Chp.5: Ambush

"Why did we come here, brother?"

Haku sighed. His sister Glausar was notoriously the most anxious of the litter, so every time he was less than three meters away from her, he already knew he had to arm himself with patience and be prepared to be asked the same question at least ten times. However, after the eighteenth time, he discovered that he had a breaking point too. "Once again, we're here to hunt fairies!" he exclaimed, refraining from yelling to avoid alerting sentries.

"Yes, but why now?" Glausar asked. "You haven't talked to that ogre yet. We don't know yet if he'll be ok with..."

"He will be" Haku immediately stopped her. "So we can get on with the job and start getting what we need"

Haku had thought carefully about the plan they had devised the day before, and had decided that, since they were going to have to burn down an entire wall, a single fire rune wasn't enough. The most powerful fire spell that dragons could cast with the runes they knew could generate a flame of a length of at most eight meters. Therefore, considering that the wall in question surrounded an entire city, they needed something more powerful. Even if the wall was made of wood, in fact, the fire would have taken some time to spread: some ogres could have taken advantage of this to climb over it and escape. Therefore they needed something that would spread fire faster.

Unfortunately, none of the runes they knew could accomplish this task. However, Haku thought he had found the solution. Once again, the fairies could help him… not of their own free will, of course, but that didn't matter.

For the past weeks and months, Haku and his siblings had kept their distance from the battlefields, but they still kept an eye on them. After all, understanding more about how their enemies fought could be a big plus in the future. Thanks to this, Haku understood the fighting patterns of fairies and ogres quite well. And in looking at this, he had noticed something very interesting.

It was the ninjas, the mysterious fairies capable of becoming invisible. When Sarpa had described them to him earlier, when they had annihilated the fairy delegation, he had immediately been very interested in their ability to disappear. Sarpa had said that they only served as spies and reconnaissance, but actually Haku had discovered that they were much more. After all, what was worse on a battlefield than a soldier who was capable of becoming invisible and then sneaking around and attacking from behind?

This was exactly what the ninjas were: as the two armies battled each other, they flew over the ogres, invisible, and then they threw various magical items at them that wreaked havoc in the enemy lines. They were an efficient and devastating technique. The magical objects they used were many: they were weapons capable of releasing poison, small globes which, once they touched the ground, caused a slight earthquake, star-shaped pieces of iron which, once activated, shot sharp needles in all directions. But above all, their main weapon was what Haku wanted: an object similar to a small egg, which once activated it generated a flash of light so strong that it burned anything within a hundred meters radius.

During the first battle, that weapon had created a large number of deaths on the ogre side. The burned soldiers, in fact, not only died but before doing so they ran desperately looking for a way to extinguish themselves, spreading the fire elsewhere and burning other ogres. Haku suspected that those ovoid objects weren't easy to produce, or at least that they needed some time, because otherwise the fairies could have won the war in a single battle, simply by continuing to burn the ogres until they were completely destroyed.

That first battle had taken many ogre casualties. However, from the second time things had changed: the ogres in fact had understood the trick and each of them had been equipped with a wooden shield coated with some insulating sap. Before releasing its light, the ovoid object emitted a soft glow; as soon as the ogres noticed that, they raised their shields in that direction and protected themselves with them, avoiding getting burned. And so, the fairies' most powerful and destructive weapon had begun to lose its usefulness. However, the fairies had continued to use it: after all, sometimes happened that the ogres didn't notice the danger in time, or that someone didn't protect themselves well; in any case, it could still cause casualties which, although not as large as those of the first battle, could still weaken the enemy.

Those ovoid objects were exactly what Haku needed. They could burn anything within a hundred meters, and the fire they generated spread rapidly: within minutes, a wooden wall like the one that surrounded ogre cities would be completely engulfed in flames. He and his siblings would just have had to strike in the right places to create a raging fire that would have imprisoned all the population inside.

Therefore, Haku had decided it was time to set up another ambush. This time the goal was to capture two or three ninjas. Thanks to his nose, in fact, Haku had been able to follow the flying ninjas on the battlefields even if he didn't see them; thanks to this, he realized that each ninja used three or four of those strange objects during each fight. Therefore, since Haku and his siblings were just seventeen and that at least three of them would have entered the city before the attack, they just needed fourteen of those strange objects. Therefore even just a small group of ninja would have been enough. He was sure that the ninja always had at least some of those weapons with them: after all, there was no guarantee that the ogres would not have decided to attack out of the blue. In that case, the ninjas patrolling the forest would have had to gather quickly, and therefore would not have had time to stop and resupply. It was therefore logical to think that each of them carried a good number of weapons with her.

With this idea in mind, Haku set up an ambush. He and his siblings had had a long eye on the fairies for a long time and although they didn't have an infiltrator in their field as with the ogres they knew a lot about them. They knew exactly which routes the patrols took and where the most vulnerable points were. Haku knew with absolute certainty where, how and when he has to strike.

So Haku had taken five of his sisters and headed to a rather dark part of the forest. The darkness was due to the very dense tree crowns of that area. It was hard to see there, at least by newcomers' standards, but for the dragons' superior eyesight that wasn't a problem. The trees there were almost forty meters high and were full of branches to perch on and leaves to blend into. They were the perfect hiding place. And about every three hours a fairy patrol passed through there, since the ogres could have used that passage to attack from stealthily, but since they didn't want to risk the ogres discovering that passage the only fairies on the patrol were always ninjas, that they retained their invisibility and were therefore unnoticed... except by creatures that didn't rely solely on sight, such as dragons. Therefore Haku and his sisters had gone there, had stationed and waited.

The only problem with that plan… was that he had chosen some long-winded sisters to help him. Therefore, while they waited, he had been bombarded with many questions and criticisms. Normally he wouldn't have despised that, after all his siblings' doubts had sometimes served to highlight problems that he maybe had ignored: however, after almost an hour of them remaining hidden, he had seriously begun to tire of all those questions.

"Mh. I really don't understand where you find all that confidence" Corgorin grumbled. "Come on, how can you be so certain that Sarpa will accept?"

"I explained to you first what I intend to propose to him! Weren't you listening?" Haku snapped.

"Yes, but your idea is no guarantee of success" Maldor objected.

Haku sighed. "Okay. So let's just say I HAVE CONFIDENCE that my idea will work. Are you okay with that?"

"So there really was no certainty!" Glausar exclaimed. "So why are we here?"

"Because my confidence rate is 99%! So even if there's a 1% chance that Sarpa refuses, we can still get on with the job! Plus the stuff we steal from those ninjas could always come in handy!" Haku exclaimed in serious exasperation. "Are you done now? I wish I could..."

He froze. A strong smell hit his nostrils, almost making him sneeze. As soon as he smelled that, he immediately stopped thinking about nonsense and a concentrated expression came over her muzzle.

His sisters also quickly changed their attitude. Maldor, Glausar and Corgorin fell silent and flattened themselves on the branch where they perched, using the leaves to hide as much as possible. "Brother, did you smell it?" Maldor whispered.

Haku nodded. "Yes. They must be close" he answered.

To be able to implement their plan, the four dragons needed impeccable timing. Simply put, they needed a lookout to be absolutely ready for the fairy's arrival. This was why Haku had brought four sisters with him: the fourth, Finiar, wasn't there with them, but on a tree at least a hundred meters away, keeping an eye on the path. And as soon as she sensed the arrival of the fairies, she immediately warned her siblings with their 'special method'.

Dragons had no way of communicating over such a great distance. Sure, if Finiar had climbed down from the tree and run, she probably would have been able to get ahead of the faeries, but that would have been impossible to do discreetly. So the dragons had resorted to a little... trick. Kialandì had invented it: she had in fact discovered a strange flower that emitted a very strong smell, perceptible even from great distances and which spread rapidly in the surrounding environment. Therefore now Finiar had taken some of those flowers and put them in her mouth, preventing the smell from going out; as soon as she had noticed the fairies, she had opened her jaws causing the flowers to emit their perfume around. That was the alarm signal for Haku, Maldor, Corgorin and Glausar.

Haku's body tensed like a violin string, ready to snap. The fairies' wings were quite fast: they would soon have arrived where they were. Careful not to make any noise, he leaned over the branch where he was perched and dug his claws into the wood, ready to attack whenever the moment was right.

He didn't have to wait long. The smell of Finiar's flowers covered that of the fairies and they were invisible thanks to their magic, but he and his sisters could still perceive their presence and pinpoint their position. The noise of the fairy wings, though muffled by their spell, was still audible to the refined ears of the dragons. The air displacement they caused as they flew bumped against their scaly skin, activating their superb sense of touch. And dragons also had special senses that allowed them to perceive the body heat and electrical charge emitted by any living creature. Basically, it was impossible to hide from a dragon simply by concealing from his sight.

Haku and his sisters waited until the fairies were directly below them. As soon as the moment was right, they launched an attack and threw themselves off the branch, over thirty meters high.

Haku felt the air hit his muzzle, but he wasn't worried. His scales were hard enough to allow him to withstand the impact with the ground from that height. At best, he'd get a big bruise, nothing he couldn't heal with some of the regeneration potions in his possession.

Besides, he would have had something to soften their fall a little. Just two seconds after launching, his paws hit something soft.