The trap at Maren had not been an act of desperation.
It had been planned from the very beginning.
When the Alliance first drew up the defense, they had understood one thing with cold clarity: against the scourge, a head-on war was a fool's war.
The infection alone turned every battle into a gamble. A single mistake, a single breach in one's defenses, a single moment of contact could transform even a Grand Magus into another soldier within the enemy's ranks. Worse still, the swarm's numbers were beyond anything a traditional army could hope to grind down through attrition.
So they had never planned to win at Maren.
The hundred Grand Magus dangled across Maren's walls were bait, nothing more. The question had never been whether the city could hold. It was whether the thing directing the swarm would commit, would pour its forces through those gates to crush a tempting bait — and whether, when it did, the jaws beneath Maren could close.
