up to ground level at the end. Then a proper palisade was constructed around the entrance to the building, covering the tunnel entrance.
They couldn’t sink any trunks into the ground over the tunnel, so several were sunk in a line, spaced a few feet apart, and additional trunks were then lashed horizontally to the supports. The entrance was now the 3ft gaps that were left between the edges of the fence and the stone wall of the building. It created a useful choke point for defending the building, but they had no intention of ever trying to do so. If anyone ever forced them inside, they would go straight down into their escape tunnel.
Team Flagbearer was excited. They had already been so successful when fending off an attack, and now they were so much better prepared than they had been the first time around. The wall was better, the barricades were reinforced, the second line of barricades was made deeper with the extra stakes planted behind it, and additional weapons were now cached near the top of the hill, in easy reach should they be attacked again.
All that was left now was to plan a proper offense. After all, the whole point was to capture the flags - they couldn’t sit in a camp all day.
The mood was still jubilant on the morning of the seventh day. Breakfast was filled with excited chatter about the attack plans they would be making. Everyone finally felt safe as well. And who could have guessed that they would already have a 2nd flag? From a 6th year team no less!
Sven saw to it that the entire camp was prepped first, before calling everyone together to discuss plans to go on the offense. He refused to discuss anything until after breakfast was eaten and cleared away, water had been ported back from the river, and firewood for the next night had been collected. Then those not on lookout duty were gathered together.
“Alright, we have a full team again...” Sven was forced to pause for a moment as some people cheered or whistled.
“Yes, yes,” he smiled. “Save it for after we get another flag...” He had to pause again for some more whooping.
“I have some exciting news. Most of you will get to spend the next couple of days working on more fortifications.”
There was no cheering this time.
“Ha ha, you aren’t expecting to just march off and attack someone were you?” he teased.
The expressions on the faces of most of his team indicated that yes, that was exactly what they were expecting.
“We have to find them first. And we can’t even start making any plans until we do. Where is everyone? What kind of defenses do they have? Have they just been attacked or made an attack themselves? We need to gather a lot of information before we do anything. I don’t want us to end up like the team who so graciously handed us their flag. We are not going to impale ourselves on someone else’s fortifications. We are going to do this properly!”
“So, we will all keep working to strengthen our defenses while the scouts go out and fill in our map. We need to know camp locations and any points of interests. Actually, I don’t need to tell you guys what information to get, you’ve all had proper training for this job. And while you're doing that, we will make sure that any flags we end up taking can be kept.”
“How do we defend our camp when we’re attacking someone else?” someone asked.
“I have a few ideas actually, but I also want to hear ideas from all of you. Anything we can do to…” Sven whipped his head around, along with everyone else. Two different lookouts were shouting and pointing down the other side of the hill, in the area between them.
“Incoming!”
“It’s the same guys!”
Yaric had a strange sense of déjà vu as he ran up the hill with the rest of Team Flagbearer. The other lookouts had already signaled that they couldn’t see anyone in their areas. Yaric ran up to the top of the wall, this time with his bow, and he was determined to make good use of it.
“It is the same guys,” Sven acknowledged, watching them forming up at the base of the hill.
“Yeah, you were right. They’ve come straight back. This is also the same spot they attacked the last time.”
“Makes sense, they know exactly what our defenses look like here.”
“Looked like…” Yaric corrected him with a smile. Sven just smirked back while the attacking team finished forming up. They now had 2 dozen tower shields side by side in their front line.
“Crap. We should have thought of some way to attack them when they’re still at the bottom. We just let them take their time and get organized to attack us.”
“Next time,” Yaric promised. He paused for a moment, before asking, “You think we could build a ballista?” causing Sven to laugh.
“Haha! Maybe! That would be a shock! I like it!”
He thumped Yaric on the back and turned to watch the advancing team. It didn’t take long for them to make it to the wall.
Yaric didn’t have a good shot with everyone hunching down behind those shields. Even worse, the second row had lifted smaller round shields over the heads of the front row.
“As soon as they break formation to attack…” Yaric promised himself, arrow nocked and ready.
The attackers stopped just 2 feet in front of the wall, huddled closely behind their shields. Team Flagbearer waited.
“Ready!” one of the attackers called, causing a lot of shifting around behind the shields.
“Throw!”
Twenty ropes were thrown out from behind the shields, arcing up and over the palisades. Each one of them had a metal hook on the end.
“Tension!” the same voice called, just as Yaric and Sven’s eyes grew wide.
“Cut the ropes!” Sven screamed, lunging for the closest one himself.
Unfortunately, it was pretty hard to cut a rope even when sawing at it with a knife. It was ridiculously hard when trying to saw at it with a spearhead on the end of a 10ft spear. None of the ropes were cut in time.
“Pull!”
Every section of palisade was yanked off the top of the wall; pulled so hard that they flew over the attackers and started rolling down the hill, with most disintegrating into separate stakes on the way down.
Yaric’s stomach was in knots as he watched the frontline crouch slightly. He could see the tips of a few swords sticking up behind those shields - this time they were prepared to fight back.
“Ready!” that annoying voice called out for a second time while Yaric watched in trepidation.
A feeling of dread began to settle heavily over Yaric. He quickly threw his bow to the rear and untied his shield, sliding his arm into the strap and drawing his sword.
“Brace!”
“Oh crap… this can’t be good!” he panicked silently, turning his head to see Sven still beside him, looking concerned, but determined not to back down.
“JUMP!”
“Ohhh... shit!”