The day after Murphy received the plea for help from the Genoa Peninsula, a report from the front lines there arrived at Dorod Fortress on the shore of Lake Shurpels. Marshal Loren was in the middle of a war game with several generals when he saw the report—and immediately exploded.
"Bang!"
Without a word, he slammed the pointer he'd been using to move pieces across the sand table onto the table beside him, his face dark with anger.
The generals beside him exchanged glances, then understood.
Marshal Loren paid close attention to his appearance, so such an obvious outburst could only mean one thing: something had gone wrong at the front.
At a glance from General Soros, the marshal's adjutant, the generals in charge of specific affairs decisively set down their pointers and left the war-gaming room with their respective staff officers. Only after everyone else had gone did Loren's tightly suppressed fury finally erupt.
"Eight of the seventeen towns we held in the northern Genoa Peninsula have fallen! I don't know how those commanders managed to fight! In practically a single night, they've turned a front that was still holding into this mess!"
The marshal cursed in a voice as loud as any dwarf's:
"Because of their failure, our first line of defense has been completely breached. The other nine towns have been forced to fight on their own, and it's too late to get our soldiers out now.
"With their speed, the gnolls have surely already encircled them. But those bastards aren't attacking the towns.
"They're baiting us into abandoning our positions along the second line of defense and launching an attack to rescue the trapped soldiers.
"They're forcing us to give up our firepower advantage and fight a mobile battle.
"When those halflings evacuated the cities, they