------ Chapter 5: Escalating the War ------

The sun set behind the Farrel mountains to the west and I find myself beaten to a pulp for the third day. Arga and Esken have been sparing with me these past days. These two spend their mornings training recruits in close combat. By noon the recruits are sent to practice archery to ensure they can fight in different roles.

During the afternoon, I finish with my temple work and find the two waiting. Initially I thought the two would spar with each other but they never did, maybe some kind of dislike. However, they get along well when I see the two. While I squeeze out what mana I can to mend what injuries I have, Esken speaks up.

“His body conditioning is going well.”

Arga glances towards her, “Yup, he doesn’t seem like his guts will spill so easily.”

Esken notices that I look a little confused, “If I wanted to teach you techniques I would not be using such force against you. However, by overwhelming your defense, the body’s resilience to resist damage will improve.”

Arga adds, “It is about survivability, once you live through a few fights you can start thinking about going on the attack. You are a skilled healer, a surgeon. So, you need to avoid taking serious damage or be tough enough to shake it off.”

I feel their words are true, before the training I could not block or keep my footing; however, during today’s sparing I was able to soften some of their blows with my sword guard. Since I am also very small compared to the two of them, I will be knocked off of my feet from their hits. I became used to this and instead of trying to stop their attack I go with it.

By doing so, I can land and recover faster without the air in my stomach being knocked out. In response, Arga and Esken increased the pace of their attacks keeping me on my toes. I did not feel like I was gaining skill with a sword but I certainly feel confident that I can take more than one hit.

“Don’t you two need to practice against each other?” I decided to ask when I healed my chest enough to speak.

Arga and Esken glanced at eachother. Arga speaks first.

“Well, if we did and we held back there would be nothing to learn. If we go all out, someone could die or be injured for a while.”

I see Esken nod.

The two of them are very different, Arga has a carefree attitude, he rarely shows respect and does not mind talking lots. Esken always gives off a cold expression while she glares around at everything.

Apart from the ear shapes, physical differences between Kridimirts and Ordumirts appear to be that Kridimirts have lighter skin. I have only seen Kridimirts have black hair, Esken and Varrel have hair that is not completely black, but very close to it. Ordumirts have a lot more variety in hair colour; however, the browner skin is common among Ordumirts.

For a woman, Esken is taller than average, she is a little shorter than Arga and her air is cut almost as short as a man’s. She ties it together behind her head which allows a helmet to easily fit overtop.

Outside of her armour, she wears much of the same as everyone else but no skirt like many women wear. I know from seeing both in their armour before that Esken has more steel plates for her armour. Which is why we traveled so much mounted on Bulims, that much armour is heavy to walk with.

Her armour mostly covers her torso, shoulders, arms, knees, and feet. Her thighs are protected by a surcoat of studded leather where a piece of steel is studded into the leather to help improve protection. She also wears chain mail under her plates covering the torso, chest, shoulders, and arms.

While I thought on this, Arga continued the conversation.

“I’d say, since Esken is an Ilowa Knight, her sword skills will be more powerful than mine. So, I would need to get within her range and use hand to hand. Which I have a lot more experience with.” He added.

“You fight hand to hand?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess it would be good to show you how grappling works.”

Arga raised his hands towards me, I stand on my feet in response. The distance between us is closed in an instant and Arga holds his right hand high, I react to this. However, it is a feint, his left hand scoops under and grabbs the back of my knee.

With this leverage, Arga’s left leg steps forward and gives him enough lifting power to pull my leg up while his right hand forces my shoulders down. In a single second I am pinned on the ground.

“From here, I have a few options, if I had a short knife on me I could do some serious cuts to arteries and eyes. With just my hands I can use my right arm to hold down your throat. If you resist, I can strike your head to dull your movements.”

Arga pulls me on my feet before continuing.

“If you strike someone’s chin from the side it will tilt the head and rattle the brain, numbing the body. I’d recommend avoiding this with your knuckles in case you hit something hard and break ‘em.”

He presses his palm against my chin to demonstrate.

“Also, striking with your elbows from this range is pretty useful, if you pull back your arm to swing someone can dodge or grab your arm. Attacks from the elbow are shorter but quick.”

His grip loosens as his arm presses against my abdomen.

“Hit the stomach if the opponent guards their face, when their guard lowers switch back to the chin or side of the head, their temple.”

Arga let go and walked back a few steps.

“Lastly, there are different grips and holds to restrain arms, legs, and even choking the neck. Against armoured opponents when your weapon may not match their armour, applying leverage against joints can break or dislocate limbs.”

I look toward Esken before asking, “What about these sword skills.”

“Ah. It is using mana through one’s sword.” Arga replies scratching his head.

Esken steps in to field this question.

“Magic in melee combat is split between boosting the body’s ability and expelling mana with a technique. Boosts are the easiest to get started on while sword skills release mana from the technique used. These take more time and effort to learn.”

With her hands, Esken gestures around her right arm with her left.

“Using an attack as an example, releasing magic during a slash will envelope the blade. This could be a simple flame effect around the blade to burn while cutting. Another can extend the blade’s cutting range through sharp wind. The complexity and power will vary depending on the technique.”

“The techniques themselves are guarded by different schools, the Ilowa knights have their own, us mercenaries don’t usually share. I have a few basic ones anyone can pick up.” Arga added.

“The fire blade is pretty good if you need something to cauterize a wound against monsters that heal quickly or have gelly forms. Plus, burns are pretty hard for healers to heal.”

“This will be all for today.” Esken cut in, “Arga and I deploy with our recruits the day after tomorrow along with the other recruit groups. So, tomorrow both of us will be occupied preparing for that”

“Ahh yes, we need to blood many of them before a real fight. You’ll likely be busy tomorrow as I expect many of them to take wounds.” The smile Arga has while saying this kind of creeps me out.

“Because you have improved the priest’s healing rate we are able to pressure the encirclement to further delay an attack on the city.” Esken mentions before she left for the manor.

Arga waves to me as he walks to the mercenary building. Having a break gives me a nice feeling, the past training was very bleak. I can hardly call it training and I would rather say it was a lengthy beating.

Still, every day I sleep off the pain and feel a little more resilient the next. I return to the Pine Inn for food, a wash, and sleep.

The next day is bustling with activity as the various groups of recruits are organizing, gathering supplies, and going over their plans. Each group is about twelve in strength with at least one veteran leader. Many of the groups have a few veterans divided among the recruits but are less skilled and experienced as their group’s leader.

My work at the temple ends early, I checked in to find that no real action is happening today. Some scouting continues with the objective to confirm enemy locations and avoid confrontation. To relieve my boredom I walk to the forge to feed my curiosity at what Laro is busy doing.

The forge is busy preparing equipment for the large amount of militia recruits that will be going into the woods to disrupt the siege's advance. Laro’s forge now has three anvils and three furnaces, I approach to hear what is going on.

From what I can see, there are three junior smiths and Laro as the senior smith. When one of the junior smiths is not on an anvil, Laro takes over; however, most of what Laro is doing is overseeing the junior smiths, the three furnace operators, and the four workshop workers.

Laro notices me from the corner of his eye.

“Kordi, what brings you here?” he asks in his blunt manner.

“No real temple work today.” I reply.

“Good, help out at the craft tables, we need some of this old gear sharpened and polished. If it is in bad shape, we’ll need to reforge it.”

I answer with a nod and walk towards the workshop area with four tables and a collection of chairs, wet stones for sharpening, and other tools. I do not mind Laro’s personality, without always having work to do I will feel awkward and flounder about.

There are piles of used and old equipment around the workshop, I am not very familiar with repairing leather or wooden equipment. I know my parents are good at it from experience; however, I spend much of my time working on metals and brewing. So, I grabbed some of the bronze spearheads.

The wooden staffs were being made by one woman who whittled long sticks into smooth poles. The bronze spearhead would be bolted onto the staff’s end. The metal used for the equipment here is all copper and bronze.

“Do we have anymore iron equipment available?” I decide to ask.

“The iron we did have is already repaired and being used. Calbin still has a lot of copper and bronze from previous conflicts stored in the armory. We are running two furnaces to produce more iron and steel.” Laro replies.

“The third one?”

“Extracts sithril from gobite we have collected. The more militia out there the more gobite they will bring back.”

“If sithril is just used for magic items, how many people can even use them?”

Laro looks towards me for a moment, I have just began to straighten and sharpen a bronze spearhead.

“We will mostly make sithril arrowheads. These can hold a small charge of mana to cause an effect. Some of our most veteran skirmishers are able to do very useful spells through these. We will also have some demand for sithril shields, arm guards, and accessories.”

“Does anyone want it for weapons?”

“No, sithril is almost identical to silver, both are heavy and soft. Not the kind of attributes you want for a sword or most armour. However, because sithril is useful for amplifying magic, a shield of sithril can create a barrier to prevent damage from breaking the shield.”

“That is why we need mythril!” One of the junior smiths added in.

Laro looked back at the junior who was taking a breather while he reheated his iron.

“What is mythril?” I am most interested in this metal, there are only a few mentions about mythril that I overhear.

“Mythril is an alloy that Mirt smiths attempted to make when sithril was discovered. In order to strengthen sithril various methods were done to do so. Gobite, is actually stronger than sithril, but it is fragile from inconsistent concentrations of different metals and minerals.” Laro begins to answer.

“By heating it, different metals will melt at different points; ruining the result. Sithril is easy to extract from the gobite along with copper. The breakthrough we received came from the Dvaren who arrived from the East and held old teachings of metal work.”

Laro reached over to one of his tools, a hammer. Its colour was not a dull iron, it has more gloss to it.

“When the Dvaren taught the Mirts how to smelt iron from ore and how to enrich the iron with coal to give it strength and malleability they also discovered how to make mythril.”

Before Laro continued, he gestured to one of the furnace operators to pull out the crucible, a clay container that can handle very high temperatures. Inside the crucible I can see glowing hot metal.

The furnace operator using a metal rod with a hook to pull out dark chunks of impurities.

“The iron will separate from the ore when it is cooked with coal, we produce charcoal from burnt wood to mix into the ore. The remains of the ore forms slag that we clean out and allows us to pour the iron into an ingot.”

The iron is poured onto a pile of ash with grooves pressed in the shape of ingots. The iron settles into these ingots with only enough melted iron to fill two ingots.

“The Dvaren are very protective of all their secrets. So, I was only taught an incomplete method of making good steel. This iron needs more carbon before it can be called steel. By adding a mix of leaves, branches, needles, and other small material made into charcoal powder we have to work the carbon in by hand.”

“Would using the iron by itself still be good?” I ask, the extra steps to make steel seem a little too much if the result is not too good.

“If we leave the iron as it is, it is wrought iron and is a moderate improvement over bronze. However, steel is easier to work with later on and allows for greater flexibility with what we can make.”

“If we can make good steel we will be able to even make mythril.” One of the juniors adds.

Laro looks back at this junior to reply, “No, good steel alone is not going to make good mythril. You will need excellent skill to properly bind the two alloys together. Mythril on its own is too heavy and soft from the sithril to be comparable to steel. The smaller amount of sithril will weaken the alloy’s potency with magic.”

“Therefore,” He continues, “If the mythril is made harmoniously and the Mirt using it excels at using it, the result can only be matched by another of the same.”

“Do we have anyone like that here?” asks one of the workshop crafters.

“Hmmm,” Laro looks into town, “Just have one.”

------ Arga POV ------

“I can’t wait to stick a dirty Kob with my blade!”

“Hehe, if I don’t stick em all before you.”

There are two young men walking in front of me, the one on the right is playing with a bronze blade joking with his friend. They are new recruits but with that attitude they are none I have trained.

“Hey, you two.”

Both turn around to look at me, my call surprised them a little and their expressions became a little pale after they saw my face. I am one of the most senior mercenaries around here so, my face is known.

“How are you going to kill a koblin?”

The man with his blade out glances down at it before he nervously looks around. I will play with them for a bit, might teach a few things as well.

“Go on, show me how you plan to stick em.”

“Oh. Okay.” He replies as he meekly thrusts his blade from his waist.

Really? That is it huh. I walk closer and let out my breath.

“If you poke a koblin like that in his guts he won’t die. Instead he will grab on and with his dying breath, sink his fangs into your throat. You will die choking on your own blood.”

I raise my right hand up to my shoulder as if I have a sword in hand. The young man’s expression almost looks sick.

“Instead, hold your blade high like this. Thrust down into the point between the neck and shoulder. You will sever many arteries and its throat while being in a position to hold the koblin from biting.”

My hand pushes down on his shoulder so he can feel how much strength can go into this move.

“Right… right, thank you.” his answer shows a little more spirit.

“Remember, even if one is wounded with arrows disable its weapon before delivering a killing blow. Step on its arm when it is down, get someone else to help, whatever you need. Don’t let them strike you down for some silly reason.”

This was the kind of thing I train my group of twelve recruits, the koblins and goblins will fight to their last breath and some play dead to sneak an attack in. I know I am considered the most strict of the group teachers, even the Ilowa knights who lead a group each were not as strict.

Being a mercenary means I deal with being considered more disposable than knights and regular soldiers. For us mercenaries, survival is important but abandoning a job is worse. It is not easy to balance both of these, since I survived so long while completing many contracts the least I can do is drill my lessons into these mirt recruits.

While walking the Pine tavern I can see Kordi assisting the Smith Laro, it is good to see that Kordi is keeping busy. Though, a temple healer working at the forge is a little odd, Kordi himself is different boy. I would hate for him to die here when he is so young, he needs to grow and put his talent to good use.

That use can be whatever he wants, I do not really care.

Inside the Pine, Doore greets me from a table. He has been working with the adventurers skilled in magic to produce sigistones. By taking a simple rock the size of a hand and carving runes into it to hold a single spell charge it can be thrown to deliver magic by anyone.

Stockpiling these for critical moments is part of our defensive plan, more reason for us to further delay the koblin and goblin army from attacking.

“Must be nice, burn up all your mana, sit around and drink, repeat.”

Doore chuckles, “both a blessing and a curse for us magicians.”

“Honestly, I would rather you be on the front throwing spells at them instead of making some stones hold half your power.”

“Sure, it does feel like that. Making a sigistone takes more mana that it would take me to normally cast the same spell. However, the Ilowa knights said that we do not have enough mages to properly destroy a massive assault. So, we prime many sigistones to compensate this.”

“and hope the goblins’ warlord is dumb enough to think we can repeat it.” I add.

“Heh, well Verrel wants us to hold out for Corrin reinforcements.” Doore’s face showed a smile, but this was the kind of dark humour we show each other to ease the tension.

We know full well how many more of them there are. The only reason an attack has yet to come to Calbin is because Koblin and Goblin leadership is not organized. Too many groups looking to do their own thing.

So, by harassing their groups and killing off leaders the various groups keep changing loyalty and another leader has to come from the command group to reign in the leaderless ones. It is a delaying tactic, we do not have the troops needed to route them out of the region, eventually they will close the noose around us.

“Well, I did not come to stay and eat. I have to wake up before the sun rises and have my recruits ready.” I waited until a mug of water is delivered to drink.

“Good luck.” Doore answers.

“Pray I won’t need it, the recruits sure do.”

By night fall I am awoken by one of our clerks, Marai, who has the boring job of keeping the time during the night. Nights are longer in the winter and we want to be up and prepared before the sun rises.

Marai spends the night with two cups of sand and a funnel. She pours one cup of sand into the funnel resting over an empty cup. The funnel’s small opening will take an hour for the sand to empty. By doing this, she can track the time during the dark nights and wake up anyone who needs to be woken.

However, my mind is not so old to forget the time while sleeping and am awake moments before Marai begins knocking on doors. I pull myself out from my warm bed onto the cold floor, I hear bed covers rustling from other rooms. The quiet tension for today’s operation has begun.

My equipment consists of a set of silk shirt and leggings which can help to wrap around an arrowhead to prevent as much damage when removing it. Unless it hits one of the seams like my shoulder seam. Kordi healed that for me very well.

On top of this layer is a leather coat and pants which I cover with a thick surcoat of Bulim wool. The wool is warm and the thick Bulim hairs provide strong protection against cuts and impacts. Since it is not very flexible, the coat does not cover past my shoulders allowing my arms more room to move.

Covering my thighs, I strap on steel plate leggings under the surcoat and pull on a pair of leather boots with steel plates. Over top of my surcoat I fit a large steel breastplate to cover my chest and abdomen, it also has plates installed to protect my neck and chin when I tuck my head in.

I grab a pair of leather gloves for my hands and fit a steel plate armguard that only covers my wrist and forearm. Lastly, my steel helmet that covers my skull and the back of my neck, the face plate is removed to improve visibility leaving just a nose guard to cover my face.

Being too heavy has never been my thing and having steel armour is far better than the copper and bronze I grew up using.

I finished preparations by grabbing my knives, fur cloak, steel sword, and shield. Packs filled with supplies are waiting by the exit, I leave the building to find where my recruits are bunked together for the night.

I find them in one of the Inns, six each to a room. I begin by swinging the first door open.

“Wake up! Patrol starts within the hour, don’t wait for the sun to rise.”

Two of the recruits sprung up, they were already awake, nervously listening to the activity outside and my boots walking to the door. The others moaned and groaned as they wiggled under their covers.

“I’ll drag you out of your beds if your still in em when I get back.”

I swing the next door open, four of the recruits here are clamouring to dress. I walk up to one still in bed and lift their furs off, they tense up as the cold winter air touches their exposed skin.

“What are you doing sleeping naked Buran. You have two women in here, have some shame.”

The two women looked at each other with awkward faces like they knew and just quietly dealt with it. The sixth recruit in this room rose from their covers before I got to him. The rooms are temporary during the training period, having six people sleeping on the floor in small rooms is not comfortable.

I return to the first room, everyone is up and dressing their leather and wool layers. None of the recruits have steel equipment, at best we were able to reuse the old bronze to make helmets for the recruits. Head wounds would be more important to protect against.

“Alright, roll call outside in the training yard, if you are last I will remember to give you most of the luggage to carry back when we’re done.”

“Yes sir!” the room replied, they were a little quiet, but it is still night time.

Outside the sky is clear and even without moonlight the silhouettes against the snow are easy to see. Of my recruits, we have Darren Mulic, Beatrie Flannis, Penni Flannis, Maro Mill, Daric Pol, Jebal Tallin, Tollic Ralm, Falo Rimmic, Pela Alma, Rillic Borma, Darrel Pomra, and Buran Castis.

Buran, is of course, the last one, he shouldn’t have been butt naked.

“I’ve gone over what we need to do today, our position is up front as a vanguard group, we find and hold any enemies while a support group comes to assist. So, grab some supplies and we will move out.”

In the market area, supplies were loaded into packs for everyone along with weapons. Every recruit is provided a simple Ordu-bow, a short bow made with Oak wood from the valley. Short bows work well in forests for not getting stuck on branches and trees, the range of a longer bow is not as important either.

One quiver is provided with twenty arrows each; however, the group leader is supposed to receive some magic arrows. I cannot use a bow that well so, I split them between the group’s two best archers. The Flannis cousins are two women who lived as hunters deep in the woods.

The two cousins did not train themselves for combat; however, their experience and accuracy with a bow is as good as any. I tailored their training this week to increase their rate of fire and also to learn some basic archery spells.

Everyone receives a round buckler they can wear on their left arm while still being able to hold a bow and arrow. The shield is a sandwich of a hard piece of leather and Bulim wool between wood. The rim is bronze or copper to help deflect attacks away from the left arm.

For a weapon, each has a bronze dagger and some even use spears. However, that spear is difficult to carry along with the bow and arrow. So, in battle, the spear is planted into the ground or against a tree until it is needed.

These recruits are considered skirmishers who fight in loose formations to hit and run against larger numbers, mobility is important. Because of this, the spears can be an issue if the battle moves away from where they are placed. My group will take four spears between the twelve. The spears are limited in number, there are around ten groups of thirteen in this operation and not enough spears to go around.

The eastern horizon begins to brighten, the sun will rise soon. This is our sign to move into the woods. We will push east where the groups of koblins and goblins are approaching Calbin from before they split off to encircle. By doing this, we cut off some of their organization and leadership to confuse the encircling groups.

With the Calbin hill facing our east, there is a main road we will take that goes around the northern side of the hill. Wooden palisades cover the road from the steep slope along Calbin’s north. A gate next to the hill side is where we exit into the woods.

From here, many paths begin to break off the main path, scouting groups have already broken ground through the fresh snow and we are able to use these routes to split up and cover the north eastern approach. As the groups move, we will flank south and pull back into Calbin from the south.

Even during the winter there are small birds who chirp at the rising sun, it is a comfortable sign. These birds are not wary of the mirts who grow seed for them to eat during the winter. The foul smell of koblins and goblins who trap them with nets will bring silence to their songs.

Our feet march along the packed snow paths, I am walking in front of the group to keep us along the correct path in the formation, as a vanguard this is important. I have walked these paths for many weeks so, I would not normally need to follow a path.

“Beatrie, Penni, up front. Eyes and ears ready.” I order, these two know the sounds of the woods better than anyone here.

I can clearly hear their steps from behind, the woods have grown quiet and the tension from the recruits behind me tingles on my neck. Our pace slows a little, we take care not to crack the twigs loudly.

Beatrie and Penni pause, their attention shifts right, I barely hear the muffle of noise. More clear to my ears is the breathing of those behind me. Ah, the tension of being in command of green recruits. I miss my old squad of mercenaries.

I look over my shoulder at the first two behind me and point to them. After they nod to confirm I am focused on them, I gesture with my hand for them to move ten paces to the right. When they walk off the road, I gesture to the next pair, twenty paces to the right. The following pair is thirty.

The pairs take extra care to avoid making too much noise as they find some tree trunks and snow banks. I spent some time teaching them about concealment and ambushing, even if you have to lay in a pile of snow concealing your silhouette is important.

The remaining four stay with me for now, with the two Flannis cousins up front; Maro and Jebal ten paces right; Pela and Darrel twenty paces right; and Rillic and Darren thirty paces right. Now we wait, watch, and listen.

Whatever we encountered has certainly heard us, no noise is made as both sides are now in an endurance contest. Noise will reveal the direction your opponent is in and any kind of sign or disturbance will be taken advantage of. If they run out of patience or become curious to poke their noses out we will have an advantage.

With that said, we could be all worked up over the noise of a rodent. If it takes too long we will need to advance. I would hate to delay so much over nothing but that is part of the battle, is it a real threat and should we risk attacking without knowing where they are?

Well, I have been in enough of these fights to have my patience, the faint sounds of steps from behind suggests that the support group’s forward scout has found us. The support group will soon be close enough to help.

As I feel some confidence in our position the silence is broken by the small shifting of a recruit behind me. It is Buran isn't it?

I ask myself this while I scan the small slope ahead, if they hear this they may move.

The groaning of snow pressing down steps closer.

What the hell is it? I ask myself again.

I look over my right shoulder to see, sure enough, Buran is waddling close. Everyone is cringing from each step. Our ears now sensitive to sound. The recruits on the right flank are even glancing over as if someone is ringing a bell.

Buran approaches on my left, while I look over my right shoulder I have to twist my hunched torso to look him in the eyes.

“Arga.” He whispers.

Might as well yell it you fool.

“I gotta go.” He gestures to his groin.

I figured as much, the tension makes bladders weak. I would rather his piss himself at this point but in the winter that would become more cold than warming. I breathe out from my nose and gesture behind me with my head.

Buran gets this message and quickly stands up to walk to the edge of the path. I can hear him loosening his pants followed by what sounds like, from the quiet we are sensitive to, a raging river smashing along stones.

I glance over the two cousins ahead who have slowly been moving closer to the slope. They are doing good work, a slow advance to give us a better idea where they are. Both have stopped, I can guess the kind of grimace on their faces right now.

Penni on the right, suddenly shifts her attention. I follow it to find a dark silhouette has emerged from between two trees, enough to be a head. I react and jump backwards to grab Buram by his pants and pull.

The wiz of an arrow shoots by where Buram stood he will have felt the wind it passed so close to his nose. Collapsing to the ground, his piss sprays into the air like a fountain.

I roll myself forward, the enemy who fired has concealed itself as three arrows from the right group fly into the trees. Noise erupts from the other side of the slope as dark silhouettes climb over to charge down. Their apparel and exposed fur tells their breed.

“Kobolds!” I shout, “Right group, support!”

I focus mana into my legs to dash ahead to support the cousins who begin to draw their strings. I taught each of them the importance of holding a few extra arrows in their drawing hand so they can reduce the time between each shot. The result is a burst of three arrows, where they then fall back to fire again.

Behind me I can hear the sound of the other recruits running in to support with spears. I do not look to see if Buram is with them and instead focus on the first koblin charging towards me.

An arrow flies towards me which I catch on my shield, the nearest koblin follows up to attack. It is too slow, I do not even need to use mana to speed or strengthen my swing to cut its neck. I follow up with my shield to knock its spear out of the way before I return my blade into the koblin’s skull.

The koblin’s are a mix of goblin and beast in appearance, they stand on two legs, with half their bodies covered in fur. Each wear rags of fur, leather, or goblin silk stitched together covered with a piece or two of wood to maybe protect their chest, arm, or head.

The next koblin comes to get revenge. In support, I spot two arrows, one high and one low coming towards me. I block the low one with my shield and pivot to avoid the high arrow. Using my invasion's momentum I continue with an upper slash to the koblin, severing his spear and his left arm.

In its blind rush the Koblin lashed out with its severed spear, throwing itself at me to sink its dripping fangs into my neck. I step in, pushing aside the sharp stick with my shield and striking the koblin’s face with the cross guard of my sword.

My cross guard is curved and sharpened like a talon on both sides which helps in these close fights against monsters that throw themselves at you.

This tore the Koblin’s cheek, the pieces of skin flapped around as it recoiled from the hit. I cross my sword over to sever its head off as the body falls limp, blood squirting across the white snow.

Another two arrows fly in my direction, I catch both with my shield as I survey around. A four koblins had attempted to charge down the slope toward the right group and lay writhing in blood stained snow.

The approach towards myself is strewn with eight koblins along the slope with another two I just killed. Along the slope’s crest, two koblins remained firing at me while a third made an attempt to attack.

Before this koblin came close it is shot down by two arrows, one entered the skull’s eye socket, the other into its chest at the heart. The remaining koblins attempted to flee but the right group knocked them down.

“Did we get them?”

Darric, Tollic, and Falo have just arrived behind me, the battle finished before they could fight. Trailing behind them the clumsy Buram carried the fourth spear while wet with piss.

“Go finish off the wounded koblins, in pairs to be safe.” I order, particularly looking at Falo and gesturing to Buram with my head.

Falo gives an expression as if he replies “all right…”

While I look over the dead koblins, the eleven that charged towards the cousins and I, nine are killed by arrows, two by sword. The arrow wounds are all accurate with a few hits resulting in quick death.

Beatrie and Penni are comparing kills, with four between them the ninth was killed by Beatrie who aimed for the head.

“Our teacher taught us the head was more difficult to hit, so we should aim for the chest or thigh.” Penni stated.

“It was close enough I knew it couldn’t dodge.” Beatrie replies.

When the koblins charged in, the two put at least two arrows into each, one into the leg to stop its charge, then a following arrow to hit the heart through the wooden breast cover. Ordumirts are well known for our short ranged archery with most Ordumirt skirmishers being required to fire three arrows within two seconds accurately at a target around twenty paces away.

The best way to train against archers is to practice catching arrows to train one’s reaction time enough that only arrows fired from blind spots are a real danger. This is why the koblins try to attack in combination between arrows and melee.

“Did they all try to attack Arga?” Darric asks as he pulls his spear from a now dead koblin.

“They do know how important it is to attack the shiniest mirt.” I reply rubbing my steel breastplate.

Which is good, I glanced over my recruits and none have suffered any damage. The koblins mostly aimed for the one mirt here who has the most experience.

“You’re really lucky Buram, you idiot.” Falo scolds Buram who is wiggling his spear free form a koblin corpse.

“Yea, did you see Arga pull him down from getting hit?” Pela adds.

The recruits begin to lighten up and gossip to each other.

“I’m sorry, I just really couldn’t hold it.” Buram pleads.

“Its all right.” I reply.

Buram looks to me with eyes full of hope.

Ah, I can’t help it, I can feel my grin rise.

“I needed a good distraction to draw a koblin out.”

Buram’s expression sinks, I am not entirely serious about the distraction, but I take what I get.

With the support group coming from behind, I give them word to loot and harvest the koblins. We will continue moving, our activity may draw more from the surroundings.

However, as I think that I hear a distant noise as a bright arrow arcs over the tree tops. It is the signal for support, something you should not just use unless you really need it. It will also draw in more enemies.

“Lets move, leave your supply bags behind.” I order, dropping my bag.

My recruits quickly drop their bags as they follow me, I begin to run at a slow pace. We can make it in a few minutes the recruits are also trained a little to run without being too winded.

I run through the snow jumping over fallen trees and ducking past tree branches, the sound of combat becomes clear.

“Spread out, keep in pairs.” I order.

I exit around a pine tree’s snowy branches to find a small opening where two full groups have entered battle with a mix of koblins and goblins. Goblins are more pale from living underground, they lack fur but wear more to cover themselves. They wear copper pieces of armour along with gobite.

The battle itself is not too intense yet; however, many of the mirts here are pulling back to protect the six or so who are wounded. Another two are visibly dead in the snow. A koblin takes notice of me and turns to draw his bow.

I dash in close as it completes its draw, the look on its face is clearly surprised. My sword draw continues into a rising slash severing the bow and continuing through the chest. I pack a short burst of mana through my legs, torso, and shoulders giving my sword enough speed and force to cleave the koblin’s chest diagonally from liver to left shoulder.

“Right groups, support the others. The remaining six cover this left flank.” I shout.

Now I am in the middle of it, what I would do for at least one of my merc buddies to cover my back. I spot goblins running towards our left position at the tree line. Half are holding bows; however, the others hold crude spears, daggers, and hammers.

I shift my position to stand in their way, twenty decently armoured goblins with bows behind to support. “I have managed to survive worse,” I say to myself.

The goblins let out a sour howl as they speed up their charge, arrows pass by from behind to dig into their charge. I wait until I see the pale green of their eyes and the drip from their mouths before I act.

I draw a dagger from my robe and throw it into the socket of a goblin’s eye. Following this I charge forward and block the spear from the next goblin while driving my blade through its belly up into its heart. I twist my torso to help draw the blade out, duck under the swing of a hammer and use the momentum to sever the hammer goblin’s knee.

I charge to the left where a goblin is trying to turn towards me, before it turns its weapon on me I dig my blade into its throat and slice to sever the spine. From behind another goblin pushes his legless comrade aside to reach for me. Using the momentum of turning around I sever his left hand and drive my blade into his eye.

After withdrawing my blade a spear drives its way through towards my chest, I angle my body to deflect the spear and smash my shield into the goblin’s face. The howl of another goblin roars out. I glance towards it, axe raised high the goblin is stepping in range to swing.

I step in towards it and drive my blade into its chest under the goblin’s left arm, piercing the heart. My following steps bring me past the axe goblin, I draw my blade back out and check my shoulder. Sure enough, the bow goblins are not taking aim, only two more goblins are chasing me with dagger and hammer.

When the goblin bows release I roll towards the two melee goblins, evading the arrows. As I rise up, I bring the path of my blade through the hammer goblin’s groin. I apply extra force with my shield to raise my blade through the goblin’s abdomen before I twist the blade to exit from under its ribs.

The last goblin lunges with its dagger, I parry with my sword and strike it with my talon guard. I grab the goblin with my left arm and drive my sword into its heart through the shoulder. I kneel down to shield myself from the goblin arrows with the corpse.

I check to see how many are left and find the last two bow goblins are struck down by arrows. I pull my blade from the dead goblin, riddled with eight arrows. The sound of battle continues to the right, more have joined into the fray.

That is when I notice the cause of this commotion. A fully armoured goblin standing before the corpse of an experienced adventurer. It is a true goblin warrior, probably the leader of this goblin band we are facing and it takes notice of me surrounded by its dead comrades.

As it walks towards me, I can see it wields a long warhammer. A blunt hammer with a spike on the other side excels at fighting armoured enemies. The real terror of this weapon is that I can tell from the hammer’s green gloss it is made from good gobite.

The Goblin warrior raises his hammer over his shoulder and picks up his pace, my recruits have taken aim at him; however, his armour deflects all of it. Gobite plate too, it is a frail metal compared to steel; however, its magical properties make it unpredictable to deal with. I could end up shattering my sword if I strike it at the wrong angle.

When the goblin warrior closes in it shouts, “Gurrgha!” while pounding on its chest plate.

So, its name is Gurg-ha. It is known goblins and koblins can speak, some of them even feel the need to announce themselves for a duel.

“Arga.” I reply.

“Arrrgha!” its response came with a grin full of teeth.

I notice from the corner of my eye that my recruits have begun to engage some goblins charging them. I am not in a position to help just yet, lets see how good this Gurg-ha is.

I step forward to charge into Gurg’s range, he swings down and I step to the left to avoid. Gurg twists his stance to bring the hammer towards me. He is fast and I tuck in and roll under the swing. The sound of air from that swing is not normal. There is magic behind his attacks, if I get hit wrong it will kill me.

My shield and armour has a lot of thick Bulim wool which helps absorb impact damage; however, a solid hit from that will at least make whatever it hits go numb. That is one of the terrors when facing gobite weapons.

Gurg thrusts his hammer forward, I angle my shield under the hammer before pushing it away. Stepping forward I trust in with my sword aiming in between his abdomen plates but he twists away. His left arm releases his hammer and pulls back to punch.

I catch his gauntlet with my talon guard, we lock each other’s arms. Gurg gives off a “Haaa” relishing the fight. He steps forward and I can feel a sensation of mana building. I raise my left leg onto the leg he stepped in with to jump back with. As I did this, a force vibrated from Gurg’s gobbite armour.

Had I been in contact with his armour, the vibration would have transferred through my sword and armour. The danger of goblin vibration magic is that it amplifies when it contacts something hard. Steel armour like my breastplate will become a chamber that contains the force mashing my guts.

I quickly throw a knife at his eye; however, Gurg turns his head right to deflect it. While this happened I dashed into his left blind spot from looking away. Noticing this, Gurg reacts by reaching out with his left hand, he wants me to strike his armour and break my sword.

With his gauntlet out and fingers extended I slash aiming for the knuckle between his pinky finger and hand. The little finger sails off while my sword remained unharmed. Gurg’s expression became frustrated, I attacked at the right angle that I did not trigger the vibration’s release.

While this seems good, getting the right angle in a fight against a moving enemy is nothing to sniff at. Gurg responds by dashing forward, his hammer raised low. He is putting mana into his steps with enough speed I cannot break away. Leaning back I watch the hammer rise to my left side, aiming for my torso armour.

I jump as the hammer strikes, the faint impact vibrates and as I fall back to the ground I can tell my bulim wool has absorbed much of the vibration.

Until I landed on the ground, my guts feel sick. No pain, just nausea. What kind of mana is that goblin putting into his swing that he can still do damage from a small hit like that.

“Move,” speaks a stern voice from behind, “This one is mine.”

I look over my shoulder, a knight only a few years younger than I is taking off his cape. The Ilowa sigil embroidered on the back. His waist holds two swords, a short and long sword, his left arm holds a simple buckler we provide the other recruits. It is Varrel, a knight of Ilowa.

I think to myself that the cocky bastard has more armour than I do, he should have seen that this goblin warrior is very dangerous against so much armour.

“Gurrgha!” Gurg-ha repeats to Varrel.

Varrel does not reply, he walks forward loosening his helmet, drawing out his short sword, and holding his shield to his chest.

I can see Gurg has become annoyed with Varrel, interrupting a duel then not replying to his challenge.

The two reach into range, Gurg swings his hammer and Varrel blocks with his shield. However, the angle he blocked from only causes the top half of the shield to burst. The shield is also mostly made from wood, wool, and leather. The vibration will not resonate through.

With his attack blocked, Varrel steps in to thrust his short sword into the Goblin’s joint between his thigh and hip. A major artery is there, Gurg replies by swinging with his left arm. Without being able to completely dodge this, Varrel takes the blow with his head but only his helmet flies off exposing his dark hair and kridimirt ears.

Rising up Varrel strikes the goblin in the chin with his pommel through the helmet’s opening. Gurg reacts by activating his armour’s burst and Varrel jumps back sheathing his short sword.

When the goblin’s magic wears off, Varrel draws his long sword, the blade is a glossy blue. He raises his sword high over his right shoulder, steps forward, and with a single breath he unleashes a swing.

A blast of magic tears the air unleashing a sharp boom of air, the bulk of this smashes into Gurg-ha tearing him apart. The rising wave of snow and body parts sail over the ground and land splattering on the ground.

The field is completely quiet, the battle is over as more recruit groups rally around, from behind one of my recruits, Tollic asks,

“What is that?”

Looking over to Varrel who stands on the snow cleared grass, sheathing the blue blade as pieces of dirt and Gurg-ha continue to fall in the distance.

“That.” I reply.

“Is a mythril sword.”

------ Kordi POV ------

The first wound arrived shortly after the sun rises over the Lower Kainran mountains. Two members of the militia carried him in, an arrow pierced through his throat from the side. Blood is trailing down from his mouth as he barely can breath.

Patyr takes a pair of clippers and snips the arrow’s tail off to pull the arrow through. I move in to check the wound.

“No arteries are severed,” I state while patching up some of the torn muscle.

“One of the juggular veins was cut along with the tubes feeding into his lungs and stomach.”

I began healing the open cuts for these, the esophagus that feeds into the stomach is a smooth muscular tube while the lung’s tube has rings of cartilage to keep it open. The biggest problem he will have is the blood in his lungs and vocal cords will be too sore to cough without pain.

By finishing my healing work I leave the rest to one of the priests who may be able to ease the pain. He will need to cough out the blood before he is really recovered.

Another wounded arrives with a leg injury from a koblin ambush. However, the militia who brought the wounded in said he would need to return quickly, a signal arrow was fired. I look outside for a moment to see that it is halfway to noon, the low sun makes the days shorter.

After this news, we received another two wounded militia. One has a stomach wound, the other’s wound is in her shoulder, both from arrows. The next wounded does not come for around an hour and there is more than one.

The militia came in a hurry carrying a body on a wooden sleigh, his armour is removed and after Petyr pulled his shirt up we see the wounded man’s torso is bruised completely.

“Gobite weapon?” Petyr asks.

“Yes, our group encountered a goblin leader, we won the fight but not without casualties.” The militia reported dripping sweat from running.

I place my hand over the wounded man’s bruised belly and use my mana to feel what kind of condition he is in.

The sensation feels empty, well not empty, just fluid as if there is no real form inside. I look to Patyr, I might be showing a very confused face.

“Gobite weapons can do this if it is made well enough and the goblin knows how to use it. If it hits hard armour of bones it will send a shattering vibration. This man must have worn armour around his torso for the effect to vibrate through his organs.” he speaks to me.

I have no idea where to start, his stomach, intestines, liver, and all seem like paste to me. By my current knowledge and ability I can’t do anything to save him.

Patyr rests his hand over my shoulder, “I’ll take care of this, I have done these wounds before, this man is lucky it is not as serious.”

Not as serious? The mixture of stomach and intestinal fluids with the body along would be fatal. White I think that, Patyr draws his sithril staff out and begins chanting. His spell takes shape with a huge amount of mana flowing from his body through the staff. Enough that the wounded man’s body becomes enveloped in a soft light of red.

My hand still rests on the bruised belly and I can feel Patyr’s magic at work, enough mana is flowing through the wound that I can not achieve the same result of one tenth this amount. The magic feels like it is first suspending everything inside, finding the right pieces to slowly bring them together.

I have a spark of inspiration, I decide to use my own magic, starting where the stomach begins I use my mana to gather what Patyr’s spell seems to label as part of the stomach. I collect them together, if my mana has a highly refined level of focus then I can speed up Patyr’s powerful spell.

Doing the same with the intestines, liver, kidneys, bladder, and so on I set up the pieces to assemble together.

“Done,” I state.

The other two priests look at me, “What did you do?”

“I pulled Patyr’s spell along.”

Patyr’s chant breaks, his eyes open and he looked down towards me. The body retained some of the spell’s effect and its condition has improved. The belly is no longer bloated and signs of muscles are reforming.

“Can that be done?”

Patyr turns to look at the other priests, “When managing large spells, some mages who specialize in control will focus on this that to speed the spell along. But if its Kordi then I can see him pulling my spell along.”

“That is wonderful, normally you would use up your mana on a single patient a few times before healing this kind of wound.”

Really, it takes that much effort?

The temple doors open again someone arrives with a shattered arm, the gobite weapon hit their shield devastating their left arm. I get to work on the arm as one of the priests casts a simple healing spell over it. The extra mana helps me manage the many pieces to bring them together.

With so many parts moving around in place I wonder if they feel anything? I do not think they have enough nerves to sense pain here but even then, I have noticed a particular numbness to magic healing a body.

The number of wounded continued to rise through the day with a total of forty three of the one hundred and thirty wounded with an unfortunate ten others who died in battle. I only tended to two serious gobite weapon injuries, apparently four of the ten dead were killed by that kind of weapon.

I overhear a few stories about the battles from the recovering wounded. The large number of goblins faced the Calbin defenders in a small opening in the forest. While one of the militias was injured and stayed near the battle he told me about some of the valiant defense.

Most of it is about the old mercenary Arga who charged into a large group of them and cut them down before facing off against the goblin leader. Before he could see the results, the Knight Varrel came with reinforcements that freed the wounded time to pull out.

Later wounded militia spoke about how the battle ended after Varrel came to help, the remaining goblins routed after Varrel killed the leader. I worried a little if Arga is alright since he was said to be fighting the goblin leader first. I did not see many of the dead, the ones that were brought here are not Arga.

With the goblin position routed, the operation is called a success and the surrounding koblins and goblins should become less organized for a while. If this allows Calbin some breathing time then we can delay until help arrives from the west and improve our preparation for an attack.

I do not have enough time after my work with the temple, the injuries and wounds continued until evening when the last groups returned. A few of these returnees came with light wounds to be cleaned and easily mended. Patyr thanked me for the assistance, I am surprised how well it went when both of us worked on the serious gobite injury.

I leave the temple to head back to the Pine Inn where I can wash and probably sleep if there is nothing else too important around. The forge is busy repairing equipment while piles of gobite is being sorted for smelting.

Inside the Pine’s dining hall I am relieved to find Arga sitting at a table while toasting a victory. He notices me enter and begins to wave over to me.

“OY Kordi! Come over here for a moment and join us.”

He looks to the mercenary sitting next to him.

“Hey move to another stool.”

“Wha! No way, why do I have to move?”

“Because, Kordi here helped heal that adventurer who had his guts turned to mush from the Goblin Warrior’s hammer.” Arga replied, leering at his fellow mercenary.

“Because of that, we won’t need to spend as much time waiting for everyone to recover, a day off and they will be ready to go.” another mercenary adds.

“Nothing happened to you Arga?” I ask.

“Me? Oh yes, I nearly had my guts mashed. That hammer of his was one hell of a weapon.” Arga replies taking a drink.

“What does this gobite really do against armour?” I follow up asking.

“Well,” Arga looks toward one of the mercenaries, “Show him one of your gobite arrowheads Tannis.”

The mercenary Tannis pulls out a dull grey arrowhead with a green gloss. The arrowhead is blunt with five sides along its length running the length of a thumb.

“If you put a little mana into this and hit something with it on its flat top, the magic released is a kind of impact. If it hits something hard like bone or stone, it will crack it. When you put enough force and mana into it you can shatter them.” Tannis says.

“The real danger is when it hits something hard, the impact force actually becomes stronger when it exits. So, hitting the skull will at the very least knock you out, at wrst it is fatal. Against metal armour and shields the effect is amplified even more. So, wearing a solid plate of steel around your torso is a death wish against this.”

Arga chips in, “But of course, we can’t just go into a fight butt naked, these weapons are heavy, gobite arrows have short range and slow speeds while the gobite is frail enough a hammer can break after a few swings.”

“That goblin warrior must have had some real good gobite then.” another mercenary pitched in.

“Well, Varrel took dibs on it after he sent the goblin’s pieces around fifty paces away.” Arga replied.

“Wha-hahah! Really, the hell did he do?”

“I heard he used a mythril blade!”

Arga looks over to those mercenaries, “Yeah, Varrel held back until the goblin warrior spend his mana. Had he opened with his powerful wind cutting sword magic the goblin would have used his gobite armour’s defensive power to deflect it.”

“What? The armour was able to do some kind of barrier.”

“Yup, I get the feeling Varrel was watching me fight to see what the goblin would do.”

"Ehh... that's kind of cheap."

"Whatever works haha!" Arga laughs, "I was killin' everything else so, if he wanted to get a shot in that was his chance."

"Its really too bad though," Doore Sithrin adds, "The armour is completely ruined, I would have liked to study it."

"Oh yeah, Doore, what do you think of Varrel's attack?" Arga asks as he turns to Doore.

"Since I did not see it I cannot comment too well; however, it is clearly a wind type magic. Pressurizing the air and releasing it in a bang! Or something."

"Or something?"

"Can't say I am an expert on sword techniques."

"Haha!" the merry laughter continues.

I spent a while listening to the battle stories before washing up and going to bed, while I wanted to learn more the mercenaries themselves were not completely sure how stuff like gobite works. Maybe I will bug Laro.

Author's Notes:

Well, this chapter felt like it would be longer while I wrote it. It only hits 10,000 words but has a lot of content.

I decided to work in a POV change to provide some better context for what is going on outside Calbin, I was considering a few ways to show it. The perspective Kordi has is very safe so far. I have found that I forgot to describe a few character's appearances and I originally wanted to introduce the koblins and goblins in a more tense way.

I still have not fully described what these monsters are like, kind of hard during the middle of a fight to spend a few hundred words explaining appearances.

These starting chapters are a balancing act where I try to explain the world without breaking the story flow too much. The plot is crawling pretty slowly as Kordi is experiencing a lot of interesting things in a short period of time.

First time writing a battle scene like this. =]