Chapter 25 - The Inter-Cohort Battle: A Plan in Action


    <blockquote>


    Inter Cohort Battle Report:


    Cohort 1: 920/924


    Cohort 2: 789/833


    Ongoing Rifts:


    1st River Tower Rift C1 21 : 1 C2 [Victory C1]


    2nd River Tower Rift C1 - : - C2 [Seeding]


    1st Middle Tower Rift C1 12 : 13 C2


    1st Creek Tower Rift C1 5 : 8 C2


    Towers Fallen:


    Forest River Tower - Contested


    Century Battle Status Report, II, VII:


    Location - The Forest / River Tower - Falling back to Misty Tower


    Strength - 69/74


    Incapacitated - 5


    Dead - 0


    Rift Teams -


    Fifth Decio - Full strength


    Sixth Decio (aka Team Palinus) - Full strength [Engaging]


    Seventh Decio - 4/5


    </blockquote>


    Being assigned to the first century of the first cohort was a great honour and Janus was enjoying every minute of it.


    “I am going to find a nice girl from the second cohort and knock her out so she can’t run away from you!” He called to Kraton, his tent mate and the man to his shield side in formation.


    “Bahaha,” Kraton laughed with his usual boisterousness, slapping his wooden sword against Janus’s shield. “There won’t be any pretty ones left by the time we get down there, the bolt thrower is doing some fine work.”


    “We’ll be back to the barracks in time for a lunch date so maybe you can drink enough of the muddy watered wine that it won’t matter!”


    “That’d take a lot of wine…” Kraton said as he slapped his toned stomach and flexed an impressive bicep. “But getting back before lunch does sound like a fine plan.”


    Their banter lapsed for a time as they marched, listening to the other conscripts in their century as they shared similar conversations. They were moving quickly down the slope and the pace had only increased as they caught glimpses of the opposing century abandoning the river tower.


    To the left of their formation they could hear the orders of the Centurion VI calling for their supporting century to speed up. They were falling behind Janus and the conscripts in the 1st and would miss all the fun of mopping up the stragglers.


    It didn’t matter to Janus if they kept up or not, he was confident the 1st could easily manage to hold off the two centuries around the river tower, especially with the advantage of the nexus they were sure to capture as soon as the second rift team did their part to secure it.


    The second rift team had split off quite a while ago further up the hill to prepare for the capturing rift. They had seemed eager to Janus and he was sure they would make quick work of any rift team the second cohort could put together.


    *Crash*


    The siege cannon bolt struck the dead limb of a tree ahead of them, dislodging it with a crash. Their targets had dried up with the enemy century falling back from the tower and the team were taking wild shots into the forest. Janus knew from the lectures on siege equipment that with their range limited by the connection to a nexus that they were not firing effectively.


    “They’ve had their fun. Surely they should stop draining the river towers essentia for the second rift...” Janus commented.


    “It scarcely matters,” Kraton grunted. “It’s not like you to care about the rift pansies..? Ahhhh, you’re jealous of the team on the siege cannon!”


    “I… I am just thinking strategically.” Janus replied, “They are wasting essentia that would be better spent elsewhere.”


    “Haha, yeah sure you are. It does look fun blasting the cannon…”


    They had reached the bottom of the hill and passed into the edge of the forest uncontested. Up ahead they could see groups of conscripts running back towards the Misty Tower through the forest, but no cohesive force to counter theirs.


    “Century I!” They focused as they began to receive orders on the march. “Janus sin, march to capture at rift site two.”


    “Understood!” Janus, Kraton and the conscripts to their left took a slight left to march towards the glowing beacon of the rift as the reset of their century moved to capture the tower.


    They marched in ranks with their shields at the ready and swords drawn.


    As they moved through the edge of the forest their tight formation was broken to weave around obstacles, but the first century moved fluidly, maintaining their spacing and moving gliding around trees, stomping over bushes and through patches of mud.


    The rift ahead glowed. Its light was a pulsing beacon that pulled them forwards like a moth to the flame.


    “Something feels off,” Kraton whispered as they approached.


    “You are imagining things,” Janus replied. “ Look, you can see their rift team lying there… that stocky boy didn’t even take his sword and shield into the rift. What an idiot.”This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    It wasn’t surprising that this rift team was undefended. It was a common strategy for a weaker force to leave a dispensable rift team behind to contest the rift and delay the capture of the tower.


    They couldn’t just knock the team out, they would be defended by the rift. They also couldn’t leave a team behind their lines to attack at their own rift teams or the siege teams.


    So they had to wait.


    They had all done this before and they knew what to do to secure the rift.


    “Century I, quadratem (a square)!” Their centurion ordered.


    The conscripts moved quickly with each row of the formation jogging in a file towards their position to surround the rift.


    Janus followed Kraton as they made a wide turn around the rift on the right side. They maintained a ten meter spacing to avoid being attacked by the rift. They had all made that mistake before and the Nexus tendrils stung worse than the lash if they wanted to.


    The unconscious bodies under rifts always creeped Janus out. The way they fell as they entered the rift was uncanny, even experienced rift delvers would fall awkwardly with their face in the mud lying completely still with their limbs akimbo. He avoided looking too closely at the team they surrounded, but something tickled at the back of his mind.


    They swung around again to take their spots on the front side of the defensive position with the Misty tower poking up from the forest ahead of them and the rift with the bodies of the enemy rift team behind them. As he reached his position and set himself to look out into the forest he realised two things.


    One of the bodies around the rift had definitely twitched, and hiding in the forest amongst the bushes he could see the eyes of several enemy conscripts startlingly close to them.


    “WE''RE-!” As soon as he started yelling the forest was suddenly filled with an intensely thick smoke.


    The chaos started as his warning yell was joined by shouts of surprise from his century.


    The cacophony of voices was joined by the cry of a charge that sounded like it was coming from all around them.


    “Shields up!” The expected order came and Janus followed it as he was drilled. He already had his wooden shield up and at the ready, but with the order he charged the ars he held in a calculii on his left shoulder.


    A transparent wall of force sprung up in front of him and he could feel the effect of his shield multiplied by the ars that Kraton was channeling beside him and the defensive ars of most of the century carried forming a solid wall around them.


    Through the thick smoke he could barely see beyond an arms length in front of him. He could hear the sounds of the approaching enemy yelling unnecessarily loudly, he could also hear the sound of fighting and people yelling in surprise and pain.


    *Thump* he felt something strike the shield he channeled in front of him.


    From the flash he knew it to be an essence projectile. Janus Shrugged it off, a single bolt would do nothing against their shield. He was completely unconcerned.


    They would simply wait out this smoke ars protected behind their shield wall, this was the great strength of the Erulean Over-Legion and they would not be broken so long as they remained in a solid defensive position.


    The voices of the charging conscripts had finally reached them and through the swirling smoke Janus caught a glimpse of a second cohort shield as it charged into him.


    The shield, and the conscript charging from behind it, bounced off their shield wall falling on their arse. Janus didn’t even bother to move as he waited for the conscript to stand.


    Once the boy had regained his feet he moved to strike with a wild overhead chop of his short wooden sword. Janus respected the bravery of the boy, he was going out fighting rather than retreating and hiding or cowering in a bush.


    With a swift thrust Janus stabbed at the boy''s shoulder, his wild strike was too slow and it forced the boy to open his body up to attack. The sword struck hard into the gap between the chest muscles and collar bone, it was a calculated strike with enough force to bruise heavily and make it hard for the boy to use his sword but not enough to do permanent damage.


    “Ow!” the boy from the second cohort yowled with pain and dropped his wooden sword instantly cradling his shoulder. Janus lost sight of him as he retreated back into the smoke.


    The quick exchange had only taken moments but in that time he knew that something terrible had happened. Janus could feel that the shield wall was significantly weaker than it should be. Not knowing what else to do he stuck to his training and waited for an order or something to happen. With a muscular arm he grasped more tightly to the strapping of his shield.


    As the smoke began to clear he could see what he already knew. He was the last conscript standing on this side, and the surrounding enemy were already upon them.


    <hr>


    “We’re in! The ambush went well, thanks for holding down the fort team,” Seline said cheerily as she and Palinus joined their team in the rift.


    Wasting no time they talked via team chat as Palinus and Seline ran to their lane assignments.


    “Nice one… how many did you get!?” Rufian asked.


    “At least 5. They didn’t even turn around! They just stood there… It wasn’t exactly sporting.” Seline said.


    It was a sentiment that Palinus did not agree with, he had been excited to turn the tables on the First Cohort. Seeing them up close they all looked like giants who had been sculpted out of stone and managing to knock two out with his wand before they retreated into the rift had felt pretty good to him.


    “Anyway we’re glad you made it, I have an important question.” Rufian said via the team chat, “Why is this lane called the top lane?”


    “The convention for rift maps is to lay them out with the defending nexus on the bottom left and the attacking on the top right-” Seline started to respond.


    “Boring reasons… you could have just said boring reasons…” Rufian cut her off.


    Tuning out Rufian’s inane chatter Palinus took the opportunity to look at Seline’s avatar as she ran out of sight to another lane.


    Seline 584/584 | Level 0


    Verdant Druid - Archer / Verdant Druid / Woodsman


    Verdant Druid sounded like such an interesting class. He had seen her roots and the colour of the avatar’s information matched the flashes of essentia she channeled when she used that ars.


    Not for the first time Palinus wondered about Seline’s story. She didn’t have parents or any known family and her attunement and features were clearly Silvanian in origin. As a child he had asked, but she had always said she didn’t know anything.


    As she ran out of sight he reflected on his own avatar, Palinus was excited to see if he now had a cool class.


    Palinus 605/605 | Level 0


    Smoke Mage - Wandslinger / Smoke Mage / Mage


    He couldn’t help but sigh with disappointment. Smoke Mage… that was not going to impress anyone. A little part of him that was starting to enjoy the growing feeling of power was secretly hoping for something that sounded powerful or mysterious.


    Pushing down that feeling of discontent he focused on the task at hand.


    “What have we missed?” Palinus asked.


    “Five waves, and we have yet to have first blood.” Bruchts supplied helpfully. “They were confused and cautious with you both missing for the first few waves, but then they just pulled their roamer into the middle lane and have been collecting the essentia. So they have level advantages. Sorry.”


    “It was too much to expect them to do something stupid or to not capitalise, we will just have to bide our time.” Seline replied optimistically.


    A small part of Palinus was disappointed, he wanted to fight and he wanted to fight head on. If they had been a bit faster they would not have been at a disadvantage and could more easily win by dominating their opposition in lane. But they had known coming into the rift late was a risk.


    He consoled himself with the fact that they had not lost yet and even better, they had another plan.