The Allied Forces at the Northern Great Wall numbered fifty thousand. Nearly thirty thousand of them had gathered around Annan.
They had enough Master Level fighters to form a fifty-person unit, and their Elite fighters far outnumbered Blackwatch's—
But they were like thin men with nothing to lose fighting alongside fat men afraid of dying. At ten percent casualties, they would complain. At twenty percent, they would turn on one another. At thirty percent, they would rout.
Unless Annan led them from victory to victory and earned their trust.
Annan followed his earlier plan and divided the Allied Forces into three groups: melee, ranged, and support.
He recalled the White Dragons and assigned himself, the other faction Chiefs, the Mage Corps, and the aerial units to the Support Unit. The remaining nine factions still had not been found. They had either been wiped out or gone into hiding, and there was no point searching further.
Thirteen White Dragons were just barely enough for the Chiefs to ride.
Annan first addressed the melee group, more than twenty thousand strong, standing in an open field. "I agree that your own safety should come first on the battlefield. Even if we kill ten Ratfolk for every soldier we lose, we still come out behind. But unless you're wounded, I don't want to see anyone disobeying orders. I won't send you to your deaths. You have thousands of Rangers and mages at your backs!"
For the Ranged Unit, Annan said:
"Your job is to ease the pressure on the front line. When the Rat Tide is thick, every frontline fighter faces five or more Ratfolk at once. I need you to cut that down to three, or fewer."
For the Support Unit, Annan ordered them to reshape the battlefield, weaken the Ratfolk, and strengthen