“Never count your chickens before they hatch.” - Old folk saying.
“That was a mite easier than I thought it’d be, I got to say,” said Angus Harscape as he returned to the defense camp after the battle, still in his armor that was soaked quite thoroughly with the blood and gore of his unfortunate opponents. Not that most of the others present in the camp were better off. Other than old Duke Banitu all the other leaders had led their troops in person and from the blood splattered on their armor, seen combat as well.
“They cracked much faster than we anticipated to the chariots and the cavalry, I admit,” said Nestor with a satisfied smile on his face. The miscalculation was an unexpected one, and likely came to be because their enemies were completely unfamiliar with the dwarves from Knallzog, but it was a happy miscalculation. Definitely the sort of boon he would take without a second thought. “I see that you’re well after the fighting, Sir Harscape. That is good to know.”
“Eh, other than the first few, most of them didn’t really give much of a fight. Too busy running off with their beards fluttering behind them,” replied the old dwarf with an annoyed scoff. “Wasn’t expecting them to fold over like a poorly dug cave, but what can you do?”
“This will probably be the only time. The rest of their troops to the south will likely have gotten more used to fighting dwarven forces by now, we assume,” consoled Nestor with a shake of his head. “These ones probably never saw your kind before and had no idea how to deal with you, so they made mistakes and panicked.”
“Tsk, amateurs. Can’t even let an old dwarf get some good fun,” muttered the old dwarf under his breath.
The fighting on the battlefield had pretty much ended, and other than herding over the tens of thousands of prisoners they caught, the coalition army was also busy with collecting the armor and weapons that many of the escaping enemies dropped behind them. Still others – mostly the mercenaries – stripped what useful things they could grab from the dead enemy soldiers.
None of them laid so much as a hand on their own dead allies, though. Those bodies would be brought back to be buried honorably.
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“So what are we doing next, Duke Nunez?” asked Grafin Siobhan Harscape from where she stood at the side of the table. The group had basically picked Nestor as the chief commander for the campaign since he was far more familiar with Posuin as a whole and had proven himself to be a sharp strategic mind. The dwarven reinforcements were technically just his allies so they would work with him only if they felt his suggestions or commands made sense, though.
“Probably close to a hundred thousand of them ran away, so we can expect to be outnumbered when we engage them once more. Since they are in foreign lands, the only real choice for those runaway soldiers would be to reunite with their other main force to the south,” said Nestor as he traced a path with his finger headed west then south. “Best we can expect is if the enemy does not have enough equipment to get them ready for battle in a short period of time, but I feel that this would be wishful thinking at most.”
“They have a large contingent of archers. It would be easy for them to have those archers lend their armor to the escapees who threw away their equipment and shove some crude spear in their hands,” commented Duke Banitu with a thoughtful look. “The archers wouldn’t lose too much by going unarmored since they mostly stayed at the back anyway.”
“That’s one way to go about things. I think they will likely have enough spare weapons and armor to outfit the escapees to fight again, though. Even if not their own, they would have gotten plenty of equipment from devouring Wanarua, Gestis, and the rest,” suggested Griselda with a frown. “All they would really need would be new officers to take charge after that.”
“All right, I guess we can all agree that we’ll still be fighting at a numerical disadvantage going forward. What’s the immediate plan, though? What do you youngsters think we should do next?” asked Angus with a shake of his head. He was present partly to lend his military experience and partly to take part in one last major battle while he still could.
“Well, we definitely cannot leave Kolitschei unguarded, so a portion of the troops will have to stay and guard here, Duke Banitu’s most likely,” said Nestor, to which the old duke nodded in agreement. “We would also need to both push further west and reinforce Lovia-Hosberg as well. I would suggest for a detachment of thirty to forty thousand to veer north and settle the situation at Lovia-Hosberg before catching up to us further west while we push towards former Gestis territory.”
“Sounds workable. The ones who went north can then bring Damien’s troops as well as what Lovia-Hosberg could spare to further reinforce our numbers then,” noted Griselda. At the moment the forces of Lovia-Hosberg and reinforcements under Nestor’s younger brother Damien were fighting against a smaller detachment of the enemy.
“Take the cavalry,” suggested Angus. “You’ll want to get there and back faster, so might as well send out our cavalry to let them have something to do in the meantime. We should be able to muster at least thirty thousand cavalry between all our forces, no?”
With that suggestion, it was quickly decided that Grafin Harscape and Duke Banitu would lead the coalition’s cavalry contingent to Lovia-Hosberg, while the rest of the troops under Nestor’s leadership would head further west. Duke Banitu would also leave behind ten thousand of his troops to garrison the defense lines by Kolitschei, just in case they were needed there. For all they know, some of the escaping enemies might have gathered and decided to go for broke and attack the city after all.