Chapter 108: Having Finished One, There Is Still Another Waiting.

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The wildfolk brought back not only the gnolls’ heads, but also their equipment and the spoils they had taken.

The tiger skins and bear hides worn by the gnoll brutes were stripped off so long as they were not too badly damaged, then tied into bundles.

The iron was collected as well. Its quality was poor, but there was a great deal of it, and it could be taken back to Riverbend and smelted down again.

Besides that, there were more than a dozen carcasses of northern bison, along with the hides that had just been stripped from them. It was undoubtedly a spectacular haul.

These muscular, ferocious herbivores were beasts even the wildfolk preferred not to provoke. They would rather hunt solitary brown bears and sabertooth tigers.

Only the gnolls, who mindlessly slaughtered anything they came across, were willing to organize hunting parties to fight bison.

The gnoll hunting party had driven the herd of northern bison into a valley, constantly chasing and terrorizing them, forcing them to run until they were completely exhausted—even to the point of rupturing their hearts and lungs—before moving in for the kill.

This was how Ulyan had once led the militia in surrounding a herd of northern bison, turning them into dried meat and tents and accumulating enough resources to migrate a thousand miles.

Leo accepted the bison carcasses as provisions for the army, while distributing all the bison, bear, and tiger hides among the wildfolk as rewards for their valor in battle.

Unfortunately, they were too close to the Shattered Stone Hills. For the sake of concealment, the army could not light a fire and had to continue gnawing on dry rations.

Krog’s ogre formation, however, enjoyed every advantage. They simply ate the meat raw and did not care whether their food had been prepared at all.

Leo declared that he missed Freya terribly. Give him a few wheat cakes and a word of praise, and she would work for an entire day.

When it came to saving energy and reducing emissions, no one surpassed her!

After half a day of rest, another gnoll hunting party appeared within the wildfolk scouts’ field of vision.

As usual, the wildfolk were responsible for launching the attack, but Leo still sent fifty Riverbend infantrymen to assist them and hold the line from the front.

Fisha requested permission to join the battle, but her proposal was immediately ignored by everyone.

Given the kobolds’ current level of discipline, everyone was genuinely afraid that once they entered the forest and were no longer under Fisha’s control, they would simply slip away and return home.

Compared with fighting and hunting, they much preferred going back to dig for ore.

The fifty Riverbend infantrymen, formerly the First Company of the militia regiment, followed the wildfolk into the mountains and forests under the command of their deputy captain, Vicky.

Vicky was not his real name. Just as no Northlander’s formal name was truly Nov, no one’s formal name was truly Vicky.

His full name was Antonius Derdelnovich.

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Antonius was his father’s name. Derdel was a long, tongue-twisting series of rolled consonants that meant “little calf” in the northern dialect, while Vicky was merely a suffix.

Thus, Vicky’s formal name meant “the little calf of Antonius’s family.”

In the villages of the North, the first part of the name was obscure and the second too cumbersome to pronounce, so the villagers chose to call him by the suffix instead.

That was why names ought to be simple and easy to understand. The combined names of Leo and his father, Mondo, who had died young, contained fewer letters than anyone else’s single name.

Everyone could remember “the little lion of House Mondo” after hearing it just once!

Two years older than Leo, brown-haired Vicky was reserved and steady. He possessed a calm rationality beyond his years, yet was no less courageous for it.

Like Leo, he was one of Ulyan’s most carefully groomed young successors.

If Ulyan became a knight, Leo and Vicky would serve as his two knightly attendants.

During the last attack by the horse bandits, Vicky had led the militia reserve crossbowmen onto the wooden framework of the great hall and exchanged fire with the bandits, drawing most of their attention and buying the villagers time to escape.

Vicky had also always been responsible for the military training of the militia’s Second Company and the refugees.

Whenever Leo went away, it was taken for granted that Vicky would manage the militia regiment. Until now, nothing had ever gone wrong.

Compared with Leo and Vicky, Ivan, who was a year older than Leo, seemed far too immature—like the difference between an overworked adult and a university student.

Magna was somewhat unwilling to accept the addition of the Riverbend infantrymen and even looked down on them to some extent, but he could only obey orders.

Bjorn, however, was different. His tribe was weaker, he himself was much more cautious, and he had witnessed the Riverbend infantry’s ability to hold the line behind their shield formation.

Rather than have his tribesmen clash head-on with the gnolls, he preferred to lead the archers and shoot to their hearts’ content from behind the impregnable infantry shield wall, making the most of the wildfolk’s greatest advantage.

Before the fighting began, the Riverbend infantry’s performance had indeed been less than satisfactory.

Compared with the wildfolk, who moved through the rugged mountain forests as swiftly as if they were flying, the Riverbend infantry, most of them farmers by origin, were exceedingly clumsy. Their marching speed was less than half that of the wildfolk, and even wildfolk elders and young girls could outrun them.

Whenever they encountered a stream more than five meters wide, the Riverbend infantry had to consider taking a detour. The wildfolk, regardless of age or sex, simply leaped across.

When they reached low cliffs several meters high, the wildfolk climbed up using both hands and feet, swift as apes.

The Riverbend infantry, by contrast, needed tools or the assistance of their comrades.

Trying to keep up with the wildfolk, some fell behind, stumbled, and became lost in the forest.

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This made Magna despise them even more, and he was even tempted to abandon them.

Bjorn stopped him, however, telling him to be patient for the time being. He personally brought up the rear and led the lost infantrymen back one by one.

After two hours of forced marching, the party finally reached the ambush site, arriving barely ahead of the gnoll hunting party.

Once the battle began, however, the Riverbend infantry’s performance left Magna utterly dumbfounded.

Under Vicky’s command, the Riverbend infantry formed a shield wall that sealed off the gnolls’ escape route, leaving them exposed to a rain of arrows for a prolonged period.

The gnolls’ several-kilogram flails and chain maces crashed against the infantrymen’s shields with tremendous force, but the shields did not shatter as expected.

The Riverbend infantry’s shields were no longer the patchwork thin wooden boards they had been in the beginning.

The old shields, owing to the lack of iron, had scarcely a few iron nails in them. The craftsmen who made them were also poorly skilled and unable to meet Ulyan’s standards.

At best, those shields could block stray arrows and light blows, intimidating the bandits and refugees who lurked along the migration route.

They could not even withstand a kobold’s short spear. Under a heavy strike, they would splinter and collapse.

The shields they used now were thick, double-layered wooden round shields, made by fastening half an inch of oak and half an inch of pine together with iron rivets and iron bands. Some infantrymen who had the means would even cover the surface with a layer of animal hide.

The soft half-inch layer of pine on the front greatly reduced the kinetic force of enemy attacks and protected the infantrymen’s wrist bones.

The hard half-inch layer of oak behind it was sufficient to withstand most heavy blows.

Arrows and blades could do little more than pierce the outer layer of soft pine, leaving only shallow marks on the hard oak beneath.

Each of these standard round shields weighed fifteen kilograms, like a thick butcher’s chopping block.

Yet in the hands of Northland infantrymen hardened by years of training, they were not especially heavy.

The shields used by the empire’s elite heavy-armored infantry were even reinforced with a layer of thick iron plate to withstand the battle-axes of orc infantry—or replaced outright with steel shields.

Those shields weighed twenty-five kilograms or more. Even an ordinary person would struggle to carry one, let alone raise it in battle.

And the Riverbend infantry were not merely passive targets, relying solely on their formidable defenses.