Reincarnated to the Past 8: First Clash 2 (Patreon)

The sun set and we moved, and we made quite the weird group in appearance. 

Hoktim wore a short fur coat that reached to his waist on top of his sleeveless linen shirt. His pants was a thick linen pants. Ureya wore a tight leather chest protector on top of her linen shirt and skirt. I had sleeves and all of my clothes were made from leather except at the joints, which had been modified with linen since I joined the Kettins. 

The Scythians had made their camp between three low hills: a southwestern, northern, and eastern hill. The area the camp was occupying was no bigger than an American football field. 

Their horses were tied to each of the tents. Their tents reminded of Mongol yurts without the sophistication and size those tended to be, especially after Genghis Khan’s expansion out of the Steppes. This was … definitely more primitive; it was more patchwork in appearance. There were no banners or anything like that, but the tent in the middle was the biggest, which told me that their leader had to be in there.

Our own horses were tied and waiting behind the southwestern hill. 

“We go in, kill as many as we can without causing alarm, and then we leave, yes?” Hoktim asked from my left.

I nodded and looked to Ureya. She too nodded. 

Silently, we made our way down the hill and towards their camp, relying heavily on the tall grass that proliferated the area. Thankfully, the winds swayed the grass, so our approach wouldn’t look odd in the dim moonlight. 

I hefted up my surprise: my upgraded crossbow. Specifically speaking, it was a magazine fed repeating crossbow with reloading lever. I wouldn’t use this right now, though; I intended to use this to quickly set fire to the tents as we retreated. However, I brought it just in case we needed the firepower to suppress any enemies that might chase us even in the chaos we will sow. So I pulled the crossbow over my shoulder and slung it onto my back and then I pulled out my hatchet. 

We were less than a hundred meters from their camping grounds when I saw a patrol approaching from our left. Ureya stopped us, and drew her bow. She notched an arrow and pulled back.

The unsuspecting patroller didn’t even see the arrow before it landed right on his forehead. We dragged him into the tall grass, Hoktim looted the corpse’s bronze sword, and moved on. 

We crawled into their camping site, and each slid into a tent. 

The tent in question was used by only one person, and he was fast asleep with nary a cover. 

I pulled up my hatchet, tiptoed deeper into the tent, and then struck down as accurately and quickly as I could onto his neck.

The sharp iron edge bit into the neck, and the man’s eyes woke up, but by the time his eyes finished opening up, my heavy hatchet had already dug down through halfway into his neck, including his arteries if the sputtering blood was any indication. 

His eyes shakily looked to me before he just … stopped moving. He didn’t even get to fight me. 

“AAAAHHHH!!!!”

‘Fuck-!’ I shouted mentally before hurriedly leaving the tent. Someone had been awake this deep into the night!

I heard a few of the camps start to stir in their tents, and one man even came out of his tent. I whipped out my crossbow, fumbled with it in the dark, and then fired off a single crossbow bolt at the man.

Just as another man walked out of the tent to see his comrade get shot and fall to the ground.

“URUNGA!”

That sounded like ‘enemy.’

I nailed in the chest.

Soon, half a dozen of them were swarming out of their tents groggily. 

“Ureya, Hoktim! We’re falling back! Retreat!” 

Then I shot more of the near-naked warriors. By then, there were at least two dozen enemy warriors out of their tents, and the patrols with their lit torches closed in on us.

Hoktim and Ureya quickly met me as we fled southwest with myself backpedaling as I fired one meticulous shot after another, killing one warrior per shot without fail. 

It wasn’t long before we were running into the tall grass. I grimaced as I lost a clear line of sight with the enemy. No matter my accuracy, I couldn’t hit something I could barely see. 

“To the horses!” I hissed to them. The plan was a bust. 

“URUNGA TISSHAN!” one of the enemy warriors shouted from outside the tall grass, and I yelled in pain when something landed on my shoulder. My eyes snapped to the back of my shoulder, which faced the enemies, and flinched when I saw a crude arrow sticking through padded leather, the arrowhead piercing the armor but not piercing deep into my skin. I pulled it out immediately and tossed it aside. 

Very frustrated with the failure of my first mission, I turned towards the enemy camp, which should have been still within my crossbow’s reach, and unloaded the rest of my first magazine blindly. 

I blinked in surprise when I heard someone scream. 

Then I turned and ran.

Entering a sparse forest now, we ran over the hill, looking over our shoulders every half minute or so, and then we were at our horses in a small clearing, only to hear the sounds of enemy horsemen catching up.

“Get on your horses!” I shouted, knowing that neither of them could buy all of us the time to mount. I unslung my crossbow against their shouts of disagreement and took aim towards the slope behind us where the sounds were coming from. I quickly unhooked the first magazine of bolts and loaded my second, an action that took me ten seconds. Then I reloaded the crossbow by pulling the reloading lever back, which had a built-in leverage that made my action of pulling the crossbow’s seventy kilogram (150 pound-ish) draw weight no harder than pulling a twenty kilogram dumbbell. 

The sound of the galloping horses grew closer and closer until-!

When the head of the lead horse appeared, I didn’t think. I took aim, predicted the trajectory of the horse, and fired.

Two seconds later and after three more horseman show up after the first, the first one goes down. In the dim darkness, that was enough.

The horsemen grew wary of charging when one of their own went down.

I didn’t give them mercy because I knew that in this ancient world, I would get none from my enemy.

I fired once, reloaded, fired again, reloaded with strain, and then repeated for a third time, launching bolts one after another into the ranks of the horseman targeting not the men themselves but the horses they rode on.

Two crossbow bolts landed in the throats of the horses and the last bolt landed on the forehead of my last target. Three more horses went down, and the rest of the horsemen, some four more who were behind the first four, turned and fled. 

The riders, all four of them, wailed at their comrades to help, but my arm was faster in pulling the reloading lever back and firing off another bolt. 

With a thunk, my crossbow fired again, and the bolt flew in the dark with a whistle. There was a thunk and a scream as the closest enemy warrior took the bolt to the leg. 

I reloaded, pulling the lever back-.

“Alan, we’re on! Let’s go!” Ureya shouted from behind me. 

I hesitated in firing… and decided to not do it. I only had three more bolts in the magazine. I also didn’t want to kill more when I could make a clean getaway. I quickly ran back, picked up the discarded empty first magazine, got on my horse that the two of them had brought closer to me, and we rode towards safety. 

I should have celebrated wounding the enemy’s force and killing their horses, their main means of mobility, but instead, I only felt cold sweat dry up in the buffeting wind. My only thoughts were how many seconds it took for me to reload my crossbow and then face the horsemen: thirteen seconds.

If the enemy got their horsemen out to chase us ten seconds earlier, then I wouldn’t have completed my reload and certainly wouldn’t be getting away.

With that thought, I rode behind Hoktim and Ureya, terrified out of my mind.