"You mean to tell me that you can see how many enemies there are!?" Rajendra exclaimed out loud.
"That's right. It's my magic that allows me to project my vision out of my body and control it from will."
"Oh, That's indeed very interesting! If I had an amazing skill like that, strategizing would be so much easier!"
"So they have five thousand men in total?" Jitamitra was thoughtful.
"Although it's just an estimation of numbers, yes they have around five thousand. They are attacking the four gates of the wall after dividing their forces."
"They have one thousand men in the west, east and north but two thousand men in the south… that's the direction we're approaching the city from. Rajendra, do you have a strategy that would help us?" Jitamitra said.
"Oh your highness! How overly reliant you've become of me! I'm overjoyed."
"C'mon. This is no time to joke."
"Yes, yes. We can't afford to lose any more time than we have."
Rajendra pulled out the map from his backpack once again and unrolled it before beginning the explanation:
"If you see clearly, there is a large forest on the outskirts of the city, it's a perfect place to sneak around. So what I'm suggesting is to split our army up into four different bits and sneakily take out their..."
***
Nirpendra crunched some dry leaves underneath his foot as he crouched past some trees. He was trying to make as little sound as possible as he stealthily took cover behind a large tree while simultaneously peeking ahead.
His head was not decorated with his usual crown made out of a luxurious bird's tail. It would provide an easy target for the enemies if he donned that into war, after all.
Nirpendra was silently observing the bushes ahead from the safety of his tree cover, waiting for something to happen. After a few moments, the bushes shook due to movement from within. This shaking movement grew larger and Nirpendra put his hand on the sheath of his sword, anticipating an enemy to lunge out any moment.
However, the person who jumped out was not even a person, rather a white wild rabbit. The rabbit stayed in that spot for a few moments while looking left and right, its bunny ears swaying each time, before running off somewhere.
Nirpendra sighed, stood up and returned to where he came from.
A few minutes ago, Nirpendra figured out that he could soar through a large distance of about 5 kilometers away from the original body. This helped to easily gather intel on the enemy and with this information, Rajendra was able to come up with a good plan.
Essentially, their army was divided into four groups led by all four of them. The one in the middle led by Ivan was the main force of this operation. He had around 800 men. Ivan was strong in the battlefield himself and raised morale, so he was best suited for the large frontal battles.
The rest of the three smaller groups of 200 men each were very mobile and would have to traverse through the thick forest and then swoop in to ambush the camps the Patan soldiers are setting up as of right now.
"Your highness!" A soldier clad in armor spoke. This was the Commander of the small army of 250 with the task to ambush the enemy camp who greeted the king on his return.
"It was just a rabbit. Nothing to worry about. Besides, won't you think we might be too late to ambush their camp?"
"Well, yes your highness. We're already making as much haste as possible and it would still take twenty minutes before we get to their camp. By that time, I reckon they would have already settled down and stabilized their army command."
"That's true. It would've been best to attack them while they're on the move… But for now let's return to the main group."
Nirpendra was thoughtful as he started walking back. Using the Vision Projection spell, he knew that the patan men numbered roughly five thousand. Nirpendra's party of around 250 soldiers were to ambush the thousand men set up at the west wall of the city and Jitamitra's party of the same size would ambush the thousand men set up at the east city.
Those numbers are in 1:4 ratio and in Medieval warfare without guns or missiles, such a large imbalance in numbers tends to make a world's difference. So their only hope of taking out the 1k men or in the least, deal a lot of damage to them was to catch them off guard while they were on the move.
But the problem was that the stealthy forest grounds were a kind of detour. The trees were a kilometer away from the outskirts and difficult to traverse. They couldn't make it before the enemies settled down. If they fail this ambush, then there would be little chance of winning this war which means letting Patan capture the entirety of Bhadgaon. This will bring an insurmountable amount of change in the balance between the strength of Patan and Kantipur and soon, even Kantipur will fall.
'Tsk! How did nobody even foresee this situation?' Nirpendra was frustrated internally. However, simultaneously, an idea suddenly popped up into his head.
Rajendra was the one who divided the army into four bits and created this entire strategy. He was also leading another force of 200 men and was supposed to leave for the Northmost camp. But the Northern camp was the furthest to get to. How could he have reached in time—
'No way… Did Rajendra know? Did he know that it'd be too late but still devised this plan?'
Nirpendra's mind was in turmoil from all these thoughts. What was Rajendra thinking? Did he have ulterior motives? However, before he could really think upon anything, an external disturbance shocked him out of his deep thinking.
"Your majesty! An ambush!"
The commander exclaimed to the king. And at this instant, a figure jumped out of the trees and stabbed the commander right at his neck and because he still had his helmet held on his hands, his head cleanly severed off due to the sharp blade and a fountain of blood emerged from the wound. This captain did not have any time to even scream in agony because he was already dead.
His head flew into some direction and his body slowly collapsed down into the floor. Nirpendra threw a glance at the ambushers. They were clad in light chainmail and the garments they wore were entirely pitch black. The person who just severed the captain's head swung his dagger to remove the blood off its blade.
The assassins talked among themselves:
"Did he just call him your majesty?"
"Then he must be the king!"
"Wow! What a lucky find! Let's get his head and earn extra rewards!"
"Yeah!"