"Well, she certainly has a high opinion of her judgment..." Erwin said, looking over to Ace with a raised eyebrow, whom just snorted in response. "...eh, your right...she's still young...one or two times on her ass will teach her better...that is, if she doesn't bite it firsts..."
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Taking a bite of the beef jerky, the hunstman rested his head against the back of his tree...as he watched Ace sniff through some of the dead corpses spilling out of the tree lines. It was quite the site on the main road, with bodies littering the nearby forest, arrows or bite marks causing blood to come gushing out of the slowly cooling bodies.
The halfing been right, he couldn't dodge 12 arrows at once; but he didn't need to, they were dead before they had a chance. Ace's noise had picked up on them not too long after the two had departed on their separate ways. They must have been waiting for somebody or somthing important, because they're was easily 15 or so lads waiting in hiding, too bad their natural odars gave them away.
Sure, Erwin could have probably snuck around with little effort, but he
It was a classic tactics that the huntsman of Strojland used: "The Talking Trees Tactics". Hit-and-run at it's finest, great for a smaller force against a larger one. The little skirmish was almost text book gurrilla, which worked in the favor of both him and Ace. It was just easier to coordinate with just him and Ace. It was a simple matter of getting behind one of the flanking bandit groups, before unleashing hell.
Erwin would rapidly loose arrows into the backs of the bandits before re-positioning himself to keep the bandits guessing. Ace blitzed the edges of the group, picking off those whom strayed too far, before retreating back into the cover of the forest. They must have thought it had been an entire group attacking them, as their constantly wailing made it clear that they were trying to figure out the numbers, when in reality it was just one man and his dog.
It was why they paid him the big bucks...and why they often sent him into the most dangerous of situations...so it was a give or take.
Both Erwin and Ace were able to kill off more then half the bandits, with the rest turning tail and running in a panic. Neither bothered pursing; those running were no threat, and it sent a clear message to the rest. More often then not, persistent action against bandits often deteriorated their moral and would cause them to splinter, making it easier to counter.
Bandits really did rely on the element of surprise and even numbers, a matter that Erwin had dedicated a surprisingly large amount of time to; flushing bandits out of the forest, right into the arms of waiting soldiers.
It was the environment that they nestled into that made them so hard to really route out. They relied on the same hit-and-run tactics as Erwin and his lot used, though Erwin and the brigade often had home field advantage. But the opposite was also true. The killing blow of any odd bandit group was more often then not their lair. Only place they really had to centralize if they wanted an extensive operation. but it made fighting them easier when they had to stand and fight. They might have looked tough and macho, but they couldn't compare toe to toe to a trained and well armed soldier, else they wouldn't have turned to banditry in the first place.
The poor and the desperate turned to banditry, Erwin thought as he rested against the tree, that and the cruel...cruel and the dim...and the ones who had terrible parents...always a fun combination...
