Page 26 of Storm to Victory
A low murmur swept the room. Dacha’s expression turned even more hard, his arms crossed tightly across his chest.
“Thanks to the efforts of the Half-Breed Squadron in securing aeroplanes for experts to study and to a squad of dwarves in capturing damaged machines, the Alliance’s top magicians, magical engineers, scientists, and elven and troll magical experts have been studying that unknown magic.” Uncle Edmund waved in the general direction where Fieran and Pip stood against the wall before he nodded to Thortrad Detmuk.
Fieran clasped Pip’s hand, hiding their hands between their bodies where the others in the room couldn’t see. Pip squeezed his fingers in return.
“And?” One of the troll generals flexed her crossed arms. “Stop tip-tapping around. What’s the verdict?”
Fieran worked to suppress his smile. Trust a troll to say what everyone else was probably thinking.
“As many have suspected, it’s ogre magic.” Uncle Edmund pressed his hands to the table as he stared at the crowd in the room.
Fieran sucked in a breath, then released it slowly. Ogre magic wasn’t too surprising, after all. What else could that mysterious magic have been?
But Fieran had never heard that ogre magic was strong enough to deflect or take the magic of the ancient kings. He hadn’t thought any force in the entire world could do either of those things. Except for Pip’s magic.
In the corner, Dacha’s expression never flickered. Perhaps Uncle Lance had shared this hypothesis with him at some point.
“It took far longer than expected to confirm it.” Uncle Edmund grimaced and shook his head. “Even though Escarland shares a border with Groyria, the ogres are very elusive. Even when some of them do cross the border to trade, they never do magic where Escarlish citizens can see or sense. They don’t even do magic near their own borders.”
“Nor do any of the living elves remember a time when they had contact with ogre magic.” One of the elven generals scowled as well, her long black hair braided at the sides. “Our archivists are still searching our records for additional information.”
“Lance Marion had to track down an old colleague who had moved to southern Escarland. This colleague had some contact with a friend who was half-ogre. This contact could finally confirm that the magic is ogre magic.” Uncle Edmund’s voice lowered. “But the magic used on the aeroplanes and machines wasn’t just ogre magic. It had somehow been tainted withhuman magic. Almost as if a human magician had wielded the ogre magic.”
“That should not be possible.” The elven general straightened, even as others around the room murmured to those next to them.
Pip’s fingers squeezed tighter on Fieran’s.
“No, it shouldn’t. But somehow, that’s what is happening.” Uncle Edmund’s tone turned even more grim.
Uncle Julien swept another hard glance around the room. “Which begs the question: just what is Mongavaria doing to the ogres?”
Fieran swallowed as he shared a look, first with Pip, then with Merrik. Once they returned to the mansion and told him, Lije would be especially worried. He came from a small town in Escarland near the border with Groyria, and he’d actually known a few ogres before joining the army.
“This might be indelicate, but do we know the ogres are doing this against their will?” One of the human generals glanced around the table. “They’ve been resistant to working with us. Perhaps they made some deal with Mongavaria, and they are willingly melding their magic with human magic?”
Uncle Edmund shook his head. “Our scouts have seen Mongavarian soldiers rounding up the ogres—men, women, and children—and holding them in large camps in eastern Groyria. If the ogres are working with Mongavaria, it’s only because their families are threatened. It isn’t willingly.”
A grim silence fell over the room.
“The conditions in the camps aren’t great, but our scouts haven’t witnessed any mass executions.” Uncle Edmund let that linger a moment before he continued, “Our scouts haven’t, however, been able to make contact with the ogres, and any villages they’ve found have been deserted. If there are any ogres still free and resisting Mongavaria, we haven’t been able to findthem. But at least that means Mongavaria hasn’t been able to find them either.”
“When Mongavaria invaded Groyria this spring, there had been a great deal of discussion on whether we should go to war to protect Groyria, even though they had not asked for our help nor do we have a treaty with them.” Uncle Julien sighed and shook his head, something like regret in his deep brown eyes. “But Mongavaria’s bombing of Bridgetown forestalled any response we might have made. That was likely their intention in attacking us when they did. It drew our focus away from what was unfolding in Groyria, and until now we haven’t been in the military position to turn our attention toward the crisis there.”
Another shifting and murmuring swept the room.
To enter Groyria without the ogres’ request, even to aid them against Mongavaria, would essentially be an invasion, trampling over Groyria’s national sovereignty.
Yet in standing by, what had the Alliance allowed to happen to the ogres?
Still, what else could the Alliance have done? From the moment Mongavaria attacked Fort Linder and Bridgetown, the Alliance had been fighting an all-out war along a front stretching from the southern tip of the Whitehurst Mountains, along the Hydalla River, and all the way to the northern seas around Dar Goranth. All their resources had been dedicated to fighting the war there, and splitting their focus more than they already had might have led to a defeat.
War strategy was cold. It had to be. It was a calculation of how best to spend the lives that would be lost, and if the objectives would be worth the cost.
“Our scouts witnessed certain ogres being taken from the camps and transported into Mongavaria, but until recently we were unable to determine where in Mongavaria they were being taken.” Uncle Edmund gave a weary shrug. “Our spying effortsin Mongavaria were focused on other things up until now, such as discovering the Mongavarian strategic and tactical plans for the war. Now that we know the ogres are playing a far larger role than believed, we are combing through all our past intercepted messages, pilfered documents, and scouts’ reports to see what was missed.”
One of the male troll generals muttered something unflattering about spies loudly enough for the whole room to hear.
Uncle Edmund pressed his mouth into a tight line as his shoulders seemed to heave in a sigh, as if this was a conversation he’d had several times over already.
