As he was thinking: It does not seem that these garrisons have been reinforced - and Abramo's army very much has. And moreover, the raw militia he started with have now fought in three pitched battles and half a dozen skirmishes; they are veterans now, and that matters as much as the raw numbers.

In the end it is much easier than he feared. He is no great tactician; but then neither are the demons. And in this world without radio, and with armies that can deploy entirely within a commander's sight even before accounting for the farsightedness of age, tactics are not very complex in any case. All he has to do is order his stolid veteran infantry -

A far cry from the frightened emergency conscripts who held the Defender's Heart. These are veteran units, and well-equipped ones; every man has a cold-iron blade, every company a first-circle healer, every recruit a battle-hardened corporal to stand behind him and stiffen his spine.

Kenabres Kestää!

- order them to hold the line, to dig in their heels and shout their battle cry and stand. Oh, yes, he will need a battle cry for the entire crusade; this situation of each unit having their own is - not the largest of his problems, but a problem. He wants a slogan that Hellknight and Shelynite can shout with equal enthusiasm, and equal awareness that they are part of one army. But for this moment, what he wants is for the Kenabres militia to hold, to hunker down behind their tower shields and absorb the terrible ton-weight charge of the gargoyles; and for that, "Kenabres Holds" will do very well indeed.

Indeed. And then the Hellknights can sweep around the pinned flank and charge. And then we'll see who has the better "terrible ton-weight impact".

Abramo has seen fifty-ton tanks advance at three times the speed of a galloping horse, into the teeth of fire that would shred gargoyles without noticing. Or, at least... he has seen the images of them, in flickering black-and-white, 24 frames to the second. It is not quite the same as being on the battlefield, where the charge of chivalry - hundreds of tons of horseflesh and armour - makes the ground literally shake with their passing. He had thought that was a figure of speech.

The demons did not think so; in fact they are quite used to the ground shaking, the Worldwound does that all the time. It hardly matters. Their momentum was used up in failing to break the shield wall; the Hellknights shatter them like glass struck with a hammer.

Then they will heal the wounded, bury the dead, and go marching through the Worldwound!

This happened after I posted "Marching through the Worldwound", and I was not aware of it when I started translating songs!

The devs think of everything!

Pff. I bet they didn't even set a market price for bees.

Fighting enemies with air superiority is an absolute nightmare, as Abramo well knows. Venezia-oltre-il-Mare did effectively nothing, except defend the Caucasus and the Strait, before fresh supplies of modern fighters arrived from the American factories. But to fight enemies who can fly, when you have literally no air force, not so much as a flak gun improvised by turning a machinegun upwards, and your army seems unfamiliar with the entire concept... that is new to him.

Well, first things first. He cannot do without Regill, his liaison with the Hellknights; or Irabeth, who commands the paladin orders; or Galfrey, technically the head of the state fielding his army. Woljif is reported to have run into the night, which is bad if accurate, but it's also one of those wild rumours that fly around any war camp and are reported as "eyewitness accounts" by people who did not see anything of the sort; he will not accuse a comrade of such a thing until he has at least checked the obvious alternative hypothesis that they were captured by the gargoyles along with the others. 

It is an error to allow the enemy to force your hand, it is an error to attack a place the enemy knows you must take... but needs must when the demons drive. The alternative is that his army breaks apart on the spot.

He will march on the Lost Chapel.

Gargoyle claws can neither melt steel beams nor hold their grip on a scientist.

Ember is immune to paralysis.

Excuses like that are for the common rabble. Daeran just has straight-up plot armour, like a named character.

And also he is very bad at concealing that the treasures are in fact highly interesting, or at least revealing of something-or-other.

What was the point of kidnapping half the party if we're just going to get them back right away?

The Hellknights really seem to bring out the worst in the writers. When a soldier has just been captured by the enemy, escaped by immense luck, been flung into battle against a number of ghouls that would likely have converted him if the high-level protagonists hadn't happened to come by just at that moment, and is now expected to help rescue his comrades... then it is neither cowardice nor desertion for him to express the wish he'd stayed at home. If he ran off screaming into the night, sure. A little grumbling? Come now. We are not executing people for pointing out that the situation could be moderately improved. That rules out Evil and "Lawful".

On the other hand, the "Good" option is not exactly a stroke of genius either; no public executions? Abramo is not ready to commit to that policy! What's he supposed to do when people genuinely do desert? And the Chaotic option of making fun of the Hellknights - on a stricken field where they've just demonstrated immense courage and discipline! - is well into the Stupid side of the alignment spectrum.

"We'll do without executions," Abramo says unalignedly, while making a mental reservation for if he ever gets his hands on the people who write this dreck.

Sosiel will go Daeran one better - not just plot armour helping his escape, he also acquired a new subplot in the course of it! In particular, figure out where the Hellknight who escaped with him got his brother's shield.

Regill has, of course, escaped just like the rest. What is he, an NPC? 

Also, the gargoyle attack was clearly an inside job. This is Regill's surprised face - oh he did that one already? Well, he's just as surprised as before.

Oh no. They got Rathimus. He wasn't even on the list of prisoners.

Galfrey was, but of course, being named in that way is a powerful protection against anything actually bad happening to you. 

Irabeth begs to differ; hanging by the arms while you wait to turn into a ghoul qualifies as "actually bad", in her opinion. Respectfully, y'Majesty.

Also, Minagho is here, with Staunton.