The Battle

The Battle

'Our plan for meeting the Dark Lord in battle always depended on spies and reconnaissance,' the strategist reflected. 'Most of the spies were peripheral, little more than reconnaissance, because few could withstand the scrutiny of the Dark Lord. Most observations before the battle were about his allies and their numbers. Most observations during the battle were aerial to determine the location of his forces. People who could conduct reliable reconnaissance were too valuable to place in the front line, but they went alone into danger, and they may have been the bravest of us all.'

* * *

For the order of battle for the Dark Forces, think of five rectangles of various shapes and sizes. On their far right flank was a small square of about 100 werewolves. Next was a small square of about 100 giants. Next was a narrow and deep rectangle of 100 goblins. Then a large rectangle of about 600 wizards. Finally another narrow and deep rectangle of 100 goblins. The Dark Lord was in the middle of the large rectangle of wizards. The giants were a buffer between the nearly feral werewolves and the rest of the army. The goblins protected the flanks of the wizards since goblins would fight to the death.

Facing this army was about 400 members of the Opposition.

The Dark Lord's obvious plan was to let the werewolves and giants savage the left flank of the Opposition. The werewolves and giants would attack first since they were considered expendable and they could not be held in check for any period of time. The Dark Lord expected them to take at least 200 members of the Opposition out of combat which left his wizards with a three to one advantage, plus the goblins. The Dark Lord's wizards would attack an army that had already been mauled.

The battle opened with globes of fiery liquid lobed into the Dark Lord's army from the far right wing of the Opposition with most of the globes aimed at the werewolves and giants. The wizards and goblins fended off the globes, but a number of them landed among the werewolves and giants who disregarded orders and charged the source of their torment. As they ran across the front of the Opposition, snipers accounted for about 50 of them. When they arrived at the far right, the globe artillerymen had retired into the mass of the Opposition army leaving six Arithmancers. Each Arithmancer swung his wand with a mighty oath. Each Arithmancer opened a pit that swallowed about 20 opponents. The surviving werewolves and giants leaped across and ran around the pits to tear the six Arithmancers apart before milling around in confusion as snipers picked them off. Globes were lobed into the six pits. The screams of the dismembered Arithmancers were followed by the screams of burning animals. The scorecard: 100 werewolves, 100 giants, 6 Arithmancers.

* * *

'I wish I had had more first-class Arithmancers,' thought the strategist, 'but it's a rare talent. It was a shame to waste it in battle.'

'But if you're not willing to lose soldiers, you'll lose the battle,' he lamented. 'The Dark Lord was willing to lose soldiers.'

'Ah, yes, casualties,' he thought. 'To the military mind, a casualty is someone who can no longer fight. Is he dead or alive? The general and his staff don't care although the casualty might. The general and his staff can't afford to care. I couldn't afford to care.'

'From the very first, we taught the people on our side that there would be casualties,' he remembered. 'We knew the value of propaganda, and we psyched them up. We told them the Dark Lord was displeased that they opposed him. We told them what his followers would do to their mothers, their sisters, their wives, their daughters, and their girlfriends. We convinced them it was better to die in battle than be tortured to death after watching your girlfriend being raped.'

'It may have worked too well,' he mused. 'The last act of one witch was to drive her wand through the eyeball and into the brain of a wizard who got in her way. I assume she was protecting her mother, her sister, and her girlfriend.'

'We've trained a generation of killers. The gods may or may not forgive us.'

* * *

The Dark Lord's first priority was the Dark Lord, and he had his 100 strongest as a body guard. The next 200 strongest were on his right flank, ready to attack the left flank of the Opposition that the werewolves and giants were supposed to have mauled. His right flank didn't think things had gone as planned, but no one was going to question the Dark Lord, and they charged forward.

The left wing of the Opposition fell back offering token resistance, but as they fell back, they activated small packets that exploded when stepped on. The packets would damage a foot or break a leg, and in the absence of medical assistance, they would take a wizard out of the battle. The steady advance of their right flank heartened the Dark Lord's army. The flashes from the packets were taken as spells from the wands of their advancing flank.

When the advancing wizards realized they were in the midst of a minefield, half of them began cautiously inching their way forward, and the other half began cautiously backing out. Scoreboard: 200 of the Dark Lord's wizards immobilized, 11 Opposition members killed.

* * *

The strategist remembered what he had told the Opposition. "The wizards in the Dark Lord's army think and fight as individuals. The Opposition should try a new tactic, and it's essential to keep it secret."

He had regularly scanned people to check if they had revealed anything. Of course, he ran into what was uppermost in the minds of adolescents. Ronald Weasley thought Pansy Parkinson was hot. Ronald was surprisingly inventive about what he would do to a stuck-up pureblood. A Hufflepuff was into both Luna and Lavender. Neither girl knew the other was involved. 'That one was placed in the wrong house,' he chuckled.

'All that security and I didn't scan the right people for the right thing.'

He knew the battle would be fought at night. The Dark Lord wanted to use werewolves, and his army was accustomed to terrorizing people at night. Hence, two people of each team were to shine cones of light that illuminated and blinded the enemy.

He borrowed the mundane idea of suppressive fire. Two wizards of each team were trained to fire stinging-hexes. They practiced until they could fire four hexes a second that no one could withstand.

Moving forward boldly and swiftly requires armor. They discarded the five-syllable disarming spell and developed a one-syllable shielding spell. Two wizards of each team wielded them.

Two wizards of each team packed the punch. They discarded the six-syllable killing curse and developed a one-syllable strike-curse that was fifty percent lethal.

"Lethal?" "Remember what they are going to do to your girl friend."

Each team was given a leader who kept them together and who also wielded the strike-curse.

'It didn't make sense: Nine people would charge the enemy with only two of them using strong curses. Everyone on the other side would be using the strongest curses they could wield. To test the tactic, we divided our army and pitted the teams against a Red Force that fought as individuals with each individual using a strong version of a stunning spell. The Red Force knew what was coming, but they were blinded by the cones of light, driven to an ineffective, heads-down position by the stinging spells, frustrated that only half their curses got through the shielding spells, and finally picked off. We switched sides and tested it again and again. To ensure the people playing the Red Force did their best, we hinted the outcome reflected on their virility. One consequence of the hint was that the witches fought like berserkers.'

The team tactic seemed to work.

* * *

After the werewolves and giants had been eliminated and a third of the wizards trapped in a minefield, it was time for the Opposition army to attack the main horde.

The attack began with a move designed to get their attention. Each of Forlorn Hope One through Four consisted of three teams. They used a penetrating formation. Forlorn Hope One and Two attacked on a broad front to shield the other groups. They were followed by Forlorn Hope Three, and it was followed by Forlorn Hope Four. The first two groups would make it as far as they could, then the third group would make it as far as it could, and then the fourth group would make it as far as it could. No one expected them to survive.

It was another case of combat sacrificing the best. The six Arithmancers were from the Department of Mysteries, as were Forlorn Hope Three and Four. It bothered the adults that Forlorn Hope One and Two consisted of young people just out of, or still in, school, but the youngsters had talent, determination, and a sense of immortality.

The globe artillerymen lobbed fire into the main body of the Dark Lord's wizards who fended off the globes but were preoccupied when 108 people left cover and charged directly for the Dark Lord, hurling curses for all they were worth.

When the Dark Lord's army was thoroughly distracted by this penetrating feint, our main body struck on his left.

Lacking any drill, the wizards in the Dark Lord's army had arranged themselves in groups of friends and family. When the main Opposition army descended upon them crying out they should surrender and live, these groups quickly surrendered to save their friends and family. The Opposition army sliced through the left flank of the Dark Lord's wizards and then swept around to capture the rest

Forlorn Hope One and Two had made it to the honor guard. Forlorn Hope Three cracked it. Shield-spell witch Nina Johnson of Forlorn Hope Three, screaming in fury, put her wand through McNair's eyeball and brain. Opponents who had witnessed it said they had felt fear. Most of Forlorn Hope Four cornered the Dark Lord. The Boy Wonder may have been the only one, but he wasn't the only thirty. Forlorn Hope Four and the remnants of Forlorn Hope Three fried the Dark Lord. They lost most of their team members, but they fried him.

This main attack was conducted a certain distance from the goblin units to give them a chance to not participate. The goblins were supposed to guard the flank, not participate in attacks to the center that could be feints. Besides, goblins have their own agenda, and these goblins, having witnessed the end of the werewolves and giants, were aware the battle was not going as the Dark Lord planned.

Both groups of goblins retired in good order. There was no reason to create feelings of revenge and reprisal by attacking them.

It was over. The Dark Lord, thinking along his lines, had expected magical razzle-dazzle, not mundane infantry tactics.

It was over. Then there was a sudden attack on our army. Our people, not knowing where the attack had come from and thinking the Dark Lord's wizards had violated their parole, lashed out and killed a hundred prisoners. A dark moment.

* * *

After the battle, it had taken the strategist some time to recover from exhaustion since it had been necessary to conceal his identity from the Opposition army. If they had known who he was, they would not have given his information any credence. The Opposition army would have been mauled by the werewolves and giants and then overrun by the superior number of the Dark Lord's wizards. The goblins would have finished off the wounded.

It also took some time to regain his equilibrium because of the horrendous casualties. Now, months later, he had the calmness and strength to examine and contemplate the battle.

No one on the winning side appeared able to face what had happened or formulate a coherent picture, but by careful interviewing and reading what records there were, he pieced together the events. He concluded the Opposition army death toll was 6 Arithmancers, 11 in the retreat of the left wing, 71 Forlorn Hopes, 3 in the main attack, and 172 in the mysterious attack.

He had an inkling of who had sponsored the mysterious attack. The attack had been carried out by highly skilled and trained operatives. Putting together such a group, arranging for it to be at the right place, and having it strike at the precise moment required foresight, intelligence, and resources. He knew who had those qualities.

Treachery was implied. He didn't think anyone in the army had leaked information, but minor clerks in the Ministry could be bribed to provide information on the time and location of the battle.

His best hypothesis was that fifty Dark Wizards had escaped detection by hiding with the goblins on the left flank of the Dark Lord's army. Almost all the after-battle casualties occurred near that flank. The goblins, too, had been bribed. That took real money, and he knew who had money.

'What was the motivation?' he wondered. He originally thought it was to eliminate the law enforcement arm of the government, but perhaps it was more general than that. 'Would they have turned on the Dark Lord's army if it had won? Were they out to cripple the existing wizard power? What had the goblins been bribed to allow to happen?'

He might be the only one who had guessed. The people who fought the Dark Lord had experienced a desperate battle, but they hadn't experienced a desperate life. They had not had to consider the options or make the choices he had been forced to consider and make. He knew what had happened.

Others had solved the 'potions equals money' equation.

The wizard world was becoming the haven of drug lords.

The strategist thought it was ideal. The mundane world, especially mundane law enforcement, did not know the wizard world existed. Sorcery could produce a plethora of consciousness-altering substances. The trade brought income to a war-ravaged economy and preyed on mundanes. That made it acceptable to many wizards. The wizard government was focused on rounding up Dark Lord disciples. It was too ineffective to recognize the drug problem and too weak to combat drug trafficking even if it wanted to.

The strategist thought it would be several generations before the wizard community had recovered enough to realize the drug trade was distorting and poisoning their world and to be strong enough to resist it.