Chapter Seventy-Six: Buying Time
The next morning, Tom and Rosa suffered through breakfast under Val’s smug grin.
“You two look a little sheepish!” she said brightly, sitting down with a bowl of steaming porridge. Neither of them replied with anything other than withering glares. Val found it hilarious.
“Did you get a good sleep?” she prodded them.
“Wonderful,” Tom said.
“Fine, thank you, yes,” said Rosa.
Val had trouble eating her porridge, she was grinning so hard. Luckily, Sesame was on hand to distract him.
The bear had become an instant favourite among the guerillas at large over the time they had spent in the cave. Periodically, the bear would send thoughts down the bond so deliberately unsuspicious that it was obvious what he was doing. They were always followed by immense satisfaction as he cadged a treat from some soft heart or another.
Once Val had had enough of teasing them, she called over the rest of their team and laid out the plan. The team leads had deliberated with the Lord General late into the night. They had not come up with a plan, not yet, but one thing was clear: they needed to act, and fast.
The siege orcs represented the biggest threat to Wayrest yet. With them, they had a chance of actually breaching Wayrest’s ancient defences before the Guards could bring them down. Their hand was forced, and something would have to be done. But not until they had a solid plan.
Until then, the teams would all be tasked with causing as much mayhem as possible in the orc army. The Lord General had asked them to do whatever they possibly could to slow down their preparations and distract them. He had tasked all of the Watch that weren’t occupied with the still-raging civil war to pitch in from their side as well.
Tom felt strangely gleeful at the mission. It was simple: cause chaos. They no longer had to focus on scouting, or retrieving resources or the like, and they could just focus on what mattered: killing orcs.
After last night he felt like an enormous burden had been lifted from him. Stress and anxiety he didn’t even realise had been bundling up, compacting, growing ever more tightly wound, had eased. Sometimes physical touch was as simple as that, a release for pent up emotions. He had noticed Rosa had been …well, she was still fiery, but her fire burned cleaner, this morning. Last night had been good for both of them.
After Val’s brief, they prepped and left immediately as a full team. They would be operating in their four-man squads still, but working very closely with the other. For these kinds of tactics, they would need the back up. Val had had an idea.
Previously, most of the teams had been getting into the village rings and starting fights with orcs, which would inevitably grow into battles as other, nearby orcs were drawn into the fray. Then, they would flee into the Deep, pulling the orcs into a running battle on their own ground, and whittling them down with traps and superior knowledge of the terrain.
Many of the teams were going to be continuing to do so. But not Val’s.
~~~~~
A couple of days later, just before noon, Tom and Val, and the rest of her team, found themselves in the Deep outside of Corin’s Grove. They had spent plenty of time here in the past few weeks, harassing the orc logging operations. Now that they knew what the felled trees were planned to be used for, the mission took on new importance.
They had raided the orc logging teams until, eventually, the Smith was forced to send several Idealists with each party to stop them from being culled, and keep the timber flowing into the camp. They had back down then, unwilling to risk injury by taking the orc Idealists head on. That had changed.
Scriber and Cub had been hard at work. At the last meeting, they had presented every single person with enchanted armour and weapons. The armour was not fancy, just a serviceable combination of leather reinforced with metal strips, with light hauberks to go with them, but they made all the difference.
They had all the standard runes, but they had two particularly good features. The first was a shielding enchantment, etched into the metal strips layered over the leather. Individually, they were weak, but piled on top of one another, overlapping, they became quite formidable.
The second feature was a healing enchantment. The armour had a built in enchantment that would trigger a burst heal when the wearer’s health dipped too low. They could also produce a small heal-over-time field. It would be useless in a battle, as it would heal enemies too, but the fields were made to stack up with each other after a fight, quickly bringing a full team back to full strength.
Scriber had made and filled the enchantments with his mother’s mana. She had given it without a second thought. Scriber was absolutely tickled. Full Healing Ideals were so rare that only the absolute vilest crimes could possibly get one exiled from Wayrest. The few that had become Hunters had not been people Scriber had liked to deal with. Scriber was like a child in a candy store, with access to so much Healing mana.
The armour was leagues better than the tatty old leather and mail Tom had been wearing since becoming a Hunter. Even then, he had been better off than almost all of the freed captives. Now, they resembled a proper guerilla fighting force.
Slowly, the team crept forwards through the dappled light of the forest. In the distance, the rhythmic grating of saws and the thud of axes punctuated the silence. Tom and Errol were taking the lead, with the merchant’s guard from Val’s squad slightly behind them. The rest of the team were arrayed slightly further back. Sesame hung back with them, to help stave off any unwanted surprises.
Tom slunk from tree to tree, most of his attention on Sere, and still quieter than the merchant’s guard, Carl. He could see several teams of loggers hard at work ahead of them, some larger orcs guarding them, and two Idealists, even larger than the rest, standing nearby.
Something prickled at the back of Tom’s neck. He focused on Sere, stopping behind a tree.
There, he thought, noting an incongruous patch of shadows on a thick bough several feet up a tree. The third Idealist orc was well hidden, but the orcs seemed to love their Ideals of Shadow, and he had learned the hard way to keep an eye out for them.
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The orc was fully concealed in shadow. Tom could not even discern an outline of it. He moved Sus and Sol closer, ready to strike once it revealed itself. The team crept closer.
Some of Sere’s bodies moved further on than the logging teams before them, noting others not far away, to each side, and closer to Corin’s Grove as well. Each had their own guards, and their own accompanying Idealists.
Perfect.
Tom turned, giving the signal to the rest of the team. Then they attacked.
One of the Idealists, a rangy looking female, screeched in pain as Val used Love you to Death on it. The skill had no visual cue, but it dealt an incredible amount of damage. The screech tapered off, warbling obscenely as a slit opened in the orc’s throat. Cass had joined the fray.
The other orcs reacted immediately, drawing crude swords, and charged at them. The logging teams were slower, but not by much. They trailed after, swinging axes and saws with wild abandon.
The other Idealist orc charged at the head of the group, and as it ran, it grew. Its muscles bulged, its skin stretching and splitting at the joints as it roared hatred at them. Tom swore he could hear its bones popping.
Tom stepped from behind the tree he had hidden behind, presenting a target for the orcs to charge at. Errol did the same. Through Sere, he saw Carl position himself in between them, ready to intervene when one of them drew too much attention. Tom levelled his spear, and began casting Agony as fast as he could.
A hurled axe careened through the air from a wild throw. Tom shifted slightly, and the shields on his armour flickered as it deflected to the side, leaving him uninjured. He waited, judging distances. The orcs, in their mad rush to attack, had grouped up just a little too much. He cast Wild Boar Strike, knocking the lead orcs into those behind them. They formed a messy, snarling tangle.
The leader, still growing larger, had only stumbled slightly. It was simply too big now, and had too much momentum, to be properly affected by the skill. It was barely a few feet from Tom when suddenly it jerked, slamming to a stop. Tom stepped up and stabbed it through the neck. The huge wound seemed tiny on the now massive orc, but another of Cass’ skills activated, and suddenly the blood flow from the wound became a torrent. The orc began to strain forwards, as if against a great force, but Tom stabbed it again, and again, in the neck and head, and it slumped and died.
The tangled logging teams and guards had begun to extricate themselves when a wall of fire bisected the pile. Lances of fire speared into them, and the tangled heap became a bonfire. Still, more orcs came on.
They quickly surrounded Tom and Errol, and Carl moved between them to help. They focused on the orcs in front of them, stoically accepting damage where they could not avoid it, but dishing out death in return.
Any orcs that tried to flank them were diced apart by Scorn’s beams, or melted with a spray of acidic breath from Val. Periodically, walls of bluish light would flicker into being, frustrating an attempt to bully them with superior numbers.
All too soon, every orc had been slaughtered. No one had taken any injuries. The student from Val’s squad with Inertia and Defense, May, and Errol’s buffs, together with their new armour, had proved an efficient combination.
Tom watched through Sus and Sol as the shadow in the trees shifted slightly, clearly watching. It had not made a move during the battle. Tom wondered why, but assumed it was simply waiting for a sure opportunity to kill one of them. Sere had been sending images of the other logging teams for minutes now. Some had run off to bring reinforcements. The rest were charging at them from all around.
Tom limbered himself. He looked behind to Rosa and grinned. She rolled her eyes, and Val gave him a thumbs up. Everything was going to plan.
Three more logging teams, with their respective guards and Idealists, saw them and charged. They broke against Tom ineffectually. Charged with buffs from his team mates, wearing his new armour, he was a bulwark. The only downside was that Misery and Whisper were not doing any retributive damage, because he was not actually being damaged.
Echo, at least, was still proving its worth. Phantom axes, saws, swords and clubs, flickered and lashed out at any orc that attacked him. It dealt only trivial damage, but against this many enemies, it was activating continuously.
Tom’s aura was also putting in work. Any orcs that came near had their health eroded away, and as long as they stayed near him, they became more and more sluggish over time.
The slowing effect was particularly pronounced. Rosa was using her control skill to amplify it somewhat. The combined usage was incredibly effective.
The second fight went as well as the first. The backline damage dealers began using their skills more frequently, Val and Cass targeting the Idealists and dropping them, and Rosa hitting any clumps of orcs with gouts of fire.
Orcs randomly stopped, their momentum bled away, or came up short as a wall sprang into life before them. Orcs dropped with their throats slit. They fell into pieces, shot through with green beams. It was a massacre. And still, the shadowy Idealist had not made its move.
Soon, Tom saw what they had been waiting for. A sizeable contingent of orcs had been sent as reinforcements from the army itself. Hundreds of them, twice as many as they had already killed. At least ten Idealists howled along with them.
The team put down the last of the orcs from the second charge. They quickly pulled out several objects each, crushing them in their hands. Tom’s body felt like it was filled with electricity. His stamina was replenished. His mana was full again. And so was everyone else’s.
Tom watched carefully through Sere. This stage of the plan was crucial. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the stream of orcs coming for them tapering off. He double checked for any ambushes or surprises behind or around them, and found nothing.
Good, he thought, and set his feet again, waiting.
The third wave was much more difficult. Every single one of them was pushed to their limits. Errol’s buffing skills were popping continuously. Tom’s enchantments on his armour ran out of mana, and he began to take damage. Luckily for him, that just meant he was dealing more, too.
Sesame began to have to intercept orcs that got around them, and Scorn moved to help him. The Rust Sands trader summoned his dog and eagle familiars, and together with Cass’ panther, the familiars formed a second backline. They shredded any orcs that reached them.
The fight was a grind. Tom took more and more injuries, though in turn he dealt more damage. Echo activated near continuously, phantom limbs and weapons striking back at confused orcs. Whisper tags exploded all around. He cast Agony, over and over, Wild Boar strike to clear out space for their front line, and Hush on any Idealist that tried to engage them.
The closest they came to being overwhelmed was when half of the Idealists tried to rush them at once. They were prepared for such a tactic, and Tom took the most threatening out of commission, and two others were slaughtered on the spot by Val and Cass. The rest were dispatched efficiently by their brawler after Tom and Errol stopped them cold.
By the time the fight was over, they were all exhausted and drained. Orc bodies were piled high around them, steaming as they disintegrated from Val’s acid, making sloppy, wet noises as the piles collapsed inwards. Many more were blackened and charred, and the smell of roasting meat and fat hung heavy in the air.
Once the last of the orcs was dealt with, Tom rushed forward. He cast Hush on the Shadow Idealist, still crouched and watching. Its shadowy illusions dropped, and he caught a flash of surprise on its face before Sus and Sol hit it from either side. It dropped bonelessly to the forest floor, its neck broken.
All of them were injured, but they had been victorious. They gathered up, activating the heal-over-time enchantments on their armour. It wasn’t long before they were all as good as new.
All around the village rings, and just inside the Deep, similar scenes were playing out. Thousands of orcs were drawn like dogs by their irresistible penchant for violence, and slaughtered.
It would put a dent in the orc army, but not a big one. Tom just hoped it had distracted them enough to buy them some time.