Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

"Loot and plunder goes back to reward their support. Slaves are sent back to labor for them. Blood and tears are extracted to enforce their demands for faith.

"These people have made the choice to believe, made the choice to think that they have a right to our lives, made the choice to do anything necessary to rule us. There must be consequences to the choices they have made, especially when their choices ruin the lives of others who have done them no harm."

Richard opened his hands. "And how are we to accomplish this?"

He drew his hands into fists. "We must bring this war home to the people who support and encourage it. It must not simply be the lives of our friends, our families, our loved ones who are thrown into the bloody cauldron these people of the Old World stoke. It must now be their lives as well.

"They see this as a struggle for the future of mankind. I intend to see that it is. I want them to fully understand that if they set out to murder and subjugate us — for whatever reason — then there will be consequences.

"From this day forward, we will fight a real war, a total war, a war without mercy. We will not impose pointless rules on ourselves about what is 'fair. Our only mandate is to win. That is the only way we, our loved ones, our freedom will survive. Our victory is all that is moral. I want any supporter of the Order to pay the price for their aggression. I want them to pay with their fortunes, their future, their very lives.

"The time has come to go after these people with nothing but cold black rage in our hearts."

Richard lifted a fist. "Crush their bones to blood and dust!"

There was a moment of silence as everyone took a collective breath, and then a thunderous cheer erupted, as if they had all secretly known that they had no chance to succeed and that they were doomed to face only death and failure in the end, but now they had been shown that there was a way. There was, at last, a real chance to save their homes and loved ones, to save the future.

Richard let the revelry go on for a time, then held up a hand to make them listen as he went on.

"The army of the Order has the support of the people of their homeland. The soldiers of the Order each know that their families, friends, and neighbors support them. The men of the Order need to hear from those back in the Old World. What I want the men of the Order to hear are wails of agony. I want them to know that their homes are being gutted, their cities and towns leveled, their businesses and crops destroyed, and their loved ones left with nothing.

"The Order preaches that life in this world is nothing but misery. Make it so. Strip away the thin veneer of civilization they so despise."

Richard looked to Verna and the women with her, Sisters of the Light, all. "They hate magic; make them terrified of it. They think those with magic must be destroyed; make them believe that they can't be. They want a world without magic; make them wish only not to anger us ever again. They want to conquer; make them want only to surrender."

As the lightning crackled through the gloomy afternoon air, and the wind-driven rain beat against the awning overhead, Richard turned his attention back to the men. When the latest crackle of thunder died out, he went on.

"To accomplish our purpose, we must have a coordinated plan aimed at every facet of the threat. To this end, some of our forces must be devoted to the important goal of hunting and killing their supply trains. Those trains are essential to the Order's survival. They not only get the reinforcements they need, but those trains send a steady stream of supplies that they must have in order to survive. The Imperial Order forces plunder as they go, but it's nowhere near enough to sustain them. Their overwhelming size is also a vulnerability. We must deny them those supplies they need to survive here in such numbers. We must cut that vital link. If the Imperial Order's soldiers starve to death they are just as dead. Any Order soldier who dies of starvation is one less we have to worry about. That's all that matters to us.