‘I want to trust you desperately, but I can’t. This is my family, my longtime allies, I’ve gone through hell with these people. I love them deeply. You talk of peace, but everywhere you went the army followed and families were ruined. Your justice is too harsh. You talk of me soliciting with monsters, but whatever you believe, what you’ve build wants those kids dead. It’s a soulless pious machine serving one man. If I can’t stop you, then perhaps he will and so be it. Better the familiar beast that calls me his dear friend. History shall judge me, but I shall see no more death.’

The Pirate Queen addressing Praetor Maximus Lucius Aldenus

Decanus Lucas Kato

The gathering storm

Part V

-Half a bridge-

III Legio

Durio’s (forward reconnaissance & engineering) detachment.

Detachment’s commander general staff

Optio (Engineers) Potis Durio (Lastport, Lesia) –Acting Prefect

Centurion (Rangers) Kaeso (unknown)

Centurion (Medics) Dottore Marianus

Centurion (Engineers) Sid Toma (Lastport, Lesia)

Heavy Infantry and other units present.

1st Maniple (part of ‘Old Red’ Cohort’s, 1st ‘Agricola’ Century)–abbreviated 3L1CH1CN1MN-

1st & 2nd Maniples from Anorum’s Century

(Acting commander) Decanus Lucas Kato (Asturia)

Decanus Damian Tarsus (Anorum)

Decanus Leo Brevis (Anorum)

100 Legionnaires

+ 200 Legionnaires from Anorum’s Century

Legio Scouts

Centurion Kaeso

Decanus Auridon

+100 Legio Rangers

(Logan ‘Gray’ Barret’s Nords followed Lady Faye Alden to Asturia)

Legio Engineers.

+200 Engineers (and apprentices)

Legio Medics

Dottore Silvio Marianus (Ludr, originally Ruinal, Regia)

Medic Telos (Gudgurth Fort)

Medic Wilder (Issir half-breed, Krakenfort)

At least 4 female Nurses

300 Legionnaires, 100 Legio Rangers, 200 Engineers + Around 800 support personnel (Workers, Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Cooks, Bards, various civilian crews of adventurers, also ‘merchants’- mainly prospectors, cartographers etc.) Fifty wagons, a hundred mules, thirty horses, four heavy cranes, two scorpios under the command of Centurion (EN) Sid Toma and Sergeant (EN) Toni Vargas.

-Maneuver known as ‘Race to Framtond’-

Part of Lucius ‘Inverted Bow’ grand plan

(One of the two vital anchoring pincers)

Code named ‘Plan C1B’

Second month of summer,

192 NC

The wildlands at the end of Uher’s Passage

Three kilometers from the River’s Groin

Day fifty eight

Darn helmet, Kato thought in his semi slumber.

It kept slipping aside each time the wagon’s wheels bounced off the rough path. Well, his head did mostly, the metal helm was just helping it. Sweat soaked his nape and shorn hair, the metal hot as the bottom of a cauldron not helping at all. The sweat kept lubricating the top of his helm, Kato was using it as a pillow of sorts, but instead of all that moisture giving him some relief from the ungodly heat, it just vaporized, but not afore ‘helping’ his resting head slip sideways and bang on the hard wagon’s rail.

Another hour of ‘rest’ would either give him a severe concussion, turn him into a vegetable, or outright kill me, a tired Kato decided, the latter probably the less bothersome option and cracked a heavy eyelid open to catch a glimpse of the position of the sun.

The bright disk was still over their heads.

Cat’s piss and mule’s shite!

Since they had broken through the woods in the passage, Prefect Durio had decided that the natural path waiting for them, the latter created from animals and hunters, was good enough –with a bit of work- to just push the wagons through.

Several lies in the Prefect’s statement were immediately apparent.

Maybe not outright lies, but falsehoods.

Now whether this was the same or not, Kato had no idea, but he had heard the word thrown around by Dottore Marianus a learned man. So he started using it himself.

Ah, he thought, the back of his head slipping and banging on the hardwood of the wagon’s bed this time. God damnit!

Anyways, the path was far from good, or even decent. There were cracks on the ground, where water had rolled down towards the plains and stones as big as melons hidden in the soft black ground.

Roots from fallen trees and sneakily empty holes from caved earth, or something. You could lose a boot there, or a foot and even a whole wheel at times.

So these wrinkles on the path needed filling and smoothening per the manual, so they all got about a couple of hours of marching out of each day, or three. Then they paused to dig, cut and shovel earth about, which was also marching with a bit of additional work thrown in. Like flattening the terrain and removing the bigger rocks. That usually lasted until the late afternoon. Then there was setting up the Castrum for another three hours because you didn’t want a lonely forest bear slipping in yer tent and chewing your face off. If you were lucky. Them bears be known to get horny after the winter. Aye. Sleep in turns and then do all of this again the next day.

After a while, you longed for any respite and sleeping on the wagon instead of marching until the next stop, even at the risk of cracking your skull on the hardwood, was a plaguing boon.

“Decanus,” Mede said breathing heavy, helmed head bobbing up and down still trotting next to the wagon, since Kato got to ride the empty spot due to rank. “We spotted a deer.”

“Is it dead?” Kato asked trying to lift his head to see the legionnaire the better.

“No. It run down the flatlands.”

There was nothing flat on the ground they were traversing.

“So, the idea is…” Kato murmured standing on his arse, legs dangling down the back of the wagon, the tall grass tickling his shins.

“Kaeso says the river is just ahead of us.”

Kato wiped the sweat of his tanned face with the inside of a palm.

“I’m not following Mede,” he said tiredly.

“It went there. Fresh meat Decanus.”

“You want to go hunting? We have plenty of supplies left,” Kato queried with a frown and considered briefly jumping off the wagon right away, but reached for his helm instead to think on it some more.

If you can’t sleep, try to avoid walking for as long as you can at the very least.

“There’s stuff growing on them biscuits Decanus,” Mede argued. “Are ye going to join the unit?”

Plate full of cack!

“Boil some water and dip 'em in,” Kato counseled him sourly and jumped from the wagon, his knees hurting when he landed and hobnailed boots sinking in the ground. The Decanus stumbled forward from the momentum for a couple of strides, afore coming to a stop. Mede stopped next to him, the grass almost to their chests.

“What are you doing?” Kato growled, his head hurting and the helm boiling his brains something fierce.

“Saw ye stop Decanus,” Mede elucidated and Kato grimaced just about ready to give him the business, but spotted Prefect Durio approaching them, the lofty rank much as the ‘clear’ path another falsehood.

Haha.

“Kato,” Durio said brusquely stopping his horse. “I need the river banks scouted thoroughly and the grass to the shores cleared.”

“Centurion Kaeso,” Kato started, but Durio stopped him.

“Is not here and I ain’t waiting for him to return. I want to know afore nightfall. Now Decanus, get your men moving!”

“Eh, so scouting to the shores,” Kato had no idea they had reached the river, but everyone else was sure about it and he went along with them. “And cleaning the grass,” he repeated to avoid any potential fuck ups.

“I’ll use the workers for the terrain,” Durio cut him off. “But I want to know what we have to work with as soon as possible.”

Right.

“Mede!” Kato barked just as the Prefect kicked his legs to gallop to the front of the marching column, Kato’s Maniple bringing up the rear and guarding the supply train.

“Decanus!” Mede responded with enthusiasm.

“What’s with the smile? Get the men moving, fuck’s sake!”

“They haven’t stopped—”

“Even better,” Kato barked irate. “We’ll get to move some more!”

“After the deer sir?”

Kato stared at him blankly, the rest of the Maniple coming to a stop when it reached them.

“Didn’t you hear the Prefect?”

“Scouting is a vague order Decanus,” Mede retorted with a big smirk.

That bone-headed idiot was actually right.

An hour later Kato found himself gliding down the muddy sloped bank of the river, the drop coming hidden behind yellow-green reeds taller than him. The stems had just given away, helm saving his head from cracking wide open, the rattle of the impact still scrambling his brains proper and the Lorica getting soaked a moment later.

He’d entered the edge of the water feet first.

“Decanus?” Mede asked unsure stooped over the opening a couple of meters above him, afore a huge grin formed on his mouth. “The river is found!”

“I fuckin’ know! Fucking retard! Eat a bowl of old cack!” Kato growled, foul water in his mouth and crawled out of the shallows. “Lower yer pilum to me so I can climb up the slope.”

“The shore flattens over there,” Mede pointed a right arm, not wanting to take the weight and Kato tossed him a warning glare afore he started walking through the vegetation. Mosquitoes, hornets, all-manner of smaller flying bugs buzzing over his dripping helm. But it was his soaked undershirt that bothered him the most.

Darn all-tickling rivulets running down the arsecrack!

The mud turned to grit twenty meters later, the sound of the big river flowing on one side and the many legionnaires leveling the approach to it on the other. Kato stumbled stubbornly out of the mire on squelching boots, towards the shining armoured figures and the level ground. He spotted Baldock and Ardas hacking their way out the thick foliage and opened his mouth, teeth clogged in foul sludge, to direct them his way. The order never given as he caught out of the side of his helm’s opening something moving in the shallow water.

Mede jumping down the slopes behind him spotting it as well.

“Hah! Look at them horns!” The Nord guffawed, Baldock hearing him perking up from ten meters away.

“The deer?” He asked and Kato frowned at how fast the word had spread.

Also because that was no deer.

“The fuck,” Mede gasped seeing the stout bovine coming out of the water, all muscle on its broad hairy chest. High convex ridge between the pointy fat at their base white horns and large vine leaves-like ears protruding on each side. “Is that a cow? With a cock?”

“Haha!” Baldock guffawed in his turn likening their chances even more, but his friend Ardas a well-traveled Norhman, since he’d been raiding stuff in the Lord Holt’s Cattle Fields for years afore joining the Legion, scrunched his square jaw troubled and spat down.

“Stay still boss,” he warned Kato and the Decanus, in the process of getting his sword out paused to glare at him. “That’s a Bison Gaurus. We call it Gaur. Mean moth’r fucker.”

The large bovine came fully out of the water snorting and grunting, darn thing the size of a rhinoceros with a funnier name.

“Garum?” Kato retorted, ears plugged with soot and the Gaur raised its front leg, shook its horned cauldron-sized head and charged him. It was like seeing a huge boulder coming your way, only with horns added and hooves digging out the ground.

Tyeus’ … fuckstick!

Kato raised his hand and flung his helm at the incoming mountain of flesh afore jumping out of the way. The helm hit the Gaur between its horns right at the ridge, half its top side flattening and then it ricocheted away with so much force it chopped off a couple of fat saplings like a misshapen cleaver.

Kato saw none of that busy as he was trying to stay alive.

He landed on a shoulder and a bit of head, got a muddy bug up his right ear, fresh sludge in his face, but had the presence of mind to not cry about it like a cunt. With a defiant, incoherent cry of survival instead, the Decanus jumped up sword in hand.

Mede’s pilum skewering the Gaur’s sides after missing him by pure chance.

“FUCKING HOODLUM!” Kato bellowed nigh infuriated for almost getting killed so soon after narrowly escaping getting killed…argh! Shite in the blasted wine! The darn bovine turning this way and that to dislodge the javelin, Baldock and Ardas approaching it, with Salle and Osteler flanking it from the other side, shields raised.

“Eh,” Mede replied either out of excuses, or stunned witnessing the unfolding situation, just before the Gaur lowered its horns and charged again, protruding pilum be damned.

Osteler stood his ground, hidden behind his shield.

A brave lad.

But also dumber than a bag of rocks, since the Gaur had decided to break through.

Shield be damned.

KAPOW!

Went the exploding Scutum turning into a thousand splinters and pieces, an armless Osteler hurled six meters away, sword flying one way, helm clattering the other and whatever was left of his arm lost in a red mist and spraying bits of pulverized flesh.

“Shite!” Mede commented, the rest of the legionnaires thankfully hurling their javelins after the groaning Gaur. Kato sprinting fast after it, his left knee buckling sideways a bit on every stride and that darn watery mud soaked undergarment plastered on his genitals like a bad rash.

“GET IT!” Ardas bellowed getting his own sword out as Kato run past them.

“The fuck Osteler went?” A shocked Salle gasped next to him voice coming out funny, armour and face covered in gore, a thin wooden splinter stabbed right through his bleeding nose.

Young harlot sucks cock using all her teeth, Kato thought clenching his jaw, feeling pieces of grit on his tongue, as he run after the stumbling badly injured Gaur. Most of the Maniple coming after him, as they emerged out of the thick foliage near Framtond’s shores and saw their officer sprinting like a madman after the wild bison.

They found another two not twenty meters later.

“Tie him up,” Dottore Marianus ordered the two nurses, a sour expression on his face. Green robes over his armour soiled with gore. “We need to set his rib-cage proper, else he’ll never walk straight again.”

“What about the arm,” Mede asked holding a piece of forearm skin and a couple of broken bloody bones in his hands.

Marianus sucked on his cheek thoughtfully and got up, proceeding to wipe his hands clean with a piece of cloth. “Good grief! Are you serious soldier? I don’t believe he’ll make it,” he finally said reproachfully and a chastised Mede tossed the remains away with a grimace.

Kato smacked his lips and turned away, stopping near Salle who had joined with Osteler in Maza Burg before they went over Ludriver to fight the Vanzons.

“I’ll see he gets a nice retirement,” he told him. “He’ll make it.”

“Ayup,” Baldock agreed and kissed a small carved figurine he’d hanging under his armour. “Gods keep him and us.”

“What’s that?” Kato asked brusquely and Mede who had approached them, wiped his bloody hands on his knee length baggy pants and snorted.

“Nothing sire,” Baldock replied, Ardas spurring him along.

“Ayup.”

“We’ll get the meat ready,” Baldock added and a bare-headed Kato nodded letting them go. They had gotten half a ton of meat, hide and bones out the whole ordeal, for the loss of a legionnaire.

It wasn’t an even trade.

“Men look to grab on to something,” Mede told him and produced a similar figurine out of his own shirt. “Far from home, from one fight to another. Death lurking behind every scrub, or in every waterhole.”

“Like a tit?” Kato retorted crooking his mouth and reached to examine the weird tiny figure. Made out of polished black granite, it depicted a naked man with the head and claws of a tiger.

It was creepy as fuck.

“Liger Hominis Panthera Divinus,” Mede explained taking the figurine back. “They are Lucians. It brings them luck, shields them from danger.”

Kato stood back bewildered. “Ye actually believe this shit?”

“I didn’t,” Mede admitted and then pointed at the still armless, broken but still remarkably breathing Osteler. “He should have been killed outright Decanus.”

Kato licked his lips unsure. Stooped to clean his mouth right after, coughing violently since he was caked in an inch of grime at least.

“Fresh cack in soup!” He cursed. “That’s bullshit Mede,” Kato croaked, but he wasn’t as sure inside as he’d been a moment ago.

“Gods keep him they say. Nothing of this world can best the Bloody Tiger,” Mede replied knowingly and slotted the figurine under his armour again under Kato’s ogling and a little worried eyes.

You don’t want to be the only dude running around unshielded in the army. All the enemies will just focus on you.

“Decanus?” A clean-cut sergeant of engineers said approaching them stopping his deep contemplating moment, the man looking energetically right and left at the signs of struggle and the slaughtered Gaurs.

One of the Lesia lads.

“What is it Sergeant… far-grass was it?” Kato grunted too scramble-brained to recollect his surname.

“Toni Vargas,” the sergeant hissed, his face turning red.

“Is that short for Antonius? What is it with you people and jargon?” Kato retorted and tried to get the muck off of his face.

“The Prefect send me to escort you back to camp Decanus,” Vargas grunted looking affronted.

“Can it wait?” Kato asked not caring about his feelings, but then he realized this wasn’t an invitation.

Shite!

That bone-headed idiot was utterly wrong.

Another fucking falsehood.

“A MAN WAS MAIMED FOR LIFE!” Durio barked in his face, the well-mannered Prefect turning into an outright cunt as the months had gone by. Kato almost lost an eye to the commander’s spittle and he had to close it in a weird wink. “You find it funny? Am I amusing you Decanus?” Durio spat again, just about ready to have him flogged to the bone.

Better to bathe in the Prefect's saliva, he decided.

So keep him talking.

“Nothing funny about it sir!” Kato thundered, now in survival mode.

“Didn’t I give you specific orders?” Durio grunted and eyed the hidden under his helm Mede with suspicion. “Loose the helm soldier!”

“Yes sir!” Mede bellowed.

“Wait, you were there too!” Durio barked. “You’ve heard my order clearly!”

“Yes sir!”

“Well then?” Durio growled.

“We scouted the area,” Kato started, Durio stopping him afore he could finish.

“People are roasting meat over there Decanus!”

“They are sir.”

“You’re not denying it then?”

“Ahm, can you restate yer query sir?” Kato asked not wanting to commit to an answer.

“YOU WENT HUNTING ABOUT!”

“Some of it is true sir!”

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

“We scouted near the river sir!” Kato retorted keeping his wits about him.

“Decanus I’m reporting you for punishment. For disobeying an order, endangering the unit and causing bodily harm to a fellow soldier. Three months pay and a month hard labor, or a thirty lashes. I’m quite lenient as I need the manpower. What will it be?”

Fuck.

“We were set upon by Gaurs during the scouting mission Prefect,” Kato blurted out quickly.

“You should have let them be,” Durio grunted. “That’s not an excuse Kato!”

“No excuse sir, the order was vague is all,” Kato retorted.

“Vague? What was vague about it?”

“What if we came upon hostiles sir? We would have gone after them, I think.”

Durio stood back with a frown. “That’s true.”

Kato let out a breath he was holding.

“Still a man was injured seriously,” the Prefect continued, cutting his relief short. “And you are smart enough to discern between hostiles and a plaguing buffalo! Are you not?”

“He is sir,” Mede ‘propped’ Kato up much as he understood it, giving the glaring his way Decanus a triumphant thumbs up. “Smart as a whip.”

Oh, for all petty fucks’ sake.

“There it is then,” Durio decided. “Sergeant write it down, three months without pay for the Decanus.”

“Eh,” Mede gasped not expecting it.

Kato closed his eyes waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I need people to bring the cranes near the river, but what I need the most is solid rocks to use at the foundations,” Durio told a sweating sour faced Kato and with a stern glare at the bewildered legionnaire next to him, turned around and marched away.

“That was vague again right? The Prefect has to work on that a bit,” Mede commented a silent moment later, the smell of roasting meat and Osteler’s groans of pain reaching them.

“We’re on rock finding duty,” Kato grunted and it took his all, not to punch the Northman’s face.

“We?”

“Yes Mede,” Kato retorted with an evil smirk. “Yer helping.”

-Third month of summer-

Day 97

The west bank of the river Framtond

“Get the ferry out of the bloody water!” Kato bellowed, skin burned to a crisp, veins popping and muscles covering his soaked body after a month of hefting and carrying small boulders down the slopes for the crews to use. “Pull at the rope you cunts!”

The wagons did all of the carrying truth be told, but it was the finding, extracting and loading that did you in.

Lest not forget unloading as well.

Another beauty.

He pulled at the rough rope, darn thing cutting through his leather gloves like knife, the massive raft with the heavy crane attached to it dancing at the current, the portion of the raised foundations as much help as a danger for the cumbersome vessel. The long lines securing it to the constructed part of the bridge that reached mid-river, taut and lethal to the crews on the other side if they failed. Three more cranes were working without stop, lowering big cut boulders on both sides of each ten meter in length support, though only the two meters at the top stood above the river’s current.

The floor of the bridge not yet laid, although the timber had been cut already and piled on the other side next to their camp. It would raise the final structure another couple of meters, arranged in three layers, but in the winter once the rains came, Framtond’s levels will rise and spill out, cover the bridge and make it unsafe to cross.

Whether it would stand firm for a year, or ten, impossible to tell and the only way to be sure is to use good quality stone Durio preached, like they had done in Asturia. But they had to finish as soon as possible and open that second route towards Cartagen and Regia. Lord Holt’s crews were finishing the Tunnel Pass, another road coming from the Green Plains, but the plains anchored by the city of Islandport could be disputed territory on the morrow, their link to the capital severed.

The Legatus wants the road opened and kept until the Legion is here, Durio had told them, totally consumed with the task to the point of obsession. Whatever he has left unfinished on the other side of the river, Kato thought hefting with all his strength at the rope, fifty men doing the same near him, haunts him in his sleep and in his wake.

That night with the Crane unloaded on the west bank and the exhausted men of his maniple sleeping where they had dropped after their brief supper, Kato dreamed of the familiar green fields at the edge of the Alden Desert. The road between Serpent’s Tongue and Wayford Rivers. Between Riverdor and Badum. A great host of crimson legionnaires present, but also half-breeds amongst them and a multitude of banners billowing in the Small Plains breeze coming from the lake. The mighty castle burning behind them.

Here they were, some he knew like the snarling tigers of the Legions, the Fair Lady and God’s Peak. The swords over rock and sea. The black squids and the wolf-banners. The Legatus outside the tightly packed formations clad in splendid Alden red plate, legion fashioned helm on his head, its fiercely red crest as striking as his dark-grey spotted horse.

Some he didn’t recognize. Kato wasn’t a learned man.

Only two banners were visible across the field. The smaller force and arms completely alien to him. One banner he’d heard about with its skulls and bones and another he’d never seen before. All black with a rim of gold at its edges, a red beast at its center. The beast Kato knew and in his dream he felt it shading the army.

‘The better to fight Centurion,” a nose-less, horrifically scarred Mede told him resting relaxed on his right side and the witch standing just outside their ranks five meters away heard them, despite the murmurs of thousands of men gasping in awe all around them and cast her ancient eyes on Kato piercing his soul.

He literally felt nimble long fingers touching his face.

‘You handsome boys shall not fight at this time,” she told them, just as the black clad soldiers across from them cried out abruptly with a mighty voice, answering the beast’s terrifying shriek and Kato hoped the stupid alien cunt was right.

The Witch beamed a gnarly smile as if she could hear his thoughts, which was weird since Kato was thinking inside a dream and raised a dainty hand holding a very thin golden thread looped at his feet. Her lips blew air out, the smile disconcerting and a little flirty and her singing words reached the Decanus in his stupor.

‘But you’ll fight today warrior. Don’t die afore we meet brave Kato. This wasn’t your revelation. You just peeked through the cracks.’

Kato cracked an eye open, the sudden breeze chilling his bones and listened to the morning sounds. The sun still hidden behind the mountains in the east, the river's noise as loud as he remembered it and the damp heat suffocating.

He was drenched in sweat.

“Mede,” Kato croaked getting up and gave the sleeping legionnaire a kick. “Has the scout patrol returned?”

“Mmm. Uh?”

Gods darnit.

Kato shivered all over spooked, from his toes to the lasts strands of hairs on his head.

“Ardas!” Kato growled and reached for his armour and weapons. “Get your arse up. Wake up Baldock, Salle and the others.”

“What’s got in to you?” Mede murmured and got up with a yawn, cock dangling as the Nords slept in the nude, the southern summer heat impossible to bear. Wait until you boys reach the coast, Kato thought and patted the legionnaire’s arm.

“Get dressed.”

“Fuck’s sake Decanus,” Mede griped and stooped to get his things.

“You have another one of those figurines?” Kato probed and watched the men slowly getting up, but for the six sentries of the morning shift.

“Sure,” Mede replied. “Now ye have me worried! Bad dream?”

“Not for you,” Kato retorted readily with a last glance at the men gathering. There were a lot of familiar faces missing in that plaguing dream.

His answer only partially true far as the unscarred Mede was concerned as well.

Centurion Kaeso’s very advanced scouting parties beyond the river finally returned almost a hundred days into Durio’s expedition and brought them word of another bridge under construction eight kilometers south of their position and on the river’s west leg.

‘Half a bridge’, the tired Legio Ranger reported to a shocked ‘acting Prefect’ Durio. ‘Has already being built over one of the two smaller tributaries. There are over five hundred wagons coming down from the mountain pass.’

Lesia was going to sneakily cross further back than the spot Lucius had anticipated. Through the unguarded River Groin so as to avoid the hunter created paths coming from Croton. A gravely worried Durio sent word to Anorum immediately, but Lucius was visiting Asturia and the missive lost another four days afore it reached him in a very inopportune moment. The Third Legion marched immediately despite the sensitive political situation of that summer, to reinforce Durio who found himself with too big a task at hand.

In Lucius’ clearly defined priorities saving the army came first, even above his own personal, or political complications. Then again without the army there was neither a kingdom, nor a future and Lucius knew that.

No Lucius, or his friends.

No Faye, or Roderick.

No Regia.

This oath he just couldn’t break.

Lord Sirio Veturius

The Fall of Heroes

Chapter II

(Lord Lucius Alden,

-also addressed-

Legatus Augustus, Praetor Maximus

Southern campaigns,

Fourth & Fifth year

Volume VIII-IX-X

Section subtitle

Bridge at the River’s Groin

-Prelude to the First Battle of Storm’s Rest-

VIII ‘The Maiden’s War’, the prelude to the ‘Mayhem at Serene River’ & the Hag of the Fenlands.

IX the long bigger and smaller battles before and after ‘Storm’s Rest’ that kick-started the ‘Eighteen Months’ offensive.

Summer 192- winter 193-194 NC)

read it at Royalroad : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46739/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms

& https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47919/lure-o-war-the-old-realms

Scribblehub https://www.scribblehub.com/series/542002/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms/

& https://www.scribblehub.com/series/547709/the-old-realms/