Undsvin had never intended to fight the Smoleni in the northern forests. From the beginning, his strategy had been to shut them off from effective supply sources and starve them out. That was the reason he'd allowed his troops to abuse the local populations as they captured one southern district after another. And why he'd allowed refugees to move north, even though they were an impediment to his advancing army: Stories of murders and rapes would spread with them, and many in the towns ahead would flee northward, putting much greater pressure on the limited Smoleni supplies.
Meanwhile the serfs who made up more than half the Komarsi army had broad competencies of their own. They'd worked with their hands from childhood, doing almost everything there was to do on the estates they'd been part of. Besides field work and barn chores, they'd built and repaired almost everything required, except the manors themselves and their furnishings. And there was no shortage of lumber in Smolen: the sawmills along the Rumar and other major rivers had had many stacks of it dried or drying when the war began. Thus by summer's end, the Komarsi army in Smolen was housed mostly in barracks it had built outside the towns. In-town billeting was limited largely to headquarters personnel; discipline and training were more readily maintained in units barracked in the countryside.
Now that winter had arrived, the troops stayed close to their camps. They were drilled enough that, along with camp chores, they were kept busy, but their main function now was to be there, to occupy southern Smolen. For one thing, they weren't equipped to operate in the northern winter. Their supply of snowshoes was limited, although that was being remedied, and skis were nonexistent. Units along the Eel-Strawstack border with the Free Lands skirmished rather frequently with Smoleni raiders—particularly rangers practicing their new, T'swa-style tactics—but they took no offensive actions.
Even the T'swa were not particularly aggressive now. On Tyss there'd been no opportunity to train in snow and cold. Here they'd been issued snowshoes, and were learning to use them. They were discovering the nature of the landscape in winter—what the operational problems and opportunities were in different landscape types. But T'swa learn fast, and even before the solstice they were out hunting and destroying Smoleni recon teams.