Chapter 141

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Grud yanked his spear out of the corps on the ground, the cold, frigid air freezing the blood on the spearhead almost instantly. It has been a month since Grud ran into the first group of the Blood Ascendants.

As they closed in, they slaughtered a few patrol groups but otherwise kept out of sight, especially when what looked like a war party of four hundred plus Blood Ascendants came out of their cave and spread in the four cardinal directions.

Could Grud and his men take on this force? Sure, but Grud was unwilling to commit to an action that would risk high casualties among his men. After all, these were not people they were fighting, these were animals they were hunting and putting down, and they did not deserve the honor of open combat. They would be hunted down slowly and methodically, as all beasts should be.

Grud took half of his men with him while he instructed the other half to deliberately not cover their tracks and lead the northern, eastern, and western war parties on a wild goose chase. As for Grud and his half of the men, they would be going after the southern war party

When he considered how to defeat the hundred-strong war party, he recalled a small, five-man-wide gorge that led to some overhanging rocks. These rocks provided minimal cover and were a plausible place to get at least some reprieve from the snow.

Grud sent fifty of his men to deliberately make poorly covered tracks into the small gorge toward the rocky overhang. He had to make it so that the enemy would commit their numbers to follow in force so he could trap them.

While the fifty men were making tracks, the rest of them erected some tents to make it look like a base camp where the fifty men would be based. When they were done, the rest of Grud's men dug out some shelters on the sides and both ends of the gorge and used fallen branches to fashion trap doors above them. 

When all the work was done, Grud and his men entered their dugouts and put the trapdoors over themselves, leaving the last person to inspect and touch up the trapdoor's snowy camouflage before removing their own tracks and closing their own trapdoor. Now, the only thing left to do was wait.

A day later, Grud and his men heard footsteps go by their position, and as the sound of snow crunching echoed through the gorge, one of the men going through the gorge whistled out a repeating bird song as they passed. This let Grud and his men know that they were the fifty men who separated to make tracks.

A few hours later, there was the fast sound of snow crunching while a different bird song whistle was being blown. This was one of the lookouts left behind to keep an eye on the southern war party, the bird son whistle meant that the enemy had picked up their track and was closing in.

Grud and his men readied themselves as they knew that the next sounds of footsteps would not be friendly.

A few hours later, there were the sounds of footsteps, but there were too few to sound like the full war party, so it was safe to say that it was a scouting party that was tracking down the fifty men who were now 'resting' at the makeshift base camp Grud setup.

Minutes later, those few footsteps ran back out of the gorge, most likely going back to where the main war party was.

Less than an hour later, there were footsteps, a lot more footsteps, enough footsteps to convince Grud that this was the main body of the southern war party.

When the last footstep crunched past Grud, who was at the entrance of the gorge, he counted to ten and burst out of his dugout with a war cry, and charged the rear of the war party. The moment Grud charged, his bellow was the signal for the others lying in ambush to spring out of their cover and attack.

While Grud cut off the entrance to the gorge, those who were hiding on either side of the gorge busted out of their own covers and started raining arrows and rocks on those inside the gorge.

While this was happening, both sides of the gorge were blocked off by Grud and his men, who were holding roughly put-together log shields. They charged in shield first, absorbing blows while the rest of the men stabbed at the Blood Ascendants.

While the Blood Ascendants war party fought with the ferocity of cornered rats without fear of pain or loss of life, it mattered little when they were pushed in from both sides of the gorge while arrows and rocks rained down on them.

The grim encounter ended as the last few Blood Ascendants were squashed at the center of the gorge between two shield walls. Unable to move, much less swing a weapon properly, what was left of the Blood Ascendants' southern war party was systematically slaughtered down to the last man.

***

The Blood Champion came storming back into the mine with his men close behind, and he was not happy in the least. He had spent the better part of a week chasing tracks that led to dead ends or further than their supply of food and Spirit's Blood that they brought could sustain them, forcing them to return to the mine.

Even while in severe withdrawal from going without Spirit's Blood for the past two days, his mind was clear enough to know that he was being fucked with while chasing those tracks, but he was not sure who was fucking with him, this unknown enemy… or the Blood Priest who asked him to go and search for this unknown enemy.

The Blood Champion barged into the Blood Priest's part of the mine, smacked aside the guards guarding the Blood Priest's door, and kicked down the Blood Priest's door to see the Blood Priest being serviced by a woman, "What are you playing at Blood Priest?! I have been chasing ghosts for the past week!" he then pulled out his axe and looked around like he was expecting an ambush, "Is this all a ploy to weaken me? To replace me?!"

As it turns out, one of the side effects of prolonged ingestion of the red moss was paranoia, and at the moment, the Blood Champion had it in his mind that the Blood Priest sent him away to freeze for a week while chasing tracks that led to nowhere in order to replace him because he had become too powerful.

To a certain extent, he was correct, but the Blood Priest was never going to admit that as he waved the woman away and held his hands up in a placating gesture, "At ease, Blood Champion, you return to us safe and that is all that matters, here, have some Spirit's Blood." the Blood Priest said as he passed a water skin of Spirt's Blood.

Immediately, the Blood Champion locked onto the water skin as he snatched it out of the Blood Pirest's hand and chugged the whole skin, which the Blood Priest knew was a lot more than the recommended dosage.

As soon as the Spirit's Blood took the edge off the Blood Champion's withdrawal, the Blood Priest acted fast, and as the Blood Champion's mind started to become addled and more suggestible, the Blood Priest spoke, "Come now, Blood Champion. I am sure you are tired from your long search out in the cold. We can save the talk for later. Let us go to your room so that your women can take care of you."

After leading the hazy-minded Blood Champion back to his quarters and instructing the Blood Champion's women to take care of him while the large dose of Spirit's Blood kicked in, Tu'Shan, the Blood Priest, went to find someone who was not so far gone from red moss abuse from those who returned to get a report on what happened.

By the time Tu'Shan had extracted as much information as he could from those who still had two brain cells to rub together, another group of those who went out in search of the intruders returned, so he interviewed them too, and what he extrapolated from all the data of the morons in withdrawal was not good.

His Blood Ascendants were being toyed with, and it did not help that the only people around here who were still sound of mind were the women who were used for pleasure to keep the men in line, and himself, who was smart enough to never dip into his own supplies.

Tu'Shan wanted to get a clearer picture of what was going on out there, so he waited for the last two groups to return and report, but after days of waiting, they never returned. Two hundred men, just gone.

To Tu'Shan, the only upside of these few days was his Blood Champion overdosing on the red moss and turning into little more than a mindless beast that only knew how to fight and fuck. He ended up needing to be isolated to his room with his women after he went on a violent rampage that killed more than ten men. The only other upside was that the Blood Champion recognized Tu'Shan as his Spirit's Blood supplier and was docile around him.

Seeing that it has come to this, Tu'Shan picked four candidates he had his eye on for the next Blood Champion and 'promoted' them to 'Blood Elites' to lead the rest of the men. This involved a few days of heavy red moss dosing and indoctrination while their minds were vulnerable. To finish things off, he gave them their personal women to serve them as positive reinforcement for obeying their Blood Priest.

When Tu'Shan thought the Blood Elites were loyal and ready, he ordered them to rally a hundred men each and search for this new threat but not to engage. What Tu'Shan needed was information on who was attacking him and how.

As for the remaining two hundred men, Tu'Shan had them on increased patrols and doubled the guard. Tu'Shan swore that when he found who was attacking him, he would savor the moment they were drugged into mindless husks of themselves that would serve him.

***

After confirming that the Blood Ascendant war parties had returned to their base, he sent runners to gather the rest of his men, who made tracks for the other war parties. When they all gathered, Grud was surprised to hear that the westen distraction group actually managed to kill the group they were distracting by luring the war party over a frozen lake that they had weakened the surface of previously.

When most of the Blood Ascendant war party was on the ice, the rest of the distraction group came out of their cover and broke the ice, leaving Blood Ascendants to fall into the lake and freeze to death or have unstable footing and be shot at with arrows from the shore and stabbed with spears when they got close to the shore.

When Grud found the young man who came up with the idea and carried it out, he knew that such actions deserved a reward. The young man asked that he be married to one of Grud's daughters, who were all renowned for their beauty.

Grud only promised to introduce them, the rest would be up to him.