For a brief second, the bandit leader looked a little puzzled by my response to his threats, like the gears in his head slipped a little, but he recovered quickly. His next word wasn’t directed at me. Instead it was a command to his men.
“Attack!” he cried.
And attack they did, starting to march forward over that lonely, windswept hilltop. His remaining scout did not stand idle, raising his crossbow and firing it in one motion. Also, they must have recovered the other crossbow from their sole casualty, as another orc raised it and fired it, albeit much less gracefully and accurately. I heard a cry of pain behind me as one of my people had clearly been hit.
My own pair of archers were not idle. Standing off to the flank beside a couple of the bigger trees that sparsely dotted the top of the hill, they followed my direction sending arrows spinning towards the enemy missile troops. The main enemy force was about fifty feet away but even though they were marching forward in formation at a measured pace, that distance was closing much too quickly for comfort. I wasn’t certain how we were going to defeat a disciplined enemy formation with wood axes and pitchforks.
Hunting for a living is not very profitable if a person is not very accurate with a bow and our hunters must have liked to eat. Both arrows flew true towards the remaining scout. One was blown off course by a sudden gust of wind, skimming harmlessly past the bandit. The other flew true, striking the crossbow wielder in his abdomen. He allowed the crossbow to drop and swing from the sling that held it secure to his body and started pawing at the arrow that had impaled him. My archers quickly shifted their aim to the other enemy crossbowman and sent another pair of arrows flashing towards him but he was already moving. As he dove to the side, the arrows harmlessly passed through the space he had previously occupied.
Not content to allow his troops to be pincushioned from range, the enemy leader detailed the smaller armored orc and two others from the rear row to engage our hunters. They came boiling out of the enemy formation, sprinting as quickly as they could towards our archers. Following my previous command, our two hunters ran to the safety of our main formation.
Turning to Patrick, I gestured towards the pursuing orcs.
“Make them regret that,” I said.
He quickly trotted off to the side of our formation to intercept the pursuing bandits, the sling he had previously rested his arm in flapping empty as he ran. I trusted him and knew that he would do the best that he was able to do. Turning my attention back to the main enemy formation, I noticed that fifty feet had become twenty five feet in my brief moment of inattention. I screamed at my archers.
“Shoot into their formation. Patrick will protect you.”
If we didn’t disrupt their formation somehow, we were doomed. Their weapons had reach over ours and they were trained to fight together.
Even though I was expecting them, I startled when the explosive sound of gunshots split the night. Boom. Boom, boom. Boom. And just like that, we were down to only six shots. Seventy five rounds of ammunition had seemed like plenty when I entered this world, but I had spent so many with wasteful inaccuracy that the pistol was going to soon become nothing more than an overly complex paper weight. Our survival was on the line, though. It was not time to hold anything back.
Arrows flew out from the edge of our lines. Given the short distance and the tight enemy formation, it was hard to miss but there was only time for one, maybe two shots before things descended into melee. Two separate bandits in the front line were hit – one in the leg and the other in the upper chest. The orc hit in his leg stumbled to his knees, fouling the next step of the bandit in the second rank behind him. The other wounded orc dropped one hand from his spear but didn’t fall. Instead, a bandit from the rank behind him smoothly stepped up to take his place as he retreated to the back rank. Yeah, it was not these guys’ first rodeo.
“Charge!” the enemy commander screamed, attempting to close the distance between our ranks to neutralize the missile fire. His troops lowered their spears and dashed forward. My friends and allies started paying the price for my inexpert leadership with their blood.
We took the most casualties from that first charge. Now seven abreast, the spearmen plunged into our ranks. I parried the spear thrust aimed at my chest, but I heard a multitude of screams, some in pain and others in anger, erupt around me. Some of the young orcs around me fell, never to rise again. Assuming that Patrick had been effective with his earlier gunfire, I knew that we had a significant numerical advantage at this point, almost two to one.
“Envelope them!” I called out. “Overwhelm them with our numbers.” Given the din of the battle, I wasn’t sure that anyone not standing next to me could hear me. But those people took up the cry and then others near them followed suit. I heard my orders echo out to the flanks in a dozen voices. With a roar, we counter-charged, and things descended into madness.
The bandit leader was smart with his positioning. Leading from the front, as I had been doing, was stupid. I completely lost my sense for the flow of the battle. Instead, my attention was confined to the small area around me. Kill or be killed will do that to a person. I had slipped inside of the striking range of the spearman directly in front of me, but that’s when the advantage of fighting in ranks reared its ugly head. That placed me conveniently within the effective distance of the bandit in the second rank. He struck and I tried to dodge, twisting my body to the right. The point of the enemy’s spear skimmed across my chest superficially lacerating it. Unfortunately, that gave the enemy directly in front of me room to maneuver. He pushed me with the haft of his spear and, already off balance from the dodge, I staggered back a couple of steps putting me back within the range of his weapon.
About that time, our numerical advantage actually started paying dividends. My troops overlapped the corners of the bandit formation causing the rear ranks to engage people not directly in front of them. They bandits were losing their cohesiveness. The fight was getting uglier, less disciplined. I desperately hoped that was to our advantage.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
My opponent jabbed out with his spear aiming for my torso. I parried, managing to catch the haft of his spear behind the spearhead and pushing it harmlessly to the side. Then I took a step forward, and viciously chopped at his lower right leg, which had moved slightly forward with his lunge. I felt the shock of the solid impact all the way up into my hands. His leg folded over in the middle of his calf, his bones clearly breaking from the impact of the strike. He fell and I shifted my grip to my sword, stabbing downward at his chest. Metal met flesh and I didn’t think that he would be getting up again. Then, I withdrew a couple of steps to try to get a sense of what was happening elsewhere on the battlefield.
Quickly scanning the area, I experienced an odd sort of cognitive dissonance. It looked like we were both winning and losing the battle. I lacked the experience to accurately gauge the flow of the fight. On one hand, there were several bandits already down. Glancing towards the area where Patrick had engaged the three bandits harassing our hunters, I could see all three were down. Goulug had taken it upon himself to finish what Patrick had started. Screaming in rage, he rained blows down on the wounded orcs, ensuring that they would not be able to rejoin the fight. Unfortunately, my order to envelope the enemy forces had also neutralized Patrick’s combat effectiveness. He couldn’t afford to shoot anymore because he couldn’t risk a miss. Bullets are indiscriminate, and if he missed a shot or one of the shots overpenetrated then he could hurt or kill one of us as easily as he could a bandit.
Despite our numbers, the main battle was not going as well. Several of the bandits were down, the one I dropped included, but more of our people were either bleeding out on the ground or forced to withdraw from their injuries. The bandit force was reduced to approximately ten effective combatants, but our twenty nine had dwindled as well, dwindling to something in the upper teens. We were essentially losing almost two people for every combat loss we inflicted. As our numbers decreased that loss rate would likely only accelerate. Something had to change fast.
So I started screaming new orders, charging around the area waving my arms like an idiot.
“Pull back,” I yelled. “Pull back! Reform the line.”
Slowly at first, but with increasing alacrity as the orders penetrated the haze of battle, my force started to comply. Fighting is exhausting. Two minutes can feel like two hours and the day of travel, of chase, didn’t help. Both sides were tired. The enemy commander was content to allow us to withdraw, giving him time to reorganize his forces, but he never let us break contact enough to bring our archers into play again. Left carpeting the battlefield were the dead and seriously wounded.
As soon as we had gained a tiny bit of separation, I turned to Patrick who had rejoined the main force.
“Aleyda, Goulug, protect Patrick,” I ordered. “Patrick, make every shot count.”
Without a word, Patrick stepped to the front of our ranks. He opened fire again sighting carefully. He kept pulling the trigger until the slide of the pistol locked open, then for good measure he reared back and flung the heavy chunk of metal into the ranks of the bandits, all our ammunition spent. The one real force equalizer I had in this world was gone and I doubted I would be getting it back.
He shot effectively. He made them all count. Two more bandits had collapsed to the ground and it appeared that he had wounded another two to one extent or another, although the other two were still on their feet.
“Back at them!” I roared, charging into battle, several of the more eager of my forces behind me. Eventually, though, almost everyone took up the charge. Almost but not everyone. Some of them had reached their limits and no amount of ordering or prodding would have gotten them to reengage. I could understand.
Our charge was not overly quick. We had to watch our step to avoid tripping over the bodies of the dead and seriously wounded. Glancing down, I noticed I was about to step over Lapina. I couldn’t tell whether she was dead or alive. A sick feeling blossomed in the bit of my stomach. I wanted to stop and retch. I had led them to this. This was my responsibility.
And then I was on the enemy, one of the orcs wounded by gunfire standing before me with a dazed expression on his face. He didn’t even get his spear up in time to defend. I launched an overhead strike, my sword arcing down to crack into the area where his neck met his shoulder. He fell down, and I hacked him a couple of more times to finish the job.
There was battle all around me. The bandits had been reduced to five or six effective combatants. Bowen, Aleyda and Goulug were facing off against their leader. Somehow, in the crush of bodies, he had been pushed a little bit away from their main force. They had him flanked. He wildly swung his greatsword around him, trying to fend them off. He was doing a fair job of protecting himself, but his men weren’t having the best luck. Weapons meant for fighting in formation work particularly well when there is a formation. When the formation has disintegrated, though, they aren’t nearly as effective. They didn’t quit, but when you are outnumbered three to one, it takes a lot of options off the table. Soon, a gap had opened up between me and the bandit leader’s unprotected back. I dashed in and struck him in the back of his knees dragging the length of the slicing edge of my sword along them for good measure. He collapsed and the other three played a fine, if short, game of whack-a-mole.
Then, we all descended on the remaining bandits, our stoutest fighters in the lead. They didn’t last long.
We had prevailed, but as I surveyed the battlefield I knew that the butcher’s bill was high. My people moved through the remains of the battle. No quarter was given to the wounded bandits, and they were slain to the last. The majority of our force moved through our own dead and wounded, trying to tend to those who could be saved. Including the poor bastard who had been shot down off of the mountain, we had already lost nine people. Several more weren’t expected to make it. I had to fight the urge to break down when I realized that Lapina was among the dead. She never should have been there. I should have forced her to leave with the others. I had never seen Aleyda cry before, but she did as she cradled the body of her fallen friend. I wanted to join her, but we needed to save those who could be saved. Walking over to Aleyda, I knelt down.
“Please help the living,” I asked. “You can maybe save some. We will have the rest of our lives to grieve our dead.”
She met my eyes, seeing tears welling in them, and then nodded. She gently lowered her friend’s body to the ground and went off to help where she could.
Two more young orcs died before we could get them off that stony hill. I left a couple of people to guard the bodies of our dead and then led both the hale and the wounded back towards my land. Even if the house had burned down, we could shelter in the barn.
The sun was rising as we reached my property. The porch was a ruin, burnt and collapsed, and the logs on that side of the house were still smoldering and charred but the house still stood. We quickly took our wounded inside, the smell of smoke lingering heavily throughout the house. Then, Bowen, Goulug and I went back outside, drawing water from the well to douse the side of the house. Satisfied that the house was no longer about to burn down, I reentered it and asked for volunteers to help recover the bodies of the dead. Even though they had been through hell, every orc who was either unwounded or bearing only superficial injuries volunteered. Every single one.
Back out to the hill we went. We were just returning with the last of the dead a couple of hours after sunrise when the main force finally arrived.