"I'm not going to waste time apologizing for this mess I've gotten us into. I built my strategy on the idea that we would get word of where Foul was marching in fifteen days. Now we're five days short. That's all there is to it."

-- The Illearth War

      No, that's not quite all there is to it. Since the first time I read The Illearth War, something about Hile Troy's alleged strategy for defeating Lord Foul's army bugged me. It was too simplistic, too restrictive, and didn't exploit the vast range of military history and knowledge available to Hile Troy. Why didn't he capitalize on the strengths of the various martial societies of our ancient world and blend them with his modern strategic, operational and tactical knowledge base to forge a truly deadly weapon of Law against Fleshharrower's army? And why did he keep his troops bottled up at Revelstone if he planned to fight the battle much further east and south, necessitating days of punishing marching even if he got his fifteen days of warning? If anyone did some fleshharrowing in the Illearth War it was Hile Troy to his own poor troops, whose standard issue swords and shields weren't up to the challenge of Stone-deformed humans, Cavewights, griffons and ur-viles. Playing armchair general, here's a few things that could have been done differently.

First the High Lord could have started recruiting more soldiers (and especially mounts) from the various parts of the Land as soon as the Staff of Law was regained. They needed to mobilize all of the free peoples of the Land onto a war footing and mindset to raise, arm, supply, train and preposition the Warward. It needed to be deadly, combining the best strengths of all its constituent peoples, thus the soldiers recruited from each race could have been focused toward one specialty, perhaps like this:

• Lords. This is a tough one, because you can't just rush a bunch of cattle herders through the Loresraat and end up with a hundred Mhorams. They did get several new Lords in the 40 years since the Staff of Law was recovered, but there should have been an even stronger attempt to train larger numbers; and the prospective recruiting pool included the Woodhelvennin, Stonedownors as well as Plainsmen and folk from the Northron Climbs and other remote locations. As they demonstrated time and again throughout the First Chronicles, each Lord was worth a thousand soldiers in battle.



• Woodhelvennin. The Warward needed archers -- good ones and a lot of them -- to break charges, take out sentries and spies, shoot down griffons, and generally whittle away Fleshharrower's strength. This is where Troy could bring his knowledge of the horse-mounted Mongol archer and the English longbow and clothyard shaft into play. Mounted Woodhelvennin archers would absolutely decimate kresh packs while constantly retreating and fading away. Unmounted archers with longbows could make regular kills at five hundred meters in Fleshharrower's ranks, just like the British at Agincourt.



• Stonedownors. These folks are physically powerful and naturally disciplined, the perfect raw material to forge into iron legionnaires just like Roman farmboys. If Troy could equip them with two pilum, a gladius, a good shield and some disciplined training, they'd've stomped as much ass as Marius' best iron legions.



• Plainsmen. While these normal humans may have lacked a Stonedownor's brute strength or Woodhelvennin's skill with a bow, they would've made a hell of a pike-toting phalanx. If Troy stacked them several rows deep with eighteen-foot ashwood pikes, no enemy charge could break that horizontal forest, not if it was covered from ur-viles by Lord's fire and protected from outflanking by competent legions. In chokepoints of the Andelainian Hills, Doom's Retreat or Doriendor Corishev they'd've cost Fleshharrower more troops than even he could afford.



• Giants. Troy could really have used ten or twenty strong Giants as commandos. Unlike Saltheart Foamfollower, these bad boys would've carried swords -- big swords -- into battle. In situations where Cavewight formations overpowered other forces these Giants could swing the tide of battle back in favor of the Land's defenders. Plus they sing and tell stories ... perfect for morale. They would've been happy to give up their Gildenlode keels for use in fashioning arrowtips to be used against griffon, ur-viles and other special targets.



• Haruchai. These mountainous folk love to fight and were good at it ... it wouldn't have been hard to recruit about five to ten thousand of them to serve as elite troops to handle especially dangerous tasks and shore up the defenses wherever they started to sag. And nobody could go under the pike phalanx with these guys waiting for them.



• Waynhim. One of the better Lords needed to engage these eyeless folks to find out what they know, borrowed a little of that old Demondim-spawn magic and maybe even recruited a rhysh of them into the army to oppose the ur-vile wedges. This could've yielded big dividends ... it did during Revelstone's siege.



• Weapons Researchers. Troy should've set up a special area at the Loresraat for these guys ... and should have taught them to think dirty. We're talking camoflauged pits filled with poisoned punji-sticks to give way under the weight of thousands of enemies, caltrops for cavalry troops to toss behind them and skewer kresh paddy-paws (with resultant disruption of ranks and pain-maddened fratricide), field medical kits, signals and warning flares, and especially nasty magical explosives. The rhadhamaerl, lillianrill and Lords should all have put their heads together and cooked up some badass boobytraps to counteract those pesky ur-vile wedges. Who knows, maybe even an Unfettered One could've helped produce something useful for the cause.

      Second, the Warmark could have kept at least ten scouting parties continuously patrolling east of Landsdrop to determine where Fleshharrower's army was assembling for attack. Sufficient lead time on Foul's intent and avenue of approach were the missing ingredients to Troy's initial battle plan. Each party might consist of ten Ranyhyn-mounted Bloodguard and at least one accompanying Lord with a lomillialor communication rod. Four parties patrolling north of Mount Thunder and another six south of it would have sufficed, given the size of Fleshharrower's army. Foul's minions wiped out scattered Ramen and Bloodguard scouting parties but wouldn't have overcome an alert Ranyhyn-mounted party of Bloodguard with a couple of Lords.

      Third, the Warward could have been stationed in two equal formations east of the Andelainian Hills, one just northwest of Mount Thunder, the other just north of Morinmoss Forest. A five-thousand pikeman phalanx would anchor the center, flanked by a five-thousand soldier legion on each side, backed up by as many thousands of unmounted archers as possible each with a bushel of arrows at hand, a couple of five-Giant commando units, between three and six Lords, and detachments of Haruchai to throw into whatever breaches developed. Each force would have a detached cavalry regiment of Woodhelvennin archers backed up by a Lord or two and Ranyhyn-mounted Bloodguard. These regiments would patrol just west of Landsdrop to harass Fleshharrower's army as it attempted the ascent and then every step of the way to Andelain. These troop formation numbers are easily attainable given what Hile Troy was able to drum up in the few short years since his summoning, assuming the Lords started organizing right after the Second Ward came to Revelstone. There are tremendous strategic, operational and tactical advantages to this general troop deployment.

• Distance. It eliminates a damaging amount of savage marching to get all the way from Revelstone to where the fighting takes place. Why the heck did Hile Troy want to start the war with a guaranteed hellish forced-march?



• Supply. Napoleon was right ... an army travels on its stomach. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to feed an army in the Andelainian hills region where everything is fertile and plentiful and supplies can be cached. Carting supplies all the way from Revelstone is an exercise in logistical stupidity, just considering the number of horses required.



• Attrition. The two mounted cavalry regiments would reap a terrible toll on Fleshharrower's army over the long miles from Landsdrop to the initial engagement (ambush) site, particularly on the compact kresh and mounted ur-vile wedges. Conducted properly with support from Ranyhyn-mounted Lords, using hit and run tactics, compound bows with steel-tipped arrows, caltrops and booby-traps these Mongol-type riders could eventually eliminate the enemy's scouts and the entire kresh/ur-vile vanguard. Then instead of them triggering the Word of Warning, the main body of Fleshharrower's army could enjoy the experience.



• Operational flexibility.
  
  
  • If Fleshharrower attacked north towards Revelstone, both cavalry regiments would harry him nonstop while the northern force could easily march back to Revelstone ahead of Fleshharrower's army, arriving tanned, rested and ready to defend Lord's Keep. The second force would stay mobile, disrupting the supply chain and mounting harrassing attacks. The Germans learned the effect of this kind of partisan warfare -- to their grief -- during WWII.
  
  
  
  • If Fleshharrower attacked toward the central or south plains in pursuit of the Warward, both forces would converge on him at a suitable ambush site in the eastern Andelainian Hills. As Fleshharrower's army concentrated on one enemy holding a chosen defensive position (complete with catapults and mangonels) the other could surprise attack from the rear cutting off avenues of escape and wreaking tremendous havoc, possibly winning the war with one decisive hammer blow. This tried-and-true "pincer" tactic really works ... the Soviets lost millions of soldiers, sometimes several hundred thousand at a time, to vastly smaller German units during the Second World War because of it.
  
  
  
  • In the event a full-scale retreat became necessary, both forces could dash through the Andelainian Hills (which Thomas Covenant discovered was mystically easier for good creatures than normal travel) through routes of their own choosing which naturally would be stocked with supplies and chock full of well-camoflauged and booby-trapped ambush sites. If Fleshharrower's army were too powerful, the Warward would retreat to Revelstone, if not they would draw it after them towards the successive ambush sites of Mithil Valley, Doom's Retreat and finally Doriendor Corishev. Remember Leonidas. In either scenario the cavalry regiments would snipe the enemy unmercifully, avoiding the Giant-Raver and scattering before an effective counterattack could be made.
  
  
  
  • If any of Fleshharrower's initially large army managed to survive the Andelainian Hills their supply lines would be dangerously overextended and vulnerable to the cavalry regiments and partisans like the Ramen. It certainly wouldn't be strong enough to lay a convincing siege against mighty Revelstone, and would be defeated in stages if it pursued the combined Warward through the well-prepared death traps of the Mithil Valley, Doom's Retreat and Doriendor Corishev.

      Fourth, and the single most important element of the entire battle strategy, would be to keep High Lord Elena and the Staff of Law with the Warward. It would be imperative to retain the only person capable of counteracting Fleshharrower's fragment of the Illearth Stone ... because Elena's prime mission would be to kill the bastard, sneakily. The High Lord wouldn't show herself at all, not in the first or even the second engagement when the Warward would be fighting with everything else it had. She'd hide her power and bide her time until after Fleshharrower exhausted himself controlling his army and fighting the lesser Lords for a couple days and nights. Then a commando unit of Giants would lure him into confrontation, covered by a Lord to ward them from immediate annihalation. Once the Giant-Raver sprang for the bait and was focused entirely on his prey, Elena would strike from his blind side with every atom of Lord's fire she could channel through the Staff of Law. No way he could survive that, not to mention the other Lords, Giants and Haruchai in the area who would converge to finish him off. Sure it'd be underhanded and low, but if Hyrim and a handful of Bloodguard could polish off Kinslaughterer in Coercri, and Mhoram could slay Satansfist with the krill, Elena could definitely off him with the Staff of Law. After that, the game's over.       That's my strategy. Once the boss goes down the rest of the army would have a contest with Sauron's boys to see who could go to pieces the fastest. Chalk up another loss for Lord Foul.