Rise of the Horde

Chapter 714 - 713

The skirmish at Harren's Ford was supposed to be a patrol contact.

Aldrath had sent a reinforced cavalry screening force of three hundred riders to probe the Meren valley's western approaches, the standard reconnaissance that a combined force of forty-seven thousand conducted when it was preparing to advance into terrain that had already demonstrated its capacity to produce tactical surprises. The screening force was professional, well-led, equipped with the frost-enchanted lances that the Baron of Frost's quartermaster had distributed to the forward cavalry squadrons.

They found the 5th Warband's screening element at the ford.

One hundred Yurakk warriors in their standard deployment, rectangular shields overlapping at the waterline, stabbing swords held at the ready, the formation's discipline visible in the stillness that five hundred hours of Arka'garr's drill had instilled. They were not positioned to hold the ford. They were positioned to be seen holding the ford.

The cavalry commander assessed the situation and made the professional decision that three hundred riders against one hundred orcish infantry at a water crossing represented a favorable engagement. He ordered the charge.

The charge crossed the ford in good order. The horses found footing on the riverbed's gravel. The lances came down at the approach distance that cavalry doctrine specified. The formation was textbook. The execution was competent.

The 5th Warband's screening element received the charge with the Tohr'terra.

Shields locked overhead and to the front. The rectangular shields' overlapping coverage created the moving shell that the formation was designed to produce, the iron surfaces angled to deflect rather than absorb the lance points, the warriors beneath the shell braced in the specific stance that allowed them to hold position against cavalry impact without the individual soldiers bearing the force individually.

The lances hit the Tohr'terra and skidded. Not penetrated. Skidded. The shield shell's geometry turned the lance points away from the warriors beneath them, the iron sliding across iron in the screech that the formation produced when it functioned as designed. Horses collided with the shell's front face and stopped, the animals' momentum absorbed by the formation's collective weight rather than any individual warrior's strength.

"Zug zug, pinkskins!" The voice came from inside the Tohr'terra, muffled by the shield shell but audible. "Your horses have more sense than you! Your horses stopped! You should listen to your horses! NAK'ROSH!"

A second voice from the shell's right side joined the commentary. "Rak'shel! Looks strong, breaks immediately! Your lances are decoration! Try a sharper point! Try a different career!"

The cavalry reformed and charged again. The Tohr'terra held again. The shield shell's surfaces now bore the gouges of the lance impacts, the marks that demonstrated the geometry was working, the lance points sliding across the angled iron rather than punching through it, the physics of the formation's design converting direct impact into deflection with the efficiency that the engineering of overlapping curved shields produced.

The cavalry's third charge was forming when the 3rd Warband arrived from the western tree line where it had been positioned since dawn.

Five hundred Yurakks at the assault pace, hitting the cavalry's reforming flank in the open ground between the ford and the tree line, their stabbing swords finding the gaps between the riders' armor plates that the swords' narrow points were specifically designed to exploit.

"GRAK'THAR!" The 3rd Warband's fury cry erupted as the flank contact closed. "KRAGH! VRAAK!"

The cavalry's reforming flank dissolved. Three hundred riders became two hundred, then one hundred and sixty, the casualties accumulating at the rate that close combat between dismounted cavalry and orcish infantry always produced when the orcish infantry was operating at full release.

The survivors withdrew across the ford. The 5th Warband's Tohr'terra opened, the warriors emerging from their shell to survey the ford's western bank where the cavalry's dead and wounded lay in the pattern that a broken charge produced.

* * * * *

Aldrath received the patrol contact report and recognized it for what it was: not a skirmish but a provocation.

He sent two thousand infantry to reinforce the ford. Khao'khen sent the 7th and 8th Warbands to reinforce the 3rd and 5th. Aldrath committed a further four thousand. Khao'khen committed the 9th and 10th. The escalation followed the pattern that escalation always followed when two commanders recognized the same piece of terrain as the place where the engagement's geometry favored their respective doctrines.

By the afternoon of the second day, twelve thousand Threian soldiers faced four thousand orcish warriors across a ford that neither side had planned to fight over and that both sides were now committed to holding because withdrawal conceded the terrain to the opponent and the terrain's value had been established by the blood already spent on it.

The escalation had a momentum of its own. Each reinforcement committed by one side justified the other side's response, and each response justified the next reinforcement, the cycle feeding itself until the patrol contact at a ford had become a multi-division engagement that consumed the attention and resources that both commanders had allocated for other operational purposes.

This was the mechanism that Khao'khen had designed the initial screening element to produce. Not the ford's capture. Not the cavalry's destruction. The escalation itself. The process by which a combined force of forty-seven thousand soldiers committed twelve thousand of its number to a terrain feature that one hundred orcish warriors had been sitting at when the process began.

"He is pulling us in," Snowe said, at the evening council. "Every reinforcement we send, he matches. He is fighting with four thousand against twelve thousand and he is holding because his four thousand are operating behind prepared positions with Roarer support and the ford constrains our numerical advantage to the crossing's width."

"Then we cross elsewhere," Varen said. The Second Reserve Corps' commander had arrived with the professional confidence of a general who had not yet fought the Yohan First Horde and who was processing the campaign's history through the filter of his own experience rather than the experience of the commanders who had been fighting the Horde for months.

"He wants us to cross elsewhere," Snowe said. "The ford is the distraction. Wherever we cross elsewhere is the place he has prepared for us."

The Snarling Wolf held its position above the market hall. The skirmish at Harren's Ford had become the Battle of Harren's Ford without either commander formally declaring it so, and the battle was producing the specific result that Khao'khen's campaign design required: the commitment of Threian numerical superiority to a terrain feature that neutralized the superiority's decisive potential.

Four thousand orcs held twelve thousand soldiers at a river crossing, and the river did not care which army was larger.