Book 5 - Chapter 34
They left the horses in a flat field with healthy grass, where they’d have a lot of room to run if something came for them. Then the Lance made their way on foot towards the undead patrol.
The undead soldiers were armed with the same wide variety of weapons that Brin was used to, but of the armored elites, most of them carried shields and spears. A charge from horseback would be a poor match-up. Even if that weren’t the case, they would probably leave the horses behind anyway. They were too valuable to risk on a little skirmish like this.
Rather than go straight to the undead, they picked a good spot first. Brin found them a tall shelf of earth, and they climbed atop it. With a little bit of elevation, they had a clear view of the surrounding area. The earth here was uneven and full of reddish clay. It looked wild and chaotic, like a sea storm frozen in time. Here, though, they had a lookout on top of a straight valley three hundred feet long.
“We’ll wait for the undead here. If they follow the current path, they’ll march out into the open right over there and they won’t have any cover on their approach. I don’t see any bows or slings with this group, so Anwir will be our greatest advantage. Take down as many as you can before they reach us,” said Brin. He tried to act business-as-usual to not worry the Lance, but this was more important than he let on. Thirty against ten were bad odds, even against [Knights]. If they couldn’t whittle those numbers down, he wasn’t sure they would win this.
Anwir nodded and started setting up. In a pinch, he could draw from the quiver on his back, but when he had time to prepare it was better to stand the quiver up on a tripod in front of him.
Brin prepared as well, summoning javelins of glass. He just created them for now, without imbuing them with any special magic. Once he started throwing them, he’d add the magic as he went.
He summoned as much as he safely could without running low on mana. Eight javelins and two dozen glass bullets took a quarter of his mana pool. He wanted to keep the rest for launching the weapons and for using his glass shield effectively.
They waited. Brin could watch the undead approach, and Brych could no doubt sense them coming, but the other men were tense, waiting for the undead to spring up any moment even though Brin said they were still minutes away.
He’d expected that the gnawing hunger would go away once he got busy, but if anything it was worse now. His pulse was elevated, his senses alert in anticipation, and the fatigue that comes from hunger threatened to undermine his confidence. Should they really be doing this? They were tired. Weak. And they could avoid this fight. The destruction of just one of these little bands wouldn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Why risk it? But Cid had decided to engage them, because if this group of undead ran into any allies there would be deaths. The armored elite might kill three times their number before another group of [Knights] ran into them.
Fight or flee. Brin snickered to himself, drawing confused looks from Cid. That old decision again, was no decision at all. He’d just have to make sure none of his men got hurt.
The first undead appeared around the bend. Anwir lifted his bow, but Brin waved at him to wait. They watched as the rest of the undead followed, until the whole group moved into the open.
Did the undead see them yet? There was no sign of it. There was no hint of recognition or passion in their rotting eyes, and there never would be. He had memories of undead wearing those same dull, bored expressions as they cut into the last ranks of defenders in Hammon’s Bog.
“Now,” Brin whispered.
He pumped his javelin full of mana and spoke words of Language to turn his simple piece of glass into an artillery shell. Then he threw it up high into the air. “<Fire!>”
Anwir was a professional and timed it correctly so that his first arrow and Brin’s first spell landed at the same time. There was a crash as Brin’s glass exploded and Anwir’s arrow struck. He must’ve used a Skill on it, because it blew through two soldiers before shattering on the armor of one of the elites.
Brin was already chanting into his next javelin, and Anwir didn’t wait, letting arrows fly. The undead scattered fast, moving back the way they came. Brin held his javelin while Anwir’s last arrow hit empty dirt. The undead were bustling around, but they were beginning to realize that going around the other way wouldn’t take them to the Lance. There was only one path forward.
Undead could be annoyingly wily fighters, quick to flee or reposition in order to preserve themselves. But they could also be unflinching and absolutely focused when the situation called for it. They’d fight without fear or hesitation if that’s what the situation called for. Brin was counting on it.
They reemerged, this time in a dead sprint. Shield-bearers led the way, the armored undead protecting the unarmored. Brin and Anwir let loose their projectiles. Since Brin’s glass rose and fell like artillery, he had another good hit, but Anwir’s arrows broke against the leading undead’s shield.
“Get the unarmored ones first! Let’s wear down their numbers!” said Brin.
The undead were approaching fast, so he split his mind and energized two javelins at once and let them fly. The undead were getting wise to the stream of projectiles, though. One of the javelins shattered against a shield, while the other exploded on the ground and wounded a few soldiers but didn’t bring any down.
Anwir loosed arrow after arrow, not waiting to see where one would land before already shooting another. The undead blocked several of his arrows but the constant storm meant that many others got through. In the short time it took the undead to sprint a hundred yards, Brin and Anwir shot down ten of the unarmored undead, but couldn’t break the blacksteel plate at range.
The undead reached the base of the shelf the Lance were standing on, and the plan had been to hack at them as they tried to climb, but they’d underestimated the undead. They balled up, packed tighter than humans would’ve been able to move together, and climbed on top of each other until they were one big wrecking ball. They crashed into the shelf, spilling over the top and straight into the middle of the Lance.
Rhun’s defense might have been able to hold him in place, but he wisely moved back when Cid and Aeron to either side were knocked back. The entire Lance had to step back in order to maintain their formation, which meant that the undead were now on even ground and could spread out to surround them.
Brin needed to break their momentum. He noticed a gap between Hedrek and Cid, and ran through it. He enchanted his last javelin, remembering the power of the spells he’d made when he’d been attempting to learn how to break Hedrek’s armor. He pushed mana into it, all that it would hold, and then added the strength of his arm to it and thrust it into the chest of an armored undead.
It crashed through the blacksteel plate and blasted the undead off the shelf to land below, ten feet behind.
You have defeated: Undead Heavy Armor [30]
He didn’t have enough mana left to repeat that. The rest of this fight would be decided by strength of arms.
The undead proved their cleverness by not overreacting to Brin’s sudden strike. Six spear-wielders formed a shieldwall and took the center. The undead with spears and axes drew back behind them, waiting for an opening. The unarmored undead still remaining snuck around to the sides to wait for an opening. The spears advanced, Brin’s men stepped forward to knock them upwards, and then the ones with swords and axes would snake in to try to score cheap hits.
Only Cowl’s massive armor and titanic maul kept the undead from overwhelming them. When he swung, blacksteel weapons shattered. When everyone else was pushed back, Cowl stepped forward, forcing the undead line to readjust.
Brin’s [Battle Sense] pointed out a few pain points. Hedrek and Cid were both doing more poorly than expected. Hedrek was fighting slow and careful, like a duelist. It was the appropriate tack for him right now, because if he fought with his same wild ferocity he’d be in danger of undermining their formation. Even so, he was slower and weaker than he should be. Cid was concentrating hard, eyes half-lidded, and probably trying to use some kind of [Meditation] technique to get a breakthrough in the [Path of the Blade]. There wasn’t much Brin could do about either. He took position next to Hedrek, and used his morphic shield to turn aside what stabs and swipes he could.
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He used the Wyrd-deception technique he’d learned, always disguising his movements, and the undead fell for it every time. Unfortunately, his spear didn’t pierce blacksteel armor unless he got a direct hit or used a lot more mana that he was comfortable with, so the best he could do was hold the line.
The undead pushed in, Cowl met them… but this time the armored undead he thought to hit ducked down flat on his face, and an unarmored soldier armed only with a thin stiletto darted in and pushed it into the joint on Cowl's elbow. Cowl roared and smashed the undead and then flattened the one on the ground, smashing straight through blacksteel plate. But the damage was already done; Brin could see a stream of blood seeping out of Cowl’s arm guard.
He needed to turn this around; they had to shift strategies.
To his surprise, [Battle Sense] was telling him that Meredydd was the one that needed to change. He was using his arming sword and fighting proficiently, but Brin thought he could be better.
“Meredydd! Pull out your scythe!” Brin yelled.
Meredydd snapped out his three-jointed scythe staff, like he’d expected the call and had been waiting for it. His weapon writhed and shifted in his hands like a strange, awkward snake. He swiped out with the hook, and pushed an undead a little off balance. The middle part of the staff pushed forward to push up an undead spear, and the left joint tapped an undead foot a little out of place.
To his surprise, these little adjustments shifted the tide. The scythe didn’t do any damage, but movements that had seemed so strange and clumsy on the dueling field suddenly made perfect sense. This was a weapon of control. Meredydd used the hook to move the enemy where he wanted them to be. He used the poles to push them back, and wrapped enemy weapons in the chain. He changed positions and movements just enough to give the other [Knights] the perfect opportunity to use their own abilities.
Govannon swung hard and drove his axe’s spike through an enemy’s head. Brych got in close with his messer and stabbed up under an undead’s breastplate. Only, he pulled back and his sword was stuck. He pulled again, a mistake because three undead nearby were already lunging towards him.
Brin sent his morphic shield out to block one of them, but he wouldn’t get there in time. Anwir!
Their archer was still behind the rest, which meant he had the most room to respond. He used [Knight’s Charge] with Gualdim’s arrow, finally using the double overcharge move they’d never really gotten to practice.
Anwir moved like a bullet fired from a gun. His arrow stabbed straight through the armored undead. Then in a fluid motion, he pulled it out, whipped it around and blocked the last lunging blacksteel axe. But Anwir was still their weakest melee fighter, and it showed. The axe-wielder stomped down into Anwir’s knee. There was a sickening crack, and Anwir’s leg bent the wrong direction.
This fight had been a mistake. Thirty against ten were bad odds when half of the undead actually had the levels and equipment to put up a good fight. The last thing he could try would be to have everyone use [Knight’s Charge], but then the Lance would be done. If they didn’t eliminate the entire force in one go, then they’d be too tired to put up any resistance at all. Brin had one card left to play before that.
“Marksi!” Brin yelled.
The little dragon was their ace in the hole, waiting in hiding until the right moment. He came from nowhere, landing on the back of the undead’s neck and digging down, clawing into him. The armored monsters went down, but the rest of the undead wouldn’t be taken off guard like that. Marksi dodged around several spears all aimed at him at once, and had to take shelter behind the Lance. Not to be discouraged, he climbed up Brin’s back onto his shoulder.
<Laser!> Marksi’s beam was different. It was still rainbow color, still identifiable as made of light to Brin’s senses, but it was definitely different than he’d ever seen before. It was hotter, much less like a laser and much more like a beam of fire.
The beam zapped an undead in the helmet and when Brin followed up with a stab to the same spot, his spear drove straight through.
Marksi gazed at the remaining undead with a domineering eye, as if deciding which target to choose next, though Brin doubted he’d be able to put that much power into a second laser.
The undead folded, and chose that moment to make a tactical retreat. Brin scooped up the glass bullets he hadn’t used, pushed in the rest of his mana, and sent a volley at their retreating forms. He killed the last two unarmored undead, while seven armored elites still remained. From a force of thirty, that wasn’t too bad. The next group of allies that found them would now have a real fighting chance.
“I’ll approve one more use of [Knight’s Charge],” Cid announced.
“Hedrek,” Brin chose without hesitation.
Hedrek roared with glee and activated his Skill. He blasted straight into the retreating undead, striking the leader down with a thrust from his greatsword. He turned and heaved his greatsword into the next, chopping it in two, and used the inertia to follow the swing around the slash at the leg of another. He didn’t break through the armor, but he cracked the bone underneath and the undead fell to the ground. Hedrek pounced on it and battered away with wild abandon until the armored undead was crushed by the merciless onslaught.
The last four undead scattered in different directions, and Hedrek didn’t gave chase. Brin sighed in relief that the undead hadn’t turned to gang up on Hedrek now that he was alone, because he was already gasping in exhaustion and had fell to one knee.
The undead weren’t weary and their retreating sprint wasn’t any slower than their attacking one had been, and soon were out of range of even a [Knight’s Charge]. Brin still half-expected Anwir to try his luck with an arrow until he remembered that Anwir was on the ground, clutching his knee and groaning in pain.
“Get that armor off him! We need to take a look at it,” said Brin. When Cowl reached forward to help, Brin said, “No, not you! We need to take a look at your arm!”
He focused his physical body on helping Anwir with the armor, but sent some Invisible Eyes to check the rest of his men. He knew from experience that you didn’t always feel the pain in the heat of battle. You could have dangerous injuries without even realizing it.
No one else was hurt this time, though he did spot a bunch of deep gouges into the metal of their armor that he’d want Meaty to take a look at.
When he finally pulled off Anwir’s armor, the man’s skin was swollen and he had black and purple bruises that made Brin forget that he was ever hungry. There wasn’t much they could do for him except try to push the bones back into place by feel and hope his high Vitality would take care of the rest. Anwir ended up taking care of the break himself. He massaged his knee, none too gently, hissing in pain, his face white. He looked to be near passing out, but he wouldn’t stop.
“[Field Dressing]. It’s an [Hunter] Skill, but my Class still let me pick it up even after I advanced. I took it after Angelic’s diseases. I thought it made sense for everyone to have at least one healing spell. This will hold me together until I get to a real healer, but it won’t do much for… guh! For the pain, and it won’t make it heal faster. Only prevent it from getting worse.”
When he finally was satisfied that he’d massaged his bones back into the right position, he made himself a splint to hold it in place.
“We’ll give Cowl and Anwir time to recover. We’ll stay here until morning, and then ride back to camp. I think that since they are injured, Cowl and Anwir should have the rest of the rations.”
“No,” said Anwir. “If you won’t eat, then neither will I.”
“Let’s save it for when we really need it,” said Cowl.
They still had to move a little, because they needed to go to their horses. Brin and Hedrek carried Anwir on a makeshift gurney crafted from a blanket and two spears. Anwir winced with every step, but stayed silent.
They set up camp early, going through the pains that they sometimes skipped like polishing the leather of the saddles and laundering their underarmor. Even that didn’t fill the day, so Brin found himself going back to one of the adventure novels he’d memorized in his light mind and reciting the stories of knights and their fair maidens.
The food still saved in Cowl’s pack took on a mystical quality. Every thought somehow kept turning back to it. Every new turn in the story's adventure somehow turned his thoughts to food and food turned into that food, and Brin would find himself idly daydreaming about what tactic he could use to make sure that it would all go to him. Then his conscious mind would reassert itself and he’d decide that whatever happened, he wouldn’t eat a single bite of it. His men had to be hungrier than he was, and besides, while it existed they couldn’t be starving. They still had food, after all. After it was gone, that’s when they would know they were truly desperate.
No one talked about it, but he could tell that the rest of them were just as obsessed with it as he was.
Sleep didn’t come easy as his stomach took the stillness and the silence to remind him that he’d fought hard and his body didn’t have anything to replace that energy. He distracted himself with exploring his Lightmind and integrating his Battle Programs. He had a lot of half-finished ideas and little tricks he’d worked out over the last few months whenever he had a spare moment to think, and now with the LIghtmind he was a lot closer to making them possible. The next time he was in a situation to use his full [Illusionist] abilities, he wouldn’t stop with just creating a crowd of Mirror Images. He’d make his enemies forget the difference between up and down.
He thought he managed to snatch a few hours of sleep here and there, but when the sun rose in the morning he greeted it with supreme relief that he didn’t have to keep pretending. He got up, licked his cracking lips, and remembered they were out of water, too. All they had needed to go to the horses. He remembered guiltily that he still had the bottle of water in his storage ring, and pulled it out to give to his mount.
Cid stopped him when he’d drained it halfway. “That’s the last of our water. Let’s keep it for an emergency. With any luck we’ll reach a stream in an hour or two anyway and it won’t matter, but better to be safe.”
“How is everyone doing? Will we be able to travel back today?” asked Brin.
“I can ride,” Anwir answered, though dark bags under his eyes told that he’d slept even worse than Brin had.
Brin checked on his Invisible Eyes. His Lightmind had taken over managing them all for him while he slept, and they hadn’t seen anything worth alerting him over. Reviewing their sight manually, he noticed a little flicker of movement. Something hiding, about five miles away.
He watched, thinking he might’ve spotted something hidden by illusion, but no, it wasn’t invisible, it was just someone with a camouflaged cloak who was good at moving unseen. The figure was heading towards those last four armored undead. An enemy leader, rallying the remnants?
He watched for a full two minutes before he got a good look at the person’s face. What he saw stunned him so much that he spoke out loud.
“Hey. That’s Zilly.”