Samofthepen
patreon
Unto the Ages: Chapter 165
🕑 Added 2025-04-23 13:26:41 +0000 UTCChieftain of the Swift Swallow tribe and alliance commander of the north wall, Jahro, was in the middle of shouting more men to an area of the wall that needed reinforcement, when he saw another battering ram coming toward his part of the wall where the gate was.
His first instinct was to turn around to call for Chieftain Grud to alert him to the incoming priority target, only for his eyes to land on a sleeping Grud attended to by a medicine man. And from the amount of bloodied rags around, the sealing of the wound with a hot knife did not take, and had to be sealed the slower and more methodical way.
‘Our strongest is too wounded to carry out this task. It is up to the rest of us to bring down this battering ram. Can't have chieftain Grud take all the glory after all, he has already had enough of it for a few lifetimes.’ Jahro thought as he turned back and started calling the heavy hitters on standby.
***
As the battering ram closed in to within around ten meters of the wall, Jahro, who was now spotting more armor than usual, jumped over the wall shield first with a roar and was followed a split second later by twenty other heavily armored men roaring in fury.
But unlike Grud, who could survive a jump from the walls as easily as one would hop down from a chair, Jahro and his up-armored men each had a rope tethered to their waists, with three men holding each rope to control the speed of their fall.
When Jahro and his men fell upon the enemy, spears that made it past his shield bounced or slid off their expensive copper armor. The moment they got their feet under them, they cut the rope around their waist, dropped their shields, and started swinging their two-handed weapons with near impunity from the weapons coming at them. All they needed to watch out for was getting stabbed in the open parts of their armor or getting dragged to the ground and finished off.
Within seconds of clearing their landing area, the battering ram reached Jahro and his men. They immediately swarmed the battering ram and killed the practically defenseless men carrying it. When the battering ram fell to the ground, Jahro and his men formed a defensive perimeter around it.
When the archers on the wall saw that the battering ram was surrounded, they shot flame-tipped arrows at the battering ram to try and catchi it on fire, and with the battering ram being defended by the heavily armored men, the Thunder Strider forces could not get to the battering ram to put out the flame.
Seeing what was happening, the Thunder Strider commanders turned their focus to Jahro’s group and started swarming the armored men. Unfortunately for Jahro’s men, the battering ram was made from a freshly cut tree and took some time to catch on fire.
By the time the tree caught fire and the fire raged too fiercely to be quickly extinguished without a lot of effort, eight of Jahro’s twenty men were dead, while he and the rest of his men were tired and suffered minor cuts and stabs in unprotected areas.
Seeing that their job was done, Jahro shouted, “Fall back!”
The moment the command was given, the archers on the wall started concentrating their fire on the enemies around the retreating armored men. As they retreated, those who could still move dragged the armored corpses of their fallen to the wall and tied them to the rope the defenders on the wall let down.
When Jahro and his men returned within the walls, dead or alive, they were immediately swarmed by medicine men and their drafted assistants, who took off their armor and treated their wounds. The recovered armor was promptly passed on to other men standing by, ready to be called upon.
As Jahro took Grud’s lead and lay down to recover from his injuries, he handed his command to his son, who had been his second-in-command, and closed his eyes as his wounds were being treated.
***
When Grud woke up, the sky was dark, and both sides stopped fighting for the night to rest and lick their wounds.
As he sat up, Grud felt the throbbing ache in his side where he was stabbed deeply by the spearhead. Other than that, the deep wound and all the other minor wounds had already scabbed over nicely.
But the perks of superhuman recovery took a toll in the form of consuming a lot of energy from his body, so Grud got up and looked around for where the supplies were stored to grab a bite.
As Grud walked around the camp looking for food, he saw that things were not going well for his side. Around half of the men were injured in one way or another that would effect their combat ability, and a third of that was out right crippled.
As he watched the medicine men, shamans, and their assistants work to treat the wounded, he noticed that they did not even have proper clean linens to bandage wounds and were shredding the clothes of the dead and crippled to supplement the lack of bandages. Off to the side, Grud saw one of the medicine men scraping together and rationing out what herbs and medicine he could to try and stretch the supply.
And as he got to the top of the walls to check out the situation, he saw that most of the archers did not even have five arrows in their quivers.
Looking out into the dark, Grud saw scavenging teams from both sides collecting arrows and fallen weapons, and was just in time to see two opposing scavenging teams fumble into each other and start fighting.
When Grud finally found where the food was stored, he saw that they might have enough food for another five days if rationed sparingly.
‘Not good. The attacks they endured while I was attacking the Thunder Strider tribe must have been brutal to have diminished their supplies to such a degree.’ Grud thought to himself, and while considering where to obtain more supplies, the first and simplest answer was the enemy.
So Grud decided to do some window shopping for the needed supplies.
After grabbing a piece of dried meat to keep his mouth busy and temporarily appease his rumbling belly, Grud made his way to the well in the center of the tribe.
Here, where his men drew water to drink and extinguished fires throughout the siege, water had constantly spilled, and the ground was trampled into a mud pit… just the disguise he needed to avoid reflecting the light of the torches surrounding the enemy camps.
After taking off his armor and putting it aside, he stripped down to his underware and used an extra piece of cloth to properly holster his swinging dick.
When all dangly bits were secured, Grud scooped up the mud and started smearing it all over his body until every inch of skin was covered and the only thing anyone could see of Grud in the dark was the feline slit pupils shimmering in the reflection of torches.
After he was done applying his camouflage, Grud jumped over the wall with only his oversized knife strapped behind his waist, and crept up to just before where the lights of the enemy’s torches could cast their light.
As Grud prowled the border of the light, his eyes searched for where the enemies consolidated their weapons, and his nose was on the lookout for the distinct smell of herbs, medicine, and smoked and/or salted meats.
After making a round around the encirclement, Grud found many such targets, but realistically speaking, there were only five viable targets due to meeting two important criteria. First, they were all stored on hand-pushed wagons. And secondly, they were not situated too deep into enemy ranks.
With his targets identified, Grud returned to camp, scaring one of the sentries as he climbed back over the wall and met up with the chieftain taking the night shift command. “I am going to need a hundred of your best men.”
***
In the dead of night, when most people were asleep. Grud and a hundred other men, split into five teams, were belly-crawling their way toward five points of the encirclment.
When Grud turned and looked out into the dark, his enhanced eyes saw that the other teams had taken their positions and were watching him for their cue.
Not wanting to delay any further, he whispered to his men to get ready and sent out tendrils of mana to grab three stones and simultaneously shot them at three torches along the border of where they were about to attack.
When the torches were struck, they splintered, sending embers flying and casting the area in a dim shade. Enemy sentries started making noise but were quickly silenced by follow-up arrows peppering them.
At the same time, the other four teams saw the section blackout as their cue to act. They used heavy, blunt, stone-tipped arrows to shoot out the torches, and followed this by shooting the sentries to silence them.
Not all the teams were successful in totally silencing the sentries in time, but they minimized the ruckus enough that they could still take their section by surprise.
After silencing the sentries, all five teams rushed into the enemy camp. They did not stop to kill the waking troops as they rushed to the hand-pushed wagons. Once they got their hands on the wagons, they gathered as many hands as they could to turn it in the right direction and pulled or pushed with all their might while the rest of the men began butchering and clearing a path of enemies.
Naturally, this caused a ruckus, waking the sleeping enemy, but it was too late. With so many men pushing and pulling, the wagon was out of the enemy lines within seconds. From there, it was a fighting retreat all the way back to the gates, where archers were on standby.
After all five wagons were in the gate, there was a minor skirmish where the Thunder Strider forces quickly realised that they were at a massive disadvantage in the dark and retreated.
As for the haul, there were three wagons full of weapons and arrows, one wagon for food rations, and another full of herbs and medicine. Grud would have preferred to have more food and medicine, but most of those were deeper in enemy lines.
But overall, it was a good haul that would keep his men alive and fighting for a few more days.
