12 Let's hear it.

***Boots***

The crowd's attention shifted to Boots, there was an uncomfortable silence.

"You plan to stop this course of events?" Gerald asked with disbelief, "How?"

"Well that we need to discuss." Boots said to the gaggle of felinians before him.

There was a murmur amongst the crowd.

Who was this guy?

Could he really do anything?

They wanted to believe but found themselves sceptical. None of them had ever met Boots before tonight. Despite him being able to free them, freeing the town seemed almost impossible to them by comparison.

"I need to know everything about our enemy. But first, I need to know everything about you." Boots said, gesturing to the people before him.

"Is there anyone here with any experience in combat or magic? Or anything else that might aide our cause." Boots searched the crowd before him, people eyes shifted away from his gaze uncomfortably. It seemed as though they weren't quite motivated enough yet.

"We have some experience." Roman and Simeon stepped forward, "I am Roman, this is Simeon, we were both in the town guard before all of this happened. As long as your plan is not suicidal, we will assist you." he said with a determined look on his face.

"I can help!" piped up Oswald

"Obviously, I'm not going to let you go running off on some hair-brained scheme without me." Fiona said, over-dramatically, "you can count on me too, Boots."

"Thank you, all of you." Boots said, however, there were still many uncomfortable faces in the crowd.

"We will put a pin in it for now. I understand that none of you know me. I also understand that it will be a dangerous undertaking. So, I will come up with a plan first, with the assistance of all of you. Then I will ask for volunteers. Hopefully whatever we come up with will inspire some confidence in all of you." Boots said to them with his best crowd winning smile.

"Fist things first," he said pulling one of the maps out of the small crate and laying it on the floor, "lets talk about numbers, Oswald write this down."

Oswald quickly dashed over to the crate and rummaged through it until he found the ink and quill he and Boots had retrieved from the tent earlier. He then grabbed a sheet of parchment and prepared to scribe for the meeting.

"What is the enemy strength? Or should I say, how many soldiers are there? Best estimate?"

There were a few murmurs from the crowd as they talked amongst themselves.

"Maybe a hundred?"

"It was more like a thousand!"

"Where were you looking? Can you even count to a thousand?!"

The crowd bickered on, clearly most of them hadn't taken stock of enemy troop sizes. No doubt pre-occupied with evading capture or death during the attack.

"I'd say there were at least two companies, so two hundred give or take fifty" Roman answered.

Simeon nodded along silently.

Luckily for Boots, military men were good for this sort of thing. Their training no doubt paying off in situations like this.

"So, two hundred and fifty, worst case scenario. Oswald write that down" Boots said with an appreciative nod. "Also put down a hundred in reserve, just to be safe."

"Reserve?" asked Oswald.

"Yes, reserve. Any commander worth his salt should keep a significant fighting portion of his soldiers away from battle in order to give himself options in the event of an ambush or flanking manoeuvre. Or to reinforce and relieve troops in battle. He also needs people to protect his supplies and headquarters. How would he even extract casualties from the field without a mobile reserve force?" Boots chuckled at the confusion on Oswald's face.

Boots looked at the town guardsmen for support, but even they looked surprised at the idea.

It seems Boots was the odd one out.

"That is not a tactic I have heard of before." Roman said evenly, "Not that it sounds unreasonable, just not something we've experienced."

"Hmm," Boots considered, "I'll take that on board."

"Also, they've occupied the town now, if he had more men, they didn't come into the town." Simon chimed in.

"I see, very well. Oswald remove it from the record." Boots conceded.

"As you wish." Oswald said dutifully, quill scratching at the page.

"Ok, now comes the tricky part. Locations, I need to know precisely where the enemy have formed up and what kind of defences they have in place." Boots gestured to the map on the floor.

"Obviously, we will need to confirm this with reconnaissance before we strike. But a general idea would be most helpful." Boots continued.

The group gathered close around the map instinctively.

The map outlined the town and many of the fields around it. It appeared to be quite precise, and in colour. However, there was no clear way of marking relief, so it wasn't immediately apparent whether somewhere was up or down hill from somewhere else. Save for the few named features outside the town, like valleys and large hills.

But Boots had locals to assist him with details like that.

They spent the next twenty minutes or so discussing troop locations. In the process Boots managed to piece together roughly what had happened in the attack.

The enemy was Raxia's second infantry battalion, the 'Crusaders' as they liked to call themselves. They had marched up to Fenniton under the guise of stopping for supplies on route to a training exercise in the mountains.

Once inside Fenniton they launched a surprise attack and started rounding people up. The Town Guard was unfortunately unable to mount much of a defence.

Once the majority of the townsfolk were captured or slain, they were deposited into the hands of the snatchers who had begun arriving in the area. It seems that the buildings that were being burned were not ones from the central town, but mostly the farms and huts that were situated in the fields outside the wall.

The looting had begun, and it seems all were to be collected and sent back to Javos. Boots deduced this was why the snatchers had so much stock with them. The army was using them to help transport their plunder along with the prisoners.

The fighting was over in less than a day. Snatchers had begun moving towards the outskirts in search of stragglers. Like Gregory's farm for example.

Most of the captured townsfolk were being held in a small camp set up just outside the walls. They were waiting for snatchers to come and collect them.

Gerald had told Boots that the towns population only numbered around two thousand before the attack, he had no idea how many had fallen. But he did know that many carts full of prisoners had already left for Javos. Gerald also suspected that they wouldn't completely destroy the town as they claimed. As it would be costly to rebuild. He believed that they would loot it and burn the houses and farms outside the wall, leaving the majority of the central town's infrastructure intact.

Boots had concurred with his reasoning; it made no sense to destroy the town brick by brick. Either from a tactical standpoint or an economic one.

The town of Fenniton was situated on a bend in the river Nix, which ran all the way to Javos. Making Fenniton a useful port for westward trade. The river was around thirty to fifty meters wide most of the year round but had swollen slightly due to the recent spring thaw and rains.

The river circled around the towns eastern edge and headed north-west towards the centre of the kingdom. There was a water gate and small water inlet situated on the western town wall for trade-barges.

The curtain wall completely enclosed the central town. It stood at around ten metres high and was equipped with two normal gates and eight towers total, forming a slightly un-even octagonal perimeter. Although it lacked gatehouses the wall was fitted with machicolations to allow archers atop the wall to fire arrows effectively at its base. On the northwest wall was a small keep, this housed the barracks for the town guard.

The Keep was well situated to fire arrows effectively onto the river should the need arise. Although it had no siege equipment currently.

It appeared that Fenniton had been initially selected as a place for a castle, but due to costs the initial plan to build one had been scrapped. They settled instead for a fortified town, this meant that Fenniton was a key piece of terrain for Raxia. This was possibly one of the real reasons why King Pino had decided to remove its population for such an arbitrary reason. Although Boots couldn't really gauge the thinking of the man, fundamentally different as they were from one another.

The gate on the eastern wall was the closest one to them and was entered via the main road. Across the road from this gate was the temporary holding camp. The Crusaders had created this small camp to hold all the prisoners waiting to be transported away by the snatchers.

The other gate led out of the northwest wall, just next to the keep. The road from this gate forked left and right, left took you over a wooden bridge and then continued northwest through the expanse of farmland and eventually led to the mountains. Right took you to another fork where you could either follow the northeast road to Javos or continue southeast to find yourself at the eastern gate from outside the wall.

The small patch of woods they were currently in was around two kilometres to the southeast along the road, there was a ridgeline preventing direct line of sight to the town from their location. Once over the ridge there was an area of woodland, known as the Drakewoods, that led up to the southern wall and across the road to the east. Meaning that it would be relatively easy to approach the town unseen.

According to the townspeople, the enemy's main force was located within the walls of the town. The soldiers had wasted no time looting and drinking whilst they waited for the town resources and prisoners to be ferried and carted off to the capital.

Their moral was high for the time being.

The prisoner holding area opposite the eastern gate was only manned by around twenty guards maximum. Crucially, this area was outside the wall and relatively lightly defended. This gave Boots some options in regard to rescuing them.

Although the Crusaders were professional soldiers, there were plenty off accounts of them drinking on watch or even falling asleep at their posts from the townsfolk. They clearly did not expect the possibility of a fight and were doing the bare minimum required by their superiors.

This was good news for Boots; however, he knew he would still only have one chance at insurrection before the Crusaders would start taking their jobs seriously again.

That would spell very bad news for them and whatever plan they could conjure.

Boots studied the map carefully.

A plan started to form in his mind.

"I believe I have a solution." Boot said slowly, "Yes. I think this can be done."

The gaggle of townspeople fell silent. All eyes turned to him.

"It will not be easy. But I believe it can be done with around ten people."

"That's a bold claim!" Gerald exclaimed in disbelief.

Everybody started talking at once, some even laughed.

"Pipe down! Let's at least hear him out." Roman said, commanding the silence of the villagers. But still wearing a relatively sceptical look himself.

"I know it may sound far-fetched. But it really is quite possible. We will still have to talk about what to do once the hostages are released. But if we are lucky, we may be able to retake the town with minimal losses. That's the best case-scenario and is only applicable if the enemy commander overplays his hand, which is quite possible. A worst-case scenario success, the prisoners will be free and we can escape to the hills."

"How on Arca-…" Fiona was looking at Boots as though he was speaking in tongues. Her face reflected that of most of the people gathered. Utter disbelief with a light sprinkling of hope.

"Well young man, you've certainly got everybody's attention." Gerald said, intrigued, "How about you let us in on this plan of yours. However, I'll warn you now, if it's nonsense I'll bash you black and blue." he said, waved his walking stick menacingly.

"If there's a moth's chance in a fire though. I'll support you all the way." the old geezer finished with a wink, "Let's hear it."

Boots laughed nervously.

"Well, we're going to need two teams…"