Chapter 62 – Operation Shakeout
The tower’s mood was tense.
Vorathrex sat on a temporary stone brought in for the purpose, his bulky arms crossed. In a comical contrast, Shake’s impish form was next to the war board, claws adjusting pieces as directed.
Boney had been roused early from resting. Surprisingly, the Red Claws’ leader didn’t look tired.
If anything, he seems itching for battle. Shouldn’t he be more exhausted from last night? And is it just me, or does he look bigger?
Kairon narrowed his eyes, focusing on the tint of his skin. He shifted to Shake, then back to Boney.
Darker. His skin is turning darker.
Like a leash from collar to domain, the flow of energy was even larger. To Kairon’s delight, Boney wasn’t the only one. In the last two days, one other devious little gremlin had gained that same glowing string.
To his side, Shiny’s orange pupils focused on the board. Then, on several pieces of bark in front of him, daily figures and yields scratched crudely into them. He’d been practicing his writing and math. To Kairon, the crude writing was almost impossible to make any sense of. But ask the little supervisor anything, and he’d have an answer for you.
More importantly, the energy. Kairon had to stop the urge from letting his fangs slide from his lips. A green and golden line stretched from Shiny’s back to the ground. What’s more was how that energy felt.
Ravenous. Hungry. Broodful. Boney’s on the other hand felt more… violent. Like the wrath totem.
Both, however, felt tainted. Mixed. Probably due to the work of the source energy.
Stepping up to the war board, Kairon cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming, everyone. As you may have heard, our first relay team returned from the pass. Their trip was, from all accounts, a resounding success.”
“Fledgling, can you please enlighten me on this relay system you speak of? Is it more of your tricks?” interjected Vorathrex.
“No, no,” reassured the city lord. “It’s not just a tactic,” corrected Kairon. “Rather, it would be more accurate to call it a process. In fact, I thought you might ask this.” He gestured to the back of the tower, where one last guest waited.
The wrath councilor’s gaze shifted, going to gray one’s leader. Vorathrex turned, pointing at the imp. “Notch? You lead this first… relay team?” he asked.
“Yes! Master explain. System for war. Worked well.”
Seeing the explanation was wanting, Kairon coughed delicately. “To summarize, our domain does not extend more than a day’s travel into the mountains. That limits our communication considerably. Not to mention that my power, as our wonderful imps can attest to, is one way.”
Shiny snapped his claw. “Master, the idea!”
“Ah, yes! Shiny brought up some visual means of two way communication. We may explore those soon. Quite brilliant, actually.” Kairon wasn’t just saying that. His top manager had come to a tactical conclusion he should have. They could use colored flags, orders, and symbols for the imps to communicate to Kairon visually in return.
Turning back to Vorathrex, he continued on. “Anyway, to answer your question, the relay is my answer to these challenges. We have teams, called fists, of six imps each. All of them have a squad leader, like Notch. On their missions, they act as relays, passing other fists. This gives a chance to pass on order alterations from my side that they wouldn’t get until physically returning all the way back to the domain otherwise.”
Vorathrex absorbed that for a minute, before rubbing a meaty finger under his chin. “This… is an interesting idea, fledgling.”
“Oh, it’s more than an idea. Notch, report to them what you told me.”
The warrior banged claw to chest. “Yes master! Gray one found enemy. Mission carry out. Six bad push. Fell. Gone. And…” He paused, going back to what Master had said. “No fist casualty. One minor injury.”
Vorathrex grunted, hints of surprise evident. “Which six enemies did you push from those mountains? Were they the golden ones, smelling of that energy,” he said, pointing at the channels illuminating the tower flooring, “or were they wearing metal or leather and smelling of sweat?”
“Not gold. Metal.”
“Yes, they were normal soldiers. Not paladins,” confirmed Kairon, having already spoken with the imp.
“Then what is the point? I suppose you are culling the weak, but the paladins are what we must focus on. The wind has been picking up their scent more and more. I do not like how it smells, fledgling.”
“While I’d argue that culling the weak, as you put it, has more value than you are granting, we are actually getting two things that are far more critical. First,” he held up one claw, “information. While none of gray one could spot the entire column, they did make out a few hundred normal footmen, with some number of paladins still yet behind. This tells us both how our enemy arranges their forces, how they see them, and how we can keep striking. I’ve already instructed gray three and four to take this into account.”
“How so?” asked Vorathrex. To Kairon’s delight, the other imps in the room all looked on with interest. It showed engagement and intelligence, something that was nonexistent beyond Shiny until recently.
“Well, I thought about laying ambushes. Waiting until the front of the columns passed, and then hitting from behind. Which, mind you, is still an option. However, I think that would be… unwise.”
In Kairon’s opinion, it would result in the loss of an entire fist. And they’d get no information back about what even happened.
“Instead, I’ve chosen to forgo additional reconnaissance for the second major benefit this is buying us.” He waved his walking staff in the direction of the war board, where one yellow stone and two gray stones were about three quarters of the way through The Spines. “Their forces are maybe… what. A few days travel at most from our city? Honestly, I think they could push through those mountains in less than two days if they wanted. Whatever difficulties they had earlier are gone. Someone over there figured out how to get them moving in the right direction.”
“What?!” snapped Vorathrex. “Why am I only now hearing of this?! Fledgling, my scents have been mixed. I did not realize…” He grunted, shaking his head in dissatisfaction. “Two days is… this is very soon. As eager as I am for battle, this seems premature.”
Kairon smirked. His mind replayed how his beefy war general typically reacted, comparing it to now. Smarter, more thoughtful, more careful.
From the side, Boney bit his lip. “I agree. Our training good. If Red Claws had…” he paused, thinking. “More time, more strong. Each night we grow.”
Shiny chimed in, raising a claw. “Master, Bean told me tell. Need more time. Holes hard dig. Too far. Two days not enough. Same with trail. And sticks.”
By now, Vorathrex’s gaze had gone from worried and frustrated to comprehending. “Time.”
“Yes!” cheered Kairon.
“What?” asked Boney. “Time for what?”
“No. The fledgling’s strategy is not to defeat the humans in the pass. It is to buy us time to defeat them once they are out,” intoned Vorathrex. “For all these things you speak of…”
“Our wrath councilor has caught on. Do you all understand? With the lack of information we have, and the inhospitable cold,” he said, looking at Notch who still had signs of frostbite on his claws and skin, “any meaningful losses in The Spines for our enemy are out of the question. Perhaps if our domain extended far enough and we had more time and preparations, but…” He shrugged. “That’s not the hand we’ve been dealt.”
He looked to the war board.
“Instead, the second and more important benefit our current strategy of relay raids grants us is time. Gray one let us know that as they retreated from their strike, they heard calls for making camp and saw the lines pausing. Even if the humans only pause for a few hours, that’s several more hours for new warriors to join our ranks. More hours for the Red Claws and other fists to train. More hours for preparations to be made. And…” he trailed off, leaning down to point his walking staff at the green stones to the west. “More hours for The Wardens to finally enter the fold.”
“I’m still not sure that is wise,” cautioned Vorathrex. “Why do we not fight these enemies one at a time?”
Boney, again, grunted in agreement.
“Because doing that has various pitfalls. The biggest of which is that a lot of the viable strategies in such an event would have us wait for our enemies to come to us.”
“Walls strong,” said Boney. “Vorathrex not even hurt.”
“That is true. However, we lack any real way to deal with enemies from our walls. Which means a force of this size could engage in an extended siege.”
“Siege?”
“Camp outside, keep us from leaving, and starve us. Maybe launch projectiles over the walls. And we can’t afford that given our ashroot fields are decidedly exposed. After a week or two, our forces would wither from starvation.”
“No food, no warrior,” said Boney, understanding coming.
“So why not fight in open combat? You do not believe we would prevail?” asked Vorathrex.
“We are… like an infection. And this world a body. We need time to grow, to claim more ground, to dig our claws in. Every week that we persist, our hold grows stronger. Time is on our side. This… is a long winded way of me saying that as we stand now, no. I fear we would not. In a month, two, perhaps three? Yes. I think we could. But right now? I think it would be foolish.”
“So then what is your plan, little demon?” pressed his general.
“What we have here is a limited market.” This time, Kairon did let his fangs show. “What we need is a consolidation. Something I’m calling Operation Shakeout.” The demon’s focus went to the unassuming five verdant rocks on the war board demarcating The Wardens. Hundreds of clans people who had to be more and more worked up at their pokes and prods. Like a bee hive, buzzing and buzzing.
Unfortunately, Kairon believed that even with their latest gambits, it was a timeline that wouldn’t hold up, even if they could keep delaying the paladins. The Wardens were simply being too cautious, sending small parties and not committing to any large scale action.
They needed to make them move far faster.
Fortunately, green one through five were currently on mission to make that happen. The city’s first full pack mobilization. A test if any imp other than Boney could step up to leading such a role.
Kairon already had just the one picked out.
“But for this to work, we need to make The Wardens join the party.”
The city lord leaned forward, slamming a large green rock on the clay war board.
***
“Green pack! Set fire!” shouted pack leader Fang.
All five fists totaling thirty warriors, or a pack as Master had called it, bellowed in glee. They’d successfully used the stealthy hit and run scare tactics to once again flush out another small village. This time, their instructions were different. To leave more of a mark. A much, much bigger mark.
Cracking his knuckles, Fang nodded in approval as warriors kicked over the still burning camp fires and began spreading wood, branch, and kindling throughout the small village.
Over a dozen crude, earthen made buildings with wooden framing and straw roofing found themselves the target of the imps’ destruction. In less than five minutes, the entire place was ablaze.
“More! More wood! More fire!” ordered Fang.
“Yes pack leader!” bellowed one imp.
Another cackled, claws chopping into a tree and working with his squad to ferry it into the burning homes.
To their side, another squad fanned flames with scavenged burlap, making the burn grow and grow.
In another five minutes, what began as a residential pyre morphed into a full regional forest inferno. Black smoke and smog puffed into the air, blotting out the sky. Columns of thinner, gray smoke from live burns intertwined. The entire mess reached upwards, becoming visible for leagues in the clear afternoon sky.
“Good. This good!” said Fang. He coughed, the smoke and blaze becoming too much even for his heat loving body to bear. The pack leader stared down at the human corpses that hadn’t been smart enough to join their fellows in migrating away. Shaking his head, he sighed. “Waste. Waste is bad,” he said, thoughts of Master coming into his mind. “But no choice sometimes.”
Next to him, a warrior rubbed a claw on his head. “Pack Leader Fang.”
He flicked his eyes over, claws gripped on his command spear. One of the best they had, with cloth on the end signifying his rank. “Yes?”
“What word mean. Valdren?”
Fang shrugged. He didn’t know what that word meant. Lately, he felt more and more frustrated when something came up he didn’t have an answer for. It made him look stupid. “Don’t know,” he said finally.
“Then why shout? When we attack?”
This time, Fang did know the answer. The warrior beamed. “Operation Shakeout!”