NOVEL NEXT Chapter 114
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Tovak, son of Yovan, Village chief of the Blazebringer village slumped into his chair after just having dismissed his Head Warriors and the various village chiefs that he had recently absorbed.
Preparations were moving along fast, but not fast enough. With each day that went by, he received more reports of their enemy encroaching further into their lands and more of his warriors dying.
“This was never supposed to happen” Tovak mumbled to himself in the privacy of his own study. It was supposed to be a simple thing, suppress some villages that were growing too fast, especially with the help of outside forces.
They had done it countless times, that was why his and the other three big villages were as powerful as they were now. The only reason the mid-sized villages were even able to form was due to the four big villages warring with each other many generations ago, and having no attention to spare the other smaller villages at the time, the smaller villages took the opportunity to merge into bigger villages.
It was only after seeing the formation of multiple mid-sized villages that the four big villages ceased their war to attempt to rein in the mid-sized villages, and to this day, it is only due to the threat of war that the mid-sized villages maintain their size, because the big four would not suffer the rise of a fifth big power to threaten the balance of their power.
That is why they suppress any small villages that show signs of growing into mid-sized villages, if any did rise, they would only give the other mid-sized villages more power to oppose the big four.
But this time, what was meant to be a simple suppression of a few small villages and using it to blood their newest generation of warriors, turned to disaster, their suppression failed, and they made an enemy of a people they did not know the full scope of, pretty much lost a whole generation of warriors for his people and the small villages that were pressganged, bribed, or threatened into their service, and finally were the more hot-headed warrior families, like Voka’s, that lost their sons at the siege of Riversong village demanding they be allowed to counter-attack when they could ill afford the potential lost of manpower.
And now the enemy was almost at their doorstep and all Tovak could do was prepare his people for war.
As he was deep in thought about what else he needed to do to prepare, he heard a knock on his door. “Come in.”
The door opened to reveal Gomak, Head Witch Doctor of the Blazebringer village, along with two of his most senior apprentices. “Chief Tovak” Gomak greeted as he and his apprentices gave a small bow.
Tovak returned the nod and gestured to Gomak to take a seat, “What news do the spirits bring, Head Witch Doctor Gomak?”
Gomak sighed, “Ill tidings, I'm afraid, the spirits see the leader of the enemy stirring… I think the time of bloodshed will be upon us soon.”
Tovak grunted his displeasure, he then eyed Gomak’s apprentices, Gomak got the hint and waved them away, and when it was only the two of them in the office, Tovak said, “Mmm… this seems to align with what our scouts report, at least those who make it back alive, our enemies have mustered a great force and look like they are about to march any day now, and with their numbers, they will most likely take two days at most to reach us… But the main issue is that I do not think we have enough warriors to win. We outnumber them and have the defensive advantage, but they have more warriors while we only outnumber them by having women, children, and the old… we might need to arm them too if we want to survive this”
Gomak nodded, “That may very well be the case, and I fear that whether we win or lose, at the end of this, our village’s power will be diminished. But at least we will not be the only ones who will be losing power, I got news that the Swiftwind, Stoneclad, and Greatlake villages are also being attacked.”
Tovak grimaced at the names of his rival villages, “As much as I don’t like it, If we survive this we may need to merge with them to consolidate our power so as not to get eaten by the mid-sized villages around, I am sure we have married off enough of our people to them to come to an agreement. But all those plans are for later, what of your preparations?” Tovak asked Gomak.
“They are in place, we just need to wait for the enemy to come close.” Gomak said as they continued their conversation deep into the night.
***
Two days later, just as everyone was getting ready to start the day, Tovak noticed a commotion going through his village, starting from the tents outside the wall and spreading inwards.
When he came out of his house, he saw two of his warriors supporting a man, and by the sweat-faded paintings on his body, he was a scout. As the two warriors practically carried the man before him, Tovak could see the fatigue on the man’s body, especially the trembling of his legs that told of non-stop running for an extended period of time.
When the warriors, let go of the scout, he practically collapsed and the warriors had to catch him, “Chief!” the scout weakly but urgently said, “The enemy, they are on the march… they should be here in a day.”
Tovak nodded and called for his head warriors. War was upon them and there was no time to lose.
***
After half a day’s march into Blazebringer lands, Grud started to receive a sharp increase in reports of hit-and-run attacks on his advanced forces, and there were even some reports of booby traps, it was not until an hour after getting the first report of such that he heard a yell of surprise, followed by screaming from some of the men leading the man column he was in.
When he made his way to where the commotion was coming from, he saw a man in a man-made pit filled with what he recognized were extremely venomous snakes, and the man had at least three snakes latched onto him as he lay there paralyzed and waiting for the poison to take him.
Grud then turned to one of the men beside him and pointed to the man in the pit, “He is dead, ease his suffering.” the man nodded, drew his bow, and shot the dying man in the head.
Grud then instructed spear wielders to line up in the front and poke the ground to detect any traps before more people fell for them.
But as it turned out, the Blazebringers had set up a lot more different traps for them. Besides the venomous snake pits, there were spike pits, swinging log traps, drop nets embedded with sharp metal bits, and spring-loaded spike traps. They also soon found out that anything sharp and pointy was laced with poison, as the men that so much as got a scratch by any of these traps keeled over vomiting less than an hour later. It was only because of the shamans and medicine men in the back line that the affected men were alive, but nevertheless, the traps had the desired effect, it slowed down the advance of Grud’s men as they had to spend time searching for traps as they advanced.
This made the two-day march at normal speed turn into a three-day slow and cautious march, but eventually, they made their way to the tree line, only to be met by a line of short and quick fortification in the form of piled-up dirt with the actual Blazebringer village further back.
The moment Grud’s people emerged from the treeline, archers popped up from behind the dirt mounds and started firing into the treeline and forcing the men to take cover behind the trees.
Grud called the shield wielders forward, and the moment the shield wielders stepped out from between the trees, things started getting weird.
Grud felt a wave of mana wash over his people in the treeline, and a few seconds later, Grud started hearing moans, groans, coughing, sneezing, wrenching, and people keeling over, there were even the sounds of people voiding their bowels, violently, and Grud could feel that it was the effect of the mana what washed over them as that very same mana was trying to invade his body.
When Grud looked around, just about half of the men within a hundred meters or so of the treeline seemed to be affected, and those who were still standing were not looking good either. The only ones who did not seem to be affected were the shamans scattered within the ranks, although he did see a few apprentice shamans succumb to whatever was happening.
But before Grud could give out orders to try and fall back, a whistling arrow from the archers pelting them went screaming into the air.
This was followed by camouflage trapdoors in front of the dirt mounds being flung open and Blazebringer warriors spilling out of them to charge the treeline.