Jan planned to overwhelm the group with her numbers. The total number of bandits with her reached 6000. Against a few enemies they had no chance of losing.
The bandits were made up of different groups joined together so she obviously made sure that her bandits were towards the rear with her. This way any casualities would be from bandits in the other groups.
As they were nearing the group, out of nowhere the people started falling in the front lines. When Jan observed closely she saw arrows being shot at the men. Because they were bandits they didn't carry any shields or Armor with them.
Jan was irritated with this unexpected scenario. She asked a few of the bandits to go intercept the archers. But contrary to her expectations the archers were sitting from a farther distance than regular archers. Yet they were able to shoot accurately and kill their target.
Jan now understood why the nobles were not able to deal with this group. But Jan didn't care about this. She ordered the bandits to charge forward and kill the people near them. She planned to deal with the archers after she took care of the group near them.
Obviously this was not a efficient method because many bandits would end up dead in this process. But she knew that trying to attack the archers now would be almost impossible.
As the bandits closed towards the swordsmen the archers started shooting continuously at them. Jan was impressed at the speed of the archers. They would shoot almost instantaneously after each arrow. In the traditional bow, the archer had to apply all the force themself to shoot the arrow. Where as in the compound bow the requirement to use power was less. This was helpful in increasing the accuracy and force of the arrows shot from it. This also helped in rapid shooting as the power requirement was low it was much easier to shoot multiple arrows in a short span of time.
In each volley of arrows shot atleast 50-80 bandits died. But this didn't become as much of a problem because by the time they reached the swordsmen only 4 volleys were thrown by the archers.
Jan observed that the swordsmen stood in a formation. This led Jan to believe that they must have had military training. As the fight started between the swordsmen and bandits, the archers started shooting the ones moving towards the fight rather than the ones fighting the swordsmen. This was because if they shot at the ones near swordsmen and misfired then they could end up injuring their own men. They were helping decrease the number of reinforcements for the bandits.
Jan was relieved that the gamble payed off as the bandits were attacking the swordsmen as it was only a matter of time before they would win with their numbers.
The swordsmen held strong in their formation and were able to easily beat many of the bandits. But eventually their formation was broken and this resulted in them falling completely on the defensive.
This made Jan relax as they were about to end the fight. Even the archers used up all their arrows and we're not able to support the swordsmen. As they were about to be crushed a voice came from the distance and all the soldiers retreated in different direction.
Just as Jan was about to have the bandits follow them she saw a group of soldiers as strong as 4000 nearing them.
She had originally come to the fight with 6000 soldiers but now there were less than 5000 left and they were exhausted from the constant dodging and fighting with the group before. They knew that if they fought now both sides would be destroyed.
She cursed her luck and ordered to retreat. The soldiers followed three bandits to attack them but eventually the bandits escaped ran away.
When the archer reached Ethan and informed him about the bandits Ethan knew he would not be able to save his men himself. Instead he informed the baron Jost about the bandits returning. Jost was very angry at the bandits locking down Darren while he was the Noble incharge.
Over the past 6 months Baron Jost had been aggressively recruiting soldiers. He even got extra money from the Duke because of the incident with the bandits. The Duke had given him the money saying it should be useful to recruit new people under him but in actuality it was a bribe to make him stay quiet about not recieving help after sending messages.
The Duke portrayed himself as a strong ruler. But if he was not able to even recieve messages of help and people found out about it then slowly the nobles might start to doubt his capability. So he gave the money to quiet Jost about the incident.
Jost had used the money to increase his soldiers. He now had 5000 soldiers under him. After hearing from Ethan about the bandits he was enraged. They had held the town captive for years. Now that he had the power he intended to make them suffer. So he ordered 1000 soldiers to protect the town while he took 4000 soldiers to fight the bandits.
Ethan used the advantage of Jost's impulsiveness to help his soldiers. This plan helped him stop the eradication of his forces.
But Ethan was not happy with the results. Originally he planned to slowly dwindle the number of soldiers under the Duke till he would become weaker but not only did the Duke not send his soldiers to defend the carts, he even hired the bandits to work for him.
Ethan knew that officially the bandits were the biggest enemies of the nobles. Ethan had told his men to attack the carts freely because he was sure they would be able to hide effectively in the forest. But now that the situation was changed and the Duke even caused the death of some of his men Ethan decided it was time for the Duke to pay for his actions.