That was until the screams of punctured feet started, and the barbarians ran into each other.
Several dozen hidden elves near the line of traps had been ordered that those screams from the enemy would be their signal. They all rose from their hidden positions covered by the thick leaves, and hurled their javelins and then fled away to avoid being killed in return. More than any other attack so far these javelins rained havoc upon my enemies, spitting the barbarians who were on the ground gripping their shredded feet, and falling, badly aimed among the crowded group that had grouped up behind the injured enemies.
Two of these elves were caught by return throws that killed them, one of them thrown by the barbarian chieftain.
I realized I’d brought this group of elves too close to where the trap was because I wanted to get casualties, and I had for a moment in the thrill of battle forgotten the most important rule: Don’t let my irreplaceable people die.
Defend them. Always defend them.
Now three of my elves were dead. And another besides the one that Marcus had performed a fast amputation on was maimed permanently.
Irreplaceable people, whose names and natures I had known.
I needed next time to find a safer plan.
Once we had archery, the greater range from bows combined with the accuracy my blessing would give my people, would let us crush groups like this without risking any lives.
The amount of spiritual energy I had ticked down steadily, as all of my elves had a blessing to alertness, and I placed my full blessing at any time on about the two hundred elves who were closest to the barbarians.
In the thirty minutes of the fight so far I’d spent about seventy thousand units of spiritual energy, but I still had more than two hundred twenty thousand. This should end safely.
Only about sixty barbarians were left in the main group, and many of them were wounded.
As they moved forward, the barbarians were slowed down because they needed to brush aside every pile of leaves with the butt of a spear before they stepped through it. So the elves who’d been clambering high above reached the prepared trees directly above them.
The hurled volleys of rocks on their heads started again.
The barbarian chieftain, his thick neck tense, looked at the man whom we’d shown mercy to, and who had led this army here, into this trap. The chieftain snarled at the very young man, and punched him in the face hard enough that I could hear an audible crack. Then when the man went down, the chieftain kicked him where his balls had been before Marcus kicked him.
I thought I was about to watch the poor boy who’d cried once for mercy die now, but instead the barbarian leader pointed everyone towards the village. They jogged forward at a faster speed now, having become used to brushing the traps aside.
The young man stood back to his feet as the back of the column passed him, and in that motion, caused a stone thrown at his head to miss. His face showed a flash of hatred as he looked at the column of his people, and then he limpingly ran to catch up with the band. He gripped his spear tightly.
These too were people, those whose death I orchestrated.
Their force now ran too fast for any of us to catch up to them, and even the elves who were already in position high in the trees could only toss one or two rocks down on their heads before the force was safely past.
There was an army of elves in front of them lined up in the trees brandishing their spears, but this army broke as soon as the barbarian leader threw a javelin that killed another elf.
I ordered the one group whose morale I could trust, the one with Arnhelm and Marcus, and also more than half of the full-time soldiers, to rush around and get ahead of them to the clearing with the village.
There were now only fifty or sixty barbarians, and perhaps I could protect the village by scaring them away from directly looting and attacking.
They were panting from the run when I had them line up along an upward sloping hill. As they did so, I remembered an idea from The Art of War.
In Death Ground fight.
So I made sure there was a pathway which the barbarians could use to flee that would take them away from the village towards the sea shore. Hopefully they’d flee in that direction, seeking safety, and then I’d gather all of my army to keep them hemmed in there, while having the rest in the forests ready to ambush them when they tried to flee from my domains.
Marcus’s force got in place just in time to properly line up along the top of the hill where they had lined up in practice drills dozens of times. Half held one javelin, and half held their own fighting spear and the spear of one of their companions with the javelins.
Marcus stood in the center of the line like a giant, tall and noble, with a spear that dripped blood.
My subjective time ran very slowly as the barbarian army broke out from the line of trees into the village clearing. I was able to watch how the sight of this large force, that was half the number of the elves lined up here, caused the morale of my men to plummet.
And I decided I had been a fool to try protecting the village at all. The barbarians would charge this group, crush them, kill them all, and they would not be able to successfully flee in the open ground like they could in the forests.
And then, before I could decide what to do with this fear, since while there were hundreds of elves close behind the barbarians in the trees, none of them had the morale to willingly charge the rear of the barbarian force, Marcus acted.
As soon as Marcus saw the barbarian chieftain step out from the tree line, leading his band of men, Marcus threw back his head and roared.
His shout was a long loud rattling roar. A roar that would have made the glass of the windows nearest him shake, had there been windows with glass.
He roared as though he were a lion, a dragon, or a beast both those magnificent creatures would fear despite their nature as the greatest of predators.
And without waiting for orders from me or for anything else, Marcus levelled his long eleven foot spear, and he charged alone towards the barbarian army.
But not alone for long.
This was crazy. Completely crazy and dangerous.
Led by Arnhelm, every elf along the hill shouted their keening howling cry, and charged the barbarians with Marcus.
And then hearing that war cry, the elves in the forests behind them took up that war cry.
Hawooo! Hawooo! Hawooo!
We were extremely fortunate that Marcus was in front, because all of the barbarians who held a throwing spear hurled their spear at him instead of reserving it for the elves.
And Marcus simply changed the angle at which he hurled himself across the ground. Two or three other javelins that were better aimed were knocked aside by his spear, or avoided by ducking his head to the side.
Damn.
The man was beautiful to watch, but I was fucking scared he was about to kill himself with this crazy attack.
He drew deeply on my spiritual blessing, using almost five hundred units of spiritual energy a minute to speed his thinking up by more than ten times.
The elves behind him had had their thinking sped up by a factor of five since they had lined up.
Marcus crashed into the line of barbarians at the same time the first hurled javelins from my elves did.
The fifty javelins were hurled with beautiful accuracy, and the spiritual blessing helped to synchronize them so that only two of the elves threw their weapon at the same target by accident. Those two pierced a man through both the eye and the stomach. We struck almost twenty of the barbarians down. The enemy was now almost a small enough numbered force that they could be dealt with easily.
Marcus’s spear gutted in almost an instant three of them, but the barbarian chief had managed to duck somehow under the blow that went for him, and then with his axe he hacked deeply into the wooden shaft of Marcus’s spear.
The other barbarians rushed towards Marcus, who pulled his now damaged spear backwards with incredible speed, and struck
at three of them as they ran towards him, each falling into a heap. The barbarian leader ducked under a stab aimed at him, and a second strike with his axe at Marcus’s spear caused it to splinter.
Marcus had at first been in danger of being overrun, especially now that his spear was destroyed, but the elves coming up behind him kept him from being surrounded, as they stabbed at their enemies, ignoring in a sudden ferocity the potential for their own deaths, and they dodged around the flickering stabbing spears of the terrified barbarians.
Arnhelm stood at Marcus’s side himself killed, fearlessly jumping past a stabbing spear thrust, two different barbarian warriors.
He was getting good, and I desperately hoped he would not die in this fight.
And then Marcus threw his spear aside which had been ravaged by many parrying blows, and he rushed forward again into the barbarian line, towards their chieftain.
As I have said, the barbarian chief was a tall man, six and a half feet tall with bulging muscles and scars all over his body. He looked like a lanky teenage nerd with a pocket protector as he faced Marcus with great bravery.
That the barbarian chieftain had a spear, while Marcus only had his short handled axe made no difference at all, and there was something in the chieftain’s eyes that knew he was a dead man.
One snap of Marcus’s axe threw the barbarian chieftain’s spear aside striking the haft at such an angle and with such force that he neatly lopped off the top of the pole with the flint head. And Marcus leapt forward before the man could pull his spear back into position.
The barbarian chief was fast. He got his arm somehow in the way of the first blow.
And his arm neatly fell to the ground. But before it could sloppily splash the dirt, oozing blood out, another blow struck him in the ribs, and neatly split them apart and destroyed his heart.
And Marcus bent over the fallen body of the barbarian war chief, seemingly ignoring all the other barbarian warriors still around him, who hesitated, naturally, to rush the muscular giant.
He hewed off the head with one quick chop. And then he held it up as a grisly trophy with his second hand, blood dripping out the open neck, and down the war leader’s stringy long hair, with a long ropy bit of vein hanging down halfway to the ground. Marcus stared seemingly into the eyes of each barbarian warrior still fighting.
Marcus leaned back his head, and roared, laughingly.
The remaining fighters broke and fled.
Chapter Fifteen
And now comes the tale of the famed tragedy of the day.
In this time of victory, though it was a victory that pained me deep inside, for seven more of my elves, brave men, men of valor and glory had been killed in that final charge, and three more were maimed in such a way that they would never be able once more to fight in the porcupine lines of battle, in this time of victory yet one more loss would we suffer.
The remaining barbarians scattered in all directions.
We had hidden the pregnant women in the forest on the far side of the village from where the battle took place. But the village was small, and the far side was only a few hundred yards away.
One group of barbarians, including the man who had led this horde here after we showed him mercy, ran across the open field the village was built on, and by foul chance, he ran directly towards where the pregnant women were hidden.
Chasing them was Arnhelm and two dozen soldiers, but these barbarians far outsped the elves, as they had longer strides, and had thrown aside their long spears and javelins, and were only holding their hand axes, while Arnhelm and his force were fully armed as they followed.
Marcus and another group of warriors had followed a slightly bigger group of the barbarians who had fled in the opposite direction towards the sea shore.
It was only when the barbarians were most of the way to where the pregnant women were hidden, with Namys, our midwife, that I realized the danger.
I had spent the preceding minutes with my mind full of accounting for the damage that had been done, and ensuring that the barbarians who were running towards the larger groups of my men got no chance to attack an unprepared low morale group.
When I saw that they were heading for the place with the pregnant woman I ordered them to do what I’d ordered all of the other weaker morale groups who were in the way of fleeing barbarians to do: Get out of the way.
The barbarians were beaten, and I would far prefer every one of them who yet lived to escape and tell the tale to losing a single further person and killing all of them.
And I found then that Hamali’s wife had entered labor during the course of the battle, and she breathed and gasped in pain with the midwife sitting by her side, while the other women encouragingly smiled.
Seeing the group coming I ordered the women to flee. But Trilia could not run as the child was already in the process of being born. The midwife, Namys, tried to pull her away with her, but then about half dozen barbarians broke out of the woods and saw them. They ran towards the two women, waving their axes.
They were both going to be killed. Namys grabbed her spear and pulled it out and stood to defend Trilia from the five barbarian warriors coming towards them. I placed my blessing on her, but every assessment I made convinced me that they both would die before Arnhelm’s gasping tired group could arrive from behind.
The warriors ran straight at them, and even though Namys had her spear while the barbarians only had axes, I knew there was only one way the fight could go, and the only question was whether she would kill zero, one or two of them before they killed her.
I knew what I needed to do. The only choice I could see.
I pushed all of my will into Namys, and I forced her to flee, though she craved to stay and protect the woman giving birth. It took a great deal of will, but I was able to make her flee and follow the other running women.
As the barbarians ran past chasing her, the one who I had shown mercy to a year before. That one, he stopped and kneeled and chopped his axe several times through Trilia’s neck before he jumped up and kept running after them.
And then the barbarians chasing Namys stumbled and fell screaming and clutched at their feet as they ran into the spike trap that Namys had led them into. Seeing this danger, the one who had just killed Trilia calmly jogged past his fallen comrades and around the trap into the forest, before he was lost to my sight as he went in a direction where none of my elves were at present.
And then finally Arnhelm appeared, and he leapt forward screaming incoherently. And he stabbed one of the barbarians on the ground through the heart, before jumping back unarmed now as his spear had become trapped by the rib cage of his victim, his fourth of the fight.
For a moment I was terrified I was about to watch a replay of the battle where Hamali died after striking a great blow. But the warriors behind him, shouting their keening cry fell upon the other four barbarians and slew them.
And in the woods, where the women had been left in hopes they would be safe, Namys sobbed as she returned to the corpse of Trilia. She brushed her hands over her eyes again and again, wiping away the thick tears. I remembered that they had been friends.
God, it must be so terrible to have been forced to run from a friend. I wondered if she felt guilt for doing so, even though I had not given her a choice.
I was certain that she felt such a guilt.
Namys knelt before the body, and in her death Trilia had mostly pushed the child out, and the babe had coughed out the blood from its mouth and squalled loudly with her baby legs still trapped in her dead mother. Namys kindly pulled the child the rest of the way out, and then wrapped the babe in the soft furs that had been gathered for this purpose.
I observed them, wanting to see some new life in this moment. This girl whose mind I had touched once before, when she was yet in the womb. And as my camera drew close to her, the girl quieted her sobbing and looked directly at me. And I knew, I knew somehow that she could see me as easily as I could see her.
Birth w
ith portentous omens
At the conclusion of your grand and great victory, one last death, of a helpless woman giving birth, casually slain by one of the cruel barbarians, and worse by a barbarian whose life you spared once.
But her daughter lives, the first birth in this new world. A child conceived in a different universe entirely, but born into this world with your touch upon her, much as this community was born, squalling into the world from the bleeding, gashed open corpse of an older and also wiser world.
Is this an omen of good and great things? Or an omen of terrifying portent?
Either way this girl shall be well worth watching over the next years. Her life shall have significance.
What name do you wish for her to have, as with her parents dead, it falls unto you to name her?
And hovering over the baby’s head one of those little menu popups with a space for name to be typed in and a blinking cursor, waiting for the letters, appeared.
I wanted to cry, but I had no eyes that I might shed tears.
And I chose the name Cassandra, for she would be a prophet, that I knew already. And I hoped that she might be heard, for I had always wished, when I thought of that tale of the unheard woman, that she had been heard and listened to.
Chapter Sixteen
The aftermath of the battle was a time of both mourning and great happiness.
As soon as the last barbarian disappeared from my minimap, either dead or successfully escaped, this popup showed:
First Great Victory
They saw you, they came, they were conquered!
You have won a great victory, despite your advantage in numbers this barbarian tribe was a deadly foe, one which could easily have savaged you and then escaped. But you used cleverness, and ambushes, and you crushed them in a mighty victory whose tale will reverberate amongst your people for many years.
They shall, in centuries to come, speak of this day as the birth of their martial culture. Of this day as the day they proved to themselves that even elves can murder their enemies in mass numbers.
Civilization- Barbarians Page 16