Chapter 123: The Closing Gap

Chapter 123: The Closing Gap

General Marcus Hale began the withdrawal before dawn, sending the first formations west while darkness still covered the abandoned central defenses.

Rear guards remained inside the trenches with enough fires burning to conceal how many soldiers had already left, while engineers destroyed stores and equipment that could not be moved.

For the first several days, the central army preserved the order Hale had demanded, marching in assigned columns with officers maintaining contact between the roads.

The goblins discovered the withdrawal on the second morning. Viridian scouts entered empty fortifications and found cooking fires still smoldering beside abandoned barricades, while farther south other patrols spotted long Caldris columns disappearing toward the west.

The reports reached Rakhar quickly, and the armies that had spent months pressing against the central defenses began moving through them instead of attacking them.

Rakhar did not gather his forces for another set battle. Fresh Viridian formations followed directly behind Hale, while Skargrim scouts spread onto side roads and tracks running parallel to the retreat.

The southern-turning army already positioned farther west continued closing from the north, giving the retreating humans less space with every passing week.

The first soldiers to feel the pursuit were those at the back.

A depleted Caldris regiment halted at a wooded pass on the fifth day and formed ranks across the road while the main columns continued west. The position was never intended to survive indefinitely, and its commander began withdrawing companies one at a time once the last wagons disappeared beyond the next hill.

Viridian troops reached the road before the final companies could leave, turning an orderly delay into several hours of close fighting.

Hundreds never caught up with the army.

Similar losses followed without producing a single decisive battle. A company disappeared while guarding a bridge, another was forced into nearby fields when Skargrim scouts reached a crossroads ahead of it, and wounded soldiers unable to maintain the pace gradually collected behind the moving columns.

Hale’s army continued west, leaving small pieces of itself scattered along the road.

The burden of the retreat soon became visible in what the soldiers abandoned. Damaged wagons were pushed aside, heavy tools were smashed, and equipment carried out of the central fortifications was discarded whenever it slowed the march.

Horses that could no longer pull their loads were unharnessed, while surviving animals were transferred to wagons carrying food, arrows, and wounded soldiers who could not walk.

Ten days into the retreat, Hale discovered that speed alone would not save him.

The army moving south from the northern breakthrough had continued curving around the central rear. Goblin-held crossroads appeared on maps that had been clear only days earlier, forcing Hale to redirect entire columns toward roads farther west.

Meanwhile, the wider force descending from the northwest was moving toward the same region from the opposite side.

The space between those two movements became the central army’s only path out.

Hale divided his troops among several parallel roads rather than allow tens of thousands of men to clog a single route. The decision kept them moving, but it stretched his command over miles of countryside.

Messengers rode between columns carrying new directions, sometimes arriving to discover that the formation they were searching for had already moved elsewhere.

Near the middle of the month, Hale finally found a place where the army might stop.

A fortified town stood beside a river crossing, protected by low hills and a stone bridge wide enough for several formations to cross at once.

Exhausted soldiers occupied the walls, while engineers began strengthening the approaches and officers gathered scattered companies into recognizable regiments again. For the first time since leaving the central front, cooking fires remained lit through an entire evening.

The respite lasted less than a day.

Scouts returned the following morning with reports of Viridian formations approaching from the east. Before noon, another rider brought word that Skargrim troops had been seen moving toward the northern approaches to the river.

Hale looked at the roads around the town and recognized the same shape he had escaped from weeks earlier. Staying would give the goblins time to wrap around him again, so the soldiers who had only just settled behind the walls were ordered back onto the road.

The army crossed the river before evening and left engineers behind long enough to damage the bridge.

The pursuit became harsher afterward.

Rakhar rotated fresh troops into the chase instead of exhausting the same formations against Hale’s rear. Viridian infantry pressed the main road for a day or two before another force took its place, while Skargrim scouts continued appearing along the flanks.

The humans could no longer assume that a road ahead was safe simply because no goblin army had been reported there the previous morning.

Around the eighteenth day, the pursuit claimed its first complete formation.

Several Caldris regiments had fallen behind after a wagon overturned inside a narrow pass and trapped the road behind it. Officers cleared the obstruction, but the delay placed thousands of soldiers several hours behind the main body.

When they attempted to take a southern route to recover the lost distance, Skargrim troops were already moving toward the junction ahead.

Viridian formations arrived behind them before they could reverse direction.

The trapped soldiers attacked west before the two goblin forces could close completely. Veteran companies pushed through stone-walled fields while conscripts held the eastern side against Viridian infantry, creating a narrow opening through which scattered groups escaped.

The opening did not last.

By evening, goblin troops had connected across the road. A few thousand humans escaped through fields and wooded ground, but the formation itself disappeared from Hale’s army.

Survivors arrived during the next two days without banners, wagons, or any clear idea of how many men from their regiments remained alive.

Hale could not send anyone back for the missing.

The army was already beginning to fragment under the strain. Veteran-led formations continued following orders, but some conscript companies attached themselves to whatever column seemed to be moving fastest.

Officers who lost contact with headquarters chose their own roads rather than wait in place for instructions that might never reach them.

Rakhar used that confusion to keep the humans from gathering again.

His scouts tracked the largest columns while smaller goblin forces hunted the spaces between them. Isolated Caldris companies vanished along side roads, and groups that stopped to rest often discovered goblin patrols approaching before they could rejoin the main retreat.

Every separation created another opportunity for the pursuers to cut away soldiers without slowing the larger advance.

By the fourth week, the landscape itself began forcing Hale’s army toward a narrower path.

The southern-turning goblins held roads to the north and northeast, while the army descending from the northwest had reached junctions farther ahead.

Neither force had completely sealed the western routes, but the open country between them had contracted into a corridor through which Hale now had to move most of his surviving troops.

Everything unnecessary was abandoned.

Tents disappeared from the baggage columns, followed by spare clothing, damaged shields, heavy cooking equipment, and wagons that could not maintain the pace.

Men who could walk were removed from carts regardless of their wounds, leaving the remaining transport for those incapable of moving under their own strength.

Rear guards became costly as the corridor narrowed.

At one bridge, two veteran companies waited until the last large column crossed before setting fire to timber packed beneath the span.

Viridian troops reached them before the bridge could be completely destroyed, forcing the surviving humans to retreat along the riverbank while goblin infantry crossed through the damaged structure behind them.

Another regiment held a village junction for most of an afternoon. Its soldiers knew that every hour bought distance for thousands marching west, and they remained until Skargrim troops entered the streets from the north and Viridian infantry appeared on the eastern road. Fewer than half of the regiment escaped before the village was surrounded.

The sacrifices kept Hale moving, but they were consuming the soldiers most capable of holding the retreat together.

Three days before the end of the month, another large Caldris column encountered the tightening jaws.

The formation had been following a western road when scouts reported Skargrim troops occupying heights ahead. Before its commander could redirect the column, Viridian pursuers appeared behind it and forced the humans to deploy along both sides of the road.

The resulting battle lasted through the afternoon.

Professional soldiers eventually opened a narrow western route, allowing part of the column to escape. Conscripts and wounded men crowded toward the opening, while rear formations continued fighting until the gap became too narrow to hold.

Thousands escaped, but thousands more remained behind when the goblins closed the road.

Hale received the survivors the following morning and understood how little time remained. His campaign map no longer showed a broad western retreat. It showed one shrinking passage between two goblin advances, with Rakhar’s pursuing army driving directly toward it from the east.

He gathered every formation that could still respond to orders and directed them toward the remaining corridor.

The final two days became a continuous march.

Caldris soldiers moved west through the night, resting only when blocked by the formations ahead. Officers rode along the columns forcing men back into ranks, while scouts searched for any secondary path that might remain open if the main road was lost.

The goblins were racing for the same ground.

Skargrim troops appeared north of the corridor before midday on the final day, forcing Hale to commit veteran infantry to prevent them from reaching the road. Viridian formations attacked the rear several hours later, turning the retreating army into a long moving battle whose front continued west while its tail fought facing east.

Farther ahead, goblin troops from the northwestern movement began approaching from the opposite side.

Hale stopped thinking about formations that had fallen behind. Anyone still east of the corridor would have to find another way out.

The leading Caldris regiments passed through first, followed by thousands of exhausted conscripts and the remnants of units reduced throughout the month.

Professional formations remained on both sides of the road, holding the opening long enough for each successive column to escape.

Near sunset, Skargrim troops reached the southern road while Viridian forces pushed through the remaining rear guards.

The gap closed behind Hale.

Fighting continued across the fields east of the new goblin position, where entire Caldris formations found themselves trapped after spending a month trying to escape. Some attempted to break through during the night, while others scattered into forests and villages before the goblins could surround them completely.

Marcus Hale could do nothing for them.

He continued west with the soldiers who had made it through, watching the surviving columns stretch along the road ahead. What remained of the central army still possessed officers, banners, and enough organization to keep marching, but the force was only a portion of what had abandoned the defensive line one month earlier.

Behind them, Rakhar’s armies joined across the corridor and turned against the humans trapped inside.

The month-long retreat had ended with the gap finally closed, leaving Hale’s battered survivors moving west while the goblin pursuit consumed everyone who had failed to escape in time.