Sergeant Stratos outranked Arda, so he had command of the rearguard. “Unit One, go into an inverted Arrowhead formation with a weak center. Two men in the middle, then three and two on either side.”

The road was wide enough for two carts to pass going in different directions. That wasn’t even enough for an entire unit to stand shoulder to shoulder. Instead, the Unit One heavy infantry created a formation intended to funnel the enemy toward two ‘weaker’ looking troops in the middle, allowing the rest of the soldiers to attack the enemies from either side.

“Sergeant, what about us?” Xerxes asked, quietly so that it didn’t sound like he was questioning the officer’s decision.

“Save your melam,” the sergeant replied. “But be ready to jump in if needed.”

Meanwhile, the drums had changed, and the column had stopped marching.

There wasn’t much sound other than the wind in the trees, the creak of armor and weapons, and a bit of noise from the animals.

Xerxes inhaled deeply through his nose, but didn’t detect any odd odors that might indicate monsters were secretly approaching.

A minute passed. Two minutes.

Three.

“False alarm?” Kashtiliash said.

“I see one of them!” a soldier shouted.

Xerxes craned his neck to try to see through the infantry formation, but couldn’t make out anything.

“Small fucker,” another soldier said. “Like a rat with big legs.”

“That ain’t gonna—”

Suddenly, several soldiers shouted. One of them swung his bronze sword out, and Xerxes made out a brownish shape flying through the air. The sword hit the thing and sliced it in half. Black blood splashed.

“Hah!” the soldier yelled.

“More incoming!”

Xerxes’ nose twitched as an odd aroma reached him. He kept his hand near his component pouches.

More Unit One soldiers swung their swords. More brownish shapes flew through the air. Furry Abhorrent thumped against shields. In other cases, soldiers sliced them in half, or skewered them with spears.

“They’re spawn,” Stratos said. “Wipe ‘em out!”

The soldiers slashed, hacked, and stabbed. Then, one of the things slammed into a shield and, while the soldier was otherwise occupied slashing another Abhorrent to death, it crawled over the lip.

Xerxes caught his first clear glimpse of the Abhorrent spawn. It looked like a large rat, except with forearms that ended in slender, human-like fingers with claws. Its face was covered with tight, leathery skin, with its eyes that were beady black bulbs. It bared its fangs as it crawled over the shield, and then… it spoke.

The words came in a garbled hiss so distorted that Xerxes couldn’t make out any distinct words. But it was the language of the Abhorrent.

The rat-like creature jumped from the shield to the soldier's face. The soldier shrieked, dropped his sword, and grabbed the creature. He got his hands on the Abhorrent, hurled it to the ground, and stomped on it.

However, that was only the first instance of the tiny creatures circumventing the shields of Unit One. Most seemed intent on jumping over the shields, but others tried to run under. The soldiers held their own at first, but it became obvious this wasn’t a group of only a handful of the things.

They kept coming, many of them chattering in their alien language.

Xerxes and Kashtiliash both stood waiting. Kashtiliash had his longsword out and in the Skyward position. Xerxes kept his hand on his component pouches.

“FUCK!” a soldier shrieked as one of the rat-like things found a soft spot between armor and dug its fangs into him. He ripped it away, causing blood to spray out of the wound before he hurled the thing off the side of the road.

More soldiers received scratches and bites. They held their position.

It was around this time that the smell reached Xerxes’ nose. The stench was unlike that of any other Abhorrent he’d encountered during the previous invasion. It smelled fetid, like animal feces that had been molding in a damp basement for weeks on end.

“More coming,” a Unit One soldier yelled. “A fucking wave!”

Soldiers hacked and slashed. Rodent-like Abhorrent skittered and leapt.

An Abhorrent landed on a soldier’s face, and he screamed as he fell back. He couldn’t get the thing off his face as it bit into his nose.

“Fill the line,” Stratos said.

Two Unit Two soldiers helped rip the thing away, although it took part of the soldiers’ nose with it. He wailed and shoved his hand over his nose, but that didn’t stop the blood from flowing.

“Get him back for healing!” Arda shouted.

“Fill the line!” Stratos yelled.

The things kept coming. It didn’t take long before they went around the line. That was when Xerxes and Kashtiliash jumped into the fray.

Xerxes didn’t see the need for spellcasting, so he focused on his sword. The little furry Abhorrent were quick, but were easy to kill. He chopped one in half. Stabbed another. Stomped a third.

He realized some of the Unit Two soldiers were helping.

“It’s a fucking pest invasion,” one of them said. Another soldier laughed.

“Seen worse in my grandma’s basement,” Kashtiliash said.

More soldiers laughed.

For a few minutes, they destroyed the rat-like Abhorrent. Then they heard some screeching, and the surviving rats turned and skittered away.

Then, just as quickly as it started, the fight was over. Unit One and Two soldiers stood there panting a bit, shields up and weapons out.

“Is that it?” Stratos asked.

“Road looks clear but for the dead,” a soldier said back.

Wounded soldiers were taken back to see the surgeons or Balatu mages. At the same time, they pushed the Abhorrent corpses into fetid piles.

Then they heard a commotion in the trees. The scout from earlier was scrambling through bushes and underbrush, panting as she half-ran down the hillside toward them.

“There’s a big one coming,” she said. “Makes those tiny fuckers look like babies.”