Chapter 31: 31- Battle Plans

As I sat at my desk that was situated in the middle of the town square, I couldn't help but sigh as my thoughts wandered around for a bit, not for the first time that day. Captain Dunn didn't give any clue about what he thought of what I had said, he only fell into deep silence for quite a long time as he looked at me, unsettling me greatly, before finally giving me my orders for what I had to do the day.

"Son?" A naturally loud voice sounded from in front of me, dragging me back from my brooding and making me jump up in my place, knocking the ink bottle and the quill I had in hand away.

Standing up after gathering the thing I had dropped to the ground, I looked in front of me at the giant of a man that stood there. He was quite tall, around 1.9 meters and had a strong and muscular body that almost rivalled some of the smaller fiyavtics, he had a head of short black hair and brown eyes. At that moment the man was looking at me with a raised eyebrow, seeing me look at him he smiled and nodded.

"Sorry, I... I was just..." I hurriedly said as I tried to explain myself, but then the man just waved his big hand and laughed it off:

"It's alright son, no need to worry about anything, we all are out of it with how things are, I barely could operate today too."

"... Thanks for the understanding..." I replied as I sighed, I was really quite out of it due to all that had happened the day before.

Seeing the man still standing there waiting, I was finally reminded of what I was doing there.

"Na- name, name of father, occupation and Inheritance?" I asked as I stuttered a bit while holding my quill, I actually knew the man, as probably few in the whole town didn't, considering he had the most well-known and liked bakery in town, and how he himself was a good person in general.

"Randy son of Daniel, a Baker," The muscular man answered as he smiled, "my Inheritance is an oven."

I diligently wrote what he told me down in the book in front of me before finally lifting my head and giving him a bit of a forced smile as I said:

"The crossbows and swords are going to get provided here tomorrow at midday. Also, if you aren't sure about your ability to use them, you can stay here after that to get some training in how they are to be handled."

"I think I'm a bit rusty with swords and crossbows since the last mandatory training I was a part of was like 1 year ago or so," Randy laughed as he scratched his chin, "so I will take you on your offer then."

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With that, the big man turned around and left. Watching his retreating back, I couldn't help but sigh as I returned my head to the record book in my hand, it had in it the names of all the able-bodied men and women in town and their Inheritances.

All that morning I had that weird sense of surreality as I wrote name after name in that notebook. That feeling came from Dorian's memories and life. He had gone through this many times before, but all those times it was only a drill to prepare in the case of something like this happening, and Dorian never believed that something like this would ever come, that the old Knight was just working them harder than needed because he could. And then, sitting in the square while I wrote name after name, doing something I never thought I would do for real, the contrast put me in quite a state.

What I was doing at that moment was performing a count for the able-bodied individuals in town who were going to be of help in the coming war, I needed to register every man and woman and their Inheritances in the notebook I had, which would then be used for further preparations, like the number of weapons we; well not us the guards but the army actually, needed to prepare and the like.

Sir William was a military man before he came to Border Town and took his role as its ruler, and that was clear from how he did things. Unlike other rulers, he was quite stringent on his subjects' military training and preparation. Every person in town would have to go through a week of training at least in using the crossbow and swords and even some simple formations if possible, this was something that other towns were supposed to push for too, but they rarely did, and even if they did they wouldn't be performing it as regularly or strictly.

The reason there was such a law for towns in the first place was that, for small towns and villages, the citizens would always be part of the wars that happened. After all, their armies and guards didn't have many members, and they would almost always use the citizens to fill the gaps. Not that they would be the main fighting force, instead using the much easily operated crossbows for some midrange support. The swords were mostly for when things turned really sour and there was no other option but to join the front lines.

As I did my work, I went through how the coming battle, or more precisely siege, would go. As I was told before, starting from tomorrow, the castle will start accepting people inside it, before the demons' army made it to the town all the citizens would be inside the castle, leaving the town empty and ready for the coming battle that it would house. The first part of the battle would happen at the town's outer wall where our archers and other users of long-range weapons and Inheritances would try to deal the first blow to the demons' army. The outer walls weren't that strong though, they were mostly made by the townspeople and they would certainly fall, which leads to the second part of the battle.

Once it becomes clear that the outer wall was going to fall, the archers and other long-range fighters would start their retreat and they would hide behind the soldiers who would, by that point, have filled the narrow streets of the town, using them as a bottleneck to split up the demons' and make them lose some of their numerical advantages. This part here would probably be the hardest as we would need to fight the demons face to face while trying to hold our ground for as long as possible. Of course, this whole time the archer and the other long-range fighters would be doing their best to help, not only them though, even the citizens would be part of this fight, remaining at the back of the army and tops of building, using their crossbows for support to take down as many demons as they could.

All that time, the soldiers would be retreating towards the castle, once we enter the clearing the siege weapons, archers and crossbow users on top of the castle walls would start firing off, giving us enough coverage to enter the castle safely. From there, the last part of the battle would start, the siege.

Once the retreat into the castle is done, the last part of the battle would start, we would try to hold on as much as we could for the reinforcement from the Marquess of Brightglow. The castle, even though it was quite smaller than the other castles in the bigger towns and cities, wasn't leaking much in other facilities, especially its wall. The castle's walls were quite high and thick, it would take the demons a long time if they wanted to go through them through brute force. It also had its own siege weapons to fight against possible invaders, so that along with the soldiers from the top of its walls meant that we weren't powerless inside the castle. Food and other such necessities too weren't a problem considering how they were being taken to the castle at that very moment.

I wasn't as optimistic for this last part of the fighting though, and that was due to one simple reason, I didn't think that the reinforcements would get to us fast enough. If it was any other time and under other circumstances, it wouldn't have been a problem, but things were anything but normal, and to be honest, border town wasn't that much of an important strategic location, and the situation we were in right now wasn't normal, more important locations needed reinforcements and I knew that they would get it ahead of us. I could be mistaken and we would still get help normally, but I didn't hold much hope.