Rise of the Horde

Chapter 825 - 824

Valdenmarch appeared on the fourth day’s horizon with the silhouette that the fortress’s position on the frontier’s elevation produced against the southern sky.

The fortress was the fortress that Colonel Gresham had transformed from a neglected outpost into an operational headquarters during the months that had preceded the Horde’s northward campaign. The fortress was the fortress whose walls the Horde had bypassed without a casualty during the northward march, the bypass that had demonstrated the Horde’s operational sophistication to the colonel whose professional assessment of the bypass had earned the Horde’s professional respect.

The fortress was garrisoned. The garrison’s strength was the strength that the post-campaign military disposition provided: two hundred soldiers, a skeleton force whose function was the frontier’s observation rather than the frontier’s defense. The defense was unnecessary. The treaty’s existence eliminated the threat that the defense had been designed to address.

The Horde’s approach to Valdenmarch produced the specific response that the approach’s context determined. The garrison did not man the walls. The garrison did not prepare the defenses. The garrison observed the Horde’s approach with the observation that professional soldiers performed when the observation’s subject was the army whose treaty with the kingdom converted the observation from defensive assessment to professional interest.

A rider emerged from Valdenmarch’s gate and approached the Horde’s vanguard at the pace that the approach’s diplomatic purpose required: measured, unhurried, the pace of communication rather than confrontation.

"The fortress extends its acknowledgment to the Yohan First Horde," the rider said. The rider was a young lieutenant whose bearing communicated the bearing that the bearing’s context required: formal, respectful, the specific posture that a Threian officer produced when the officer addressed the commander of the force that had liberated the kingdom’s capital. "Colonel Gresham’s instructions include the provision of water and rest facilities for the Horde’s use during the column’s passage."

Sakh’arran received the communication. "The Horde accepts the provision. The column will use the water facilities south of the fortress. The column does not enter the fortress."

"Understood."

The exchange was the exchange that the exchange’s efficiency required: brief, professional, the specific interaction that two military organizations produced when the organizations’ relationship had been defined by the treaty that the campaign’s conclusion had produced and that the campaign’s aftermath had reinforced.

The column rested south of Valdenmarch for four hours. The rest was the rest that four days of sustained march produced in warriors whose physical endurance exceeded the endurance that human armies produced but whose physical endurance was not unlimited. The warriors drank from the water facilities that the fortress’s southern cisterns provided. The Rhakaddons drank from the stream that the frontier’s geography channeled past the fortress’s southern approach. The wargs drank from the same stream at the downstream position that the wargs’ predatory presence at the upstream position would have contaminated for the Rhakaddons’ use.

During the rest, Khao’khen stood at the frontier’s elevation and looked south toward the Lag’ranna Mountains whose silhouette the elevation’s view provided on the horizon’s edge.

The mountains. The barrier between the Threian kingdom’s territory and the orcish lands that the treaty had recognized as the orcish people’s sovereign territory. The mountains that the Horde had crossed northward at the campaign’s commencement and that the Horde would cross southward at the campaign’s conclusion. The mountains whose Narrow Pass was the passage through which the Horde’s entire force had marched months before and through which the Horde’s entire force would march again within days.

The mountains looked different from the north.

The difference was not geographic. The mountains’ profiles were the profiles that the mountains’ geology had produced over millennia. The difference was perspective. The northward view of the mountains had been the view that an army marching toward enemy territory produced: the mountains as obstacle, the Narrow Pass as chokepoint, the crossing as the transition from safety to danger. The southward view of the mountains was the view that an army marching toward home produced: the mountains as boundary, the Narrow Pass as threshold, the crossing as the transition from foreign territory to sovereign ground.

Home was beyond the mountains. Yohan was beyond the mountains. The city that Khao’khen had built from nothing, the forges that Zul’jinn operated, the training grounds that Arka’garr’s drills had shaped, the streets where children played, the walls that Yakuh’s 2nd Horde defended. Home was beyond the mountains and the march would carry the Horde to home within the days that the march’s remaining distance required.

"The frontier line," Sakh’arran said. The strategist stood beside the chieftain, the strategist’s observation directed at the same mountains whose observation the chieftain’s attention occupied. "The treaty establishes the frontier line at the position south of Valdenmarch. The position is the position where the kingdom’s sovereignty ends and the orcish territory begins. The frontier line’s establishment requires the markers that the treaty’s implementation specifies."

"The markers."

"Stone markers at the positions that the treaty’s geographic specifications designate. The markers bear the Threian kingdom’s seal on the north-facing surface and the Horde’s seal on the south-facing surface. The markers’ placement is the placement that both signatories must witness."

"Then the markers are placed on the return march. The Horde witnesses the placement. The kingdom’s representative witnesses the placement."

"Colonel Gresham’s authority includes the witnessing. The colonel’s designation as the kingdom’s transitional representative extends to the treaty’s implementation requirements."

The frontier line. The line that the campaign had been fought to establish. The line whose establishment was the establishment that the treaty’s acknowledgment of the invasion had produced alongside the acknowledgment’s other provisions. The line was a line on a map. The line was markers in the ground. The line was the physical manifestation of the political reality that the campaign’s military pressure and the campaign’s diplomatic negotiation had combined to create.

The line was the line that separated the kingdom that had invaded the orcish south from the orcish south that the kingdom would not invade again. The line was the line that the treaty’s existence and the Horde’s capability combined to guarantee. The line was the line behind which the orcish people would live in the sovereignty that the line’s establishment represented.

The markers would be placed. The frontier would be marked. The campaign’s purpose would be inscribed in stone at the positions where the purpose’s geographic expression existed.

The rest concluded. The column reformed. The march resumed southward, toward the mountains, toward the Narrow Pass, toward the frontier line’s establishment and the crossing that the line’s southern side represented.

Toward home.

The wolf marched south. The wolf’s snarl, which had been directed north since the campaign’s commencement, was now the snarl that faced forward and forward was south and south was home. The snarl’s direction had not changed. The snarl’s direction was always forward. Forward had simply rotated to face the direction that forward’s purpose now pointed.

Always forward. Even when forward was home.