Francois already had his beamer unslung and was just about to fire off a ray when Césaire grabs his arm. Before yelling out at Olivier to stop.

Olivier listens, skidding to a halt and almost tripping over one of the large stones embedded in the road, frantically he waves his arms up, gesturing wildly.

“Pretty sure the prick is himself Francois.” Césaire says, eyeing up Olivier.

“Come on over Olivier.” Francois shouts out, before shooting Bertrand a grave look. “Bertrand walk a few steps back and keep an eye on our flank with that.”

Although they couldn't give him orders, they were still his superiors in rank and so Bertrand gives Francois a solon nod before turning back around and keeping a careful watch over the stumpy hills, with the occasional glance directed towards the woods.

The madmen had attacked without uttering a sound, not even a grunt of exertion left their lips. The same went for their resurrected comrades. So being eagled eyed was incredibly important in order to spot them as the other senses couldn't be relied upon. They didn't even seem to breath.

Bertrand was mainly on the watch for gun barrels though, Despite the supernatural resurrection of his fellow skirmishers he still felt like it was some sort of arcane drug, like the Hoffer potion. The madmen could have been a penal company or battalion who were force fed the drug and sent to soften them up.

If so the main threat would probably be enemy grenadiers moving towards their legion to wipe out the bannermen.

And so anxiously he looked around for the tall brutish soldiers. The average weapon of choice for such men was the Seal blunderbuss, a terrifying gun capable of obliterating anything in front of it.

Bertrand had once seen a demonstration of one. He had watched as from one hundred feet away it blasted apart a brick house in one shot. All it would take was a single shot from such a thing and he would evaporate because he was pretty sure he wasn't as tough as a solid brick house. Even if he had been working out a bit lately.

After a few minutes of this all he got for his intense observation was strained eyes and a slight headache.

Thankfully the three men behind him had finished up on their conversation and were starting to jog towards him, judging by the footsteps.

Still a little concerned after what happened earlier in the morning he turns around slightly, and feels his heart beat a little less intensely when he confirms it's just the trio and not some madman.

“Bertrand we’re leaving now, we’re jogging all the way back no stopping no rests.” Francois frustratedly says, then noticing the confusion in his eyes he snarls out.”Now.”

And thats when it hits Bertrand, he’s not frustrated he's scared.

Not even bothering to ask he sets off on a jog, following after Olivier who hadn't even bothered to tell him to move and had just gone past him.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

With Francois and Césaire on both sides he felt rather safe. Both men were Bone buttoned, meaning they had to have been veterans of dozens of battles and at served through two different campaigns at a minimum.

Still if something had scared the two of them this badly just what Olivier reported. “What did he say?” He asked Césaire.

Originally he thought Césaire was the least friendly of the two, but after serving alongside them for the past two weeks he had learned that the man was actually rather relaxed and friendly, if only to get you involved in his game nights.

“Olivier run off to scout around where the middle of our formation was, as the other skirmishers who were ahead of us should have moved on by now. Instead though he found, bodies. Not ours, but he was still concerned, so he went ahead to where the front of our formation should be and he found no one.” Césaire grimly replied.

“What? How, we should have heard fighting just like we did before.” Bertrand questioned further.

“Olivier found the bodies roughly two hundred yards from our position, that's far enough away that you wouldn't notice it when your busy fighting your own fight. The real question is how did they sneak past the front skirmishers and attack us. We were the strange border between back and middle rank so nobody should have managed to sneak through.” Césaire patiently explained, trying to let Bertrand understand the weight of their situation.

“What about the other skirmishers, are we going to warn them?” Bertrand asked, just before realising how foolish a question it was. “Ah nevermind, they would have either heard the fighting or their dead.”

“Correct, but the rearmost of our forces could still be unaware of the threat. This whole day has been a disaster, no signs of resistance and then we get hit all of a sudden by idiots with no sense of self preservation, and cursed sorcery that taints our dead.” Francois interjected, with an anger born out of fear.

“The officers also carry a few flares which we can use to signal a retreat for the survivors, and when the Linemen see it they’re also get to work constructing a basic perimeter, while some light infantry comes over to reinforce us. Trust me we’re going to be fine.” Césaire says, strangely being the calm one amongst the duo.

With his questions temporarily satisfied and an urgency created from the knowledge that the front rank skirmishers were probably all dead, Bertrand focused all his energy on jogging. It should only take then an hour or so to get back to make it back to their officers, and then they can finally take a more cautious approach to their excessive scouting.

Bertrand knew that probably wouldn't happen though. What had allowed Napoleon’s legions to succeed in the civil war was their mobility and aggressive scouting doctrine. Changing how they operated would by a fruitless task as it was quite literally the fundamentals each legion was constructed around. Not to mention that without scouting if you moved too fast you could get wiped out by an ambush very easily, and speed was currently, incredibly essential in this campaign.

As they jogged the treeline slowly started to recede, replaced by deformed hills which too began to get replaced by actual proper hills, worthy of being called mini mountains.

Near the end of this mess of hills laid the command tents of the skirmisher corps and a dozen miles behind them laid the actual bulk of their legion.

Starting up the hills was an atrocious task, it was almost as rough as going down them, he had to keep his eyes fixed on the tall grass and weeds least he accidentally slipped and crashed onto the hard dirt.

After a few minutes of this tiring new part of their journey, Bertrand took a quick break from staring at the ground and glanced up, seeing Olivier frozen at the top of one of the hills looking over at them.

With sweat trickling into his eyes, he was just about to rub at them and go back to focusing on where he was going when he notices Olivier unsling their beamer and point it towards them