“Dammit!” Bordan growled, punching his thigh. “Alright, it’s over! Gather up! We’re leaving!”

Moans and upset murmurs answered his shout, but the adventurers repeated the call down the line and began walking toward them. Edwin looked after the enemies they had fought just moments earlier, but they continued to retreat. Maybe they didn’t feel like they were in good enough shape to give chase, or they wanted to get their casualties back to their healers. Not that they could’ve reasonably chased the adventurers anyway.

As their cohort was still gathering – their formation had been very loose and spaced out, spanning some two hundred meters in width – Edwin looked around. He spotted a fallen tree, brought low by a storm, its jagged stump coming up to his shoulders. Their retreating fight against the Marradi shield wall had moved them away from their previous position, a rise now blocking their view of the battlefield proper. Edwin slammed the spike of his glaive into the dirt, then pulled himself up onto the stump. Finding a foothold was challenging as it wasn’t a smooth cut, but after a bit of trying he managed to wedge his feet into the cracks and carefully stand up.

From his new vantage point, he finally had line of sight on the battlefield again, units of both sides distinguishable as patches of color – though his position was slightly ahead of the main Harvand line, which meant he saw mostly red. Scanning the field, he tried to compare it to his earlier view and make out the positions of his allies. The center seemed to be performing an orderly withdrawal, which was unsurprising, held as it was by the first battalion. The far flank, the one that was most likely the reason for their retreat, wasn’t visible from where he stood, so he could only hope that they were getting out alright. The near flank, though…

Edwin furrowed his brow. “Bordan!” he shouted, waving at the man.

“Come on, Edwin!” the former soldier yelled back. “You can climb trees later.”

“Bordan, come here! Take a look at that!”

His teammate looked like he wanted to tell him to sod off and get off his damn tree, but after a moment he sighed and walked over. Edwin jumped down to meet him, his boots stamping deep divots into the soil.

“Get up there, take a look and tell me what you see.” Edwin said. Bordan furrowed his brow, but when he saw Edwin’s serious expression, he didn’t argue. Edwin gave him a hand, and moments later he stood where Edwin had been, looking over the battlefield.

“Not a bad view, I’ll give you that. What am I looking at?”

“Check the closest enemies. We should be seeing blue, but we don’t. There’s only red, and way further than it should be. I think second battalion is in trouble.”

Bordan frowned, leaning left and right to get a better look.

“There’s second’s flag... Gods, I think you’re right. The Marradi are wrapping around the edge of their line.”

“We need to help them!” Edwin said, voice urgent. “We’re in the perfect position to get them out!”

Bordan studied the scene for a few more heartbeats, eyes narrowing. “You’re right,” he said finally, carefully hopping down from his perch and striding over to their flagbearer, a young adventurer by the name of Helk.

“Signal the second cohort,” Bordan told the boy. “Tell them to come here, and quickly. We’re attacking.”

With wide eyes, Helk scrambled up the nearest slop and whistled the signal, raising his flag to get his counterpart’s attention. Once second cohort’s flag rose in the distance, Helk began to wave his, signaling Bordan’s message to their allies.

“Let’s move up. This needs to be fast, so I want to be in position once the others catch up. Salissa?” Bordan turned to the mage, holding her eyes with a serious look. “I don’t expect we’ll need a lot of shielding from here on out, so you can start being offensive as well. Conserve your mana, but otherwise use it as you see fit.”

Salissa simply nodded, her face drawn into a grim mask of determination.

The adventurers gathering around them had been dejected, with angry murmuring and frowns dominating the group. As Bordan announced the new plan, however, backs straightened and eyes narrowed. Edwin had been surprised at the adventurers’ behavior ever since the first battle. With how much they had griped about their situation from the moment Master Hector had revealed it to them, he had expected them to be happy that they didn’t have to do much but stand there and chase away some enemies with arrows. It seemed that he had underestimated them.

While most of them freely admitted that they didn’t want to be there, they were all professional warriors. Men and women who had freely chosen to put their life on the line every day, with nothing but the strength of their arms and the tenacity of their comrades dictating whether they lived or died. They didn’t even do it for money, as adventuring didn’t pay that well once you subtracted the cost of weapons, equipment and traveling gear. Most of them didn’t even do it to protect their fellow countrymen, although that surely mattered.

They did it because they couldn’t stop. They craved the adrenaline coursing through their veins, the feeling that could only be found when staring down a foe that was hellbent on taking your life, determined to take theirs instead. Adventurers had never been known as particularly sensible individuals, after all, even before the exile. To park them off to the side while everyone else fought a desperate battle was not just an insult, it was like chaining a drunkard to a wall and chugging bottles just out of arm’s reach. As Bordan led the cohort toward the battlefield in a jog, Edwin saw more than a few dark smiles on the faces of his guildmates.

A few minutes later, Gerrack thumped down on the forest floor between Edwin and Bordan, crawling the last meter to look over the mound they were waiting behind.

“What’s going on?” he whispered, studying the battlefield before them.

“2-2’s getting surrounded, we need to break them out,” Bordan replied, pointing. “You head right, hit those that have already made it behind. We head left over the open ground and trap them between us and what remains of 2-2’s line. Hard and fast, if the enemy retreats we let them. If we’re not out of here in ten, we’ll be too far behind to retreat safely.”

“Got it,” Gerrack said curtly, pushing himself up and hurrying back to his cohort, head low to keep from being spotted. Edwin looked after him, then turned back to the battle in front of them. The enemy was maybe a hundred meters ahead of them, back turned toward the hidden adventurers as they wrapped ever more tightly around the Harvand flank. It was only held by two of second battalion’s cohorts, the third nowhere in sight, and with three cohorts of their own, the Marradi had simply bypassed the struggling line.

The outside edge of the Harvand formation had bowed inward to prevent their allies from getting attacked in the rear, but that meant that they were now surrounded on three sides, leaving them unable to safely extract themselves from the battle. The crossbow cohorts supporting them had been pushed back by the Marradi archers who had moved up to just behind their infantry once it became clear that the battlefield was theirs.

Edwin was itching to go, almost vibrating with nervous energy as they waited for Gerrack to relay their plan to his banner officers and get into position. Every moment watching their allies getting ever more surrounded felt like an eternity. Finally, a birdcall sounded from their right, and Leodin answered it. Edwin shot up, glaive gripped so tightly that he clearly felt the distinct roots even through his thick leather gloves. As they jogged toward the edge of the woods, Edwin had to slow down twice so as to not get ahead of his guildmates.

Exiting the forest, the springy, overgrown soil turned to a grassy field and the adventurers sped up. Third and fourth banner veered left, heading for the archer cohort just behind the Marradi formation, while first and second banner headed straight for the infantry. They ran in absolute silence, no battle cries or rattling metal armor to be heard over the clamor from the battle ahead. They made it halfway before anyone noticed them, the archers pointing and shouting in alarm. The first infantrymen began to turn toward the new threat, and Edwin sped up even as bolts and arrows zipped by his head, falling on the confused Marradi. For this to go quickly, the enemy couldn’t be allowed to muster a proper defensive. The easiest way to do that was to hit them before they were ready.

Edwin easily outpaced his allies as he picked up more and more speed, virtually flying down the gentle slope toward the press of red-uniformed bodies. Edwin didn’t bother to slow down and swing his weapon, instead holding it in front of his body one-handed, the other arm covering his bare head. He felt spears impacting his armor, fruitlessly searching for his flesh in the single moment that he was in the defenders’ range. Then, Edwin crashed into the disorganized Marradi formation like a battering ram.

At close to twice the weight of those standing in his way and traveling at the speed of a galloping horse, the first two soldiers didn’t even register. As the enemies in his path were bowled over, crashing to the ground in an expanding wave, Edwin’s foot slipped on the shield of one of his first victims. He took flight, crashing into onward with his head and shoulders first before the press of bodies became too tight and his momentum ran out. Shocked silence reigned around him, only broken by the pained groans of those flattened by his charge. Edwin turned around, looking up into the surprised face of a man wearing Harvand blue.

“Hey,” Edwin growled, trying to push himself to his knees in the cramped space, his limbs still tangled with those of his enemies.

“Hey,” the confused soldier answered, clearly unsure how to react. Then the rest of Edwin’s guildmates arrived, falling on the unprepared rear of the Marradi with less momentum but just as much ferocity.