Chapter 567: Fighting in the Fog
Once again, Ollie crouched behind the trunk of a cypress tree overlooking the army that Owain Lothan and the Church had assembled against the Eldritch people. This time, however, several things were different.
The first time Ollie poked the hornets’ nest, drawing the combined forces of several knights and lords into the cypress grove, the men had been fresh and alert. They had only recently built their camp, and the assault of the never-ending day had just begun. Now, however, the combined human forces were looking distinctly wilted, and the enthusiasm many of them held for earning glory by going to war against ’demons’ had faded under the tedium of what amounted to guard duty protecting the sorcerers of the Inquisition.
"This time, you won’t have such an easy time of it," Ollie said under his breath before giving Harrod the signal to begin his raid.
Much like the first time, Harrod’s men struck at the vulnerable supply wagons, but this time, rather than drawing the pursuing soldiers in a single direction, they scattered six different directions with each small cluster of men leading the human pursuers into a different ambush.
Milo and his hunters had more than a week to prepare traps in the cypress grove and they made good use of that time, digging pits filled with sharpened stakes, hanging nets and preparing blinds from which they could rain down arrows on the human soldiers.
Ollie himself, however, held back from the fray, even though part of him wanted to unleash a storm of cypress needles that would cripple the human soldiers before their spears and axes could inflict as much as a scratch on any of Ollie’s men.
It was a temptation born of equal parts hatred of what these men had come to do and a fierce desire to protect his own men, but he firmly pushed down the desire and focused on his own mission. His only purpose in this battle was to counter the sorcery of the Inquisitors and to reap their lives, bringing an end to the oppression of the second sun. Everything else, he would have to entrust to Harrod and Milo and their men.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the army under Owain’s command to martial its knights, sending armored men leading small groups of soldiers into the cypress grove. Most importantly, each knight escorted a pair of Inquisitors who clearly intended to unleash their holy flames on the small bands of ’demons’ lurking in the forest.
Ollie, however, had no intention of making it easy for them to hunt down his men and as soon as the knights and Inquisitors entered the cypress grove, he let loose with a different incantation than he’d used the first time.