“Sometimes the biggest problem is staring you right in the face and you just fail to notice it until someone else points it out at you.” - Old mercenary saying.

“That said, little Boss, gotta say that this job might be a tough one even for us,” noted Valeria after a little more observation. Egil’s, Nicole’s, and Fatimah’s groups were deployed closer to the outskirts of the forest to take a closer look, whereas Hannah’s fliers watched over the situation from high above. Erycea’s and Alvaro’s platoon were positioned deeper in the forest in several ambush positions as the reserves, with only a few amongst them observing the battle at all.

“Their numbers?” asked Erycea as she caught on to what Valeria was driving at. The two of them had been friends and fought beside each other for over a decade by this point of time, so there was a certain easy understanding between them that needed little to be said. Out of everything Erycea had seen of these invaders, it was their numbers that stuck out to her the most.

“Yeah. They got like what, a hundred thousand here in Kolitschei alone? There’s probably as much at Lovia-Hosberg, and even more down south fighting the Bostvans. That’s notwithstanding whatever troops they left behind in Oleynuos, since that siege’s still ongoing according to Hannah’s people,” said Valeria as she elaborated her thoughts. “Even if we just assume around the same numbers up north and back west, and say double that down south, we’re looking at half a million soldiers.”

“Not an impossible number, assuming they use conscripts and have the population to support it,” noted Erycea after some thought. They had just served in Levain so they were well aware that Levain could reach such numbers if they conscripted their citizens all at once, though equipping so many people was likely far beyond the city council’s capabilities. “Now that you mention it, their rank and file does behave a lot like conscripts that they just tossed some weapons and armor and told to go fight.”

“High morale though, somehow,” argued Valeria. What the foreign soldiers lacked in skill and training was more than easily made up by their high spirits and advantage in numbers, as the people in the fortification were learning the hard way. “They’re definitely a lot more motivated than you’d expect from random peasants made to go to war, so either they got some sort of cause driving them forward, or more likely, promise of good rewards.”

The norm in Alcidea when it came to rewarding conscripted peasantry was typically limited to them being fed while they were part of the army, maybe some tax breaks, and for the rare nice lords, perhaps some monetary compensation. All too often they were just forced to serve for little to no compensation, their deaths considered inconsequential and the conscripts themselves treated as disposable.

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Because of that, more often than not conscriptions were done on the defensive, where the peasantry involved would at least possess the additional motivation and desire to protect their family and loved ones behind the frontlines. Of course, an empire built on conquest might well reward their conscripted peasantry more than the norm as well, as in their case morale tended to be high from previous victories and it was easy to distribute tangible rewards from the conquered territories.

While now it was gone for the most part, the Clangeddin Empire itself acted the same way during its own heyday of expansion and conquest. Many of the present noble houses of the Former Empire now rose up from humble beginnings because their ancestors managed to excel and perform great feats of bravery on the battlefield. Such feats were rewarded with money, titles, and even territory back in those days.

If whoever these invaders turned out to be were still in a similar phase of their nation’s development, where they were fighting wars to conquer new lands, then it definitely explained why even the conscripts had such high morale. After all, for the peasantry, it was akin to normally impossible chances to advance up the ladder of society in one fell swoop dangled in front of them. It was plenty to make most of them willing to risk their lives for the chance, no matter how remote.

“If your speculation is right, then this is indeed potentially troublesome,” noted Erycea. The idea of half a million strong invasion force with high morale stomping all over Western Alcidea was a rather fearsome thing. The Free Lances had merely around two thousand combatants. Their capabilities would not even be noticeable at such a scale. “I’m more worried about something else, though.”

“Oh, do tell?” asked Valeria with some curiosity in her voice.

“These invaders supposedly landed on the western coastline by ships. That means that these people have enough resources to build the number of ships needed to transport half a million people, or at least a hundred thousand or so, assuming they’re close enough and do the transportation in batches,” explained Erycea. “Does Posuin even have any navy to call upon to use against that kind of force?”

“I don’t think anyone does, though maybe Knallzog might have something,” said Valeria after some thought. Naval power was never a focus for the nations of Alcidea, since they maintained a good relationship with the southern continent of Ur-Teros. Many of Alcidea’s larger nations had few stretches of usable coastline or were landlocked, and thus naval development was never a priority in the continent as a whole.

The idea of facing a maritime nation that could potentially slip around the defenses the Alcideans put up and strike from elsewhere was indeed a worrisome picture, though at least they would have to venture quite far to manage that due to how the western Alcidean coastline was mostly unusable outside of a few stretches of sandy coast.

There were far more crags and sheer cliffs instead, which made the western region of Alcidea hard to enter from the sea, other than the ports at Wanarua’s north-western and Bostvan’s south-western side. The invaders had struck at both ports and took them over early in the invasion, however.