B3Ch88-Change in plans (Patreon)

Harold hit the tent flap hard enough to snap the canvas, and the TOC noise hit him in the face along with the heat.

It was a kicked anthill in there. Runners shouldered past each other in the aisle between the map tables with slates under their arms, and clerks bent over casualty rolls with their lips moving as they counted. Somebody at the back shouted numbers to someone, and someone shouted them back. The whole tent stank. The staff officer by the door saw him and snapped upright.

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!”

“ATTENTION IN THE TOC!” the tent bellowed back, every voice in it, and the clerks came off their stools.

“Count arriving!”

Harold turned and looked at him, annoyed as he shouldered his way in.

“Shut it.”

Hale came in through the flap behind Harold, stamping snow off his boots, and walked past both of them to the big map table without a word, and the tent went back to work around them. Harold followed him to the table and put both fists on the edge of it.

“Okay,” he said. “Get me up to speed. Where did we fuck up? And where’s Garrick?”

“Garrick’s with Fourth Corps.” Hale was already pulling slates toward him and sorting them by some system only he understood. “Most of the screen’s over on that side, so that’s where I need him. He’s running their scouts, and he won’t be back for days.”

“Then get me whoever’s running scouts here.”

Hale lifted a hand without looking, and a runner peeled off toward the flap.

Maren was at the far end of the table as she bandaged up a nasty gash on her arm. She nodded to Harold and went back to it. Halloran stood behind her in his long coat, arms folded, studying the map. Down the table, Mark sat on a camp stool with a bandage around one hand and his elbows on his knees. Adeline had already taken her corner, and her folio was open, and she looked up at Harold once and went back to her pages. 

Dorgan sat on an upended crate by the brazier with his ribs strapped and his axe across his knees.

“How are the ribs?” Harold asked him.

“Broke,” Dorgan said. “Same as the troll’s knee. I’d call it even, but the troll’s dead.”

The flap opened again, and Sawyer came in.

He’d come straight off the ridges. He was filthy to the eyebrows, with a rip down one sleeve that had been bandaged over with what looked like a strip of somebody’s shirt, and he had a short bow over one shoulder and two quivers on his hip, both of them nearly empty. He came to the table, looked at the officers around it, and nodded to Harold.

“My lord.”

“Sawyer.” Harold had last seen him when he graduated scout training. He’d been an Optio then. Now he had a centurion’s knot on his shoulder and a couple of new scars. “You’re running scouts for First Corps?”

“Yes, my lord. Since Captain Garrick went west.”

“Then tell me where we fucked up.”

Sawyer didn’t flinch from it. He leaned over the map and put one dirty finger on the valley.

“We looked up, my lord, and they come from under.” He traced the ridges. “We had teams up both these ridgelines since yesterday mornin’. Cleared ’em. Found some goblin sign, couple dead pickets, nothin’ big. Reckoned anything set to hit us would be sittin’ up top, so that’s where we put our eyes. The earth crafters typically scan the earth as we move. But I talked to some of em. The tunnels they used were sunk deeper than they can scan easily.” He tapped the river flats. “Nobody figured on tunnels under the valley floor. Not down there. Ground’s half frozen river gravel. Shouldn’t hold a tunnel worth a damn.” His jaw worked. “And that avalanche. We seen it. I personally set a team to watch the dangerous areas, but when I went to check on them I found their throats slit.”

“How’d they bring it down?”

“Shamans, my lord. Found the spot after.” Sawyer spat into the brazier, and it hissed. “Them hobgoblins in the narrows was waitin’ in a cut that runs off to the side. Covered over with hides and snow. Some kind of spell over em that made us avoid the area. It wasn’t until I talked to some o’ my teams that we noticed that area didnt get properly cased.” He straightened up. “They was smart about it, my lord. Smarter’n I’ve seen goblins be. Whoever’s runnin’ ’em knows this country better’n we do and knows how we look at it.”

Harold looked at the valley on the map for a long moment.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Thank you, Sawyer. Stay.”

Sawyer nodded and stepped back from the table, folded his arms, and went still.

“So that’s where we are,” Hale said. “First Allied’s lost two thousand, near enough. Second Allied lost another two cohorts. The other Allied legions from 1st Corps are still reporting but I'm expecting a total loss of around eight thousand from 1st Corps. The baggage is a mess. The wargs got into the medical wagons before the Iron Order chased them off.” He put a slate down. “The narrows have to be cleared, the road dug out, the baggage sorted, and the wounded sent back. Four days. Five if it snows again.”

“It’ll snow again,” Maren said, without looking up.

“Five days, then.” Hale looked at Harold. “Then we continue up the valley on the plan as written.”

“We can’t sit here five days.”

“We can, and we will, if that’s what it takes.”

“Hale.” Harold leaned on the table. “Every day we sit here, they dig in deeper at the city. Every day we sit here, the Velthari get another day closer to the thaw. They’re already putting scouts into the northern lines. We need to be done here and marching north before the passes open up there, or we’ll be fighting them on our own ground with half the army still stuck in these mountains.”

“I know the calendar, Sire,” Hale said stiffly.

“Then you know it’s too slow. They’re slowing us down, and they’re doing it well.” Harold reached across the map and put his finger on a knot of lines where six thin passes came together, three days' march up the valley and off to the east. “This town. That’s the key to the whole range. It’s critical.”

“I know it’s critical,” Hale said. “It controls six different passes, and the goblins are using them to move troops around.” He drew them with his finger, one, two, three, all six radiating out from the knot like spokes on a wheel. “Take that town, and we limit the entrances to their city. They can’t shuffle their army around behind the mountains anymore. That’s exactly why the other corps are taking the passes they’re taking. We isolate it, choke it off, and then we take it once it’s cut off from the city.”

“In five days, once we’ve finished digging out.”

“In however long it takes.”

Harold looked down at the town and rubbed his jaw.

“What if we’re doing it wrong, though?” Maren said.

They both looked down the table at her. She turned the chalk in her fingers and looked at the town too.

Hale gave her a look that could have curdled milk.

“Continue,” he said.

“What if we want them to move troops to it?” Maren put the chalk down in the town and left it. “Right now, we’re going around the edges. Taking the outer passes. Closing them off one at a time, so when we get to the town it’s alone. It’s standard procedure. We want to isolate the objective first. But that means fighting them in pieces, in their country, on their terms, every single day. Like today.” She tipped her head at the valley. “What if an advance force went on the attack instead? Got there in a day, before they knew it was coming, and took it.”

“They’d go mad,” Halloran said slowly.

“They’d be desperate to retake it.” Maren nodded. “It’s the hub of their whole road net, and they’d move everything to get it back.”

“And the force that took it would be crushed,” Hale said. “We don’t have a force big enough to take that town and still move fast enough to get there in a day. A legion can’t cross that country in a day. Not in this snow. Not with the passes contested.”

Harold rubbed his jaw again. Down the table, Halloran unfolded his arms and opened his mouth to speak.

“The Legion could do it,” Maren said right over him. “With the Count’s new roads.”

Halloran closed his mouth again with a look of mild injury.

“Mine roads,” Dorgan said from the brazier.

Everyone looked at him.

“Mine roads, Count.” The dwarf hefted himself off the crate with a grunt, one hand pressed to his strapped ribs, and limped to the table. He reached into his coat and pulled out a fat roll of oilcloth, and slapped it down across the map. When he unrolled it, it was covered in lines, hundreds of them, each one a tunnel. “The Bronzeshoulder’s roads.” He jabbed a thick finger at the town. “There’s a cut that runs right under that place from here. Comes up in the old ore cellars beneath their market. Ye’d be under the walls before the greenskins knew ye’d left this valley.” He looked around the table. “Ye’d be lost in an hour without me, mind.”

“Can a legion move through those?” Hale asked.

“In column, aye. Three abreast on the main road. Two in the narrow bits.” Dorgan sniffed. “It was built for ore carts.”

Maren had picked her chalk up again, and she leaned over the oilcloth, and Harold could see the plan come together in her face as she traced it. Hope rose up within him at the sight. This was why he had expended so much to recruit her in this life. She had been a famous and infamous commander in his last life. Her and Fitch together.

“So the Legion goes under,” she said. “It comes up inside the town and takes it and holds it. The goblins surround it. They’ll have to, because they can’t leave it in our hands. Otherwise we cut off most access to their city.” Her chalk went out along the six passes, one by one. “And while every goblin in these mountains is running at that town, the corps move up the other passes around it. Second Corps here. Third and Fourth here and here. They cut off the reinforcements coming up behind, and they close in.” She drew a ring around the town, and then she drew a second ring around the first one. “And then the corps smash the goblins besieging the town from the outside, between the corps and the Legion.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“We could destroy a large part of the goblin army,” Maren said. “Out here, in the open, instead of behind the walls of the city.”

“Risky,” Hale and Halloran said at the same time.

Harold was still looking at the two rings.

“Do it,” he said.

“Harold—”

“Do it, Hale. It’s good. It’s better than good.” He looked at Maren. “It’s exactly what we need.”

Hale breathed out through his nose. He leaned over the map with both hands on the table, and looked at it for a long time, and didn’t argue yet. Harold had known him long enough to know what that meant. He was looking for the hole.

“The wargs,” he said finally. He put his finger on the passes between Third and Fourth Corps. “This terrain is bad. Broken ground, side valleys, a hundred places to come out of. The wargs have been cutting Third Corps up for a week. If Third and Fourth move fast through that country, the wargs will be all over them. They’ll hit the flanks, the baggage, the rear. We’ll bleed every mile.”

Maren shrugged. “Then it’s time to spend some adventurers.”

Down the table, Mark looked up.

“Technically most of them are on a quest right now,” Maren said. “We can afford to lose some of them. And they all want a piece of the wargs anyway. The speed and the durability perks they get off those kills are worth the cost. The crushing perk they get is interesting as well, and the upgraded pack tactics perk.” She looked at Mark. 

Mark rubbed the back of his neck with his good hand. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, they’d go. Half of them would go for free just for the perks. The other half for the gold.” He blew out a breath. “Some of them won’t come back.”

“Some of them won’t come back from sitting in this valley either,” Maren said.

Mark looked at her, and then at Harold, and nodded slowly.

Halloran cleared his throat, and this time nobody talked over him.

“If I may, sire.” He came around the table and leaned over the map, and put one long finger on a pass that ran out to the west of the town. “This one here. ’Tis the one they’ve been using to get their wolves round the flanks so quick. My order could march to here, and cut it off.” He tapped it twice. “Plug that, and the wargs can’t come at the flanks of Third and Fourth through the quick ways. They’d have to take the long roads round, or go to ground in the underroads.”

“Wargs won’t go below,” Dorgan said, with deep contempt. “Not a chance of it. They hate the enclosed spaces worse than they hate us. Ye’ll not find a warg in a dwarf road while there’s a hole in the sky to run under.”

“He’s right,” Sawyer said from the back. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged. “Never seen sign of ’em underground, my lord. We know they do use the tunnels to move around, but only in short spurts. They won't stay under the mountains long.”

“So the passes then,” Halloran said. “The adventurers can hunt them along it, moving in smaller teams.” He straightened up. “And I’ll send a detachment of my best with yer Legion, sire. My irregulars and my archers. Ye’ll want bows on those walls.”

Hale grunted. He looked at the map a moment longer, and Harold watched him find the next hole.

“If speed’s the problem,” Hale said, “then call the eagles back. Bomb that town flat from the air and save everyone the trouble.”

“You know why I can’t, Hale.”

Hale did know. He grimaced anyway.

“The eagles are out there making sure the lords don’t do something stupid,” Harold said. He looked over at Adeline’s corner. “How many last night?”

Adeline didn’t need to check her folio. “Margaret authorized three more strikes. One on a lord west of the Basin who tried to assassinate a Lord on his border. And the other two on lords who kept their levies home from the muster while they took the bounty for sending them.” She turned a page. “And she says there’s a fourth she’s watching closely. She wants to know if you’ll approve it if the proof holds.”

“Who?”

“Lord Asher.”

The tent went quiet around the table.

Harold looked at her for a long moment. Lord Asher was heavily in the coastal merchant faction. The Argent Circle and their support for the campaign weren't critical, but they were important.

“Tell her I want the proof,” he said. 

Adeline wrote it down.

“So no eagles,” Hale said.

“No eagles. Besides, we can’t risk them in these mountains. Too many other things flying around up here.” Harold turned back to the map. “And if I go forward now, Master Balfiel and I get the time we need to finish preparing that surprise we’ve got for the city.”

Hale straightened up off the table. He looked at Maren for a long time, and when he spoke, his voice was flat.

“I still support the slower movement,” he said. “Slower, aye, but sure. We take the passes one at a time, and we get there intact. We took a beating today. The other Corps are reporting losses around ten thousand. We got punched heavily today.”

“It’s too slow, Hale.”

“It’s safe, Sire.” Hale tapped the town. “And this is foolhardy. Even if we’re late to the north, we’d get there with the army in one piece. This plan has a real chance of going sideways. If the goblins are smart about it, and we’ve all just watched how smart they are, they’ll leave the town alone, hit the corps in the passes while they’re strung out, and chew one of them up before anyone can help.” He looked around the table. “There’s a real chance we lose a corps doing this.”

“We were always going to get chewed up,” Harold said. “That’s what this campaign is for. The survivors will be better off for it and better prepared for the Velthari.”

The table went still.

Maren’s chalk stopped turning. Halloran’s eyebrows went up into his hair. Down the table, Mark was staring at him, and from the corner of his eye, Harold saw Adeline’s pen lift off the page and stay there. Dorgan was the only one who looked unbothered, and he was watching Harold with an odd, flat interest that reminded Harold uncomfortably of Vargrim.

Hale spoke slowly.

“When did our policy change,” he said, “that those kinds of losses became acceptable?”

Harold grimaced.

“Recently,” he said. “And it’s not acceptable. It’s never acceptable.” He rubbed his brow. “But my eyes have been opened to some other threats out there, Hale. Ones you don’t know about yet. We need to end this sooner rather than later.”

Hale stared at him steadily for a long moment. Then he stepped back from the table, walked toward the far end of the tent where the canvas was rolled up to face the valley, and jerked his head at Harold.

Harold followed him.

The cold came in through the open side of the tent, and the snow had started up again, fat flakes drifting down through the firelight. Down in the valley the corps’ fires ran in a crooked line toward the narrows.

Hale stood with his back to the TOC, hands clasped behind him, and spoke without looking at Harold.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got a thinking commander out there, and he knows this terrain better than we do.” Hale’s voice was very low. “You heard Sawyer. If we do this, there's a good chance we’ll lose one of the Corps. Maybe not all of it. But one of them gets ground up in the passes, and the men in it will never know why they had to die so we could move a few days faster.”

“Then let’s figure out a way to not lose a corps, Hale.”

Hale turned his head and looked at him.

“Keep Vayle in reserve with Fitch,” Harold said. “Twenty thousand horse is the wrong tool for these mountains, but it’s the right tool for a hole in the line. Let the goblins see them gallop off somewhere else, somewhere big and obvious, like they’re being sent back to guard the baggage or the road south. Then have them circle back around through the underroads where nobody can see them.” He nodded at the valley. “If the goblin commander goes for a corps in the passes instead of the town, he’ll find twenty thousand horse coming up on a flank. Let’s do something to stop it. But this is the way we need to do it.”

Hale stared at him.

“Has the goal changed?” he said.

“What?”

“The goal, Harold. Has it changed?” Hale’s voice stayed level and very quiet. “Are we still working to keep humanity from dying out here? Or are we looking to inflict losses on the other lords? Cutting up a Corps is a good way to reduce the size of their armies when we do march on them.”

Harold rubbed his brow hard enough that it hurt.

“I don’t want that either, Hale. The goal hasn’t changed.” He let his hand drop. “The method has... altered. Losses are a little more acceptable now, if the survivors come out of it a lot better.”

“A little more acceptable,” Hale grunted. He looked out at the snow for a long time.

“You and I are going to sit down and talk this over,” he said finally. “If we’re doing this, then I will know why.” He turned and looked Harold in the eye. “I won’t work in the dark for you like this.”

Harold looked back at him and nodded.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Hale held his eye a moment longer. Then he grunted, turned back toward the map table, and raised his voice.

“Maren! Get me the timings for Second Corps through the eastern pass. Sawyer, I need your best four on Dorgan’s tunnel tonight. Halloran, how fast can your people march?”

“Faster than yer soldiers, Colonel,” Halloran said. “And with better songs.”

“Nobody’s singing,” Hale said. “Not after today.”

Harold stayed at the tent's open side a moment longer and watched the snow fall onto the fires.