When the militias were still fighting the Sullivan forces, when Chris was still getting rescued and when Raymond was making a move on Jonah, Jerry scoured through the battlefield, trying to find someone willing to listen to him.
This wasn’t a good idea. Most people he met ignored him either before or after listening to him.
A scream came from the side. One of the Sullivan soldiers leaped onto one of Jerry’s militias. Jerry was about to turn around to help when a wave of friendly militias pushed him and his men forward. Jerry happened to be in their way. When Jerry finally got out of the horde, he found himself facing half a dozen Sullivan soldiers. More importantly, his bodyguards were scattered along the way.
The Sullivan soldiers saw Jerry almost as soon as he saw them. They charged forward with swords raised. Jerry gulped. Just as he was about to turn around and flee, an arrow came in from the side and pierced one of the Sullivan soldiers through the chest.
Jerry turned and found a brunette holding a bow. A quiver was on her back. She pulled out another arrow from the quiver, loaded it onto her bow, and fired it. The arrow struck another soldier in the leg and sent him to the ground. In the middle of a battle as intense as this one, on the ground was equal to death. Even if a sword or a spear didn't get them, the shoes of their comrades would.
Militias moved in from behind her and engaged the enemies. Spears clashed with swords.
Jerry walked up to the brunette. He recognized her as an absolute lover of archery from his class. She saved his life, but he had no time to thank her.
“Nicole! Listen to me! We have a problem!”
Nicole rose her eyebrows. Instead of brushing past Jerry like everyone else, she actually lowered her bow and listened.
Jerry, slightly surprised, explained to her his concerns.
“If we don’t hold the gate, we will be facing an army the next morning.” He finally concluded. He just shot out several sentences in just seconds. It was the fastest he has ever talked.
Nicole nodded in agreement. Almost without thinking, she turned to her militias. “Fall back!”
The militias that belonged to Nicole pulled back. Their absence left an opening in the militia formations. If the Sullivans were led by a skilled commander, they would deploy a squad and strike the opening, potentially breaking a hole in the militia lines. Unfortunately, at this moment, the Sullivans were as blind and aimless as the militias.
Jerry, Nicole, and fifteen or so militias started making their way toward the gate. From time to time they would run into a Sullivan soldier, but Nicole dealt with them easily. Her arrows rarely missed.
Archery used to be a mere hobby to her, but now it made her several times more powerful than her fellow teens.
“I got third in the State archery contest.” The girl commented as Jerry looked at her with surprise.
Finally, the squad reached the gate. Jerry was slightly taken back when he saw the gate was still guarded. Even when the militias were launching a full on assault on the Sullivans, Liam still kept a dozen men at the gate. Both towers held several archers. This might be more complicated than just walking to the gate and closing it.
Unlike Jerry, Nicole attacked without hesitation. She took aim and fired in less than two seconds. A Sullivan archer screamed as he fell down from the tower. The arrow struck him in the chest.
The rest of the archers retaliated. Jerry has wisely cowered behind a piece of large rock as militias charged forward.
Several Sullivan sentries at the gate drew their blades and went into melee combat with the militias. They had fewer numbers, but the archers on the tower provided some support. Ten seconds after the initial contact, two militias were shot by arrows and one was sliced apart by a Sullivan sentry.
Nicole acted as the only ranged unit of the attackers, and she was damn good at it. Archer after archer fell off the towers. When the archers tried to take Nicole down, the girl hid behind trees or other obstacles. When the archers tried to reinforce their brothers on the ground, Nicole would pop her head out and take down another archer.
Eventually, all the guards were down.
Jerry finally walked over.
“Crisis averted?” Nicole asked as she knelt down beside an archer and plucked the arrow that killed him out of his corpse. Resources were scarce in this circumstance.
“I don’t know.” Jerry frowned as he moved from body to body, trying to find someone that survived the onslaught but couldn’t find any. “We should’ve kept one of them alive to ask if a messenger has already left. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you that sooner.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” Nicole replied casually. She looked at Jerry and smiled in reassurance. “I’m sure everything’s going to be fine…”
“I’m not.” Jerry answered bluntly.
Jerry’s blunt response obviously took Nicole by surprise. At this time, the sound of battle has already died down. The sight of militias a distance away told them their friends were the ones who came out op top.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
But Jerry had no time to talk to Nicole. Instead, he turned and ran toward the battlefield. If news about what happened here indeed got out, then the teens needed every second they had to get ready just to have a chance of survival.
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“You are saying one of the messengers might’ve got out?”
The teens formed a circle around Jerry while militias cleaned up the battlefield. Patel was the one that asked the question.
“Yes. We need to...”
“What’s the worry? We can just kill whoever attacks here.”
Chris' voice came from the side. Jerry turned and found the man swinging a standard Sullivan sword around. Scars covered his body. Several other teens stood behind him. One of them was the girl who ignored Jerry when he first attempted to get help to go to the gate.
She tossed him a dirty look.
Jerry took a deep breath.
“Kill the attackers? If you cared to talk to other prisoners inside this very camp, you would’ve learned that the Sullivan Empire contains hundreds of larger cities and thousands of smaller ones. It has hundreds of thousands of soldiers under its banners. How are we going to stop them? With a handful of farmers with spikes?”
He did quite some research before the rebellion. A couple of chats with his fellow workers told him all about the Sullivan Empire. Information was one of the most important parts of war. Unfortunately, his fellow comrades didn't seem to know that.
The teens looked worried for a second, but one of the teens suddenly spoke up.
“They won’t send too many men to a random mine in a random ditch. We can deal with them. Hell, we don’t know if a messenger got out either.”
“You don’t know that!” Jerry turned to him. “Are we really leaving our fate to luck?”
“Speaking of luck.” The girl that gave Jerry the dirty look, Jerry remembered her name to be Kirsten, stepped forward and spoke. Jerry suddenly had a terrible feeling about this. “Where were you when we fought those guards?”
How in the world is that related to luck? “That’s not important right now…”
“I killed three men back there. How many did you kill?”
Jerry paused, seeing where Kirsten was going. He knew he couldn’t let her continue down this road.
“Fine. You’re worth three militias and 45 gold. So what?”
Kirsten smirked. Her dislike for him was right on her face. “I saw you in the field. When we fought for our lives, when I killed those men, you tucked your tail behind your legs and ran away. Why should we listen to the words of a coward? Also...who initiated the attacks? We were completely caught by surprise. If we would've known about this, we could have been so much better prepared!” The girl stared at Jerry, knowing the answer to her own question.
Jerry’s mouth hung open from disbelief. What made him even more shocked was that the other teens seemed to have agreed with him. Their look at him started turning to annoyance and even mocking.
He did his best to press the issue.
“Look, if we can set up barricades…”
His words became less important to the teens when a wave of footsteps approached from the side. The teens and their militias converged and raised their weapons.
They were met by Sophia, Raymond, and a hundred militias in purple leather jackets.
Chris stepped forward. Rage was in his eyes. His knuckles went white as he gripped tightly onto his sword.
“Traitor!” He stared at Raymond. Behind him, the other teens that were part of the failed attempt to escape were furious as well. If it wasn’t for Raymond, they could’ve been days away from this camp already. Especially after killing multiple Sullivans, these teens weren’t afraid to add some more blood to their hand.
The militias under their command were ready for battle as well.
Before Raymond could do anything, Sophia stepped forward.
Sophia started explaining how Raymond didn't have a choice and how sorry he truly was. Jerry could hear Chris complaining and Patel trying to calm everyone down. Unfortunately, he didn't care.
Why would everyone think a random teen is more important than the safety of everyone in the camp? They should be worrying about getting ready to either defend the camp or evacuate!
Voices kept on coming, but Jerry wasn’t listening.
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Six hours after the uprising, the battlefield was already returned back to normal.
Raymond and Chris still weren’t best friends, but they managed to restrain themselves from killing each other. Raymond’s one hundred men added to the around four hundred militias the teens had left and returned the overall unit count in the camp to five hundred.
To Jerry’s disgust, the teens were celebrating. Over a week of torture made them tired, hungry, and stressed. It also made them feel justified to relax a little. Food from the camp’s storage like pork and steak, reserved for the Sullivan officers, were carried out and shared by the teens.
When Jerry talked to Patel about this, the virtual leader of the camp didn't find a problem with that.
“You need to learn to relax a little, Jerry. We can work on the defenses tomorrow.” The man looked certain. “I talked to one of the prisoners that used to be a soldier stationed in the closest city, Maynard City. It takes two days to march an army from there to here. Considering the time it takes going to and coming back, I’d say we have some time to lay down and take a break.”
Jerry turned and left without another word.
On the positive side, Alex’s situation got better. Jerry always knew she was a tough cookie. Her fever was disappearing. She was still asleep, and Jerry gladly allowed her to continue doing that. Underneath his bed wasn’t exactly a comfortable place to rest.
After he left Patel, Jerry went to the mineral bank of the camp. The bank kept the minerals harvested from the mines before they were taken away by Sullivan transport parties.
He was stopped by two militias.
“Hold it right there, General Jerry. General Patel has ordered the warehouse to be sealed off to everyone, including you.” One of the militias declared. He belonged to Patel.
As Jerry was stopped, instead of being angry or irritated, he was glad.
If Patel left the warehouse unguarded, any teen could walk into the warehouse, loot all the minerals, and walk out with a private army. If Patel did that he would be beyond salvation. At that point Jerry might even consider leaving.
“Very well.” He replied to the militia before turning around and walking toward the mines. The other slaves beside the teens were no longer forced to work either, so the mines were pretty much empty.
Jerry went from tunnel to tunnel, turning scrap pieces of metal into gold. When he came out of the mines an hour later, he had over six hundred more units of gold.
That meant forty more militias. This was enough to replenish Jerry’s exhausted forces and allow him to do something by himself without anyone else’s approval or support.
Judging from the situation, Jerry might need to rely on himself quite a bit.