Chapter 159: Plan

When Allen led the other troops to Bamonde Camp, the sky was already beginning to brighten, and the battle here had long since ended. Bandak, leading over a thousand infantry with the help of the Skin-changer Wulf, had quickly broken through this camp; after all, for the sake of his own petty schemes, Bamonde had taken away most of the camp's combat strength.

Before the war began, Allen had gone to find his good friend Beorn, but because this battle was initiated by Allen and was a conflict between Humans and Humans, the kind-hearted Beorn, out of certain considerations, was not particularly willing to run to eastern Rhovanion to slaughter the Easterlings. Moreover, Beorn's daughter Rebecca was only five or six years old this year, and he was somewhat reluctant to leave his well-behaved daughter.

In the end, Beorn decided to stay in the Anduin Valley to help Allen stabilize the rear and assist in guarding any prisoners that might appear.

However, Beorn did not stop his son, Grim, who had just come of age not long ago, from leaving with Allen. At the same time, he also spoke to his kin, the other Skin-changers, saying that if they were willing, they could seek a future in Allen's army.

In fact, there were four Skin-changer families living near Beorn's Garden at this time: the families of Beorn, Wulf, Ogris, and Baierke. If counting only adult Skin-changers, there were as many as ten, and if children were included, there were nearly twenty people.

It was just that female Skin-changers generally would not head to the battlefield; unless they were invaded or in other critical situations, they would not join the fight—for example, when their families were in danger.

Most Skin-changers were kind-hearted and hated evil, but their personalities still differed in subtle ways. For instance, Wulf hoped to bring a better life to his family, so he was quite proactive in every one of Allen's campaigns, though most of the battles were very easy and had no need for such a powerful unit as the Skin-changers.

As for Ogris and Baierke, they were willing to have a stable and comfortable life just like Beorn; they were not particularly willing to take the initiative to step onto the battlefield, though of course, fighting the Orcish was an exception.

Grim Bëor's aspirations were somewhat different; he hoped to obtain a good position under Allen and then increase the influence of the Skin-changer race within this country. He knew that his father and the person he pledged loyalty to had a deep friendship, and currently, the relationship between the two sides had always been quite good.

Perhaps because he had too much contact with the officials of the Cabinet and understood things that were relatively more complex, this newly adult Skin-changer was considering things more far-reachingly than his old father at this moment.

In short, Wulf and Grim eventually left the Anduin Valley with Allen and set foot on the battlefield against the Easterlings, while the others remained at Allen's base to deal with any unexpected situations that might arise.

On the battlefield, the combat power of the Skin-changers was beyond doubt, and they helped Allen a lot in this first battle. For example, Wulf knocked over the gate of Bamonde Camp in a single charge, and subsequently, with the assistance of the infantry, the camp was quickly breached.

However, Bamonde's camp looked far more miserable than Rabat's at this moment. That camp of nearly two thousand people had over a thousand taken prisoner by Allen, while Bamonde's camp of three to four thousand people had only a thousand or so survivors, and most of them were slaves who had been oppressed.

This was also unavoidable; the thousand-plus soldiers Bamonde took out were killed until less than one in ten remained on the road by the Cavalry unit led by Fatis, and even Bamonde himself was left there.

As for Bandak's side, because the number of troops he led was not large and they were at a numerical disadvantage, even with the help of the Skin-changer Wulf, the Easterlings here still had a vigorous desire to fight. After being ambushed, they put up a stubborn resistance, and even the women held sharp weapons and joined the formation defending the camp.

Therefore, at the very beginning when Wulf smashed open the camp gate, an extremely tragic battle broke out between the two sides. It was just that Bandak had Elite Archers and Crossbowmen providing cover, those fighting on the front line were all Elite Infantry wearing Iron Armor, and the Conscripts holding Spears were also assisting in killing the enemy behind these Elite Infantry, plus there was Wulf rampaging through the enemy ranks.

Under such circumstances, these Easterlings, who could not be considered particularly elite, collapsed without holding out for long.

By this time, the camp was already littered with corpses. Some Easterlings might have heard the shouts of Allen's men and dropped their weapons to kneel on the ground in surrender; these people were considered to have survived.

Others gathered in the sturdy parts of the camp to make a final stand, only to be shot dead by the arrows of the Archers gathered by Bandak, or to be smashed to pieces by Wulf charging directly inside.

Soon, there were no living people holding weapons left in the camp, except for the Easterlings who knelt to surrender and the slaves who had been oppressed.

When Allen saw Bandak, he was directing his soldiers and those civilians who were about to shed their slave status to move and bury the enemies who had died in this battle. All of Allen's generals knew that corpses could not just be left in the Wilderness to rot and stink, as this would very likely harm them in the end.

Upon seeing his lord, Bandak did not quite dare to look Allen in the eye, because the soldiers he led in this battle suffered significant casualties: several died on the spot, over a dozen were seriously injured, and over a hundred were slightly injured. Although this casualty count was already very small compared to the enemy, Bandak felt he had not done well.

Because he had not expected the Easterlings' resistance to be so fierce. In fact, Allen had urged him before the battle started that the Easterlings' desire to fight was strong, and in critical moments, even women would take to the battlefield, and their combat power was not weak.

But Bandak had been anxious in the end. He watched as the enemy leader took away most of the combat strength in the camp. At that time, Bandak thought the old, weak, women, and children left in the camp should not have caused him too much trouble, so he gave the order for an all-out attack at the beginning. As a result, the fierce battle that broke out between the two sides in a short time caused some casualties among his soldiers.

Even though he was somewhat ashamed, Bandak still reported the battle process to Allen truthfully. Allen did not blame this Housecarl who had followed him for many years; he knew that in battle, no one could guarantee that their soldiers could walk off the battlefield unscathed, not even himself.

For the few who died, Allen ordered Bandak to send people to transport their remains back to Wilderness Town. It just so happened that those rescued slaves needed to obtain new identities, and those Easterlings who had just become prisoners needed to be transported back to Wilderness Town for custody and then assigned work. After these people returned, the officials of the Cabinet would naturally provide compensation and arrangements according to the established rules and regulations.

As for those soldiers who were seriously and slightly injured, they had already received initial treatment. Allen intended to use his own abilities to provide further treatment to them after arranging other matters. He could not guarantee that those seriously injured would immediately recover their combat power, but at the very least, he could spare them the threat of death. As for those slightly injured, resting here for two or three days should be enough.

In fact, Allen did not intend to strike while the iron was hot and continue leading troops to raid other gathering points of the Easterlings, because the situation was different.

The entire eastern Rhovanion, from the Iron Hills to the confluence of the Running River and the Redwater River, was about three hundred kilometers from north to south, and about the same distance from east to west. If compared to locations in Allen's memory, this place was about the size of more than half of Korea.

War was not as simple as bringing soldiers to the enemy's doorstep and killing them all directly. Because Rabat and Bamonde had received orders from Ashur, the locations where their camps were built were very close to Heidelberg, less than fifty kilometers away.

Before launching the war, Allen had actually found them an eyesore, so naturally, the first battle was to take them both as the targets.

Therefore, after the soldiers were assembled, Allen brought a few days' worth of supplies and marched directly to the vicinity of these two fellows' camps, then spent two days making some careful arrangements to break through both of their camps in one go.

And now, one of them had become a ghost under the spear, and the other was already on the way to Heidelberg under guard.

But the subsequent battles could not be as fast as fighting these two camps. Subsequent supplies and materials had to keep up, the soldiers needed to rest, and the accompanying blacksmiths also had to repair the weapons and Iron Armor damaged in the battle.

Therefore, Allen intended to rest in Bamonde's camp for a few days and arrange for the soldiers to fortify the place, using it as a bridgehead for his own attack on the Easterlings. Subsequent returning soldiers and materials transported one after another would be sent here first.

However, fortunately, there was still a lot of food in these two camps, which should have been provided by Ashur to support these two subordinates to ensure they could safely get through this winter. Now it was Allen's gain, so he did not need to transport too much grain from Heidelberg for the time being, which was very good news.

Besides that, Allen also captured hundreds of sets of still-intact Iron Armor from the hands of Rabat and Bamonde. Although the styles were a bit strange, they could be used to arm his own soldiers after some simple markings and repairs.

As for some wealth, after being counted clearly, it was distributed to all the soldiers as a reward for the victory in battle based on their performance on the battlefield. Allen was not short of gold and silver jewelry; now that the trade in Wilderness Town was quite developed, distributing some gold and silver to the soldiers could improve their family lives and greatly increase their morale.

As for the Easterlings' horses, Allen also captured dozens, which were handed over directly to the Cavalry to serve as spare horses, while most of those that died on the battlefield had already been turned into meat soup and would enter the soldiers' stomachs within these few days.

In addition to arranging these trivial matters, Allen also explained the next battle plan to his subordinates.

Currently, there were about a dozen tribes of Easterlings living in eastern Rhovanion, totaling nearly forty thousand people. If a direct head-on decisive battle were to start at this moment, the four thousand infantry and one thousand Cavalry in Allen's hands would never be able to defeat so many Easterlings. Even with the help of the Elite Dwarves led by Thorin, Allen's soldiers would not have many left after winning against these Easterlings.

The greatest possibility was that in the middle of the war, Allen's army would be the first to collapse. Those elite soldiers might be fine, but for a considerable portion of the Conscripts, this was a battle far from home. Once large-scale casualties occurred or unexpected situations arose, Allen would not be surprised even if deserters appeared, so he had to be cautious in dealing with the upcoming war.

Of course, it was not that Allen had no chance of winning this battle, but it required some maneuvering. Thorin's reply told Allen that his Dwarf army would directly besiege Kurda, who lived in Iron Wall Town, striving to capture this castle that once belonged to Humans before attracting the attention of other Easterlings. After eliminating Kurda, he would lead his troops south to continue attacking some nearby Easterling camps, helping Allen share some of the pressure until they converged.

Although it would take the Dwarves some time to complete these battles, especially since building siege equipment could not be done in a short time, it did indeed save Allen a lot of trouble. He now only needed to find a way to target the tribes surrounding Ashur.

The method Allen thought of was also very simple. His biggest advantage now was having over a thousand Elite Cavalry and two Skin-changers who could turn into Giant Bears; their mobility and ability to break formations could be said to be very strong.

Besides that, with the help of animals, he had an extremely vast reconnaissance field of vision.

Then, to deal with the scattered Easterling tribes, if Allen wanted to amplify his advantages infinitely, he could only execute cut-off tactics and blitzkrieg, using the elite forces under his command to cause as much damage to the Easterlings as possible before Ashur could react.

The battles to attack Bamonde and Rabat were actually experimental battles.

Allen had Holimion lead the fastest and most elite Horse Archers under his command, with the cooperation of the Animal Friend, to first sweep away all the Scout Cavalry around the enemy camp, creating favorable conditions for their own surprise attack.

After the surprise attack was launched, he had Alayen and Bandak use their numerical advantage, plus absolute elite power, to complete a devastating blow to the enemy. If the battle did not go smoothly or there were other accidents, then the Cavalry led by Fatis would complete the final blow to win a battle at the fastest speed.

Afterwards, Allen used his own recovery ability, plus the enemy's materials and camp, to let the troops complete their rest in a short time and restore their full combat power to conduct the next battle.

Today's experiment went very smoothly.

The most critical issue here was not to let the enemy's messengers seeking reinforcements run out of the area controlled by Allen; they must all be intercepted within the battlefield.

Only in this way could he avoid Ashur gathering all the Easterling soldiers after learning the information.

If Ashur gathered a large enough army and led them to forcibly attack Long Lake Town or Heidelberg, then Allen would be forced to divide his troops to defend, or fight a decisive battle with Ashur.

Allen did not want a war of all-out tactical conversion, nor was he willing to let his army have a decisive battle with the Easterling army.

What he wanted was to weaken the power of the Easterlings as much as possible, and then besiege Ashur and his subordinates in his base, and through the siege, expel or annihilate him before Sauron could react.

Only in this way could Allen ensure that in every battle with the Easterlings, his men could have an absolute advantage to deal with the enemy's counterattack, and his own losses would also be reduced to a tolerable level.

He now had detailed intelligence and a careful plan; all that remained was to be fast enough.