Arablest/ Prototype

The soldiers were about to reach Garrett and Joseph when Durand spoke to me.
“Give me a few minutes. That’s all I need.” Durand said. I glanced at him, and he was already muttering under his breath, his face in total concentration. An incantation of some kind, perhaps? And perhaps a powerful one, considering he asked for a few minutes.

“Jeremy! Let me take point!” Garrett shouted. “We are knights of Lycia! These numbers are meaningless. They will never defeat us!”

Garrett got of his horse, when I noticed he had a large shield with him now. Where did he get that? I don’t remember him having a shield before; maybe he had all along but decided not to use it until now, I guess. Placed on the horse when not in use, maybe?
I let him take point like he asked. There really wasn’t much of a difference, we didn’t have enough people to let him take point, especially since Joseph was fighting her own way.
Joseph had stayed on her horse this time. Her horse was armored as well, unlike Garrett’s, so I supposed she would have been fine.
Kal just stood there, his killing edge held off to the side in his right hand.

The girl… what was her name again? Neither of the children told us their name. The girl was firing arrows as quickly as she could… I timed it: about one shot every 12 seconds. That would be… 5 shots per minute. Not bad, considering I've heard experts could do 6 shots in under a minute. I directed her to aim for as many enemy archers as she could, which she did.
I went up to the boy, who was just taking out and replacing numerous knives.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Checking all my weapons,” replied the boy. “Wait, we haven’t introduced ourselves to each other. My name is Nicolas. My friend over there is named Gwen. And you?”
“My name is Jeremy, the girl with the lance over there is… Leona, the unicorn rider is Veronica, and the knights are Joseph and Garrett. That swordsman is Kal. Leona and I must stay back because of certain reasons.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you after we win, ok?”

I ran over to Gwen, who was firing at the enemy.
“I want you to target as many archers as you can, ok? Try not to get hit.”
“Uh, ok.” Gwen replied.

That was when the enemy soldiers reached Joseph, Kal, and Garrett. Surprising, Garrett held up rather well this time; he would block with his shield, sometimes bashing soldiers with it, and attacking and knocking away lances with his sword, despite the lance having a better advantage because it had a longer reach. Many iron lances broke when they hit Garrett’s armor or his shield.
Joseph wielded an axe, its handle long enough to reach from astride a horse. She was easily knocking aside lances with her axe and chopping away at soldiers left and right, while charging through the enemy ranks. Not much of a shield, like Garrett, but I guess it was ok. Many of the soldiers were too concentrated on trying to counter Joseph (and failing) rather than advancing on us.
Kal moved so fast, the soldiers were almost stunned by his speed. Almost. They still reacted enough to attempt to lunge and stab at him, trying to keep him away. But they did not fight like Leona does, and Kal easily slipped through their defenses, his killing edge piercing and killing soldiers with every blow. Unlike Joseph, however, he stayed near Garrett, and they supported each other. One defended and the other countered. What an interesting combination; they're fighting styles may be completely different, yet they suited each other.
The enemy archers targeted Veronica, mostly, but she stayed grounded, and sent her unicorn into the village, so it was hard to hit her or her mount. Veronica, on the on the other hand, had taken all her javelins and piercing every soldier who got past Garrett and Kal to reach at us with deadly accuracy.

Even then, then solders who survived that were weakened and easily taken out by Leona.

However, everyone back here; Leona, Veronica, Gwen, Nicolas, Durand, and I were very lucky not to be hit by any enemy fire yet. Most of them were still aiming to take out the unicorn, which had taken cover inside the village, and the enemy ranks of archers were quickly getting decimated by Gwen alone before they realized that she was the bigger threat. Well, Joseph cut quite a few archers as well. There were some arrows stuck on her armor, but it didn’t seem to stop her; and many of us back here were tired of avoiding arrows. I attempted to block arrows from hitting Durand as he attempted to complete his spell, but I was lucky; no arrows came close. He was still muttering at this point, and drawing a visible circle in the air in front of him. A magic circle, perhaps?

The enemy cavaliers had now decided to charge at Garrett, hoping to knock him aside with the blunt force of their movement. By now, most of the enemy archers were demolished by Gwen and Joseph, so Gwen managed to unseat a few enemy cavaliers before they reached Garrett.

Garrett saw them coming. Instead of retreating or moving, though, he just took a step back, and got ready to take force. By himself. Kal was too far away at the moment, being all caught up in the battle. Not that he would be helpful in defending. I think Garrett forgot that he was fighting alone, because there was no way he could hold them off by himself, even with Kal. A group of cavaliers charging at you is not only a very intimidating sight; without the right counter you would probably be run over.

He didn’t even have pikes, which would have been very effective if we had more men in the first place to wield them.

But that was when Joseph came riding by and knocking of quite a few cavaliers off their horses, and those horses ran astray, causing the group to scatter. Only a few stayed true to their course, which Garrett easily dodged, killing their riders at the same time.

I was surprised at myself for just realizing I didn’t have much of a reaction to the blood and death in this battle, and yet I was commanding it. Was I already hardened to this scene? The screams of the dying did not deter me much.

Then, Nicolas suddenly called out to me, and when I looked up, a soldier was about to impale me with a steel lance. I quickly dove to the side, and then suddenly Nicolas was there, cutting the soldier’s throat, blood spraying. My stomach twisted; I think I didn’t mind earlier because they were too far away.

The enemy refused to surrender or leave, even if their ranks were being demolished. Joseph, Garrett, and many others were tiring quickly, however. Whenever an enemy soldier died, two more took its place.

We were seriously outnumbered.

That was when Durand spoke.
“Jeremy. Tell Garrett, Kal, and Joseph to fall back.”

I yelled out my orders to Joseph, Kal. and Garrett. I wasn’t sure if they heard me or not, I never liked speaking out very loudly.

But they did fall back, and the enemy soldiers also stopped temporarily, probably being wary of us, because they would probably be killed if they charged. They still outnumbered us by far, but at least they had no archers left, thanks to Gwen and Joseph. Our small group faced theirs, and we looked at each other. I could see fear on some of the enemy soldier’s faces; many of their faces seemed to say: “How are they lasting so long without taking any casualties?”

We were lucky that they decided stand down while I had Joseph, Kal, and Garrett retreat.

Garrett, Kal, and Joseph, however, were sweating profusely, and were exhausted. Even Joseph’s horse was snorting and foaming with exhaustion. She got off her horse, and let her horse rest for a bit. Kal refused to show he was tired, determination on his face but you could see it.
“I’m not going to fail you, not my first fight with you commanding!” Kal said with conviction.
“Kal, take a break for a moment. They’re not attacking.”I replied.
Kal then kneeled, breathing hard.
"I will not stop until we win." he replied.
Then he fell, unconscious, covered in scratches. I just noticed. He wasn’t bleeding very much, though.
Gwen ran up to me, pain showing on her face.
“I don’t think I can shoot anymore… My fingers are bleeding, and I don’t have a finger guard… I've been out of arrows a long time ago as well... and I need to take a break.“
I looked at her hand, which was dripping with blood.
"If you were out of arrows, how did you keep shooting?" I asked.
"By using their arrows. I would grab an unbroken one, pull it out of whatever it's embedded in, and fire it back."
"That's.. really smart of you! All right, go ahead and take a break. You deserve it. And fix up your fingers or something while you’re at it, ok?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“No, it’s my fault for pushing you so hard. We don’t have very many people who can fight in this group. ”
“I’ll leave then…er...”
“I'm Jeremy.”
“See you, Jeremy! I’ll be back soon!”
I looked back at Durand. His eyes were closed, and there was a floating… magic circle in front of him. He took his right hand, raised it up, moved it back down diagonally to his left, then straight to his right, making a triangle; he brought his hand back, opened his eyes, and then pushed his hand through both the triangle and into the symbol. Both the triangle and the symbol moved forward a bit before fading into nothingness.
“What is that supposed to do?” I asked Durand, a bit too soon. A huge wave of sound: screams, crackling, and more came and smashed into me from behind my back, answering my question. I turned around, and there was a massive hurricane of flames where the enemy soldiers were.

The fiery storm soon subsided, leaving only scorched, black ground, ashes, and burnt corpses where most of the soldiers were. The only soldiers left were a single well-armored man on a horse, surrounded by five heavily armored knights. I was assuming he was the commander of this legion; I don’t think his tactics were as good as mine. I smiled to myself despite knowing I commanded a small group of people who just nearly killed of an entire legion of soldiers.

The ones that survived were probably his elite soldiers, or were lucky not to get caught in the blast. I was sure that we were going to have some trouble fending them off.

Veronica ran up to me.
“I’m out of javelins!” she shouted. “What should I do now?”
“Stand down.” I replied. “Maybe we should try to negotiate; after all, we actually outnumber them this time.”
“That’s true, but if they decide to fight, then we may still lose; they haven’t fought yet, and all of us are exhausted, except you and Leona. “
“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t take that into consideration. Go ahead and take a break or something. We’ll let them come to us.“
“By your leave.” She replied.
I nodded, and she left to who knows where.
“Garrett and Joseph! Get over here! I spoke loudly at them. They moved over, and stood.
“Yes, Commander?” asked Joseph.
“Are you two exhausted?”
Both replied yes.
“Go take a break, until they decide to attack. All right?”
“Yes sir!” replied Joseph. They both left. I shook my head; I still wasn’t used to being called Sir or Commander by adults.
“Durand?” I asked.
Silence.
I turned around, and Durand was unconscious as well on the floor, although well hidden enough. Joseph came over.
“Is something wrong...? Oh, he must have used too much energy on that last attack. He should be up sooner or later.”
“Well, that puts us at a bigger disadvantage if they decided to attack…”
“Yes. Let’s hope that they won’t. We already have too unconscious people on our side. It’s a miracle that no one on our side has died yet.”
“Yeah… “ I replied.
“It’s not a miracle!” said Garrett. “With Jeremy’s superb tactics and our skill, of course we managed to survive this long!”
“Garrett?” I said in surprise. I still doubted my tactics; I thought it was a miracle that we survived this long. Another attack might result in casualties. I hoped the enemy would stand down for now.
However, when we turned around, the enemy was already marching towards us in formation.