“Be wary of nuisances. Sometimes they would pile up together and start becoming threats just because one was so used to dismissing them out of hand.” - Old mercenary saying.

“By Pesca’s hairy arsehole, not another delay!?” cursed Simeon Durant, adjutant to Marquis Viktor Esvant and his most trusted general. While some of the nobleman’s retainer’s flinched at the middle-aged general’s liberal use of profanity, the Marquis himself ignored it, all too aware of his right-hand man’s nature. Some things could never be changed, after all, and as much as Simeon often tried to hide it, his peasant upbringing showed itself whenever he was stressed or annoyed like this.

“Beg your pardon, General, sir, Your Grace,” replied the messenger, who looked somewhat nervous at addressing arguably the two most powerful men in Podovniy. People who could have his head with just a single word if they were so inclined. “Seven more people had stepped on pitfalls. Three had minor injuries and sprains, but the other four were heavily injured.”

“And you all are so foolish as to keep marching like headless chickens when you knew there were traps ahead of you!?” yelled the general with more vitriol in his voice. “Even donkeys are not so foolish as to fall into the same trap twice! Are you telling me that my soldiers are all dumber than donkeys, huh!? Are you saying that!?”

“We- we attempted to search the area ahead of us for more traps, general, but whoever made them is cunning. They were so well hidden and made that they wouldn’t even react unless someone steps directly in the middle of one. Many of them were only found by people in the middle of the vanguard’s formation, even,” said the messenger as he tried to explain himself.

Podovniy’s troops had spread themselves into ten separate units, each roughly numbering ten thousand men, with some distance between each unit. Close enough to come to one another’s aid immediately, but not so close that a trap would be able to catch too many of them at the same time. It was a precaution taken since they knew that Levain had burned tens of thousands of Southern Coalition’s soldiers to death just mere months ago.

They had not expected to run into such light but annoying harassment during their march instead, though. Clearly their enemies saw them coming from afar, probably before their army even marched into Levain’s territory. There were rumors that the mercenaries employed by Levain supposedly had some of the usually isolationist flying therians working as scouts, which would explain much.

That rumor also caused some paranoid soldiers to shoot down every fowl they saw flying above them, save those that flew far too high for arrows to reach. For the most part, the behavior ended up with a positive result, as more meat for the soldiers’ dinner from the show fowl helped with morale, but the general had to caution them to watch their shots after some missed shots fell back down and injured a couple soldiers.

At least it also meant that unless the mercenaries had fliers capable of flying above arrow range, their scouts wouldn’t be able to get close to the army.

“Janos! Get your fat bearded ballsack over here! We got a job for you to do!” yelled Simeon once more, this time his voice aimed towards someone traveling behind them. After a few moments, an old dwarf riding on a large ram rode next to the general. The dwarf was Janos Silberfuss, commander of the March’s sole team of combat engineers.

Dwarven combat engineers were one of the units that the Podovniy March lacked for generations already. Since the elven domains and the Therian land of Boroes that they guarded against had been peaceful in the Empire’s last century, many amenities had been stripped from the eastern March as they were considered no longer needed.

The dwarven combat engineer teams were the first to go, nearly a century ago, and even the group under Janos was one that the March only managed to put together by recruiting from amongst the forces of the states they conquered since the civil war broke out. As for elven scout teams, the Podovniy March never had any, as it was considered – perhaps rightfully – risky for the elves to be used so close to their brethren from the Domains.

As a direct result, the Podovniy March had no elven scouts, and only a single overstrength – sixty-five instead of the usual fifty members – dwarven combat engineer team. That Simeon called for Janos made sense, as the Marquis had ordered them to make best time towards Levain. They couldn’t afford to slow down just due to some traps on the road.

Dwarven combat engineers were predominantly earth affinity mages, which made them uniquely suited to the task of trap detection. Of course, having them head to the front to do so would expose the valuable unit to danger, but that was why Simeon also ordered the vanguard to fan out and guard the engineers while they do their job, after all.

The Marquis and the General noticed that the pace of the march began to pick up once more shortly after the combat engineers took the lead and worked on detecting and disarming what traps they ran into. Even so, from time to time some members of the vanguard who were marching on the sides of the road, right next to the forests that bracket the road, fell into other traps that had been set there.

Fortunately their disarming the trap by triggering them meant that the combat engineers were spared casualties.

Even so, when the army finally rested for the night, the Marquis and the General were surprised to see many members of the combat engineer team half-dead with fatigue when they came to congratulate them on a job well-done. That was not supposed to happen after such light work as trap detection, so both of them asked why with incredulity in their voice and features.