Chapter 117

 

Reports on the dwarven front and the war activity…

After last night laughing at Doppel-chan trying to catch us I awoke feeling very amused.

At first the mental shock of radically changing what we were doing in high stress bothered me. But I got used to it after ‘breakfast’ with Asakura, and her smile at me.

Currently we’re in the travelling army convoy system. We’d marched most the day already in long lines with the other dwarves; which feels pretty darn safe since it’s a fairly good sized army convoy even when stretched out this long. But because of so much going on and how tired and stressed out we are, we were able to ride in one of the wagons which has helped us rest up. The dwarves didn’t like it at first, but Svinn vouched for us and probably saved our life of dying from fatigue in doing so though I felt they kind of owed us since we were responsible for that small town being saved.

I kind of feel bad that we had to leave that small town. It had a homely feel to it. At least it did before it was gutted by war. Svinn and the others assure us that it’ll bounce back twice as strong and even get military reconstruction vouchers to expand the town, since it held its ground.

Then after morning cleanup, dinner, and our normal routines I took Rina and Asakura with me to try to meet with the dwarven leaders.

“So Ingvarrin won’t be able to join us to talk?” I asked when Svinn came back to relay our plea to meet with a leader to work out small issues.

Since he had sort of recruited us I was curious about hoping to meet him again. He had also seemed very smart and wise and who doesn’t want to be with smart people to make your life better? It’s not like we were asking for money anything right? I thought it was fairly reasonable.

Svinn shook his head, “he’s busy that one. He and Silverspur are holding the whole Southern Kingdom together and a lot depends on them. In a way they do more than the War Twins, even though they aren’t as flashy about how they do it. I bet he only gets about four hours of sleep a day with all the activity he has to take on daily. He has constant scouts and messengers coming in every hour updating warfront information and there’s so much of it if he neglects it even half a day it can get too hard to look after; it’s a wonder he can even keep from going crazy because there’s so much activity.”

“Sounds like you’ve seen his inner leadership ring?” Asakura guessed.

“Wow you’re sharp. You’re right. He tried to recruit me but I told him no. I wanted to sort of have a break after the last conflict we had,” he said.

“Wow,” Asakura is also impressed.

I couldn’t help but be a bit curious of what has happened to Ingvarrin, whom we’d met awhile back but he’s too important and too busy to spend time with us. He’s riding in some kind of wheeled palanquin, which makes us a bit jealous but then again he’s higher up the food chain than we are. We’d wanted to see him again. He had this strength just oozing out of him that even non-mages could pick up on.

It’s been like days since we left that settlement and its battle site of smoking ruins and we’re on the road in the dark caverns under the Earth. But it’s only been like one day since dealt with the Doppelganger girl conflict. I’ve learned that for some reason this planet has a heavily fractured crust, and so you can travel in great, wide caverns like this for days without ever seeing the sun and many of them are big enough to hold whole cities in them. We’ve been moving along what they call a trade route road that follows one of the great movement plate cluster caverns, but has in more recent years been primarily used for troop movements between different dwarven cities, and settlements of which there are many.

We’d also found out the dwarves used a scout and assassin strike team to take out some of the goblin catapults that everyone was scared shitless about. But they did retreat with some of them still active and having survived, so scouting patrols are still on high alert to try to intercept attacks before they can reach dwarven settlements.

“Are you sure that town be able to recover?” Rina asked Svinn, who is walking with me. He’s interesting to talk to and has a good attitude while not being corrupt or dishonest. I can see why others like him too.

He shrugged, “we always do. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.”

“But it looked pretty awful. The whole town was gutted by fire and molten rock with ruined buildings,” I said in awe. It looked hellish when we’d left.

“You guys really will keep living there?” Asakura also is interested in what he has to say.

“It’s how we live,” he shrugged. “Besides even though it looks ugly the granaries and the malt and brewery shafts were preserved. It also had a really good silver mine there. Who doesn’t like silver?” He winked at us on the part.

“So that part makes it OK huh?” Rina couldn’t help but smile.

“I can see you understand me well,” he flirted back with her. He had been playfully teasing Rina for the last hour, which I didn’t mind. I actually wanted her to see there were other good men in the world too and to not be such a bro-con. Somehow she’s accepted small talk Svinn, who is an unlikely companion but still very solid. But the bro-con ness in her will probably never be cured and she still keeps Svinn at a distance even though she sort of jokes with him a bit.

It’d taken me a long time the day after the battle to save his life, while he was on deaths door using every bit of mana I had. I still couldn’t help the fact that his whole abdomen is like one huge giant scar where we’d tried to patch him up. With a hundred or so heal spells and pinpointing tissue welding to get things back together he had pulled through much quicker than I’d expected.

“So this whole dwarven war thing never ends does it?” I asked him.

He avoided looking me in the eyes and has a somber expression. “I can’t deny I don’t like that part. We do seem to have a few years of lull between storms but it’s usually not very long so we have to build while we can. There will be a point where it slows to almost not being a war though. We do have a lot of ‘skirmishing’ that goes on. But we also also have a lot of peace between storms to. For now that town will be safe for a long while and there is going to be prosperity there too. Goblins usually think it’s bad luck to hit the same place twice after the first one fails, in part because of the psychological effect behind our town rebuilding policy and partly because of their own superstition. You will see. In fact ten years from now I hope to show it to you. Newly rebuilt town, and wall to be reinforced, and more things fixed up with heavy ballista on the new wall design. There are other upgrades too that I want to add to the brewery,” his eyes were shining with joy on that last part like a kid describing opening presents on Christmas Day.

“So…I don’t get it though. Doesn’t it seem hard to go rebuild that wrecked place?” Rina asked. We’re all staring at Svinn in awe, hearing him describe it.

“I can see why you are skeptical. To humans and a lot of other races, you are thinking like it would be easier to start over somewhere else right?” his fingers stroke his beard as we walk.

“Yeah that’s kind of what it would seem like. Where we come from a lot of people would have become refugees and refused to go back from the bad memories,” Asakura admitted. “But some people do like old stuff and places they grew up in.”

“Exactly! That’s my point!” he said.

“Gotcha,” Rina nodded.

“Dwarves are a bit different from humans in our spirit and psychology in that we focus on the towns and settlements that have won through and been bled through blood being spilled in how we focus our new resources. To us that’s the real spiritual meaning behind the town being a sort of stake in the center of the creators blacksmith shop,” he added quickly.

“So how’s that work?” Asakura wondered, while kicking a rock out of the middle of the road. This road almost felt like a mining road and was purely dirt, so every now and then we could see all kinds of interesting volcanic rock pieces here. She bent over to pick up an interesting piece of lava rock to study.

“While humans will choose the best and most richest places to want to swarm new buildings around, the dwarves instead have this almost lemming like urge to settle in a place that is proven safe through valor and trial by combat. I believe I hinted at this earlier, but now that the settlement we defended has been properly blooded and defended you will see probably a dozen families this year alone wanting to migrate here to stake out new territory to live in. You’ll see I promise it. Plus in this case there is also a mine that’s doing well here. I’ve seen it before,” his eyes twinkled.

“But those families had to come from somewhere right? Don’t they already have homes? You can’t just pull people out of nowhere,” I asked him.

“Yeah but that’s the beauty of it. There are a percentage of them that’s been thinking for years that the Capital is too big and too crowded. Let’s guess and say that’s maybe two or three families. There’s also going to be some families that will be seeking land and home grants from the government to settle in areas that need new population, but don’t have funds to move on their own without such grants. New families with a lot of kids wouldn’t be able to do that in an area that is economically too strong because of the cost of homes and vocational training for their kids. So they come to places like this that are near the frontier and the kingdom grows through the government sponsorships.”

“I guess that could happen,” I said, sorting it through my head.

“Wait government sponsorship? Shun, does that mean we could?” Rina started to ask.

But Svinn looks really sad. “Right now there isn’t a system in place to sponsor people that aren’t dwarves,” he said apologetically. “But you would be able to buy a home outright if you have money.”

He pretends to ignore Rina swearing for a half a minute.

“We’re trying to implement a system to allow humans who have proven themselves through loyalty, but factions against it have been fighting it for awhile,” he said.

“Well I guess that’s better than nothing,” Asakura noted.

“So you were saying about how families would be brought here?” I suggested to keep him going and I want to hear more about the dwarves and how they are different from humans to understand them better.

“There are the ones that come out thinking that this place will be safer because it’s been properly blooded now too and I think I’ve mentioned those already in the past. They’ll also believe that the goblins will fear it and that it will make a good place to raise good families. There are a percentage of those too, that come from wasted and ruined towns, be they human or dwarven having survived harsh sieges. You’ll see that too, unfortunately and you can usually tell which ones they are since they are often refugees or have the sorrow and despair of the world plastered to their facial expressions,” he sighed.

“I hope it can get better,” Rina frowned, hearing it.

“Sounds almost like an ecological cycle,” Asakura commented.

“Aye, it is,” Svinn said.

This march is also … I can’t describe it. There’s a feeling of strength and unity as the dwarves are coming together. We’ve joined a long twisting column of them as we march down the road, and somehow other dwarves kept joining in as the column of marching men kept getting bigger as their people were rallying.

All kinds of volunteers had joined up, from nowhere. They’d been coming out of the woodwork for days to come fight off the orc and goblin plague in their lands. We’ve been on a long march with the rest of the dwarven column. This particular column is marching with four dwarves shoulder to shoulder from left to right. We’d started with over three hundred strong that made up Silverspur and Ingvarrin’s regiments. Of course before that number was compiled, he’d originally had four hundred, but there was a need to leave behind about thirty each split up in the three settlements that had been fought for in the last few days.

“So what gives with all the volunteers? Is that allowed?” I asked Svinn.

“I think that’s a bit different too,” Asakura noted. She’d omitted the last part of “different from our world”, but had glanced at me so I could guess it.

“Why wouldn’t they be? Real enduring countries have to foster nationalism and patriotism in order to survive. You can’t survive with it out because real lasting meaning and lasting societies are built upon the sacrifices of the forefathers and ancestors that spawned them over time and that carries forward even to the sacrifices necessary by the living. If people don’t sacrifice for it then they’ll be taking from it instead. When you cut out patriotism you get people pulling everything up from within for themselves from chaos and selfishness,” he looked at me like I was acting strangely.

“That’s deep,” Rina is trying to comprehend it.

“But true,” he confirmed.

“Hmm, back home sometimes the screening process for soldiers is very long and tight,” Asakura explained, without going into detail further.

“Ahh, I can see why humans would do that with so much corruption and all. You also tend to have more allowance for people to withhold support and question if something can endure. That makes it harder even if you have good people. No offense,” he replied dryly. I couldn’t help but feel annoyed that he said that, but he’s right. He wasn’t trying to be a jerk or judgmental either, but it’s just true that many types of people have trouble with corruption and doing things for the wrong reasons with no ability to back it up.

“So I got some news for you guys. This is all the juicy stuff that’s happened over the last half of the week,” he said enthusiastically. We’re of course, very interested and a little appalled at the same time as we get more details on how thorough the goblin and orc side has been.

That was also the big news!

While we’d fought the higher numbers of goblins here, two other battles were fought at the other two settlements, all of which made up this branch of the Trade Way Cavern system. We were also shown a map.

Wow, this is a huge campaign going on of dwarf versus goblin!

But my next thought was...

How could such a cavern this big exist?!

“One of the battles was a ruse, where about forty goblins were thrown away as fodder with no reinforcements against the more heavily walled and bigger of the three settlements. This was no surprise and not much of a victory because it was meaningless and had been designed to pull troops away from the other two towns. We later also learned that this had been the first attacked settlement, which had been the first report we’d heard from,” he explained while chewing on a small bit of hard tack.

“Then a day later reports came in of an attack on the second settlement, which was the farthest away from the first compared to this small settlement that we’d defended, which was exactly in the middle. So in order of the towns on the Trade Way, there was the first settlement higher up closer towards the Capital but still far away, then the third town we’d been in was actually between the first and the second.”

He’s really getting into his story now, “according to Svinn, Ingvarrin was faced with the possibility that the other two towns might be the real targets, since the first town had the best fortifications and ballistae systems. He was right, but didn’t know that until later. At the time, he also didn’t have exact numbers on the enemy troop movements near the first settlement either and had to make a decision blindly. And then the very next day he received news of the farthest town out being attacked, also unknown of how many enemy troops.”

“The next report which came in while he was still figuring out his troop movements, was believed to have been interception messages purposefully placed in the dwarves hands from goblin messengers with fake information meant to make the allied dwarves thing a heavy army was converging on the first town, which actually at this point had no more enemy movements at all after the forty fodder troops had been annihilated. It was also purposefully placed by the goblin commanders to arrive in their hands around the same time they were receiving the news of the farthest out town being attacked, in an attempt to decoy and split up his troops among too many places to defend at once,” he concluded.

“Wow, that would be a tough decision,” Rina said with her eyes wide in fear.

“And the goblins came up with this on their own with no help? I find that hard to believe,” Asakura’s eyes narrow as she mulls it over.

I was thinking the same thing and our eyes met as she said it. Both of us are wondering how the goblins could pull of a strategy this complex.

“Yeah that’s the funny part. They are sneaky little gutter trash, but sometimes can come up with a good scheme if someone throws them a bone or two or get help with necessary resources and that’s my concern. I’m thinking that’s probably what’s happened,” he grunted.

“What do you mean by thrown them a bone?” I asked.

He sighed, “They are lazy and that forces them to be warlike to compensate for it when they end up with nothing and mouths to feed. They can sometimes get a scheme going but to carry it forward is another thing entirely when it’s on this large of a scale, since their culture foments violence being necessary to carry work projects forward. So it’s not impossible for them to do, but I do think someone is guiding them with ideas they shouldn’t be able to come up with on their own.”

“Yikes,” Rina said.

“At any rate, Silverspur and Ingvarrin know they have to act quickly and that further enemy troops along the whole line of all three towns could happen. They make the judgment that if the enemy sees them coming to the second and third towns, then they might go back up to the first town by sneaking around from behind and either go after the first town; or end up cutting off the dwarven supply lines which happen to be going through the first town. And with both of them working together they try to help support each other into not missing anything that’s necessary.”

“So he had to reinforce all three settlements at once, it seems,” Asakura reasoned.

“Exactly! Man for man, dwarves are the best fighters around but even we can get stretched a bit thin,” he said nervously.

“So what happened then?” Rina asked.

“The enemy commander split his army evenly between the second and third settlements, half going to each. It was tough work. That other town didn’t have as much support like ours did but they had overall more troops,” he said.

“So Ingvarrin, as the General’s advisor wasn’t able to determine the enemy had split his troops?” I guessed.

He nodded, “Ingvarrin had sent forces to each settlement but he had to keep a reserve to go where the real fighting was. In this case it happened to be the farthest town out, and most of the dwarven army ended up going there. There weren’t enemy shamans there, but the orc shock troops were there too, which is really bad.”

“Orcs have some kind of shock troops? That makes me queasy,” Asakura stated. That made us both very nervous. What if we hadn’t really seen a tough veteran orc yet? We’d seen what WE thought were veterans but maybe they actually weren’t?

Svinn nodded slowly, “unfortunately so. They aren’t fun to deal with. I’ve only barely survived some of them myself a few times so I don’t want to talk about them right now.”

Rina and I are suddenly scared. “This is so complicated, Shun,” she says to me.

“Well how come the shamans didn’t show up until the end?” I asked.

“Good question. That was part of the part that tipped the scale in our favor. If the goblin shamans had entered the campaign earlier we might have lost a town, whether the one we fought at or another it could have been either or both,” he said quietly.

“So what happened?” Asakura is really hanging on this. I didn’t realize she was that interested in strategy, but it makes sense because of her background.

“The enemy shamans had been held up because they weren’t sure which town the dwarven heavy armors were going to and they like to try to hold those in check since if they don’t our heavy armor coming shakes their morale up pretty badly. That was the big key in the delay see; because they couldn’t go in first, because they knew their confederation of the bulk of their armor being light, quick footed fighters would have trouble withstanding the dwarven heavy armors. That’s also why the goblin scouts had been going mad for the last week, trying to run all over the place and why there were so many scouting skirmishes. Everyone was desperate to find out signals of where the dwarven heavy armors were headed to cut them off with shaman support to stop their losses long enough to capture the towns.”

“Wow, this is pretty complex,” Rina swore aloud.

“It is, and you can tell something is up by watching for surges in their scout activity that they are about to do something dangerous. That was our first tip off this time too and other times. To have a clear war plan they have to have their eyes looking everywhere then you learn to watch for what follows. Remember that it will save your lives someday,” he said with an warning look.

Svinn is pretty impressive.

“And I’m guessing the dwarven heavy armors couldn’t go in because they didn’t know yet, which town the orc shock troops were headed too? Which would have caused more delays,” Asakura finished.

Svinn is stunned seeing her reason it out on her own. “That’s exactly right.”

“So the heavy armors were like medieval tanks, I get that part but the other parts are just…arghhh,” Rina has a headache.

“What’s a tank?” Svinn said suspiciously, looking straight at me.

Oh right...the dwarves probably use different words that aren’t as ‘gamey’.

“It’s a mythological beast weapon from some other mythology. I don’t think they exist here,” Asakura shrugged like it was nothing, covering for both of us. I breathed a short sigh of relief when Svinn wasn’t looking after that.

“Well they sound interesting. Maybe you can tell me more about them later,” he suggested.

I’m giving Rina a ‘be careful’ look. She’s looking humble now and trying to give off an air of repentance.

“So the other town had most of the dwarven heavy armors there, and the orc shock troops too. So I don’t get why the shamans went to where we were instead of over there?” I asked.

Svinn chuckled. “That was pretty clever wasn’t it?”

“As you know the ten dwarven heavy armors that went with us to the town we were at to fight were a small number of the overall numbers of them that we held in reserve. But the smaller group were also spotted first. That threw off the goblin shamans and was why they sent their shamans to the wrong place. They heard a report of dwarven heavy armors sighted at such and such town, which is where we were. Instead of confirming the report and making sure no other reports of heavy armors were elsewhere they ran off quickly to engage at the first opportunity, probably hoping for the best loot too. They like dwarven gems to help them cast spells better and it sometimes makes them get too greedy and rush their judgment, which is another important thing to remember when dealing with wealth management. Thus they by accident they separated their orc shock troops and their shamans, which ended up being just what our side needed to pull through.”

“And we get to live to fight another day, because of it,” I concluded.

“Exactly,” Rina confirmed.

“I still don’t get it though. How did they get separated so easily, wouldn’t they have turned around and joined their orc shock troops when they saw the orc elite fighters were somewhere else?” I asked.

Svinn noticed I was getting it too, “Yeah that’s the thing. The orc elite troops march slower too. So they had been turned back around after leaving when the goblin commander received another report of where the real bulk of the dwarven heavy armors were heading to or located at. He was thus able to catch up with them more quickly and get them to where they needed to be. We’ll have a high speed strike team hit the orc elite troops en route while they are outside of their stronghold to clean it all up in another day or two. But the shamans have enchants and things to march quickly and were probably too far out to be found easily to be redirected. There probably was rivalry too between the non-shaman goblin officers and the goblin shamans too, I suspect. I bet even on a good day even the shamans rivalry within their own ranks can make it hard for them to change plans quickly. They all want a piece of the pie see; so when someone comes up with something new or wants to adjust to the new plan the first thing that happens is that person has to weather the storm of them trying to steal from each other.”

And in this manner the day passed with no conflict while we keep moving with the dwarven army. We are getting closer to the Capital but…the chances of other skirmishes are high.

Scouts move back and forth >troop adjustments and movements > range troops try to cover main armies of both groups fighting each other > leaders and magic users try to send in elite troops to gain ground > battles often determined by superior scout info, better magic and leadership, and efficiency of elite troops for both orcs and dwarves.

I’m amazed the goblins and the dwarves both have such a complex social system.