The Vampire & Her Witch

"You want me to destroy their settlements?" The Clanless vampire said, scratching a furry eyebrow with the tip of one of his small, dexterous fingers that looked so incongruous on his large, bearish frame.

"It’s easier to burn a village to the ground in the summer when the thatch is dry and the streams are running low," he said, thinking of the occasions over the years when he’d been forced to teach a lesson to smaller Eldritch settlements for picking on the Clanless trying to make their way to his manor. He’d learned long ago that dealing with them immediately might be the most satisfying, but choosing the right time could be far more devastating.

"No, we don’t care about the people or soldiers in the Hamlets," Ashlynn said, shaking her head lightly. "We want you to steal from them. Sheep, goats, cattle, chickens... In the dark of night, when the living are huddled around their fires and sheltering from the rain, we want you to empty their barns and coops, carrying away as much of their livestock as you can."

"If you’re lucky, you may not need to fight at all," Thane added. "But if you do encounter the soldiers protecting these hamlets, you can expect as many as two dozen men under the command of one of the Dunns’ ’captains,’ men who are training to become knights if a position ever becomes available to them."

"This, this is how you intend to solve the shortage in foodstuffs?" Jakob said, unable to hide his astonishment at such an underhanded move as the opening of their war. "By stealing livestock from common folk?"

"Not just livestock," Ashlynn said, tapping further south on the map around the Hanrahan Barony. "The Dunns have spread themselves thin in order to raise more head of cattle than any other barony, and their herds of sheep produce more wool than anyone else in the march as well. That makes them an ideal target for small raids by irregulars, but men can’t feast on beef and mutton alone," she pointed out.

"But Hanrahan Barony is lush with vast fields of wheat and barley," Ashlynn added. "And their farms produce dozens of other useful crops that fill up storehouses in their villages, waiting to be carted to Lothian City to be sold each market day. Commander Tausau, your Mongrel Horde won’t be very useful attacking those caravans of wagons hauling grain and produce because they move during the day, but the other irregular soldiers should be more than capable of overcoming a single knight and his escort."

"My Lady," Commander Bassinger interjected, pursing his lips together as he tried to imagine what these raids would look like for the soldiers carrying them out. "We allowed the Dunns to keep the territory they claimed in the summer campaign. Even though we made them pay a price for it, they still built camps to hold the positions of several fallen villages. If Commander Tausau’s men have to detour around the Dunn’s advanced positions in order to conduct these raids, they may not be able to return to the Vale by sunrise."

"We only need the Mongrel Horde to be present for the initial raid," Ashlynn said smoothly. She didn’t intend to get so far into the details of their plan in this meeting when there was still so much to cover. They hadn’t even talked about the fourth person they needed to take on a leadership role yet and in her mind, these were questions that should be resolved between Lord General Thane and Commander Tausau, but since the question had been asked, she answered for the entire group.