Eritance - Chapter 8
“You! Stay with the lord’s daughter and protect her. We’ll handle this” barked the guard that I had come to know a bit over these past few days, his name was Simon. “Wedge formation” shouted the lead guard. “We’ll smash through them and make them wish they were never born!” he emphatically shouted at the others. “K ekeke” laughed the orc chieftain in a deeply guttural tone. “Do you think a mere 15 guards can stop us? Tear them apart”! With that the battle commenced. The 7 orcs charged forward with the chieftain coming up behind them. “For the lord! We’ll finish this battle quickly. They may be strong, but we have the numbers and superior equipment than them” yelled the captain of the guards.
It was true, what the captain of the guard said. There were nearly two guards for every one orc. On top of that, the orcs were all dressed in plain clothing, carrying short spears with them as their weapons. The guards however, all wore steel chainmail, round glancing shields, and short swords. This coupled with the fact that orcs were not as good as humans in tactical strategy made the guards quite confident in their easy victory.
As soon as they charged in close, the orcs immediately tried stabbing out with their spears to take advantage of their superior reach. “Hah! What a predictable move” the captain roared. “Men raise your glancing shields and fall back!”. Quickly responding to the orders, the guards raised their glancing shields to block the incoming strikes. Feeling quite proud of gaining the initiative the orcs roared victoriously and pressed on striking out with their spears again.
“Now!” shouted the captain of the guard, “activate the shields!”. Immediately after saying this, the guards activated the power of the shields. “Kyu!” the orcs let out a surprised grunt as their spears glanced off the shields and ricocheted back towards themselves with great force.
Watching from in front of the lord’s daughter, I thought to myself, “dumb orcs. With glancing shields being so common, how could they not recognize them”? Glancing shields were shields that were inscribed with special runes on them that absorbed energy from blows. After at least one blow has landed on the shield, the power from that blow can be used to cause the next one to glance off in a random direction back towards the attacker. The only way the orcs could overcome this is to either, over power the rune capacity, or to not hit the shield. While glancing shields were less common than non-rune inscribed shields, they were still common enough that large numbers of guards and soldiers could be equipped with them by a moderately wealthy lord. Although, these shields were not as good as deflective shields that send attacks directly back, the runes were weaker and more affordable.
“Guaaaa!” cried out two of the orcs in pain. Two of the strikes that had glanced off the shield ended up piercing them through their legs. In this moment of confusion, the captain of the guard yelled, “you two from the fourth row, jump forward now and attack!”. The fourth row of the wedge formation had been waiting for this moment to attack and immediately lunged forward and pierced the two injured orcs through the chest. They immediately fell to the ground, bodies convulsing as they died.
“Hah hah hah! You see men? These are only stupid orcs, they can’t stand up to our might” laughed the captain. “We’ll be finishing them off in no time at all”. However, the Captain underestimated one thing. It is true that the orcs weren’t good at organized fights, and that they were poorly equipped. However, orcs were still orcs. These monsters were the cause of many deaths throughout the empire. They had bulging muscles, and even greater strength than what their bodies let on. The most important piece of information that the captain underestimated, was that there was still the orc chieftain to deal with.
Orc chieftains were much different from their orc counterparts. These ones could think, not to mention they were physically stronger and faster than normal grade orcs. However, beyond this, orc chieftains had a special ability. They could utter a roar imbued with special power. This power, when heard by subordinate orcs will cause them to temporarily gain a boost in speed and power. Underestimating an orc chieftain, was a grave mistake.
“Goyo goyo goyoooooooooooooooo!!” the orc chieftain yelled, activating orc cry. The muscles on the remaining orcs all seemed to swell as an even more ferocious and wild look appeared in their eyes. The orcs immediately threw down their spears and ran in and swung their powerful arms down towards the guards to smash them. “Raise shields!” the captain ordered. “guh” could be heard from the guards that received the blows with their shields, the crushing weight from the orc firsts nearly caused their knees to buckle. The orcs again, swung their fists out, while the soldiers attempted to activate their shields.
However, this time was different. This time the orcs’ strikes did not glance away, instead, cracks formed along the shields as the powered-up orcs had too much strength in their strikes for the weak runes to handle. This time, their strikes really did cause the soldiers that were using their shields to fall to the ground. At that, the orcs finally had a chance to counterattack and stomped heavily down on the guards that had fallen. The bone crushing stomp of the orcs caused the fallen soldiers to immediately vomit blood as their ribs were shattered. All in all, four guards were unable to continue fighting, being severely wounded.
“Don’t give up men!” shouted the captain, “we can still win, so what if they got a little bigger”. However, the orcs weren’t done yet. It was now time for the orc chieftain to let these foolish humans understand the gravity of their situation. With a mighty roar the orc chieftain crashed into the next line of guards, shock and fear being written all over their faces.