For the Glory of Rome: Chronicles of an Isekai'd Legion-Chapter 41B3 : A Numbers Game

B3 Chapter 41: A Numbers Game

When the dust finally settled and the last of the orc horde was dealt with, Quintus found himself sighing with relief. The fighting had dragged on for the better part of a day, leaving him and his men exhausted. But finally, they'd earned some rest, actual rest, not a handful of minutes’ worth.

“You sure you don’t want a better seat?” One of his men called over. “They're pretty nice.”

Quintus glanced over at the man, who sat atop an honestly quite comfortable-looking armchair that he’d crafted out of the rock below. A cluster of similar such seats gathered about him, each hosting a rather grateful Legionnaire.

He shook his head from atop his own perch, an outcropping of jagged rock that seemed specifically designed to stab him in the ass as much as humanly possible. The fact that he'd chosen it over the ground was a testament to its own spikiness. “No. I'll make do.”

As nice as it sounded, his personal comfort wasn't worth the stamina, not when they were running fairly low on the resource. Near the end of the battle, they’d even had to be more conservative with their skill usage as a precaution, though that was a relatively simple matter, considering the individual strength of their enemies had greatly diminished by that point. Although he didn't begrudge his men their small luxuries.

Quintus soon straightened from his spiny perch. Now that he'd caught his breath, there were other matters to deal with. Like the collection of orc prisoners they’d taken during the assault.

He made his way across the landscape toward the tents that had been temporarily erected nearby. On his way, he saw a number of the muscled brutes still being restrained by Legionnaires. It was a more difficult task than one would imagine, as they had a habit of ripping through ropes and nets. Even those who had formerly been too debilitated to move soon recovered well enough to cause problems. Fortunately, the comparatively weak individuals they’d subdued found it much more difficult to dig out of solid rock.

Quintus found Gaius standing above one such orc buried up to his neck. Even then, the barbarian’s struggles never ceased, shifting the earth slightly with each herculean effort. But he was nowhere near breaking free.

“...You and your brethren were on your way to the moot, were you not?” The Legatus asked as Quintus approached. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

‘Moot?” The orc scoffed. “Torg no care about moot! Is stupid fancy thing for old orcs.”

Gaius's frown deepened. “Then where were you going?”

“To fighting contest!” The orc’s eyes practically sparkled with excitement. “Torg going to prove he strongest orc in Mukmuk clan, no, in whole world!”

Considering his current situation, Quintus very much doubted the claim, something that the orc appeared blissfully oblivious of. Not that he'd even make it to said competition, of course.

The centurion waited as Gaius interrogated the prisoner a while longer before turning away. The younger man shook his head. “It seems we were right. There's definitely something afoot here.”

He gestured to the groups of orcs undergoing interrogation, some far more willing to talk than others. “None of their stories line up. Some claim they're going to assemble for war. Others, a great feast. A few even claimed they were moving to take revenge on some enemy of theirs. A dozen different reasons for a dozen different clans. The only thing in common is the direction they're headed.”

Quintus’s own frown grew to match the Legatus'. “What are the odds that they're all correct?”

“I'd expect they are, in some fashion. Though not quite the way that they'd expect.”

Gaius gestured toward the command tent that had been temporarily erected nearby. They made their way there alongside a group of Legionnaire guards as Quintus mulled over the new information.

It had already been clear that the gathering force would be one of unprecedented size. But the clever manner in which the orcs were being gathered up troubled him. Even though one didn't necessarily need to be a genius to trick these barbarians, it still showed a level of intelligence and forethought they had not yet seen.

A pit grew in his stomach. This group had been easy to manage because of their straightforward and borderline mindless tactics. But this news all but confirmed the presence of a sharper mind pulling the strings. One who would certainly be coordinating the forces at the gathering point.

They reconvened with the officers about Gaius's findings. After dispatching the last of the prisoners and allowing the men a brief rest, they began to move once more. Time was of the essence, and no one had any desire to stay in these blighted lands any longer than necessary.

For the next few days, they worked to hone their strategies and teamwork as they cornered and subsequently decimated any groups of orcs they came across. They learned quickly how to best leverage the terrain and superior teamwork against their foes. They even whittled down their selection of traps and pitfalls to find the most efficient ones.

All the while, they closed in on the earthen bowl that represented the orcs' mustering point. Their efforts may have only put a small dent in the enemy's overall numbers. But the intelligence gained was far more valuable.

Yet despite being in constant communication with the emperor, they did not expect reinforcements. Not immediately, at least. Their mission was not the only one being carried out, after all. But they also could not afford to wait and allow the orcs to gather, organize, and march.

Granted, attacking also might be a death sentence. But it still seemed the better option to them.

Eventually, Quintus found himself standing on a ragged lip of mountainous earth that fell away beneath him. It stretched around for what must have been dozens, if not a hundred miles, wide enough that he wouldn't have recognized the formation as a ring without having seen a map. And there, far below, stood their target.

Tufts of brown grasses and low shrubs dotted the slope downward, the first real evidence of vegetation they'd seen in this blighted place. The plants grew in density until the bottom of the slope, where they met a massive lake of murky water. A collection of rough islands sat scattered across its surface like stones dropped into some massive puddle, each studded with a collection of semi-permanent structures more dense than any settlement they’d seen so far.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Spread across all of it were orcs. All along the slopes, the shores of the lake, the islands—green skin as far as the eye could see, clustered around cookfires and the occasional hide tent. The air was heavy with smoke and the smell of cooked meat, and as Quintus watched, at least half a dozen fights broke out amidst the crowds.

He'd heard the reports, of course, but seeing it himself… He'd thought that the force they'd eradicated on the way here was sizeable. But this? This was so much larger than he'd ever imagined.

After taking stock of the situation, Quintus and the scouts that had accompanied him pulled back to the camp they’d hidden nearby. Their own tents and cookfires were obscured as well as they could manage behind a particularly large series of cliffs. Although perhaps their most effective stealth tactic was still killing any witnesses that might have been able to report their location.

The position was easily defensible and would allow them to withstand a siege for quite a while, especially given the local wildlife they’d hunted on the march to supplement their rations. But of course, that was not the goal. They needed to find a way to take the fight to their enemies, using just their current numbers if possible. There was no guarantee of reinforcements, and whatever men might be sent their way would take days to arrive at minimum. Yet they wouldn’t let that stand in the way of carrying out their orders—namely, to decimate the orcish population and keep them from threatening Rome ever again.

Hopefully, they would receive support soon. But until then, Quintus foresaw quite the bloody campaign before them.

***

Tiberius rubbed at his temples, his third glass of brandy at his elbow. Usually, he refrained from drinking while working, unless the work in question was a meeting where such refreshments would assist in the negotiations. But given the contents of the reports in front of him? He needed something.

The tall stacks of paper were filled to the brim with beautifully penned treatises on how Novara’s finances could be, declarations of loyalty from assorted nobles that made broad platitudes without any real promises beneath them, and summarizations of reports from the warfront that Tiberius strongly suspected were longer than their source material many times over. All of it was about as useful as chicken scratch. The only thing it made clear was how astonishingly mismanaged Novara had been from the start.

After he and his aides had finally managed to slog through the entire mess, he came out relatively certain that eighty percent of the kingdom’s budget was being siphoned away by various functionaries of the king without his notice. What those funds were being used for was anyone’s guess—mostly personal luxuries, he would assume, based on the peacocking that seemed so common among these nobles—but it clearly wasn’t anything useful.

Fortunately, about half of the nobles responsible had already been caught and executed, either for those crimes or other unrelated ones. Yet others had covered their tracks slightly better. It would take more time to prove those ones guilty, and a few were already on the run.

He sighed and took another swig of the brandy—an honestly quite fine one that the previous king had kept stowed away with his wine under a ludicrous amount of security. If he'd invested even a modicum of that concern into securing the castle itself, then taking it over would have proven a much more difficult matter. But all it had done was given Claude something to do as he bemoaned the state of mages and enchanters nowadays.

Its value didn’t come anywhere near what they would need to repay the various debts the former king had incurred with other nations and individuals. Fortunately, Tiberius had absolutely no intention of doing that.

There were times to honor the obligations of the previous administration, but this was not one of them. He had no allies among Novara's creditors, nor did he expect to make many. After all, he intended to continue Rome's conquest. So why pay those who would soon be his subjects?

At the very least, the lack of resources at Novara's disposal came at little surprise. He hadn't expected much more. Even the fighters that were counted among its military would be little better than recruits for a while yet, assuming he could even gain their loyalty. No, what they’d hoped to gain were the food, the people, and the land. And that, they had done.

Of course, that land also came with its fair share of troubles, particularly in the form of monsters. Evidently, the combination of the orc invasion and the Legion’s own had drawn enough adventurers away from their usual work that the countryside was now filled with the things. Quests from farmers and smaller villages were piling up and begging for help with their own issues. But oftentimes the prices they offered were too low to draw the level of parties necessary to properly deal with a threat, even if the adventurers themselves weren’t flooded enough with options that they could afford to be choosy. On top of that, there were area bosses that had grown too big for certain areas and pushed out others, causing cascading failures throughout the kingdom.

The entire system was so flawed that it honestly shocked Tiberius. Even worse was that adventurers would move on once they’d finished a quest, content with a job well done and completely ignoring the possibility of such trouble cropping up again in a few months’ time. Even if it did, who was to say they wouldn’t have found greener pastures or leveled beyond the stage where such a quest would be fitting for them? Adventurers wanted to be off and have their adventures, after all.

Sometimes a successor would come along to ensure an area wasn’t completely undefended, but not always. And there was no official system for making sure that every area was properly covered.

So far, things hadn’t devolved entirely. Between the remaining adventurers, the Legion’s efforts, and the quests that Tiberius had negotiated with the guild, things were still tenuously being kept in check. But the issue was still was destroying crops and productivity, displacing villagers, and creating refugees. Any sort of expansion would be impossible without dealing with this first.

Tiberius settled back in his chair to think. He’d need to meet with Guildmaster Hyde again, and soon. The Adventurers’ Guild could be a powerful tool, that much he’d already known. But only if it was used properly. And given their current situation, it was clear that they were doing nothing of the sort. In the meantime, the Legionnaires would need to be spread out across their territories. At least it would allow them to earn more experience.

He pushed that aside and pulled up the latest reports from Gaius, skimming through them again. He frowned. One more area that needed manpower he didn’t have. Even with his second elven legion, they were spread far too thin—a problem that would only continue to haunt them going forward. And one of the primary ones that needed to be remedied.

Tiberius motioned for Lucius, the aide stepping out of the shadows as though materializing from them. “Yes, emperor?”

“It’s time to push for recruitment. Have the men prepare advertisements and spread the word. Leverage whatever Novarans you can for the clerical work, but ensure only trusted officers preside over the most important decisions.”

“Sir.”

Lucius bowed and immediately began penning a series of messages. The fact that they were spread so thin meant that Tiberius also suffered from a lack of officers and commanders who could be trusted with such matters. While people like Duke Redcliffe and his son had proven their usefulness in reining in other nobles, but standing up a Legion or even a group of auxiliaries was an entirely different matter, one he wouldn't entrust to just anyone.

It was enough to make him consider recalling Quintus from his current campaign, but he thought better of it. Leaving Gaius without the man's support could be a recipe for disaster.

“Sir,” Tiberius was drawn from his thoughts by Lucius speaking up once more. “Given the state of the empire, we are lacking in funds that will be required for recruitment. Where do you propose we acquire them?”

The emperor glanced down at his glass of brandy and thought back to the thousands of bottles of wine beneath them. “I believe I have an idea.”