"Incidentally, the dwarves are said not to have pikemen; a remarkable and serious lack. If the result is what I expect, this will be an extremely important victory for us. We will have wiped out an army which has enormous prestige in Vismearc.
"As support, I have ordered Prince Chithqosz and his circle to accompany Trumpko's force. The dwarven trade embassy at Colroi seemed quite unaffected by our use of monsters and panic storms, but they may be susceptible to concealment screens. We will see."
Again he looked them over. "If any of you have questions or suggestions, now is the time to voice them. Before we discuss longer term prospects, and I assign further tasks."
That autumn, during the Tigers' preparations for the expedition, the Cloister's teams of textile and garment makers had given their full efforts to preparing "rakutik uniforms." The actual rakutik uniforms they had as models were woolen, and presumably worn in winter. But the jackets were inadequate for living and fighting in the field in winter, and no one knew what their heavy field coats looked like, or even if they had any.
Macurdy had told the Sisters in charge to do the best they could. With his guidance, they created a winter coat design of their own-knee-length and fleece-lined, with large side pockets for gauntleted winter gloves. The exterior design and color resembled those of the autumn jackets.
They exercised the same creativity in producing winter caps-fleece-lined with ear flaps. The Tigers would wear fleece-lined versions of their own boots, and new, fur-lined mittens.
It wasn't as if they were going to stand inspection by the voitik crown prince, Macurdy thought.
Production took time, and he wanted his Tigers in action. So when they'd left the Cloister, only four companies of the 1st Cohort-what Macurdy called a "short cohort"-had been dressed as rakutur. The fifth company, still wearing Tiger uniforms, had been reassigned to the 2nd Cohort.
When they reached the confluence of the Pomatik River's Middle and North Forks, Macurdy sent the 2nd Cohort, six companies strong, west to the confluence of the Merrawin, with now full Colonel Horgent commanding.
Through the great ravens, he'd learned that the Asmehri scouts, and the Kullvordi and Kormehri, had reached ylvin lines. The Ozian Heroes would soon follow. He ordered them all to remain with the ylvin army, west of the Deep River, till people from Cyncaidh's raiders could brief them on their tactics and experiences. Finn Greatsword had cajoled a second company of Asmehri out of the wofhemst. Both companies were providing roadblocking teams, half using axes, the rest protecting them.
The 2nd Tiger Cohort arrived at the town of West Fork on the same day as the lead unit of dwarves. The river was thickly ice-covered now. Rather than cross where the dwarves planned to, Horgent led his force another few hours upstream, and crossed there by night. No snow had fallen since the river had frozen, so they left no conspicuous tracks on the ice.
On the other side, they disappeared into the forest. Horgent had his orders and four great ravens. He looked forward to what a Tiger would think of as the experience of a lifetime.
Two days farther east, Macurdy's short cohort had crossed before dawn, at the confluence of the North Fork, and headed north. For a day and a half they rode through rough, mostly wooded country, neither pushing their horses nor dawdling, and saw no one. Then they entered the fertile, gently undulating North Fork Plain.
Over the next two days they saw some furtive civilians, but no military personnel. Not one. The country had been razed, as if a large force had ranged south to loot and burn, and kill anyone they met. But the job had not been thorough. Humans, and perhaps some ylvin mixed bloods who could pass, had moved back into villages and towns only partly destroyed. Macurdy and his Tigers had spoken to none of them; their speech would give them away as not rakutur. At night they'd rousted people roughly from their shelters, slept in them, then left at first dawn.
Vulkan traveled cloaked.
On their third and fourth days, they'd met three platoon-sized cavalry patrols, none of them accompanied by voitar. No one had hailed the "rakutur" in passing. In fact, the hithar had passed them apprehensively. This hadn't surprised Macurdy. He'd known only one rakutu, Tsulgax, but if Tsulgax was an example, the hithar undoubtedly feared them.
Now Macurdy sat his horse where a road crossed a modest rise. It was afternoon. He was waiting for Blue Wing, his Tigers behind him in a column of fours. Their horses' breath formed a cloud around them. In the distance, across snow-covered fields, lay the ruins of Colroi. A single unburned neighborhood remained.
The devastation had been blanketed and obscured with white. Its extent was suggested by the walls of scattered, burned-out buildings, presumably of stone or brick. The city had been large for Yuulith, but not as large as Duinarog, Macurdy decided. And unlike Duinarog, must have been built largely of lumber.
Clearly it had been burned by the invaders, not the ylver. The unburned section appeared to have been military, spared by the voitar for their own use. Most of its buildings were large. One had a tower. Others seemed to have been old barracks. Men could be seen on foot and horseback, moving among them.
Just north of the city, on a modest promontory above the river, was what must have been the imperial palace. What seemed to have been defensive walls and enclosed buildings, now were snow-capped rubble heaps. It seemed to Macurdy that to have wrought such utter destruction of a fortress, with the time and forces available, would have required explosives.
Or powerful sorceries. He remembered Felstroin's description of the great lightnings called down upon Balralligh. Concentrated and prolonged, they might have caused something like that.
When Blue Wing returned, he did not circle down to Macurdy. It was best not to be obvious. Instead he flew at a few hundred feet, approaching from the west. Vulkan dropped his cloak, and the bird landed on his shoulder.
"Continue on the road," Blue Wing said. "The center of activity is in the unburnt buildings you can see. They include a stone building with a bell tower and guards, and a large stone stable across the street from it. Nearby to the east is a very large building by the river, also of stone. I do not know if it is the food storage building you asked about or not, but it is guarded, and has large haystacks outside. A number of wagons are parked there."
Macurdy gazed northward for another long moment, then turned to his trumpeter. "Let's move," he said.
The Tiger raised his trumpet and blew "ready," then "march." Macurdy trotted off, Vulkan invisible by his side. His cohort followed. This, he told himself, would be the voitar's biggest shock since the storm of darts, boulders, and water in the Copper River Gorge. Not in losses, but symbolically. For Colroi had been Kurqosz's great symbolic victory, and it was some two hundred miles behind the front.
They rode unchallenged all the way to what had been the main fire hall, and was now Colroi's military headquarters. As they approached it, Macurdy wondered if there'd be rakutur there. If there were, would they see through the pretense? But the guards proved to be hithar, humans, quite military looking, but inadequate for what they were about to experience.
Macurdy dismounted in front of their sergeant, who frowned, perhaps troubled by some anomaly in the "rakutu's" behavior or appearance. Macurdy drew his dwarf-made saber and ran the hithu through. There were shouts. While others disposed of the remaining guards, Macurdy and several Tigers pushed their way through the front door. Hithik administrative personnel took refuge behind furniture.