Chapter XX: King Magnus's Opening Moves.

Late May 1111 VTE near Trinitas

Magnus and his army had made good progress towards Trinitas, his objective, over the past two weeks. He did not expect to meet such little resistance that he had faced thus far, with the only thing preventing this from being more or less a parade being the short bombardments and surrender of 3 Border Forts and their tiny garrisons. Soon his army would be at the gates of Trinitas, and laying siege to the important city itself. But Magnus understood that things weren't going as well as he planned despite this of this great success...

First, he was somewhat unnerved by the coldness his army had been received by the local population. He had been told prior to the war that the people of Syrenia would rise up in open arms if Magnus presented his army as liberators, but instead, he found the population to be borderline hostile to his army, with every village entered thus far having provided no warm perception to his army whatsoever, with many staying in their houses and shops themselves being closed. He had even heard some shouts personally of such vulgarity towards him and his men that he thanked Selen it did not result in his men breaking composure. Farmers were hesitated to deal with his men, too. Something was not right about this. These same farms and some of these villages had been torched by Pomerlane nearly a decade ago. Why weren't they throwing their full support behind him?

Secondly, he was quite shocked to hear that Pomerlane himself had not taken his army as he expected towards Syrenia but had divided it and personally taken about 30,000 to the north with the rest believing to be sent to Syrenia. This was uncharacteristic of Pomerlane, who seemingly had made a blunder of diluting his force in the face of an enemy. He expected something bolder from the genius, such as taking his whole army north or striking towards Selenium itself. He even expected that Pomerlane would realize the problem he faced in Syrenia and try to meet him on the battlefield. But dividing his forces? That was shocking to Magnus and did give him a good amount of anxiety, because certainly Pomerlane was doing something beyond what he expected himself and the uncertainty behind it was not good. What was that Renegade Prince up to now? Did he really make a blunder by dividing his smaller forces or was there something up his sleeve?

Finally, Magnus had received reports from Karl Bergenstråhle, Count-Palatine of Aarstad, that were not good...

To be continued.