Chapter 108: The Horde Does not Stop

Chapter 108: The Horde Does Not Stop

The Viridian banner had barely settled above Valemar’s provincial government building when new orders began moving through the captured city. Prisoners were still being gathered into guarded courtyards, healers were treating wounded soldiers, and crews were extinguishing fires left by seven days of bombardment.

Many officers expected the southern army to spend several days reorganizing after the siege, but messengers from Eastwatch arrived before the occupation of the capital had even been fully arranged.

The orders carried Grand Marshal Rakhar Veyr’s seal and left little room for interpretation.

Valemar was to be secured by occupation formations and troops too exhausted to continue campaigning, while the freshest units were to prepare for immediate movement toward Stoneford.

Siege detachments surrounding the remaining Valemar strongholds would remain in position, and reinforcements arriving from Eastwatch would gradually replace formations needed elsewhere.

The southern commander read the instructions twice before looking over the strength reports spread across his table.

The seven-day conquest had inflicted casualties and exhausted many veteran companies, but thousands of soldiers had remained in reserve throughout much of the siege.

Additional formations had also arrived behind the front while Valemar’s capital was being attacked, giving the army enough strength to continue without forcing the most depleted units back into immediate combat.

"We leave the wounded, the exhausted companies, and enough soldiers to hold the city," he said while pointing toward the deployment lists.

"Fresh infantry prepares to march, engineers and scouts move first, and the siege equipment follows behind the leading formations."

One officer glanced toward the government district outside and reminded him that the province was not yet fully pacified.

The commander answered that complete pacification was unnecessary at this stage because the resistant towns were already surrounded and the capital was under Viridian control.

If Stoneford received two weeks to prepare simply because every remaining fortress had to be conquered first, then Viridian would be surrendering the advantage created by the speed of the campaign.

The logic followed the doctrine that had already transformed the eastern war. A fortified town no longer needed to fall before Viridian advanced beyond it, and an occupied province did not need to become completely peaceful before another army crossed its far border.

With enough soldiers available, the empire could maintain sieges, guard roads, occupy cities, and continue advancing at the same time.

Valemar therefore began changing from battlefield to staging ground almost immediately.

Granaries were inventoried under guard, captured warehouses were assigned to the army, and engineers inspected the roads leading toward Stoneford.

Garrisons took control of important intersections while fresh formations assembled outside walls that had been defended by Caldris soldiers only hours earlier.

Farther north, the same process had already advanced much further because Northwatch’s provincial capital had been under Viridian control throughout most of the Valemar siege.

General Vorak Thenn had used that time to reorganize his army, repair roads, establish depots, and absorb fresh formations arriving from Eastwatch.

Several fortified towns still remained under Caldris banners, but they were surrounded by siege detachments that prevented their garrisons from interfering with Viridian movement.

Vorak stood over a map of the road into Redhaven when Rakhar’s new orders reached him. He had expected the command eventually, although its timing confirmed that the wider campaign would not pause after Valemar.

Redhaven lay directly beyond Northwatch, while Stoneford lay beyond Valemar, and the provincial barriers that had once protected both territories were now gone.

Rakhar’s command contained no unnecessary explanation. Vorak would advance into Redhaven with fresh formations, while the southern army would enter Stoneford from Valemar.

Neither army was required to wait for the other, and neither was expected to delay its advance until every resistant settlement behind the front surrendered.

Vorak looked toward the officers gathered around him and began assigning the next movement orders.

"The men who fought hardest for Northwatch remain with the occupation if they need rest. Fresh formations lead, and we cross as soon as the forward supplies are ready."

One commander asked how many troops would remain behind for the unfinished sieges. Vorak answered that the existing detachments would continue their work while additional occupation forces held the capital and major roads.

Any fortress that remained isolated could be reduced later without tying down the field army, and the first columns began preparing to move before the following day had fully developed.

Redhaven received almost no warning before those columns started approaching its border. Governor Seraph Dorne had spent the previous weeks sending soldiers north in an attempt to save Northwatch, and some of those forces had never reached Edric before the capital fell.

Others had withdrawn after discovering Viridian already controlled the roads around the city, leaving Redhaven with troops, militia, fortified settlements, and a capital garrison but considerably less mobile strength than it had possessed before the crisis began.

Seraph received confirmation of Northwatch’s fall while trying to reorganize remnants returning from the northern roads.

He had expected Vorak to require time to secure the conquered province, reduce the remaining fortresses, and recover from the siege.

The next message destroyed that assumption because Viridian scouts had already crossed into Redhaven, with infantry and larger columns following behind them.

Seraph pushed away from his campaign table and ordered the province placed under full mobilization.

"Every formation still capable of marching moves toward the main Northwatch roads. Recall anyone who can return without being cut off, and warn the capital that the goblins are already coming."

His officers left before the orders were fully copied because there was no time for another governors’ council or a careful redistribution of eastern forces.

Northwatch was gone, Valemar had fallen, and the shared eastern reserve that once could have been moved between threatened provinces had already been scattered by the previous campaigns.

Stoneford received its warning only slightly later, and Governor Cassian Holt learned of Valemar’s fall through a stream of soldiers, couriers, and officials escaping from the southern corridor.

Several Stoneford formations he had previously sent through Valemar had already become tangled in the failed reinforcement movements toward Northwatch. Some were returning, others had been redirected, and several had lost days simply reversing their marches.

Cassian ordered every formation still within reach recalled toward Stoneford’s primary defensive roads. Bridges were to be prepared for destruction if necessary, militia mobilized, granaries secured, and the provincial capital placed on emergency footing.

His commanders initially believed the Valemar campaign would provide at least a short period for those preparations, but scouts returning from the border reported that goblin formations were already leaving the conquered capital.

The southern Viridian army advanced with roughly seventy thousand troops available for immediate campaigning, while additional units remained behind for occupation, supply, and reinforcement.

Fresh infantry led the movement, and veteran formations that had spent the siege fighting through breaches were allowed to recover or assigned to less demanding duties. Engineers, scouts, crossbow formations, and siege crews followed according to their place in the marching order.

The road into Stoneford filled with Viridian banners before many local garrisons had even received confirmation that Lucan Merrow had surrendered.

Cassian’s first defensive force gathered around a major junction where several roads from Valemar entered the province, numbering only a few thousand soldiers reinforced by militia from nearby settlements.

Their commander prepared barricades across the main road and positioned crossbowmen behind them, hoping to delay the invasion long enough for larger formations to assemble farther inland.

Viridian reached the position before those reinforcements could arrive, and its crossbow formations spread outward while infantry advanced toward the barricades.

Supporting columns moved along neighboring roads, immediately threatening to pass around the defensive position instead of allowing it to control the entire advance.

The Stoneford commander recognized the danger and withdrew before his force could be surrounded, preserving much of his army but surrendering the junction within hours.

Redhaven’s first resistance ended in a similar fashion as a field force assembled near the border attempted to block Vorak’s leading formations along a broad road bordered by farmland.

The humans possessed enough soldiers to create a respectable defensive line, but Vorak had no reason to test it through a narrow frontal attack.

He sent formations against the center while additional troops widened around both sides of the Caldris position.

Once Redhaven began stretching its line to prevent encirclement, Viridian increased pressure against the weakest section, and the defenders eventually withdrew when it became clear that remaining would allow goblin formations to cut the roads behind them.

Vorak did not order an extended pursuit because the retreating soldiers were already moving in the same direction as his objective.

If they fled toward Redhaven’s capital, then his army would continue following the roads that led there anyway, and he had no intention of scattering thousands of troops across the countryside for the sake of destroying one retreating formation.

Across both fronts, the campaign was now accelerating faster than Caldris could communicate. Messages left Redhaven for the royal capital describing a new invasion while other couriers carried similar warnings from Stoneford.

Those riders would require days merely to reach officials capable of passing the information farther west, and any royal army gathered in response would need much longer to march east.

By the time the royal government understood the situation, Viridian could already be standing before another provincial capital.

The speed of the conquest was beginning to outrun Caldris’s ability to react politically and militarily, especially now that two separate invasions were progressing at the same time.

Rakhar watched the new advances from his headquarters in Eastwatch. The campaign map that had once contained a single narrow foothold around Brackenford now showed three conquered provincial capitals and two fresh arrows extending deeper inland.

His officers continued bringing reinforcement reports from the Gate Beyond Heaven. More Viridian soldiers were entering Edras, allowing older formations to rotate into occupation duties while fresh troops were pushed toward the advancing fronts.

Eastwatch remained the primary logistical heart of the invasion, but Northwatch and Valemar were quickly becoming forward supply centers of their own.

"We maintain the flow north and south separately," Rakhar told Varek while tracing the roads on the map.

"Northwatch supplies Vorak until Redhaven can sustain him, Valemar supplies the Stoneford army, and Eastwatch fills whatever shortages appear behind both fronts."

Varek studied the expanding front and asked about the towns still resisting behind the advance.

Rakhar answered that those settlements would remain surrounded until they surrendered or until the siege forces were reinforced enough to finish them, but the two advancing armies would not be brought to a halt simply because a few walls behind them still carried Caldris banners.

High above the mortal battlefield, Noah observed the movement through his connection to the Viridian Empire.

He remembered how the original expedition had entered Caldris with only thirty thousand soldiers and had been forced to consider carefully where every formation would go.

That limitation no longer defined the war because siege camps remained around resistant towns, occupation forces guarded three captured capitals, supply formations moved continuously between provinces, and two separate field armies advanced at the same time.

Noah issued no new command because the Viridian military structure was already functioning without divine intervention in individual battles.

Rakhar, Vorak, and the other commanders had developed a campaign system that could continue operating as long as soldiers, supplies, and roads remained available.

Before the day ended, Vorak’s leading formations crossed fully into Redhaven while the southern army pushed beyond Stoneford’s first defensive junction.

Behind them, Viridian banners flew over Eastwatch, Northwatch, and Valemar, with long chains of camps and guarded roads connecting the conquered provinces.

Ahead of both armies, couriers raced toward the final two eastern capitals carrying warnings that the goblins had crossed their borders.

Some messengers arrived only hours before the first Viridian scouts, leaving governors and commanders with barely enough time to understand that the war had already reached them.

The eastern campaign was no longer moving through one province at a time. Two goblin armies were now advancing simultaneously through the last territories separating Viridian from complete control of eastern Caldris, while the forces left behind continued occupying cities, maintaining sieges, and feeding supplies toward the front.