Chapter 77

Chapter 77 \n“Burkes, I haven’t seen you for some time. I thought you had forgotten this old friend of yours!” Davos greeted him with a smile.\n“How could I forget! I had just came back and so I had a lot of backlogs that needs to be dealt urgently, and I have no spare time for a while” Explained Burkes.

“Oh, so have you finished it now?” Davos jokingly said.

“Still not finished.” Burkes then added, “However, there is an important order from the city hall of Thurii for me to convey.”

“Oh, what’s the important order? The lords of Thurii finally remembered us mercenaries.” Davos said teasingly.

“Shall I speak here?” Burkes looked around.\n“I’m sorry, this is my negligence, then let’s go to my tent.” Davos led them to the center of the camp while he apologized.

“Have you learned this ‘Tug of War’ from Persia?” Asked Burkes.

“I came up with it mainly because I was worried that if the soldiers stayed in the camp for a long time and have nothing to do then some accidents may happen. Therefore, I have them compete in sports not only to consume their energy, but also to exercise their bodies and develop their teamwork. As a matter of fact, there is a reward for the final champion of this competition, and I put out a lot of money myself.”

“You handled these mercenaries very well!” Praised Burkes, and he then change the topic, “But you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Soon, you will have some stuff to do.”

Davos was not surprised, “The Lucanians are already started appearing. While Thurii isn’t taking any actions, and made me thought that you were ready to give them the land outside of the city.”

Hearing the resentment in Davos’ words, Burkes was thinking about how to respond, but the afterglow on his eyes made him see a 4-meter high stone wall inside the wooden wall on the right, which shocked him and said, “Do you still plan to build a stone wall?”\nDavos blinked, “The floor of the wooden wall is relatively wet, so it is not strong enough. Therefore, a stone wall is built inside using stone debris to prevent it from being broken.”

“You and your soldiers are so great that the camp you built turned into a city!” Burkes vaguely criticized.

“We can’t help it. The number of our people is too small, and if we don’t make the camp stronger, once Thurii is surrounded and us mercenaries needs help as we also get surrounded, then who will help us? Therefore, we have to rely on ourselves!” Said Davos frankly.

“The market outside is also related to the defense of the camp?” Asked Burkes rhetorically.

“At first, I just wanted to rely on the market to buy and sell some stuffs that we need for our daily needs. However, I didn’t expect that it would become like this…but you don’t have to worry, when the Lucanians are defeated, everything will be back to normal.” Davos assured him.

Burkes just wants to gain some psychological advantage in the following conversation. After all, only the city hall and council can make a decision whether to force the mercenaries to close the market, and so he no longer pursued it, but had instead decided to go back and report it to Friis. After entering the tent of Davos, he immediately said, “According to the situation, the Lucanians may attack Thurii in 2 days. After deliberating, the strategoi decided to meet the enemy and ask for you to participate in that battle.”

\nBurkes started to get nervous.

“Would you like to hear my opininon?” Davos raised his head and pointed to the drawing on the ground and calmly said, “This troops allocation given by Thurii should be relatively balanced. And it is obvious that the strategoi wanted to use defense to drag down the enemy’s attack through a long confrontation.”

Burkes nodded because Friis had said something similar when he explained it to him about why he had done it this way. Davos really deserved his reputation, from just him looking at the drawing he managed toinfer the intentions of the strategos.

“Although I haven’t fought with the Lucanians, but I have fought with many mountain races in Persia. Their fighting characteristics should be similar, they are fierce, loosely organized and poorly equipped. Maybe that is the reason why your strategos have the confidence to take this kind of formation. However, there are a few problems that needs to remind your strategos-” Davos turned around and raised his tone, and said,

“Last year, there are more than 10,000 citizens of Thurii that was killed in the battle with Lucanians, which means that nearly 10,000 sets of excellent Greek hoplite equipment fell into the hands of the Lucanians. They can then use these equipment to completely update their simple equipment, I have encountered this situation while scouting Amendolara. Secondly, according to my scouting, there are at least 13,000 warriors in the Lucanian coalition, which is 3,000 more than us. This mean that their formation will be denser than us, not only will they have greater impact and pushing force than us, but also the threat of getting flanked. They have just won a great victory, and their morale will be much higher when facing us, and as far as I can see, you Thurians are afraid of the Lucanians from the bottom of your hearts, and so it’s hard to say who will retreat first after a long battle.” Davos uses the branch to draw on the ground, which represents Thurii’s center, “Don’t forget, half of your force has ‘old men’ included.”

Burkes confidence about the “Greek hoplite clashing with the savages without being afraid of them in the face of war” was shaken due to the words of Davos.

“Do you want to hear my plan?” Said Davos at this time.