The next few weeks I spent in the village of Blackwood were the epitome of a quiet agrarian existence. It was currently early summer, with lovely warm days that gave ample opportunity to settle into my new life. I had passed a pair of silver coins off to Gunther, who said that the payment excused me from needing to do any fieldwork to pay for my stay.
As for what work I was doing, teaching the reading classes in the evenings had gone quite well. I had impressed Felian enough with my understanding for him to accept me as a teacher alongside himself in the evening classes. There were just under a dozen griffons in attendance usually, with the two of us covering material related to the basics of grammar and spelling. And of course we did plenty of guided practice reading from the bookshelf.
Much as Felian had expected, the math classes I offered were not very well attended. Virtually the only griffons who were interested in learning math were those responsible for taking the harvest to the city in the fall. They wanted to be sure that no merchant was trying to cheat them and the village out of some coin with fancy mathematics.
There was another griff interested in learning math though, and that was Cynthia. When I asked her about it, she told me that she wanted to learn as much as she could about the world. Besides, she was likely to end up the eldergriff herself someday, and math would be useful at that point. A commendable set of reasons, and she had ended up being the most gifted student in the math class to boot.
Since my classes were only held in the evenings, that left me with plenty of time during the day to myself even with lesson planning. As a result I spent my days questing in the woods on the search for a place to harvest slate rock. Despite the beauty of the woods, there was a sense of danger that hung in the air.
I figured that I should be able to use my weapon with at least some skill, or at the very least not be more of a danger to myself than my opponent. In the woods I practiced dueling against a birch tree. My control over the blade was slowly but steadily improving, and I felt I was getting a handle on swordplay. While I still would be far, far, behind the skill of any knight or trained soldier, at I least wouldn't be entirely helpless if something attacked me in the woods.
One day, as I was returning back to the village, I ran across Cynthia resting near the farm fields in the shade provided beneath a copse of birch trees. Taking a seat beside her as she lay on the grass, we struck up some idle conversation about village life.
After a while though, a thought occurred to me. “Hey, so how come your father doesn’t come to the reading lessons? I find it to be kind of strange that so many other griffs in the village can read, yet the eldergriff can’t?”
She sighed before responding. “It isn’t like he doesn’t want to learn, but the duties of the eldergriff can take a lot of time out of his day dealing with petty squabbles and the other minutia needed to keep the village running.” I could hear the pride in her voice as she used the new word that I taught them all last night in regular conversation for the first time.
“Excellent use of vocabulary there. I award full marks.” I put on the voice of the wise old mentor figure as I lightly teased her, causing her cheeks to flush red.
She replied, “well, I had a pretty good teacher if I do say so myself.” There was a brief lull in the conversation before she spoke up again. “So how much longer will you have to wait for your wing to heal? I know you must be looking forward to being able to fly ahead instead of being ground-bound.”
“From what I’ve been told by Felian, I can take the splint off in the next couple days. The flesh is already healed up, just waiting on the bone itself.” I stopped for a minute to think of a way to explain that even with two working wings, I wouldn’t be able to fly. Physical therapy to regain my flight was the excuse that came to mind, but before I could voice it a brown blur came barreling towards us.
Our conversation was interrupted by the sudden arrival of one of the other villagers. They came crashing in with squawk, skidding to a halt right in front of the two of us. “There you are! Come quick, back to the village! We’re having an emergency meeting!”
“What? Why, what happened?” Cynthia shot to her feet, wide-eyed as the urgency in their voice pressed into us.
“Cyril was out hunting, and he spotted a giant raiding party headed towards Blackwood! We think they are going to try and raze the village!” After delivering the message he instantly sprung off the ground again towards the fieldworkers nearby.
“What!?” me and Cynthia shouted at his back as he left. That bounty I had found said that there were just a half dozen of them out there in the woods! At most! Where did they suddenly get the numbers from?
We immediately took off towards the village, where it seemed my peaceful vacation was about to come to an end.
Upon our arrival we found that the rest of the community had already gathered in the village square. The crowd murmured uncertainty as they considered the threat that they had been presented with. Gunther was out in front of the crowd, trying to calm their nerves before panic could truly set in.
As Cynthia and I slipped into the back of the crowd, one of the villagers began shouting. “I think we should just grab what we can and run already! If we leave now, we can get to the city before the bandits can catch us!"
“Oi! If we run with all our stuff, we won’t be quick enough to get away in time! What, would ya have us abandon everything we own to the bandits!?” the blacksmith shouted back at him.
“She’s right,” I added, “if we leave while burdened down with our belongings, all that's going to happen is that we are going to be attacked out on the open roads. Only way we can have a good chance running is if we leave everything behind.”
“What are we supposed to do then? Just lay down here and die!?” the villager snapped back at me, but I could hear the waver in his voice. The fact of the matter was that we had been stuck between a rock and a hard place, with no clean way out.
The fear that he felt was echoed by me, but that also came with a certain burning determination. I had only lived in this village for a short while, but I would be damned if I let these people lose everything they had.
“The way I see it, you have only two options.” I stepped towards the front of the crowd to better articulate my points to the griff. As I did so, I caught the attention of the rest of the village and the quiet conversation and arguments died down to listen to what I had to say as I stepped to the fore. I took a deep breath before continuing. There was no turning back now.
“First, abandon everything here, and hope that the bandit horde is distracted long enough with looting your homes to make it to the city in time.” Raised wings and shouts of protest throughout the crowd told me exactly what they thought of that idea.
“Second, you can fortify this village and protect everything that you hold dear. If we can make it clear that attacking us will cost more than it's worth, we can ward off the bandits. They are like rats, slinking around looking for easy pickings. They aren’t soldiers, they won't throw themselves into a fight they aren't sure they will win.”
The mood of the crowd was still hesitant, but the prospect of giving the bandits the boot had lit a fire in the breast of these people. It was Gilda the blacksmith who spoke up first over the quiet crowd.
“Ay, we’ve fought back beasties both magical and mundane before and we are still standing! We didn’t run then, why should we run now!” There was a chorus of cheers from the village as they took heart from her words. Indeed, these people had survived whatever horrors had been visited on them by chaos. With the dawning of a more peaceful age, they wouldn't give in to those seeking to prevent them from enjoying it.
“It’s settled then, we will protect our homes! We will drive this scum from our fields! We will show them what it means to be a true griffon!” Gunther shouted, his wings flaring out as emotions took hold. The roars from the crowd were deafening.
We would stand, and we would fight.
The only matter that remained was how exactly we would fend off the bandits. As everyone in the square broke off into small groups, I grabbed Gunther and went to go talk with Cyril. He was the one who had first spotted the bandits, and we would need any information he could give us in planning the defense.
“Cyril, can we borrow you for a minute? We’d like to talk with you about what you’ve seen out there,” I asked as we pulled him away from his fussing mother for a moment.
“Well, I’d like to be able to say I got a good and proper look, but after I saw them all I ran for my life!” The poor kid was absolutely rattled at what he had come across.
Gunther responded seriously, placing his claw on the young griffon's shoulder. “And it's a good thing you did Cyril, you’ve given us all a chance to prepare for what's coming.” Cyril’s restless actions calmed down a bit with the assurances of the eldergriff.
“Can you tell me what you did see? What was their force composition like?” I asked him. Despite the conviction that I had helped plant in the village, if we were outmatched against a mob of deserted soldiers or some other well-armed folk we might be forced to flee regardless.
“Uhh… what?” The look on his face reminded me that I wasn’t dealing with a trained army scout here, just a teenage hunter. Hopefully his eyes were just as good as promised, and Cyril could give us an idea of what was coming.
“What kind of weapons did they have? How many of them were there? Did any of them have armor? Things of that nature,” I expanded. We needed to know as much about them as we could before we started making plans on how to deal with them.
“There was a lot of ‘em out there, If I were to guess I’d say around three dozen of them, maybe clawful more. Only a couple of them had any real armor, prolly the bosses of the bunch.”
“Were they separated into groups much?” I asked.
Cyril nodded emphatically. “Yeah! They moved in clusters of around a half dozen or so, ‘cept for one larger group with prolly more than a dozen griffs in it. Big scary guy was with those ones as well.”
I nodded as I digested this information. Multiple ‘bosses’ as Cyril put them probably meant that this group was actually composed of several different bandit groups that had banded together for the promise of greater loot.
That could work to our advantage, as I doubted they had any real trust amongst themselves, and none would be willing to break their own power and band to achieve victory if that meant being subsumed by a different bandit leader. Plus, it was hard to enjoy the pillaging if you were busy bleeding out in the dirt.
“As for what they were carrying, they had a bunch of long spears and hooks for monster fighting and the like. Lotsa cudgels, axes, and knives too.” Cyril counted off what he had seen on his claws as he tried to remember.
"Only a couple of them had any bigger swords like what you have there Geralt” He said as he gestured to the longsword hanging by my side. I idly wondered if carrying that blade had gave more credence to my words earlier, as I looked like a proper warrior amongst the village.
“Archers?” I asked.
“Not many bows that I saw, though there were a clawful. I saw maybe a half dozen slung over backs?” The uncertainty in his voice did not inspire confidence in the count, but that was another threat that had to be considered.
Gunther then asked probably the most important question to know. “How long do you think that it will take for them to reach us?”
“Uhh… It took about two full days for me to get back home. But I was flying as fast as I could, and I know all the shortcuts for when I was ground-bound. If I were to guess, it’d take them about three days to get here from now? Maybe four?” Cyril answered.
Gunther and I paused for a minute to think about what we were told.
“Can I go now?” Cyril sheepishly asked. “I’m really tired, and I’d really just like to go to bed for a bit.”
Gunther dismissed the poor boy, and then turned to me with a grunt. “Three days it is, don’t want to be caught unaware.”
I nodded in agreement. “The only thing that left for us to do now is to see what we can get done to survive this.” It was time to make a battleplan.
“What kind of weaponry do we have in the village?” I asked Gunther, who took a moment to mull over it before responding.
“We are probably in a similar state to the bandits, maybe a little worse off,” He eventually said. “Everyone knows how to poke at a monster with a spear when they come knocking, and we’ve got plenty of those around.”
“I think our biggest advantage would have to be the archers though. If Cyril was right about what he saw, we should have plenty more bows than our foes. Hunters and the like, so pretty decent shots as well. Can probably rustle up around a dozen and a half from around Blackwood. Can’t say for sure we will get it all our way at a distance though.”
“Apart from that, the only things we really have that could be useful in a fight would be the knives and hatchets. They aren’t really fighting weapons as such, but can still cut.”
As we spoke, I found that my gaze was drawn towards the pitchfork leaning against the side of the house with its long sharp prongs. As I did so, a lightbulb went off instead of my head.
One of the most valuable weapons throughout history was the javelin, from the ancient Greeks all the way through to medieval knights. They carried far more power than a bow, and could be used as a weapon in melee themselves. As I looked at the pitchfork, all I saw was a number of tips just waiting to be fashioned into crude javelins.
“Gunther, do you think that we could make do without the pitchforks for a while? I bet that we could use them to make javelins for our speargriffs instead.”
“That’s… not a bad idea actually. It would give them something to use against a flying opponent from the ground.” Gunther’s eyes light up at the idea.
“Or to blunt a charge.” I added. “Make it so they lose their momentum and cohesion before they reach us.”
“And then we can tear ‘em to pieces when they reach us!” Gunther exclaimed excitedly, pumping his fist in the air before continuing. "As for the archers, I think that we should have them fly up the roofs. Have them stay on the slants that face into the village, that way they can duck out of sight and move around."
That was far better than sticking them on the ground behind the spears like I was going to propose. I had embarrassingly forgotten about thinking three dimensionally in our planning, everyone having wings changed the possibilities on the battlefield significantly. For our archers, getting up high was the easy part. The problem was what would happen if the bandits flew up as well.
“If the bandits decide to rush in and attack our archers from the air, the archers will be in some serious danger. We can give them first pick of the hatchets and knives, but that will just end up being more of a stopgap measure.” I was worried that if the bandits turned this into an aerial brawl, we would be quickly overrun. I didn’t have a clue how medieval air-to-air combat worked either, and I wouldn’t be much help anyways ground-bound.
“You’re right, we need something that can keep their attention away from our archers. We'll set up some barricades to draw the eye as well to stop them from just sweeping in. Just some simple wooden ones with sharp ends to keep them off us,” Gunther agreed readily.
He bent down to sketch an example down in the dirt. "We used stuff like this all the time to hold off monsters before. There is a small stock of the things somewhere in the village, but I'll see what I can do about getting some more made up. Don’t want to leave any gaps."
“They might not stop them, but it forces them to get airborne if they want to get over them, and they can’t land on them either to gain a height advantage. It also exposes their wings and their guts to us. Mix that in with the spears, and we can control the rate that they get in.”
"That makes sense, though what do you mean by 'control the rate they get in'? I thought it was best to stop them dead at a barricade," I questioned.
At this Gunther raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t it be better to let them over the barricades a bit? You know, and then we can press them up into the spikes. Stop too many of them smashing into us at once, and stop them from getting away.”
“We could, but that would make the battle much harder for us, and even if we win it will be a lot more bloody for both sides. We don’t need to kill them, we just need to drive them away. Best to give them a way out, if we corner them they’ll fight like… well cornered rats.”
“Guess that's the difference from most of what I’ve fought before. Damn demons don’t give up until either you or them are dead, and that costs blood. Believe me when I say that,” Gunther sighed. “Never really had to deal with fighting other griffons like this. Course we’ve had plenty of bandits before, but the lord and his knights always took care of them and the biggest monsters before they attacked us, and the smaller groups were dealt with by the bounty hunters.”
“I can’t say that I have experience with either brigands or demons. I’ve got some ideas on what to do, but I have no idea how effective most of them will end up being in an actual battle. Nothing quite ends up like the book.”
“Yeah, but some of your ideas still seem like good ones. Besides, it’s not like we have much of a choice in the matter. You go talk with the blacksmith about making your javelins, and talk to the archers. I’ll take care of the speargriffs and the barricades.” With a hearty thump on my shoulder, Gunther left.
I made my way over towards the blacksmith to discuss my javelin plan further. Gilda had returned to her shop the moment after the meeting had ended, and I found her repairing one of the pitchforks. How prescient.
She looked up at my approach. “Well well, if it ain’t the master tactician himself. Whaddya need from me then?”
Relaying to her my idea for the javelins, she hummed consideringly for a moment before responding. “Aye, I think I could make that work. I was worried when you came over here that you’d ask me to try and rush out some new blades, but this seems actually doable instead. I’ll need some more griffs to help me with the handles of course, but I can get it done.”
“I'll get you some claws to help with that,” I assured her, “we just need them to be ready by the time the bandits arrive. We can practice with some sticks to get the idea of how to use them down in the meantime. Won't quite be the same, but better than nothing.”
The matter of the javelins sorted, all that remained was to brief the archers on their part of the plan. Heading over to where they were waiting, I was surprised to see that Cynthia had joined them with a bow of her own.
“I didn’t know that you used a bow,” I commented.
“I started learning when I was pretty much a chick. My mother was the one who taught me how to shoot.” She tugged at the bowstring remorsefully before locking eyes with me. “Honestly, I’m pretty scared about what's coming. I’ve only been in one other fight in my life, and it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. And that was only against monsters, I can't imagine what it'll be like to fight people.”
“I would be more worried if you weren’t scared, I know that I sure am,” I replied sincerely. “Everyone is always at least a little bit scared when they fight. If there is the kind of person that can just kill another person and feel nothing out there, I wouldn't want to meet them."
She seemed to take a moment to think about my words before nodding. "Yeah, I guess so. Just got to do what we need to do. Keep our homes safe, no matter what or who comes to destroy them."
"That's right, and remember that your fighting for what's behind you, not against what's in front of you. On that note, time to talk about how that fighting is going to go."
The plan that Gunther and I had come up with was fairly well received, and the gathered griffons seemed confident that they would be able to pull it off. The arrows available to us were simple hunting broadheads, which would be brutal on any unarmored brigands. The bandit leaders might be unaffected by them, and charge down the archers. If the archers were attacked, they should immediately flee down towards the rest of the defenders instead of trying to duke it out with a superior opponent.
After the briefing concluded, most of the archers dispersed to assist the rest of Blackwood in the preparations, and I grabbed a few of them to bring back to Gilda for carving. Sitting on a stump, I shaped a branch into a shaft while watching Gilda work. Despite it being my idea, there was something unpleasant about watching farm tools being broken down into weapons of war.
Was it the right idea to convince everyone here to stay and fight? How many of the faces that I had met in the past weeks would we need to bury afterwards? It’s easy to advocate for a confrontation in the heat of the moment, but the tension that hung in the air around the village was unsettling.
Regardless, we were committed now. This upcoming fight would be a battle of wills almost as much as of blades. I hoped that our preparations and determination would be sufficient for the village of Blackwood to hold the line against the forest bandits.