Rise of the Horde

The second verse was not louder. It was quieter, and it was worse.

Khao’khen had studied the Meren valley’s agricultural calendar with the attention that he applied to terrain maps and garrison strengths, because the agricultural calendar was a weapon that no commander in the campaign’s history had used and that no commander had thought to use, because commanders thought about armies and Khao’khen thought about systems.

The valley’s spring planting season was entering its critical phase, the two-week window during which the crops that would feed the eastern province’s population, including the twenty-five thousand soldiers of the combined force, were planted. The planting required civilian labor. The civilian labor required access to the fields. The fields were in the valley that the Horde controlled.

Khao’khen did not burn the fields. Burning fields was the tactic of an army that wanted to deny territory. Khao’khen did not want to deny the territory. He wanted to control the timing.

He sent delegations to the valley’s farming communities with a message that Sakh’arran had composed in careful Threian: the Horde would guarantee the safety of any civilian who entered the fields to plant. The planting would proceed on the Horde’s schedule, not the agricultural calendar’s schedule. The schedule the Horde set would delay the planting by exactly three weeks, shifting the harvest window from late summer to early autumn, which shifted the combined force’s food supply timeline by the same three weeks.

Three weeks was the difference between the combined force being provisioned when the Second Reserve Corps arrived and the combined force needing the Second Reserve Corps to bring its own provisions, which meant the Second Reserve Corps’ supply train would need to be three times longer, which meant the march from the capital would take an additional week, which meant the six-week window was now a seven-week window.

"You are fighting the calendar," Sakh’arran said, when the operational logic was complete.

"I am fighting the system. The army is the system’s most visible part. The army exists because the system feeds it, equips it, and moves it. Disrupt the system and the army’s capability degrades without a single engagement. The calendar is part of the system. The harvest is part of the system. The roads are part of the system. The farrier’s tools are part of the system. Every component of the system that we degrade is a component that the combined force must replace from its own resources, and every replacement reduces the resources available for the purpose the combined force exists to serve."

* * * * *

The farming communities received the Horde’s message with the complicated response that occupied civilian populations produced when the occupying force offered terms that were not destructive but were not voluntary.

Administrator Sera at Millbridge, whose practical competence had managed the market’s operation throughout the Horde’s occupation, met with Sakh’arran and negotiated the planting schedule’s specific terms.

"Three weeks delays the harvest past the first frost risk," she said.

"The frost risk is fourteen percent in a normal year," Sakh’arran said. "The crop yield reduction from a three-week delay is approximately twelve percent in the absence of frost and thirty percent if frost occurs. The crop yield reduction from the Horde burning the fields is one hundred percent. The chief’s position is that the delay is preferable to the alternative, and the alternative is the one that an army that was not fighting for something worth preserving would choose."

"You are not threatening to burn the fields."

"No. The chief does not burn fields. The chief controls when fields are planted, which achieves a military objective without destroying the resource that the civilian population depends on. The distinction matters to the chief. It should matter to the province."

"The distinction is the difference between an occupying army and an occupying disaster," Sera said, and the observation carried the specific quality of a civilian administrator who had been occupied by both kinds in her professional memory and who recognized the difference.

Sera negotiated the terms with the professional pragmatism that had characterized her interactions with the Horde throughout the occupation. The planting schedule was adjusted. The civilians entered the fields under the Horde’s protection, the orcish warriors standing at the field’s perimeters while the farmers worked, the visual contrast of armored orcish warriors guarding human farmers producing a scene that no participant in the campaign had expected and that no military doctrine had a provision for. The planting proceeded on the delayed schedule.

Aldrath received the intelligence about the delayed planting from his own agricultural advisors and recognized the operation for what it was.

"He is starving us without burning a single stalk," Aldrath said, at the evening council.

"The harvest delay means our supply calculations are invalid. Every provision estimate for the combined force’s autumn operations must be revised. The Second Reserve Corps’ supply requirements must be recalculated. The march timeline must be adjusted."

"The adjustment adds seven to ten days to the Reserve Corps’ arrival," Snowe said.

"Seven to ten days that he gains without an engagement. Without a single warrior killed. Without a single weapon fired. He delayed our reinforcement by controlling when farmers plant seeds." Aldrath set his hands on the table with the specific pressure of a commander who was watching his opponent dismantle the war’s infrastructure from a direction that military doctrine had no defense for. "This is not a commander. This is something else. Something that no military academy in the kingdom has a word for."

"Mog’rok," Snowe said, and the word was not Orcish but the old general had been campaigning against the Horde long enough that certain words had entered his operational vocabulary without his conscious decision to adopt them. He caught himself. "He sees what we need before we need it and denies it before we reach for it. He is not fighting our army. He is fighting our logistics."

"Zug zug, pinkskins," Krak’thul said, from the ridgeline observation post where the 4th Warband’s most vocal warrior had been monitoring the combined force’s camp with a Verakh spyglass and providing running commentary to the warriors around him. "Your supply master weeps again. Your harvest is late. Your calendar belongs to us. SHARAG KRUL! Take what they died for!"

The reclamation oath’s words carried across the ridgeline with the conviction that the Ashrock and Stonecaller traditions imbued in the phrase, the oath that was spoken before battles fought to reclaim lost territory, which was what the campaign had always been about, the reclamation of the thing that was taken before Yohan existed.

The Snarling Wolf held its position. The calendar turned. The planting proceeded on the Horde’s schedule. And the window, which had been six weeks, was now seven, because time was a weapon and the wolf understood time better than the forces arrayed against it understood anything.