Chapter 49: War Council
The command post had never held this many people.
Six officers around a stone table that Aldric had built for four. Runt’s charcoal map dominated the surface — The Stamp, the border villages, the patrol routes, the cliff face, all drawn in the precise shorthand of a scout who thought in distances and angles.
Krug stood at the head of the table. Not because he’d chosen the position — because everyone else had left it for him. The Handler. The Voice’s mouth. When Krug spoke in council, it wasn’t always clear where the priest ended and the god began, and that ambiguity was deliberate.
Vark stood to his right — arms crossed, jaw set, the posture of a military commander facing a problem he couldn’t punch. Beside him, Runt crouched on a stool rather than standing, because Gnolls were more comfortable low and because it put his eyes level with the map. Nix leaned against the wall near the door, one arm folded across his chest — the other ended at the wrist, the forge burn that had taken his hand long healed into smooth scar tissue. Harsk stood near the back, silent, watching. And Aldric — the human builder, thin-faced, methodical — sat with a clay tablet and a stylus, ready to record.
"There’s a god to our southeast," Krug began. Not as news — they all knew. As a framing. "He’s called Thyrak. The Herd-Lord. Rank 3. He rules minotaurs. He has eight hundred warriors, a stone fortress, and three thousand believers who pray to him because they’ve forgotten there’s an alternative."
A pause. The gold flame in the Chapel next door pulsed — Krug felt it through the wall, through the bond.
"He sent scouts to look at us four months ago. They reported us as a minor settlement. Not a threat." Krug let that sit. "He was right, at the time. He won’t be right much longer."
"We’re attacking a god," Harsk said. Flat. Not a question.
"We’re taking his territory before someone else takes ours," Krug corrected. "The Rootmother to the south is recovering. The window where she can’t reach us is measured in months, not years. When she moves, I’d rather be holding a fortress on a plateau than a palisade in a swamp."
Silence. Vark unfolded his arms. "Show me the fortress."
Runt moved to the map. His clawed finger traced the features — the western gate, the walls, the patrol routes, the cliff. He spoke the way he drew: precise, minimal, no decoration.
"One gate. West face. Wide enough for four abreast. Walls are thirty feet, carved from the plateau. Patrols rotate every four hours, same route, same timing. No variation. No scouts outside the walls. No archers on the battlements — they don’t have archers."
"Eight hundred minotaurs and not a single bow?" Dorin asked from the doorway. He hadn’t been invited to the council but nobody had told him to leave.
"Not one," Runt confirmed. "Heavy infantry. Hammers, axes, iron shields. They charge in formation and they hit hard. That’s everything they do."
***
Krug presented the problem the way the Voice had framed it: not as a battle plan, but as a puzzle. Five hundred against eight hundred. Inferior numbers, superior flexibility. How do you win?
He didn’t give the answer. He let the room find it.
Vark found the first piece. "We don’t attack the gate. That’s what they expect. That’s what they’re built for. A frontal charge into eight hundred minotaurs behind a stone wall is suicide."
"So we go around," Harsk said.
"Around to where?" Vark gestured at the map. "South is a cliff. East is ridge terrain — broken ground, no road, takes three days to move a column through. North is open grassland where they’d see us coming from ten kilometers."
"The cliff," Runt said quietly.
Everyone looked at him.
"Nothing with hooves climbs a cliff." The Gnoll’s lips pulled back — not a smile, but the closest his species came to one. "We don’t have hooves."
The drakes. The connection hit the room at different speeds. Vark got there first — his eyes went to the rough sketch of the southern face, then to the door, in the direction of the paddock where Sythek’s three juvenile drakes were growing larger by the week.
"Can they climb it?" Vark asked.
"Vertical stone. Clawed feet. Built for it." Runt tapped the cliff on the map. "Sixty feet. Undefended. Unpatrolled. They don’t watch it because they can’t climb it."
"That’s the hammer," Krug said. The word came through the bond — Zephyr feeding him the framework. "Cavalry over the cliff from the south. They won’t expect it. They can’t respond to it. While they’re trying to figure out how soldiers appeared on their unclimbable wall—"
"We hit the gate," Vark finished. His posture had changed. Not confused anymore. Planning.
"Not hit," Krug said. "We present ourselves at the gate. The Shield. Two hundred infantry. Visible. Loud. Threatening. We want them looking west."
Nix spoke for the first time. "And the wall?"
Krug looked at the forge master — the one-armed Kobold who’d built the settlement’s entire metallurgical infrastructure from nothing. "Can your sappers tunnel under a thirty-foot stone wall?"
Nix’s single hand flexed. "How thick is the foundation?"
Runt answered. "Moss in the joints. Cracks in the mortar. Northern section has a visible lean. The foundation hasn’t been maintained in decades."
"Then yes," Nix said. "Give me three days and a tunnel entrance they won’t find. My Kobolds will take the foundation out from underneath. The wall won’t explode — it’ll settle. Twenty meters of stone sinking into the ground like a building that forgot how to stand."
The room was quiet for a moment. The plan was assembling itself — each officer adding a piece, each piece fitting into the ones before it. Cavalry from the south. Infantry at the west gate. Sappers from below. And —
"Archers," Thaelen said. He’d appeared in the doorway behind Dorin, drawn by the same gravity that pulled officers toward war councils. "The western ridge. If your infantry is at the gate and their minotaurs sortie to meet them, my archers can shoot from elevation. Stonesteel arrowheads at two hundred meters. They won’t be able to reach us with anything."
Through the bond, the Voice hummed. The plan was complete. Every officer had contributed a piece because every piece was real — the cavalry they’d bred, the sappers they’d trained, the archers they’d recruited, the infantry they’d forged. This wasn’t Zephyr’s plan imposed from above. It was the kingdom’s plan, assembled from the kingdom’s capabilities.
That was the point.
Dorin broke the silence. "The charge." He was looking at the map, specifically at the western gate. "When their minotaurs sortie against the shield wall. What’s the casualty estimate?"
The room shifted. Theory becoming body count.
"If they commit four hundred to the charge — which they will, it’s the only move their doctrine allows — and we hold formation, we lose between ten and twenty soldiers in the initial impact." Vark’s voice was clinical. He’d been running the numbers since Runt’s debrief. "Stonesteel shields will hold against iron hammers. Our spear tips will slow their momentum. But minotaurs are twice the mass of our heaviest Lizardman. Physics doesn’t care about metallurgy. Some of our front line will break."
"Ten to twenty dead to hold their attention," Harsk said. "While the real attack comes from three other directions."
"That’s the cost," Krug confirmed. Through the bond, the Voice was silent. This was the part of command that game mechanics didn’t calculate.
Thaelen asked the other question that mattered: "What if the wall doesn’t fall? What if the sappers can’t breach in time?"
Nix’s jaw tightened. "It’ll fall."
"If it doesn’t," Vark said, "we still have cavalry over the southern cliff and archers on the ridge. The infantry pulls back. We besiege rather than storm. It takes longer, but the outcome doesn’t change. Thyrak has no supply lines. No allies. No way to break a siege. We can wait. He can’t."
That settled it. The plan had a contingency. Not perfect — but real. Wars weren’t won by perfect plans. They were won by plans that survived contact with the enemy.
***
After the officers filed out, Krug stood alone with the map.
Through the bond: Name it.
Krug looked at the charcoal lines — the fortress, the three approach vectors, the arrows indicating movement. Three prongs closing on a single point. A constrictor wrapping its prey.
"The Constrictor," Krug said.
When?
"Five weeks. The drakes need another month to reach mount-weight. The sappers need forward positioning time. And I want Fangscar and Thornwatch converted before the first soldier crosses the border."
The border villages.
"If we take them first, Thyrak loses a hundred believers before the battle starts. His FP drops. His intelligence on his own border disappears. And we gain forty wolf-beastmen who know every trail between here and The Stamp."
A pause in the bond. Not hesitation — appreciation. The Handler was thinking strategically, not just relaying.
Do it. Send the trade delegation first. Fangscar, then Thornwatch. Convert them with value, not force. Every believer we take before the siege is one less variable during it.
Krug rolled up the map. Five weeks. Trade delegations. Border conversions. An army of five hundred marching against a fortress of eight hundred.
The odds were bad. The plan was good. In Krug’s experience, plan beat odds more often than the other way around.
He walked to the Chapel. The gold flame burned low and steady at the altar — the same flame that had kindled from nothing in a ruined shrine eight months ago, when a nameless god had spoken to a faithless Lizardman and said *build*.
Now that Lizardman was planning a war against a god three times their rank. With an army that hadn’t existed six months ago. On the word of a Voice that had never been wrong.
Krug knelt. Not because the Voice required it. Because some things deserved the weight of a knee on stone.
Evening prayer was in twenty minutes. There was a war to prepare for. Both things needed tending.