Rise of the Horde - Chapter 780 - 779

The espionage war’s invisible front ran through the forty-three miles between the three armies’ positions like a web whose strands were made of observation and counter-observation and the specific skills that intelligence operatives applied to the work of knowing what the enemy knew and preventing the enemy from knowing what you knew.

Day five of fourteen.

Sakh’arran’s morning debriefing presented the previous twenty-four hours’ intelligence harvest with the organized precision that four months of continuous intelligence operations had refined into the specific briefing format that Khao’khen’s decision-making process required.

“The barbarian camp,” Sakh’arran said. “The shamanic preparation area has expanded again. The expansion includes a new structure that the Verakhs describe as a circular platform of stacked stones, approximately twenty feet in diameter, positioned at the camp’s northeastern corner. The platform’s construction suggests a ritual function. The stones are arranged in the spiral pattern that the shamanic tradition uses for long-range divination.”

“Divination,” Khao’khen said.

“The barbarian shamans are looking for something. The long-range divination ritual’s specific function is the detection of large-scale movement or the assessment of distant positions’ strength. The ritual requires the circular platform, the spiral stone arrangement, and the sustained chanting of at least three practitioners for a duration of four to six hours.”

“They are looking at us.”

“They are looking at everything. The divination’s range at the Seventh Circle’s power level covers approximately one hundred miles in every direction. The ritual would provide the shamans with the awareness of every significant military formation, magical concentration, and supply movement within the range.”

“Can the divination detect our Verakh positions?”

“The divination detects large-scale patterns. Troop concentrations. Magical signatures. Supply movements. Individual scouts in drainage ditches do not produce the signature that the divination’s resolution can detect. The Verakhs are invisible to the divination because the Verakhs are invisible to everything.”

“And our camp?”

“Our camp is visible. Thousands of warriors produce the signature that the divination detects. The camp’s Roarer positions produce a metallic concentration signature. The Rhakaddons produce a biological mass signature. The ogres produce an individual signature because the ogres’ mass exceeds the divination’s individual-detection threshold.”

“Then we present the camp as it is. We do not attempt to mask the camp’s signature because the masking’s failure would reveal the masking’s attempt and the attempt’s revelation communicates that we are aware of the divination and the awareness communicates the intelligence capability that the awareness requires.”

“We let them see us.”

“We let them see what we want them to see. The camp. Thousands of warriors. The fortifications. The readiness. We do not let them see the Verakhs because the Verakhs are not visible. We do not let them see our intentions because intentions do not produce signatures.”

* * * * *

The Threian intelligence service’s contribution to the espionage war was the contribution that a kingdom’s institutional intelligence apparatus provided: the structured, bureaucratic, document-based intelligence collection that the kingdom’s network of informants and observers and diplomatic contacts sustained across the kingdom’s territory and beyond.

The intelligence service’s assets in the barbarian theater were limited. The highland clans’ territory was terrain that the kingdom’s informant network had never penetrated because the kingdom’s intelligence priorities had never included the highland clans as a strategic concern. The barbarians had been a tactical nuisance. The barbarians were now a strategic threat. The intelligence infrastructure that strategic threats required had not been built because the infrastructure’s construction had not been prioritized when the construction would have been cheap and the construction’s urgency had arrived at the moment when the construction’s cost was prohibitive.

The battlemages provided the magical intelligence capability that the informant network’s absence demanded. The kingdom’s remaining battlemages, sixty-three practitioners reduced from the campaign’s original complement by the attrition that the thundermaker fire and the shamanic redirection had produced, included four practitioners whose academy specialization was divination rather than combat.

The four divination specialists conducted their own long-range assessment from the capital’s eastern tower, the tower whose elevation provided the physical component that the divination’s ritual required. The ritual was the academy’s structured version of the divination that the barbarian shamans conducted: geometric patterns drawn in silver on the tower’s floor, incantations spoken in the mathematical precision that the academy’s curriculum prescribed, the practitioners’ magical perception extended outward from the tower’s position in the expanding sphere that the ritual’s power sustained.

The divination detected the barbarian camp. Fourteen thousand warriors. Fifteen thundermaker signatures, the weapons’ iron mass producing the specific metallic resonance that the divination’s resolution identified. The shamanic practitioners’ magical signatures, concentrated at the camp’s northeastern corner where the circular platform’s construction was producing the resonance that sustained shamanic ritual generated.

The divination detected the Horde’s camp at Ashwell. Thousands of warriors. The specific signatures that the Horde’s equipment produced: the Roarers’ metallic concentration, the fire sphere caches’ chemical resonance, the Rhakaddons’ biological mass, the Golden Wolf totem’s arcane signature.

“The Golden Wolf,” a divination specialist said, her voice carrying the specific awe that the totem’s arcane signature produced in practitioners whose academy training included the theoretical study of faith-based magical constructs. “The signature is unlike anything in the academy’s reference library. The totem’s power is sustained by collective belief rather than individual casting. The signature is diffuse, distributed across the camp’s entire area, the belief of thousands of warriors manifesting as a field that our divination reads as a single continuous arcane presence.”

“Can we assess the totem’s combat capability through the divination?” the intelligence officer asked.

“The totem’s combat capability is the capability that the belief sustains. The divination cannot assess belief. The divination reads signatures. The signature says the totem is present and the totem is powerful and the totem’s power is not the power that our classification system measures because our classification system measures individual practitioners’ casting capability and the totem’s power is not individual. It is collective.”

The divination continued through the night, the four specialists sustaining the ritual’s power at the cost of the magical reserves that the ritual consumed. By dawn, the assessment was complete. The three armies’ positions, strengths, and magical capabilities were documented in the report that the intelligence service’s protocol required and that the council’s deliberations would use.

The report was detailed. The report was professional. The report was also the report that the barbarian shamans’ own divination had already produced from the opposite direction, the two divination rituals crossing each other in the magical spectrum like two searchlights sweeping the same darkness from opposite sides of the clearing.

The espionage war continued. The divinations detected each other. The Verakhs moved through the landscape between the detections. The fourteen-day period counted down. And the information that each side gathered about the others was the information that each side’s decisions would be based on when the fourteen days ended and the decisions’ consequences became the campaign’s final chapter.

Nine days remaining.

The magical spectrum’s invisible battlefield was the battlefield that the three forces’ practitioners fought on while the physical forces observed the ceasefire that the fourteen-day period’s diplomatic activity had produced. The battlemages’ divination swept the landscape from the capital’s eastern tower. The shamans’ divination swept the landscape from the circular platform at the barbarian camp’s northeastern corner. The sweeps crossed each other in the magical spectrum like two search beams whose operators were aware of each other’s existence but could not prevent each other’s operation because the prevention required the offensive magical engagement that the ceasefire period’s diplomatic context discouraged.

The Horde’s contribution to the magical espionage was the contribution that the Golden Wolf’s arcane field provided: the passive awareness that the totem’s sustained activation produced in the warriors whose belief sustained the totem’s power. The Golden Wolf did not conduct divination. The Golden Wolf did not sweep the landscape. The Golden Wolf existed as a presence that the other forces’ divinations detected and that the detection’s results told the other forces that the Horde’s magical capability was present and active and sustained by a mechanism that the other forces’ analytical frameworks could not fully categorize.

The presence was the intelligence. The intelligence was the uncertainty. The uncertainty was the weapon that the fourteen-day period’s espionage war provided to the force whose magical capability was the capability that the other forces could detect but could not assess, the capability whose classification defied the classification systems that the assessors used.