The drum wall was the strangest tactic the campaign had produced, and the campaign had produced tactics that Threian military doctrine had no chapter for.
Khao'khen ordered the troll specialist corps to construct forty war drums from materials that the Meren valley's timber provided, the drums built to the specifications that the Ironmaw chanting tradition required: deep, resonant, capable of producing a sound that carried for miles and that vibrated in the chest cavity of anyone within a thousand paces.
He positioned the drums in a line across the valley road, spaced at twenty-pace intervals, each drum operated by a troll specialist whose only instruction was to maintain a continuous beat at the cadence of a resting heartbeat. Sixty beats per minute. No variation. No acceleration. No stopping.
The drumming began at dawn and continued through the day.
The sound was not the sound of war drums as the Threian military understood war drums.
