The sudden message made Alex rise and grab his weapons instantly.
"Where are they? What is Atarra doing? Why did they come so far without us knowing?" Alex had entered overdrive mode, and his brain was functioning at maximum capacity.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean this camp. We received information about the troops on the front. It seems there are movements in the settlement, and they are preparing to attack," the Gnoll corrected.
Alex came to a sudden halt. Athena observed him with curiosity from a corner.
Alex stared back at her, incredulous at the situation.
"Why the panic, then, soldier?" Alex asked.
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm new to this camp, and..." The soldier stopped mid-sentence.
"And?" Alex asked, feeling frustrated by how often people avoided communicating with him.
"Well, others say you're very strong and that you literally expelled a great enemy from this forest," the soldier said with some timidity.
"Well, they are not lying. Although it wasn't just him; he merely assisted in driving away an Eldritch Horror," Athena suddenly responded with her ethereal voice.
"Did the sir really expel an Eldritch Horror?" asked the Gnoll with a mix of timidity and respect.
"Well, as Athena said, it wasn't just me. I only helped a little, and I paid dearly for it. Anyway, enough of digressing. Take me to where Atarra is. We need to plan our response," said Alex.
Although he was slightly frustrated not knowing exactly what was happening, it seemed that the Gnolls who had been with him longer had been telling stories to the newcomers. By the way this soldier behaved, it appeared that the purpose of these stories was to intimidate them in some way.
"Atarra, what's the situation on the front?" Alex asked the matriarch.
"We are preparing for battle. It seems some of our groups were finally discovered by the settlement, and they are organizing to come out and fight. Unfortunately, not all our troops are together; some are still exploring," summarized an officer of the matriarch.
"So, there's no need to fight the enemy. Give the order for them to withdraw slightly from the vicinity of the settlement, and all units in the field should regroup. How are the stairs and anti-archer defenses?" Alex asked.
"The stairs are ready, and we are still finishing another dozen mobile defenses. Soon we'll have everything ready to start the fight," replied a second officer.
"Sir, why are we retreating? Even if our troops are scattered, we are not at a disadvantage; we can win the fight," the first officer asked.
"You're losing sight of our official mission," Alex responded.
Atarra was intrigued by Alex's words to her officer and asked, "Would you mind sharing with us why?"
"We didn't come here to fight; that's not our mission," Alex simply said.
The second officer quickly grasped the message. "We came to rescue our brothers."
"And capture enemy bases," added Atarra.
"That's right. It makes no sense to win this battle because the enemies are trying to face us near their base. They will have advantages over us; their walls allow their archers to shoot ours from safe positions, so they could retreat at any time. Simply put, it serves no purpose to fight in these situations. Let them come out, and if they dare to chase our troops out of the range of their archers, they'll pay for their mistake," replied Alex.
Alex assigned orders and dispatched different captains with precise instructions on what to do and what he expected from them. He knew he couldn't micromanage every aspect, so it was necessary for them to know his intentions and the conditions for victory.
"If we have to fight, it will be on my terms. Never let the enemy dictate the pace," Alex added before addressing the first officer. "In case the enemy is foolish, take troops to this location and prepare an ambush there." Then, he turned to the second officer, "Once all our measures are ready, gather all troops, and we'll move forward to begin the siege."
Both officers looked at their matriarch.
"Atarra looked briefly at the human in front of her and wondered how he could change so much in these situations. However, she quickly put this matter aside and nodded to her officers.
"Yes, sir," they both responded and left to fulfill their assignments.
"How are your operations in this sector going?" Alex suddenly asked the matriarch.
"I have obtained a large amount of resources from the exploitations, and I have identified a couple of interesting points. I am thinking of setting up my own exploitations soon, with the workforce I have finally acquired; I am not so short-handed to work anymore," Atarra replied.
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"Well, I'm glad to hear that. I must warn you that for the next settlement, I'll have to go on an expedition to fulfill a mission from the Lightning Protector. I'll take a few troops with me," Alex said as he observed in a certain direction.
"I understand," Atarra simply responded. "If you have nothing more to add, I'll prepare to perform my spell. It doesn't hurt to give our boys an additional advantage."
There was a strange excitement in Atarra's voice. One could easily see how enthusiastic she was about taking the settlement.
"Atarra, it is strictly forbidden to kill prisoners," Alex said. He didn't even know why he said it or what led him to say such a thing, but somehow he felt it was a necessary formality.
"What about our enemies, goblins, and orcs?" Atarra asked with a frown.
"Our enemies are fair play," Alex responded with some reluctance.
"Fine," Atarra said, dragging out each vowel.
Alex watched the old matriarch walk away, and a sudden chill ran down his spine.
Inside the settlement, there was a great sense of unease. Just a few days ago, everything was normal; they had been occupying this settlement for a few months, and life was only getting better.
Although orcs demanded large amounts of manpower, now they no longer needed to pay with their own people. They finally had enough slaves, and they kept capturing more. Goblin settlements had been expanding rapidly, taking large stretches of land.
Another significant factor for them was that occasionally some Krons arrived in this sector. In exchange for various tasks, they received substantial rewards, allowing the Goblins to enjoy even greater prosperity.
However, since the night before, they hadn't received any communication from the outside, quite unusual but not the first time it had happened.
The worst came in the afternoon, near noon, when they had sent a couple of patrols to explore, and they never returned.
When the Goblin shaman learned of these events, he quickly performed a ritual to observe his surroundings.
Everything was completely quiet; there was nothing. Even when he looked over where Alex's central camp was in the distance, the shaman couldn't see anything.
However, the strange calmness of not seeing anything unusual in the landscape heightened the shaman's paranoia. He performed the ritual again.
Now he was sure that something was odd. After all, if you take two pictures of the forest, and both are exactly the same down to the smallest detail, there's a high probability you're looking at a copy.
This happened because Atarra didn't specialize in this type of magic. Probably, if Atasha had been in charge of this expedition, she would have been able to maintain the spell long enough for the attack.
"We are under attack!" the shaman immediately shouted, mobilizing all his people.
Although he really had no idea who the enemy was or if there was one, he mobilized the entire settlement. This had the chief quite annoyed. However, after the incessant verbal onslaught from the shaman, he decided to simply take a large patrol and go out to explore to show this one how useless his magic was.
But what they really found was a Gnoll expedition that ambushed them. Even though both stumbled upon each other accidentally and exchanged a few blows and arrow shots, the Goblins got the worst of that exchange. However, upon returning to their settlement, they knew the shaman was right.
"What do we do now?" one of the Goblins asked.
"We need to call for reinforcements," said another.
"It's impossible to send a messenger; they are everywhere. We're surrounded," asserted one of the Goblin scouts.
"What about magic?" asked another.
"There's no shaman in the next settlement, and I don't have enough power to send a message farther," replied the shaman.
"Can we fight?" a Goblin asked, clearly hoping someone would convince him that it was possible.
"It looks pretty tough. It seems we're equal in numbers, and they have superior weapons," said one of the stronger Goblins.
"Are you suggesting we surrender?" the first Goblin responded, irritated by the cowardice of his soldiers.
"It looks pretty tough to resist here. If we deploy our entire army, maybe we can escape, although we should move quickly," said the shaman.
"Fool, if we leave like this, we won't be able to take anything from our settlement. We'll lose our belongings. If we arrive at another settlement like this, we'll be a laughingstock, and they'll probably end up using us as cannon fodder anyway," the chief replied.
The shaman knew what the leader said was true. After all, they had won this city using another smaller clan as cannon fodder.
"And what can we do? We've already lost a lot of time, and every little skirmish, even for some reason the enemy refuses to fight us when we deploy our troops, I think they're trying to weaken our army. Maybe they don't really have the numbers to assault the settlement," said the veteran.
The room full of Goblins erupted into a commotion, with each proposing plans, each one more foolish than the last, wasting a couple of hours in debates that led nowhere until it finally happened.
"Sir, sir, the Gnolls are at the gates!" a Goblin ran into the crude stable that housed the Goblins.
"What are they trying to say?" the Goblin chief asked, annoyed by so much useless discussion.
"No, sir, they are literally at the gates, preparing to attack us," the soldier replied.
The Goblin chief didn't even spare a second more for the soldier and ran towards his walls, which he was lucky to have the sturdiest among all the minor settlements; the others barely had a palisade in its place.
Seeing the magnitude of the forces forming in front of him, he knew his end had come. He didn't have the necessary forces to repel such an attack, and the walls wouldn't act as a significant asset in this situation.
Panic began to grow among the garrison, and voices demanding to flee multiplied with every passing second.
The chief, on the other hand, knew they couldn't retreat. There was something here that he had to protect; that was the only reason he was granted better walls than all the others. If he went to any other settlement, he knew he would be handed over to his chief, and he would be executed without a second thought.
"Tales; we have the walls in our favor. We can defend this position long enough for reinforcements to arrive," the chief lied.
The shaman was about to say something aloud, but a single stern look from the chief was enough to silence him.
"Get ready to cast the spell," the chief told the shaman, emphasizing the last words.
The shaman could only swallow the saliva that was stuck in his throat with difficulty. Both knew the consequences of such an action; now, the shaman knew the decision the chief had made, and in his mind, there was nothing but thousands of calculations of routes and techniques that would allow him to escape the outcome of this battlefield.
Where could he flee? What would he do next? What consequences would there be? These were all questions that could be answered later; the shaman had no intention of dying here, despite the grandiose speeches the chief began to give to the rest. Those words meant nothing to him; they had never meant anything to any Goblin. If it weren't for the spell that the shaman began to cast in the area, capable of affecting the minds of all present, none would hear a single word of what they were being told.
Yes, the chief had decided to spend the magic he had in his camp to brainwash his troops instead of conjuring something that would help them fight, and the result—the shaman truly hoped not to be here to see the outcome.