Rise of the Horde - Chapter 770 - 769

The shamans adjusted on the twentieth day.

The two Seventh Circle shamans, whose atmospheric manipulation had been the barbarian army’s primary magical capability since the lesser shamans’ degradation at Harken Field, shifted their power from offensive application to a purpose that the Threian battlemages had not anticipated: anti-air defense.

The atmospheric manipulation that had been pressing the Threian center into the ground at Harken Field was redirected upward. The air above the barbarian battery positions thickened. Not the fog that the lesser shamans had produced at Vinefield Ridge. Something different. The air’s density increased at the altitudes that the griffon dives required, the atmospheric compression creating the specific condition that the Seventh Circle’s power produced when the power was applied to the medium that aerial mounts depended on for flight: reduced lift.

Valden felt the change at twelve hundred feet. The griffon’s wings, which had been generating the lift that twelve hundred pounds of mass and the dive’s acceleration required, encountered the denser atmosphere and the lift coefficient decreased. The griffon’s flight muscles strained against the resistance that the compressed air produced. The dive’s trajectory shallowed. The beast’s airspeed dropped.

“The air is heavy,” the second rider said. “The wings are working harder. The dive is slower.”

“The shamans,” Valden said. “They are compressing the air above the batteries. Thicker air. Reduced lift. Slower dives. Longer exposure to the boomstick fire during the dive’s approach phase.”

The adjustment was the adjustment that changed the guerrilla campaign’s risk calculus. The dives that had been conducted at velocities that minimized the griffons’ exposure to the upward-aimed boomstick fire were now conducted at reduced velocities that increased the exposure time. More time in the boomstick fire’s envelope. More balls aimed at the slower-moving targets. More probability of the hit that brought a griffon down.

Valden dove. The compressed air slowed the dive from the speed that the previous seventeen days’ attacks had been conducted at to approximately seventy percent of that speed. The thirty-percent reduction in velocity increased the dive’s duration by forty-three percent. The boomstick fire’s window of opportunity increased by the same percentage.

The boomstick balls rose. More balls than the previous nights because the barbarian crews had been reinforced by additional boomstick-equipped warriors whose specific assignment was the anti-griffon defense. Fifty boomsticks aimed upward. Fifty balls rising into the compressed air where the griffon was diving.

A ball struck Valden’s griffon in the right wing’s leading edge. The armor plate absorbed the impact but the plate’s mounting bracket cracked and the plate shifted, the shifted plate disrupting the wing’s aerodynamic profile at the specific point where the compressed air’s reduced lift made every disruption significant.

The griffon lurched. The dive’s trajectory wobbled. Valden’s frost bolt fired early, the targeting disrupted by the griffon’s lurch, the bolt striking the ground fifteen paces short of the ammunition wagon. The frost detonation cracked the earth but did not reach the wagon.

“Pull up! Pull up!” Valden hauled on the reins and the griffon’s wings opened in the emergency pull-out that the compressed air made harder and slower than the previous dives’ pull-outs had been. The beast strained against the thick atmosphere, the wings’ frost-rimed feathers producing the specific sound of maximum-effort flight, the creaking of cartilage and tendon that a griffon’s wings produced when the wings were working at the limits of their structural capacity.

The griffon cleared the battery position at forty feet. The boomstick fire followed the climbing beast. A ball struck the griffon’s tail armor and the armor held but the impact caused the beast’s hindquarters to drop and the climbing angle decreased and the altitude gain slowed.

“Missed,” Valden said. The word carried the specific weight of a miss that had cost the dive’s risk without producing the dive’s reward. The ammunition wagon was intact. The thundermaker battery was operational. The dive had accomplished nothing except demonstrating that the shamans’ atmospheric adjustment had changed the guerrilla campaign’s viability.

* * * * *

The three griffons regrouped at two thousand feet, above the compressed air layer. The riders assessed the situation with the specific professional attention that the assessment demanded.

“The compressed air extends from ground level to approximately fifteen hundred feet above the battery positions,” Valden said. “Below fifteen hundred, the air is thick enough to reduce our dive speed and increase our exposure. Above fifteen hundred, the air is normal.”

“We cannot dive through fifteen hundred feet of compressed air,” the second rider said. “The dive takes too long. The boomstick fire is too dense. The targeting is disrupted by the griffon’s reduced maneuverability in the thick air.”

“We adapt,” Valden said. “We do not dive through the compressed air. We dive to the compressed air’s upper boundary and release the frost bolts from fifteen hundred feet. The range is greater. The accuracy is reduced. The exposure to boomstick fire is eliminated because the boomstick fire’s effective vertical range does not reach fifteen hundred feet.”

“The frost bolts’ accuracy at fifteen hundred feet is approximately thirty percent of the accuracy at two hundred feet.”

“Thirty percent accuracy means three out of ten bolts hit the target. We fire ten bolts per sortie. Three hits per sortie. Three ammunition wagons destroyed per sortie. The rate is slower than the previous campaign’s rate. The rate is not zero.”

The adaptation was the adaptation that the guerrilla campaign required to continue functioning against the shamanic counter-measure. The dives became high-altitude releases. The accuracy decreased. The thundermaker destruction rate decreased from two to three per night to one to two per night. The decline’s trajectory toward the threshold slowed.

But the decline continued. Twenty-four thundermakers became twenty-two. Twenty-two became twenty. Twenty became nineteen.

The threshold was approaching. The approach was slower than the Baron had planned and faster than the barbarians could prevent. The shamans’ atmospheric compression had changed the guerrilla campaign’s efficiency without eliminating the campaign’s effectiveness. The griffons still flew. The frost bolts still fired. The ammunition wagons still cracked.

“Nineteen,” Valden said, at the twenty-third day’s dawn assessment. “Nineteen thundermakers. The threshold is fifteen to twenty. We are inside the threshold’s upper boundary.”

“The next battle will tell us whether nineteen is sufficient to decide the engagement or insufficient to overcome our numbers.”

“The next battle will tell us everything. The next battle is the battle that nineteen thundermakers fight against thirty-one thousand soldiers, and the answer to that battle’s question is the answer that determines whether the kingdom survives.”

The griffons rested during the day. The riders slept the specific sleep that sustained combat operations produced in warriors whose nights were spent diving through boomstick fire and whose days were spent resting for the next night’s diving. The sleep was not restful. The sleep was the body’s minimal requirement for continued function, the four hours that the guerrilla campaign’s operational tempo allowed before the next night’s preparations began.

The thundermaker count stood at nineteen. The threshold beckoned. The Baron of Frost’s campaign continued.

The adaptation’s effect on the campaign’s timeline was the effect that the shamanic atmospheric compression produced on the thundermaker destruction rate’s trajectory toward the threshold. The trajectory, which had been declining at two to three thundermakers per night, now declined at one to two per night. The threshold, which had been ten to twelve days away at the original rate, was now fourteen to eighteen days away at the reduced rate.

Fourteen to eighteen days of the barbarian advance continuing southward. Fourteen to eighteen days of engagements that consumed the Threian army’s remaining boomstick ammunition at the rate that each engagement demanded. Fourteen to eighteen days of soldiers dying in earthworks while the thundermaker count declined toward the number that would change the mathematics that were killing them.

“We cannot sustain eighteen more days of fighting,” Fairfax calculated. “The boomstick ammunition sustains approximately three more engagements at the conservation rate. The soldier losses sustain approximately four more engagements at the current casualty exchange rate. The arithmetic’s intersection is approximately twelve to fifteen days, at which point the army’s effective fighting capability reaches the threshold where continued engagement produces collapse rather than attrition.”

“The thundermaker threshold and the army’s collapse threshold are converging,” the king said.

“They are converging, Your Majesty. The question is which threshold is reached first. If the thundermaker count reaches fifteen before the army reaches its collapse threshold, the kingdom survives. If the army reaches its collapse threshold before the thundermaker count reaches fifteen, the kingdom does not.”

“A race.”

“A race, Your Majesty. Between the Baron of Frost’s griffons and the barbarian thundermakers’ destruction of our army. The Baron is reducing the thundermaker count. The thundermakers are reducing our army. The race’s outcome determines the war’s outcome.”

The race continued. The griffons dove. The thundermakers fired. And the two thresholds converged, each day’s fighting bringing both numbers closer to the limits that the war’s resolution required one of them to reach first.