“There are some rations on the box at your right side. Go warm them at a bonfire and bring them here. Don’t try to eat them before me. You will regret it.”
Zelos found some pieces of jerk on the box on some sticks and then went to warm them outside. He was starving for the first time in a while, but he was able to endure the hunger since he didn’t make much effort that day. Thanks to that, the man gave him two of the sticks with the jerk. It was probably the first time that he ate meat that hadn’t gone bad, was cooked, and wasn’t something he found in the forest…
“You should last until noon with this much. Can’t let you die before that with my weapons in your hands.”
The man looked at the boxes once more and then considered what he should do… the idea of joining the enemy’s side was appealing for survival. He just had to claim the heads of two or three of the other commanders. That would make him return to his family and enjoy life for a while longer, but the other side would never trust him fully… no one sane ever would trust traitors. He also didn’t want to destroy the history of his family… it was better to die like a man than to live like a coward.
In the end, Zelos was told to sleep in the corner of the tent while the man slept in his chair. Both of them slept in a bad position, but at least they were able to wake up as soon as the movements in the camp began to get more intense one hour before sunrise.
“Ugh… no time for breakfast. Try to keep up with at least these two.”
The man passed Zelos a sheathed long sword and a lance while he was carrying a glaive. Considering what he said, his horse was dead, and glaives were better used while mounted, but they should have some other use. Before he could leave, Zelos approached the boxes and was able to grab and carry a Warhammer and a longbow with several quivers, which made the man furrowed his eyebrows.
“No one said that the kids would have useful traits. It seems today I will have better odds of surviving.”
The man equipped his helmet while grinning. He could tell that Zelos wasn’t just trying to work hard beyond his limits in order to increase his survivability. It was hard to imagine that Zelos would be able to use any of them since he was still short despite his strength, so the man didn’t feel worried at all. Besides, if he were to do something, he would be skewered to death by his underlings, and then he would have his limbs chopped off while he was alive… there would be other ways for him to die as well. In times of war, people grow quite creative when it comes to thinking of torture.
A group of soldiers was already waiting for the commander outside the tent, so he silently nodded at them before moving forward. Zelos followed the man from behind while the surrounding soldiers ignored him… thanks to the darkness of the night, Zelos was able to see some lights in the distance going upward and then falling… It looked like the battle had already started.
“Another weird trait… I will have to keep my eyes open against attacks from above, too?”
That would be difficult, but considering their falling speed, Zelos assumed that they wouldn’t be heavy. Since that was the case, he would be able to do something about them. When the group began to climb a certain hill, they eventually came to a stop as they watched two other groups approach from the sides. They should represent two other commanders, so it seemed the other two were already ahead. With that in mind, they couldn’t waste any more time.
“Follow the plan… attack the enemies from the sides before dawn comes while we keep them busy.”
“All right, we will try not to take too long.”
The commander wearing the dragon helmet grunted in annoyance at the response of that woman from the previous night. It was the worst time for their allies to joke about that when their lives were on the line… in any case, the man soon raised his spear and then lowered down.
“Let’s kill these dirty bastards.”
All five hundred men in that battalion roared and then began to run while following their commander. They were only jogging while making a lot of noise to scare the enemies, so Zelos was able to follow them.
“This doesn’t feel like the best time to attack enemies. We are at high risk of being ambushed.”
Zelos kept following the commander while thinking that he wasn’t that nervous. Come to think of it, the idea of dying didn’t seem that scary. Was it because he wasn’t afraid of dying, or was it because he had a lot of confidence? He couldn’t tell…
After running for ten minutes, the sounds of screams and shouts of enemies and allies became more vivid, alongside the sickening smell of blood and flesh being burned. The sound of steel colliding was almost deafening. Zelos looked to the sides and soon found some corpses on the ground… Some wounded warriors were being pulled by their allies as well. The healers weren’t there since they had no combat abilities and could become easy targets. A group like that could throw the battlefield into chaos.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Give me the lance.”
Zelos quickly tossed the spear to the commander, who turned around and readily grabbed it while also tossing his sword into Zelos’ arms. The group slowed down, and then Zelos decided to keep at a certain distance from them… all of a sudden, in the middle of the darkness, arrows were fired toward them at supersonic speeds… the command swung his lance from one side to the other and repelled two projectiles. The impact was sharp as the commander clenched his teeth.
Zelos looked in the distance and saw the silhouettes of the enemies a hundred meters away… they were forming a line ahead, and it looked like they were about to launch another volley of arrows… for their attacks to cross that distance that fast and keeping its power… they should have been a specialized unity. Zelos looked to the sides and saw some bodies with arrows… only on their heads.
“Focus on defense until you reach them! Don’t stray away from each other!”
Everyone raised their weapons and then proceeded to advance. They blocked the arrows, but not perfectly. Thanks to the darkness of the night, they still got hit on their arms and legs. Zelos looked around in search of the other battalions, but they looked like they had been decimated or had been spread around due to the relentless attacks of the enemies.
When they covered half of the distance, the arrows stopped, and the silhouette of the archers began to retreat… and soon gave room for a larger and firmer silhouette of enemies… they were equipped with shields and spears, and they were marching in absolute unison.
“Hammer!”
The commander dropped his lance and then grabbed the hammer that Zelos tossed at him… with his blood boiling already, he couldn’t care less about the fact that he was making Zelos work harder. Without having to worry about the arrows, the group was able to reach the enemy’s lines faster, and soon, the commander stepped in with all his might. A single swing broke the head of the spears and the next swing broke the shields ahead and then the enemies groaned in pain until the commander kicked the heads of two of them with all his might and then smashed the chest of the third…
‘... He is pretty brutal.’
Describing what happened to the body of the guy that was hit on his chest by the hammer probably wasn’t a good idea, but the commander still grinned from ear to ear after he saw the result of the smashed torso.
Since the shield formation was destroyed in no time, the ground was able to pierce the line of shields soon enough, and then they began to spread the destruction to the sides since there was no other line of them. That made Zelos raise his eyebrows, but the commander was happy just killing the enemies that he could see.
“Hey, the archers are nowhere to be seen.”
Calling that man commander didn’t feel right about Zelos, so he just said those words. Still, it seemed that he hadn’t heard of it… he was laughing while swinging his hammer.
Zelos envisioned a fighting style simple but brutal for himself, one that would be as efficient as possible. Still, despite the similarities of what he wanted and the fighting style of that guy, Zelos didn’t want to look like a brain dead warrior… in the end, he hit the back of the helmet of the commander with the butt of his spear and he turned around in search of an enemy, but he only found Zelos and raised his eyebrows.
“You actually hit me…”
“The archers will probably wipe us out when you are done with the line of shields.”
The commander blinked several times… that made a lot of sense. They couldn’t attack them now, but once their allies were done, and they had exhausted their enemies as much as possible, the archers would be two times more effective than before.
“Shields! Grab the shields!”
The commander had destroyed a bunch of them, but he still felt on the right to grab one of the tower shields that were intact to protect himself. In the middle of the chaotic and screams filled battlefield, everyone still heard the sound of arrows being fired at supersonic speeds.
Everyone raised their shields, but they still groaned in pain as the damaged shields broke. Some pieces of the commander’s shield broke as well, even though he grabbed one that was mainly intact… such was the power of the arrows, or the enemies had imagined that something like that would happen.
“Use the bodies of the enemies as shields and charge toward them!”
Everyone quickly tossed away the shields and grabbed the bodies of the enemies as they moved toward them… the dark night sky was slowly turning blue, but they didn’t have time to wait for that. The arrows kept coming and coming, and it was only a matter of time before their numbers began to decrease once again. Fortunately and all of a sudden, the sound of arrows stopped, and soon they heard the screams ahead.
“The others have arrived! Advance and kill them all!”
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”
The soldiers didn’t need to hear it again… they charged toward the enemy’s lines with all their might and soon found the enemy camp ahead, being attacked by the sides by the other two battalions… they took their time, but they finally arrived.
“Sword!”
Zelos tossed the sword to the commander, wondering why the scream… he wasn’t deaf like his underlings, but it felt that he would if he kept hearing those insanely loud shouts. Once the group reached the enemy camp, there was no such thing as formation or tactics. They only attacked the closest enemy and kept advancing.
Zelos remained focused in order not to lose the commander, but he couldn’t help but frown when he began to feel the smell of piss and shit alongside the smell of blood and death. It seemed that people in times of war couldn’t help it in their last few moments… Zelos suddenly recalled the words… there is no honor in death, and he wondered if the person who thought that thought after seeing the aftermath of a battle like that.
The sun began to rise on the horizon, and then the sea of blood and corpses was revealed… The soldiers around were fighting the remains of the enemies or finishing them off while breathing roughly. At the same time, things began to calm down a bit, and that made Zelos realize that he smelled like blood as well… his cheap boots stepped on several puddles of blood, and the weapons that he touched made the blood flow to his hands while he wasn’t aware of it.