NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 103
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Deep into the night, a few hours before sunrise, Tufic and Nuba of the Swiftfeather village were hanging out in a tree as sentries to guard the outer perimeter of the force sieging the Riversong village.
They had been up for a few hours having idle conversations to keep each other awake until the next shift came to relieve them.
“So, how long do you think we going to be stuck here?” Tufic asked.
“No idea. Depends on how long the Riversong village can last, from what we can tell, they have a well so they will not need to worry about water, the only limiting factor is food. That or we actually breach their walls.” Nuba answered.
“Well I hope we manage to breach those walls, then I can have a real fight with those invaders hold up in there.” Tufic said while puffing out his chest.
To this, Nuba turned to Tufic and shook his head in disagreement. “You just got here 2 days ago. Do not believe what those overconfident idiots from the Blazebringer keep on spouting, those that we captured are non-combatants, you do not want to face the warriors of those so-called invaders, you were not around when we first faced them in open combat. The only reason we were able to push them back into the Riversong village was due to our overwhelming numbers, if your arrows do not hit them in the head, heart, or somewhere important, they will just keep coming until they close the distance with you. Very few of us have survived a melee fight with them.”
Tufic turned to Nuba with a look of disbelief at what he had just told, but knew that Nuba would not lie on such matters, “Truly? They are that strong?”
“Yes, if they get close to you.” Nuba sighed, “I have no idea what our Chief was promised to him to send us here, but I don’t want to face them if I can help it. No matter what others say, just know that these invaders are strong, how do you think they managed to push us back every time he tried to attack, we-”
*Rustle*
At the sound, of rustling to their right, Tufic and Nuba turned their heads and notched an arrow at the ready. A few seconds passed and they loosened the tension on their bows.
“Must have been a fallen stick or something.” Tufic remarked.
Nuba nodded, “Yeah, most likely some small creature in another tre-”
Nuba’s sentence was cut short by a spear to the side of his neck pinned him to the tree he was in.
Tufic only had enough time to turn in the direction the spear came from, only to receive his own spear in his eye, followed by another to his chest, and died instantly.
This left Nuba, somehow alive, pinned to the tree, bleeding out, and paralyzed from his neck down.
As the darkness was closing around Nuba’s vision, he saw what could only be his assailant step out of the shadows and into the moonlight.
He was huge, covered in dark and smooth armor he did not recognize, and had spears floating beside him.
As Nuba gurgled the blood, the man who he now knew to be a witch doctor looked at him, and then one of those floating spears flew towards him and Nuba knew no more.
***
Grud jumped up into the tree his latest kill was in and pulled out his throwing spears. Along the span of approximately, a kilometer, teams of hunters who were chosen for their exceptional stealth expertise were chosen to dispatch any and all patrols and sentries, with prejudice.
Grud decided to get a head start on calming his still boiling rage with the blood of his enemies by being his own hunting team and clearing out patrols and sentries with the other teams, and so far, it has been going well, all of them dying to throwing spears from the darkness.
When Grud looked ahead, just beyond the cover of trees he could see the light from the fires of the enemy camp.
As Grud was taking his time extracting the throwing spears while waiting for the main body of the war band to catch up, all of a sudden, somewhere in the distance behind him, a whistling arrow that was used to warn the enemy camp screamed its way through the sky.
Shortly after that, Grud heard shouts coming from the direction of the enemy camp and knew their cover was blown. Apparently, one of the hunting teams did not do their job properly and the enemy got the warning out.
“Shit” Grud cussed to himself. “Well, no point hiding now, might as well sow as much chaos while waiting for everyone to catch up.”
Grud bolted out the treeline and straight towards the few men who were shouting to alert the camp.
It did not take long for Grud to be spotted, but those who spotted him were not able to shout out the warning loud enough before Grud was upon them.
Over the years, Grud went through a few iterations of spears and finally landed on something closer to a glave than a spear. The monster bone spearhead alone was ¼ the length of the weapon and was used to great effect against huge beasts and monsters.
Grud had never used his current spear against a man before, but he was about to find out. The first man who died in the frontal attack was some poor sod who was sleepily crawling out of his tent, he was swiftly beheaded in Grud passing swipe of his spear.
As Grud got deeper into the camp, besides his superhuman strength, the other advantage he had was knowing everyone around him was hostile and nobody wanted to send arrows flying in the middle of the camp, that was a recipe for friendly fire.
Grud swung his spear around in wide arcs, splitting men into pieces with each swing.
Soon, people were running in terror from the huge armored man butchering people, but while people were running in terror, Grud was not just mindlessly killing, he was killing in a certain direction, he was killing his way to the biggest tent in the area, he had some business to settle with, Borak, the firstborn son of Voka… bloody business.
As Grud closed in on the biggest tent, the flaps of that big tent were thrown aside to reveal a man in polished copper armor adorned in bright red feathers. Seeing the armor, Grud knew it was Borak, and even better, Grud was coming at Borak from the side and was not noticed by Borak yet.
‘Oh, I am going to have fun with you.’
Grud flipped his spear around and swung the shaft of his spear at Borak’s kneecaps.
Grud’s blow to Borak’s kneecaps was so strong and swift, that he folded the wrong way at the knees like wet cardboard and face-planted on the ground.
The blow was so sudden that Borak did not even know his legs were bending in the wrong direction.
As Borak pushed himself up while stemming the bleeding from his broken nose which slammed into the ground, he felt something was wrong. As he looked down to his legs where he felt the wrongness, he could not comprehend why he was looking at the soles of his feet.
It took a few seconds before his mind registered that his knees were supposed to bend the other way, this was followed by his brain registering the damage, and Borak shouting in pain as he flipped himself on his back.
When he looked up, he saw a huge man in dark maroon armor that was reflected in the camp’s torches.
As Borak looked around for help, the only thing he saw were men running for cover as the huge armored man waved his hands around, with each swing of his hand, short spears flew through the air at unnatural flight paths and stabbing any warrior not fast enough to dodge or block the seeking spears.
When the last throwing spear was embedded in the back of a warrior, Grud looked down at the crippled Borak, and the only thing Borak could see in Grud’s eyes was malice for him.
Borak reached for his copper shortsword at his side, but Grud whacked his hand away with the butt of his spear and stepped on Borak’s arm.
Once Borak’s sword arm was held in place, Grud brought the butt of his spear crashing down on Borak’s elbow, shattering the joint, once again renewing Borak’s cries of pain.
And just to make sure Borak could not try anything funny, Grud did the same to Borak’s other arm.
Once Grud was done fully crippling Borak, he lifted Borak by the back collar of his armor and ran to where he remembered the captives were.
As Grud was making his way to the cages, he could already hear the clash of battle behind him as the main body of his forces clashed with the coalition of villages laying siege to the Riversong village.
Now that backup was here, Grud’s job was simple, rescue the captives, link up with the main force, break the siege, and hope the people inside the Riversong Village were strong enough to help strike the enemy while his forces kept the enemy busy.
Grud had hoped to throw the enemy into disarray by taking down Borak, but from the number of people on the enemy’s side shouting orders to mount a defense, it was now seeming very unlikely that Borak was running the whole show.
Grud may have failed at decapitating the enemy’s command structure, but what he did manage to do was create enough chaos by punching a hole of destruction and carnage through the camp, allowing the main body of the attacking force to have an easy time exploiting that hole.
That was a win to Grud, and he was going to take what he could get.