Chapter 693 — The Turning Point

It took Anluo two careful looks to recognize him as one of Winterwolf Keep's advisory scholars—after the army reforms, Emperor Luoyan had established the "advisory scholars" as a special corps within the military. These men, reminiscent of a royal advisory council, were usually battle mages or priests with both battlefield experience and learning; they were better at thinking than ordinary soldiers and officers, and more familiar with the battlefield than pure civil officials. They analyzed intelligence of every kind with their experience and stratagems, and offered opinions to the army's supreme commander in the form of reference and advice. They were exceedingly important personnel in the modern Typhon legion.

Some old-fashioned knight commanders did not much care for these advisers who were forever chattering at them, but Anluo had always valued the opinions of the advisory scholars. She had even considered several reform proposals for the advisory scholar corps and submitted them to His Majesty, so that these advisers might play a more active role in the army. Now, seeing one of them come to her in such haste, her expression turned grave at once: "Sir, what has happened?"

"General, there is something wrong with the Cecilan defensive line. They… ahem, they may be playing for time," the middle-aged man said, stepping before Anluo as soon as he was permitted and spreading the papers on the table—they turned out to be page after page of inventories. "Look—these are their reinforcement records, these are the additions to their positions, and these are their supplies: the supply-flow data we gathered and inferred indirectly through intelligence channels. Look, look at these numbers!"

"They look perfectly normal," Anluo said after two careful looks, her brows knitting tight. "But… I feel something is off."

"Of course it's off! There is nothing wrong with the numbers themselves—what's wrong is how they change!" the middle-aged man cried loudly. "They're too smooth, the changes too regular. If you draw a line for the troop increases and another for the supply flow, the two lines are almost perfectly straight. And especially the supplies—that is the hardest intelligence to gather, and the hardest intelligence to gather can never be accurate. If it is accurate and shows regularity, then it must be false—planted for us to see on purpose!"

A flash of light went through Anluo's mind. She finally knew where her vague unease had come from.

"How foolish… I have been so foolish…"

The young wolf general murmured under her breath, and suddenly a saying of her father's came back to her:

The most cunning enemy is not one who hides all his secrets where you cannot see them, but one who shows you everything—and you cannot tell which parts are true and which are false.

She rose abruptly to her feet, speaking fast: "The First Winterwolf Knights, light march, advance on the Palemel Heights—I will lead them myself. Order the Iron River Knights to assemble in the Plains Triangle. The Black Banner Mage Corps stands ready. All legion-grade mana crystals to be pre-warmed. Prepare for deployment!"

"Yes!" the adjutant answered loudly.

He did not ask what should be done if the general's judgment proved wrong—as the wolf general, as heir of the Wendell family, this young-seeming lady had long since weighed every consequence when she gave an order. If her judgment truly failed this time… she would surely do everything in her power to bring the First Knights back, and then bear all the responsibility herself.

Nor did he question whether this "disobedience of the emperor's command" was proper—because from the very day the Winterwolf Legion was founded, the "wolf general" had been granted a degree of frontline discretionary authority. When an urgent situation arose and there was no time to consult the homeland, the wolf general had the power to act on her own judgment.

As for whether the Cecilans would be provoked by this, whether they would find a banner of "righteous cause" in it, whether they would bring pressure to bear on the Empire—the adjutant did not think too much about any of that.

The Empire was the backing of every Typhon soldier, and soldiers were sent to the front to fight a war, not to retire.

A well-equipped knightly order, nearly a third of whose members were transcendents, was swiftly assembled. Under an ever-darkening sky and in an ever-colder autumn wind, it departed from Winterwolf Keep and advanced rapidly along the "Curving Corridor" region south of the plains toward the Palemel Heights. Meanwhile, the Iron River Knights, one of the Typhon Empire's most elite orders, quickly gathered in the triangle of ground before Winterwolf Keep, their arrowhead formation pointed far off toward Longwind Keep. Thousands of battle mages, specially trained for war, also arrived at the assembly point, waiting at any moment for word from the First Knightly Order.

A desolate cold wind swept across the plains, and the battle banners, caught up in it, billowed and snapped. The griffin riders attached to the order circled high overhead, crying out shrilly. In the shrill piping of the cold wind, Anluo donned the winged helm passed down through his family, rode along the ranks of knights, and at the very front of the column drew his longsword: "Forward! To the Palemel Heights! Forward!"

...

An armored griffin skimmed through the clouds, using the overcast cover to slip past the Typhonians' griffin scouts. On the back of that iron-feathered raptor, the knight Cecil, goggles over his eyes, bent low and swiftly relayed the news back to the fortress commander.

A full-strength grand knightly order of the Typhonians had suddenly launched a march on the Palemel Heights.

Maggie stood in the command room, staring fixedly at the map before him, at the directions of the arrows marked upon it.

The direction that Typhonians' knightly order was heading... was a decoy position.

They had seen through it—before the Iron Throne arrived.