Unto the Ages

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When morning came and Grud’s men were rested, they split into 4 teams of 25 men with the objective of ambushing and killing as many enemy patrols as possible, Grud ended the briefing with, “As for those worrying about being found out by the enemy, worry not, there is no need to be discreet. Our objective is to make the enemy wary of us and keep their attention on us until the main forces arrive.”

 

With all that being said, the men broke off into their hunting groups while Grud acted as his own group and went off on his own.

 

Throughout the morning, the groups stalked and ambushed the enemy patrols with relative ease. While the Newlanders were faster than the Mainlanders on average, there was a reason Grud selected those who were good at stealth, Grud’s men would hide and lie in ambush, and when the enemy patrol who numbered 5-10 warriors came into the kill zone, they would get a hail of spears from 25 hunters in hiding, and any who survived would get rushed and struck down.

 

After they were done killing a patrol, they would just leave the corpses for other patrols to find while they relocated.

 

By the time it was afternoon, the enemy got suspicious of their patrols not returning and sent out bigger patrols to find out why.

 

What most of them found were the bodies of their fellow warriors, while some of the new patrols found the cause of their problem, they never made it back to camp.

 

Those that did make it back to camp reported of the dead patrols from both camps. Hearing this, the leaders from both camps got together to plan things out against an enemy of unknown numbers.

 

They immediately doubled border security and suspended any further attacks on the Fangfall village as they suspected an imminent attack was coming

 

So just like that, Grud’s plan worked out, the enemy’s attention was focused on them.

 

By late afternoon, the Swiftwind and Greatlake’s leadership decided to send out warriors in force to hunt down their elusive enemy before it got too dark.

 

This action did stop Grud’s men from performing any further attacks, but the act of moving out in such numbers made them easy to keep track of from a distance and avoid them. The only one daring enough to attack this mass of warriors was Grud.

From the cover of the foliage and from behind trees, Grud would hurl stones and whatever deadfall at the group of over 50 men while keeping his distance and hiding himself as much as possible.

 

When it was the enemy group decided to rush his position, Grud would just run and lead them on a wild goose chase through the woods.

 

Eventually, it got dark and the enemy retreated back to camp for the night. That was when Grud was most effective at terrorizing the enemy.

 

***

 

Grud and his men kept up the harassment campaign for 3 days before his men ran into a scout group from the main force, after exchanging some words, they sent runners to fetch Grud.

 

When they found Grud, he was standing among a scattering of dead enemy warriors with his bloodied spear.

 

“Chieftain Grud, the main force has caught up and is asking for a report.” one of Grud's men said once he was found. Grud simply acknowledged and followed the man back.

 

When Grud made it back to the scouts, the first thing he asked was, “How did the attack on the enemies at the Wisperwind village go?”

 

“It went better than expected, from what I heard, they put up a token resistance along with the smaller villages and then retreated.” the scout reported and asked the status of Grud’s situation.

 

“Over the past few days, I have lost 22 men, but we have killed over 300 enemies, and i have been harassing the two main camps at night to keep them on edge. Hopefully, they are sleep deprived, but I doubt that.” Grud reported.

 

The scout nodded and said, “Ok, stay here and watch the enemy for now. Keep the enemies clear from the West as the main force approaches, they will most likely send men to relieve you so you can rest.”

 

Grud nodded and sent some men to tell the other groups still out there about the latest update and regroup.

 

***

 

A few hours later, a force of 200 men came to relieve Grud and his men.

 

When they arrived at the temporary camp of the main force, his men immediately went to rest while he had to report his findings to the other chieftains.

 

It took the better part of an hour before Grud was done briefing the others on the current status of the 2 enemy camps, their positioning, and the last known estimated numbers. After that, Grud found the nearest available tent and crashed from the exhaustion of days of minimal sleep in order to harass the enemy day and night.

 

By the time Grud woke up, it was nighttime. He went to get some food and went to find Thagrak to ask what plan they came up with.

 

Thagrak brought Grud into his tent and laid out the current plan, “We are planning to attack tonight, we have instructed the men who replaced you to create a distraction from the East while we hit them from the West, which means we will be hitting the Swiftwind forces first. Hopefully, we can crush them fast, it may discourage the Greatlake forces from engaging with us and retreat.”

 

After asking a few more questions, Grud left Thagrak’s tent to prepare himself for the upcoming battle.

 

Over the past few days, Grud did not have the chance to clean himself and maintain his armor, due to this, even with his enhanced physique, he still had sores from the lack of upkeeping his hygiene, and some of the straps holding the armor to his body were damaged and had to be replaced.

 

Lucky for Grud, there were crafters attached to the main force on whom he dumped his armor to perform maintenance while he went to a small stream to scrub days of dirt off of himself. Other than that, the only thing Grud could do was grab some food and wait for the time to attack.

 

***

 

As Grud was resting on the ground under the starry night, he felt someone nudge his leg, “Chieftain Grud, it is time.”

 

Grud nodded to the hunter and donned his armor.

 

Soon, there were over 2000 men moving through the woods, their only light source was the moon in a cloudless night sky. Beasts and animals, big and small, sensed the mass movement of people and the section they were traveling through became devoid of any noise from the local wildlife.

 

When the main force was hiding in the treeline and observing the lights of the camps, a runner was sent to the East to start the distraction.

 

When the distraction happened, which consisted of arrows being shot at the Greatlake’s camp from the eastern treeline, both enemy camps went on high alert.

 

After about 15 minutes of exchanging fire with each other, the Greatlake forces decided to charge at the distraction. 

 

From atop a tree, Grud saw a third of the Greatlake forces charge toward the eastern treeline. He shimmied down the tree and relayed what he saw, hearing this, they decided this was as good as the distraction was going to get and began the charge at the Swiftwind forces.

 

As they charged out of the tree line and over the open darkness, there were no warcries this time, all the men were under strict orders not to utter a sound until they clashed with the enemy, the only sound was the rapidly approaching sound of thousands of feet trampling the grass.

 

The tribal main forces managed to get halfway across the clearing before someone from the Swiftwind camp noticed the sound coming towards them and sounded the alarm. The Swiftwind archers only managed to get 2-3 volleys of arrows off into the darkness before the first tribesman crashed into the Swiftwind camp.

 

And that first tribesman was Grud. facing a row of spears and swords a few meters before the clash, Grud started his first attack by reaching out his hand and releasing a pulse of mana.

 

The mana pulse sent men and tents flying as Grud rushed into the breach he just made, followed closely by the biggest and strongest hunters the tribes had to offer, their job was to punch as many holes in the enemy's defense as possible and sow chaos.

 

The moment the heavy bruisers behind got into the enemy line, they dropped the shields that were keeping them safe from the enemy’s arrows and brought out the 2 handed weapons. 

 

Long clubs reinforced with copper bands and flanges, primitive glaves and greatswords that were an amalgamation of bone and copper were now wielded by these men who started swinging.

 

Bodies were crushed and body parts fell to the floor as Grud and the bruisers behind him advanced into the enemy line.

 

When they got deep enough, one of the commanders would call Grud to fall back with his men and the other hunters would fill the gap. This allowed Grud to repeat this action in different parts of the battle line, and soon the Swiftwind forces started to crumble and rout.

 

As for the Greatlake forces, at first, they did not even attempt to help the Swiftwind forces, fearing that they too would be attacked by an unknown force on their side, but by the time they realized that they were the ones fighting the distraction, they saw the Swiftwind forces start to lose ground and crumble.

 

The Greatlake’s commander in charge decided that it was not worth the lives to engage in combat of what looked to be a losing battle and called for an orderly retreat.

With the last of the enemy forces leaving the field of battle, the tribesmen and those inside the Fangfall village let out a roar of victory.

 

And now that they have achieved victory in defense, soon it would be time to claim victory in vengeance.