Free Web NovelChapter 205: The Battle for Herald City - Part 10
Over the next 30 minutes, the battle entered a tenuous stalemate, with the beasts unable to break through the human defences, but the humans also unable to force the beasts to retreat.
By now, everyone was feeling exhausted, on both sides.
Evidence of this was that more and more beasts were breaking through, getting up on the walls and even descending down into the city; but despite that, the rate of casualties on the human side wasn’t increasing because these beasts were generally heavily wounded and unable to cause much real harm.
If nothing changed, the humans, as the defenders, would likely emerge victorious as they had the territorial advantage; however, the situation in the sky was threatening to tip the balance towards the beasts.
Up until now, Vanessa had been able to contain the flying beasts admirably, especially when one considered it was just her and Starlight against several hundred highly mobile enemies.
Through repeated charges and sweeps, Vanessa managed to mostly corral the flying beasts and keep them occupied, but as she had anticipated, before being able to force the enemy to retreat, she had run out of arrows, sharply decreasing her lethality.
Now, despite her best efforts, dozens of flying beasts were breaking away from Vanessa every few seconds and heading towards the city.
Those that descended towards the battle, drawn by the smell of blood, weren’t too problematic.
In order to get close enough to attack the human defenders, these beasts also exposed themselves to counterattack. There were still casualties due to the difficulty of trying to defend against fast-moving airborne threats, but they were still within an acceptable range for now.
It was the beasts that chose to bypass the defence line entirely and fly into the city that were the real concern.
Celestina did her best to shoot down these beasts, racing across the rooftops as she chased after these strays, causing most of her attention to be focused on that task alone; but, even for her, trying to hit so many fast-moving targets in the black of night wasn’t easy, especially since almost all of the beasts were now aware of her presence and were doing their best to avoid her.
A few of the other strong archers were trying to help, but their efforts proved somewhat futile as very few of them could even shoot 300 metres up into the air, much less hit a moving target at that height.
Before the battle, all non-combatants were told to stay inside and not come out until they were given the all-clear, but with so many refugees flooding into the city, it was impossible for everyone to seek shelter, resulting in many people still being left out on the streets.
If the whole flock of flying beasts broke into the city at once, the casualties would be staggering, not just from beaks and talons, but also from the crowds of people themselves. With so many crammed into such close quarters, all it would take is a few people panicking to set off a crowd-crush, resulting in dozens, if not hundreds of people trampling each other to death.
Realizing she had no choice, Celestina sent the signal for the reserve Aerial Knights to sortie, and moments later, a handful of Tartans flew into the sky and began intercepting the scattered enemy fliers above the city.
The situation once again stabilized, but this time the deadlock didn’t last long. Shortly after the Tartans made their appearance and contained the flying beasts, a series of familiar, gloomy howls echoed across the battlefield.
The humans were once again affected by these howls and many of the weaker ones were dazed, as if they had suffered a blow to their heads. However, this time, instead of the attacking beasts going into a frenzy, they mostly froze in place before turning their heads towards the north-west.
Even the flying beasts began hovering or circling, not proceeding any further into the city.
Seeing this, Celestina refrained from firing the arrow on her bow and instead held her breath, waiting for what happened next.
Shortly after, the same powerful howl which had signaled the start of the beasts’ aerial attack came from afar, and with that, the various beasts began to retreat.
Letting out a long sigh, Celestina quickly shouted, "Hold your fire! Let them go!"
Many of the human defenders who still had their wits about them hesitated upon hearing this order, as it was almost a given that when an enemy retreated, you should hit them from behind to cause as much damage as possible. However, with all the Spirit Initiates heeding the General’s command, the others didn’t dare act out of turn.
On top of that, many of the archers felt like their arms were about to fall off, and those who were wielding spears, swords, and axes weren’t fairing much better, so a full counterattack wasn’t possible to begin with.
The battle might not have lasted long compared to a conventional siege, but it was extremely intense for the untrained defenders who were just thrown into this situation with no warning.
Watching the enemy retreat, Celestina was torn between feeling relief and concern.
She was thankful that the battle was over for the night, as it would give the city some time to rest and reorganize, but she was also worried about what the next day would bring.
An enemy who could tell it couldn’t win and was willing to retreat to preserve its strength was far trickier to deal with than one that was reckless and simply threw everything they had at you until one side was annihilated.
Clearly, the opponent they were facing this time was the former; a cunning foe with sharp instincts.
.....
With the enemy temporarily withdrawing, Celestina made her way back to the city’s north-west gate, sweeping her surroundings with her Soul Sense as she ran along the streets, trying to get a sense of the damage that had been done.
There were corpses of several avian beasts, a number of collapsed buildings, and more than a few blood stains that seemed to belong to humans, but given the scale of the attack, the casualty count within the city’s walls seemed to be relatively low.
Had there been just a few more flying beasts, or had they approached Herald City from multiple direction, things could have been much, much worse. Fortunately, that seemed to be beyond the capabilities of the attack’s mastermind.
Throughout the night, the beasts had mostly been smashing their heads against the north-western portion of the city’s wall, spreading out somewhat once attacked, but never separating into different units to try to outflank the defenders despite that being the most obvious tactic to use.
This didn’t surprise Celestina too greatly, however, as she knew what kind of opponent she was facing, and had a decent idea how it was controlling all the different beasts within the horde.
There must be only a single Alpha, and while it can pass down commands to its pack members and have them force the other beasts to follow, once they split up far enough, their influence decreases, causing the controlled beasts to scatter, Celestina reasoned to herself as she arrived at the north-west entrance.
Observing all the activity going on at the gate, Celestina had a hard time maintaining her stoic expression. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Unlike the inner part of the city, the walls, and by extension the defence forces themselves, were in pretty bad shape.
Everywhere she looked, Celestina saw dead or dying soldiers, and even a quick estimate on her part put the number of fatalities at over 300.
As for the number of injured, that was significantly higher, reaching well above the thousand mark.
Considering that the entire defence force only totalled about 4,000, this level of casualties could only be described as grievous. It wasn’t enough to represent a total collapse of combat capabilities, but it was still extremely serious.
Stifling a sigh, Celestina waded through the crowd towards a small building where she sensed all the most powerful auras had gathered.
Pushing open the door, Celestina was immediately greeted by her saluting subordinates, as well as a number of local leaders. Even her granddaughter was present, though one of her arms was heavily bandaged and nestled in a makeshift sling.
"At ease," General Balfour waved her hand before approaching a large table which had a map of the city laid out.
Standing over the map and seeing a number of places marked in red around the north-west quarter, Celestina’s eyes narrowed as she asked the critical question, "What’s our situation?"
