Chapter 378

"Uncle Albert, how is father doing now?" Orson looked at Albert anxiously and asked.

"You should go and see the master's condition yourself." Albert said this and pointed to Lucius' room on the second floor.

Litt nodded and then walked towards the second floor.

On the other side, Litt followed closely.

She and Albert looked at each other and then followed Orson upstairs.

Orson came to the second floor and opened Lucius's door. What came into view was Lucius lying on the bed and Mary sitting beside the bed, accompanying Lucius.

"Father, mother." Orson said this and walked into the room.

Lucius, lying on the bed, looked in good spirits and did not look particularly weak.

"Your father just lost too much blood. He just needs to rest these days. Other problems are not big." Mary explained when she saw Orson coming in.

"That's good." Hearing Mary say this, Orson's hanging heart was also put down.

At this time, Litt also walked into the room.

"Father, mother." Litt was still a little reserved when he saw the two of them.

"Litt, come here." Orson said so, beckoning Litt to come to his side.

"Father is fine, he just needs to rest." Orson repeated to Litt what Mary had just said.

"Orson, Litt." Lucius was quite moved when he saw his two children rushing back so quickly. In order to liven up the atmosphere, he quickly made a joke. "You are so anxious to come back, are you so afraid that I, an old man, will die?"

Although Lucius was only 48 years old, he was used to calling himself an old man.

"Father, don't joke." Orson certainly understood what Lucius meant, and a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. "Don't mention that you were assassinated, even if you caught a cold, we, as your children, should come back to visit you."

"Okay, okay, there's no need to say these anymore. We are all family here, so there's no need to say those polite words outside." Lucius said this, waving his hand, looking completely different from someone who had been assassinated before.

"So, father, do you know who assassinated you at that time?"

Orson said this, looking at Lucius, wanting to get the answer to the question from him.

"I don't know." Lucius shook his head. "To be honest, I don't know who wanted to attack me at that time, but look at my current situation, isn't it fine?"

As he said this, he opened his arms and patted his chest wrapped in gauze.

"Look, I'm in good health, and I guess the other party's intention is not to kill me."

"But... things on the front line..." At this time, Litt on the side spoke up.

"Yes, things on the front line are not optimistic." Hearing this, Lucius also frowned and nodded. "Of course I know what's going on at the front. These days, war reports have been coming to me like snowflakes."

"Although Carlisle is quite experienced, his ability is still limited. The enemy seemed to know that I would be assassinated, and launched a large-scale attack on the same day. By the time the news of my assassination reached Carlisle, a day of decision-making time had been wasted, and the enemy had already captured a city." Lucius said this and sighed.

"Orson, you came back at the right time this time." As he said this, he glanced at Mary and then at Litt.

The two immediately knew what Lucius was thinking, and they left the room tactfully.

"Father, please tell me what you want me to do." Orson bowed respectfully and moved closer to Lucius.

"Orson, do you want to try to command an army and gallop on the battlefield?" Lucius said this and smiled. "I know that it may be a bit arrogant to hand over the command of the army to a young man like you."

"Do you want to try? If you want, I can hand over the command of the front-line army to you now."

Orson looked at Lucius's expression, and couldn't guess what Lucius was thinking.

Is he testing his ambition, or does he really want to entrust the front-line affairs to himself?

"I...if my father trusts me, I am willing to take on this important task." Orson thought for a while, and then said something relatively neutral.

"Okay." Lucius heard Orson say this, leaned forward, and patted Orson on the shoulder.

"I can give you the military power, but how to convince the people, how to dispatch the army, and even how to make decisions to defeat the orcs will all be up to you."

"When the time comes, once you succeed, you will become the military god of the empire and continue the tradition of the Stranik family to establish the clan by force. Once you fail, the Duchy of Antica and the thousands of people under the Duchy of Antica will suffer losses because of you."

"It's not a question of whether I trust you or not, but it depends on you, Orson." Lucius said.

"But, father, didn't you just say that your health is fine?" Orson looked at Lucius in confusion, "As long as I can stabilize the situation on the front line by then, and wait until you recover and come back, it will be fine."

Lucius didn't say anything. He stared at Orson for a long time and suddenly laughed...

Chapter 2: I, Orson, came here with only one goal (4K)

After Orson walked out of Lucius's room, he glanced at Litt and Mary who were standing at the door, waiting anxiously.

"Father said he wanted to rest for a while, let's not disturb him first." Orson said so.

"Okay." Mary nodded, then turned around and prepared to go back to her room.

"By the way, mother, father has given me all the military duties on the front line, so I will go to the front tomorrow. During this period, you will be in charge of all the affairs of the family. Thank you." Orson remembered something and suddenly spoke.

"I know." Mary nodded, then turned and left.

"Orson, is father okay?" Lit looked at Orson at this time, with a hint of doubt in his tone.

"It's okay, father is just a little tired. After all, he was injured before, and he needs time to recuperate no matter how good his body is." Orson said so, touching Lit's head.

"By the way, there are some things I want to tell you alone, let's go back to my room first." So saying, he took Lit to his room.

Entering the room, Orson closed the door.

"Leet, do you want to go to the front?" Orson asked.

"Eh? Orson, why do you suddenly ask this?"

"As the son of the Duke, the most distinguished nobles in the Empire, especially in our Stranik family, the army is something you will come into contact with sooner or later." Orson said this in a flat tone.

"It just so happens that I will take over the task of temporary commander-in-chief of the front line this time.

At that time, you can be my adjutant and learn these things from me first. If you go out in the future, you will have to be independent sooner or later."

"Of course." Orson said this and pointed to the desk. "If you want to stay here and learn how to manage finances from your mother, it's okay, because if you become a duke in the future, you can also be responsible for finances yourself."

"Well..." Leet heard this, pondered for a long time, and then said: "Then, I think it's better to go to the front line with you, Orson."

Leet always felt that Mary had some opinions about his arrival. Compared with staying at home and being looked down upon, Leet still prefers to be with Orson. Being with Orson is also the time when he grows the fastest.

I don't just want to stay with Orson.

"Okay." Orson nodded. "But, Lit, I have to give you a shot of vaccination first. The army is a very serious place. When you get to the front line, you have to act like a soldier. You can't act like a spoiled child in front of me. Do you understand?"

"Eh? So serious?" Lit said in surprise.

But she was still mentally prepared and agreed to Orson immediately.

"I know, Orson, I promise that I will listen to you at that time."

"Okay, then I'm relieved." Orson said this with a smile.

"Rest at home for a while today. I'll go out to deal with some things first. Tomorrow we will take my father's letter of appointment to the front line."

"Okay."

After Orson and Lit finished talking about these things, they went to the center of Antica City and met a few people.

The next morning, the carriage was ready for Orson and Lit, but Orson disliked the carriage for being too slow, so he took Lit to the front line on a magic carpet.

…

A small town somewhere on the front line.

At this moment, the city is full of broken walls and ruins, and bloodstains can be seen everywhere on the city walls, indicating that a large-scale battle had taken place here not long ago.

A large-scale battle broke out between the three thousand human soldiers stationed here and the five thousand orcs attacking the city. In the end, all the soldiers stationed here were killed, and no one was spared.

A burly orc walked across the battlefield.

The walls were full of human and orc corpses.

Although the orcs captured this town, they paid a heavy price.

However, because this is a militarized town, most of the residents are military dependents, who had evacuated before the war broke out, and no further bloody incidents occurred.

After looting the town's armory and granary, the orcs had a full meal.

In addition to supplying the soldiers, a batch of the looted supplies will be transported back to the desert by transport teams to the families of the soldiers who are starving there.

In order to prepare for this war, the orc tribe concentrated the scarce supplies to the soldiers on the front line, so that the soldiers could eat enough to fight, and then rob the human food to provide to the orcs in the rear.

Because of the particularity of the orc tribe, each clan has a tribe. These 5,000 orc warriors are actually put together by more than a dozen tribes, and the commander is the strongest person in the army.

In this case, it is inevitable that there will be uneven distribution of spoils and the commander will favor his own tribe. Fortunately, this is the early stage of the war, and the contradiction of disunity within the orcs has not yet appeared.

Often in the middle and late stages of the war, after the orcs have accumulated resentment for a long time, a civil war will break out, and they will eventually retreat without fighting.

"How is the result of today's battle?" The young commander walked to the warehouse. At this moment, many orc warriors were moving the grain in the warehouse out in boxes and bags. He looked at the adjutant in charge of statistics and asked.

The adjutant and he were not from the same clan or tribe, and the relationship between the two was completely just a cooperative relationship.

"Commander, we lost a total of 2,000 soldiers in today's siege. Each tribe has losses, but generally speaking, it's relatively even." The adjutant said so, and then pointed to the warehouse. "This warehouse seems to be prepared for a protracted war. There is a lot of food stored in it, enough for the remaining soldiers to eat for two or three years, but if it is distributed to each tribe, there will not be much left."

Now there are only 3,000 people left in this orc army, but behind these 3,000 people are about 10,000 mouths to feed.

The foster care of this small town, in fact, can only feed the people of the tribe for one year, and after a year, they have to come out to plunder again.

It's better to rob more at a time.

Thinking of this, the commander looked at his adjutant.

"Leave a hundred people here to clean up the battlefield, and the rest of the people will repair on the spot for half a day, and then continue to advance."

From the perspective of the orcs, human defense is like an egg. As long as you break through the hardest layer of the eggshell on the outside and go deeper inside, you can enter the no-man's land.

The 3,000 soldiers stationed in this town should be the largest among the nearby villages and towns. Next, his troops will plunder the surrounding villages and then follow the orders of the joint chieftain.

Things like this are still happening in several small towns on the border.

…

At the front line, Carlisle was looking at the defeated battle reports in the barracks with a frown.

As Lucius's adjutant, his greatest advantage is conservatism, but it is this conservatism that made him waste the most precious first day of the battle at the beginning of the battle.

When he received the battle report, he sent it back to Antica City as soon as possible, hoping to get instructions from Lucius. He just followed Lucius' previous arrangements and let the soldiers on the front line hold on and rotate defense as much as possible.

But unexpectedly, Lucius, who was unconscious after being assassinated, had no way to give Carlisle guidance. In desperation, Carlisle left Lucius's command for the first time in his life and began to perform the duties of the supreme military commander, trying to stabilize the situation on the front line.

But the situation on the front line did not stabilize, but continued to deteriorate.

After all, his ability to respond to emergencies is not as strong as Lucius, and he does have fewer cards in his hand. He can only rely on his seniority to suppress the generals under him. Otherwise, those generals would have fought on their own. At that time, the situation would be even more serious.

"Forget it, let's hold a joint meeting of the army." Carlisle thought so, and called his adjutant to help him gather all the generals under his command.

Today, the army of the Duke of Antica is mainly composed of three parts.

The first part is the standing army and conscripted army in the duke's direct territory. This group of troops is directly commanded by the duke's confidant Carlisle, and the number is about 100,000.

The second part is the earl army under the duke. Each earl can basically send out an army of more than 2,000 and less than 10,000 people. This group of troops has an independent commander, either the earl himself or the military general under the earl. The number of this group of troops also accounts for about 100,000 people.

The third part, which is also the part that gives Carlisle the most headache, is the army sent from other parts of the empire to support. Basically, the other five duchies and royal direct duchies of the empire have sent about 10,000 troops. The quality is uneven, but overall it is acceptable, except for the Duchy of Naples.

The Duchy of Naples, which has the worst relationship with the Duchy of Antica, only sent 5,000 militiamen. Carlisle had a headache looking at these 5,000 militiamen and could only arrange them to the rear to maintain public security and supply lines.

The number of troops in this part is about 50,000, but because they are troops sent by people of the same level or even higher level, Carlisle can't command their officers at all.

If Carlisle had spoken to them in a friendly manner, they might have listened to him for Lucius' sake. But now that Lucius was ill and the situation on the frontline had deteriorated, these commanders did not trust Carlisle's strength. Except for the army of Prussia, which could still be commanded, all other armies were guarding their respective defense zones, not seeking merit but not making mistakes.

The reason why Carlisle had to convene a joint military meeting was to get the army of those uncles to act through the discussion and voting of the crowd at the meeting.

The 250,000 human troops consumed a lot of food and grass on the front line every day. Although they had funding from other dukedoms, if they continued to drag on like this, the economy of the Antica Duchy, which had just started to improve, would probably be dragged down by the war again.

Half an hour later, the joint military meeting was held.

Carlisle sat in the chairman's seat and glanced at the officers below.

On his left were representatives of the armies of the various earls in the dukedom, and on his right were representatives of the foreign aid army.

"I believe everyone has heard that three more cities were breached yesterday. We lost more than 10,000 soldiers yesterday alone." Carlisle said this with a frown.

"Now, all my troops who can serve as reserves have been sent to the front line. My idea is that some defense areas where the pressure is not too heavy can be appropriately transferred to support the areas with greater pressure. Otherwise, if the front line is breached, your troops will be vulnerable to attacks from the flanks."

"Ha, after saying so much, what you mean is nothing more than that you are no longer capable and need our help?" The representative of the Dukedom of Napoli spoke from the audience. "Our mission was arranged before the war. We only obeyed the orders of Duke Lucius, the supreme commander of the frontline army. Now Duke Lucius is injured and cannot come to the frontline. As a temporary army commander, you missed the opportunity to fight and caused several cities to be breached. How can we trust your ability?