Chapter 19 I had queenie fly over to see what the big commotion was. She reported back that the rats had several tree trunks that they were moving up slowly. It would take them over an hour to reach us at the speed they were going. She could also see that much larger rats were forming up in formation behind the carried trunks. I needed to come up with a plan fast. We needed to hold out at least till night-time. That should have given the caravan enough of a lead to be able to make it to Maiden's rest before getting caught. By this time the last skeleton had spawned so I was up to the full 22. My plan was for now to try and stall them. I still had a few fire arrows left. I mounted Luna and we rode onto the bridge. I was able to get to the halfway point pretty easily. The group with the treetrunk was still about 10 minutes away, as they were moving very slowly carrying the thing. I summoned my group of archers and gave them the fire arrows. Their orders were to try and set the trunk on fire and to kill as many rats at long range as they could while retreating backwards after the fire was set. As they had longbows their range was incredible and they could start firing immediately. It took 3 of the fire arrows to finally set the tree on fire. The rats quickly dropped it and it rolled sideways a bit and started rolling back down the slight slope of the bridge. Taking out a few rats before finally falling off the side. I had hoped that the log would stay on the bridge and block the way for a while. Now, all it did was make the way clear of the rat elites to start moving up faster. I could now see them. They were in their humanoid form and a lot larger than the other wererats. These were up to 2m tall, had leather armour and seemed to be armed with swords. I counted at least 100 of them moving up. and I could see at the back a couple of gigantic wererats moving them along. Both were in full plate armour and at least 2.20m in height. With no shields, the archers were taking out a rat per shot but they would soon be overrun. I ran back to the wall to hopefully come up with a plan to deal with this. After talking it over with Moira we came up with a simple plan. We would hold here as long as we could but at the first sign of them breaking through she and I would retreat on our mounts. Get a bit of distance and then every hour summon a new group of skeletons to harass them. the elites were slow so hopefully, we would only have to deal with the weaker normal rats. The next hour was chaos. The bodies piled up in front of the wall so high that the rats were using them to get over the wall. Moira and I were kept busy and queenie and the sprites had to heal us more and more. The two leaders just stood back and directed the action. My cooldown on the summons was done just as we were about to be overrun. I tried the other summon this time and summoned the swordsmen. 5 Skeletons appeared in full plate armed with greatswords. They helped against the tide coming over the wall. This was the point the two leaders moved up. At a full run, they used their bulk to smash straight through the bone wall. That was the sign for me and Moira to get out of there. the skeletons had orders to take out as many as they could. Queenie and the sprites would head straight to maidens' rest and see if the rest of the caravan had made it. We were able to stay just ahead of them for a while. I was only able to use the summons every few hours as my mana regen wasn't that high. Each time I did I summoned the unit of greatswords as they were able to take way more punishment and hold them up for longer. We lost the pursuit once we got to a wooded area just as dusk started to settle in. The rats not having darkvision helped us to evade them and find a place for a few hours of rest. An hour or so before dawn we set out again. This time straight through the woods instead of taking the winding road, trying to take a shortcut. Just before midday, we were back on the road leading through a valley between two sets of hills. We could see dust plumes both ahead of us and behind us showing that we were surrounded. This would be where we would make our final stand.