The Foolhardies - Chapter 192 A Thousand and One Hands

“I hear Llewellyn invited you to her bed?” General Redbull chortled.

I coughed in response. “I think she was just joking around…”

My eyes darted nervously toward Aura who was riding Starlight just off to my right. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to hear Redbull’s comment.

“Um, about the strategy tonight, General,” I said, desperate to change topics in order to avoid further embarrassment. “Any special plans for the left army?”

By the time the second night of battle rolled along, Shärleden’s reinforcements arrived at the desert, and it was a nice surprise that we received fifty thousand troops instead of the forty thousand that was originally promised. So now we were a hundred-and-seventy-thousand strong with a clear advantage on the battlefield since we’d secured the oases located in the center region.

Great General Garm divided the army into a fifty-thousand-man central army, a sixty-thousand-man left army, and a sixty-thousand-man right army.

While he remained in charge of the central army which had the enviable job of reinforcing the center region, he left command of the left and right armies to General Redbull and General Llewellyn respectively.

The right army would engage the enemy’s left army in the north while the left army would battle the enemy’s right army in the south, all for control of the remaining oases.

Luckily, I wouldn’t have to deal with Llewellyn for a while as my unit was part of the left army along with Al Sheridan’s Millennium Hawks.

“I’m not really big on outmaneuvering my opponents with tactics,” Redbull said as he smashed his fist into the palm of his other hand. “I’d rather crush them with force.”

He looked over his shoulder to where I rode behind him.

“But I’m sure you’ve got a plan of your own…” he chuckled. “I won’t stop you as long as you keep contributing to our success.”

He was right, of course. I did have a strategy in mind, one that would ensure a swift end to the left army’s battle if everything went according to plan.

“How do you like the soldiers I lent you?” Redbull asked.

“They’re very capable, sir,” I answered.

Before our left army marched out, Redbull had sent four hundred soldiers to supplement our force of six hundred so that my unit could be a proper one-thousand-man unit.

He’d trained three hundred of those soldiers personally, and they’d been part of his unit since his days as a Five-thousand-man Commander. They were a mix of satyrs, humans, gnomes, and pixies that were willing to work under me for the duration of the battle.

Redbull didn’t send an officer with them as he trusted me to distribute these new forces among the unit’s squads. This was a bit of a challenge as introducing new recruits to an already cohesive force took time. Time we didn’t have as we were marching out that same night. Still, I did my best to manage the troops.

The viseres were mostly sent to Azuma’s Immortals as they’d lost a lot of soldiers in the last battle. The remainder was sent Luca’s squad.

I’d never worked with satyrs before but I heard they excelled at defense and so I sent them to supplement Edo’s and Ashley’s squads.

As for the gnomes, I knew from my experience with Zarz that despite their small stature gnomes could pack quite a punch. However, it was also their small stature that made them difficult to use in our usual squad formations.

Luckily, Thor’s squad was a group of bandits who excelled in hit-and-run tactics that had no need for a proper squad formation. So I sent them over to him to fill up his new hundred-man squad.

Yeah, I promoted Thor to a temporary squad leader post since he’d done very well in the last battle. I expected that this would drive him to continue delivering good results.

“The dwarves giving you trouble?” Redbull asked.

The remaining hundred soldiers Redbull sent me was a dwarven unit that had lost all their officers in recent battles, and as they were leaderless, they’d been acting out and getting all rowdy within Redbull’s army. It was probably why he sent them over to me so they’d be my headache now.

So I made them Varda’s headache. After all, it was about time the unit’s Quartermaster had her own squad to help her. Hopefully, the veteran dwarves Vardoom had sent us would help Varda get her Troublemakers into shape. Yeah, that’s the squad’s name — Varda and her naming sense.

“Nope, Varda’s managing them just fine,” I said, although I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or not.

Redbull chuckled loudly. “Well, make good use of them, One-thousand-man Commander. They might not be attuned to your unit yet but I picked guys who can pick up the slack when necessary.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” I answered. “I trust my squad leaders to manage their new additions just fine.”

Earlier, I’d warned the officers not to let the trap of inexperience working together ruin their squad’s cohesion. We needed to avoid those kinds of mistakes at all costs.

When I asked Redbull why he’d been so generous with supplying me his own men, he responded with, “Because there’s a big difference between being a Five-hundred-man Commander and being a One-thousand-man Commander, Dapper… Do you know what that is?”

“A thousand-man unit has the capability to affect the battle in a way five-hundred men can’t,” I answered. “But I disagree, sir…”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Why’s that?”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether I had a hundred or a thousand… My tactics are at a scale big enough to affect the battlefield,” I reasoned. “We proved as much in the last war.”

Redbull laughed out loud.

“Do you hear that, April?” he nodded to his left where his adjutant rode on her swifthart. “This cheeky human’s got a pair of balls on him!”

“I’m human too, sir,” April reminded him before turning an icy stare on me. “But I agree, he is cheeky.”

—

Half an hour after we began our march, and we finally sighted our target.

“General, the enemy is within sight,” April Valentine called.

Redbull’s adjutant alerted us to the enemy that had just appeared in front of us in numbers so great that they covered the horizon from one end to the other in their yellow and red banners.

“There are more of them than the reports mentioned,” I whistled.

At a glance, I assumed they were at least eighty-thousand strong.

“They must have received reinforcements on their side too.” Redbull reached back for the handle of his battle-ax strapped to the side of his mount. Then he pulled out the wicked-looking thing and raised it forward while laughing out loud. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll kill them all!”

I don’t think he meant for it to sound like a battle cry but the soldiers around us began to cheer together, “Kill them all! Kill them all!”

“Well, Dean,” Redbull turned his gaze on me, “You think whatever you have planned will work against that?”

“Possibly…” I grinned. “So long as you do your part, General.”

“So you expect me to do the heavy lifting, huh,” he laughed out loud. “This kid has such big balls, don’t you think, April?”

April Valentine, who was riding beside Redbull, nodded her head. “Perhaps that’s why General Llewellyn wants to bed him…”

This caused Redbull to laugh at my expense.

My eyes darted nervously toward Aura once more, and this time I noticed the slight smile on her lips.

I face-palmed myself because I knew I was going to get it later — if not from Aura then certainly from Luca or Edo or Varda or Qwipps or whoever else Aura decided to reveal this secret to.

“A-anyway,” I stuttered to change topics quickly, “If you can get their right vanguard to move forward, that’ll really help me out, General.”

Redbull laughed. “Cheeky brat… alright, I’ll be your bait! You better get the job done though.”

“Yes, sir,” I said in all seriousness. “We’ll nab you a general’s head for your trouble.”

Redbull’s laugh got even louder. “As I said, you’ve got big balls, Dapper.”

“Don’t be too cocky, Dean Dapper,” April warned. “The enemy general of the Dominion’s right army is nearly famous for being a defensive general. He’s a strategic type like you.”

Redbull nodded. “They call him Amon, the Shield of Rah.”

“Why does everyone get a cool nickname but me?” I wondered out loud.

“Boy Touched with Fire doesn’t really sound intimidating, huh,” Redbull agreed.

No, I wasn’t worried about this ‘Shield of Rah’ as I’d faced off against dozens of strategic-type commanders before. The biggest one being Ardeen Spellweaver, the fairy responsible for giving me my lame nickname.

“The more well-known they are, the easier it is for us to make them slip up,” I reasoned.

“Well, show me what you can do then, Dean,” Redbull ordered. “Bring me a general’s head.”

“Roger,” I answered.