Arrows flew through the trees, occasionally accompanied by blasts of elemental magic. Ursus’ people continued to fall back, with their most powerful mages moving in a far more orderly fashion, while their weaker and less disciplined troops left them behind.
The situation on Calerus’ side wasn’t too dissimilar, though, which kept him from feeling too superior. His retinue marched with iron discipline, staying as in formation as the forest allowed. However, this slower advance meant that the less organized forces they were marching with soon outpaced them.
This also meant that the startlingly accurate arrow fire from Ursus and several of his people didn’t harm those that Calerus actually cared about, and for this he was grateful. He wasn’t too interested in winning glory in battle, so he wasn’t in nearly as much of a rush to confront Ursus as the rest of his fellow nobles.
He was also extremely wary of a trap or ambush. Ursus’ giants still hadn’t been seen, and they had pushed the barbarian’s people almost a mile into the forest. Calerus didn’t think stone giants would be too easy to hide, though, so while he was keeping his eyes open and his magic senses projected, he wasn’t too worried about not seeing a trap coming.
And yet, the further the Octavian forces pushed, the more he started to doubt his conviction that a trap had been laid. He could sense that there weren’t any additional troops coming in from Duronius’ camp, but that hardly mattered since they had a force of fifteen thousand at least going up against Ursus and his three thousand, so the fact that they were moving farther and farther away from support wasn’t concerning.
Despite his attempts to maintain his caution, Calerus found himself relaxing in his saddle as his horse did its best to follow Ursus’ fleeing unit through the dense, wet forest. In fact, he started to find that he was growing more concerned over losing a horseshoe in the sucking mud and marshy soil that they were often struggling through than he was about walking into a trap.
There were no doubts in his mind that they would catch and kill Ursus. He was only a barbarian, after all, and those who were following him were relatively small in number. Without the giants, even his startling strength and personal skill wouldn’t save him.
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“Keep moving!” Leon shouted, urging his people to continue moving back, though his words weren’t entirely necessary. More than ten thousand of Octavius’ troops were bearing down upon them, and few of his people needed the reminder to fall back. Even the Barons weren’t arguing with his orders right now.
Leon fired an arrow from the back of Anzu as they slowly retreated. His aim was true, his arrow striking a fourth-tier knight in his exposed inner thigh. Not an immediately fatal shot, but certainly debilitating. Beside him, both Alix and Valeria were firing arrows, though neither were comparable to his skill—then again, of the fifty or so people who had bows and enough arrows to shoot, no one could match Leon’s skills, even if Marcus came surprisingly close. Still, in Leon’s own, admittedly biased, estimation, he was the best archer in their unit, and from the way the few archers pursuing them shot back, he was better than any archer that their pursuers had, too.
So far, he was astounded at how easily it had been to get the Octavian forces to attack and follow them. It was almost surreal. He had to slow himself down quite a bit so that their pursuers didn’t lose them in the forest, but otherwise, keeping Octavius’ nobles on their trail was staggeringly simple.
This went on for about an hour, with Leon’s people remaining just close enough that the Octavian forces refused to give up the chase, despite how long it had been going on, the slow accumulation of casualties they had been sustaining, and the further stretching of what passed for their marching column. Fortunately, their destination was only about five miles away from the camp, though in the dense underbrush, it took almost an hour and a half to get there.
But when they did, any fatigue Leon’s unit felt vanished as they took up their positions, and Leon himself began to smile in anticipation beneath his helmet.
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Calerus scowled as Ursus’ unit finally vanished out of sight. They had led the Octavian forces into a low-lying patch of incredibly dense forest, where the tracts of dry ground were in the minority compared to the mud and standing water, severely impairing their ability to move. The section of forest itself was located in the valley of several gentle, heavily forested hills that had been carved by a river that ran right through the middle, which right now was stagnant, green, and filthy.
In other words, it was the perfect ambush location; far enough away from the camp to prevent reinforcements from easily reaching them, and the terrain was rough enough that it would make escape difficult. But those facts weren’t what made Calerus nervous, it was the fact that most of Ursus’ unit vanished within—he couldn’t see any of them with his magic senses!
“Halt!” he called out, raising his fist in a stop gesture.
“What is it?” the water mage beside him asked, looking up at the older man curiously.
“Have you been tracking the savage’s troops with your magic senses?” Calerus asked, not taking his eyes off the shallow river valley before him.
“… Yes…” the water mage said, and though Calerus believed him, the water mage’s tone made it clear that he hadn’t been as diligent about it as Calerus had been. The expression of surprise he showed just a moment later confirmed Calerus’ suspicion.
After a long sigh, Calerus tenderly took his eyes off the valley for a moment, glanced at the water mage, and said, “You really should be paying more attention. This is war, I don’t want anything to happen to you…”
The water mage remained silent out of shame. It was fortunate that his three thousand troops stopped along with Calerus because otherwise, they might’ve left him behind.
“Any idea where they went?” the water mage asked.
“No, they must have anti-magic sense wards set up all over these woods,” Calerus replied, immediately slipping back into his noble demeanor.
“What should we do, then? We can’t just leave things here…” the water mage replied, meaningfully nodding his head at the thousands of other Octavian troops that were continuing to charge into the valley with wild abandon, though a few here and there were glancing worriedly in the direction of Calerus and his halted retinue and slowing down.
“No, we can’t let that barbarian and his band of bandits get away just like that,” Calerus said. “We just have to take things a bit slower.” The Count turned his head toward his knights and vassal nobles who were waiting for further instructions. “Spread out and move slowly!” he ordered. “Sound the alarm if you see anything suspicious!”
After a chorus of ‘yes, my Lord’s’, Calerus’ unit began moving again, but the time they spent motionless was enough for most of the rest of the Octavian troops to put some distance between them, with nearly all of them quickly disappearing into the deeper forest.
Their formations began to thin and spread out, taking as much space as they could as they descended into the dark valley and began to sweep it for any sign of the vanished Ursus and his unit.
After five minutes, they had found nothing. Many of Calerus’ retainers were on edge as they entered the dark valley. The sun was blocked by the leafy canopy, leaving many of the weakest levies stumbling blindly through the underbrush, while the clumps of trees grew denser and denser, interfering with their formations and giving many of Calerus’ followers an almost overwhelming sense of claustrophobia.
Calerus slowed them down even further so that this wouldn’t affect their battle line, though he noted that few of the other units that had gone ahead had done likewise. As a matter of fact, several of the units seemed to have completely disintegrated upon entering this section of forest, with the more powerful mages leaving their weaker comrades behind, with Calerus running into them as he and his retinue pressed on into the dark. Some of the mortal and first-tier people were even absorbed into Calerus’ unit as it marched past them since they had little other recourse than turning around and abandoning their leaders.
Like this, they struggled along. The forest floor was a little drier with all the dense vegetation, but that wasn’t saying much; many mages still slipped and fell in the mud, while the roots and vines caused others to trip. Just pushing deeper into the forest through the trees and underbrush started becoming a chore, even with them following the lead of those who’d run ahead.
And then a tremendous clap of thunder boomed throughout the entire river valley, echoing in everyone’s ears and bringing Calerus’ entire line to a halt as they prepared for battle. No enemies charged at them through the trees, but they heard the sounds of battle further on. Or, more accurately, they heard screaming and the sounds of dying men and women.
“Keep moving!” Calerus shouted, his voice sounding strangely muffled by the surrounding flora, and his unit began to advance again, though at a slightly more cautious pace than before.
After a few minutes, the sounds of fighting died down, leaving the forest in a state of eerie silence—or, as silent as it could be with thousands of men and women marching through it at once. Still, it unnerved those who were paying enough attention to notice. Clearly, one side had ended the fight, and since they couldn’t hear the sounds of celebration, it seemed to them that Ursus’ unit had probably come out the victor.
And then, in the distance, the forest began to thin out, allowing a few beams of sunlight to peer through the canopy, shedding light onto what appeared to be their destination.
It was a scene of carnage, and it only grew more so the closer that Calerus’ unit drew. Huge boulders studded the area between the trees, and between them were hundreds of corpses. Calerus recognized a few sigils here and there emblazoned on the tabards of the fallen knights, and he even saw a few bodies of the Samar mercenaries that had so recklessly charged forward. The bodies themselves were mangled beyond recognition, leaving their clothes as the only way to identify the fallen.
It also became clear why this area seemed a bit clearer than the rest of the forest around it: Calerus could see many fallen trees around that had probably been knocked over in the brief battle that had been fought here.
However, it wasn’t the bodies, the obvious remnants of elemental magic having been used like a few small fires and long ice spikes here and there, or the strange boulders scattered around, each as large as a small house. Instead, what truly unnerved him was that his magic senses couldn’t penetrate at all into this section of forest, as if someone had created a ward that scattered magic senses over miles of forest. He couldn’t imagine how complex that would have to be, how much time and effort it would’ve taken to create something like that.
“They’re in there,” he said to the water mage.
“Yeah…” the water mage replied, his tone deadly serious and extremely apprehensive. “We’re going to get them?”
Calerus glanced around at the bodies that they were finally starting to pass and both he and the water mage could see the damaging effect it was having on the morale of his retinue, even as disciplined as they were. Many were recoiling at the carnage, while a few of the weaker and younger of their number failed to hold onto their breakfast.
“Yes, yes we are,” Calerus responded. He then addressed his people, his voice booming out into the forest and yet still sounding strangely muffled. “Stay vigilant!” he ordered. “Watch the boulders! Watch for anything out of the ordinary!”
This time, his order was met with quite a bit less enthusiasm than his previous orders that day, but his people were professionals and they continued on. The stragglers they picked up along the way, however, were less professional and committed, and many simply stopped moving or turned back altogether.
They were all obviously peasant levies, and he couldn’t blame them for halting in their tracks. Their leaders left them behind and then went missing in the forest or died at the edge of this relatively thin grove. The blame was with those leaders for those levies losing heart and backing down.
Calerus’ people would not lose heart. They marched at his side as he slowly steered his horse past the first boulder.
His eyes strained in the dark, looking for any sign of the forces that had killed the several thousand fighters that had charged ahead of him down to a man. All he saw were more bodies scattered around the trees and rocks. He even stared at the boulders themselves, as if expecting them to crack open and reveal Leon Ursus there with a horde of savages at his back.
But nothing moved. Further into the grove his people pressed, many jumping at every gust of wind and snap of a twig, their anxiety growing more and more as nothing happened.
Until something did happen.
The earth beneath them suddenly cracked open, sending hundreds of stone spikes tearing through their formations. In an instant, more than five hundred of Calerus’ retainers lost their lives, while hundreds more were gravely injured as the spikes grazed their bodies. Calerus himself barely noticed as a stone spike had erupted from right beneath his horse, impaling it and hurling him upward.
Fortunately, his horse had been armored and was a fairly powerful beast besides. This kept the stone spike from penetrating all the way through the animal and impaling Calerus’ groin, but it left the animal mortally wounded and shrieking in pain. Calerus himself was thrown from the saddle and down into the mud.
He was barely able to roar, “BRACE!” as he felt the earth beneath him rumble. All around and within their ranks, a hundred stone giants appeared, emerging from the ground like they were bursting up through water. The boulders then snapped open, justifying Calerus’ earlier fears as they revealed themselves to have been hollow the entire time, and Ursus’ barbarian sympathizers came streaming out, crashing into Calerus’ people both from within and without, taking complete advantage of their surprise and suddenly disrupted formations.
Calerus, meanwhile, managed to push himself back to his feet just in time for the boulder ahead of him to burst open, revealing Ursus and his most powerful mages. They charged at him, their auras and killing intent soaring.
Desperately, Calerus drew his blade and readied himself for the fight of his life as all around him his retainers lost their lives.
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