Chapter 47: Victory, Loss and Return Home
Personal System Calendar: Year 00012, Day 15-28, Month IX: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6857, 15th to 28th day of the 9th Month
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Casualty Report
When the morning came the day after the battle, the chiefdom was still very much in the middle of what followed after each war had concluded. Rather than being in a celebratory mood they began the process of cleaning up, it was the word that got used, but it was too small for what it had actually meant. It meant that they would be combing through the debris and the bodies and the sections of wall that had come down, accounting for everyone on both sides of it, retrieving what could be retrieved and confirming the status of everything.
The warriors who could still move were the ones who did the work, they didn't get much sleep either since they had been keeping guard all night just in case there are still remnants of the Oruk raiding force that remained. But there were never enough of them after something like this had recently happened.
Talon One and Two had returned to the chiefdom by nightfall the previous day. The battle on their end had concluded. They had been thorough about it — none of the Oruks who had pursued them into the forest made it back to wherever they had come from. The team arrived dirty and exhausted and considerably more battered than they had been when they set out, and were given shelter inside the walls without ceremony because there was nothing to celebrate and it is not like anyone had the energy for it.
The chiefdom had seen better days. The district around the main gate, the gate itself, the gatehouse, and the sections of wall adjacent to where the battering ram had finally worked through — all of it was gone after significant fire and stone had been applied to them at scale. Buildings in the interior had taken debris from the trebuchet volleys. The chaos magic contamination in the stones and the elementalists that had buried it deep in the courtyard still needed to be properly purified rather than merely contained. In summary there was debris everywhere and the fallen were everywhere, whether it be friend or foe.
The families who had been evacuated before the siege had begun returning in the hours after word reached them that it was over. They came back to help because it was what was most needed at the moment, and the weight of what they were helping with was visible in the way people moved when they were trying to hold grief and practical necessity in both hands simultaneously and not drop either of them.
The chiefdom processed it the way the beastfolk processed things — directly, together, and without pretending it was something other than what it was. Grief and relief and anger occupied the same people at the same time, which was the truth of survival that nobody who had not been through it fully understood from the outside.
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Report
Two more days passed before the full casualty report could be compiled.
Three thousand five hundred warriors died. One thousand severely injured with outcomes that remained uncertain. Five hundred who would recover fully given adequate time and care. The rest of the combat-capable population was occupied with the recovery operation itself — the retrieval, the identification, the burial preparation, the physical work of beginning to rebuild what had been destroyed.
Chieftain Midoka formed two battalions from among those still fit to move at combat capacity, placing them under the leadership of two of his Warrior Heroes. Their mission was to pursue whatever remained of the Berdeng Oruk force that had not died at the walls or in the forest engagements — the scattered five percent who had fled in the dissolution of the siege, the stragglers and the lost, the ones who were lingering in the surrounding territory without the command structure to organize into anything coherent. The chiefdom was not going to leave those elements unaddressed.
The Oruks who died at the walls and in the fields outside them were another problem. The beastfolk had no particular interest in honoring them, and the practical reality of several thousand Oruk bodies in the season of fall was not something that could be managed through ordinary means. August, Betty and Benethar volunteered to handle it. They gathered all the Oruks and Goblins and burned them with fire that was unceremonial and comprehensive. The pits that were dug to hold them were deep enough to fit thousands. It was not pleasant work, but it was necessary and it was done.
The purification of the chaos-afflicted stones proceeded over the same two days. The ten light elementalists worked through it methodically, prioritizing the ones in the courtyard that had been buried near the medical area and working outward. It was a slow and methodical process, because they would need to watch out for the chaos that might affect them. The last of the contaminated material was neutralized before the eagles arrived for the team's departure.
Ninety-five percent of the Berdeng Oruk force that had participated in the campaign was confirmed dead or accounted for as casualties. The remaining five percent — scattered, leaderless, without supplies or organizational coherence — were being hunted down by the chiefdom's pursuit battalions.
The Berdeng Oruks as a raiding force were, for the foreseeable future, considered to be no longer a threat. Their raiding base still existed somewhere in their home territory. There would be others who would rise to take Agroba da Kill Mongar's position, because that was the nature of their hierarchy — the strongest ate the strongest and became something new. But eighty percent of the active raiding force was gone. And their recovery to what once was would take years at minimum, and it would take whoever rose next time to build back to this scale, which was not something that happened quickly even among Oruks.
The Southern Beastmen Tribes Chiefdom had time to prepare for such an eventuality.
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Hailed as Heroes
Chieftain Midoka called the assembly of his elders and chieftains on the third day following the battle, when the immediate crisis had been addressed well enough that minds could turn to what came next. August and the senior members of the team were invited.
The Chieftain stood before the assembled leadership of the Southern Beastmen Tribes and spoke plainly, which was the only way Midoka spoke.
What he said was that the chiefdom had survived the greatest threat to their continued existence. That the margin of survival was not the chiefdom's own strength alone, however great that strength was. That they owed the mixed beastfolk and human warriors of the combined Talon force from Maya Village who had fought for a tribe that was not theirs a great gratitude, as had bled for it and even stayed to help the work that remained. That Agroba da Kill Mongar — the Berdeng Oruk Warlord King, a creature that had never known defeat in three hundred and fifty years — had been personally killed by August Finn of Maya Village.
He said that this would be remembered. Not as an obligation, not as a debt in the transactional sense, but as something that needs to be included in their stories, that will be told to the next generation until the next because it deserves to be carried forward.
They would be celebrated as honorable heroes who had fought for the continued existence of the Southern Beastmen Tribes. Warriors from another species who had come uninvited to a war that was not theirs and had changed its outcome. The name of August Finn would be spoken in the chiefdom's oral tradition alongside the great names of their people, which among the beastfolk was not a small thing. Names spoken in the oral tradition were names that did not die when the person died, it continued to be passed down to the next generations to come.
August accepted this with the mild expression of someone who was genuinely uncomfortable with the scale of it but had the good sense to accept gracefully rather than deflect ungracefully.
He asked for one practical thing in exchange: a conversation with the chieftain about strengthening the chiefdom's security network before he left. Midoka of course gave him the entire afternoon, for their discussion.
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Before Leaving
August shared what he had thought about the beast folks defense across the table with the directness that the chieftain appreciated.
He told him that there was a failure in their current security if the Oruks had managed to arrive undetected because the chiefdom's territorial coverage of security had gaps between its other settlements and its more defensible walled settlement. The probe attack had proven that, given that the main force had time to march from the forward camp and arrive at the walls without the defenders having adequate warning or the ability to call for outside support with enough lead time for that support to arrive and prepare.
The solution was simply not to add more warriors to defend the walls. What needs to be done is for the fast travel of information to reach them before the enemies do.
One such model August proposed was the construction of several well spaced and tactically placed outposts. Positioned at intervals across the claimed territory, connected not by messenger on foot but by the fastest communication method available to the chiefdom. Not only that but he proposed that they also conducted regular patrols running regular circuits between the outposts on defined schedules, so that if there was ever a break in the patrol pattern itself, it would be the quickest way to communicate that something was wrong before anyone had to report it. A dedicated unit whose function was not combat but transmission — getting information from the territory's edges back to the chiefdom faster than any enemy could move. All of this information of course has already been proven in Maya village time and again as an adaptable model. Still the final decision on whether to adapt it or not is to be left on the Southern Beastmen's Tribe leaders. But for it to truly work for their needs they would have to discuss and learn on their own for what works best for them.
August added that the Harpees were the most obvious choice for the messenger role. They covered distance at speeds that ground-based communication could not match, they could fly above the forest canopy where terrain was not a factor, and they were already organized as a unit with their own command structure under Kirara. Reassigning a small portion of their function from aerial combat support to dedicated rapid communication would cost the chiefdom some aerial firepower. But in turn it would give them any warning instead of getting surprised when the next threat came from their forest domain.
Chieftain Midoka listened. He asked questions about how they should go about the outpost construction, patrol rotation, and how the beastfolk equivalent of shift schedules would work in practice given the tribal structure. August answered what he knew and was honest about the limits of what he knew, because the beastfolk territory was not Maya Village and the systems that worked in one did not transfer without modification to the other.
By the end of the afternoon the Chieftain had enough to work from. The remaining specifics would be the chiefdom's own work. The framework August had given them was a gift that would produce immense results in the near future.
Kirara, when informed of the proposed role for her company, made the expression of someone who had been handed something that was not just a mere assignment that they normally expected and when she heard of this proposal she agreed to it. Rapid communication across the territory was useful work. It was less exciting than diving on Oruk formations from altitude, but it was the kind of usefulness that prevented the next siege from getting as far as this one had.
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Transports Have Arrived
The request for transport had been sent after the battle's aftermath. The batch of eagles arrived the following morning, descending from the sky in the unhurried formation of creatures that did not particularly care whether the people waiting for them found the pace acceptable.
The team packed what remained of their equipment. The medical cases that had been emptied over the course of the campaign. The depleted potion stocks. The damaged weapons that needed repair and the armor that needed attention from people with the right tools and the right materials. The personal effects that they had carried through a couple of days of continuous operations was now considerably less than what they had started with, which was both a practical reality and a record of what had been spent.
They had said their goodbye to the people of the chiefdom in the way that people who had been through something far greater than friendship would do — not briefly, not elaborately, but with the specific weight of the shared experience between life and death that had been compressed into a short period of time and had no adequate summary of how to put it into words. Mee-rka spent a long time with her father and her brother before the eagles lifted off. What passed between them was not August's business. He only waited where he was, before they eventually left to return home.
Chief Madok Koktoko saw them to the departure area and gripped August's arm in the beastfolk manner before they left.
"Come back some day when there is no war, and tell my sons that their father is proud of them," he said.
"I'll try to time it better next time, I will pass on your words to them Chief," August said with a smile.
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Updates From Home
The news from Maya Village had been arriving in fragments through the Party Chat during the operation — controlled fragments, because the team had been focused on their battles and the village had understood not to add to the noise unless it was urgent. So only the most urgent and important information was sent.
Now that the war had concluded the most important information all came through at once.
The first information that was flagged as the most important was Adam and the rest were already stable. The healers at the village had received him and Rael and Daret from Kirpy's delivery and had been working on them since. Adam's blood production was already doing better given the time that had passed and because of the proper nutrition and the right medical support was provided — it was a slow recovery, but it was in the right direction. He was already conscious the following day, enough to be sharing huge laughs with his family only to be admonished by his wives. The first thing he had apparently asked immediately about when he woke up was if everyone was alright and had been told by his wives Adarna and Hiraya that everyone was alive and accounted for, which had produced from him the specific expression that Adam produced when he was relieved but did not want to make a scene of it.
The second important information that came through was in regards to the village itself, which had not stopped in its progress while they were gone. Zone 4's construction was progressing on its construction schedule, expanding on the western side of the existing settlement with the focus on agriculture and additional residential space as Zone 2 completed its transition into the commercial and administrative center. The birth rate continued to do what it had been doing for the past few years, which was able to produce more children than the village had previously planned for, which was a problem, but of the best possible variety. The steady expansion of the village's population through both births and the controlled migration intake was on track. By the estimate of the current growth rate, the word town was not far off. It is estimated that in just a few years time at this pace, nobody would be able to call it as merely a village with a straight face.
The other information was about Lord Millhaven who was on his way to the village for his visit.
This was the piece of news that arrived in the firmest terms, because it was time-sensitive in a way that the other updates were not. Earl Hugo Millhaven and his wife were traveling toward Maya Village with a retinue of four hundred soldiers, two hundred personnel handling logistics and support, a collection of council members and minor nobles who had attached themselves to the official visit, and a merchant group who had evidently decided that accompanying an earl to see the frontier settlement he kept speaking about was worth the journey.
In the Earl's own phrasing, communicated through the letter that had arrived at the village while August was still somewhere in the forest chasing Oruks: this was an official visit, and also, in certain informal respects, a vacation. The Earl had apparently decided that both categories were true simultaneously and saw no reason to choose between them.
The village was already preparing for their arrival. There will be a grand feast that is going to be held. And as the village celebrates their festivities people who knew of what this meant, knew that there would also be discounted prices across the market for the duration of the visit. There would be the particular organized energy of a settlement showing a significant ally what it had built and what it was capable of — which was, at this point, considerably more than anyone outside the forest had seen yet.
August thought about this on Finnester's back, somewhere over the forest canopy, with the particular quality of wind that altitude produced moving across him. He was tired in the deep way that came after several days of a strenuous and continuous operation, and the tiredness he had right now was not an unpleasant feeling, because he knew that it was the kind that had a reason behind it. So he slowly let his eyes close on its own.
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Dream
As he slowly slipped to his dreams, he also began to think about the question that had occurred to him, the things that had happened so far were like a dream to him, one that the question of whether he had ever imagined any of it, didn't even cross his mind.
And if anyone asked him if he did, then his honest answer was no.
He had been so busy just surviving for the majority of his young adult and adult life in the Great Forest, keeping everyone around him alive, doing what needed doing each day without much runway to think about what the several years of it would have looked like from above. He had not even dreamed of a village that was now approaching a town scale. He had also not even foreseen that the day would come for the village to have trade caravans capable of carrying ten Imperial Orichalcum Coins worth of goods out to Millhaven, or any settlement for that matter. And he most definitely did not envision having an alliance network that included an earl, a marquess, an empire's garrison, and the beast folk clans of multiple species sharing Zone Three peacefully, and the dwarves to have occupied the two mountains that had stood guard at Maya Village's rear. He had not foreseen any of it.
And yet here it was. All of it. Being able to exist into reality because the accumulated weight of the individual decisions he had made without a grand plan had somehow produced something that looked, from a sufficient distance, like it had been designed to be so.
He had also lost a lot of important people along the way. That was also true, and he did not set it aside when he was thinking about the rest of it. His family. Uncle Christopher. The others. The soldiers from the empire who had fought for them and the most recent the loss of Beast folk warriors form the Southern Beastmen Tribes, and although he had not made any acquaintance with them it was still a loss. These losses were part of what any of these beautiful things cost to achieve, as they say, "the road to making a kingdom is one that is painted with blood and countless sacrifices," and although they were not a kingdom, but a minor and still developing settlement. All of these were already accounted for in the future. He wondered how everything would look like in a few more decades.
But what was important to him was the current, the village was alive and thriving, the people in it were also alive and thriving, and his growing family was alive. And his team, although all of them battered and exhausted and on their way home, was also alive. He couldn't be more thankful to their continued support even if it may seem unreasonable.
That was the foundation of his current self, his bedrock. Because everything else was built on it.
The Great Forest of Lonelywood stretched out below him in the afternoon light, enormous and indifferent and full of things that would have killed him without a second thought when he was young. Yes he was a part of it and now he was going home through it.
And one day it is going to become a home to many more, it was a settlement that had no business being where it was located, and the forest has already gotten used to that.
He fell asleep on Finnester's back with the wind in his face, which was not the most dignified way to travel but was the most honest accounting of where his body was at after the past several days.
He had a smile on his face when he fell asleep.
What he did not know was that he was smiling and Mee-rka, who was riding Kirpy nearby and watching the sleeping figure of the person who had come to her father's chiefdom uninvited and had managed to instead change the outcome of a war, noticed it. She did not say anything about it. Some things did not need any commentary.
The eagles flew south, toward home, carrying everyone on their backs.