The Foolhardies 102 The Great Escape Part 1

"I-I'm alright," I answered with a little difficulty. It was hard to speak when my throat felt like I'd just poured hot lead into it. 'I'm alright… I think."

"What happened?" Aura asked.

Although I couldn't see her, I knew she was riding alongside us. I could also feel Darah's arms holding me tight. She was most likely keeping me from toppling over.

I felt weak. My entire body was in shock like I'd just placed my hand on a live wire and got myself electrocuted. It was worse in my eyes. White-hot pain surged into them like the timed tapping of feet against the beat of some unknown song.

"Backlash, I th-think…" I answered. "Overused Fool's Insight too many times tonight… P-pain all over…"

The next voice I heard belonged to Darah. "Concentrate, Dean. Knowing the cause of your pain is not enough. Find the will to break through the pain and do what you need to do."

Her words gave me a chance to focus my mind. Now was not a time for giving into pain. It was a time for action.

I sighed. "You could make a killing selling fortune cookies, ma'am… Hold on…"

With every ounce of willpower I could muster, I forced my mind to focus on the pain in my eyes, forcing that pain back into the recesses of my mind and turning it into a dull, manageable roar.

Once the pain had receded, I took a deep breath. Then I opened my eyes.

I was a bird in flight looking over a battlefield that was the very definition of chaos.

Darah, who'd felt me relax under her embrace, whispered into my ear, "What can you see, Dean?"

"Everything," I answered breathlessly. "I see everything… and we're about to drown under a deep pile of mud, ma'am."

I described to Darah and Aura the scene beneath me to the best of my understanding, and every second I spoke I knew I was sapping the hope out of them. Things were that dire.

From my vantage point in the sky, I could see how all the forces were arrayed. Our Darah army stood in a straight line from north to south and faced off against the Magesong host which formed an opposite line to our east. The newly arrived Scarlet Moon army which had numbers that dwarfed ours had come at us from the north. Their formation was shaped like a crescent moon with its eastern tip touching the back of the Magesong clan's center army while its western tip was flanking Commander Vardoom's left army.

In my mind, I thought they were like an open maw of some wild beast threatening to devour our armies whole. It brought a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the dull pain that still racked my body.

How such a huge army escaped anyone's noticed was beyond me, but I suspect Ardeen Spellweaver had something to do with hiding them so completely. That was another reason I had to sock that fairy hard on the face.

The tale begins with the new arrivals, the Scarlet Moon Clan's army of at least a hundred-and-fifty-thousand strong drow and their monstrous allies. That number might be larger. I couldn't accurately tell. Not with my insight feeling like it was being forced to do overtime. More than once I felt like my brain was getting fried by a combination of painful spikes and info dump.

At first, I thought that the Scarlet Moon had arrived as reinforcements to the Magesong army that had lost at least half of their original forces. But I was wrong. The Scarlet Moon wasn't there to help at all. No, their soldiers were already in the midst of slaughtering the Magesong clan's rear line.

The Magesong soldiers thought the Scarlet Moon had arrived as allies too. So they didn't stop the approaching army, and by the time they realized their mistake, their forces were already under attack from the new arrivals. It probably helped that Great General Spellweaver and his son weren't around to lead them.

This wasn't just happening in the center armies battlefield, but even our left army and the Magesong's right army were experiencing a similar struggle. Vardoom's remaining fifteen thousand forces were neck and neck against the Magesong right army's own soldiers, and so they couldn't form a defensive formation to block the attack aimed at their left flank.

I watched in horror as the left army's flank was crushed under the attack of a Scarlet Moon heavy cavalry, and I could only imagine what kind of curses were coming out of Vardoom's mouth while this was going on. However, it wasn't all doom and gloom. Vardoom's forces were slowly veering south toward our center army.

"I think Commander Vardoom got your message, General," I deduced.

I heard Darah chuckle softly behind me.

"Yes, he's always been the reliable one despite his attitude… and appearance," Darah commented.

While Vardoom's forces were struggling desperately, our right army seemed to have an advantage over the Magesong's left army. The duo of Three-Thousand Man Commander Unna Ra Lara and Three-Thousand Man Commander Tyrox Xor was doing an amazing job leading their diminished eighteen thousand right army against a smaller Magesong force.

Seeing their success sent a spark of an idea into my brain, the makings of a plan that might save us from the mess we were in.

"In the middle of chaos lies opportunity," I whispered the words of the great Bruce Lee.

"Indeed," Darah answered. "What opportunity have you found?"

"There's a slim chance, but I think if we can gather south to where the right army is, we might be able to secure an escape path," I explained.

"There's nothing south of the Calmlands, Dean… no place to keep our enemies from pursuing us," Darah argued. 'Unless you plan to veer southwest and make our way to Clowntown."

I shook my head. "No ma'am. We need to go all the way south first. That should bring us near enough to—"

"—Broken Sellsword's Canyon!" Aura finished. "But, Dean, that's Lover's Embrace territory."

"Exactly," I said, feeling myself grin. "A neutral clan would respond to the arrival of our Darah army by sending out their own forces."

"How does that help us?" Aura asked confused.

"As long as we don't actually enter into their territory, they probably won't attack us," I reasoned. "But having the Lover's Embrace forces just come out would be enough to make some parties reconsider pursuing us. The thing about neutral clans, you never know who they're allied with."

"A ruse…" Darah noted.

I nodded. "Reforming our army in this battlefield under these circumstances is only asking our soldiers to die a useless struggle. But like you said—"

"—It would be a senseless waste of life and talent…" Darah finished.

"Yes, ma'am," I agreed.

I felt Darah shift in her seat. "Very well, Hundred-Man Commander Dapper… lead our forces out of this mess and I'll take care of the rest."

That was way easier said than done, but I did my best even while the pain kept shooting up my eyes like a heartbeat that was only increasing in its pace. Still, I managed to switch from the overview mode of Fool's Insight to the zoom-in function that was better for close encounters. Now, instead of a bird soaring alongside the clouds, I was a bird of prey gliding above the heads of our column, leading us through the sea of enemies.

For each battalion of Darah soldiers we met in the center army, Darah gave the orders of a slow retreat south while keeping our backs protected from the enemy. her orders were mostly followed, although there were way too many groups out of our reach or surrounded by enemy forces they couldn't break through.

I averted my eyes against these as I knew there was no way I could help them short of sending more people to their deaths. Darah was relying on me to lead us out of this mess and that was the only thing I needed to focus on.

Often, I would find myself yelling, "Turn right here!" or "We're heading to the left!" so our main column could avoid a patch of dense gray soldiers who would have held us up if we engaged them.

Sometimes I would call on either Aura or Luca to lead their vanguard left or right and engage the enemy so the rest of the column could move forward without slowing down. Always I would remind them to break off from the fighting once they'd ensured our soldiers had passed the enemy.

Every time either of them left to follow this order, I felt my heart tighten out of worry, and not until they were riding alongside us again did that tightness lessen.

It helped that Darah ordered her personal guard to join up with Luca's or Aura's squads. Although the Foolhardies were well trained for hit-and-run tactics, the strength of Darah's main unit was like sending a Tomahawk missile as reinforcements to our swords and bows.

In fact, things were going very smoothly for a time, and we'd nearly reached the right flank of our center army when I noticed trouble coming our way.

There was no mistaking the silver mask covering half his face or the heavily armored soldiers following him. Ardeen Spellweaver had popped out of the shadows and was leading those soldiers I noticed with him earlier in a charge that would intercept us before we reached the right army. The bastard had read my plan once again.

"Muddamit!" I hissed. "We've got company!"

Chapter end