It had taken them weeks of careful movement and observation, but they were finally on the hill above a target. Now they would find out if this idea was worthwhile. Despite the prospect of imminent death the mood was anticipatory.

“The khompound is khuiet. I khount four sentries, plus the duty guard.”

“I c-counted three demons using the latrine in the last hour.”

“Do we know for sure where the grappler is?”

“It went in the p-pens and I didn’t see it come out. But it could have s-snuck.”

“I’m fairly certain that is not what those are khalled.”

“Well none of us know their proper names and I’ve been using these for a long time, so you’ll have to live with it.”

“I know the military’s official c-codenames” Oresus protested.

“Those are worse. I’d rather khountenance his ridiculous names.”

“If it’ll make you two happy we’ll have a group discussion if we find any new types. For now though we should focus. Any foreseen issues?”

“None.”

“I’m still w-worried about the company commander. He h-has to be at least an aberration.”

“Worst case scenario I’ll hold him off while ya’ll run.”

“I don’t l-like that either.”

“It’s fine.” Emokha put a hand on Oresus’ shoulder. “We khan do this, no matter the odds.”

“F-fine. Let’s.”

“That’s the spirit! Get into position and wait for the signal.”

“R-right. Good luck.” Emokha added something quietly in her own language, then nodded and followed her friend.

For his part Gloe began covertly making his way closer to the walls. The compound was made of some sort of concrete analogue, he assumed produced by magic given the smoothness of the walls. He wasn’t certain even lizard squirrel boots would have worked on something like this, which was a moot point given that he didn’t have any. (Or shoes for that matter.)

Additionally it was irrelevant because they had built this little fortress next to a rather large hill. Looking at the soul-sapping architecture Gloe had to assume these were mass-produced according to a centralized blueprint. The structure looked identical to several other demonling outposts they’d surveilled and passed on, and very similar to the larger scaled-up ones they’d bypassed completely.

Keeping things simple and sticking to a time-tested template made a certain amount of sense, but you had to take local conditions into account. There were a lot of swamps and hills in the area, and since the demons weren’t quite stupid enough to try to build a fortress in a swamp they’d opted for the hills. Leveling a hill was a lot of work though, so apparently they’d chosen to build in a flat spot in between them.

Necessity and all that, but why not adapt at least a little? The walls were built too high for Gloe to leap them, probably deliberately calculated to exceed average aberration jumping height. So they could have put up an additional wall to protect against a leap from the nearby hill. Hell even a net would have provided some additional security.

His hope was that they were good little soldiers, following orders and their scripts without ever questioning, or even understanding the reasoning behind them. Second best would be if they were complacent because this outpost was several days travel (at regular speed) from the border, and that border was with the deep wyld rather than an opposing nation. The monsters in the forest were fearsome to be certain, but even the intelligent ones weren’t organized enough to mount a straight up invasion or deliberately seek out and target garrisons well behind enemy lines.

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Regardless of the reason though it was fairly easy for Gloe to leap directly from the hillside into one of the sentry towers. Making certain none of the sentries was looking his way at the time was harder, but not impossible. He had to break the vet’s neck since he’d given his best weapons to his erstwhile allies, but once he’d done so he had himself a pair of passable knives.

Sneaking up on the other three sentries took a lot of patience, but he had that. Most of their attention was directed outward so all he had to do was creep along in the interior shadow cast by the walls, freezing any time they moved. The doors to the towers weren’t locked, and although he didn’t dare try to enter through the trapdoor atop the stairs there were windows several stories up to allow oil and rocks to be dropped on attackers. They were shuttered and bolted, but they didn’t creak too badly. From there it was a simple blind leap to the sentry. Two of them detected him at the last second, but he was able to kill both before they could shriek. The third died unaware.

As did the duty officer. To his credit he wasn’t sleeping, but he was far from alert. After dispatching him Gloe considered picking up the fallen book to discover what demons considered light reading, but decided he really didn’t want to know.

Instead he went to open the gate. This was the part of the plan that made him the most nervous, given that the door was huge and heavily armored. Something was certain to hear it opening, the only question was how they would respond. To his surprise though he discovered a cleverly nested sally port in the door. That hadn’t been evident from the exterior at all. With features like this no wonder the demons favored this standardized design.

The hatch opened so quietly he had to hiss several times to get Oresus and Emokha to enter. Once inside though they were back on plan. Even better, actually. He re-locked the hatch and now they didn’t have to worry about reinforcements for a little bit.

The fortress was home to four of what he had designated company-equivalent demonling units. From what he could tell the demonlings’ organization was fairly ad hoc, but there were some standards that seemed to run true more often than not. Base demonlings tended to be led by vets, but vets could also operate in groups as a sort of advanced infantry, at least in small numbers. In larger groups they needed a C-Type or grappler to lead them.

A vet could keep track of a squad of about five base demonlings, while C-Types tended to lead between twenty and forty mixed lesser demonlings. C-Types also preferred to run in pairs, keeping their platoons together, but they could split up if they had to. The preferred ratio of C-Types to grapplers seemed to be four to one, but that seemed to be more of an organization foible than based on the leadership abilities of the grapplers. Gloe had certainly seen a grappler command a much bigger group, although it could have been an outlier.

Based on his quick survey of the garrisons they’d reconnoitered a company-equivalent demonling unit was comprised of one grappler commanding four C-Types, each with their own platoon. Say anywhere from eighty to one-hundred twenty demonlings, give or take a dozen or so. There also was a handler for each platoon, a company commander per each, an overall garrison commander and a handful of support staff. These latter were demons, but he couldn’t tell if any of them had abilities. Certainly the duty officer hadn’t possessed a lot of life force, but he wasn’t going to draw too many conclusions from that fact.

The reason they had targeted this particular garrison was because three of the four companies assigned here were currently out on assignment. They’d noticed them preparing to depart and stuck around long enough to see them leave, the garrison commander prominently in the van. One company was still a heavy lift, but it was probably the best opportunity they were going to get.

Splitting up they entered the pens where the demonlings were housed. Technically speaking they weren’t cages as the demonlings were free to come and go as they pleased, but it was difficult to dignify them with any appellation more grand. They had roofs and walls, but nothing else. No windows, no interior walls, no furniture. The demonlings just plopped themselves down on the floor to sleep.

Oresus headed for one of the smaller pens with far more base demonlings than vets. Neither Oresus nor Gloe knew what level they were, and Emokha hadn’t volunteered her own, but there was an unspoken consensus that Oresus was the least powerful of the three. They were trying to remedy that, but if this went south at least he had a chance of surviving for a bit in there.

For similar reasons Emokha headed into one of the pens that housed a larger proportion of vets. She’d comported herself well against vets while crippled so she should do well in there even if the alarm was sounded. It turned out that her now regrown missing arms ended in wickedly sharp natural sickles, and she was both instinctively adept with them and had trained extensively as a soldier. Once Gloe had handed over two of the daggers he’d taken from the sentries he stopped worrying about her. Those demonlings were better off dying in their sleep.