Toad tribe

"Are you sure about the place?" Sir Burncoat who was part of her personal escort asked the local hunter.

"Yes my lord, I am definitely sure that this is the best area to catch the biggest preys. We don't usually come this way because none of us hunters can take on the monsters here." The man affirmed.

The hunter was a bald man with a hat so old Nessa couldn't even tell what sort of head-wear it was originally supposed to be.

"Could we have guessed the intentions of our enemies wrongly then?" Sir Granchant or asked from somewhere to her left.

That man was the one who interrupted her with a lute that one time. She had to admit that he was good with strings, be they attached to a lute or a bow. She turned back to look his way with a frown and he hurriedly added something.

"Not that our lady would make such a mistake! I'm just saying that we might not understand their motives fully after all."

"I'm sure they will come, the real problem is to know whether they already passed or if they have yet to arrive. If they already came, they will surely have left some traces behind. I want the knights to search the area thoroughly. If we don't find anything then it means we're ahead of them somehow." Nessa told everyone in answer.

"Understood my lady." The knights answered and lead the rest of the group to disperse.

A few hundred knights moved at once and scattered around the local woods. Nessa wasn't worried for their safety at all, even if the monsters here were supposed to be strong, only the toad tribe was a real threat to this amount of knights.

Swiftly, only her five escorting knights and the bald hunter remained at her side. While everyone was looking for some indication that the toad tribe had passed here or not, she started planning the ambush.

To be perfectly honest, this place was absolutely unsuitable for an ambush.

The forest wasn't really dense in the area because of the large monsters roaming the place and felling the trees in their way, there were no rock formation to take advantage of, no river, no hills and the weather was clear.

"Is there any sort of landmark around here? Something that isn't an open forest?" She asked the hunter directly.

The man gripped his hat nervously and answered along with fifteen short bows.

"No my lady, sadly not. My apologies. The nearest thing that stands out is a small clearing that way. There was once a barbed-mouther living there that razed down all the old ancestors and nothing grew back since. It's the only place anyone could build a camp around here if that helps?"

Nessa answered with a short nod and looked in the direction he was pointing towards. If this was the only place to build a proper camp then forcibly, the toad tribe would have to stop there. In that case, if she found a way to hide her troops reliably she could have everyone wait in the vicinity and catch them as they arrived.

Finding a way to hide more than three hundred persons in shining heavy armors was a real problem however. She turned her eyes towards Sir Dendourse. Being the eldest here and a renowned knight, he had more experience on the field than anyone.

"Sir Dendourse, how do I hide three hundred knights in an open forest?"

"Sorry my lady, this is simply impossible." He answered with an apologetic frown.

It sure sounded impossible but there had to be some way. Maybe they could hide underground using some earth magic? It sounded like the most effective idea she could find but none of the knights would want to do it. They were too proud to hide under some dirt. They'd all be offended by the suggestion.

Knowing the nobles around here, they wouldn't be against some mildly underhanded tactics if it was to get back at the cursed-bloods who humiliated them time and again but it couldn't damage their image in the eyes of all the other knights present. Dirt was the lowest of things so of course, no one wanted to appear disgracefully covered in it.

So what could she do then? If they just stood there the warriors from the toad tribe would obviously not show up.

"I suppose that just staying on standby a bit further wouldn't work either. At best, even if we attack them in the middle of the night, we'll only force them to give up their camp in a hurry."

The five knights around her all agreed on that.

The tribes were used to running away from large groups of knights. They'd hear their armors and weapons clanking in the night from far away and escape in a hurry to dodge a direct confrontation. The faster knights might manage to catch a few enemies but she couldn't expect everyone to catch up to the fleeing enemy, even if they were considered slow. What's more, they would have a big advantage in the night as they could see much better in the dark than her human knights. They'd use tricks along with their superior senses to escape and even surround the knights that rushed too far ahead and kill them before the rest of her troops showed up.

This wasn't the way to go but in that case, what could she do to insure a decisive victory?

She thought about what she could do as well as what the important nobles proposed as strategies throughout the last week. None of the ideas they gave could apply properly to her current situation but one of them did give her an interesting idea.

"What if we were to raise a tiny camp in the clearing ourselves. We'd pretend to be only a few and wait for them to attack us in the middle of the night on their own."

The cursed-bloods were fond of night raids so all she had to do was pretend to be weak in the middle of the night to bait them in. If there were only a few tents raised and just a couple of knights standing guard, they wouldn't expect to face a strong resistance and only see a good opportunity. She'd have all the knights piled up in a few tents, all already wearing their armor along with their drawn weapons. The moment the tribe attacked, they'd all rush out of the tents more than ready to fight. Those ambushing and those ambushed would then be reversed.

Ignoring the hunter, she presented her idea to the other five in order to hear out their opinion. In the past, she would just have went with it as this is how those around her usually did things but she had learned in school that sometimes, other people with much lower standing could provide some valuable insight.

With their help, her plan was quickly refined into something usable and very well defined. They provided a good amount of ideas to improve on what she proposed and it made her once again confirm that Emp and Mable both had the right idea on how to decide of a plan.

She was very confident in her reasoning abilities but different people always came with different ideas and it was only when taking all of them into account that the best course of action could be seen clearly. Hanging out with smart people was the best after all. She was so glad her bodyguards could use their heads properly. She'd have felt really lonely if all of them had been all brawn and no brain.

Thankfully, they were not and so she could often have some interesting discussions with them like now while she was waiting for her knights to come back.

It didn't take too long before she had the confirmation that the toad tribe didn't come around here yet. Considering the time it took them to get there and how long it had already been since their last attack however, Nessa and the gathered nobles didn't think that it would be long before they came here. They should arrive sometime between now and maybe three days later at worse.

It gave them plenty of time to prepare the ambush she planned. She gave her orders and the nobles reluctantly moved to the clearing were she planned to strike the tribe.

Since the fight was planned to happen in the night and she needed everyone to be awake then, she asked the troops to try and get some sleep in turns while the sun was still high up.

Those that weren't sleeping had to help prepare the ambush. Despite the plan being rather simple sounding, a lot had to be put in place. The supplies had to be secured but made visible to entice their target to come. Fires had to be lit so that the toad tribe would spot them from afar but not too much that it would seem suspicious. Enough tents had to be erected that it would seem plausible to see but not enough that it would seem impossible for them to attack either. Then they had to prepare some lights in advance.

She had the knights pile up wood and dry grass everywhere in the woods surrounding the clearing. They even cut down a few ancestors for her to make more space and wood to burn. The trick was to have enough big fires for the knights to see everything while still somehow making all those spots inconspicuous. If when the toad tribe showed up they spotted the places were fire were to be lit right away, they would understand that something was off and refrain from attacking.

In order to hide all this, they pretended that all those were piles of branches cut off from the ancestors as they cut down the trees. More often than not, when cutting down a tree, the branches were all piled up into big temporary mounds to get to the trunk right away. Those branches would be picked up for firewood later little by little or transferred into a wagon to be carried off once all the leaves were removed. With cut down trees here and there, their opponent wouldn't think that anything was strange about this but all of those piles were ready to be set on fire at a moment's notice. The massive braziers should provide a bright light across the whole clearing and the surrounding woods too.

Reusing the idea of hiding underground with earth magic, each piles of wood were placed under the watch of a servant hiding in a hastily dug hole. Each of them were equipped with a burning talisman and when the signal would be given, their task was simply to get out of their hiding hole and use the talisman to set their wood on fire. Using oil would have been less costly and just as quick but she was afraid that the sense of smell of the cursed-bloods would pick it up and expose their plan.

After that, the knights used what time they had left before night to place down traps around the fake camp. Those traps would be the opening but once they were activated, the enemy would know this was an ambush. They couldn't do anything all that special because the moment one of them sprung up they would all have to hurry and launch their attack. They couldn't place too many either because they didn't have the time of course but also because it would be truly embarrassing if their own knights fell into those traps because they were too densely packed.

Still, the knights seemed to really enjoy placing down traps. They where eager to get back at the tribes for all the things they put the northern grove through. They were appreciating the idea of the enemy falling for the sort of thing they usually used against them. because of this, Nessa left them free to set up any sort of trap they wanted using anything they wanted as long is it remained undetectable for the enemy.

The nobles came together and agreed upon a simple yet devastating trap design. They gathered more talismans from their supplies and carefully half buried them in places they selected in advance. Everyone was made aware of which area was unsafe to walk on clearly before they started placing the traps and then they easily covered them up with dirt, moss and leaves.

Talismans were powerful and dangerous weapons, the moment they were cracked open, they would release the spell attached to them. Because they were so fragile, they would break without a doubt if someone stepped on them, it was all the more true for those fat toads. If they didn't get in the camp following the safe paths, they'd get assaulted by all kinds of spells from under their feet.

With all those preparations done, it would be very embarrassing for Nessa if those cursed-bloods never showed up. She was very nervous about it because the opinion that everyone here had of her wasn't the most resplendent. She could tell that they were mostly following her to entertain her or try to gain her affection rather than because they actually trusted her. If she made a big mistake on top she would have a really hard time getting back up. She needed them to stop seeing her as the pretty lady Hasting and see her as ruling lady Hasting instead.

She prayed to the ancestors that the enemy would show up throughout the night but they didn't. Did they just not get here or did they see through her plan and didn't attack? She doubted the toad tribe would be smart enough to spot the ambush but the laomillians couldn't be underestimated. They were relevant here because most of the important tribes and those made of bulkier individuals almost always used laomillian scouts.

Laomillians were small, crafty, agile and masters at hiding themselves. They only had a few warriors but their tribe made up for it by scouting for the others in exchange of some of the bounty they collected. More likely than not, a laomillian would be the one scouting for the toad tribe instead of one of their own and this was a problem for her because they were really much smarter than the big toads.

A laomillian scout was really hard to spot for most of the knights but even if they did spot them, they had been ordered to do as if they hadn't in order to lure the toad tribe more easily. She couldn't help but wonder if she had given some wrong instructions or if the enemy scout saw that something was off.

She felt like the way everyone looked at her turned even worse but she would have everyone wait here for a few more days anyway. The enemy could show up at any time, they couldn't be certain that they wouldn't come or that they turned tails already.

Because of this, she also had to force everyone to remain hidden in the tents throughout the day as much as possible. If the tribe's scouts showed up and saw a large group of knights lazing around a camp that small, they would know that something was up and never show up when night came.

That day ended up being really hard on her because everyone felt cramped and too close together. Nobody liked to sleep through the day either even when they knew that they would have to be up all night long. Everyone was irritable already and it had only been a single day.

It was all because the morale was low to begin with since they didn't really trust her plan or believe that the enemy would show up as intended.

She tried to get some sleep herself to calm herself but she barely got a few hours of rest in the end. It wasn't because she was too stressed about this whole thing or even because of the sun! Instead, it was simply because she could feel everyone staring at her while she tried to sleep and it disturbed her.

She couldn't keep a tent for herself because of the plan so she slept outside in the open like everyone, without her armor of course. She felt the eyes of those trying to court her burn holes through her body the whole time and it annoyed her deeply. Who could ever sleep in those conditions!

Once night came back around and everyone got piled up in the tents again, she really hoped this would be for the last time.

Only a few knights were left outside pretending to be on watch duty. They stood behind the lines of traps and waited to be attacked.

The servants were hidden further in the woods ready to light the fires as well.

Like for the previous night, Nessa remained tense in the pitch black and cramped tent.

Finally, a thundering blast assaulted her ears, something stepped into a trap. She did not feel dread or nervousness, she only felt hopeful. If it was just an animal or a monster, the sentries wouldn't say anything but if it was truly the enemy, they would raise the signal.

"Please be the enemy." She begged the ancestors.

A second that seemed to stretch forever passed and then relief washed all over her when one of the sentries shouted from outside.

"Enemy attack! To arms! To arms!"

Everyone was already armed though, this was only the signal to begin the ambush. All her worries dissipated like smoke right away and a victorious grin appeared on her face. It worked! This was her time to show everyone what she could do! This was the time to finally get a victory for her northern grove.

"Give them hell! Get them all!" She shouted with her sword raised.

She was answered by a deafening war-cry and all the nobles rushed out of their overfilled tents.

She ran out herself to get into the fight and finally got a glimpse of what was happening outside. Pyres were quickly and suddenly lit all around the area and the scene quickly turned almost as bright as day for her and her troops.

In the field of traps and in the woods around, dozens of ugly giants lumbered towards them. They had encircled the camp to prevent anyone from escaping which would have been a good tactic if there had been only a few knights. Here however, it only made her smile. Their troops were all scattered and severely outnumbered. They'd all be quickly isolated and surrounded themselves.

"Don't let them regroup and don't let any escape!" She shouted again, barely managing to get heard over the song of battle already rigging in the field.

The knights around her all rushed towards the enemy with fire reflected in their eyes and over their armor. Bows were usually used first but in the dark, it was much harder to hit the enemy. Plus, this race of cursed blood had so much fat on them that most arrows didn't do anything to them. Going into melee right away was the correct tactic and also the plan that had been agreed upon previously.

The disgustingly fat toads all looked surprised beyond belief and distraught by the sudden turn. Before they even clashed with her knights, their attack devolved into chaos. They didn't seem to have any idea on what to do and all acted upon their own personal ideas. This meant that some tried to pull back towards their allies, some just tried to run off while others pushed forward like madmen.

Her knights quickly collided with them and started exchanging blows. Those toad men had the advantage in terms of height and strength, most of her knights barely reached their pectorals and their weapons looked like children's toys when compared to the massive war clubs the tribesmen wielded. However, she had a bit more than eight times their numbers and the cursed-bloods would quickly be overwhelmed. However tall and strong they were, a knight only needed one opening to cut their necks open after all.

There were more of them than what she had anticipated but she didn't worry about the outcome. This battle was as good as won already, she could taste the victory, it felt exhilarating.

This didn't mean that she could just stay there and do nothing however. She had to prove her abilities and test herself against the enemy. She had to fight too. As the commander of their forces, she had the right to pick a fight with their chieftain, their best warrior. Even if the rest of the knights and nobles believed she would loose, they didn't have the authority to stop her here which was perfect.

She looked around quickly and spotted the tallest cursed-blood of them all. He was towering even over his own kind and barking orders in the language of its tribe. In this chaos however, only a few seemed to hear or listen to him.

She pointed its way and ran towards it with her escort keeping her company. They left her some space so that she was able to start the dance as she moved towards the enemy commander. She started spinning in the middle of her run and by the time she faced the chieftain, she had pushed herself into the third stage of the dance already.

If she could defeat the enemy commander right here in honorable single combat then her place would be secured. She had to win no matter what, she would go all out right from the start.

She pointed her sword lockstep towards his face and called out to him.

"You're the chief of the toad tribe right? Face me and pay for your crimes against my people!"

The guy eyed her with disdain. He almost had to bend himself forward to see her because of how tall he was in comparison. Her eyes were at the level of his bellybutton, she was like a small children in his view.

His many layers of fat danced and jumped as he laughed right at her face. It was all easy to see because nothing covered his enormous belly. He wore a loincloth and a skirt of foul smelling furs as well as some arm-guards made out of scales but that was it. Nessa didn't count the necklace of belt buckles as a piece of clothing and its crown of wood and bones was more a symbol than a head-wear.

His bulbous eyes locked onto her closed helm and he spoke on an amused tone while saliva dripped from his gaping mouth like a waterfall. She felt sorry that Lockstep and Chassé would have to touch that disgusting thing.

"You be shiny chief? I be dead but I no like lonely."

Nessa had no idea what in the world he meant with that but she didn't really care either. His accent was too sloppy and he clearly didn't speak the tongue, it would just be too much efforts to try and decipher what he said.

Anyway, the chieftain didn't await her answer and raised his weapon. That thing was massive. It was a club that seemed to have been carved from the trunk of a tree directly and massive fangs had been lined all around its head. The first thing that came through her head as she saw him raise that thing easily was that the fangs made no difference at all. If she was hit by that, she would be turned into pulp regardless of the fangs presence.

She pictured the trajectory of his swing clearly before he started his attack and started moving to dodge it right away. She moved forward and lunged to the side before his club started to swing down. His weapon moved surprisingly fast for its size but she still managed to avoid it safely.

She felt a strong wind from where the club was swung and heard an ominous whoosh followed by a boom as the weapon crashed into the ground and sent dirt flying everywhere.

She then crouched to escape a swing from his offhand intending to bat her away from him and spun back onto the top of his club. The last time she stepped onto the weapon of someone, she lost her balance and got flung off but this time, she knew exactly where she was so she didn't fear that she would fall off.

Her swords crossed in front of her at blinding speed and a hundred cuts appeared onto the stomach of the cursed-blood. His greenish hairy skin probably looked even worse in the orange glow of the fires, she didn't feel bad at all covering it in cuts. Thankfully, her dance prevented her from being disturbed by the lighting condition as her world was now made up of only sounds. Sadly however, his enormous frame had so much fat on it that none of those cuts were deep enough to injure him properly, not because his skin resisted her blades but simply because she couldn't reach deep enough.

It did make him realize that he couldn't underestimate her so much however. She saw the look in his eyes change in shock and felt his heart beat change. Now he would take this seriously, the real dance was about to start.

The nearby toad warriors decided to come to the help of their chief as well but her escort swiftly intercepted them with many other knights. This fight would be between her and that chief only, the knights all knew that when a duel was called like this, it was very improper to interrupt it by aiding one side or another.

She showered him with more quick lashes of her swords before he reacted violently and threw his club back up in the air. She let the club rise under herself and made a back flip to fall back onto her feet. Immediately after, his left arm came back tearing through the air in an attempt to punch her. She stepped back lightly and carved up his forearm with a spin, sending blood flying in every direction despite the scale bracer he wore. She had cut straight through his protection.

The huge man roared in frustration and stomped on the ground powerfully in retaliation, kicking up dirt onto her helmet in the process. Her visor was totally shut however so the dirt only bounced harmlessly onto her armor instead of blinding her.

The earth crumbled under his massive weight and strength as he propelled himself forward faster than a man this large should be able to. He threw a wild horizontal swing of his club which combined with his charge should have made her unable to dodge it but Nessa didn't panic. She saw it happen long before the motion had begun and propelled herself forward and up as well. She couldn't jump all that high but her movement was so well timed that she managed to use the club as a step to increase the height of her jump much further.

She flew well over the club which ended up hitting another unlucky knight who blew open like an overly ripe fruit. His armor was instantly torn open and the flesh inside just collapsed on itself as the man was sent flying like a simple ball. His shield arm was torn off and left behind by the violence of the impact.

The monstrous man wasn't that surprised to miss her and had already began his next step, he completely ignored the knight he just killed.

He opened up his mouth as she kept rising up in the air in front of him and threw out his tongue her way. It moved fast, so fast that a human eye wouldn't be able to see it, but she wasn't using her eyes and his dance steps were predictable.

She formed a wall of cuts in front of her before the tongue even left its mouth and the slimy organ got shredded into a mountain of disgusting and bloody bits that flew in every direction except towards herself.

The expression of the giant man-toad turned into terrible pain and blinded him for an instant while she passed over his head, kicked off his ugly crown and spun with her arms extended. He pulled up his shoulders to shorten his neck on reflex when he felt the crown fall but this was futile, at this point, she had already won.

Lockstep and Chassé spun at high speed and ruptured the many layers of fat covering his neck and the back of his head. Gory bits formed a red curtain as her swords dug deeper and deeper at the back of his skull and then through his neck until she chopped open his main arteries and sent off a vertebrae flying into the forehead of another warrior who stared horrified at the scene.

His neck was torn to pieces with a heart clenching sound akin to a wet buzz. If Nessa hadn't been in the third stage of the dance, she would probably have felt her last meal rise up in her throat again because of it.

It twisted backward grotesquely from the continuous cuts and the chief faced her one final time. His eyes looked at her in disbelief while she was falling back down softly behind him. The necklace of belt buckles was cut loose as well by her swords and all his achievements clattered onto the field around him. All this experience useless in front of the royal sword dance's might, all the trophies scattered in defeat.

His massive body was still in the middle of his charge but his legs gave out under the suddenly lifeless weight and the whole corpse flew forward as if he lunged towards something.

The corpse fell onto its belly and slid forward for two meters before it bumped onto a tree and stopped moving.

A disgusting red and white rain then fell form the sky and splattered the skin of the clan warriors and the shining armors of the knights across a good half of the field including those of her own escort. She would apologize to them later.

She raised her swords again towards the nearest cursed-blood, they were gleaming clean still, not a drop of blood was to be seen on them.

The tribal warriors lost all the moral they had left when their chief collapsed and after that, the fight just turned into a slaughter. Each and everyone of them was hunted down and killed. They had no real value as slaves and had no use as prisoners. Their only use was to serve as a warning that things were about to change. No longer would the tribes be able to run free in her northern grove.

The last two cursed-blood standing tried to use the villagers they had captured as hostage to keep back the hundreds of knights surrounding them. They held on to fifteen people in total and Nessa had no doubt that they'd be able to kill most of the peasants before dying if her knights did anything reckless.

All the knights got their bows out but Nessa ordered them to hold back for a moment as she was thinking of a way to save the poor villagers. This time around the troops obeyed her right away. She felt so happy about it that she wanted to grin but she kept her mind on the situation thanks to the sword dance and gave out instructions.

She left the two warriors an opening from which to retreat and satisfyingly enough, they were too dumb to realize that she was sending them off through the field of talismans. Since they tried to keep the peasants between themselves and the knights, they were the first to step into the traps.

Explosions rang out from under their feet. It would have killed a normal man for sure but because of their size, it only injured them and made them loose their balance. One lost his feet in the explosion and fell backward into another trap that burst at the back of his head, killing him in an instant. The other lost his grip on his hostages and instantly got turned into a pincushion by the knights. Arrows weren't that effective against them but with almost three hundred arrows in total, the warrior couldn't possibly have been able to stand through it.

A few of the hostages were injured by the explosions and one even got cut by an arrow but they would all survive. That night ended up being a great victory for her. Some of her knights died like usual but this time, they annihilated the warriors of an entire tribe in exchange.

"Did any escape?" She asked no one in particular.

"Yes, a laomillian ran off, I planted an arrow into his shoulder but I lost him right after." Granchant answered from just beside her.

If even he couldn't hit the target with his bow then it was pointless to run after the fleeing scout. Still, she was satisfied, only a laomillian escaped, this was no threat at all.

She gazed at the many corpses now littering the open field and the sparse forest. Only a few of those were human which was pleasing. In some strange way, it looked very eerie, for her only the fires didn't cast their ominous glow upon the corpses and the scattered blood. It gave an alien feeling to the whole scene, all of it felt fake but she knew the truth. This was all real, all those death caused by her words, a few directly by her hands.

It didn't feel so bad this time around. It might be because of the sword dance again but she felt no real pity for the cursed-bloods that died tonight. She felt exhilaration instead, they all got what they deserved. Justice was finally brought upon those who killed so many of her people. There was still a lot more to do however. She wondered how many she would have to kill before the tribes finally gave up and ran away back into their own lands. She didn't desire the annihilations of all the tribes but she would remove as many cursed-bloods as she had in order to finally bring peace back to her home.

Now at least, she was certain that she would gain the respect of the knights here.

Now they "had" to look at her differently. She won, she killed the chief on her own and showered them in blood to show them how annoyed she was.

She wasn't just a noble girl, she wasn't a noble with delusions that she could fight either and she wasn't a lady who killed a few assassins sent after her by pure luck. Now she was a warrior who beat a tribal chief in single combat.

Surely, they would treat her more decently from now on.