Barda was not a man, not fully. His mind and body had undergone transformations that made him a supersoldier, at the very least. The bow in his hands had been crafted with care and precision, a masterpiece at the very least.
However, the arrows at his disposal were ordinary. He still hadn't gotten the time to craft better ones due to his busy life. What's more, there were only 16 arrows in his quiver, and he was running towards an army. Then there was the little thing about distance, as in how far he was from the enemy, specifically 9 miles plus.
Barda's target wasn't the soldiers in the front lines, but the group of commanders who were in the back. Without someone to bark orders, he would be effectively disabling the army. The commanders had a nice defilade away from the village, so none of the village archers were a threat to them. A wise decision, but that only left them exposed to Barda.
The IAA system calculated the odds of him making the shot at 12%. One wouldn't be sure who the leader was, but leaders love to point. He was also supposed to be the one barking orders and telling people what to do. Barda had already located a likely target.
Tang!
The familiar ring of his bow as he released the string. The arrow took flight and disappeared from view. The adventurers were shocked, wondering what he was trying to do. Of course, no one asked as they continued to run, keeping up with Barda's pace was already hard enough.
On the arrow went, piercing the air, fired by the same aiming system that is used in galactic spaceships. Unfortunately, the arrow wasn't propelled by guiding systems, no propellers or motor, just good old fashion muscle. The forces of nature are not so easily undone. The arrow landed 2 feet away from the intended target.
The group of commanders was alarmed. They didn't know where the threat came from. All they saw was an arrow drop from above.
"Kumar, get some men in that direction, find out who's shooting!" Commander Dana shouted, "Zerios, lead the way, get me to that damned village." Commander didn't want to go to the village since showing herself would make them understand how much of a substantial force was behind her. She was a commander of an entire legion, one of the many that had been deployed.
"Helio, lead the way, we going to the village." They had been spotted by whoever had fired that arrow. Whether it was a terrible aim or bad luck, her hand had been forced. She had to act no. Now she got to do what she had wanted from the start, to lead the men from the front. She was not a fan of cowardly staying back and barking orders, but sometimes that's what one's got to do.
"Olie, blast the horn!" She said.
This was what the soldiers in the front lines were waiting for. At the sound of the horn, they would move in. Olie held his job sacred as the official horn bearer of the commander. As he raised his horn, something dropped from the sky.
His poor horse was rattled. The arrow had struck it cleanly on its face, below the eyes and above the nose. The privilege of a high lord's aide horse was that it got to have armor, which shielded it from the arrow strike.
Despite it not taking any damage, the horse was rattled, which made it snap and jerk backward in flight. Olie, who at the time had his horn close to his mouth about to blast away tumbled and fell, hitting the ground hard.
"Help him out, dismount and find cover." The commander yelled as she too dismounted and went to find cover. She has seen the direction the arrows had come from, so she knew where to hide. As she moved, she didn't want to leave the men behind, so she had to wait for the others.
Barda had no idea whether his missed shot had led to more harm than good, but he understood that not that he had started, there was no looking back. The silver lining was that they were within range. The AI estimated that he needed 78% BowString capacity to hit them from that range.
They may be within the range of his weapon, but hitting them was another matter altogether. Barda estimated that he had a 12% hit rate even after applying the calculations. Luckily, his AI was equipped with machine learning chips that fired instance self-adjusting algorithms. Essentially self-correcting as it went. With every shot, his hit rate increased.
Taking down the horse had been a missed shot since he was aiming for Olie himself. He figured that if he took out the communicator from the group, he might buy them more time. He had overcompensated too far forward, but instead of the arrow falling harmlessly, there was a horse to intercept. He didn't hit his target but he wasn't complaining. Lady luck was with him.
2 more arrows were fired, each missing its mark. Each arrow was a source of data, he would automatically record the wind speeds based on the arrow movements as he watched it move to its target. Each shot might have been a miss but it was a source of the immense amount of data needed to make that one in a million shot. Not only that, to do so repeatedly that it becomes routine.
"Boss, what are you shooting at?" Batoo asked. Since he had known Barda, he had revealed miracle after miracle, each action spooking him further. He hated the fact that he was of little help. The rookie he chaperoned shot past him like an arrow.
Unlike others who thought he was crazy, Batoo knew Barda wouldn't act irrationally. Since they were too far to see anything on the battlefield, much less hit it, then the threat that Barda was shooting at must have been nearby. If so, then he too might be of assistance since he too was a bowman himself.
Barda didn't answer. At that moment he was too focused. His arrow was drawn. He wasn't breathing since he had an android body. He just needed to find that moment in flight when he was most stable. Unlike when he had to guess as human, he knew at precisely what moment to let the arrow loose.
Tang!
The arrow whistled in the air as it broke through from zero to 400kmh in under a second. The one advantage of having lighter arrows was weight reduction. Normally, longbows wouldn't fire fast arrows due to the weight of the equipment. They mostly parked a punch, like a shotgun. Now with a lighter arrow, he could make use of the reduced weight to increase speed.
The arrow started its descent a the 5-mile mark, now propelled by the momentum and leveraging gravity as well. The rivetting winds buffeted it left and right, but all this as in its projected flight path. The feathers on the arrows acted as a guiding system, with the winds as the navigator.
The piece of wood snaked its way through the air, hunting its prey.
Meanwhile, the bashing of shields had stopped. The army stood on the opposing side of one another. Captain Dunhill and his men had managed to raise whatever defenses they could in hopes of protecting the city, even though they knew it was a lost cause. Now watching the army just stand there, he wondered if this was a scare tactic.
Across the field, Captain Todd wondered why the cause for delay. The plan was clear, he had been there in its planning. They were supposed to get into position, then wait for the signal. Why they had to wait instead of moving in did not make sense. D*mn b*tch was making power moves in war, what kind of commander was this?
It was obvious he didn't like her or obeying her commands. She was a pampered brat that had been fast-tracked through the military, all because daddy was a who's who in the military. She was quite the militant, and he commended her for having a fighting spirit, but this move was showing how inexperienced she was, confirming his fears.
Olie raised his horn to do his most sacred duty. He was the one the entire army was waiting for. Every second he dallied was a second the enemy dug in, making it that much harder to fight them. The horn never touched his lips.
Tearing through leather armor and flesh, the kinetic energy in the momentum of the arrow caused a temporary wound that tore through Olie's ribcage. The arrow broke into splinters since it was not strong enough to handle this kind of force, but it was an advantage in this case since there was nothing to pull.
Olie couldn't even muster a whimper as he crumbled down, suffocating in his blood. He had just managed to get up. Seeing this, the soldiers that were scrambling to get Olie up and out of under his horse took off running, scared out of their minds.