Night Raid (3)

While not the total sum of their forces, a considerable number of the enemy army submitted themselves in defeat against the legions.

As they were processed it was found that not one of them had tried to sneak a blade through in an attempt at assassination.

Honor truly was everything to these people.

The ability to honorable fall on the field of battle, but instead to live for the sake of their comrades and nation, accepting that the crimes they'd commited up to this point against the Spartan's was what led them now to receiving their just desserts against their Latinium foes.

While we were busy processing those who'd chosen to surrender a runner on horse back approached informing me that the rest of the enemy who'd chosen not to surrender had refused surrender and decided to attempt escape instead, while the army was busy dealing with their new captives.

It was far from an organized retreat, as the men had simply grabbed whatever they could carry it seems and were running in a disorderly mass.

Our limited cavalry were running them down of course but due to the size of the retreating force it would mean that most of them would manage to escape from us, back to the north where they would have a city to hide within.

As much as we wanted to give chase we simply could not, the number of our war slaves climbed once more by the thousands, and we needed first to coordinate where to put and how to feed all these new people.

The King was both impressed at our capture and outraged that we had let the enemy escape however cooler heads prevailed when he realized that the invaision had been stopped and their northern city while still fallen could now be retaken by the Spartan's themselves.

This was of course the plan we came up with, I cared not for the north. The north was where General Haddin would be coming with the Legions along with Germanic volunteers and mercenaries seeking to strike it rich.

Their invasion route was the north, so rather than hit the same lands twice over our force would journey south-west, away from Argosia and the occupied spartan territories and closer instead to our fleet that should be actively occupying the sea routes thanks to the Queen, and our own naval ships.

These ships could aid us in ferrying countless slaves back to the home country while bringing in fresh supplies and men to reinforce our own position.

The king was less than impressed considering we'd "abandoned" the north to it's fate for now, but then seemed to realize that we were just going to find better battles to fight rather than going after stragglers from the allied army.

This realization netted us a boistrous round of laughter from the king and his men, who left the command tent in high spirits.

Later it was revealed to me that the king had requested a similarly sized army as my own, to join him, while a second army would be dispatched to reclaim the now heavily weakened norther states.

Back in the camp, the army found itself getting a bit nervous, the total number of our men compared to the total number of slaves was honestly getting out of hand, our fort was now filled with almost 3 times our own number of captured enemy soldiers.

All of whom had been bound by slave magic so a rebellion was not possible except in the form of a coup but only those with high loyalty to me were assigned as Slave masters.

Since the battle had been won we remained stationary in our fort allowing the men who'd fought like heroes over the last number of hours to get their fill of rest and food.

The slaves were used to once more expand our base of operations, and forage for food stuffs.

Claim up the left behind goods and gear from their retreating comrades, as their camp was dismantled becoming our own gear.

The biggest boon to use was the ample number of transport wagons that were captured, while this would result in our scouting and cavalry force needing to be decreased as the horses were repurposed to become cart horses pulling the spoils.

My own fatiuged had been building up bit by bit as the tense battle and strategy i had employed was a new style unseen before and as such i needed to be there to reassure the men, and not simply just send them off into the night to meet their own end.

So just like all the legionaires i retired to my own bed and slipped into the deepest sleep of my life since coming to this world.

Offering up a simple prayers to the gods for allowing this victory to be possible by bringing me to this world.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

< < ??? POV > >

- - A few days later - -

Defeated? how could the entire army be defeated?

"We're not quite sure but there is an assembled army accompanied by the spartans in that position, they've even built up fortifications which implies theyve been there for quite some time now. The only explaination we can surmize from this would be that the main army has either retreated or met a grizzly fate. And if it's the latter the force we just went up against could be only a margin of their true force... They were taking prisioners not executing them so, their supply structure must be fairly robust to handle all those mouths to feed.

"For the main army to fall, and then for us to lose the bulk of our spearhead as well... we should expect a counter-attack soon then, without our offensive blunted like this it's going to be time again for the spartans to push and with enough momentum we'll be pushed right out of their lands and begin having to fight just to keep our own..."

"Correct mix that with this unknown ally of theirs and our fates look even more grim, shouldn't we simply offer up terms now and be done with it? Athenia can say what they want but they are not our masters, we've done enough on both sides to bring this war to a close don't you think."

"Do you think Athenai will allow that to happen? If we were to make peace with sparta and this new ally of their Athenai would surely attack to prevent us from possibly turning on them and making them become the underdog in this fight. Depending on the terms set by the spartans we might be weakened to much to resist Athenai at that time, and then our people would ahve no choice but to join the fight once more only this time against their will." 

"So... offer up no terms, but we should retreat nonetheless, we will need our remaining strength the whether the offensive that is sure to come, so we'll pull back and reinforce our own lands without sueing for peace. The others can fight on as they like but for now we defend our own lands, at least till another allied force is assembled wherein our participation is required by the alliance."

"Seems reasonable no sense sticking around here if we cannot go further the peoples hope is far to high, their disobiedence to our occupation will whittle us down over time, if the Kings cannot be toppled best not to slowly allow ourselves to bleed to death. I'll inform the men and we'll begin a march home, while we try to gather more information on what has happened to the main army."