Rise of the Horde

Chapter 711 - 710

Aldrath attacked on the twenty-second day because the accumulated degradation of the ghost fires and the drum wall and the harvest delay and the bridge ambush and the singing advances and the Throat Team operations and the farrier destruction and everything else the Horde had done in three weeks had produced the specific condition that Aldrath's professional instinct recognized as the threshold: the point where waiting cost more than acting, regardless of the acting's risk.

The attack was the most sophisticated operation the combined force had conducted since the four-column convergence. Three elements. The first, a frontal advance of eight thousand infantry down the valley road, designed to fix the Horde's main body in its defensive positions. The second, a flanking movement of four thousand infantry through the western farmland, moving at night to reach a position on the Horde's western flank before dawn. The third, Aldrath's personal command of the remaining force as the reserve, positioned to exploit whatever opening the two-pronged assault produced.

The operation was well-designed. The timing was professional. The execution was competent.

Khao'khen had been expecting it since the eighteenth day.

"The threshold," Sakh'arran had said, on the eighteenth day. "He is approaching it. The degradation has been accumulating faster than projected because the ghost fires' psychological effect is compounding with the physical effects of the other operations. His staff's decision-making quality is declining. The cavalry's operational readiness is reduced. The planting delay has forced a supply chain recalculation that is consuming his logistics staff's capacity. He will attack before the degradation reaches the point where attack is no longer possible."

"When?"

"Four days. The supply convoy arriving on the twenty-first day replenishes his Roarer ammunition to the level that offensive operations require. He attacks on the twenty-second or twenty-third day."

Khao'khen had prepared the valley for the twenty-second day.

* * * * *

The frontal advance's eight thousand infantry hit the Horde's defensive line at dawn and found what the Horde's defensive line always presented to a frontal assault: the shield wall, the Roarers on the flanks, the fire sphere positions on the ridgelines, and the 1st Warband at the center where the assault's weight was concentrated.

"DRAK'UL VOSH!" The 1st Warband's defiance cry went up from the shield wall as the Threian infantry's first rank closed to contact range. Death before surrender. The words were not the words of warriors who expected to die. They were the words of warriors who were telling the force in front of them what the cost of this engagement would be.

"Grak'thar!" Arka'garr's voice, the 1st Warband master's command tone cutting through the contact's noise. "Zug zug mag! We are one, we are war!"

The shield wall held. It did not merely hold. It pushed. The 1st Warband's warriors, fighting in the full-release mode that the new phase had established, met the frontal assault with the combination of discipline and physical ferocity that had been the campaign's defining quality, the organized application of orcish strength that turned the frontal assault's numerical advantage into a compression problem, eight thousand soldiers pushed into the space that the valley road's width allowed and ground against the shield wall that would not move.

The western flanking force reached its position on schedule and found Trot'thar waiting.

Trot'thar's three warbands had moved to the western position during the night, guided by the Verakh network that had detected the flanking force's departure from the combined force's camp six hours before the flanking force's commander believed his movement was undetected. Fifteen hundred warriors in prepared positions, facing four thousand infantry who arrived expecting to surprise an undefended flank and instead found a force that had been specifically positioned to receive them.

"Vol duum mok!" Trot'thar's war cry carried the Ashrock honor tradition's weight, the words calling the ancestors to witness the engagement. "No surrender, the dead watch!"

"DUUM! DUUM! DUUM!" The single-word defiance cry rose from Trot'thar's three warbands in the rhythmic repetition that the Dreadmoor tradition used for engagements against superior numbers, each repetition landing like a hammer blow on the flanking force's momentum, the sound of fifteen hundred warriors who had been told they were outnumbered and whose response was the single word that meant we do not go back.

The flanking engagement became the engagement that consumed the flanking force's momentum, four thousand soldiers fighting fifteen hundred in terrain that the fifteen hundred had prepared and that the four thousand had not expected to find prepared.

The reserve, Aldrath's personal command, moved to support the flanking force when the flanking force's reports indicated contact.

The reserve's movement exposed the combined force's camp.

Haguk's warg cavalry, four hundred and sixty riders who had been holding position south of the valley since the previous night, hit the exposed camp from the direction that the reserve's departure had left unguarded.

Not to destroy the camp. To take the supply depot.

The supply depot's contents, three weeks of provisions and four hundred Roarer ammunition crates, were loaded onto the wagons that the warg riders' trailing element brought and were moving south toward the corridor before Aldrath's reserve reached the flanking engagement.

* * * * *

The battle's results were tabulated at the end of the day. Threian losses: six hundred and twelve killed, eight hundred and forty wounded, three weeks of provisions and four hundred ammunition crates captured. Horde losses: one hundred and eighty-nine killed, two hundred and sixty-one wounded.

"He used our attack to feed his army," Aldrath said, in the evening's silence. The Lord-Commander's voice carried the specific quality of a professional who had just experienced something new in the long career that he had believed contained no new experiences.

"MORG!" Dhug'mhar's voice carried across the Horde's camp with the volume that post-engagement celebrations required when the engagement had produced the results that this engagement had produced. "GROMBASH KRUL! MOK GROMBASH KRUL! The strong have earned this and the ancestors witnessed it all! Perfection's contribution was, as usual, decisive. The camp assault was Perfection's idea."

"The camp assault was the chief's idea," Graka said.

"All ideas within Perfection's operational environment are, by proximity, Perfection's ideas."

The wolf above the market hall held the night's darkness, the banner invisible but present, the wolf's snarl directed at a combined force that was now three weeks of provisions poorer and four hundred Roarer crates lighter and facing the specific mathematical problem that an army faced when its enemy had just stolen its food.

Twenty-two days gone. The window was working. The wolf was working. Everything was working because the system was the target and the system was degrading.