Tessa frowned down at the body of their last kill of the day. The Frost Giant was a Commander, one of the many team leaders that they had killed that day, and unfortunately, identical in appearance to the others under the war paint.
Doug stepped up beside her, and turned the corpse’s head to one side with his boot.
“It would have been better if they were different looking.” He grumbled, agreeing with Tessa’s silent complaint.
“Well, we can say for certain that they still have the means to summon more Frost Giants, and we now have a decent idea where they are coming from.” Lotus added helpfully.
Karl checked a corpse for magical items before he joined the conversation. “And once we radio in for the evening, Command will know as well, but I’m not certain what they will be able to do about it. From the sound of things, this front is being withdrawn further every day, and the number of actual elites on the line is nearly nonexistent now.
They have been called away to the other fronts, and the regular army has been left to deal with the Frost Giants.”
The battle wasn’t lost. In fact, it was far from it. What the army was doing was luring the Frost Giants down out of the mountains, where they could shell the enemy lines with impunity.
They did have to evacuate a few villages, but that was a minor loss in the grand scheme of things, and the relocation would cost them less than a day’s worth of wasted munitions if the Frost Giants continued to hide in the hills.
The same General was responsible for this section of the line, and it sounded like he had gotten a single Elite strike team to stay with him for security reasons, but almost all the other scouts had been swapped for regular soldiers with a battle cleric.
The change was obvious to anyone in range, as the radio call in patterns were different for the Elites, who gave their number, and the Clerics working for the army, who gave a team designation by regiment and company.
Theirs was the only regular daily check-in that was still coming to that position by Elite number, and they were considered to be too far behind enemy lines to be extracted, so the army just accepted the numbers that Karl and Bob gave for the day without question.
They certainly weren’t going to send anyone out here to find out for sure, and they didn’t want the teams to stop hunting if they were giving accurate numbers. Intercepting them in small groups before they got to the main lines was much more effective, it seemed, than hitting them with artillery.
Once they were safely back in the village for the night, they began drawing up a map of the Frost Giant reinforcement routes, and marking them the same way that the officers marked the battle lines. It still seemed like the best way to do it, but with so few details on their map, anyone else who read it might not even understand what they were looking at.
“So, what do you think, should we go for a spot near the other attacks, or should we go all the way over here, to make it look like there are multiple groups hidden in their territory?” Karl asked with a gesture to the map.
Bob pointed further down the border. “I think that we should hit them over here, so they believe that it might be something coming out of the ash zone and killing their reinforcements. They would naturally suspect it, and it would make for a good cover, instead of sending them looking for humans immediately.”
Karl looked to the others, and they nodded in agreement.
“Alright, that sounds like the best plan we’ve got. I will have Hawk scout the area in the morning, and we can attack the Frost Giants further down the border, closest to the ash wastes, first.”
With their plan made, they settled in for the evening, keeping a light watch from inside the village. The cave mouth was open now, as the presence of snow over the ash would actually make it easier to find them instead of harder.
But when they arrived, the cave was open and nothing had ever disturbed it, so none of them were too concerned about it, especially with the Spider Golems standing watch in the tunnel all night, prepared to deal with anything that might try to attack them.
Karl didn’t have a turn on watch that night, so he woke up to the smell of breakfast cooking, and Hawk’s first morning scouting report.
[We don’t need to go down by the border. There are no Frost Giants there. The glowing red things ate them.] He reported.
[Glowing red things?]
[Maybe Fire Elementals? They are red, they burn everything they touch, and they really like turning Frost Giants into ash when they get too close to the border.] Hawk replied.
“Hawk says that there are Fire Elementals in the ash wastes, and they are attacking the Frost Giants who get too close. Going there to fight them might get us attacked, but there aren’t any more Frost Giants there this morning, even if we wanted to go look for them.” Karl explained to the others.
“How did he describe them?” Doug asked.
“Red and glowing, on fire, and they burn everything they touch.”
Doug nodded. “Ask him if they look solid. They might be Magma Elementals, a hybrid earth and fire species. They’re common in magically rich volcanos, and the Magma Dragon might have been nurturing them. It makes sense that they would serve as the guards for his territory, but we need to know for certain before we report it.
If it is a proper Fire Elemental, it looks like living flames and just moves through the air without anything to burn.”
[Yeah, that first thing sounds right. They’re kind of small, but really hot. They go dark red, almost black when they touch the Frost Giants, but when a bunch of them do it, the whole giant burns to nothing.]
Karl relayed the message, and Doug relayed it back to the main lines.
“We are going to have to change our plans. If we’re working near the ash wastes, we should burn all the bodies, so the Giants can’t tell if the group was eliminated by us or the elementals. If we’re further out, we can leave them like usual and work through them at a higher rate.
More importantly, we need to pick a new area to target for the day. If this is the first time that the creatures of the Ash Wastes attacked out into the snow, then it might be the start of a new conflict as the Dragon attempts to expand his own space as well.
Or, they might have just been too close for comfort, and his minions were defending their border. The Elementals have an innate hatred for water and ice element magic.” Bob explained as Doug sent the reports back to headquarters.
[Understandable.] Hawk replied as Karl explained the situation to the beasts.
When it came to elemental affinities, Hawk was definitely on the side of the Magma Elementals, but it was more important that the Frost Giants not know that they were being hunted from this particular edge of the Ash Wastes.
If the Frost Giants thought that this was the weaker end of the Dragon’s defences, and not just an outlying area covered in ash, then they might well send a full offensive here, and the ten of them didn’t stand much chance if they were caught in the open by that.
Everyone knew it was a dangerous game they were playing, taunting so many of the Frost Giants. But the odds were strongly in their favour, as long as the Frost Giant army didn’t know where they were sleeping.
{Combined team Mackenzie. Your intel is received. Hold for further updates. Three.}
The last bit didn’t make sense to Karl when he heard it over the radio, but Doug smiled happily.
“Three is the number of days before they plan to take action. As that action involves us, we can guess that it’s going to be an offensive of some sort, to try to push the Frost Giants back.
For all we know, the freezing enchantment might have been broken not only near us, but all along the line, and the borders might be returning to normal.” The Nature Priest explained.
“Or they could be running short on clones, and the front lines are actually making progress.” Tessa reminded them.
“Right. That brings us back to the topic of the day, what route are we going to ambush?” Karl agreed.
