The goblins, even when they do rally, do so as amorphous clouds of archers in the treelines or hiding behind rocks, and they rally only occasionally. 

The bloody work of the day is done by mid-afternoon, and then people get to work, building a secure camp, tending to the wounded, stopping up the numerous tunnels and cracks around the area from which goblins might emerge, and generally going about the work of a victorious army. There's even a little plunder; greenskins are as vulnerable to the lure of shiny things as anyone else, for all that they apparently use their own teeth as currency.

Their own...teeth? That's...well the Acolyte supposes it's not the strangest thing he's heard these people say about greenskins.

The Acolyte can certainly chop and move wood, but that seems like it might be the extent of his help for the rebuilding.

Thier own teeth! If he does any of his own looting, he will find little purses full of knocked-out teeth where Kislevites would have, say bronze and silver coins. Totally worthless, if you're not a greenskin. 

Command wants the Acolyte to rest up; they want him moving out with the main army when it starts moving again tomorrow, as quickly as possible, they don't have the supply-chain to linger. 

The Acolyte has seen some odd currencies in his time as a mercenary, but never human teeth. Or, humanoid he supposes. A part of him wonders whether it means most of them go around largely toothless.

The Acolyte could probably march right now if he needed to, but he will certainly not refuse to rest when given the chance. He will be as refreshed as the field amenities allow tomorrow morning and perfectly ready to continue onward.

It is a fact of life, when moving with thousands of others, that sometimes you have to rest just to let everyone catch up and get back into ranks and such. Such organization is as important for armies as the actual capacity for violence, one of the reasons to endless hordes of chaos are only an intermittent threat, rather than a constant one. 

In the next morning, a foggy dawn sees the army marching out. The mountains make a cold and damp country colder and damper, but at least it's not snowing. 

The Acolyte supposes military organization favors small groups of specialists much less in this world than it did in his homeworld, Given how capricious the local sorts of magic are that seems fairly reasonable.

The Acolyte is still shielded from the cold and the wet by his defensive flames, and if he finds anyone suffering particularly from either, he'll see if he can wrangle permission to try extending those defensive flames to some of the rank and file as well.

When even the greatest specialists can die to a stray arrow, maximising the number of arrows has great merit.

Who he is allowed to protect with his flames comes down to who will accept it, and most refuse, either out of machismo, or citing religious objections, or due to already having protections from better-trusted sources. But some do grant him permission, if he keeps asking, and their lives are better for it. 

He will allow himself some pride in having successfully brought some comfort to his fellow humans. Onwards they go, now somewhat less cold and wet than before.

Three days of marching up an old road, churning it into mud and doing hasty repairs to keep the horses moving, and it's been all quiet. Suspiciously so - it's not like greenskins, to not head towards the biggest fight they can find, as quickly as possible. 

Which is why, when the ambush strikes, drugged-up goblins with long spiky chains swinging suicidally out of the forests and into the ranks of the pulk, no-one is terribly surprised. Startled, perhaps, alarmed, certainly, but surprised, not really. 

It's no siege, but plausibly the Acolyte's destructive capabilities are still useful in quickly mincing a good number of the ambushers and hopefully reducing the number of casualties they're able to inflict.

Killing the fanatics is pretty possible - even the regular archers kill plenty of them before they arrive at the kislevite lines, but then, out of those same woods, come a great hail of arrows, wicked-sharp and dripping with poison, at least ten for every goblin charging suicidally into melee. 

Okay. Time to prove some more value. Arrows in flight move fast, so this is work is going to be choppy, but that's alright. He doesn't need to finely dice every individual arrow, he just needs to break the arrowheads up enough that they aren't carrying enough momentum to injure people and deliver any potential payload.

A rain of glittering shards and splinters is probably better than a hail of arrows, even if probably a good number of arrows make it through as well and some people probably still get hurt, still get poisoned. If the Acolyte can find them fast enough, maybe he can strip the poison from their bodies? If there's another attack he may not get the chance though.

A devastation volley becomes a hail of ineffectual shards. There are too many people and too much going on for the Acolyte to save more than a few people from the poison, and then both sides are filling the air with arrows, as goblin infantry begins to march out of the forest, in an approximation of ranks, on both sides of the road. 

The Acolyte will try and keep protecting himself and those in his immediate vicinity without interfering with the outgoing arrows, but with his attention split between that and attempting to help cut down the goblin infantry, his efficacy at both is limited.

That turns out to be enough; goblins are poor archers and poor soldiers, so their only advantage here was surprise. The acolyte keeps the front he's on from taking any serious losses, and while they're heavier on the other side of the battlefield, the goblins are as fearful fleeing from the singing banners of the winged lancer as they were brave charging in to start with. 

Alright, with the heat off, he can quickly try and help purify any surviving wounded. After that, he supposes he'll just have to rest himself, and wait for his next commands.

This was, in a fucked-up way, the goal; now whoever was smart enough and strong enough to set that up is probably dead or discredited, and the next waaagh will be that much less delayed for it. (The Acolyte, having been in several battles with greenskins, has developed a firm appreciation for why a group of them is called a "waaagh". Their battle-crys are like nothing else.) 

It is nasty business, but it spares the future more, worse nastiness. It's a familiar calculus even if that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Still, how are the men handling this? Is there anything in particular the Acolyte could be doing in this moment, now that the fighting has passed again? Or perhaps they will simply rest and continue onwards again.

The air grows grimmer with every death, among the men (and woman) of the pulk, but they understand in their bones the dread necessity of this work, and roar their defiance at the world which demands it of them. 

And then they get moving again. The added wounded slow the movement of the pulk, but it's safer than sending them back to the fort along unsecured roads. Eventually, the valley narrows into what seems like a dead end, but the dwarf pathfinders direct the scouts to a great gate into the earth, once impenetrable and now long-broken-open, saying that down this path, there was once a great fortress that commanded this pass - Karak Raziak. Lesser than Karak Ungor, with it's ancient gold-mines, said to be the richest in the world and now long-lost, but potentially much easier to take, not being the heartland of the foul Red Eye tribe. 

Tunnel fighting is probably more the Acolyte's speed, even if it poses its own risks. Fewer potential angles of attack means he doesn't need to split his focus in as many directions.

As always, he will go where he is commanded.

The tunnel-fighting will be given to the elite infantry, the tsar's guard and the streltsi, for the moment, since the kislev rank and file are not well-suited to it - they prefer to make up for quality of fire with quantity of fire, every man in the line bringing a bow as well as a melee weapon and only switching when absolutely needed to protect the front line, and dwarf fortresses are designed to give the defender the advantageous lines of fire in every situation, for all that this one will have been degraded by centuries of orcs digging paths every which way. 

The commanders will not think to put him on the front line of a tunnel-fight unless he suggests it, or something is encountered which is unlikely to die to mere men; making wizards do constant sustained casting rather than a few decisive spells is a recipe for disaster. 

Constant sustained casting honestly seems like one of the primary places where Knowledge outshines wind-magic, given the low cost and minimal risk of catastrophic failure. so he will actually suggest it. He won't push too hard if he meets resistance, though, it's not worth burning any political capital he's managed to gain so far.

With the idea in their heads, they will assign him to a secondary push through a side-tunnel; with his assigned ice-guards, it's expected he won't die to anything unexpected. 

And indeed, it isn't; a constant flow of goblins in every dark corner, with long wicked knives and shortbows and so much poison, plus the occasional crude fortification filled with burly orcs living high off the labour of the goblins they've enslaved. The problem is less killing them all, and more finding anything productive; it's a maze, and it's dangerous to get too far ahead of the rest of the forces, moving as much slower as they are, trying to secure every one of a hundred winding tunnels in the dark against the seemingly endless flow of greenskins.