He arrived at the wall late, but in high spirits, Olivier was going to be back to normal in a few days and the knowledge that the mage had survived was quite a morale booster.

Unfortunately when he was done clambering up the watchtower he got given a nasty glare and a few cuss’s thrown at him, which dampened his mood substantially.

He should have been better prepared, even if what he did was justified it didn’t make it right.

Bertrand couldn't blame the infantryman's poor reaction, he would have acted the same way if he had to stay up on the bland tower for an extra two hours past his shift.

He did say sorry though and explained why he was late, which seemed to have lightened up the infantryman's mood a little.

You couldn't really be that angry at someone who was late because they were trying to help out a fellow soldier, though if he was any later it probably wouldn't have mattered to them.

“Hmm, alright, all is forgiven. Good luck on your watch skirmisher.” the infantryman grunted out before descending the ladder.

Bertrand gladly nodded his head, his respect didn’t really matter though as the infantryman was already a quarter of the way down the ladder and so couldn't see him nodding.

It mattered to Bertrand though and weirdly made him feel a bit better about being late.

Now that he was finally on duty though it was time for him to stop being sentimental and time for him to become a sentinel.

He strided over to the front of the watchtower, making sure to stay a foot away from the degraded railings though.

He wouldn’t even trust them not to collapse if he leaned his beamer against them.

Seer he could even see some sort of insect that was burrowed into the wood.

If it wasn’t already rotting right now it definitely would be soon, though by the time they needed to start repairing the hastily constructed watchtowers and ramshackle fortifications, their comrades from the third and twentieth legions should have arrived to reinforce them.

And once they joined up there would be no more hiding behind shoddy walls, at least not for Bertrand.

Skirmishers would get dispatched in every direction alongside a hefty escort of light infantry, while linemen started to turn the town into a proper fort with the help of the grenadiers.

And then once everything had been scouted they would start scouring the countryside for any zombies. Purging each and every last one of them.

Bertrand just didn’t see how it would go any differentially. The third legion was the best of the best and the twentieth legion was still a legion compromised of four thousand trained soldiers.

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Though in actuality the number of soldiers would be lower than that, paper strength vs field strength was a thing after all.

Worse case scenario there would be twenty percent less troops than expected. So about six thousand and six hundred instead of eight thousand.

That was in the worse case scenario though, it was far more likely the legions would only be lacking ten percent of their paper strength, giving them a combined total of around seven thousand and two hundred soldiers.

Add that onto the rough three thousand that the twelfth legion had left and they should have over ten thousand troops when they all meet up.

Not exactly the full brunt of Francia’s military might but certainly not anything minor. It was a considerable number of troops that would give most enemy commanders pause.

Not so much because of the large number of soldiers themselves but because whenever two legions were committed to a battlefield they almost always brought artillery.

And to Bertrand's knowledge not even the greatest of mages could defend themselves against the barrage of a dozen cannons.

As for the average enemy combatant, they got it even worse. A new invention had been recently created called the mortar, it was essentially an upgraded catapult and lunched non magical munitions thus bypassing the shields of enemy bannermen.

That was all Bertrand really knew about it as it had only come out of the experimental phase late last year but it sounded terrifying.

“Horde.” A hoarse voice shouted out from the wall, attracting his attention towards the shouter and then towards the plains.

He had to squint to see them, but when he did spot them he let out a sigh of relief.

It was just a few dozen basic zombies, at worse maybe they had some adaptors in the mix.

But there were no watchers, their skeletal frames just stuck out to much to be missed.

Bertrand still had to be on guard though just in case something unexpected happened, so he carefully double checked his mana vein making sure it was stable and connected properly.

Then he went back to watching the horde rapidly approach them.

All of the linemen on the wall were doing the same, waiting for the zombies to get in range before firing. Well all of them except for one lineman.

They hadn’t even bothered to go down the ladder, opting instead to jump off the fifteen foot tall wall and land clumsily on the ground.

It was a bit dangerous but they were the assigned messenger, it was their job to run and get one of the companies that was standing by to come over and reinforce this segment of the wall.

Just in case the initial salvo proved unable to kill or disable the zombies before they reached the wall.

Usually the task would be done by runners but due to the massive losses the officers had taken, the runners were now having to take over the role of their departed masters.

Spending their time working on logistics, directing repairs, brainstorming ideas, and likely a myriad of other complicated things, instead of acting as, well, runners.

So runner, runners had to be assigned.

It would have been funny if it weren't so sad. Soon new officers would join their ranks though so the runners would go back to being the messengers, or maybe a few would get promoted instead.

Was that a thing that could happen?

Bertrand was pretty sure it was but he could be wrong, the few officers he knew all seemed to come from the officer corps training camps.

But he had heard rumours of runners being promoted to officers.

In the end there was no need for the messenger to be dispatched, as the initial salvo utterly decimated the zombie horde.

A few zombies limped or crawled forwards but they were so slow that all the linemen had enough time to repair their mana veins and fire again.

Wiping out the few stragglers that remained just as the company that was tasked with being a response force arrived.