After the Barbarians withdrew their troops, Bone Baldy and his officers were at a loss.
The attack had been meant to test the enemy's Border Fortress. At first, they had only wanted to probe its defenses, but as the battle went on, they got carried away. Bone Baldy gave in to temptation and sent in his main force, hoping to break through on the walls. The losses were devastating.
Including the losses suffered by the five ten-thousand-man units organized by the Faith Order, the Forward Camp's casualties that day exceeded those of any previous day.
Total casualties topped 13,000. More than 5,000 came from Bone Baldy's forces, and half of those were from his own troops.
That was a crushing loss for Bone Baldy. He commanded fewer than twenty thousand men, with only around ten thousand in his own contingent. Excluding the old and infirm, nearly half of those troops had become casualties in a single day.
For a minor commander of the Iron Bone Tribe like Bone Baldy, it was an enormous blow.
Priest Sparison was just as distraught. Although Bone Baldy's troops had taken over the sector with the heaviest casualties, the main force in the charge had still consisted of several ten-thousand-man units organized by the Faith Order.
Even without a formal count, Sparison could see that both units directly involved in the assault had suffered badly.
The unit that had targeted the fortress's center had fared especially poorly. Its Commander of Ten Thousand was wounded, and two Legion Commanders were dead.
Among the five ten-thousand-man units organized by the Faith Order, almost every officer of Legion Commander rank or above was an Order Warrior. They were all veterans under Keledu.
Some had long served as junior officers in the Order Warriors Corps. In both experience and