The past two days of bitter fighting had been hard on Kuba and Shikele. They had been so close to breaking through.
But one careless mistake that night had ruined everything again. What should have been a battle to breach the fortresses had turned into a war of attrition.
Neither man wavered. They enforced military discipline ruthlessly; in the past two days alone, three Legion Commanders had been executed for retreating without orders.
One had even been a longtime subordinate of Shikele's. He had not chosen to retreat; the troops beside him had broken, and fleeing soldiers had swept him along. Shikele had executed him all the same.
Under such harsh discipline, the Barbarian troops fought with everything they had, not daring to let up for a moment.
After two days of fierce assaults on the Blue Lake Bay Fortress Cluster, they finally had another chance at victory. The Small Fortresses had once again exhausted their defensive supplies. By their estimate, the garrisons could hold out for no more than another day.
This time, though, the two men would not be careless. They stationed large numbers of troops on watch through the night, leaving no chance for supplies or reinforcements to enter the fortresses.
At dawn, they would attack again. They were certain they could take the Small Fortresses, then ride the momentum of victory to seize the Main Fortress.
The situation was even better than they imagined. The Small Fortresses had not only run out of supplies; scarcely a tenth of the fresh troops sent in earlier remained.
Inside the Small Fortresses, the wounded now outnumbered the soldiers fit to fight by more than two to one. In the worst-hit fortress, only a little over three hundred soldiers were still breathing. Most were wounded, and fewer than a hundred