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As the only remaining daughter of the village chief, Adana naturally fell into the role of caretaker for the non-combatants hiding behind the inner wall, and ever since the gates were shut a few hours ago, the sounds of battle seemed to be drawing ever closer to their position, which was very worrying indeed, and she was starting to have troubles keeping everyone calm, in fact, she was finding it hard to keep herself calm.
The breaking point of everyone going into a state of panic was when there were shouts from outside the inner walls to open up, and the warriors guarding the inner gates did so, and the moment they did, a few head warriors and their men rushed in.
But instead of immediately closing the gate behind them, the head warriors and their men went to round up their own families and went back out. This made it obvious to everyone that all their strongest warriors were making a run for it.
This caused the rest of the people in the inner gate to break out in a riot while begging the warriors escaping with their families to take them with, only to have weapons pointed at them while saying things like, "Back off! You will only slow us down!"
During this riot, Adana was lost in the scrum of people trying to escape for their lives and was forced to the side to avoid being trampled, and when all was said and done, a fifth of the people previously within the inner walls were gone and there were no warriors left in sight, even the warrior her father left in charge of guarding her was nowhere to be seen.
When Adana got out to the main area, she saw and heard the groaning of men, women, and children who were trampled in the riot to escape, and even as she went to help those who were injured, she saw groups of people running out of the inner gate and guessed that they were going to take their chances to strike out on their own without the warriors.
As she saw more people leaving the inner wall, a small nagging question was there in the back of her mind, 'What happened to Father and his warriors? Why did they not come and get me?'. But now was not the time for such distractions, her people were in front of her and they needed help.
A few minutes into helping the wounded, she noticed the noise of battle getting a lot closer, a lot faster than before. And when she looked up from the woman she was tending to, she had a line of sight down the main road of their thinning and retreating defense line, and standing head and shoulder above the multitude of warriors and enemies, was the one unique being in dark maroon armor on the whole battlefield, the one her people know as The Monster.
At the increased noise, others looked out the gate, saw The Monster reaping warriors like stalks of grain, and dispaired. By this point, the fall of the Blazebringer Village was evident to all, and it was only a matter of time.
But despite all this, Adana refused to give up and just die, and she would save as many lives as she could, better if they fell into slavery than be butchered, and she would use whatever leverage she had to accomplish the best outcome possible for herself and the people left behind.
She immediately got to her feet and started shouting orders, "Close the gate and arm yourselves, I do not care if you are crippled or a child. If you can hold a stick, you wield it and prepare to sell your lives dearly because that is the only way we are coming out of this alive today!"
Soon, the gate for the inner wall was shut and bolted, and everyone was gathered at the gate, all armed with some form of weapon, be it an actual weapon, a cooking implement, or even a simple unsharpened stick. Adana herself had her dagger strapped to her side and an arrow notched on her bowstring, ready to draw.
As they waited for the inevitable, what was actually a few minutes, felt like a few hours as the sound of battle died down, and the only sound left was the sound of children crying and hundreds of footsteps coming from just beyond the inner wall, and soon, even the sound of those footsteps ceased to be.
Just as they were wondering what the enemy was doing outside, there was a loud boom that shook the gate, making Adana and all the people behind her scream and flinch in shock, this was followed by a second boom of the gate being struck, but the gate that had been here for generations, ever since the Blazebringer village was founded, and was said to be protected by the ancestral spirits held strong.
This alleviated some of Adana's fears. If their gate held strong and the enemy tired themselves out trying to take down the gate, she would have more leverage negotiating her peoples' surrender for more favorable terms, but what happened next dashed that hope as what looked like a glowing blade stabbed straight through the copper reinforced beam baring the door.
***
After throwing two punches at the unnaturally hard gate with mana-infused fists and not having the dramatic effect he wanted, only resulting in deep dents on the wood, Grud decided not to drag on the breaching of the last bastion of safety the Blazebringers had and pumped mana into spear before accurately punching precisely into the gap between the gap where the two doors of the gate met.
Besides feeling some resistance of the edges of the gate deforming to accommodate Grud's spear, the beam securing the gates showed little resistance to Grud's spear that pierced through, and after wriggling his spear up and down a few times, there was the feeling of something snapping and the sound of two thuds coming from the other side of the gate.
Grud then kicked the gate open to the cheers of his men who were about to charge in and begin slaughtering everyone. But before his men took two steps forward, Grud raised his hand and shouted, "STOP!".
This sudden halt to what was going to be a charge through the gates startled both Grud's men and the people on the other side of the gate. It even made some of Grud's men fall over from the false start.
Grud looked at the gathered people in front of him and noticed that they were only women, children, the elderly, and the infirm. But despite the obvious fear on their faces and body language, they all had a look in their eyes that told him that these were people with nothing to lose, and that was one of the most dangerous foes to face, especially the woman in front of the group with her bow drawn and aimed directly at Grud.
As Grud focused on the woman aiming a bow at him, he noticed that despite her frizzled appearance from a lot of moving around, she had a pretty face and a very well-kept appearance. Her skin was smooth, her hair had a healthy shine, and her gritted teeth appeared to be well-maintained, all signs of an affluent upbringing.
Not to mention her healthy figure. Even though they may be bound in leather to keep them from moving around, Grud had been around huge knockers long enough to know the woman in front of him had at least D Cup breasts. Shifting his focus downward, she had wide childbearing hips that connected to some juicy looking thighs, and the plumpness of her breasts and width of her hips made her waist take on an hourglass figure despite having some fat. Just the way Grud liked it, a woman with some meat on her bones.
The sight of this woman made his lately under-utilized and under-drained balls pulse and tingle as his blood started pumping away from less important things, like his brain, and into his dick. The only thing keeping Grud from having a full-on erection and depriving his brain of more blood was his armored codpiece, and if anyone was paying close attention, they could hear the leather holding the codpiece together creaking under the stress of holding back Grud's dick.
A few seconds into ogling the woman, she spoke up "I am Adana daughter of the Blazebringer Village Chief, Tovak. What is your name, great warrior?"
That snapped Grud out of his ogling and looked Adana in the eyes before replying in her tongue, "I am Grud, Chieftain of the Rock Claw tribe and leader of these warriors. Sur-"
Before Grud could ask them to surrender or die, Adana shouted, "Accept our surrender with our lives, or i swear by my ancestors we will use what life we have left to bring as many of your men to the afterlife with us!"
'Well, that was easy.' Grud thought. And in truth, he was grateful it was this easy, they were just women and children here, and even though he was sometimes forced to take the lives of the weak while conquering the small villages on the way here, did not take pleasure in killing them. Especially if they were a beauty like the woman before him.
Grud then walked up to the woman until the drawn arrow almost touched his breastplate and looked down at Adana as he loomed over her, "I accept your surrender. No further harm will befall the people here so long as they do not provoke us… in exchange, you will be my woman from now on." Grud said as the last part of his sentence was conjured up mainly by his lower brain.