Chapter 193: Chapter 179 – Giving All One’s Got

"It is not what you could have done that mattered, it is what you actually *did*." - Nec Aarin, the Bone Lord, Eternal Ruler of the Lichdom of Ptolodecca, circa 695 FP.

After she separated from the escaping family, Aideen doubled back and travelled along the path they took, slowly, while she kept watch in case there were more pursuers. She only relaxed her vigilance when night fell and no sign of pursuit had made itself known.

 

She watched and felt relief that the family had reached a nearby city by sunset, which she saw from a distance. She herself camped out in the wilds as it was too far, and there was no way she would reach the city before they shut the gates.

 

Aideen pondered on her actions while she leaned against a tree in the cold that night. She had originally just intended to observe, and not participate, but she found that the display of callous cruelty she witnessed that day had crossed her bottom line.

 

She had saved four lives as a result, and reaped another five. It was a decision she had no regrets over.

 

In some ways, the conflict was one she was indirectly related to. The Istrians were attacked because their neighbors envied their newfound prosperity. That prosperity had come from the opening of trades with Ptolodecca.

 

She knew grandpa Aarin would not send troops to interfere, not unless the Istrians literally asked him to, which was unlikely to say the least. The Jarldom had barely any relations to Ptolodecca, only recently opened trade between them, and used to be quite hostile in the past, even.

 

Even so, if the war broke out, Aideen doubted she could observe while remaining a bystander. The people of the east are a hard people, forged by the harsh climate of their homeland. For warring Jarldoms to pillage another was the norm, not the exception in wars there.

 

Early the next morning, Aideen snuck into the town, along with refugees from another village that had evacuated overnight upon noticing the smoke on the horizon. She entered the city easily that way, and quickly set herself up in a large tavern.

 

Publicly she was a travelling bard caught up in the mess and just trying to make do, trading her songs for food and board. Discreetly, she always kept up to the latest news that reached the town, often chatting up the messenger while drinking with them.

 

Nobody found her suspicious. The guise of a bard proved useful in that regard, as a bard trying to find out the latest rumors were par for the course.

 

The Jarldom of Istria had not remained idle in the face of its neighbors' aggression, and the Istrians amassed their army too. Not three weeks after the incident, she watched from the crowded city walls how an army of mustered soldiers and militia from the Istrian side marched by.

 

There weren't that many people involved on either side. Maybe five thousand on the Istrian side, and about as much on the side of each of the attacking Jarldoms. The Istrians made camp atop a hill that covered the best approaches from the east, as the cities in the Jarldom were often just a fenced gathering of houses, maybe with palisades in some larger cities.

 

Aideen had witnessed far larger battles before, with tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand on each side. She even took part in them. Sometimes it was easy to forget that smaller nations had no such luxury, to amass tens of thousands at the drop of a hat.

 

While the eastern lands as a whole were larger than Ptolodecca in size, each jarldom was far smaller. Even the thousands they managed to amass were mostly conscripted or volunteer villagers formed into a militia.

 

The professional fighting force each Jarl retained under them barely numbered a thousand, if that. She would not have been surprised if the militia outnumbered the professional soldiers by ten to one or more.

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When the first clash happened roughly a month after the incident, Aideen saw the difference between the two sides immediately. Especially in the way they treated their people.

 

The attackers had placed their militiamen to the front, to take the brunt of the carnage, while their elites were gathered near the back, where the Jarls themselves were located as they directed the battle from afar.

 

On the other hand, the Istrian defenders had the militia hold the sides, while the center of their defensive formation was held by the elites. The young Jarl himself was present near the frontlines, as he exhorted his troops with his presence.

 

The clash was ugly, as could be expected when untrained militia made up the bulk of both armies. They fought from noon to sunset, before both sides retreated to their respective camps.

 

Aideen counted maybe a few hundred dead and as many injured on the attacker side, with around two-thirds that number amongst the defenders, more heavily slated towards the wounded. The defenders had quickly retreated those wounded to the back, and she kept note of which large tents served as the infirmary.

 

When darkness fell, Aideen sneaked into the defender's campsite, having replaced her usual white cloak for a dark blue one to blend in better with the darkness. The camp was naturally guarded, and as it was on top of a barren hill, there was nowhere to hide around it.

 

Even so, Aideen had worked and trained with the Death's Hand of Ptolodecca for decades, and she found the camp - mostly just a smattering of large tents circled by makeshift wooden barricades - easy to sneak into.

 

She quietly made her way towards the infirmary tents, which were in a lightly guarded area. It made sense, as the Jarl's presence meant the guards would be focused on his safety. Besides, it was common sense to leave the wounded be, so that they could keep draining resources from the enemy.

 

Aideen slipped through the folds of the tent, and found herself in one where the badly injured were gathered. It was late at night by then, and everyone in the tent was asleep, including one healer at watch who had fallen asleep while sitting, his hands still holding a grinder with which he was grinding dried herbs.

 

The man must have worked so long that fatigue overtook him.

 

She silently went to work, as she discreetly healed the injured in the tent, one after another, careful not to disturb their slumber. There were easily two hundred people inside the large tent, and she went through them at a rapid pace. Something she would have never been able to do a century ago when she was younger.

 

It was not that her mana capacity had improved - it had over the years, but she only had maybe half again what she possessed when she was fifty even so - as much as it was her skill with it that had drastically improved.

 

Aideen had never truly stopped practicing her magic in the past century and a half. She had greatly improved her efficiency and effectiveness over those years, to the point that she needed less mana to do far more than what she could have managed in her youth.

 

Her jaunt that night went unnoticed, until the next morning, when the Jarl of Istria learned with nothing short of utter bafflement that nearly five hundred injured people had recovered to full health overnight.

 

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