Chapter 339: Chapter 323 – Regrets Always Came Too Late

“People rarely regretted something before it was too late, nor missed something until it was long gone.” - Old folk saying.

Nikodemus Sanvord felt great about the expedition, nay, the crusade that his lord had betted on. He was a knight from Lavinja, from a long family of knights that had served the various counts of the region for many generations. Twenty-six years of age and at the prime of his life, he hoped that the glory and rewards from the crusade would allow him to find better marriage prospects after he returned, despite his rather plain face.

 

The County of Lavinja had been through lean times for the past few generations, ever since their much-vaunted mines dried up. Even during his grandfather’s generation, their family had to tighten their belts due to the poor economic condition of their County. Things had just gotten even worse during his generation.

 

Seven years ago, when Nikodemus was still a squire in the final phases of his training, a scandal had rocked the County, with how the heir of a lord under the Count had been murdered in broad daylight by a pair of travelers. When the lord himself had gathered his knights and set out to pursue the murderer, they had only found the dead bodies of the lord and his retinue instead, while the culprits were long gone from their lands.

 

That event had shaken the people’s faith in their noble lords and caused a couple small-scale peasant rebellions to sprout up, which had further troubled the already troubled County. It took them over a year to put down those riots, and the County had been in worse shape than ever before, on the brink of dissolution, even.

 

It was during their darkest hours that an envoy from Oiloma had visited and talked at length with the Count, after which the County built up their military forces and conscripted soldiers out of the common populace where they could. The reason only became clear a few months ago, when the Count himself had announced how several regions from the Empire had decided to marshall their forces, supported by forces from neighboring Ezram and Theodinaz, to pursue an expedition into the lands of savages to the north.

 

An expedition to wrest the bountiful lands from the hands of the savages who wasted it and take it for themselves.

 

When the forces for the first wave gathered - mostly from the northern regions of the Empire with a token force from the neighboring countries, who would send more troops for the second wave - Nikodemus found himself part of a gathering easily fifteen thousand strong, and some of the knights from Theodinaz had called the expedition a crusade, a deity-ordained quest to claim the fertile prairies from the hands of the heathen savages. The moniker quickly took hold amongst the members of the expedition.

 

They found success when they ran across the first few villages of the savages, though some smaller scouting parties had been routed when the savages outnumbered them. Overall however, they made good progress into the prairie, with relatively low casualties, which was something that had greatly boosted morale.

 

That morale was further buoyed after the expedition’s first wave erected their fort in the prairie, and further bolstered when the second wave of troops - the contingent from Lavinja had been led by the Count himself - arrived, doubling their numbers and confidence. Quite naturally, when their scouts reported a great horde of the savages approaching from the north, every person in the expedition were eager to take them on and show the savages what it meant to go against them.

 

Even when he saw the great horde - probably twice their numbers or more - arrayed across the plains from them Nikodemus felt no fear, only great pride to be part of the crusade and eagerness to whet his sword in the blood of the savages. His fellow knights were all around him, and even his lord watched them from behind, so there was no way he would do anything to shame his order or his liege.

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The commanders of the expedition army had decided to let the savages attack them first, to break their charge and morale on the shields and spears of the gathered army, before sending out the cavalry to rout them. It was a simplistic tactic, but none had thought the savages deserving of more than that. Since the horde of savages had halted a bit outside of arrow range, the archers were left to do nothing but to twiddle their thumbs while they waited for the savages to charge them.

 

That was when things started to go differently from the plans they prepared.

 

The horde of savages advanced slowly and cautiously, rather than in the undisciplined mass charge they expected, then halted just outside of arrow range. Some of the archers with itchy fingers tried to low a parabolic shot but the shots mostly fell just short of the horde of greenskins before them and only earned them a reprimand from their commanders.

 

Then the greenskins unlimbered the longbows they carried and notched their arrows, every single one of them. When they loosed their shot, the expedition army suddenly found itself literally in the shade, as the thousands of arrows had blotted out the sun, so dense they were. The savages had larger bodies compared to humans, and the bows they used were similarly larger. While they were not yet in the range of the army’s archers, the army was well within their range already.

 

Nikodemus - along with many others - hurriedly raised their shields in an attempt to block the incoming rain of arrows. He felt many impacts against his shield, heavier than he had expected, and some of them even embedded themselves through the thin metal coating of his shield and into the wood behind. He felt as if someone was punching at his shield and body as he endured the rain of arrows.

 

Then he noticed how he was looking at the arse of the horse in front of him, and saw that his trusted steed had dropped to its knees, more than half a dozen arrows protruding from the horse’s flesh. Nikodemus wanted to sigh sadly at his mount’s fate, only to suddenly taste a metallic fluid that seemed to gush up his throat. It was a taste he was familiar with.

 

The taste of blood.

 

He looked down slowly, and only then noticed the three arrows that had slipped past his shield and pierced through the links of his chainmail, embedded deep in his body. He tried to stand up, but found that he had no strength to do so, and soon, not even the strength to sit up straight as he fell onto his side.

 

The last thing he thought before darkness claimed him was how he should have gotten that expensive plate mail after all…

 

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