Rise of the Horde

Chapter 823 - 822

The Yohan First Horde departed the Threian capital on the fourteenth day through the southern gate at dawn.

The departure was the departure that Sakh’arran’s operational planning had structured across the fourteen days’ preparation: orderly, sequential, the formations moving through the gate at the intervals that the gate’s width and the southern road’s capacity and the column’s composition combined to determine. The departure was not the departure that haste produced. The departure was the departure that the Horde’s specific character produced when the character’s expression was the expression that the departure’s audience, the capital’s remaining civilians, Colonel Gresham’s administrative personnel, the kingdom’s soldiers who had arrived over the preceding days to assume the security that the Horde’s withdrawal created, observed and that the expression’s content communicated.

The content was discipline. The content was order. The content was the specific quality that seven thousand warriors produced when the warriors’ departure from a conquered city was the departure that the warriors’ training and the warriors’ chieftain’s purpose converted from the exit that armies performed into the statement that the exit’s conduct represented.

The Verakhs led. Maghazz’s scouts preceded the main column by two hours, the scouts’ advance deployment establishing the route’s security across the terrain that the column’s passage would traverse. The scouts moved at the pace that the scouts’ function required: fast, dispersed, invisible to observation from the road’s flanking terrain.

The Rakshas followed. The 1st Warband’s formation passed through the gate with the synchronized step that the formation’s discipline maintained regardless of the step’s location, whether the step was the step that crossed a battlefield’s terrain or the step that crossed a capital’s cobblestones. Arka’garr’s position at the formation’s front was the position that the warband master’s authority required and that the warband master’s bearing communicated to the observers whose observation the bearing addressed.

The 1st Warband’s passage through the gate produced the sound that the passage’s synchronized boots produced on the cobblestones: the measured impact of hundreds of boots striking stone at the interval that the formation’s cadence prescribed. The sound was the sound that the Horde’s advance had produced across every terrain that the campaign had traversed. The sound was the sound that the capital’s civilians heard as the sound passed beneath their windows and through their streets and out through the southern gate into the countryside beyond.

The Yurakk warbands followed the Rakshas. The 2nd through 10th Warbands, their rectangular shields slung and their stabbing swords sheathed, moved through the gate in the column’s sequence that the departure’s order prescribed. The warbands’ passage was the passage that two months of urban combat in the campaign’s frontier towns and one night of urban combat in the capital had produced in formations whose capability the passage’s disciplined conduct understated.

The Rhakaddons followed the warbands. Dhug’mhar’s Rumbling Clan moved through the gate with the specific restraint that the gate’s dimensions and the cobblestones’ structural tolerance demanded from three-ton beasts whose passage’s impact on stone surfaces required the pace that the impact’s management prescribed. The beasts’ armored bulk filled the gate’s width. The beasts’ iron-capped horns cleared the gate’s arch by the margin that the arch’s height and the horns’ elevation combined to provide.

"PERFECTION DEPARTS THE CAPITAL!" Dhug’mhar announced from his mount’s saddle, the announcement delivered at the volume that the announcement’s subject warranted and that the capital’s acoustics amplified to the range that the announcement’s audience included. "PERFECTION’S DEPARTURE IS THE DEPARTURE THAT THE CAPITAL WILL REMEMBER BECAUSE THE DEPARTURE’S SUBJECT IS THE SUBJECT THAT REMEMBERING WAS DESIGNED FOR! THE CAPITAL’S ARCHITECTURE SHOULD FEEL HONORED THAT PERFECTION’S PASSAGE HAS GRACED ITS COBBLESTONES!"

"Duum," Graka said, from the position beside Dhug’mhar that the position’s permanence had established across every operational configuration that the Rumbling Clan had deployed in.

The warg cavalry followed the Rhakaddons. Haguk’s riders moved through the gate at the loping pace that the wargs’ urban movement required, the padded feet’s silent passage on the cobblestones the contrast to the Rhakaddons’ ground-shaking departure that the contrast’s existence provided. Four hundred and sixty riders whose mounts’ predatory awareness of the urban environment’s features, the narrow alleys, the building corners, the elevation changes, communicated the riders’ capability through the mounts’ behavior rather than the riders’ announcements.

The 1st Kani’karr Corps followed. The troll engineers and their siege equipment moved through the gate with the equipment’s specific transport requirements: the wheeled platforms disassembled for the road’s gradient, the fire sphere crates secured against the transport’s vibration, the anti-air crossbow platforms folded into the travel configuration that the platforms’ design permitted.

The goblin sappers followed the trolls. Grogus led the column’s goblin contingent with the bearing that the goblin commander’s growth from barely-a-warrior to capable-leader had produced over the campaign’s duration. The fine blade at Grogus’s hip caught the morning light. The blade’s quality, inappropriate for a goblin by any standard that the pre-Horde orcish world’s assessment of goblins would have applied, was the quality that the Horde’s specific assessment of warriors, the assessment that evaluated capability rather than species, permitted.

Grukk followed the goblins.

The ogre’s eight hundred pounds of enhanced musculature moved through the gate with the impact that eight hundred pounds produced on cobblestones whose structural capacity accommodated the impact through the stone’s compressed tolerance. The ogre’s passage drew the observers’ attention the way that eight hundred pounds of anything drew attention: involuntarily, the attention’s direction determined by the mass’s presence rather than the observers’ choice.

"GRUKK IS LEAVING!" the ogre announced, in the third person that the ogre’s self-referential communication style employed for every statement that the ogre’s communication included. "GRUKK HAS OPENED MANY DOORS IN THIS CITY! THE DOORS WERE GOOD DOORS! GRUKK RESPECTS THE DOORS THAT GRUKK HAS OPENED!"

The supply train followed Grukk. The wagons that the campaign’s logistics required moved through the gate at the pace that wagons’ movement produced on cobblestones: slow, deliberate, the wheels’ iron rims producing the specific sound that iron on stone generated at the speed that loaded wagons traveled.

Khao’khen departed last.

The chieftain of the Yohan First Horde walked through the capital’s southern gate on foot, with Sakh’arran at his left and the Snarling Wolf banner carried by the banner bearer at his right. The banner’s crimson wolf on its black field with the eight-petaled white flower caught the morning wind that the southern gate’s orientation channeled through the gate’s opening. The wolf’s direction on the banner was forward. The wolf’s direction was always forward.

Colonel Gresham stood at the gate’s interior. The colonel’s position was the position that the departure’s protocol required from the kingdom’s representative whose authority the departure’s conclusion would transfer to the capital’s full governance. The colonel’s bearing was the bearing that the departure’s observation produced in the officer whose professional assessment of the departing force was the assessment that the departure’s conduct warranted.

"Chieftain," Gresham said.

"Colonel," Khao’khen said.

"The capital is received."

"The capital is transferred. The condition is the condition that the transfer’s terms specified. Functional. The essential services operational. The civilian population secured. The structural assessments completed."

"The condition is confirmed. The transfer is acknowledged."

Khao’khen paused at the gate’s threshold. The pause was the pause that the threshold’s significance produced in the chieftain whose passage through the threshold was the passage that the campaign’s conclusion represented. The threshold was the boundary between the capital that the Horde had taken and the road that led south through the kingdom’s territories toward the frontier and beyond the frontier toward the mountains and beyond the mountains toward Yohan.

The road home.

"Colonel. The kingdom’s future is the kingdom’s to determine. The treaty’s framework provides the foundation. The acknowledgment provides the perception. The peace requires the will. The will is the kingdom’s responsibility."

"The will exists, Chieftain. The will is imperfect. The will is contested. The will is present."

"The presence is sufficient."

Khao’khen walked through the gate. The southern road received the chieftain’s boots and the column that preceded the chieftain and the banner that preceded the column and the thousand of warriors whose campaign had begun at Yohan’s northern gate months before and whose campaign’s conclusion was the walk through the Threian capital’s southern gate toward the south that the campaign had secured.

The walk home. The distance that the walk’s completion required was the distance that the Horde’s strength and the Horde’s discipline and the Horde’s patience would sustain. The distance was long. The distance was the distance that the purpose had always required.

The south was theirs. The ground the people needed. The ground the Horde had fought for, bled for, negotiated for, and won. Not through conquest’s permanent occupation. Through the specific combination of military capability and diplomatic wisdom and strategic restraint that the wolf’s character produced.

The Snarling Wolf marched south. The banner’s crimson wolf faced forward. The wolf’s direction had never changed. The direction was forward. The forward was home.

VOL DUUM MOK. No surrender. The dead watch.

DRAK’UL VOSH. Death before surrender.

ZUG ZUG MAG. We are one. We are war.

The Horde marched. The capital shrank behind them. The road stretched ahead. And the wolf, the snarling wolf whose snarl had been heard from the southern territories to the Threian frontier to the barbarian highlands to the Threian capital’s central hall, turned that snarl toward home.

Forward.

Always forward.

Home.