6 Plans

I've been woken up by the bright sun quite early in the morning. I'm a believer that everyone's day should begin at 14:00, anything before that is a morning for me.

"Damn, that was some good sleep, my head hurts a little bit but overall I feel pretty refreshed." As I said that I looked outside of the window. The time looked to be around 11 in the morning, a decent amount of people were outside, doing their daily activities.

I've decided to go down to the first floor and look for Harold.

As I came down the stairs I spotted Harold at the table eating some weird soup.

"Shit, my head hurts like hell."

"Good morning mister Harold, you don't look too good, are you ok?" I said that with a light chuckle.

"Oh, good morning mister Max, honestly, I feel like shit, our wine is pretty strong so the hangover usually is appropriate, that's why we have a special soup recipe that helps curing it. Shame that the taste is quite bad. By the way how are you feeling?"

"Oh don't worry, my head hurts a bit but it's not that bad" I said that and took a sit near Harold.

"Alicia anticipated that and made a light dinner before going home, I'll bring it over immediately."

"Do you need help?"

"No, it's fine" He said that and went to the kitchen. It did look like Marta had some business as I didn't see her anywhere.

Harold brought our dinner and we proceeded to eat it silently. After we finished it Harold complexion looked a little bit better. A good meal plus the special soup worked magic.

Before we could start any dialog though we heard a knock on the door.

"Damn, business already? And I really wanted to relax a bit" Said Harold and proceeded to walk to the door. When he opened it I heard his slightly surprised voice.

"Martin? How come you finally found time to visit this old man?"

"I have some important business to discuss with you today, can I enter?"

"Sure, come in."

I saw Harold entering the kitchen with another man of high stature, brown hair, quite muscular and with a small beard. I've noticed some similarities between him and Harold.

"Mister Max, this here is my son Martin, he's in command of our hunters. " Oh, so it was actually his son, I proceeded to stand up and offer Martin a handshake while saying.

"Hello there mister Martin, nice to meet you, I'm Max Goldwin, a merchant that had a tragic incident yesterday and currently being offered shelter by your father."

"Mister Max had an unfortunate encounter with the bandits and all of his property was stolen" Harold proceeded to further explain my circumstances.

"Nice to meet you too, yeah those pests are a real nuisance recently, I'm actually here to talk about them, father." We shook our hands and Martin proceeded to sit on a chair.

"We plan on attacking the bastards at night." He said that with a serious face. This promises to be an interesting talk.

"You do realize we don't have the manpower for it right?" Harold said that with a straight face, being completely in his village head mode.

"Yes the bastards do outnumber us at least 2 to 1 from what we know plus they have good equipment but I think that sitting in our village, behind those walls won't help either. Fuckers even started attacking our hunter parties. You do realize that if this continues, we won't be able to go outside the village without fearing for our lives. Time is not on our side, they'll get only stronger with each passing week and if we really let them be I believe that soon they might be able to even organize a raid on the village."

He's right, by the looks of it, they can't hope to receive any reinforcements in the near future. They still have the advantage of knowing the terrain really well but in time, the bandits will also learn it. Right now, they still have possibilities but soon they'll lose even those and the only option left will be turtling behind the walls.

After a period of silence Harold was the first to say something.

"I get your point, so what do you propose?"

"We know of the approximate location of their hideout so I plan to take some lads at night and raid them. I don't think we'll be able to annihilate them but at least I plan on doing some serious damage." Martin said that, his eyes burning with determination.

It's a decent plan but the downside is that it really depends on multiple variables. The attack is guaranteed to succeed only one time, on the premises that the hunters didn't really go on an offensive until now so it should be a surprise for the bandits. After the attack though, they will be on guard and also will want revenge. So it's either you cripple them with a surprise attack, or fully annihilate them, a long term war won't be beneficial for the hunters. Don't just poke the bear, you either kill it or wait for the right opportunity to do so.

"I'm sorry for interrupting the conversation but I think I have a slightly better solution for your problem" As I said that I saw both of them turning to me. Martin didn't look too happy to be interrupted. Before he could say something I proceeded to take the initiative.

"I understand that you might think it's outside my area of expertise but I had some military education, my family was quite fond of the military so at some point I was force to learn the art of war a little bit." Of course all I said was a lot of bullshit but still, I played many video games in my world and at least for the current situation I'm quite confident of cooking a better plan than the one proposed by Martin.

"I don't say that your plan is faulty but I think it's incomplete. Allow me to ask this, how many people can you muster for the attack?"

Martin was a little bit reluctant to discuss this with me, but eventually he decided to at least hear me out.

"34 at max, all experienced people that I've hunted with for years."

"Ok, that means that the enemy should have around 70-80 people judging by your intel. I propose to follow your plan of a night attack but let's tweak it a bit. We'll use half of our forces to 'poke' them and the other half to 'kill' them. You said it yourself, they got cocky, I want to make full use of that." Martin looked to be interested in my idea.

"Let's use 17 people to make the initial attack, we'll give them a light shower of arrows and create as much confusion as possible. After some time they should realize that our forces are quite small, this should push them into making a counterattack on us. I want your guys to retreat while periodically skirmishing them. We'll lure them deeper into the forest where the second half of our troops will be laying in ambush." My plan was pretty simple but it was intended to annihilate the enemy, not just wound him.

"That sounds good, I like your idea but what if they won't fall for the bait?" Asked Martin a little bit more satisfied with my input now.

"Continue to shower them, make sure your guys throw some curses from time to time in a loud voice, I'm telling you, this should be enough to bait them." I said that with a smile on my face.

"Hah, good, there might be another issue though."

"The mage?" I asked anticipating his question.

"That's the thing, we don't know if it's only one. When we got attacked they indeed had a mage but that doesn't mean they have only him."

"Indeed, we should be careful when it comes to mages, that's why I want to directly be on the battlefield." That was a surprise for the two people and Harold proceeded to try and convince me to abandon the idea.

"Sir, I don't really think it's a good idea for..." I proceeded to cut him there.

"I have some personal business to settle with those bastards and now I have the perfect opportunity, plus in case something goes wrong I want to be able to influence the situation." At those words Martin furrowed his eyebrows a little bit.

"I think as the only person with military education here I will be of use in the upcoming operation. I'd like to be in the first group and coordinate the luring part as I believe this should be the trickiest part while you'll be in the second group coordinating the ambush. Just to be clear I won't interfere with your men's work, but just in case something unexpected happens I think I should be able to respond properly to the situation."

Martin contemplated my words for a couple minutes.

"Alright, but I'll put a trusted person as your aide, our hunters use whistling and other sounds to coordinate in the forest, without knowing those you might accidentally catch an arrow to the head. That's why you'll need someone besides you. He'll help relay your commands and coordinate the attack."

It's good that he gave me command of the first group. In case he refused I believe it would've taken a lot of time to try and convince him otherwise.

"Meet us at the gates before the sunset. I'll organize the men." As he said that he turned to leave.

"Son...take care." Harold said with a worried expression.

"Don't worry dad, I'll be fine." Martin said and proceeded to leave the house.

After his son left, I received a very good question from the village head.

"Mister Max, do you have a weapon for the upcoming fight?"

Right....a weapon...of course I freaking don't. Reading my expression Harold said.

"Don't worry, I have a spare bow and a hunting knife, It should be enough to at least defend yourself in case the situation gets out of control."

"To be honest I rarely used a bow and the knife won't be too useful in my hands either but still it is better than nothing so thank you very much."

"Don't worry about that, it's not a big deal, I'll be right back."

After some time I saw Harold coming back with a bow over his shoulder and a knife in his hand. The knife had a generic appearance but the bow looked pretty cool. I used to play with bows when I was a kid so I had some knowledge about using one, not that I plan to do it at night but still, it's a good measure of precaution.

"If you want to get used to it, behind the home is a small yard where you could train your shooting skills." Said Harold spotting my interested gaze.

"Then I'll be going there, thank you very much."

As I took the bow I proceeded to walk outside and into the mentioned yard. I spotted some targets placed at a reasonable distance so I decided to practice my shooting skills for a couple of hours to pass time and also think about the upcoming operation.