Victor had considered the prisoners this battle might produce long ago, so he had ordered the engineering troops to build POW camps near both fortresses.
They had built many barracks to accommodate the large number of prisoners expected from the battle. The barracks were divided into living and activity areas, but they were rudimentary, meant to house the prisoners only briefly.
After all, the Border Fortress still had to fight the Barbarians. It was no place to keep captured herders and others like them.
Under the Two Rivers Legion's procedures, the prisoners would stay here for about ten days. Once they had been checked for disease, they would be sent into Two Rivers County, where the Department of Civil Administration would assign them to new settlements and farms to work for the county.
Before the siege began, James had not expected to use the newly built POW camps so soon.
The Border Fortress was the side under attack, after all. Capturing large numbers of Barbarian prisoners would be difficult.
But when the Barbarians used their herders as cannon fodder in the assault, they gave James and his men an opening.
The moment James saw that the large group of Barbarian herders and slaves had slipped out of the army's control, he realized they were prisoners waiting to be taken.
If the defenders did nothing, the Barbarians would simply round them up again and drive them back to the walls as cannon fodder, forcing the defenders to expend ammunition and making the assault easier for the Barbarian troops.
So James and his subordinates quickly devised a plan: first, they would send men to guide the Barbarian herders willing to follow them through a side gate and into the fortress's Barbican.
If the Barbarian army tried to slip in with them, troops