Trumpets of War

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At the head of a force numbering five hundreds of thousands, the largest host ever seen upon this land in all memory, Zastros, High King of the Southern Ehleenoee, had invaded the Kingdom of Karaleenos, to his immediate north. But despite his vast force—partially, actually, because of that force’s very vastness and consequent difficulty to keep always under firm, central control and keep supplied—his advance had not been either easy or inexpensive. What with green crops and forage burned where they had stood, most sources of water poisoned or foully polluted before him, while hit-and-run partisans nibbled at his flanks by both night and day, he soon was losing as many men to desertion as he was losing to enemy action or disease; furthermore, the deeper that the host penetrated into the hostile land, the larger became the percentage of loss figures, with severe malnutrition of men and beasts added into the horde of troubles, as the hyperactive partisans now closed in to his rear picked off most of the supply trains bound for the army.

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