“There are times when traditions are beneficial and good for you, and there are times when they should be discarded right out of the door.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“Shame they’re headed straight for Levain,” mumbled Reinhardt quietly while he watched the enemy troops movement through his eye piece’s enchantment from the safety of the camp the Free Lances and their allies had erected deep within the jungle. Hannah was keeping track of the enemy from on high, well outside arrow range as usual.

If the enemy had spread themselves thin in order to properly conquer the outlying areas of Levain first before heading to the city itself, Reinhardt and the people with him would have been able to do a disproportionate amount of damage to them, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. With the enemies on a direct course to Levain, at best he got a week and a half to two weeks to harass them before they reached the city.

Once they have reached and besieged the city itself, their encampments would be better fortified, and their sentries would be more alert and on guard to incursions. Reinhardt could still bother them even then, but it would be to a lesser level than what he was capable of pulling off while the enemy was still traveling to the city.

Unfortunately, it was the norm of warfare to aim straight for the large cities and towns instead of conquering every bit of a nation gradually. The expectation of the times was that the smaller villages would surrender themselves to their new owners without much fuss, and be incorporated easily once their erstwhile rulers were removed from power.

The dwarves from Knallzog had not subscribed to that method and instead did things in their usual methodical way back during the Theodinaz campaign, though the discoveries that all the villages were empty did put a damper on that. In the end, however, that methodical manner helped them integrate the land even better once they won, compared to the usual way.

Reinhardt had also noticed Duke Utghwes of Dvergarder employing such methods, slowly creeping over the enemy’s land, engulfing them one village at a time. Then again, the Duke had been quite a forward-thinking man and commander, a trait he passed down to his daughter the young Duchess. For most of the rest of Alcidea, campaigning straight to the enemy cities was still the norm.

Podovniy was clearly sticking to that norm.

As it was, the Podovniy troops were clearly slowed by the traps Reinhardt and his crew had prepared all over the road. Even on stretches of road where there were no traps, they slowed down since they were searching for traps that weren’t there to begin with. If anything, such untrapped stretches of road turned the enemy soldiers somewhat paranoid instead.

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Every now and then, they would discover and either disarm or mark a trap so the others behind them could avoid it. Even with all their efforts, they still missed quite a few traps which were only discovered the hard way by the people behind them, however. None of that did any good to the morale of the Podovniy soldiers.

And Reinhardt hadn’t exactly left them unbothered either. Every now and then, small groups of twenty to fifty people of his would approach the column of enemy soldiers and harass them with projectiles and thrown weapons from the safety of the forests. Reinhardt had especially stocked up on large amounts of projectiles and thrown weapons for this exact purpose.

Some of the projectiles were not even intended to kill. Sometimes they threw urns that contained all sorts of unpleasant substances at the enemy. The stink bombs used on the first ambush was just one example. Another sort they used came from the idea Elfriede’s team used way back when they were still independent mercenaries to deal with invisible targets.

In this case, however, Reinhardt had not bothered with the flour – since all the enemies were visible anyway – and instead doubled up on the pepper load of the little “bombs”. The resultant explosions spread very finely ground flakes of pepper and chilies all over the vicinity, irritating the eyes, noses, throats, and mouths of any soldier unfortunate enough to be caught in it.

It wasn’t anything debilitating or even serious, but it did wonders to mess up the enemy formation and even disturb their morale.

Egil had even more evil ideas to put to use for their harassment. Some of the concoctions his goblin alchemists had created were lures. When the urns shattered all the Podovniy soldiers could smell was a faint fragrance, and they also felt nothing off about them, which made them wonder what that was supposed to be or whether the attack was a dud.

Only when they moved further and passed the territory of certain… insects did they find out what Egil had doused them with.

Swarms of wasps, hornets, and bees mobbed the Podovniy army, focused on the sections which had soldiers that had been previously doused by the lure earlier. Quite naturally, under such a situation, most of the soldiers flailed about to try to get rid of the insects, and as the insects saw that as a threat, they stung the soldiers in response.

Again, the enemy army took minimal deaths – other than a few unfortunate soldiers who it turned out were allergic to bee stings and died horribly – but the disturbance caused a lot of casualties, as many soldiers were stung to the point that their faces were so swollen not even their own parents would have been able to recognize them. They would recover, but it was doubtful that they’d feel enthusiastic about the war by that point.

Other than bees, Egil also had the alchemists from his platoon work on other lures their tribes usually used in the northern jungles. A different lure caused whole colonies of ants to disturb the sleeping enemy soldiers that night, while yet another lured practically every predatory animal in the vicinity to attack them by the morning.

All while Reinhardt kept the harassment going without end, though he was careful to keep his people out of the way of any incoming swarm lured by Egil’s concoctions.