The soldiers watched, stunned, as they came to a halt, realizing that they would only have been in the way if they continued in their intent to offer assistance.
A short moment later, Beam cut the final Gorebeast's hind leg from under it. It collapsed, only to be skewered by half a dozen spear points as a result.
"Hah... Thank the Gods," a sergeant said, mopping his brow. There were murmurs of agreement from amongst the rest of the soldiers. "You were late this morning, boy – but I won't complain too much. You saved us a good bit of struggle back there."
"Apologies," Beam said. The fighting had severed to work out his nerves just enough that he felt it right to apologise for the inconvenience he'd caused, but his words were still sharp, and it was clear to all around him that he was not in a mood to be bothered.
The sergeant seemed to take note of that, for he regarded him a moment with a raised eyebrow, wondering if he had merely slept poorly – for the men on this fighting shift had not heard about the chaos of the night yet.
"We'll see to the corpses for you lad," the sergeant said, taking care to be friendlier than usual with his grumpy comrade. Most of the soldiers treat him with cautious gratefulness now – well aware of the load that he was lifting for them. "I wish you luck."
Beam nodded in reply this time. His eyes were already focused on the trees ahead of him. He could sense the next wave already approaching. He hardly spared the soldiers a glance as they dragged their corpses past him, back towards the line of defences.
The soldiers were still fighting in front of the stakes that they'd made, and the shallow trench that they'd dug – that was to ensure that building could still continue, even as they fought the waves off. So though the defences had improved, they were not making use of them quite yet.
"ARROW FIRE ON THEIR RIGHT!" The officer shouted, as much for Beam's benefit as for the soldiers'. A cloud of arrows came storming in, just where the officer had said they would be.
Beam hit the party on the left, instead. He could see no archers amongst this party of horned goblins, which in itself was a rarity – but their spears were just as troubling.
Or, they would have been, had the eyes of the goblins not been continually flickering toward the cloud of dangerously approaching arrows. Just that momentary lapse in attention was more than enough for Beam now.
His sword was faster than it ever had been before. It seized on the opportunity. The goblin moved to react – it would normally have taken a combination of attacks before Beam could have overpowered it enough to land the killing blow. But with the arrows, and its delayed reaction, his sword brushed its throat on the first strike and ended it.
He saved the extra movements that he would have wasted on dealing with a single goblin and instead used them to dismantle the entire party.
Three horned goblins had been caught directly in the arrows line of fire. They were intelligent creatuers – intelligent enough to know that arrows were worthy of dodging. Perhaps they even respected the arrows too much, for their own kind used them, and were well aware of the dangers.
As such, long before the arrows could land, they were moving out of the way with almost comical vigour. But in doing so, two showed their backs to Beam – a fatal mistake. It only took a single slash each to end them both – these creatures that would have been so bothersome for the soldiers to have dealt with alone.
"I have to say... watching him go about it like that, making it look so damned easy – pretty terrifying to watch," one soldier said lightly. All he'd done was fire a single arrow. He hadn't even had to move from his post.
The day shift, as such, was becoming rather fought over. Men knew that it'd be basically a walk in the park, firing arrows all day – every single one of them was trained with the bow, as well as the spear – so they fought to make sure that their shift, if any, was the day shift.