Chapter 272 - 171 Sidonius’s Doubts_2
When the rebel army’s decrees were being implemented everywhere, bringing joy and laughter throughout the temporary camp, there was only one place that remained quiet.
This place was located on the western side of the camp, facing the direction of the Alde Tribe, between the inner and outer camps, surrounded by a moat and wooden fence, and sandwiched between the Inner Camp Guard’s tent area, the outer camp’s First Legion, and the new recruits’ rest area.
Inside lived the four thousand captured Pannonian warriors, who were escorted daily to construct the camp, working from dawn until nightfall, exhausted to near death. Upon their return, the food they received was not enough to fill them, forcing them to lie down early to rest to avoid excessive exhaustion.
But they had no tents to rest in; the rebel army merely marked areas on the ground, with ten people lying on a piece of bare land, covered with dry straw, lying down in their clothes, surprisingly soft.
As it was early autumn, it rarely rained at night here, and the weather was neither cold nor hot, so sleeping outdoors was not much of a problem.
Although the camp was close to the river, the rebel army had already cut and filled the mud pits and reed beds, prone to mosquito breeding around the camp. And as per Emmerich’s suggestion, they burned a kind of wild grass around the camp every day. Although the smell was strange, it indeed reduced the mosquito bites.
Therefore, the Pannonian warrior captives, who had finished their dinner early, were indifferent to the surrounding waves of cheering, quickly falling sound asleep under the sentries’ watch...
The Legal Officer Sidonius approached the Central Army Tent, seeing Maximus standing at the tent entrance, bidding farewell to an Aldean. He stopped, waiting for the person to leave before walking over, curiously asking, "Leader, which envoy from the Alde Tribe is that?"
"I didn’t quite remember either, just that it’s not one of those Alde Tribes that once lived along the Kupa River and were eventually driven away by the Segestica people," Maximus casually replied. "They all speak the same language, saying things like ’they’ve lost their homeland, and their tribesmen live in hardship, hoping we can help them return to their ancestral land’ and the like..."
"They’re dreaming!" Sidonius said coldly. "The treaty we signed with the Alde Tribe states clearly that the land we seized from the Segestica people belongs to us... are they trying to break the treaty?!"