“I’ll be fine,” I replied, reaching up to pull the arrow free of my shoulder, wincing as I did so. “A little help, Caius?”
“On it!” Caius said, already moving before I could even finish the question, his hand lightly touching my shoulder and causing the wound to vanish.
Nodding at Caius in thanks, I motioned for us to get off the exposed wagon while simultaneously sending a message to Amaranth, the cat having gone scouting with Sierra and Constantine.
“Damn, we have incoming!” I said as Freya, Caius and I leapt off the wagon, Halcyon choosing to remain on top to protect Thorne and the horses pulling the wagon. If either of the two large draft animals pulling the wagon went down, getting the wagon back to Aldford was going to be next to impossible.
Assuming of course, that any of us survived this surprise attack at all.
Putting aside the question of who would be attacking us for the moment, I glanced around my surroundings, looking to see how the other guild members had reacted to the sudden interruption of our journey back home, half expecting my eyes to land on several clusters of shell-shocked Adventurers, staring numbly into the forest.
But instead of an array of frozen or panicked statues, I saw that they had all reflexively fallen into their assigned groups, each of them complete with a glowing shield of force shimmering around them as they rushed forward towards the head of the wagon, two of the groups rushing forward on the side opposite from us with the other moving directly towards us. A wave of pride and relief flowed through me as I realized that all the new recruits had taken our lessons over the last week to heart and hadn’t let panic overcome them.
Spotting Alistair’s familiar face at the head of the group of Adventurers rapidly closing in on us, I waved for him to follow us, before turning my body and leading the way, shouting as I ran.
“Raiders attacking from the woods on either side!” I bellowed as I rushed towards the front of the wagon, seeing dozens of people burst free from the heavy brush ahead of us, rushing onto the path, some of them visibly stumbling as branches and thick plants impeded their progress.
I idly wondered if it was my movements that had forced the attackers to spring their attack early, or if Amaranth and the others had contributed in spooking them, but whatever the case was, it was readily apparent to me that we had only partially fallen into their ambush. With every second that passed, more and more attackers steadily streamed out of the forest ahead of us, clearly caught out of position from where they had planned to launch their attack.
Up to us to make the most of a lucky break, I thought, the wound in my shoulder already a memory as my feet continued to move forward, a plan forming in my head. We’re still a long way from being in control of this fight.
The first rule that I had learned when surprised by a close ambush was to push past the instinct to hide and take cover, especially against one that had gone off halfcocked like this one. Staying put gave away the initiative, giving the enemy the opportunity to do whatever it was that they wanted. No, the best way to survive an attack like this, was to charge straight into it, taking away the time for the enemy to adjust and take control of the encounter.
Which is exactly what I planned to do.
“Charge them!” My voice rang out into the forest around us as I rushed past the now panicking horses at the front of the wagon. “Don’t let them form up! Ranged attackers, let them have it!”
“You heard the man!” Helix shouted a heartbeat behind mine, his large scaly form visible as he and the rest of the Thunder Lizards rounded the other side of the wagon, moving to fall in on my right. “Melee in the front ranks!”
A roar of defiance rose up into the air as we all surged forward towards the raiders, the thunderous clap of spells beginning to ring out as mages on both sides began to unleash their arsenal from afar, before the clash of melee forced them to switch to more precise and targeted spells.
Despite the planning and tactics the attackers had shown, I couldn’t help but notice that the leading edge of their ranks appeared to be caught off guard by our sudden rush into combat. Their movements faltering for a moment as some of their members took a step back, watching us as we closed the distance in surprise. Whoever these Adventurers were, it seemed that they lacked the edge that only hard training and experience could provide.
Who are these people? The thought couldn’t help but cross my mind as I looked at the raiders ahead of me, seeing that some were covered in nothing better than rags, while others were clad in finely crafted leather armor. Was there another group of Bandit Adventurers this way that we missed? Or have they made it back this way already?
Time quickly ran out for my internal questions as we finally slammed into the raiders, the loud crash of bodies and metal overwhelming the earlier sounds of magic. A half-orc’s face briefly filled my vision as the battle began, his expression shifting from angry defiance to horror as I batted the point of his sword away from me and plunged Razor into his unarmored chest. Without even hesitating, I continued forward with my charge, shouldering him hard in the chest and knocking him backward off his feet, aided by his desperate efforts to pull himself off my blade.
Flailing wildly, the half-orc crashed into a companion behind him, taking the pair of them down to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Without even a second’s hesitation, Freya’s spear shot out from beside me, reaching to stab the unlucky Adventurer in the throat with her spear, before snapping back to embed itself in the stomach of the man before her. Stepping forward, I moved to finish what I had started, thrusting my blade into the eye of the half-orc I had wounded earlier, and then immediately delivering a wicked slash to an attacker on my left, his attention keenly focused on Alistair, who had taken up position beside me.
Caught completely unaware, Razor sliced a long gash under the man’s arm, causing him to flinch in pain and glance towards me, inadvertently giving Alistair the opportunity to bury his axe directly into the side of his head, sending him falling lifelessly to the ground.
It was hard for many to understand at first, but fighting in a line of battle like this was not a clean or honorable affair. The fights didn’t unfold like personal duels played out on a grand scale like they did in movies, each attacker only striking at the one before them. A line of battle was in fact, pure chaos, a press of bodies so close that there was rarely enough room to swing your weapon, let alone have a clear and fair angle at a single opponent. Attacks could seemingly come from any direction at any time, and more often than not, any fatal wounds that landed weren’t delivered by the person before you, but from the person on either side of them, taking advantage of an opening that you had no chance of defending against, let alone seeing.
That was the reason why I had gone through such pains in making sure everyone - my friends, the new guild members and even myself - had practiced intently in fighting together. Survival in a close battle such as this depended on having those beside you watching your guard and you watching theirs. Catching a blow that was meant for your partner on the left, meant that she was able to land a thrust of her own on another opponent, which then, in turn, created an opening for someone else, the action endlessly repeating up and down the entire line. Consequently, a single person falling out of line could result in several others taking injuries or falling themselves as several attacks of opportunities played themselves out from the momentary lapse, forcing the line to readjust itself in a hurry.
It was this hard-practiced skill, combined with our better equipment that allowed myself and the rest of Virtus around me to carve through the first few rows of raiders like they were nothing, their numbers only serving to get in their way as they scrambled to meet our assault, more than a few latecomers still trying to force themselves out of the heavy foliage that bordered the forest path.
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��Gah!” I screamed in exertion as I chopped Razor into the shoulder of a poorly armored bandit, feeling his rusty sword grate harmlessly against my chest, the dull blade unable to damage the links that made up the armor.
Ignoring the man’s pained scream as I pulled my weapon free, I shoved him hard away from me and saw him vanish in the press of bodies behind him as yet another Adventurer wearing a set of rags that could barely be called clothes, let alone armor, practically threw himself onto my sword in a rush to attack me.
What the hell is with all of these unarmored bandits? I thought as I pulled Razor free from my overeager attacker’s gut and delivered a killing slash across his throat, sparing a moment to glance around the press of people. Where are all the ones I saw wearing armor earlier?
Taking in my small portion of the line in an instant, I felt my heart leap as I realized that I had lost sight of the overall battle and that in the chaos of fighting, the center of our line, driven forward by the Thunder Lizards, Freya and myself, had pushed itself too far forward. To my left, I saw Alistair and the rest of his group struggling to keep pace with their attackers, the majority of whom appeared to be the armored bandits I had seen earlier.
“Shit!” I breathed, immediately recognizing what the raiders had suckered us into doing. “Pull back! They’re stacking the—”
Moving faster than anyone could react, the fireballs streaked through the air directly towards us, burning effortlessly through the low hanging branches, before detonating in a fiery explosion all around us. Throwing my hands in front of my face in reflex, I felt my feet leave the ground as I was thrown backward from the blast, briefly catching a glimpse between my fingers that one of the fireballs had been far enough off target to land directly in the heart of the attackers in front of us.
Spinning through the air, I barely had enough time to process the searing pain that shot through my body before crashing back down onto the ground in a heap, a heavy weight landing on top of me just as something hard hit me directly in the forehead.
“Ugh,” I reflexively tried to coil away from the pain but found myself unable to move, my head spinning wildly as a trio of alerts flashed urgently in my vision, sending cruel sparks of pain into my rattled brain.
Unknown’s [Fireball II] hits you for 238 points of fire damage!
Unknown’s [Fireball II] hits you for 112 points of fire damage!
Unknown’s [Fireball II] hits you for 87 points of fire damage!
Freya hits you for 45 points of damage!
Shaking my head to dismiss the prompt, my eyes snapped open, only to find Freya lying directly on top of me, her free hand clutching the side of her helmeted head as she grunted in pain. A long mark of blood on the edge of her helmet making it readily evident to what had hit me in the head.
“Freya,” I managed to gasp as I felt something wet drip across my face.
“Shit, what—,” Freya began to say, her eyes snapping open, widening as she saw my face and began scrambling to get off me. “Oh damn! I’m sorry, Lyrian!”
“It’s fine,” I replied, cutting her off as I moved to force myself up off the ground and tried to piece together what had just happened, feeling my head begin to spin. “W-we need to move.”
Forcing myself through the pain as I sat up, I turned my head to scan the battlefield, finding that we had been far from the only ones to be affected by the blast. Nearly everyone, be it Virtus member or raider, had been staggered or knocked off their feet from the quartet of fireballs that had streamed from the forest around us, with the raiders seemingly having taken the worse of the damage due to the one rogue fireball that had landed in the heart of their formation.
Those who still stood amongst the raiders hesitantly glanced into the forest, their expressions a mixture of both worry and anger, while the stunned Virtus guild members struggled to pick themselves up off the ground and buy themselves some measure of space during the brief pause in battle.
“Fuck, Helix and Zethus just vanished from Party Sense,” Freya told me just as I finished my scan around the battlefield, having already pushed herself up into a standing position. “They must have caught the fireballs point blank.”
“Damn,” I cursed while mentally reaching out to check on my groupmates, then flinching as I realized that both Sierra’s and Constantine’s presence was much further away than it had been a few seconds earlier. Whatever they had run into in the forest, had been more than they could manage, and they had both just respawned back in Aldford. “Sierra and Constantine too.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Freya snapped as she offered me a hand to get me back up on my feet. “I thought we cleared out all the bandits in the area!”
“So did I,” I wheezed as I accepted her hand and allowed her to pull me up, sending a message to Amaranth as I rose.
Amaranth’s mental voice was pained and rushed as he spoke.
“Amaranth is coming,” I told Freya urgently while taking a moment to cast Lesser Shielding on myself now that I had the opportunity. “He said that he needs help and he’s not replying to me.”
“We’re about to have our own problems here, Lyr,” Freya said, motioning towards the raiders who had steadily managed to pick themselves up off the ground during our interlude. “We need to form up and regroup back at the wagon—”
A loud feline roar intermixed with feral barking cut off the remainder of Freya’s statement as Amaranth leaped out from the forest in a spray of leaves and broken branches, a large, translucent red wolf soaring through the air a heartbeat behind him. Moving faster than the cat could react after landing, the wolf leaped onto Amaranth and knocked him onto his back. Straddling the cat, the wolf savagely bit at my familiar, managing to land several bites before a vicious kick sent the ghostlike creature flying off him, the creature’s body shifting eerily as it landed on all fours without any apparent effort.
[Malevolent Wolf Spirit] – Level 17
Amaranth replied in a pained voice as he forced himself up onto all four paws, revealing a patchwork of bloody and burned fur across his body. Some of it being obviously someone or something else’s, but a generous portion belonging to the cat himself.
“Would you look at that?” a familiar voice called out from across the battlefield, interrupting our conversation as a group of armored men dressed in heavy leathers walked out of the woods, opposite to the one that my familiar and the spectral wolf had just emerged from. “Seems that they like playing with one another.”
The spirit wolf gave a snort of derision at the statement, giving Amaranth a hungry look before turning and trotting over to join the speaking man’s side, its ghostly appearance making it hard for the eye to follow.
Tearing my attention away from the strange creature, I felt my blood go cold with anger as I recognized who the speaking man was, the large stag’s skull on his head doing little to disguise his identity. It had been weeks since any of us had seen him last, not since everything had happened with Graves. We had just all assumed, hoped, that he had cut his losses and went elsewhere.
Clearly, we were wrong.
Glaring at the man, I tried to force down the rage that erupted in my chest, his name tearing itself out of my throat like a curse.
<
br /> “Carver.”
Chapter 26
Silence fell over the battlefield as the name floated through the air, everyone staring numbly at the half-orc, taking in his new appearance, the man having long since shed the plain leather armor that we had all last seen him in, replacing it with a nightmarish collection of fur and hide.
Dressed from head to toe in a patchwork of blood-soaked leathers and animal fur, Carver’s armor sent involuntary shivers down my spine as I spotted bits and pieces of flesh still clinging to the individual pieces that comprised it. The longer I stared at the armor, the more it appeared to be sewn together by a madman, with barely a care to appearance, unless one actively wanted to project fear and the capacity for violence.
Which knowing Carver, he most definitely did.
Completing the rest of his disturbing appearance was a cruel looking short spear bearing a serrated edge and a heavy wooden shield covered in similar bloody hides as his armor, the items serving only to enhance his already vicious image.
“Lyrian, Freya,” Carver called out joyfully, his stag-horned helmet dipping towards me in greeting before his eyes shifted ever so slightly to the blond warrior beside me. “It’s been too long since we’ve last seen one another.”
“No, Carver, it hasn’t,” Freya spat angrily as she whipped her spear into position before her, training its point on the half-orc. “In fact, you should have never come back here.”
“Goodness I’ve missed you, Freya, your friend Thorne too,” Carver replied with a chuckle, his gaze then focusing past us and towards the wagon. “It just isn’t the same without you two anymore, you—”
“What do you want, Carver?” I cut the half-orc off, noticing that while the man was talking all the surviving raiders on the battlefield were regrouping behind him and the other men that he had exited the forest with, prompting me to motion for the rest of the guild to do the same, lest we get caught off guard a second time. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Legacy of the Fallen Page 32