The great council at Oakhaven marked the beginning of our transformation from a reactive alliance into a proactive strategic entity. The air in the Market Hall, our new de facto capitol building, was thick with the weight of our future. I stood before Anya, her face a mask of ancient wisdom, and Grak, who seemed carved from the very iron of his mountain, and I laid out the war that was to come.
"The King will not send another tax caravan," I began, my voice echoing in the stone hall. "He will send a legion. His pride has been wounded, his authority challenged. He will seek not to punish, but to annihilate. To erase us from the map and turn our city back into the dust he believes it came from."
"Let him come," Grak boomed, his fist crashing onto the oak table. "We will meet his legion in the Grey Pass and send them back to their master in pieces!"
"And what then, Grak?" Anya's quiet voice cut through his bluster. "We win another battle? And he sends another, larger legion? We cannot win a war of attrition. We are a handful of tribes against a kingdom of millions. We can win a dozen battles, but we only need to lose one."
Anya, with her nomad's intuition, had seen the core of our strategic dilemma. This was the point I needed to drive home.
"Anya is right," I said. "We cannot win a defensive war. To defend is to react, and to react is to slowly bleed. The kingdom holds the initiative. They will choose the time and place of their attack. We must take that initiative from them."
I unrolled a large hide map on the table. It was a crude but functional representation of the kingdom's eastern frontier, pieced together from Borin's intelligence, Ren's knowledge, and my own cartographic skills. I pointed to a location deep within the kingdom's territory, a full week's march from Oakhaven.
"Here," I said. "This is our target. Fort Drakon."
A stunned silence fell over the council. Borin, standing behind me, shifted his weight, his one eye wide.
"That is a Royal Fortress!" Kael exclaimed from the sidelines. "It guards the Dragon's Tooth Pass, the main artery into the kingdom from the east. It is madness to attack it."
"It is precisely because it guards the pass that we must attack it," I explained, my mind racing with the cold, hard logic of the military doctrines I now possessed. "The King's legion will march from the capital, here." I traced a line from the center of the kingdom. "But its supplies, its siege engines, its tons of grain and arrows, will be marshaled here, at Fort Drakon, before beginning the final push into the wastes. The fortress is the lynchpin of their entire invasion plan. It is their staging ground."
"You propose we march into the dragon's maw?" Anya asked, her eyes narrowed.
"I propose we pull its teeth before it can bite," I retorted. "We will not wait for their army to assemble. We will strike their logistical heart while they are still gathering their strength. We will sow chaos in their rear, destroy their supplies, and cripple their ability to launch their invasion. We will force them to react to us."
The sheer audacity of the plan was intoxicating. It was a move they would never anticipate. Grak's initial bluster was replaced by a look of grudging admiration. This was a strategy even a brute like him could appreciate: a direct, devastating punch to the enemy's gut.
But to attack a fortress, I needed new knowledge. My current military skills were for ambushes and skirmishes, not for breaking stone walls. I had twenty System Points. It was time to spend them.
I focused my will, opening the system's interface.
[SIEGECRAFT & ENGINEERING - KNOWLEDGE PACKET][Cost: 12 System Points.][Prerequisites: Basic Masonry & Architecture, Basic Military Tactics.][Description: Provides advanced knowledge of offensive siege warfare. Includes designs and operational principles for catapults (onagers), trebuchets, battering rams, siege towers, and sapping/mining techniques to undermine fortifications.]
It was the single most expensive purchase I had ever made, but it was the key to this entire strategy. Purchase.
The knowledge that slammed into my brain was devastatingly beautiful in its destructive elegance. It was a symphony of physics and violence. I saw levers and counterweights, torsion and tension, the precise, mathematical application of force required to turn a mountain of stone into a pile of rubble.
I looked up from my brief, internal reverie, my eyes burning with new plans. "The walls of Fort Drakon will not save them," I said, my voice resonating with an unshakeable certainty. "Because we will not just march to the fortress. We will bring the tools to tear it down."
I spent the next hour sketching the designs for onagers—powerful, torsion-spring catapults—and a massive, iron-capped battering ram. I explained how we would construct them from the timber in our valley and the iron from Grak's forges. I laid out the entire operation, from the stealthy march to the systematic siege.
When I finished, the council was silent. They were looking at me with a new kind of awe. I was not just their leader. I was their engine of war, their miracle worker who could conjure victory from thin air.
"The Confederacy agrees," Anya said at last, her voice firm. "We will follow your plan, Lord Castian."
Grak slammed his fist on the table again, but this time it was a gesture of thunderous agreement. "To Fort Drakon!" he roared. "Death to the King!"
The war council was over. The decision was made. The full, combined might of the Army of the Wastes began to mobilize, not for defense, but for our first, audacious, preemptive strike deep into the heart of the enemy's territory.