The ghost fires started on the seventh night.
Khao'khen had ordered twelve Verakhs to carry bundles of treated brush, the kind that burned with heavy smoke but minimal light, to positions along the ridgelines east and west of the combined force's camp. The positions were not the positions that the Horde used for combat operations. They were the positions that the Horde had never used for anything, the empty high ground that the combined force's patrols had checked and cleared and marked as safe.
At the second hour past midnight, the Verakhs lit the brush piles and withdrew.
The smoke rose from twelve positions simultaneously, the heavy columns visible against the night sky in the moonlight, creating the impression of twelve fire positions on the ridgelines above a camp of twenty-five thousand soldiers.
