Chapter 45.4: The Southern Beastmen Tribes - Against Fifteen Thousand Oruks and Forward Base
Personal System Calendar: Year 00012, Day 1-14, Month IX: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6857, 1st to 14th day of the 9th Month
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Talon One and Two's Arrival
They came in just two hours, which was fast by the standards of most people and about average by the standards of people who had Aetherwing's offspring at their disposal.
The formation that arrived over the treeline and descended toward the chiefdom's open ground was not the full complement of both teams — Angeline had stayed behind, as had Hiraya and Adarna. The three of them had responsibilities at Maya Village that could not simply be set aside because there was a conflict happening somewhere else, and August had not asked them to come. Everyone else, however, had made it. The old members of Talon One who were not currently studying abroad and not currently occupied with a newborn, the new members of Talon One who were still finding their footing, and the full strength of Talon Two — all ten of Team Mandibles including Ragnar at the front and Banog beside him, Freya Martin, Torin Ned, Kali, Cinna Moe, Shaggydog Tracker, Benethar Solvorn, and their support personnel Jennifer and Ruk'ruk. They had also brought two Grimfangs. Toto came with Torin as expected, and Rexy had decided to come herself, which settled any question about whether the wolves were going to be useful in terrain like this.
Kirpy descended alongside Finnester, the two eagles making the air around them busy and loud in the way that eagles at those dimensions tended to. Kirpy was Bren Anglewood's bonded beast, one of Aetherwing's offspring from the first clutch, and considerably larger than Finnester, who came from the second. The other eagles who had carried people here turned back once the delivery was made. Flying home was their business and they had done enough of the favor asked of them already.
The beastfolk at the gate watched all of this arrive with expressions that were difficult to read but that August, standing nearby, would have described as impressed and relieved in roughly equal measure.
The chiefdom's forces allowed them in without delay.
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The Council of War
They convened quickly, because August had no interest in spending time here that the situation did not require. The village was not undefended in their absence — the people left behind were more than capable of handling what the village ordinarily faced, and the current threat was concentrated here, not there — but prolonged absence from home was still prolonged absence from home, and he had never liked it.
Chief Midoka had assigned his brother Chief Madok Koktoko to act as liaison and briefer for the newly arrived forces. Madok was familiar enough with the Maya Village contingent from his people's time in Zone Three that the introductions were brief. He filled them in on what the beastfolk knew of the Berdeng Oruks' movements, the direction they had come from, and the general geography.
The enemy's war camp was northeast of the chiefdom's position. Far enough that they had arrived at the settlement without being easily spotted on the approach — which meant they had either used the terrain well or had moved quickly enough that no one caught them in transit. Given that Oruks in the field were not typically subtle, the latter seemed more likely. They had moved fast and brought a lot, banking on the idea that what they were walking toward would not know they were coming.
There was also the matter of the forward camp. A force that size did not cover that distance in a single march without leaving something closer as a staging point. August said as much in the briefing.
"They wouldn't have come that far without a forward camp somewhere between here and their main position. The question is where. We need eyes on it."
He took Bren with him. The two of them, with Finnester and Kirpy above and a small group of winged beastfolk accompanying, swept the surrounding territory in a wide arc. It did not take particularly long. Oruks were not small creatures, and a camp large enough to support a serious offensive operation required cleared ground. Trees did not just clear themselves.
Thirty kilometers northeast, at the foot of a low mountain, the tree line opened up in a way that trees did not open up naturally. There was also smoke, rising thin and steady from cook fires that were lit by creatures who had not thought carefully enough about whether anyone might be looking. The forward scouts that had accompanied them pulled back before they got close enough to risk being spotted. They returned to the chiefdom with what they had found.
August had not pulled back yet to study the camps layout and the size of its contingent.
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The Number
He walked into the war tent late, which the assembled chieftains and elders noticed and said nothing about, because the look on his face when he entered was the kind of look that preceded aninformation they were not going to enjoy.
He found a space, oriented himself toward the council, and told them what he had seen.
"I estimate between ten and fifteen thousand in that camp. The warriors account for roughly ten thousand. The remaining five thousand are a supply train — small, green and brown, from what I could make out at distance. I think they are enslaved Gobus and Gobis (Goblins)."
There was a murmur through the tent that ran from one end to the other. The chieftains exchanged glances. Several of the elders made sounds that were not quite words but communicated clearly enough.
For those unfamiliar with the distinction: Gobus were the male of the goblin species, Gobis the female, and neither had the stature, strength, or general disposition for front-line combat. What they had was numbers, and a centuries-long tradition of being pressed into service work by larger and more aggressive species who valued labor that cost nothing and complained only as long as it was physically able to. As a supply train they were functional. As an explanation for why the Berdeng Oruks had marched this far with that kind of logistical support, they were also an indication of planning that was beyond the average Warlord's ambition.
This was not a simple raid. This was a campaign.
The beastfolk population of the chiefdom ran to approximately seventy thousand by rough estimate, which sounded like a significant number until you understood what it actually meant. Not all seventy thousand were warriors. Most of them were ordinary members of the tribe — craftspeople, hunters, families, elders who could no longer compete in the trials that determined rank. The actual combat force numbered around seven thousand trained warriors, with perhaps two thousand more who could be called on in the worst circumstances, what the beastfolk called Reserved Warriors and what the equivalent in human terms would be a militia. Beyond them were the thirty chieftains and approximately two hundred elders who still had enough in them to fight, and then ten Warrior Heroes — the beastfolk equivalent of a specialized elite unit, champions by any other name, individuals whose combat proficiency had earned them a status that set them apart from the general warrior population in the same way Talon One was set apart from Maya Village's regular forces.
It was not a bad force. It would have been more than sufficient against most threats.
But against an experienced horde of ten thousand dedicated Oruk warriors with an expert-level average combat proficiency and five thousand supply personnel to keep them fed and armed indefinitely, it was a problem.
August let the numbers settle before he said the next part.
"Based on what I observed, the warriors in that camp average around low Expert level in combat proficiency. That is not a mere warband scraping together whoever will show up. Every one of them is here because fighting is what they do. There are no non-combatants in that warrior count. The Gobus and Gobis don't necessarily have to fight, but everyone else does."
The murmur in the tent had gone quieter. The kind of quiet that happened when a room full of experienced people finished adding up a set of numbers they did not like the total of.
August waited until the silence had run its course.
"Well. With that information in hand, it is probably best if we start reducing their numbers before they decide to reduce ours, don't you think?"
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Operation Hit and Run
One of the new members of Talon One — still finding the right register for how to address August in a council setting — spoke up carefully. "Sir, do you have anything specific in mind for how we should approach it?"
August looked at him for a moment. There was no irritation in the look, just the mild assessment of someone recognizing that the question had been asked sincerely. "Hohoho. You really are still green. Well then, I will tell you the plan."
He laid it out for them to understand.
They were not going to just walk up to ten thousand Oruks and fight them directly. That was not a plan, that was just a death wish with extra steps. What they were going to do was make life progressively worse for the Berdeng warband in every way that did not require standing in front of it. It was guerrila warfare at its finest. They would destroy their supply stores. Hit their hunting parties when they moved out to forage. Eliminate their scouts before those scouts could report back. The damage from any single action would sure be small. But the cumulative damage, applied consistently over days, would compound into something that eroded their operational capability without giving them a fixed target to respond to.
"It may seem like small work," August acknowledged. "But small incremental damage that keeps happening without a moment to recover from is much worse than a single large hit they can absorb and recover from. When it piles up, it is going to be immense. That is what we are here to do."
He turned to Chief Madok. "Tell the Chieftain we will be out of the chiefdom for the time being. We will be going Oruk hunting. In the meantime, prepare your defenses as best you can. If there is a civilian population that cannot fight, I advise it is best to begin moving them to a safer position. I am sure you already know what needs to be done, Chief."
Madok inclined his head. "On behalf of our people, we will prepare as best as we can."
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Forward Operating Base
By the end of that day, Talon One and Two had moved out of the chiefdom and established a position five kilometers from the enemy's forward war camp. Close enough to operate efficiently. But far enough to maneuver if something went wrong.
Before they settled in, August addressed everyone.
"Before we start harassing these bastards, I want something understood. This operation is not a village concern in the official sense. But we have deep ties with this group. Some of their people live with us in Zone Three. One of our own members is Mee-rka. So we will help as much as we can, and we will do it properly." He looked at the assembled faces. "Do not over-extend yourselves. Do not put your lives in unnecessary danger. This is not our fight at its core — we are here as allies. When things get dangerous, the correct answer is to pull back. There is no shame in running when running is the smart decision. Victory does not matter when you are dead. It only matters when you are alive. We still need to go home to Maya Village when this is finished."
A pause, then: "Now. I want this camp built clean and undetectable. Underground if possible, or above the canopy. Anything that does not announce our position to something with a reasonable nose or decent eyes. I do not know how sharp Oruk senses are out here, but I would rather find out after we have already made our preparations than before. We will call this operation Hit and Run."
The construction moved quickly because they had people who knew exactly what they were building. This was not something improvised on the fly. Maya Village trained its specialized forces in field craft as a deliberate part of preparation, and underground concealed bases were a standard part of that curriculum. The theory was straightforward: a specialized team that spent days or weeks in enemy territory needed somewhere to rest, recover, and plan that was not visible from outside. What they built here was a larger version of what they had practiced, scaled up for a combined Talon One and Two deployment rather than the usual fifteen-person configuration.
They had earth users in the group, which reduced the time considerably. The displaced material was removed and dispersed away from the site to avoid leaving the ground disturbed in a pattern that anything that has a keen sense of its surroundings might notice.
The result: a rectangular underground structure with twenty-foot ceiling height and an additional six feet of earth above it. Two entrances and exits. At each end, a large open bunk room — fifty by fifty feet, with full ceiling height — one for the women, one for the men. In the center, a longer shared space running one hundred and twenty feet by fifty feet, which held the equipment storage, supply cache, the gathering area, and the separated medical section taking up twenty feet of the central run. The separation was deliberate. A field hospital that shared space with a gear storage area was a field hospital that would be turned upside down the moment someone needed a specific piece of equipment in a hurry.
The Grimfangs — Toto and Rexy — had space in the central area as well. Rexy made her opinion of the arrangement clear through her general manner, which suggested she considered it acceptable but barely. The eagles, predictably, wanted no part of an underground structure and settled into the canopy above, which suited the secondary purpose of the construction. Two-person elevated lookout positions were built into the highest accessible branches, screened from sight below, giving them observation coverage over the approaches to the camp in all four cardinal directions. Shift rotations were arranged so that everyone got adequate rest without leaving the perimeter unmonitored.
When the last of it was done and the concealment checked from several angles in the fading light, the camp simply was not there. The treeline looked just like any of the normal treeline and so did the ground beneath it.
It was good work, and the people who had built it were appropriately satisfied with it.
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Planning the First Strike
They gathered in the central space by torchlight — or rather, by the contained light sources that would not bleed through six feet of earth and tree root overhead — and spread out what August had mentally recorded of the enemy camp's layout.
The Berdeng Oruk war camp was square in formation, roughly organized in the way that a force run by a Great Warlord King would be, which was to say that it had more structure than a simple raid camp but still reflected the underlying preference for density over refinement. Smaller camps clustered together in a way that suggested unit groupings — different warband factions within the larger force, each maintaining its own fire and its own perimeter in miniature. Between them and running through the center of the camp were the supply lines, the paths the Gobus and Gobis used to move materials from storage to cooking fires to wherever they were directed.
And in the middle of the camp, distinct from everything around it in both size and the quality of construction, stood something large. A structure that carried no ambiguity about its function or its occupant. Whatever Agroba da Kill Mongar called home in the field, it was there, and it was not trying to be modest about it.
August noted the position. They were not going near it tonight.
Tonight was for learning. Watching the patrol rhythms. Finding the gaps. Identifying where the supply stores were positioned relative to the cooking fires, and whether the Gobus and Gobis kept to consistent paths or varied their routes by instinct. Small observations that would determine where the first real action would happen.
They would begin tomorrow.
For now: rest, rotations, and the particular kind of quiet that came over a group of trained people when they had finished preparing and were waiting for the operation to actually start. Not nerves exactly. More like a focused attention, pointed in a direction and was held there.
Outside, the night sounds of the forest continued as they always did. Whatever was in that camp five kilometers away from where they made their base of operation were doing whatever Oruks did in the evenings, which probably did not involve much in the way of reflection.
Tomorrow would be a different kind of day for them, though they did not know it yet.