Sigh… I supposed it was very on-brand that shit hit the fan on the one day that I was off. After all these months of pulling 12 hour workdays, I figured I deserved a little morning break with the kiddos and their wolf puppies. Loki just had another batch of puppies with members of his impressive harem, so I was letting them mingle and play together outside on a beautiful sunny day. I was able to enjoy the blissful tranquility of puppies and babies for precisely 13 minutes before the bells were rung.
To our credit, we responded quickly to the impending crisis. Within half an hour after the signal flare was sighted, everyone outside the walls were drawn inside and all militia members were at the battlements manning their posts. The non-combatants were heading to the arms factory for shelter (and to be gang-pressed into emergency ammo workers). The annual drills I made all of us do really paid off in that regard.
I arrived at the battlements roughly 10 minutes after I’d heard the bells. Sapphy joined me on the battlement soon after (Emma was in charge of noncombatant evacuation, so she'd take a while to finish her task). While I didn’t see anything out of the treeline yet, I wasn’t going to casually dismiss the warning of my patrols. With my trusty spyglass, I nervously scanned the treeline over and over again, hoping against hope that Ratty accidentally set off that flare during his patrol. 5 minutes later, that hope was dashed when an Imperial standard emerged from a treeline as thousands of soldiers marched behind it.
Skera immediately ordered the MG squads to rappel down the wall with their gear and ammo. Once they landed, they manned the final trench line right in front of the advancing legions. The mortar squads scrambled into position on and behind the walls. The sharpshooters each found their own crenel and prepared to line up their respective shots with the Garands. Within 10 minutes, we were fully deployed.
Sadly, so were they. Well, at least the advance guard of 200-300 knights and men-at-arms. Judging by how shiny and fancy their armors are, these have to be the household troops of somebody important. The legionnaires behind them were still forming up. Fuck, there must’ve been at least 3-4 legions worth of soldiers arrayed against me.
Shit. I fucked up. I did the very thing I mocked my enemies for- underestimating one’s opponents. Honestly, I didn’t think these backward savages were capable of marching that many men through a hostile forest while maintaining a supply line through a city on the verge of a chaotic collapse. That would be…
Oh.
They got Mike, and very likely his family. There’s no way Carnwennan would be chaotic. No, if the guy in charge of this is as competent as I think he is, he would never allow his rear to be in disorder. Hell, I bet the first thing he did was to swiftly take the city, prevent anything from coming out of the city, and make it his base of operations. With an army that big at his disposal, the squabbling nobles would fall in line quicker than I could spell the word parfait.
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Poor Mike. While I certainly didn’t appreciate being lied to, there was a good chance that they made him send this at swordpoint. Plus, he did his best to tip me off subtly. Fucking hell, I knew something was off about that note. Sigh... I supposed that is all the consolation I could get out of this shitty day.
I turned around and noticed Tali making her way up the battlements. She was dressed in a full noble battle regalia- a fancy blue traveling dress covered by a metallic cuirass. The steel helmet she wore was decorated with a peacock feather on top and was open faced. As her armorer, I heavily advised against this setup, but I supposed this was the one thing she wanted to emulate from her dirtbag of a father. It wasn’t functional protection she seeked- it was the noble prestige.
“Are you ready for the parley, my husband?” She asked with a resigned tone in her voice.
“Yeah. No point dragging it out…” I replied.
“It’s not your fault, Rummy. If any one person deserves any blame, it is your foolish wife.” She earnestly pleaded.
I reached out and held her hand, in full view of the militia. “No, love. That’s not it. It’s nobody’s fault.” I sighed again. “I always knew this day would come- I wasn’t so naive to think that we would evade the Pantheon forever. I just didn’t quite expect this degree of competence.”
Skera walked up to us and stoically added. “My Lady, look at that insignia of a sword in a lake on the standard- that’s an insignia of an Imperial Prince. These are imperial household legions we are defending against.”
Well fuck, that does explain the extra competence. At least now I know who I’m dealing with- a direct descendant of the Pantheon, and somebody who presumably has access to all the information they had about me. Heck, he might even know more about the impending world disaster.
Despite my instinct to punish them for not respecting the personal space of my M2 mortars, I held it in for 3 reasons- 1) The treeline were the outer edges of the effective range, so precision decapitation strikes would not be possible. 2) It makes more military sense for us to wait for them to draw closer in with their main army before informing them that our mortar has ranges beyond their wildest imaginations. 3) I wanted to give diplomacy a chance. As wary as I am of them, I recognized the grim reality- even if we prevailed today, what would stop them from sending another 4-5 legions my way next summer? I see nothing but hard fighting down that path. If there was even a chance that this Prince guy is intelligent and reasonable enough to treat with, I should take it.
So with a heavy heart, I rode towards our enemies upon Loki with Tali holding tightly around my waist. Based on what I’ve seen so far, this Prince guy is easily the most impressive nobleman I’ve ever seen in this shithole of a world. Let’s see what he’s truly made of.