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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 54
🕑 Added 2024-02-01 10:41:52 +0000 UTCAs the knights surrounded the caravan, a bunch of bandits walked out on the main road, behind the tree they felled to block the road.
Once they were in the middle of the road where the knights were staring them down, a big man from the bandit’s side who was at least a head taller than the tallest man in the area stepped forward. On his face was a predatory grin and resting on his shoulder was a humongous mace.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here? A bunch of shiny knights playing escort for some noble brats, I see.” the large bandit said and was joined with snickers from the lackeys the large bandit brought along.
That was when the lead knight came forward on his horse, “You dare bar our way?! You do know whose banner we march under right?”
The large bandit chuckled and reapplied, “Sure I dare, there are more than a hundred of us and only 30 of you knights, and yes, I know you work for the dipshit Earl Beaufuck or whatever.”
“Insolent Brute!” one of the knights shouted in outrage at the insult to his lord’s name and was about to charge but was stopped by a raised hand from the lead knight.
Hearing the knight’s outburst, the large bandit broke out in laughter, “HAHAHA… you knight types are sure easy to piss off… insolent brute… such a pansy comeback, you are not even trying to be creative and just stating the obvious. Am I Insolent? Of course I am. Am I a Brute? Most definitely! Or my name is not Dome Dasher Dom!”
At the proclamation of his name, the surrounding bandits cheered and the knights looked at each other in recognition of the name.
Recognizing the knowing looks of the knights and the carriage driver of the 1st carriage, Dom continued, “Oh ho, I see some of you know who I am, so I will make this quick. Hand over those noble brats and there will be no need for bloodshed, you have my word they will not be harmed, it's not good for business after all. We would not want to lower the value of the hostages now would we?”
While Dom was monologing, the lead knight was giving out hand signals behind his back to the rest of his men, and the message was passed along down the caravan line.
“You will get nothing, so this is your last chance, move out of the way or die.” the lead knight said while drawing his sword.
To this, Dom released a dramatic sigh, “And here I thought you would be smart with your fancy education and whatnot… but it seems yo-”
“NOW!!” the lead knight bellowed as he cut Dom off midsentence.
Upon the lead knight’s signal, a couple of things happened at once. The first thing that took place was the carriage drivers reaching under their seats to touch a metal plate and inject mana into said metal plate. From that spot, a previously invisible array lit up, and a blue-tinted translucent dome that encompassed the horse, carriage, and the nearby knights snapped into place.
The next thing that happened was 7 knights, which included the lead knight, did a calvary charge toward Dom and his 2 accompanying men. And as strong as Dome Dasher Dom was, he was not confident in going head-on against a calvary charge, so he and his men jumped out of the way while shouting, “Kill’em!”.
While everyone had their attention on the calvary charge, 2 of the knights dismounted and followed just behind the calvary charge while clad in aura. As the calvary charge jumped over the fallen tree to scatter the bandits, the 2 aura-clad men ran with their bodies close to the ground and practically tackled the fallen tree off the road to clear the road for the carriages.
As the carriages start to move forward, bandits rush out from the treeline on the sides of the road to try and board the carriages, while arrows are fired at the knights and carriage drivers.
As the carriages started picking up speed, the first of the arrows aimed at the knights and carriage drivers made contact with the blue-tinted translucent dome and uselessly plinked off what was now revealed to be a mana shield.
Next came the charging bandits, at first they took swings at the mana shield which bounced their weapons off, that was until one of the more grizzled bandits took slow test pokes at the mana shield and their weapons managed to go through after some slight resistance.
Seeing his weapons go through the mana shield, the grizzled bandit shouted, “It is a projectile barrier, swing too fast at it and your weapon will bounce! Walk through the barrier first, then attack!”.
Unlike a mana shield that can block anything from passing through, a projectile barrier only blocks objects impacting it at a certain predetermined velocity, but unlike a mana shield, it takes a fraction of the mana to operate and maintain.
As the bandits pushed their bodies past the projectile barrier, the knights on the other side of the projectile barrier took the opportunity offered to them by the slight resistance of the bandits pushing through the projectile barrier to slay any bandits within their reach. But the knights were not the only thing they had to contend with, they had support in the form of the 2 carriage drivers per carriage acting as crossbowmen shooting anyone who got through the projectile barrier.
Soon, the convoy got to a speed where the bandits on foot could not follow. “Where are the riders?! Chase them down!... and somebody get me my horse!” Dom bellowed.
After a few minutes of getting out of range of the bandit’s arrows, the knight acting as rear guard picked up the sound of many hooves beating on the ground, but when he looked back, the road was clear, it was only when he looked into the woods that he saw silhouettes of horsemen riding through the woods and slowly merging into the main road, so he shouted forward to warn the others, “We have around 50 riders coming from our rear!”
After the message reached the front, the lead knight shouted, “Men, equip spears and follow me. We will show these fatherless whore-sons what a real calvary charge looks like!”
The knights cheered and all but 3 knights, whose horses got killed while removing the roadblock, collected spears from the supply wagons and charged the chasing bandits.
