Chapter 86 - Strategy Discussions
Of course I knew that I had made a slight blunder by almost admitting that I was on my way to Virshak at that very moment, or at least that the carriage I was supposed to be in was heading that way at that very moment, but I also knew that I was an excellent liar, and that I had clearly covered it up perfectly.
"Now then," I said. "Now that we have at least some plans of getting these refugees economically active, let’s move on to this new ’warlord’."
"What do we know about him at the moment?" I asked Julia and Cat as I sat down on the edge of our bed again.
"Well according to Bronwyn," Cat started. "He’s an elf that went to the human territories to become an adventurer, and eventually ended up as a mercenary in the Dellroy kingdom."
"There, he made friends with a lot of humans," Julia added. "Humans who he has recruited into his army, along with any elves that wanted to join, whether that is criminals, or the young and ambitious."
"Now they’re going around taking over the elven territory village-by-village." Cat finished.
Damn! I love how they would basically finish each other’s sentences. It’s like they can read each other’s thoughts. I’m so happy that I didn’t get the cliche’d harem where all of my wives hated each other, and constantly fought over me.
Ahem... anyway, this seemed like a problem at the time, but me being a pretty calm person who tended to not overthink things too much, or stress about future problems all that much, I was pretty calm at that moment.
"Do we know how large their army is?" I asked.
"According to Bronwyn, there should be around two-hundred of them," Julia answered.
"Only two-hundred? That can’t really be considered an army, right?" I asked Cat. "And who’s this Bronwyn you keep mentioning?"
"That’s what we said!" They exclaimed together with smiles.
"And Bronwyn is the daughter of the chief of one of the villages that was conquered," Cat answered.
"We actually think that you would like her," Julia said with a knowing smile that sent shivers down my spine.
"Okayy," I said, deciding to ignore that last statement from Julia entirely. "Do we know where this ’army’ is currently, or if they’re heading in our direction?"
"We’ve already sent out Jason and his group to go and do some scouting, and also to call back the other group we sent out" Cat answered. "But if the refugees have reached us already, I’m thinking that they can’t be too far behind."
"Great," I sighed, rubbing my head. "So we’ll need to plan our defenses, and come up with a strategy against these future invaders."
"How many of your new training subjects have magical affinities?" I asked.
For those of you who don’t know, I’ll explain it a bit more. Every living being in this world has magical power, but not all of them have elemental affinities.
"Actually quite a few of them," Julia answered. "Elves in general usually have stronger elemental affinities than humans."
"That’s good," I nodded. "That means that if we can improve our walls, we can basically just have them rain down hell on the attacking army."
"Which means that I won’t be able to sneak in and out of the village like I had planned," I added. "Since it would be much quicker for me to use my magic to improve our defenses."
I couldn’t help but sigh at the thought, I really actually wanted to hide my teleportation ability for a while, but oh well, it didn’t seem like that would be possible.
"I think another thing we could do is to disrupt their approach as much as we possibly can," I said. "It looks like it’s time for us to start training our mercenaries in the art of guerilla warfare."
"Guerilla warfare?" Julia asked, both her and Cat wearing a confused expression.
"Yep," I smiled. "Guerilla warfare is a strategy that is very commonly used in my world."
"In essence it’s when a small, mobile group of fighters uses tactics to weaken a much larger and more organised force."
"These tactics could basically be anything that isn’t a full on frontal assault," I added. "We’re talking: ambushes, hit-and-run tactics, sabotage, or anything that would slow them down, or weaken them."
"That seems a bit... cowardly." Cat said.
"All is fair in love and war, my dear," I smiled. "Besides, is it more cowardly than attacking a small force with a much larger one?"
"I... guess not," Cat finally nodded after spending a moment to think it through.
"I like it," Julia smiled.
Of course she would, she was an assassin after all.
"But first," I smiled, holding up a finger. "Listen to my plans for the village’s defenses, and add anything you think might work."
"I was thinking we should raise the wall around the village significantly higher than it currently is," I started. "So we’ll need some villagers to make us a nice big slab of wood that we can use for a door, and also as a drawbridge for the moat I’m going to create."
"Basically I’m going to create a rampart around the village, a rampart that will be surrounded by a moat that can only be crossed by using the drawbridge. We can add more exits later, but for now we’ll only have one." I finished.
Cat and Julia were looking at me with slack jaws and wide eyes at that moment.
"What, not enough?" I asked.
"That might be too much," Cat mumbled. "You basically want to create a fort that can keep out an army of thousands, to withstand a battalion of two-hundred."
"And if you do this, won’t that hurt the future expansion of the village?" Julia asked.
She made a good point, it’s not like I can move the rampart and moat every time the village expands beyond the walls.
"We’ll create some space between the fortifications and the current village," I answered. "But if it expands beyond that point in the future, we could simply create another fortification beyond the expansion, basically creating an inner and outer village."
For some reason this also made them look at me with those knowing smiles, I couldn’t understand what the hell they found so... funny, I was only doing this to protect the investments I had already made, I did not want to start all over again somewhere else.
"Anyway," I said, standing again. "Let’s get to work."