Chapter 89: The Escaping General Rabbit

  Kevin panted, his bald head covered in sweat, his helmet askew, his arms numb with fatigue, the mallet in his hand almost too heavy to lift.

  He was surrounded by the Imperial Guard and two regiments of cuirassiers from the 4th Corps, who successfully repelled two Austrian attacks, the second one being particularly difficult, Kevin was already exhausted and could hardly keep his back straight on horseback.

  Watching Odin's people retreat like a tide, leaving behind a sea of corpses.

  "What's wrong with these Odin people? Why aren't they chasing us?" The bald man furrowed his brow.

  But soon he stopped thinking about these things. Anyway, the general's order was to cut off the pursuit, and since these Odin people were not chasing them anymore, it could be considered that the order had been fulfilled.

  There were over 600 cavalrymen around him, who had gone through two battles of breaking off and blocking the pursuing enemy troops. His brothers had also lost about 200 men, although they were exhausted and their horses were tired, Kevin carefully gathered the remaining men and horses, formed a queue and slowly withdrew from the battlefield to pursue the main force in the south.

  Just as Kevin led his men away, the Odin warriors behind them sounded their horns...

  Are these Odin people crazy? The bald man was bewildered in his heart.

  ※※※

  General Adrick of the Northern Line learned that his rear was being enveloped by Hastings three days ago.

  The news was discovered so early, thanks to General Ruru the rabbit. This fat man had carefully set up a mixed rear team behind him when he went north, keeping the rear team at a distance of one day's journey from his own team. At that time, making this decision was purely due to the fat man's innate escape talent and sixth sense before danger arrived.

  And this time, this premonition helped a lot again.

  The fatso is an infantryman, he was originally slow in his pace, and his team was already lagging behind, let alone the one following them.

  Soon, the mixed rear guard discovered that there were Odin's reindeer cavalry coming from the south to search for traces!

  This discovery immediately shocked General Rabbit severely!

  South?!!

  Audi is actually behind us?!!

  Such news was immediately transmitted to Adrick's army by a fast horse.

  Then Adrick made a decision without hesitation: march south!

  The battle-hardened Adrick knew that if the rear was surrounded by the Odins, only one of the Odin leaders who had never been defeated by him would dare to make such a big move - Hasting!

  And if Heston has such a terrible enemy already around your butt...

  Adriek didn't even dare think about it!

  Without hesitation, the Thirteenth Corps immediately turned around and marched southward!

  The cavalry's speed, once they took a forced march, Adrick thought, was to catch up with Fatty Rou first, who had fallen behind in the south. Originally, according to everyone's distance, they should have been able to catch up with Fatty in just one day.

  In fact, the 13th Corps did not catch up with Rour's troops until the evening of the second day.

  What made Adrick even more amazed was that Rouru indeed lived up to his reputation as a famous fleeing general. As he chased after him, he saw large quantities of abandoned supplies on the road! Spare military equipment and armor, grain and fodder carts, and even some infantry-specific crossbow cars and assembled catapults were smashed and thrown away by the side of the road!

  Lü Ru's escape was utterly hysterical! This fatty actually ordered the entire army to only bring three days' worth of dry rations and basic weapons and armor, everything else was abandoned!!

  To put it in fatty's words: anyway, if we can't make it back to the base within three days, then everyone will only have one dead end! As for other things, just throw them away, what's the point of holding on to them when you're already dead?

  When the Thirteenth Legion caught up with Rour, Rour made another request: to let the cavalry of the Thirteenth Legion set aside some spare horses for his men.

  The Thirteenth Legion was all cavalry, and each cavalryman had at least two warhorses. Under Rour's strong demand, Adrick reluctantly allocated more than 2,000 horses.

  Next, Luol started to play tricks, and the series of actions he showed afterwards proved that his nickname "Rabbit Speed" was not in vain!

  Do you still remember his mixed team at the back? Once he turned around and headed south, that rear team became the front team! It was on top of everyone else!

  Rul and Adric caught up with the mixed group again after they met.

  And in the rear team of the mixed brigade, there is also a large number of heavy grain transport carts!

  At the order of Lu Ru, the soldiers of the Sixth Army used an astonishing speed to extremely skillfully harness one by one the war horses allocated from the Thirteenth Army to the carts. Then, with block after block of wooden boards, they quickly transformed and built the grain transport carts into two hundred long and wide large horse-drawn vehicles!

  The whole process took less than two hours, as if these Sixth Army soldiers were used to doing this kind of thing.

  With these more than 200 large horse-drawn carriages, the Sixth Army Corps, although infantry, greatly increased its marching speed! Thousands of infantrymen jumped onto the carriages, and then the wheels rolled, barely keeping up with the cavalry's speed!!

  Two hundred super-large carts consumed eight hundred war horses to pull the carts, and these two hundred large carts loaded nearly three thousand people. The remaining 1,200 war horses, with two people riding on each horse, were also counted as carrying more than 2,000 people. This time, it was equivalent to giving wheels and legs to more than 5,000 infantrymen!

  The only pity is that these horses are only afraid of running to their destinations and basically have no other outcome but death from exhaustion.

  Five thousand can ride horses, and there are carriages for them to sit in; the more than five thousand remaining soldiers of the Sixth Army have no choice but to use their legs.

  Then, the soldiers of the Sixth Legion showed off their excellent quality: running ability!

  It's like seeing a ghost! These infantrymen ran and marched on the continent, then swapped with people in carriages every hour. As a result, they didn't fall far behind the 13th Legion's cavalry after all.

  (That fat guy, he's only afraid of spending his whole life thinking of ways to escape.) Adrick's malicious speculation.

  So, three days!

  After the junction of two corps, a three-day forced march, abandoning everything that could be abandoned, only took three days, and they killed from Alabakete plain back. After the cavalry vanguard on the road swept away the two small intercepts of the Hastings Corps, the vanguard arrived at a place just over ten miles away from the garrison on the evening of the third day.

  Fatso asked Adrick for the warhorses from the past, most of which had basically died from exhaustion. In pursuit of speed, Fatso didn't care about horse power - as he put it, if lives were lost, what's the point of having horses? As long as they could return alive, warhorses could be bought again, but people couldn't be reborn.

  Adrick found that this chubby has a remarkable calculating ability!

  His troops abandoned another batch of supplies on the road, and in the end, many soldiers even threw away their armor, shields, and weapons!

  But such abandonment is not in a state of panic, but rather in an orderly and even controlled planned abandonment!

  The fatso calculated all the steps, and after walking a certain distance, he would calculate how much supplies could be discarded within the tolerable range based on the soldiers' physical strength and marching speed. Walking a little and discarding a little, it maximized the balance of the soldiers' physical strength, combat effectiveness, and marching speed.

  After arriving, in Pao Tzu's army, probably only about three soldiers could share one set of armor and weapons on average. In other words, the combat effectiveness of his army was reduced to only one-third! However, due to Pao Tzu's method of rotating horse-drawn carriages for rest, these one-third of the soldiers still maintained their minimum standard of combat physical strength!

  A three-day forced march, still able to maintain one-third of combat effectiveness, for an army that is not elite, it's already quite difficult.

  Adrick couldn't help but admire him for that. At least he was clear that if he were to lead an infantry army in a similar situation, he wouldn't have been able to achieve what Fatou had accomplished.

  "You know what the Sixth Army's most practiced project is? I'll tell you - armed long-distance cross-country training! To join my Sixth Army, the first requirement isn't being able to fight, but being able to run."

  After the break, Kevin's troops also caught up with the main force. The six hundred cavalrymen who followed Bald-headed Man were obviously exhausted, but each of their eyes was still bright, and they sat upright on horseback, their waists straight as a pen.

  But the news Kevin brought was not very pleasant.

  Having accepted the task of blocking the pursuing enemy, Kevin started by fiercely fighting two battles against the Odin people. However, the Odin people suddenly and inexplicably retreated afterwards. They even lined up in formation to see him off into the distance, and even blew their horns... Where on the battlefield does one find the kind of situation where they are fighting for their lives one moment, and waving goodbye the next?

  The people of Odin behind did not try to kill again, but they didn't do nothing either.

  Behind them, the motley army of Odingers seemed to have gathered all their cavalry, more than three thousand reindeer riders who day and night drove Kevin and others without stopping - these damned Odingers would not really come up and kill them, every time they chased to a distance of one arrow, they would slow down on purpose, shouting loudly, waving knives and axes, making as much noise as possible. They were like a pack of sheepdogs, driving Kevin and the others to run southward as fast as they could.

  There were several times when Kevin was so angry that he couldn't help but turn back and fight those Odin people - the 13th Legion's warriors were all hot-blooded! However, once they turned their heads to go back, those Odin people suddenly panicked and ran away!

  In short, for three days, everyone chased each other, shouting and intimidating from a distance, but in the end, no battle was fought.

  Kevin turned back several times, but after all, he had fewer people and didn't dare to really chase up too far, just scaring the opponent was enough. But the cavalry of the Odin people behind seemed to have become sticky candy, and they couldn't shake them off no matter what. They stopped and walked, chased and made a ruckus...

  "They're not too far from our rear guard now, and as soon as they saw our main force, they immediately retreated. But I think they didn't go far, probably hanging around two or three miles behind." Kevin panted.

  General Adrick spat out a wad of phlegm: "Damn it, what are these Odin people trying to do?!"

  Next to Rour, General Roule had already undone the leather straps on his armor and let out his round belly, comfortably panting, and hummed: "What else can we do? Drive us away! Drive us sheep into the mouth of those wolves in Hastings."

  Adrick thought for a moment, a hint of killing intent flashing across his face: "Take a one-minute break! Then prepare for battle! Is the base still in our hands? It seems that the little ones in the base are doing well. As long as we can kill back to the base, this battle will have turned around!"

  General Rour, who was standing beside him, frowned, while the fat man gently patted his belly, a habitual action of his whenever he had something difficult to decide on in his mind.

  The fat man slapped his round belly loudly before speaking, and his face looked a bit strange, as if there was something puzzling him.

  "I think... killing our way back to the city, probably won't be too difficult. Hastings won't really fight us to the death! But taking a big bite out of us, that's possible."

  Adrick looked at Rur seriously all of a sudden.

  After several days of rapid march, Adrick was not a fool. He naturally saw through this fat man who was famous for his escape skills and found that he was not the kind of fool everyone said!

  "What do you mean, General Rul?"

  "Hmm, the Odin people behind us aren't really pursuing us. According to my calculations, if they were to pursue us with all their might, our return speed would be slowed down by at least a day or more due to their entanglement. What does this mean? It means they're not using their full strength! But what about in front of us? The garrison is still in our hands! Aren't you surprised? Although the little ones in the garrison are a bunch of good kids, we're clear about their strength - only one battalion of combat troops, and the rest are just miscellaneous soldiers. Hmm... I'm not saying miracles don't exist, if it were another Odin general leading the army, maybe they could hold onto the garrison! But... who's in front of the garrison right now? It's Hastings! Do you think the greatest general of Odin, with tens of thousands of elite troops, can't take down a small fortress with less than a thousand soldiers? Possible? Please, he's Hastings!!"

  The fatty got more and more excited as he spoke, and a few beads of sweat even rolled down his forehead.

  Adrick also pondered: "This doesn't make sense... The pursuing troops behind aren't making an effort, and the Blackstone in front seems to be slacking off? What are they thinking? Logically speaking, the pursuing troops should be trying their best to entangle us, hold us back, and give Blackstone time to raid our old nest, but now..."

  The fatty looked at Adrick and suddenly lowered his voice: "General Adrick, this is your consistent weakness! You always think that war is too simple! I remember when I followed Grand Duke Minas, he once said a sentence: War is the continuation of politics. This sentence not only applies to both enemies but also to the same camp!"

  Adrik furrowed his brow, Mina's Grand Duke, that was the old generation of military commanders in the Byzantine Empire, what he said must be very reasonable.

  Lü Er smiled lightly, narrowing his eyes: "Don't you understand yet? The pursuing troops behind us and the Blackstone in front... these two Odin armies, they - are not, synchronized!!"

  This fat guy is really something!

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