Defence?

{Centurion Ilens}

I open the High Centurions tent she vanished last night after striking a Legionary. I know she is brutal but I've never seen her beat someone to a pulp like that. We were planning on dragging him before Caesar but even if he had survived she disfigured him completely. She is slumped over her desk about 4 empty bottles are strewn across it. The burn the Sorcerer gave her hasn't been tended to. It is a rew red but luckily their is no fat coming from it. Her head will need to be shaved so no hair sticks to it. I gently shake her shoulder and throw myself back. My caution was well advised as she apparently sleeps with a knife.

"Wu-WHAT?" "Its morning High Centurion we need to discuss the plans for the defence." "Why are you on the floor?" "You have a knife. No don't."

The swear words coming from her mouth would make a supermutant blush as he recovers from gripping her burn.

"I'll get a medic for you. But you will need to shave your head.

{High Centurion Bellona}

Oh yeah. Last night the attack, the fight, the burn the.

"Go get me a medic."

Centurion Ilens gets up bows and leaves. I brab my knife and grab a mirror, the burn goes from above my singed left eyebrow across the side of my head to the back. All the har is burnt away and any directly in the burn is gone completely. I take a swig and get to work running the knife carefully across my skup cutting the hair close to the skin. Finally the flaps of my tent open and a man with a bag walks over, he begins tending to my burn in silence.

I walk down to the command tent slightly giddy from the strength of the painkiller my medic gave me, one of the downsides of taking so many drugs in the Mojave. I step inside and see my ripper, machete and hat sat on a table. I place my hat back on and slide the rest into their places. Before wandering over to the table.

"Whats been planned so far?" "We are planning to march out to attack them before they arrive." "Pack up the camp and lock the gates." "High Centurion?" You Centurion Alexander will hold a small force inside the city. Me and Centurion Ilens will take the rest of the army out. When they arrive pretend to be the guards of the city and claim not to know what they are talking about. Then we will charge from behind, when they attempt to enter refuse and chuck stuff down on them." "Are you planning to use their own tactics against them?" "Yep. But they won't know that will they."

Centurion Alexander looks annoyed probably because I've sidelined him again but to be honest he's a lanius worshiping cunt so I don't care.

(Sir Arthur Smallburgh)

We have been travelling for two days. I know the Sorcerer King summoned the army when the capital city was blockaded but I'm seeing a suspicious lack of a blockade. We approach the walls.

"Who goes there?" "It is I Sir Arthur Smallburgh, responding to the summons of the Sorcerer King." "There have been no summons sent."

I am trying to work out what is going on. When a shout.

"Attackers"

I wheel my horse around and wade through the slave warriors. Coming from the east. They have banners of a golden bull and appear to be at a full run. As they get closer the sound of their boots and the cheers and battle cries blend together into a roar. I am barking orders to my slave masters when something falls from above. Oil? Then the first burning plank falls and I launch myself from my horse as fire rages through my army. I am scrambling to my feet when the first of the opposing army arrive. I spin my blade slashing out but the figure leaps back but is soon pushed forward by the tide of bodies behind him. I swing again but my blade is caught by about 3 others and someone slashes my thigh. I disengage my sword and stab it through another but leave my back exposed. Blades find the gaps in my armour and my blood flows. I pull my sword free but something plucks at my chest where my armour has fallen away and I collapse, boods step on my driving me into the dirt as my world goes black.

{High Centurion Bellona}

This army appears to mainly be slaves. I think the leader got trampled.

"Found Him."

One of the Legionaries remembered being part of a group of about 12 that attacked a man in armour and beat him down. I walk over to find a heavily battered man in armour half pushed into the ground. He is barely breathing.

"Drag him out and tend to him. Then give him to the Frumentarii." "Yes High Centurion."

This battle is won but Caesar has recalled me.

"Centurions. You are in charge I must return to Caesar." "Yes High Centurion."

{Caesar}

It has been a month and a half since we arrived and we've run into a bit of an issue. Initially our food supplies were only meant to tide us over until farming began. However this land is barren, most of the water holes are polluted and the soild is full of sulphur.

"Tell me, what have we been doing about water?" "Mighty Caesar, we have been filtering it through sand charcoal and cotten but we are barely making do even with the new water sources High Centurion Bellona has found." "Tell me has Lanius Found anything. His campaign has only found mountains he has searched them and found only 3 ways through but all are guarded by highly trained women with iron rings in their breasts and rubys in their cheeks. They are ferocious and cut down over 70 Legionaries before he retreated and lost only 9. He is hanging back however the maps indicate these mountains split the continent in half." "What of High Centurion Bellona's path?" "The city she recently took appears to be only the capital of a selection of cities, towns and villages position in a south east line from the city of Yunkai to the city of Qarth on the map if I would liken it to something from out world I would say the silk road. These Citys, towns and villages exist for traiders to stop at as they travel between the cities. Which means that as our forces expand less merchants will travel the road and our newly aquired population will become a burden."

Bellona enters my tent and falls into a kneeling position removing her hat. Her head shines up at me. Its odd really i knew that our slaves have been shaved to prevent disease but our soldiers many of them already had short hair but shaving. As she shifts uncomfortably under my gaze I see it a brilliant streak of faded red.

"Come here Bellona."

She moves up to me and I grip her face and turn her head. The streak goes from above her eyebrow across the side of her head to the back even the tip of her ear is burnt and the skin is still mottled. As I examine her head I see it a scat on her forehead close to the burn, as my fingers drift closer to her I notice something. Her hands are rapidly opening and shutting as If she is trying not to grasp something. As I raise her head up, her eyes. I don't think I've seen such pure anger.

"Benny?"

She doesn't reply but its in her eyes the anger. Benny the chairman of the Tops casino is why my High Centurion ordered that her new prize be burned why the reports from my Frumentarii indicate that she hasn't been sober since she took the city. If Benny wasn't long dead I'd have wrung his neck.

"You were lucky that Centurion Ilens didn't obey you when you ordered the city burned. If that city had burned you would have to Bellona. Right now you are to return to your army and go south from there, you will march on the Grass sea and bring me a prize, if you fail your body will hang over the gates understand." "Yes, Mighty, Caesar." "Go."

I let her go and she scrambles away. Lucius steps forward.

"What of Lanius?" "Tell him to set up guards at the mountain passes, no one is to enter or exit. Then tell him to go west, I wish to see if the lands of Lhazar are fertile." "Yes Mighty Caesar."

Sulphur. If I remember correctly sulphur is a core component of black gunpowder.

"Have the chemists test the sulphur in the soil. See if it is extractable and if it is good enough for making bullets."

I pause our main issue is food the citys relied on trade for food however the traid routes have closed with our activity.

"What was the region to the west called?" "Slavers bay Mighty Caesar." "Go through our slaves and filter out the ones not useful to us. Then have them sent to Bellona tell her to take them into slavers bay and sell them. She will then trade for food and send the food back before she heads south.