After having been defeated, we were on our way to the city of Tania, it was mandatory to pass through there to return to the Helvetii territory without running the risk of ambushes.
However, there was a problem, that city of traitors was surrounded by swamps, so if the city had to be besieged it would have to be from the front, otherwise any siege weapon would be useless because of all the mud.
Although morale has suffered a heavy blow from that defeat, the fact that we were going to punish some traitors made their spirits recover, even the mercenary wolves felt that this was something personal so for now I would not have to worry that decide to desert or even join the enemies.
My countenance was dark, I felt a lot of anger and rage for being defeated in that way, again I had ignored the magic factor.
"Hey boy." The leader of the wolf army, Volcatts, quickened his pace to catch up with me on horseback. "Don't worry, it wasn't a bad move, if it wasn't for that fire spell we could have won, and even so, building a wall when you're attacking is something that would never have occurred to me, thanks to that the crossbows and archers could be in range to support us. You have potential, you just weren't lucky today."
"Thank you, but that bad luck wiped out a quarter of our forces..." I said holding my head because of the pain I had at that moment. "And we're still outnumbered three to one."
"That just means they each have to kill 3 gals." He said joking. "You know? I'm surprised you didn't use us as a meat shield, even though you gave us the hardest job, you also sent your heavy infantry to help us. Not just any Imperial does that with demi-humans, much less someone in the royalty."
"That would be bad for business, if they see me sending mercenaries to the front lines to die then no company will want to serve me in the future." I said shrugging my shoulders.
"Does that mean you're going to hire us more often?"
"Yes, I already saw that they are very good warriors." Although the boss was quite strong and intimidating, I couldn't help but remember when that Japanese soldier paid him to spend all day with him, so it was hard for me not to laugh when I remembered that scene from the manga.
/
Outskirts of Tania.
I observed that the city was right in front of us, we saw that the door was blocked with several logs so the battering rams would be useless.
"Build siege towers!"
I ordered immediately; we were going to assault the walls since we observed that there was no moat around the wall.
This would also be difficult, as all the defenders would have to do was amass troops where the towers would go, creating a bottleneck.
"Engineers! I want you to build a ramp from the ground to the wall! Wide enough to hold two centuries at once!"
Everyone was stunned by that demand.
"Sir..." one of the architects spoke. "How are we going to build that if they're going to shoot us on sight?"
"Then let the legionnaires protect you using shield formations! I want soldiers protecting those who build the ramp, wolves protecting those who cut down trees and others who build walls in our rear in case the army that was in Ali is after us... oh, and have the engineers put the ballistae and scorpions back together.
"Yes sir!"
/
Meanwhile, from the city walls, the governor watched what the Imperials were doing.
"It looks like they were pretty beat up by Harngeil." He said this while eating a turkey leg. "Aim!...fire!" he said for the archers to start shooting at the workers, who were protected by the soldiers.
The garrison was reinforced with 23,000 Gali soldiers who were in the woods.
"hmm... So all you have to do is wait for them to starve to death." Finishing eating, he throws the bone towards the Imperials.
A week later, King Harngeil's forces arrived on the battlefield, but did not fight.
/
Northern Gali.
Servius was leaving a burning village, he had reduced that entire village to ashes by refusing to surrender and support the empire, not without first making it clear that his men raped all the women.
Although the idea of giving him citizenship and rights to make them kill each other pleased him, he found it humiliating to have to propose that to them and considered it an insult to his person and to the empire that those barbarians rejected that offer, causing him to brutally take it out on those peoples. who decided to resist.
Although he was not an idiot either, he made sure that the allied gali soldiers who joined him in burning and raping entire villages with the purpose of making them feel that they had already crossed the line and that if they decided to leave the empire no one of their own would trust them. them for what they did. That brutality also served as a deterrent to those who thought of continuing to fight.
"Although I wonder why his highness would have sent me to this place where there is no one to fight, it seems that the prince wanted to keep all the fun." It was said while he was on his horse, from his hand he was carrying a chain where several women were chained and beaten. "Well never mind, at least I can have fun with several of these whores." Pulling the chain to make them go faster. "When I see him again I will give him several women, surely he will reward me for that."
"General! Keep in mind that the prince does not like those who are as dirty and damaged as they are." Said a noble knight. "The prince does not consider them worthy to be in his presence."
"Really?" The general asked in surprise, but put that way it made sense.
"Yes, I was at his 14th birthday party, I should have seen how Duke Canus turned out for giving him second-rate meat." Laughing. "So I suggest that the ones you plan to give as a gift feed them well, that they are clean and have no visible marks or wounds, in fact several nobles have begun to order them that way and keep them that way to maintain the beauty of the slaves."
"I understand, I'll keep that in mind."
/
Imperial Camp: Just outside of Tania.
It had already been a day since we started the construction of the defenses and siege weapons, I was eating my plate of oatmeal with water, day and night for almost a month I had not tried anything else, my mouth tasted like ashes due to the horrible taste .
"My lord!" A soldier came rushing towards me rather urgently. "Sir... We don't have any more food."
"I see... In that case reduce the rations as much as we can."
"No sir, I mean we already ate the last bag of oatmeal... We don't have anything to eat anymore."
"... What?!" This was bad, very bad. "Why didn't anyone inform me about this?! Why did they wait until there was absolutely nothing to tell me?!"
This campaign became a real headache and everything went downhill since I returned from Sadera.
"I'm sorry your highness, but we thought we were going to join Cornelius's legions at the Golden Hill and then return to Tania..." He answered trembling.
"Ugh! Damn... If we go to Helvetii then it will take at least another month to resume the campaign, and Servius won't be able to last that long only if the Galis turn their attention to him." I was trying to explain as calmly as possible, however this was another mistake of mine, lack of communication. "...Retreat, organize several parties to go hunting, hopefully we can get some food. Let Volcatts know so the volralden will support us."
"Yes sir!" The soldier retired, giving a sigh, he believed that he was going to be executed for what he considered was his mistake, so the only thing he could do now is carry out the orders and thank the prince for his mercy.
/
The hunting party set off for the woods, surprisingly making a good hunt without encountering enemy soldiers.
"If only we had our own wyverns we could have won at Ali," said one of the hunters.
"If you want to give your food to those lizards then there you go, I want to eat." His partner answered.
"The problem was the enemy magicians, if it wasn't for them we would have destroyed them." Said the werewolf who was sent to help them. "It's a pain in the ass to fight them."
"What I hate the most are scorched earth tactics. How many villages did we find completely empty and without food?"
"Like 40. The smell of burnt food I'll remember forever." The volralden replied.
"I can imagine what torture it must be for you to smell so much wasted food while only eating military rations." Said one of the soldiers. "But thanks to your nose we were able to get a good hunt!" Smiling, he held up several dead rabbits.
Normally, the imperial soldiers and the demi-human battalions would fight and work separately, but Zorzal began to mix them up to do tasks together, making them search for resources together, making them fight together like in the previous battle, all this made a feeling of camaraderie begin to be born between the imperial soldiers and the wolf mercenaries.
They continued to search for some other prey, however the werewolf detected the scent of something.
"Something wrong?
"This smell..." Sniffing more into the air. "It's the same smell that Gali army had... We must go back!" He responded alarmed. "The enemies are closing in!"
The Volraden detected the enemy approach, so thanks to them the hunting parties did not meet head-on with the approaching army through the woods, so they returned to camp, with a week's worth of food for all.
/
Golden Hill: Imperial Camp.
Cornelius was quite nervous, he had found out about Tania's betrayal, however there was not much he could do, not with his numbers.
He was doing everything he could to get reinforcements. not to the senate because he knew that between the meetings, they would decide where the troops would come from and who would be in charge of them, since it would take months, so he spent days and days writing and sending letters to the Gali tribes in the occupied territory, to the nobles Zorzal's friends and mercenary companies to join his two legions and then set off to seek out and rejoin the Prince's forces, taking supplies with them.
"I hope the prince resists..."
/
Imperial Camp: Outskirts of Tania.
The first few days the ramp seemed to be being built without problems, however heavy torrential rains began to occur, making the construction more complicated.
My efforts to try to provoke a battle against the Gali near our fortifications were in vain, it would not fall into something so obvious but it had to be tried.
Also... We ran out of food again, and the Galis know that, every day they start cooking deer, pigs or whatever in front of us, something quite annoying and cruel if you ask me.
My stomach was starting to rumble from hunger.
"tsk... When that ramp is ready I swear I'm going to kill them all." Very upset as the smell of roasting meat reached my nose.
"If they like roast beef that much then we should burn that city full of traitors." proposed one of my captains.
"Hmm, exterminate a city?" Come to think of it, I never thought about what to do in case a city betrayed me, clearly I couldn't let them go unpunished... but killing them all? I always tried to keep civilian casualties as low as possible.
Meanwhile, in the city palace, the governor of Tania was having a meeting with his advisors.
"Thank the gods for these sudden rains!" Said one of the counselors.
"And also thanks to the Prince's kindness! Thanks to that now our city will get the glory for being the place where the empire was defeated!" another toasted.
"That's right, this can only indicate that the gods want the empire to be defeated." The governor said. "And once we defeat that prince, thanks to the example of our city, all the tribes that joined the empire will be on our side again.
Everyone continued celebrating as if the battle had already been won.
/
15 days had already passed, the rains continued and the only thing we could do to try to calm our hunger was to eat grass to avoid fainting.
The only good thing about the rains was that at least we wouldn't die of thirst.
"How's the ramp construction going?" He asked with a pale face from hunger.
"Well... At this rate it will be ready in twelve or ten days..."
"Tsk... Okay, let it be in ten di" A loud sneeze interrupted my order.
"Are you alright, sir?" The concerned engineer asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine, just...keep working." I said walking back to my store. "A flu is the last thing I need..."
We couldn't last much longer in this state.
"Sir..." a noble soldier enters the tent and bows. "Why don't we send a hunting party to get some food for ourselves?"
"We can't, don't you understand that they would intercept them? We were lucky not to run into the enemy forces in the forest thanks to the Volraden's sense of smell, but with the rain their olfactory abilities will be diminished"
"Oh, I don't mean big parties to get food for everyone." Smiling as if he had a great idea. "I mean a small group that can easily go unnoticed and capture some prey for your highness... And for us."
Basically, only me and a few higher ranking nobles would eat with that plan.
"I refuse." I said emphatically.
"Your Highness?" Confused. "Because?"
"It is useless to prepare meat without them realizing it, and when they do, you will have 50 thousand desperate soldiers at the entrance of their stores." I answered and then sneezed again.
That plan was a recipe for disaster, already with low morale if you add distrust there will surely be a riot.
"Those commoners would be no problem!" Said the nobleman. "The prince's guard and the triarians could put them in their place."
"No!" I said hitting a table. "Is it your intention to sabotage the army?!" Hunger had me in a very bad mood, and I was not able to put up with the stupidities of the nobles.
"N-Not your highness!" He responded scared, it was not the first time that the prince had killed a nobleman under charges of sabotage, that happened when a nobleman urged his troops to violate the order of 'ordered looting' during the taking of a town just so that they would look for slaves beautiful, and he almost got away with it but that nobleman was so stupid that he appeared with several chained women who had not been distributed in the square just when the sentence on his men was going to be executed, as a result the prince pardoned the soldiers who they had been pressured by their commander and that nobleman was executed by being nailed to a cross "But... could we try sending a messenger to Captain Cornelius to swallow the provisions?"
"Either." I replied. "His forces are only 10 thousand, I think we would already know what would happen if he is intercepted by the Gali army."
"I understand... We are very hungry." The noble tried to excuse himself.
"We're all hungry, so if he wants to eat, you better work that damn ramp to take that damn city."
/
Gali Camp.
"Imperials in the north?!" King Harngeil exclaimed in surprise. "How is this possible?!"
"We think they made a naval landing taking advantage of the fact that we were in the south." One of the generals responded.
"My king, what are we going to do? Almost half of our forces are from the northern tribes, most want to go and protect their homes." another general asked.
The king was thinking carefully about what to do, he was silent for a few minutes until he answered. "We'll stay here, Zorzal's army is the biggest threat at the moment."
"This is disgraceful!" Said another general who was a native of the north. "Are we going to leave our compatriots to their fate?! Let's split the army in half!"
"Fool! We need as many soldiers as possible to overwhelm them or the attack won't work!" Said another general.
"Calm down!" The king silenced the room. "Zorzal's forces must not be able to hold out much longer, and if everyone sees that this victory was thanks to Tania's people stabbing the empire in the back, then all the tribes that were forced to unite will return to our arms, only We should wait a little longer."
"What if the Imperials build the ramp?"
"Well in that case we will attack with everything when they start the assault, forcing them to fight from two directions... I know it must be difficult for all those who have family in the north, but if we don't defeat Zorzal now then we will regret it later."
/
Meanwhile, Zorzal was in bed due to a strong fever that had seized him a few days ago.
"This... It's the last straw..." He told me without even being able to move. Getting sick in the ancient age was not a very good omen.
"I have to... supervise the construction..." I said trying to get up from the bed to try to put on my armor in vain, remembering that I had collapsed when I was supervising the ramp after a strong cough and a strong pain in the chest. chest.
"Mister!" A servant who came to change the wet cloth hurriedly saw that I was trying to get up. "You must go back to bed! You are still very weak!"
"Sa~you say that the royal fa~family is weak... I... I'll punish you by taking away your cell phone..." he was already delirious, mixing things from my world "And... I won't let you use the Internet for two days..."
"Oh no! he's delirious!" The servant placed him back on the bed.
The whole camp already knew that the prince had collapsed and was very sick from hunger and rain, he wasn't the only one but he was the most affected, after all the prince was still 15 years old and was always supervising everything.
"What do we do? At this rate the prince will die before the ramp is built." one of the soldiers asked.
"We need to get him something to eat urgently." Volcatts replied, that young prince had earned his respect. He not only went to hire him personally, but was also surprised that despite being a highborn prince and it was his first war, he never complained about the lack of luxuries or comfort, even eating the military rations instead of his own. risk the lives of his men by sending them to hunt for him.
"But where are we going to get that food?"
"We must risk going out to hunt something, capture something, no matter how small, and then come back."
They all agreed, trying to hunt something big for everyone would be very risky, so they would only hunt for Zorzal.
In addition to respect, the soldiers also believed that if the prince died they could be punished, and the mercenaries believed that if the one who hired them died then they would not be paid.
/
Golden Hill.
Cornelius watched with satisfaction as their strength had doubled, now they were ready to go.
"Don't let it be too late..." he whispered to himself; however, someone had come from the capital, who he never thought would come.
"Let me understand, miss...why are you here?" The captain asked incredulously.
"I've come to help." Answered the slave Gali of Zorzal mounted on a horse.
"That... I can understand but how did he get out of the palace?"
"It's simple, I simply told some guards that the prince had called me to keep him company on campaign, and they did not want to defy an 'order of his highness'"
She answered happily, as the Imperial escort she had brought for her protection glared at her for having deceived them.
"I understand but... How could a slave help his highness and how did he find out that Prince Zorzal needed help?" The only reason the captain hadn't taken his sword and beheaded the slave girl who dared to speak so rudely was because she was the prince's property, and as his subject he couldn't harm her.
"I knew Master Zorzal needed help as soon as I learned of his defeat at Ali, news moves fast." Eating some sesame seeds as she spoke, she had already learned to be more confident in front of the Imperials thanks to her master. "As for what I can do…well, take Ali for himself." She replied calmly.
"Are you saying that you are capable of achieving something that the crown prince of the empire was unable to do, slave?!" Angry, he draws his sword and places it on Saskia's neck to threaten her.
"Of course, I do, and my name is Saskia." Defiant, knowing they couldn't touch her.
"Tsk... how do you plan to do that?" Resigned to being forced to follow the will of a slave.
"First you must give me fast horses and then control of all the Gali soldiers that belong to the Andes tribe."
"You... you're lucky that Zorzal is very fond of you or he wouldn't have hesitated to put you in your place, slave." The captain roared quite annoyed. "And why do you want them from that tribe? Are they good warriors or what?"
"Don't you know? Those of us from the Andes tribe lived in Ali until the war against the Parisians, we know this city and the surroundings like the back of our hands."
/
Imperial Palace: 20 days before.
The news of Zorzal's defeat had worried the senators, however they were not yet in an emergency since the emperor managed to convince them that this was a minor setback, in fact he had lied to them saying that in truth the real attack force was that of Servius, and that the prince had been put as bait since the enemy would put all their attention on him.
However, Saskia knew that something was wrong, no one would attack Ali with a simple force of bait.
She had told the prince that she would support him and that she would be with him but... Exactly what was she going to do when she was in the palace?
"I said if he succeeds then things will get better... But I'm not doing anything! And it just had to be against those damn Parisians?!" She hated the Parisians, after all they were the ones who destroyed her home and sold her into slavery.
She was walking through the garden, when by chance she heard two nobles talking.
"I understand the prince's idea but... Do we really have to give those barbarians rights? Even make them vassal kingdoms if they want to have high autonomy?" He was complaining. "That's lowering ourselves to their level! We should simply demand that they keep their heads down or die!"
She kept thinking about that noble's words.
"It would be good if we had our kingdom again... Although we are subjects of the empire, it is better that the Parisians do what they want with us..."
"Our kingdom, our kingdom" She repeated in her head.
"Too bad those who remained in Ali did not reveal themselves and would have supported the prince..."
"Support the prince" "our kingdom"
Remembering how she tried to flee with her family from the city, how they burned her home, how her father was killed in front of her, how they ripped her from her mother's arms, seeing how they dragged her by the hair to put her on a slave carriage while they took her to some bushes to rape her.
"Parisian pigs" "our kingdom" "help the prince"
With tears running down her eyes, remembering the times she was beaten, humiliated, the days of hunger, thirst and cold. She didn't know when she had gone from being a gali slave to being an imperial slave.
She hadn't noticed the difference, the only thing she had to do to not have a worse time was bow her head and let them do what they want to her.
Until she suddenly got a hot bath, the prince's maids made sure to make her glow, then she got hot food, then comfortable clothes, her wounds were treated.
Then one of the maids sent her to the room of her new master, the first prince of the most powerful empire in the world.
Not wanting the treatment, she was receiving to go away, she decided to put her head down and go to the prince's room, ready to do what everyone wanted of her.
But how great was her surprise that when she arrived, he wanted to hear her story, nothing more... And he heard absolutely everything. She could even see the concern in his eyes as the story progressed.
"He rescued me... And the only thing I could do for him is say a simple ´thank you...´"
Clenching her fists, she smacked herself.
"No! I'm not going to stand here doing nothing! The prince saved me at my worst, I must do the same!"
Decidedly, she began to write a false letter and entering the prince's desk, took his seal to pass it off as a royal letter.