Chapter 14

The next day a very unhappy Sid finished interrogating the Colonel that had been captured in the raid, five days earlier. The information that he had gotten from the man didn’t represent good news. The Colonel had been leading five groups of a hundred men each. Each group followed the previous group by thirty minutes. He hadn’t left Hunter to face a second group of a hundred, but a second, third, fourth, and fifth group of a hundred each! It was too late to help Hunter, but he hoped the young man had managed to pull off a major miracle.

The news was even worse than that. He had learned that Danny Sun wasn’t being very effective in his campaign. That had freed a lot of enemy troops that could be brought to bear on the more effective generals. Half of them were headed in his direction, and that meant trouble.

His attention was drawn away from that problem by the arrival of Hunter in a huge crowd of men. He gave a sigh of relief on seeing the young man. He was accompanied by one of the raiding parties, and most of his men. The entire party looked in bad shape, though.

Hunter left his men and stopped a short distance away from Sid. He didn’t care if Sid was going to yell at him about ordering him to leave. What he had gone through justified that many times over. Looking down at the ground, he said, “I’m reporting as you ordered, General.”

“How did the ambush go?” Sid asked noticing that Hunter had a bandage on his arm.

“I lost twenty men and had another forty four wounded,” Hunter answered.

“What happened?”

“We ambushed the second set of troops and things went alright. Two of our men were killed and ten were wounded. The problem was that there was a third set of troops fifteen minutes behind them. We were caught by surprise, and had to fight a strategic retreat for two days,” Hunter answered.

“What about the scout? Why didn’t he warn you of their approach?” Sid asked wondering why they hadn’t learned about the third force.

“At the time, I figured he was dead. I later learned that he had been chased for almost four hours by the enemy’s mounted soldiers before getting away,” Hunter said.

“Tell me about the retreat,” Sid said feeling like Hunter must have done an exemplary job of controlling the men to have survived three engagements in a single day.

“Well, we picked up our shields and our spears as soon as we heard the enemy coming. Estimating that we faced an equal or greater force, I ordered that all of the prisoners be killed. If they got free, we’d be fighting them for a second time and I couldn’t risk the lives of my men for theirs,” Hunter said fully believing that Sid would criticize him for not doing something else with the prisoners.

“Understandable,” Sid said knowing that Hunter had been in a tough position. He probably had about fifty prisoners and less than a hundred men. Retreating with fifty prisoners was impossible and adding almost half your force to the pursuit was suicidal.

“We headed down the road before they saw us. I figure that coming across that many dead bodies slowed them down for half an hour. We used that half an hour to get as far away as possible, and then we stopped to catch our breath. It was an open area with no cover to be found. I chose to make a stand at that location. The last thing I wanted was to be chased down in disarray,” Hunter said. He figured that break actually saved his men.

“By the time we had caught our breath, the enemy was within sight. We used that turtle defense where we locked shields and used our spears to keep them off of us. I couldn’t believe how effective it was. When they would charge, we’d just poke out a spear at any body part that came into view. When they backed off, we continued our retreat down the road, in formation,” Hunter said. It had been the longest day of his life.

“They must have charged us twenty or thirty times that afternoon. Each time, it was an ugly fight with lots of blood; mostly theirs, but occasionally some of ours. We lost eight men that afternoon. We held each time, but we were getting weaker. They kept getting more and more reinforcements. It finally got too dark to fight, but we continued moving down the road for half of the night, staying in that turtle formation. I’d say that we got about four hours of rest before the sun rose.

“When dawn came, the enemy was still in sight. They had followed us in the dark, but couldn’t see well enough to coordinate an attack. I’m halfway convinced that they were terrified of facing our defensive position when they couldn’t see well enough to dodge our spears. That morning, they attacked us again. My men were exhausted, but each of them stood their ground and fought with a ferocity that should be commended,” Hunter said looking at Sid.

“Have no doubts about that!” Sid said.

“It was nearing noon and I wasn’t sure that we were going to be able to hang on for another minute, when the scout showed up with the raiding party led by Theodore Forester. I was down to forty people who were still capable of fighting, and Theodore had fifty mounted men. The enemy was still well over a hundred,” Hunter said. He remembered looking out between shields and seeing the charge of Forester’s men. His first thought was that another group of enemy reinforcements had arrived.

“What did you do?”

“His charge pulled the men from one side of our formation. I ordered our men to form into a line formation, and to advance. I think the enemy was very surprised to find itself facing four rows of spearmen advancing behind a wall of shields. It turned into a melee, General. I don’t know how my men did it, but they stood until the tide had turned. Forester’s men mopped up the enemy,” Hunter said.

Nodding his head, Sid asked, “How many of the enemy do you estimate were killed or wounded?”

“I’d say about four hundred if we include the first two ambushes,” Hunter said.

“And you started with a hundred men,” Sid said rubbing his chin thoughtfully. He said, “You lost twenty men and had forty four wounded. Does that include the one dead and four wounded in the initial engagement?”

“Yes, sir,” Hunter said.

“You do realize that you actually engaged five hundred of the enemy?” Sid asked.

“It sure felt like it,” Hunter said.

Sid looked at Hunter very impressed with how the man had dealt with the situation. He said, “I want you to know that I’m very impressed with how your men handled themselves through that entire ordeal. They demonstrated exactly the kind of discipline and strength of character that I want in our men.”

“Thank you, General. I’ll let them know that,” Hunter said.

“You don’t have to let them know that. I’ll tell them that myself,” Sid said with a smile. Sid rubbed his chin and asked, “I want your honest assessment about another matter.”

“Yes, sir,” Hunter said.

“How would you evaluate your performance?” Sid asked.

“I’d say that I was right in sending you away, and I was wrong in staying for the second ambush. After that mistake, the only thing I could do was hold off the inevitable for as long as possible. We were lucky that we were rescued by Forester’s raiders,” Hunter answered.

“That’s where I have to disagree with you,” Sid said.

“I was right in sending you away, sir,” Hunter said.

“That was a given. You might think I was upset by that, but I was more amused than anything else. I don’t think you were wrong in staying for the second ambush. I also think that you didn’t just hold off the inevitable. That understates your performance. You held together a force of men who were so tired that I imagine they just dropped to the ground when it was all over. Your men performed admirably, but that was because you demonstrated the leadership skills that brought that performance out of them.”

Blinking, Hunter said, “Thank you, General.”

“No. I should by thanking you, Hunter. You did an outstanding job. You managed to save eighty of your men when you were facing three to one odds. That was an impressive demonstration of leadership,”

Hunter didn’t know what to say. He went with the tried and true response. “Thank you, General.”

Pacing in front of Hunter, Sid said, “You may have wondered why I asked you to report here, when I left.”

“I figured it was for asking you to leave,” Hunter said.

Sid laughed and said, “That wasn’t the reason why, although I did leave you with that impression. No, the reason I asked you here was to promote you. You’re going to be leading a brigade from now on.”

“You’re kidding,” Hunter said looking at Sid in disbelief.

“No; and now that I’ve heard your report, I can say without a doubt that I wasn’t wrong in wanting to promote you,” Sid said patting Hunter on the shoulder.

“Thank you, General,” Hunter said. As far as he knew, there were only a handful of men who had command over thousand men, in all of Chaos. In most campaigns, that would make him a general.

“You deserve it, Hunter. Now, if you’ll take my advice, I suggest that you have your men relax this afternoon without any duties. Let them sleep, fish, play, or do what ever they want until noon tomorrow. I would like them to stand in formation at the bridge at noon tomorrow so that I can address them,” Sid said.

“I’ll let the men know that.”

“Once you’ve done that, you might decide how you want to spend your time,” Sid said.

“Thank you, General. I think I’ll just take a nap in a hammock,” Hunter said. He waited to be dismissed.

Seeing the young man still standing there, Sid made a shooing gesture and said, “Run along and play.”

“Yes, General,” Hunter said with a laugh. He walked away shaking his head in amazement.

Turning to the crowd that had gathered behind him, Sid asked, “Well, Gregor. What do you think of Hunter?”

“He’s good. I’m very impressed,” Gregor answered. He was more impressed that Sid managed to train his junior leaders to such high levels of performance.

“I’m impressed, as well,” Sid said. Shaking his head, he added, “I imagine that he lived through hell out there.”

“Indeed, General,” Fred said with a nod. It had dawned on him about halfway through the story that Hunter could have retreated through the area where the slaves had just been freed. It was likely that if he had done that, the enemy would have been held up to deal with the freed slaves. He could have gotten away after a two hour retreat, rather than a two day retreat.

Sid turned to Fred and noticed the expression on his face. Smiling, Sid said, “I see that you figured it out, too.’

“He figured out what?” Derek asked.

“That he led the enemy away from the men and women we had freed earlier that day,” Sid said.

Derek frowned and said, “He could have used their help against the enemy.”

“He would have gotten most of them killed,” Sid said raising an eyebrow.

Realizing that he had known many of the folks that had been freed, Derek understood that Hunter had done something very noble. Rather than risk hundreds to save his own skin; he had risked his, to save them. Nodding his head, he said, “I understand.”

Gregor said, “They’re going to send an even larger force out here, now.”

“I know,” Sid said with a frown. He figured that there were five hundred men at the base where the original forces had been camped. It would take a day for one of the survivors to return to the base. It wouldn’t be until the next day that a force would leave for the farms. Then, it would be another day on the road before the force made it to the farms. He decided that the farm had three days from the day of the battle before they would be facing enemy forces.

“The slaver army had three days to get there. Five days have passed since the ambush,” Gregor said. His mind had gone through the same calculation as Sid.