By the time I really realized where I was, which was exactly where I had been midwinter as well, it was already spring and my army had sat out in the cold, twiddling its thumbs and doing nothing. Or more precisely, the spearman and the scout had, the undead had just stood around, like frozen statues. I had, apparently, been investigating the differences between how the bark of various different trees behaved in the cold.
*shakes head*
I have GOT to get a grip...
In any case, having wasted two entire months, I spent the next three force marching southwest to meet the jungleborn threat.
I left Cernetu behind, since he is more useful scouting the northern frontier. That area is currently tame enough that he can do it on his own without a lot of risk and I don't need to tie up troops up there. The death knight also took care of that annoying blue mushroom growing in the forest. Took him half a month to chop and burn it down, but at least it's gone.
When I finally arrived south, there was more than one enemy army in place and I had my work cut out for me, even with the help of Manvale and Gunthamund. I would have to choose which one to engage first.
In the end the choice was easy. The northern force was both weaker and poised to wreak havoc in my rear echelons and perhaps even threaten my citadel, necessitating a chase if left to its own devices. Crushing it first would give an opportunity to reanimate more troops both after the battle and again on the way south at the farm. Let us see how this self-styled jungle king and his army of slaves fares...
The battle went more or less as expected, though Manvale almost got himself killed in the opening exchange of blows. He is going to have to sit the next battle out, because I paid far to much for his services to lose him to carelessness.
We lost a few more longdead, but apprentice mitigated things a bit by inspired and proficient use of the Bolt of Unlife spell. Excellent choice against unarmored targets, kills them and then reanimates them to serve the caster.
The second enemy army with that red-feathered priest tried to sneak around the mountain on the plain to rendezvous with his now deceased ally, which gives me an opportunity to crush him immediately afterward. With Manvale and his men staying out of this fight, Gunthamund will have to reanimate the fallen from the last battle, even though there are not quite as many as I had desired. Well, it cannot be helped.
While Gunthamund reanimated half a dozen longdead and half again that many soulless, Manvale's men made a flanking maneuver back the way the savages had come and regained both the farm and the hamlet for us and denying vital resources to the enemy.
And now it is time to engage!
As soon as the battle began, I became painfully aware that this would be a dangerous affair indeed. The enemy priest has some kind of fire magic and wasted no time making good use of it. Fortunately he decided to target one of the soulless in the front rank. Had he aimed it at the back of my army...
However, then it was my turn and I had been itching to test the efficacy of Soul Vortex in battle. and it was efficacious indeed!
Nearly a third of his front line was killed outright or rendered near-dead from the lifedrain and my own energy and health surged in equal proportion.
Half of his monsters lay dead after the first clash and it was our fortune again that the next incinerating strike from the sky found another soulless instead of worthier targets. Some few losses later the longdead ranks closed in and hacked the lone remaining winged jaguar and its master to pieces.
Another invasion repelled, though recovering my forces to their previous levels of strength is once more going to take a while.