Chapter 124: The Road to the Capital

Chapter 124: The Road to the Capital

The territory west of the closed corridor barely had time to understand what had happened before the goblins arrived. Marcus Hale had escaped with part of the central army, but the roads behind him were already filling with Viridian and Skargrim scouts.

They passed through abandoned trenches, crossed battlefields still littered with broken wagons, and followed the same roads the Caldris survivors had used during their retreat.

Within days, larger formations followed, fresh waves of Viridian soldiers advanced. Rakhar Veyr gave no order to regroup around the old central defenses.

Instead, he pushed the armies west and allowed to pursuit retreating enemy forces to becoming the spearhead of the campaign.

The first week showed how different the war had become. Caldris still had soldiers in the region, but they appeared in scattered groups rather than as a single organized army.

A few hundred men guarded a bridge along one road, while several miles away a noble had gathered militia and surviving conscripts around a walled village.

Farther west, another commander tried to collect retreating soldiers at a crossroads and turn them into something resembling a regiment.

The goblins met these defenses one after another and rarely treated them the same way.

A Viridian column spent half a day forcing Caldris troops from a stone bridge, only to discover that Skargrim scouts had already crossed the same river farther north through a shallow ford.

The human defenders realized they were about to be flanked and withdrew before sunset, leaving the crossing intact.

At another village, the local commander decided to take a stand against the goblins. Wooden barricades blocked the main road, crossbowmen occupied rooftops, and several hundred conscripts formed ranks behind carts packed with stone.

The position looked formidable from the east, but a Skargrim patrol found a farm road that curved around the settlement and rejoined the main route two miles beyond it.

The larger goblin column never needed to assault the village. A containment force remained outside its walls while the rest of the army continued west, leaving the defenders to watch thousands of goblins disappear around them without offering the battle they had prepared for.

Settlements sitting on bridges or major junctions received immediate and overwhelming attention as the goblins converged in those positions.

By the second week, several goblin columns were advancing through the region simultaneously. Viridian formations held the main western road and moved through the most direct route into central Caldris, while Skargrim forces operated farther north, where their advance gradually connected with territories already occupied during the northern campaign.

Mixed formations moved along smaller southern roads, preventing local Caldris commanders from simply gathering everything in front of the main column.

The effect was less dramatic than a single great battle, yet it proved far more difficult to stop. A town might receive warning that goblin scouts had been seen twenty miles away, only for another report to arrive the next morning saying a second column had appeared on a completely different road.

Officials preparing defenses against one army suddenly found themselves wondering whether the enemy would even bother approaching their walls.

One settlement did become important enough to force a direct assault. The town controlled a stone bridge over a broad river and sat at the meeting point of two major roads.

Its walls were old but thick enough to resist improvised attacks, and several thousand soldiers had entered before the goblins reached the area.

Viridian commanders surrounded the eastern approaches while Skargrim scouts secured roads north of the town. Engineers began preparing covered approaches toward the walls, and siege crews were brought forward from the rear rather than allowing the defenders time to organize a relief force.

The fighting lasted four days and became the first significant siege of the central advance.

Caldris crossbowmen held the walls through the first bombardment, forcing the goblins to shift their siege engines toward an older section near the southern gate.

Catapult stones struck the same stretch repeatedly, while ballistas targeted troops attempting to repair the damage.

The breach opened during the fourth afternoon, and Viridian infantry entered first. Fresh formations followed quickly, pushing through the narrow opening before the defenders could barricade the streets behind it.

Fighting spread toward the center of the town and continued until evening, when the surviving Caldris soldiers abandoned the western quarter and tried to escape through smaller roads.

Some escaped before the Skargrim patrols completely closed the routes west, though most did not. By the following morning, goblin engineers were inspecting the bridge while quartermasters counted grain inside the warehouses.

Occupation troops replaced the units that had stormed the town, allowing the frontline formations to resume their march before the blood had been washed from every street.

Goblin-controlled routes began linking with one another, and roads captured in northern Caldris now connected to the central advance through junctions secured by Skargrim formations.

Troops could move south without returning east, while Viridian units advancing west could receive reinforcements from more than one direction.

The invasion stopped resembling a narrow spear thrust and began developing into a growing network. Caldris tried to respond by concentrating forces around terrain the goblins could not ignore, fortifying bridges, strengthening castles overlooking important roads, and turning towns along river crossings into temporary military centers.

The kingdom could no longer defend enough of those places at once. A castle might dominate the highway beneath its walls, but if the countryside offered another route, Rakhar’s commanders simply sent scouts looking for it.

An important bridge could hold for days, only to become less valuable when engineers repaired a damaged crossing upstream.

The geography of central Caldris had once helped local armies move between provinces.

Now the same network of roads gave the goblins choices the surviving defenders could not cover, and each new route forced Caldris to spread its already weakened forces thinner.

By the fourth week, the advance accelerated noticeably. One Viridian column crossed three towns in less than ten days because only one chose to resist seriously, while another force farther north seized a junction that connected directly with the occupied northern roads.

Once engineers secured the crossing, goblin formations could move between the two regions without returning through the old eastern routes.

The territory behind the frontline armies began changing with them. Goblin camps at captured crossroads became permanent garrisons, warehouses were converted into depots, administrative buildings became temporary headquarters, and bridges received dedicated engineers instead of improvised guards.

Occupation troops secured what the frontline armies had taken and kept the roads behind them open. That arrangement allowed Rakhar to maintain the momentum of the advance without repeatedly turning frontline formations back toward settlements already passed.

Marcus Hale tried to slow that movement farther west. The survivors of the central retreat had gathered around him in fragments, with some regiments still possessing recognizable command structures while others had been reduced to several hundred soldiers carrying mismatched equipment and following whichever officer had escaped with them.

Hale combined those survivors with local garrisons, noble troops, and newly raised conscripts. The force grew steadily, but it never regained the strength or cohesion of the army that had held the central line, leaving him little choice but to abandon the idea of creating another continuous front.

Instead, Hale positioned blocking forces around the roads most likely to carry Rakhar toward the deeper central provinces.

The first serious attempt centered on a river town where two major roads met before crossing a stone bridge. Several thousand Caldris troops occupied the surrounding fields, dug earthworks outside the walls, and placed experienced survivors among the conscripts.

For several days, it appeared the position might force Rakhar into another costly battle. Then Skargrim scouts found a shallow crossing upstream, and the first goblin infantry crossed there under cover of darkness.

Engineers followed and widened the banks enough for larger formations to begin moving across.

Hale received the report before the goblins could completely move around him and ordered another withdrawal.

When Viridian troops entered the abandoned outer works, they found cooking fires left behind and trenches already empty.

He tried again farther west, but the same problem followed him in different forms.

A hill fort protected one road while another goblin column moved through farmland several miles south, and a town blocked the direct approach to a junction while scouts discovered an older provincial road that curved around it.

Each time Hale concentrated enough soldiers to create a strong point, Rakhar spread his advance wider. Hale preserved what remained of his army by leaving before encirclement became possible, but every withdrawal surrendered another stretch of central territory.

By the fifth week, the leading scouts reached a market town where several roads converged from north, east, and south. The place itself was not heavily fortified, and its importance came entirely from what lay beyond it.

From the junction, one road continued west toward the deeper central provinces. Another bent southwest through a chain of towns supporting the royal heartland, while farther ahead those routes eventually connected with the roads leading toward the capital.

The local garrison did not wait for a siege. Caldris soldiers withdrew before the main Viridian column arrived, leaving militia and civic officials behind to negotiate surrender while the goblins secured the surrounding roads.

Rakhar received the updated campaign maps that evening and studied how the routes ahead converged. The capital still lay far beyond the front, separated from the goblin armies by several weeks of marching, rivers, towns, castles, and whatever troops Caldris could still assemble.

Even so, the shape of the campaign had changed again because the roads ahead no longer ended at another defensive sector.

They ended at the kingdom’s heart, and Rakhar had no intention of rushing toward it carelessly.

A direct thrust would tell Caldris exactly where to concentrate every remaining soldier while leaving towns, roads, and river crossings on the flanks capable of interfering with his rear.

Instead, he ordered the advance widened again. Northern formations were to continue joining the central occupation, Viridian columns would keep pushing west along the major roads, and additional forces would spread southwest to deny Caldris the chance to organize a new army along a single approach.

The decision forced the kingdom to begin defending the heartland before the goblins were close enough to threaten the royal walls.

Troops gathering in provincial towns were redirected toward stronger positions nearer the capital, bridges along the inner roads received larger garrisons, and local nobles were ordered to contribute whatever soldiers they still controlled.

The movement of people along the roads changed accordingly. Goblin soldiers marched west while Caldris troops moved inward, and behind the human columns came officials, merchants, and civilians leaving settlements that no longer expected the army to protect them.

Northern Caldris continued falling at the same time. Several isolated human strongholds remained behind Skargrim-controlled roads, but they had little influence over the larger campaign.

Some surrendered after months without realistic hope of relief, while others remained behind walls watched by containment forces.

Each pocket removed freed more goblin soldiers for movement south. By the sixth week, the northern and central occupations were connected broadly enough that Rakhar could shift formations between them without relying on the old invasion routes.

Skargrim units that had fought in the north could now descend through secured roads and appear inside the central sector. Viridian reinforcements could choose among several corridors depending on where resistance developed, giving Rakhar the freedom to reinforce whichever road promised the greatest progress.

Caldris no longer faced one advancing wall of soldiers. It faced goblin armies appearing along multiple roads and choosing where the next battle would happen, while Marcus Hale continued withdrawing toward stronger positions closer to the heartland.

Hale still possessed enough troops to contest important routes, but not enough to cover the width of the central sector. The distinction became painfully clear near the end of the sixth week when three separate goblin columns reached different approaches into the deeper central provinces within several days of one another.

One took a bridge after its defenders withdrew, while another surrounded a fortified town and left a containment force behind. The third occupied an administrative center whose officials had departed only hours before, giving the goblins another base farther west.

None of those victories was individually decisive, but together they showed how little remained between Rakhar and the inner kingdom. When the latest maps were placed before him, goblin-held roads stretched from northern Caldris into the center and continued west toward the heartland.

His forward scouts were already standing on routes that eventually led to the royal capital. Rakhar studied them without celebration because the capital was not the next battlefield simply because it had finally appeared clearly on the map.

There were still roads to secure, towns to isolate, bridges to capture, and whatever soldiers Caldris could gather before the final approach. Every mile of territory taken around the capital would remove another place from which the kingdom could organize meaningful resistance.

His orders remained simple enough for every commander to understand. The armies would continue west, southwest, and south from the northern occupation, taking the routes that allowed them to widen their control rather than collapsing into one narrow march toward the royal city.

Far ahead, Caldris soldiers were already abandoning weaker positions for stronger ones closer to the heartland. Couriers carried warnings toward the capital while goblin columns advanced behind them along roads that had never before seen the enemy.

The great central army that might once have stood across those routes was gone, and northern resistance had been reduced to isolated pockets.

Marcus Hale could still delay selected columns, but he no longer possessed enough soldiers to stop Rakhar’s advance across the entire width of central Caldris.

For the first time in the campaign, the road toward the capital was not blocked by another great defensive front.

It was being opened steadily through the fall of each bridge, junction, town, and road that once separated the goblin armies from the heart of the kingdom.