It has been hours since one of the riders left with one of Chris’s followers, Karl, and thirty militias. Karl was a longtime friend of Chris. He followed him in an attempt to escape, and he suffered the same pain Chris did. Upon hearing of this mission, Karl gladly took it. He was almost as eager for combat as Chris was.

In the meantime, Jerry put all the resources he had to work. Even before he and his friends came along, the mining camp was filled by slaves the Sullivans found from other sources. This included convicted soldiers, criminals, and even civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were released after the uprising, but for a few days, no one knew what to do with them. They were sort of just lying around, eating food and occupying and not making any contribution. Some individuals were chosen as scouts, but that was it.

Jerry decided to put an end to that. First, he went to Patel and suggested putting the slaves back to work in the mines. They would be given better working conditions and shorter working hours than when they were under the Sullivans, and their harvests would be converted to units. Unfortunately, while Patel was still considering, Sophia gave a decisive no. She saw it as a reason to enslave those people. Her times as a slave left her with some serious PTSD. She wasn’t going to let that happen when she could stop it.

Honestly, Jerry was slightly unhappy. They were at the brink of death. Every piece of resource needed to be put to use if they wanted to survive. If it was his call, he wouldn’t place the vague morals over actual benefits. But he quickly ignored that grudge because the grudge wouldn’t lead to any benefit. Instead, he suggested putting the men to work on setting up the trap for the Sullivans.

Working in the field against the enemies that took those men prisoner was different from working in the mines in the interest of the teens. This time, even Sophia didn't have anything to say.

Jerry had Patel go in front of all the men and announce that decision. The rescued slaves could either take the offer, and in return get supply and protection from the teens, or they could leave. Every single one of them stayed.

The labors cut down large bulks of trees, chopped off the branches, and put the finished logs along the edge of the cliffs. The round logs could easily row down the cliffs and hit the main road, crushing anyone in its way. Even if the logs didn't hit anything, it was pretty hard to march an army through a road that was practically wasted and still be in fighting formation.

In addition to the logs, the labors collected stones of all sizes. The smaller ones, tossed from the cliffs, would gain velocity on its way down. Jerry has never tried it on a human target, but he suspected even helmet wearing soldiers couldn’t take a hit to the head. The larger ones were much more deadly. They could cover less ground than the logs, but they were much taller. All Jerry knew was he wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of a rolling stone.

The field was already set up when a mounted figure approached the camp from a distance away. As he got closer, Nicole, on the towers, lowered her bow. She recognized that man as the rider sent out.

Militias opened the door, and the scout rushed in. He almost fell down his horse when he tried to get down. His breath was like thunder.

Jerry, Chris, Patel, and a few other teens walked to in front of him.

“What happened?” Patel was the first to arrive. He quickly demanded.

“It’s...the Sullivans…” The scout finally started to gain a hold on his breaths. “We ran into them on the way to Maynard City. There were so many of them…and they were heading here!”

“We? Where’s Karl?” Chris suddenly demanded as he realized the rider returned alone.

The scout shook his head. “I don’t know...we were discovered...the Sullivans sent their calvary after us...we were scattered…I don’t know where Karl is.”

Jerry frowned. Karl had a horse. The whole point of sending Karl and the militias in was so that if something went too wrong to be fixed, like if they were pursued by large groups of enemies, Karl could sacrifice the militias and escape by himself on horseback. But both he and Patel made a mistake in assuming that just because the Sullivan guards in the mines were on foot, this new group of invading forces would be on foot as well. Given that both Karl and his pursuers had horses, and Karl only learned to ride in two days, it was likely Karl didn't make it out alive. He might either be captured, or worse.

Doesn’t matter. As someone who barely knew Karl, Jerry could put his cold, logical mask on and say the life or death of a single teen wasn’t important when the safety of the entire alliance was at stake. It was cruel for Karl, but there was nothing they could do.

Or was there?

“Send out a search party.” Chris turned to his followers without consulting either Patel or Jerry. “Karl’s alive, and we don’t leave one of us behind. We’ll find him!”

“We’re under siege!” This time even Patel is having some trouble with Chris’s decision. “We need every man we have here against the Sullivans.“ An effective search could take hundreds of men. These were hundreds of men the alliance didn't have.

Jerry quickly turned to the scout.

“How many Sullivans are there?”

“A lot. Thousands.”

In reality, it was impossible for a single scout to determine the full size of an enemy force, especially not if the scout was being chased away. Skilled scouts could make an accurate estimation, but a random horseman couldn’t do such a thing.

Jerry turned to Chris. He didn't say anything, but the meaning was already conveyed.

Chris’s expression changed as he held his fist tight in anger, but as he turned and glanced at those standing behind him, his anger disappeared and was replaced by despair. Jerry was right. He was one of the leaders in the alliance. His every action represented the will of the alliance. If he ordered search parties to be sent out, there would be search parties sent out, but could he really afford the cost? If the camp fell and people died because of that, could he still look them in the eyes and say he did the right thing?

“To the cliffs!” He finally shouted.

The alliance moved.

Eight hundred militias moved onto the two side of the cliffs. The rest of the militias were left to guard the camp with all of the labors. Patel took command of one side of the cliff with Sophia and Raymond. Chris took the other one with Jerry, Alex, Kirsten, Nicole, Isabella, and all his followers. Jerry chose to go with Chris because he felt like the brute might need some extra logic on his side to balance out his irrational choices. Alex and Nicole just followed Jerry.

Everyone waited patiently. Alex tapped a log in boredom. Nicole flexed her bow. Jerry scanned the entrance of the road for any sign of enemy. He was ice cold on the face, but his hand was actually shaking. The tension was killing him. Every second, thousands of thoughts flew by his mind about things that might go wrong. He closed his eyes and ignored all of them by telling himself he has already done all he could.

Chris put on a cold face. Behind him, Kirsten grabbed onto Isabella’s hand with one hand and grabbed onto Chris’s with the other.

“We stick together, and we will get out of this alive. Those idiots won’t stand a chance.” Chris comforted. The question was if he was talking to the girls or to himself. “And then we will find Karl. He’s alive. He has to be. When we practiced, he defeated me more than once. Hell, he might just come back to the camp with a dozen Sullivan heads attached to his horse, you know, because he killed everyone that chased him...” He was almost rambling.

Kirsten nodded. She subconsciously turned to Jerry, expecting to find him peeing his pants. That didn't quite happen. In fact, Jerry was dead silent.

The blonde rose her eyebrows. She was slightly surprised. Quietly, she let go of Chris and Isabella and sneaked to beside Jerry. The boy took a step back.

“Something wrong?”

“Uh...no.” Kirsten shook her head. “I just want to say that, perhaps, I might’ve seen you wrong. What I’m saying is...we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

Jerry tilted his head as Kirsten continued.

“I just want to say that...if one of us dies today, know that I’ll think of you as just as worthy as any one of us.”

“Good luck.”

As Kirsten backed off, Jerry looked at Alex and Nicole in wonder.

“What was that?”

“Just some random pointless bullshit.” Alex shrugged. She was checking out two swords curiously. Unlike most of the teens, instead of feeling afraid or anxious, she felt something that could only be described as thrill. To her, what was about to come wasn’t a fight for survival but rather something exciting and stimulating. She looked forward to it. At the same time, Kirsten’s words to Jerry made no sense to her.

Nicole frowned. She could, sort of, understand where Kirsten’s sudden change in attitude came from. It was a natural response. Kirsten thought she was about to die, and in times like these, she was able to look at old, emotional grudges or opinions with a new light. She realized perhaps Jerry wasn’t the coward she always thought he was.

Obviously, neither Jerry nor Alex truly understood what happened. Alex was simply incapable of handling such emotions while Jerry saw it but refused to analyze it. Instead, for some reason, he was willing to let the icy wall between him and Kirsten remain.

What Kirsten didn't know was that in Jerry’s mind, logically, if Kirsten died, it would be easier for him if Kirsten was someone who hated him rather than someone who understood him and even admitted her mistakes. Deep down, he sensed something, but he shut it down like one would cover up the hole in a leaking water tank.

On the other side, Patel was looking at the entrance. He was barely blinking. Sophia stood tall. She was holding a spear in her grip and she had a sword tied to her belt. Most teens used swords because it was easier to use a sword and kill someone with brute force than use a spear. But Sophia felt she was able to handle both weapons at the same time. During the days of nearly restless training, as her bruises increased, so did her skills with combat.

Raymond stood in front of his 130 militias. He wore an armor taken from one of the killed Sullivan officers. After the uprising, the teens stripped the armors of the Sullivan corpses and got hundreds of armors. Unfortunately, fighting with armor on wasn’t merely a matter of wearing the armors. Armors were heavy, and neither the militias nor the teens were trained with kilograms of metal on their back. A few attempts to fight with armors on told the teens it might be better to leave those protection off for now. It didn't matter if you could survive an extra stab if you would collapse, exhausted, after fighting for several minutes.

Raymond, on the other hand, didn't see himself fighting on the front line. He mainly wore this armor in case a random arrow or something happened to come his way. As far as he could envision, if he had to start fighting, then things have gone horribly wrong, and fighting for five minutes and fighting for ten minutes would make no difference.

After what seemed like eons, loud footsteps finally approached at the entrance of the canyon.

The vanguard of the Sullivan army was made up of twenty calvaries. These horsemen were the Sullivan scouts. They wore light armor and carried swords and bows and arrows. They quickly ran across the canyon and made sure there weren’t enemies hiding behind the trees. The militias on the cliffs kept their head down and easily got through.

Jerry didn't know he got it lucky. Horsemen couldn’t get up the cliffs, but standard Sullivan procedure called for the scouts in this scenario to dismount and examine the cliffs by foot before signaling the main army it was safe to enter. This pretty much eliminated the chance of being ambushed. Once again, the Sullivans didn't bother to be patient. It was already bad enough they had to come to the middle of nowhere to take down a group of bandits and rebels. Why bother make it extra long with these pointless concerns. The rebels have probably fled already. Who would be foolish enough to make a stand against a full Sullivan army?

This was a huge mistake on their part.

One of the horsemen stopped in his tracks, took out his bow, and fired an arrow into the sky. The arrow made a loud, piercing sound as it flew by.

“Ringing arrow.” Nicole whispered.

The main Sullivan army started marching. Infantrymen marched into the canyon in columns of four. Giant red flags were held up all throughout the army. On one side was a giant S. On the other was a number. XX.

20. So these medieval barbarians know roman numerals. Great.

More and more rows of infantrymen entered the canyon, and Jerry’s expression started to change. There were only 800 militias. With the element of surprise they might be able to deal with an equal number of Sullivans, but they didn't stand a chance against over a thousand of them.

Finally, after he counted over 250 rows of 4, after he saw the first columns of men have almost reached the exit while those in the back still haven’t entered the canyon, Jerry knew this ambush was a no go.

There were simply too many of them. If the forces Jerry had were of equal quality to those of the Sullivans, he might just go for it, but militias...he remembered one of the lines in the unit description.

They are slightly more durable in a fight than villagers, but if they are in a difficult fight, or even an even fight, they would turn and flee.

Jerry didn't trust them to carry out a mission as difficult as this one.

He turned to Chris, ready to tell him to pull back. It would be a difficult task, but defeating the Sullivans in combat was even more difficult. They could fall back and use small groups of forces to harass the Sullivans and buy enough time for everyone to run into the mountains. They haven’t lost yet. They would just be trying a different way to gain victory.

Just as his eyes glanced across the Sullivan lines, they suddenly landed on something, and Jerry simply couldn’t move them away anymore.

It was a pole.

That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was there’s something on the pole.

Jerry squinted, trying to see the object more clearly. Whatever force brought them here also mended whatever physical problem they had. In the case of Jerry, it meant he had near perfect eyesight. In fact, he suspected the eyesight was almost supernatural, not that it mattered. All he knew was that he squinted and clearly saw what was on the pole.

It was a head...and it belonged to Karl.

“Oh shit…”