by G. Akella
It may have been an illustration from a book of fairy tales—the forest, the slow flow of the river, and the sandy beach near the millpond. The mass of water would crawl over the dam languidly and then roar downward from the height of some twelve-fifteen feet. The whole scene exuded peace and serenity. Perfectly idyllic... if it weren't for the charred ruin of the watermill on the other bank. The roof had fallen in, and the walls, formerly white, were blackened by the blaze. The arch of the entrance facing the river, and the windows, having shattered in the fire, gaped with unnatural blackness, as if someone had spilled an inkwell over a rustic painting, and then proceeded to slash at the same spot with a knife.
"So lovely," said Zara, who was the last to come out of the forest, but then she saw the burned-down watermill. The girl stopped, sighed and stared at the ground.
"My brother and I used to catch enormous catfish here," said Aritor in a soft low voice, his stone-like face softening around the edges as he let the memories flood his mind.
"There's a pool over there," Reena echoed, pointing upstream. "The sand is soft there, and the bank isn't the least bit steep... Me and the girls would always bathe there, didn't we, Olta?" the demoness turned to one of the archer girls for support.
"Well, some of us were catching catfish," Reece pursed his lips, clapping Aritor, lost in his memories, on the shoulder, "while others sat in the bushes over there," the mage pointed toward the pool. "Watching the girls bathing... Choosing a conformation of his liking, as it were..."
"Why you..." Reena's gaze shifted from Ayim, who had gone red as a beet all of a sudden, to the mage, his face cracking a wide smile. "And which bushes would those be?"
"Hey, don't look at me!" Reece put up his arms. "I'm just complimenting his good taste! Whenever you go bathing with Olta again, be sure to take Salta, Zara and Hagedia along. And I'll go fishing for catfish with Aritor. I'm genuinely interested, you know. They might look fine, but what if there's a defect of some sort? Those catfish can be tricky..." the mage hastened to add, noticing the senior archeress staring daggers at him.
"Did you really?!" Reena took a few steps toward Ayim, who looked utterly abashed...
"Too much talk!" I decided to nip the burgeoning "family" conflict in the bud. "Will you stop behaving like children already? Where is the bridge that you promised?"
"Right here," Ayim pointed to the surface of the water, happy to have escaped righteous retribution. "It's easy enough to cross along the edge of the dam—it's only ankle-deep there. We would all use this shortcut as kids. Uncle Storkh kept scolding us, but it's not like we would use the door or anything," the demon pointed to the gaping black hole across the river. "We would dive and come out further right. Our clothes would be dry by the time we reached the village."
"Why would he need a doorway facing the water?" I looked at the black-haired demon in surprise.
"Who could have known the river would rise so high?" the demon shrugged. "They were digging a canal from the other side for the wheel, and must have miscalculated, so another doorway had to be made. But this one remained anyway."
"Just tell me one thing, my dear friend," I looked at him with a sigh. "Are you sure there's no one inside?"
"Well..." the warrior looked nonplussed, "I could scout it out myself."
"You fool," I shook my head. "Do you think your death would gain us anything?"
"No one is likely to be there. The undead aren't all that fond of buildings."
"There's a first time for everything, and the first time usually happens at the worst possible time. The path here is narrow," I nodded toward the rocks that were barely noticeable underwater. "We'll be lucky to cross one at a time. If anything comes at you, you wouldn't even be able to escape."
"Well, they'd probably start shooting—they're stupid mobs, after all, as you always say. And this looks like shooting distance to me," the demon shrugged.
"Is there any other way across the river?" I asked.
"There is—the bridge on the main road," Ayim lowered his eyes. "I told you about it, dar. There are only these two ways across—the bridge and the miller's path."
"I see," I hopped onto the razorback and turned him around. "Let's head for the bridge! By the way, Ayim," I looked at the black-haired demon. "If I ever put you in charge of others, and you will have a choice of two options, go for the tried one. And never leave anything to chance. Got it?"
"Aye-aye, dar!"
The squad set into motion. Getting up from the ground, Reece stretched, clapped a sullen Ayim on the shoulder, and said in a deliberately cheerful voice.
"Cheer up, buddy! Being in command is not like sitting in the bushes... getting a feel of, uh... catfish! You'll learn!" He nodded toward Reena and sweetened the pill a little. "You might teach me, too, while you're at it. You've had pretty good luck with the catfish, after all..."
Ayim was right—the way to Feator took much longer along the main road. We had to move through the forest at a snail's pace for a mile, and cross the river along a wooden bridge that felt as if it was crumbling. From there it was another quarter mile before my squad finally got the tall palisade surrounding the village.
Feator and Environs was a level 155-156 zone whose shape resembled a cucumber stretching from the northeast to the southwest. The village lay in the southern part, near the border with the neighboring zone—right on the road leading from Ballan to Farot. The environs of the village lay behind Thessa River that passed through here before flowing into Ithele much further south.
"Bastards! How I hate them!" Reena exhaled, looking toward the village seized by the undead. The priestess' eyes started to glisten, and she turned away from the view that had opened to us, burying her face in Ayim's shoulder. Looking grim, the youth gave her a pat on the shoulder and whispered something soothing into her ear, but the struggle on his own face was all too visible.
The sight was indeed anything but inspiring: a crooked gatepost, with the actual gate lying on the ground, smashed to splinters. The houses that stood closest to the entrance had burned through to little more than charred ruins. All the space before the gates was strewn with the rotting carcasses of the former defenders of the village, and the bones of the attackers. The hideous emanations of death and putrefaction coming from the village could be felt from even here.
"There's a breach in the palisade on the right, about three hundred feet farther on," muttered the black-haired warrior through clenched teeth. "We used it for our retreat. I think there are fewer of those freaks there," he nodded toward the silhouette of skeleton archers above the palisade, five on either side, and six undead knights in plate armor standing at the gates. Other invaders roamed the main street behind them in formation that defied easy understanding, the most conspicuous one being a nine-foot-tall two-headed skeleton with a huge two-handed poleaxe. A light blue mist shrouded the blade of the monster's weapon—most likely, it dealt extra cold damage and had a small chance of dropping from this oversize bonehead. Seven million hit points, level 165—the beast was weaker than Daeron whom I had killed earlier, and my party, which dealt around fifty thousand damage per second, should manage to dispatch the monster in three or four minutes. But how would we handle the rest? There were a hundred there at least, and if they all attacked at once, I didn't see any way we'd survive this encounter.
"Everybody rest and wait for me," I put on a helmet and took the lance out of my inventory, just in case. "I'll ride around the village and take a look at how things stand, then formulate a strategy." I turned toward the fighters as they prepared to pitch camp, then gave Gloom a shove, steering him to the right so as to avoid the aggro range of the skeletons on the walls. "I'll be back in two shakes..."
My riding around Feator did not yield any results. The breach in the palisade that Ayim had mentioned had been made from the inside, and I couldn't help wondering at first why the locals hadn't let the kids escape through the southern gate of the village, where the road to the next zone began. But once I reached th
e southern gate and saw groups of level 170 skeletons swarming the road, the answer became abundantly clear.
What if we launch our assault from the next zone? What if the enemy garrison can't cross the border, and we manage to pick them all off from a safe distance? I kept thinking this as I gazed at the gates, shut tight and reinforced with strips of iron. But what if they can? What do we do then? If I'm wrong, there'll be nowhere left to retreat. And taking the trouble of clearing another zone just to find out... Nope, that won't do. Time is too short. The only thing that brightened my mood a bit was that there were no undead near the village itself except for the garrison inside. It meant that we didn't need to vanquish any mobs to ensure an escape route for the squad.
After some deliberation, I decided against scouting out the village invisible. What would that gain me? I might be able to calculate the exact number of those stiffs, but what good will that do? Whether they number a hundred, or a hundred twenty... makes no difference to me, I thought to myself as I headed back to the party camp. Should we try the breach in the palisade? It's narrower than the main gate, and two tanks can easily hold it, but they'd have to handle two or three skeleton warriors each, plus there'll be archers to worry about. And if some of the undead slip out of the main gate and flank us, we'll bee in deep shit...
"Buff up," I waved to the demons who had jumped up at my approach, dismounted the boar, and placed Shield of the Elements on my action bar while we buffed.
"Have you reached a decision, dar?" asked Salta, hand covering her face from the sun that rose above the trees.
"I have, and it concerns you and your archers first and foremost." On the second day, I placed the demoness in command of all the ranged fighters, putting the healers in Reena's charge, while tanks and other melee fighters became Ayim's responsibility.
"So what exactly do we do?" Salta's eyes assumed a serious expression at once.
"See the skeletons on the walls? They're our main concern now. I can assume that should we manage to dispatch one of them, it will instantly be replaced by another. Mobs are predictable enough, so we may take out all the ranged fighters in the village in this fashion. You see now why I have assigned... I mean, why I have taught you long-distance shooting—your arrows have a longer range. So, as soon as we're buffed, the archers are to approach the leftmost skeleton within firing range," I marked the required target in the options. "This one, to be precise. Fire at my command. Next you switch to the one on the right, and keep at it until there's no one left standing on this side of the gate." I looked at the soldiers—they all listened attentively. "Everybody else, don't stick your necks out. Just stay put and observe everything quietly, and get ready to retreat to the bridge at any moment. You do realize it is only the archers who will fire, don't you, Reece?"
"Aye aye!" shouted the mage, his chest puffed out and his eyes bulging and blinking.
"Aye aye what?" I asked him with a sigh.
"Aye aye to staying behind and observing the flowing motions of certain parts of our archer squad's anatomy! Reena and Hagedia, in turn, can watch—"
"Stop," I waved my hand, staunching his verbal diarrhea. "Are you ever going to pipe down?" I feigned my fiercest glare. The truth was that this kid with his lighthearted buffoonery always brightened my mood, as well as that of most others. "If everything is clear, let's begin! Salta, report when you're ready."
I watched the archers move to take position, then mounted Gloom, my gaze fixed on the palisade with the skeletons standing over it, immobile. In a moment, I would see whether or not my assumptions were correct. The risk was minimal, however—the party could just retreat if anything went awry. Once you got some five or six hundred feet away from a mob pursuing you, in most cases it would cease its pursuit and return. Dungeon mobs were the exception—they would pursue their quarry to its death.
"We are ready," the magically amplified voice of the demoness sounded in my ears.
I focused my gaze on one skeleton, its head kept turning this way and that, gave a deep sigh, and gave the order, "Go!" Red and white flashes marked the trajectory between the archers and the mob, taking off over three quarters of its health at once. The monster's body shuddered at the impact, and fell over the palisade, carried by the momentum, the sun reflection off the metal of its bent helmet.
"Fire at the next one!" I ordered, and the second skeleton disappeared behind the palisade, pincushioned by arrows. But then something strange happened. The remaining three skeleton archers from this side of the gate and the five that had stood on the other simply disappeared behind the roughly hewn logs of the palisade, while the six armored skeletons hastened to disappear behind the gate, falling out of my archers' reach. Great, just great!
"What did they just pull off?" Reece asked somewhere behind me. He sounded just as surprised by the behavior of the undead as I was.
"I wish I knew," Reena shook her head, her eyes fixed on the gate.
"Archers, fall back!" I shouted, waving my hand to Salta, who had turned in my direction. I could not see her expression behind the helmet's visor, but she must have been just as astonished as everybody else by what had happened. "Run!" I turned toward the rest of the squad, and raised a hand for the soldiers to stop all chitchat. "Quiet! Let's wait..."
We didn't need to wait long. About three minutes later, an organized horde of skeleton warriors poured out of the gates. Following closely behind were their brethren in robes and chainmail—liches and archers. S'art, the local bicephalous boss, marched heavily behind them all, his poleaxe heaved on his shoulder and his eyes' sorcerous green glow following my squad's every movement. So much for the battle!
The undead boss threw his arms upward and roared. The host of skeletons that marched out to attack us started to move faster.
"Retreat!" I shouted. "Make for the bridge, quickly!" I noticed the faces of my clanmates darken, clearly displeased with my orders.
The morale of your party has fallen by 5 points. Your party's current morale is +14 (a 14% increase to your party members' physical and magic damage).
Damn it! But of course, it was the first retreat in the past three days. There would be countless others, but attacking a hundred walking dead bristling with iron head-on would be suicide. I wasn't going to bury everything that had been achieved with so much effort like this, in a single engagement. I brought up the rear on the razorback. As I barked orders for my soldiers to move faster, I turned around and made one of the most widely used gestures in the world at the attacking undead...
"So why the long faces? You remind me of pregnant gophers," I spat through my teeth. "It took just one retreat for you to start whining. Did you think I'd leave the village to the undead?"
The demons were a pitiful sight. Once we had lost the pursuit and stopped our retreat, I was instantly barraged by questions such as, "Why didn't we stand and fight?" "Why didn't we try to do some damage to the enemy using ranged weapons?" Given that it had taken us all of yesterday to earn those five morale points, and that the exact way of capturing this Hart-forsaken Feator was still beyond my understanding, I lined up my subordinates and proceeded to give them a thorough chewing-out.
"It was a tactical retreat! If you intend to pout every time we retreat, we won't do much fighting! Do you really think a heroic death is a good thing? Do you want revenge or not? You!" I stopped in front of Ayim, his head hung low. "Tell me, should I have tried to find out what to expect of the enemy? To make an approximate estimate of their numbers, at the very least?"
"Aye-aye, dar," muttered the demon.
"Salta!" I fixed my gaze on the leader of the archers.
"Aye-aye, dar! You should have!"
"Exactly," I clenched my fists and took a few deep breaths. "So why do you have to look like... whatever they were..."
"Gophers!" Reece puffed up his chest. "Pregnant gophers!"
"That's right," the hand that had reached for the pipe froze midway. "What?"
"I have no idea why pregnancy makes those rodents d
our, either!" barked the mage in a jaunty voice. "But if that's what commander says, that must be it!"
"Your tongue will land you in hot water someday," I shook my head with reproach, and eyed the ranks over again.
The demons' sullen grimaces were replaced by guilty expressions, which was exactly what I had wanted. Although the party morale didn't rise, they would trust me more in the future.
"Dismissed!" I ordered. "Everybody check their equipment—we march in five minutes."
So how do I proceed with this village? I stood at the railing of the bridge, watching the water running underneath. Regular mobs couldn't have become that much more intelligent! Those aren't NPC armies which could sometimes act in non-scripted ways even before the patch, but your run-of-the-mill undead... Feator must be captured—there's no way I can get to my private room otherwise. Such were my thoughts as my teeth chewed on the mouthpiece, and my mind replayed our first unsuccessful engagement time and again.
The forest around us lived a life of its own, one full of mystery. The birds chirped, the canopies of the mighty trees rustled in the wind, and the leaves whispered to each other. A mottled woodpecker kept beating his tattoo on the thick trunk of a nearby tree, ruining my concentration. So, what do I do now? Bang my head against the wall all day long, just like this woodpecker? I've got to think of something. I can't afford to lose these guys! They're like family to me now—the only ones who had faith in me and decided to follow... Fury started rising from the depth of my mind, making it hard to breathe. Mobs could not have become so intelligent! It would be like... like... The mobs didn't—it was I who was the idiot! The archers hid behind walls because they ran out of targets! Normally, they would have just run out through the gate. But the behavioral mechanism of defending the settlement must have kicked in, so they must have waited for everyone to rally and joined the host, ditto for the armored warriors. Apparently, according to the scripts, they have to wait for others if no targets present themselves, and it makes no sense to do that when you're fired at, even to the stupidest of mobs! If that's the case, we can put up our tanks to soak up the archers' arrows, and they won't hide!