The man held a special position. In the north of Holy Sword Mountain, there were three counts, all old men.
Those three old men were incompetent.
But one of them had a daughter named Elizabeth Bartley, whose husband was the son of another count.
And her son had married the granddaughter of the remaining count.
Under these circumstances, they had joined forces with the Empire's central government to implement its policies.
Although the policies couldn't be carried out to the letter, they had still managed to curb the guerrillas' momentum.
Lynn finished reading the intelligence report and set it on the table. "They're being very cautious. The guerrillas should avoid them for now and not rush into a fight."
"Also, the enemy has more than forty thousand troops. That's just the size of their main force. Their actual numbers are probably over a hundred thousand, maybe even more."
"They've misjudged things. The Imperial Army seems to be treating non-mobile forces as if they aren't troops at all, and they're counting their vast numbers of slaves as soldiers."
"It's like how our actual troops number only eight hundred thousand, but we don't count the armed police or regular police as military forces."
"After all, you need troops to garrison castles, villages, towns, and cities."
"To maintain a blockade this tight, they must have plenty of troops."
"My guess is that their central government really did send forty thousand troops. The rest are probably local nobles' forces."
"Preserve your strength and wait for the enemy to expose a weakness. Lure them in deep, into the guerrilla zone—that's where we have the home-ground advantage."
Lynn put down the document and shook his head. "When their own interests aren't involved, they don't bother thinking. But when they are, suddenly they're all clever."
Someone beside