Samofthepen
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Unto the Ages: Chapter 122
🕑 Added 2024-08-17 16:58:31 +0000 UTCGrud yanked his spear out of the wall it was embedded in, and in his other hand was the severed head of who he thought was most likely Tovak, Village Chief of the Blazebringer village, still in its decorated copper helmet. “At least I hope I am right, it would sure be embarrassing if I held this head up and they told me it was the chief of some smaller village.”
As for the elite warriors, most of them seemed to have obeyed the last instructions given to them and dispersed to the next ambush location, while a few of the others tried to avenge their chief and charged Grud, only to get ripped apart by Grud.
Not wanting to get interrupted by the reminisce of those elite warriors, Grud took a detour a few hut clusters to the side, and soon after was tired of navigating the winding paths between the buildings, so he did the same thing he did to get in and started jumping from building to building.
As he neared the battle line, he could already see his forces had already pushed their way into the streets, this slowed the advance of his forces as now the enemy was able to fight with many chokepoints between the buildings.
Seeing this as a good time to boost the morale of his side and demoralize his enemies, Grud got to a two-story building behind enemy lines and climbed to the roof. From there, he stood at the edge facing the fighting and took a deep breath before his voice boomed over the battle below, “I, Grud, Chieftain of the Rock Claw tribe, have taken the head of the Blazebringer’s Chief!” as he raised the severed head above him.
This announcement was met by a roar of victory from his focus as they pressed even harder onto their enemy, and when Grud repeated the same announcement in the Newlander language, those who earlier thought Grud’s shout was just someone shouting gibberish, turned up to see the severed head and instantly recognize the helmet.
A moment later, as Grud was about to get down from the roof and rejoin the fight, he heard shouting from somewhere to the right of the battle line.
“I, To’gah, firstborn of the late Chief Tovak, will now assume the position of Village Chief!” he was then cheered by only a small group gathered around him.
Grud used his enhanced vision to zoom in on this To’gah and saw that he was a somewhat scrawny man in his late twenties.
Almost immediately after To’gah proclaimed himself the new village chief, a gruff voice closer to the middle of the battle shouted back, “Shut your mouth To’gah, you fool boy! Fight first, declare your rubbish later!”
When Grud looked for the owner of that gruff voice, he found an older warrior, who was starting to get some white in his beard, and covered in armor almost as gaudy as Chief Tovak. And as he saw warriors moving to surround the building, Grud looked through the enemy’s battle line and spotted a few warriors in copper armor, ‘Those must be the Head Warriors of this village, if I can take them out, the whole enemy force would be easily routed.’ Grud thought to himself, ‘But if I attacked from this side, I would be doing it alone, and I do not know how long I will last if I pushed through to attack the leaders, best rejoin the main force and help with the push. But that leaves the question, how?’
Grud looked for anywhere in the battle line that he could have an easier time breaking through to rejoin his side but found none. As he followed the battle line to the walls of the village, an idea popped into his head, ‘I could just exit and re-enter the village from the main gate.’
Grud then wrapped Tovak’s head in some cloth he grabbed on the way here and tied it to his belt, then jumped off the roof toward a lightly defended part of the wall.
Besides swatting a few warriors who were too brave for their own good, Grud made it to the wall with relative ease, looked down at the drop, and hopped over while jamming his spear in the wall a few times to slow his descent, after that, it was a simple matter of running along the outside of walls back to the main gate.
Once he got to the main gate, he saw one of the older chieftains, whose name he did not remember, organizing the men to send to different points on the line.
Grud walked up to the older chieftain and said, “Chieftain, I am going to need some men. I plan to punch through the enemy line to kill their leaders.”
The older chieftain turned around from the men he was commanding with some shock, “Chieftain Grud! Of course!”, after some shouting, he managed to cobble together some men who looked like heavy hitters, some of them he even recognized from the fight when they broke the siege on the Riversong village.
Soon, Grud’s strike force made out of the bulkiest brickhouses of men they could round up on short notice, were armed, armored, and ready to bash some skulls in, and in that time they used to prepare, Grud was getting patched up by a medicine man.
When they were all ready, Grud and his men made their way to the front line, and ahead of them, a crier heralded their arrival, “MAKE WAY! Chieftain Grud coming through!”.
When Grud smashed into the front line, he and his men cleaved their way into enemy lines. Grud led the way by cutting his way to where he saw the leaders, and with the help of his strike team to keep his flanks safe, it did not take long to take the head of one of the Head Warriors leading the center of the enemy battle line.
By the time Grud killed the second warrior in fancy armor who looked to be giving out commands, some of the glory-seeking hunters on Grud’s side took inspiration from Grud and started forming their own strike teams and went leader hunting, with limited success. But every time Grud or the other strike teams succeeded, their roar of victory only further demoralized the enemy.
Eventually, what few Head Warriors saw that this was a lost cause and sounded the retreat.
***
As his peers started falling like flies, Head Warrior Voka knew that the battle, no, the war, was lost and called a retreat of those men loyal to him, and as he looked around, the other head warriors were of the same mind.
But unlike the other Head Warriors who were heading to the inner wall to get their family, then escape over the wall to try and break the blockade on the opposite side where they were getting attacked, Voka’s idea was to skip getting his or his men’s families altogether.
“Head Warrior, we missed a few turns, the inner walls are that way.” one of Voka’s men said as they ran.
Voka glanced back as he replied, “We are not going back we are escaping now.”
This statement was met with many shouts and questions, “But… our families, even your wives and children, we need to take them with us!” another of his men shouted.
Voka stopped and turned around to face his men, “Say we do that, we go and get our wives and children, how long do you think we have? Our battle lines are crumbling as we speak, and even if we manage to get our families, they will slow us down, we still need to get them down from the walls on the far side of the village and fight our way past the enemy blockage, are you all going to do that while defending them while being chased? It would be a lost battle. Better we fight our way out without burden, we can start our own village if we want, all we need to do is take over a small village and take their women. But if you want to stay and die, go and be with your family, if not, follow me!” then turned and started running again.
At first, most were hesitant, then slowly one by one, started running after Voka, and only a handful ran toward the inner wall where all the women and children were.
