Chapter 41: Rest and Regroup
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Cleander, Mennor, Fjalar and Galar had picked up some air support. They had Griffins and Dragons now. They had all done their share and more and as midnight of the first day approached they were draggin. Even the Dragon’s were draggin. They were whupped. Being this tired was dangerous anywhere but it was almost suicidal in combat. They desperately needed sleep.
Had they all been flyers it would have been easy to fly out of the combat zone and snatch a few winks. That wasn’t an option for the cats,nor their partners. So it was nap in place.
Everyone kept an eyeball peeled for a good spot. Galar spotted a decent location he thought and everyone else agreed. The cats, griffin and dragons, having four feet, could dig like badgers when need be. Now was the time. They swiftly dug out a shallow trench and the team piled in. They were almost asleep before the last one landed. The last one’s were dragons.
Dragons on top. Dragon skin and especially dragon wings, are EXTREMELY tough. Most hand weapons and many bullets won’t penetrate. The dragons laid on top of the pile shielding everyone with their wings. They slept like the dead for two hours.
Unknown to the team a crew of Demons had seen them dig their fox hole and pile in. The Demons waited for half an hour and then started sneaking over to the sleep trench. When the team of Demons were halfway to their goal a storm of arrows sleeted in from all directions. None of the Demons survived.
The Kindred Gestalt watched over it’s own as they slept.
After a couple of hours they were good to go and back up and killing.
Almost every arrow fired by a kindred caused a casualty and most likely a fatality among the Demons or one of their slave races.
Likewise with defense. Many a kindred would leap, duck or dodge for no apparent reason only to have lethal weaponry enter the space they had just vacated. The overmind, the Gestalt, was beginning to get the feel for fighting, pray that it did not begin to enjoy it.
The first few hours of the battle were all in the Kindreds favor. They hit totally without warning coming out of the rising sun and the Demons were slaughtered. The Demon commanders immediately began to realize what was happening and begin to issue orders. The computing power of the gestalt defeated that strategy. The Gestalt used various and multiple evidence to locate those same officers and killed them. Officer behavior attracted swarms of arrows. Officers were taken out as soon as they were identified.
The Elders stayed high enough to maintain a tactical perspective and they were the first to see their own doom. The elders were also smart enough to understand what they saw and thus the entirety of the Gestalt knew at once.
A final contingent of invaders were disembarking from their lighter than air transport. They were the last to leave from the other side of the abyss. They’d evidently been the rear guard and were the best trained and best equipped of the lot. They had Machines. Up until now the Kindred had been fighting the Demon’s common Guard. That was about to change. These new troops were better equipped.
These Demons had machines. Machine guns, fast firing small arms, aircraft and steam powered combat cars. The kindred didn’t even have metal. In place of metal the kindred used plastics, ceramics where possible and carbon composites.
This inner core, this cadre of the enemy was mechanized and armored. Although it was very small in size compared to the rest of the Demons, It was huge compared to the kindred force.
The kindred had nothing similar. So they attacked harder.
The elders launched flaming arrows at the enemy zeppelins. Arrow range is closer than heavy machine gun range and many an elders went down. Even though it took a LOT of concentrated heavy machine gun fire, per elder. Even so ALL of the enemy's hydrogen zeppelins, and much, much else, burned to the ground. Much of the equipment was thus put out of service before it came IN to service. The enemy was now stranded, and would soon be short on supplies. It no longer had the capability to return to where it had come from, nor did it have air support, not that it had demonstrated any capacity to use it. The enemy was now officially desperate.
The enemy did have combat cars. Steam powered, metal covered self propelled, off road capable, mechanical wagons. The metal of the cars were proof against most arrows and their light machine guns wreaked havoc among the Griffins, Cats, Dwarves and Elves. The Manta’s and especially Dragons not so much.
The metal of the tanks were proof against MOST of the arrows, not all. A bolt from an elder's arbalest would skewer the combat car, front to rear AND take out the steam engine. Unfortunately there were fewer and fewer elders while there were great many steam cars.
However, fortunately for the kindred, the combat cars had a weak spot, their door locks. A Dwarf with a pry bar could open one quickly. Then a kindred would enter the car and slaughter the crew, not so easy under light machine gun fire but the kindred had incentive. The occasional Demon would survive a dragon insertion to be killed by the cat kin or an Elf attack. None ever survived a Griffin insertion or that of a dwarf. Griffin are FAST and FURIOUS, and Dwarves are just BRUTAL.
The battle lasted for days. The Demon forces melted away like a snowdrift in warm rain. All of the smaller kindred would fight to exhaustion then fall in their tracks to sleep for a few minutes or an hour then wake and return to the fray. Likewise the big flyers but they would sleep drifting at high altitude. During sleep time the Gestalt was on guard both in the air and on the ground. The Demons had no such advantage. Any fallen Demon died every time.
Percentage wise the battle was a draw. The Kindred wiped out 90 percent of the invaders while taking 90 percent losses themselves. Unfortunately the invaders had outnumbered the Kindred by a hundred to one to begin with.
The end of the battle was signaled by the Demons breaking contact. They ran for the interior. A column of steam combat cars, several columns of steam cars and a horde of enemy troopies on foot scampered off across country. For all that it was a huge number of invaders in it’s own right it was but a tithe of a tithe of what they had to begin with. Bodies covered the battlefield like a carpet.
There WERE not enough fit Kindred left to prevent them from leaving ...and damn few that could follow. Most of the surviving kindred were wounded. There WERE no surviving Mantas or elders. All the large fliers had died, there were damn few griffin or dragons. A small camp was built and the worst injured were tended to. The lesser injured, that is almost everyone, shrugged it off and soldiered on. Of the lesser wounded surviving fliers scouting assignments were made. Different fliers shadowed each column of Demons and kept everyone appraised when possible. Spirit Elders were conscripted when available and towed behind Dragons. Oddly enough there were several in the area.
The Kindred Army set up camp after a fashion and tended to their wounds. They would follow the enemy to the ends of the world there was no doubt, but not this instant. Now was the time to rest and regroup.