As soon as their diminished supplies were replenished, 5th division’s advance force marched out from Giant’s Head. After General Asher’s speech, the previously relaxed and celebratory mood had turned serious. They were on the hunt.

It did not take long either. Lindvar division didn’t have much of a lead, and unfettered by ox-drawn wagons, the light Harvand infantry was on their heels by mid-afternoon. As the rear Marradi elements spotted the approaching foes they turned around, blocking the road to prevent the attackers from advancing further and buying time for the train to make distance. It worked, too – until third and ninth battalion charged out of the woods and hit the center of the train in a by now familiar pincer maneuver.

Banners of light infantry appeared without warning, overwhelmed beleaguered defenders, then retreated once reinforcements appeared, luring any foolish enough to give chase into the waiting arms of their crossbows. Adventurers emerged out of the underbrush, struck hard and fast, then disappeared back into the trees before they could be caught. Marradi infantry tried to encircle their attackers, archers fired blind volleys, and frustrated mages shot off barely aimed fireballs, but nothing was effective at deterring the Harvand forces.

With Lindvar division beset from all sides by a foe that wouldn’t let itself be engaged head on, they had no choice but to focus on defense. To stop the lightning-fast strikes, Lindvar’s commanders dissolved their marching formation and sent out their soldiers in an unbroken circle around the much-diminished supply train, effectively screening the attackers from their preferred prey through sheer numbers. Seeing this, the Harvand commanders pulled back their troops, content to launch small probing attacks and volleys of bolts every now and then but keep their distance otherwise. After all, while the Marradi formation was strong defensively, it had a major flaw: It didn’t lend itself to moving very quickly, and by even the most generous estimates, the Marradi were on the brink of running out of food and water.

As evening came and darkness spread across the Wasteland, uneasiness spread among the Marradi soldiers. Caught out on the road and under constant attack, their reflexes slowed by a lack of sleep, wounded soldiers piling up in the wagons, morale was reaching critical levels.

“We won’t survive another night like the last one,” some would whisper out of earshot of their officers. “They’ll grind us down until noone’s left.” For maybe an hour, unbeknownst to the commanders of both forces, large parts of the Marradi division teetered on the brink of a complete rout.

In the end, Lindvar’s commanders got lucky. Just after nightfall, the slow-moving train reached a sparsely wooded hill that the road curved around. Spurring their men into a final push, the Marradi ascended the hill and encircled their wagons on top, fortifying their position and waiting for their foes to continue to terrorize them throughout the night, as they had done before. Nervous, red-clothed soldiers waited, and waited, and waited – for an attack that never came.

--- ----- ---

“What’s this?” Borm asked in the darkness somewhere to the left.

“How are we supposed to know, genius?” Hetta asked, and Edwin could basically hear her roll her eyes. “We can’t see it either.”

“Some kind of sausage, but different than the normal ones. Longer and thinner, I guess.”

“Wait, what?” Bordan said, perking up. “Let me see that!”

Bodies shuffled in the dark, a hand blindly felt at Edwin’s knee, then the sausage was delivered.

“Friends,” Bordan announced quietly, “thank your lucky stars, for they have blessed us with a delicacy the likes of which you’ve never tasted before!”

“Why, what is it?” someone asked.

“A true rarity. A relic of better times. Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time, the army was running low on meat rations, and their regular suppliers couldn’t meet the demand quickly enough. So, in their time of need, the logistics department placed an order for a few hundred crates of hard sausages with a butcher in Pel Andris, that wasn’t used to providing army rations. Instead of doing the bare minimum and producing the cheapest sausages they could to maximize profits, those blessed men and women simply made the requested sausages as they would any other, packed them up and shipped them off. Those shipments got mixed with the regular ones until nobody could tell from the outside which was which.”

Bordan paused for dramatic effect.

“Every now and then some lucky soldier will open up a box of rations, expecting the same old, barely passable sausages, only to be graced with a delectable surprise. Today is a good day, my friends, a very good day!”

“Really, Bordan?” Edwin asked, chuckling. “It’s a sausage.”

“Really?” a length of meat swished through the air, dangling precariously close to Edwin’s face. “Take a bite then.”

So, he did. Then he moaned in pleasure.

Everyone knows that things just taste better if you eat them outdoors, let alone if you’re hungry. It was this strange property that allowed soldiers everywhere to actually enjoy food that would barely be good enough for the animals under normal circumstances. Applying this mystical force to a sausage that had been lovingly crafted by a master butcher, filled with delicious meat and seasoned with a well-thought-out mix of spices made it taste like the finest food any king had ever tasted.

Ninth battalion only had a small box of the stuff, so they carefully cut it up into small pieces until everyone could have at least a bite. It was silly, all things considered, but after an exhausting day of marching and fighting, silly was the exact thing they needed to ease the tension. And so, after a cold dinner of otherwise bland food and a single slice of heavenly sausage, the adventurers fell asleep like content children on Arrival Day, barely giving a thought to their enemies that were sitting on a hill a mere few kilometers away, shaking in their boots for fear they might be ambushed at any moment.

And while they waited in vain that night, the ambush was coming. It just didn’t come when and how they expected.

--- ----- ---

“There they are,” Edwin said quietly, peering through the trees at the distant road, where the mid-morning sun was glinting off helmets and spears. “They’ve passed the mark. You ready?”

Hafarn took a steadying breath through the nose, then let it out through the open mouth. “Ready.” He looked at Bordan, who nodded gravely.

“Begin.”

The young mage returned the nod, then he closed his eyes and spread his arms, fingers splayed. As he took another deep breath, Edwin could almost taste the mana gushing from the young man’s core, flooding through his body and twisting into complex shapes before finally exploding from his hands and turning the world white.