Rise of the Horde

The first operation of the new phase made no tactical sense to anyone who observed it, which was the point.

Khao’khen ordered three hundred warriors of the 6th Warband to march, in full formation and in broad daylight, to the stone bridge at Halford Crossing, seven miles northeast of Millbridge, and to sit down.

Not to hold the bridge. Not to fortify it. Not to deny it to the enemy or prepare it for demolition. To sit down on it. In formation. In silence. Three hundred warriors seated cross-legged on a bridge that carried the combined force’s secondary supply route, their weapons laid across their knees, their shields beside them, their faces directed north toward the road where the supply convoys would arrive.

Sakh’arran, who understood most of Khao’khen’s designs before they were explained, looked at this one and paused.

"They sit," he said.

"They sit."

"On the bridge."

"On the bridge."

"In daylight. Without fortification. Without Roarer support. Without the anti-air platforms."

"Correct."

Sakh’arran waited for the explanation that accompanied every operational order. The explanation did not come. Khao’khen simply looked at him with the expression that the campaign’s analytical officer had learned to recognize as the expression that meant the explanation was the operation itself and the operation would explain itself when it produced the reaction it was designed to produce.

The 6th Warband marched to Halford Crossing at dawn. The warband’s master, a methodical warrior named Drul’kesh, executed the order with the precise obedience that the Horde’s command structure required, seating his formation on the bridge in the arrangement that the order specified, weapons across knees, silence maintained.

The warriors sat in rows of fifteen across the bridge’s width, their varying skins and dark armor creating a visual impression that was equal parts absurd and menacing, three hundred warriors who were not doing anything and whose not-doing-anything was the most aggressive thing the combined force’s forward scouts had observed since the campaign began. The warriors’ silence was the specific silence of fighters who had been ordered to be silent and whose obedience to the order communicated something about the army that gave the order that noise could not have communicated.

The combined force’s forward scouts reported the bridge occupation to Aldrath’s command post within two hours. The report described three hundred orcish warriors sitting on a bridge. Not blocking it with barricades. Not mining it with fire spheres. Sitting on it.

Aldrath’s staff debated the purpose for four hours.

* * * * *

The debate consumed the specific resource that the operation was designed to consume, which was not the bridge but the staff’s analytical capacity.

Colonel Drev, Aldrath’s intelligence officer, presented six possible interpretations of the bridge occupation, ranging from a screening action for a flanking movement to a psychological operation designed to draw the combined force’s attention away from the true objective. Each interpretation required a different response. The responses were mutually exclusive. Committing to one meant accepting the risk of the others.

Aldrath sent a cavalry reconnaissance force of two hundred riders to observe the bridge occupation. The cavalry arrived, observed three hundred orcs sitting on a bridge in silence, and reported that the orcs were sitting on the bridge in silence. The cavalry commander requested clarification of his orders, because his training had not prepared him for an enemy that occupied a strategic position by sitting on it.

While the combined force’s staff debated the bridge and the cavalry observed the bridge and Aldrath’s analytical capacity was oriented toward the bridge, Khao’khen sent the Throat Teams east.

Two teams. Thirty warriors. Moving through the terrain that the combined force’s reconnaissance was not watching because the reconnaissance was watching the bridge. The Throat Teams reached the combined force’s eastern supply depot at the hour before dawn on the second day and destroyed it.

Not the main depot. The eastern depot, the smaller facility that stored the mage corps’ replacement equipment, the communication crystals and spell matrices that had been shipped north from the capital to replace the equipment destroyed in the camp penetration weeks earlier. Equipment that had traveled four hundred miles and three weeks to reach the eastern province. Equipment that was now burning.

The 6th Warband stood up from the bridge at dawn on the second day and marched back to Millbridge. The bridge was undamaged. The three hundred warriors were unharmed. The operation’s cost was two days of sitting.

The operation’s yield was the destruction of the mage corps’ replacement equipment, which meant the combined force’s magical capability remained at the degraded level that the camp penetration had established, which meant every engagement going forward would be fought without the large-scale battle magic that Aldrath’s tactical planning depended on for the kind of force-multiplying effects that offset the Horde’s physical advantages in close combat.

The Throat Team warriors returned to Millbridge at dawn, moving through the eastern terrain with the specific silence that Throat Team operations required, the silence of warriors who had just destroyed equipment worth three weeks of transport and whose satisfaction with the destruction was contained in the professional manner that the teams’ operational discipline demanded.

"Morg," the team leader said, upon reporting to Sakh’arran. The single word carried the weight of an operation completed and an objective achieved and a professional’s quiet recognition that the objective had been worth the precision the operation required.

Sakh’arran assessed the results that evening.

"The bridge operation cost nothing and accomplished nothing," he said. "The Throat Team operation cost nothing and accomplished the destruction of irreplaceable equipment. The bridge operation’s function was to make the Throat Team operation possible by consuming the analytical attention that would have detected the Throat Team’s approach."

"Zug zug," Khao’khen said.

"The combined force will not be distracted by the same method again."

"They will not. Which is why the next distraction will be a different method. And the method after that will be different again. The purpose is not the method. The purpose is the principle: every time they look at the thing I want them to look at, they are not looking at the thing I do not want them to see."

The Snarling Wolf above the market hall held the second day’s fading light, the banner’s fabric carrying the wind that came down from the highlands, the wolf’s snarl directed at the forces arrayed against it with the expression that had not changed and would not change until the wolf’s work was done or the wolf was destroyed.

The wolf was not going to be destroyed. The wolf was going to make the forces arrayed against it wish they had accepted the peace when the peace was offered.