Rise of the Horde

Chapter 828 - 827

The Verakh rider from the south met the column on the tenth day with the message that Yakuh had dispatched from Yohan six days before.

The message was brief. The message’s brevity was the brevity that Yakuh’s communication style produced when the communication’s content was the content that brevity’s efficiency served. The message read: "Yohan stands. The 2nd Horde holds. The forges operate. The fields produce. The children grow. The city awaits the chief’s return. Yakuh."

Khao’khen read the message at the column’s midday halt. The reading was the reading that the message’s content produced in the chieftain whose concern for the city during the campaign’s months-long absence had been the concern that the chieftain’s letter to Yakuh had expressed and that the chieftain’s memory of the historical commander whose recall by crisis at home had ended the commander’s campaign had sustained throughout the campaign’s duration. He read the message twice. The second reading was not the reading that doubt required. The second reading was the reading that relief demanded: the slow, deliberate passage over words whose meaning the first reading had confirmed and whose confirmation the second reading deepened into certainty.

Yohan stands. The two words that the concern’s resolution required. The two words that confirmed the city’s survival and the 2nd Horde’s capability and the civilization’s continuity during the months that the civilization’s creator had been absent. The two words that every commander who had ever left something worth protecting behind him had needed to receive, and that not every commander had been fortunate enough to receive.

"Yohan stands," Khao’khen said to Sakh’arran.

"Yohan stands," Sakh’arran confirmed. "The message’s content is consistent with the Verakh network’s reports throughout the campaign. The city’s defense was never tested. The Blue Countess maintained her position at the Tekarr Arch. The frontier’s stability during the campaign’s duration was the stability that the 2nd Horde’s deterrent capability and the Countess’s strategic priorities combined to produce."

"Yakuh held."

"Yakuh held. The holding was the holding that the chief assigned and that Yakuh performed. The performance confirmed the assessment that the chief made when the chief assigned the holding."

The assessment. The assessment that Khao’khen had made when he had looked at the young Skallser chieftain and seen the quality that the chieftain had seen in Sakh’arran and Arka’garr and every commander whose selection had been the selection that the selectable quality warranted. The quality was not the quality that experience alone produced. The quality was the quality that character produced and that experience refined: the steadiness beneath pressure, the judgment that operated when judgment’s difficulty was greatest, the will to hold when holding required more than training had prepared the holder for. Yakuh had possessed that quality when the chief had assessed it. Yakuh had been selected. Yakuh had performed. The selection’s validation was the validation that the performance provided.

The column resumed. Five days remained. Five days across the orcish plains whose terrain the warriors recognized from the northward march’s departure and from the years of habitation that had preceded the campaign. The terrain’s recognition produced the response that familiar terrain produced in warriors returning from unfamiliar territory: the specific relaxation that familiarity’s presence generated in bodies and minds whose tension had been sustained by unfamiliarity’s constant requirement for assessment.

The relaxation was not the relaxation that discipline’s absence produced. The relaxation was the relaxation that discipline permitted when the discipline’s context shifted from the context that required the tension to the context that permitted the tension’s reduction. The warriors maintained formation. The scouts maintained their screen. The patrols maintained their schedule. The discipline’s structure remained. The tension within the structure eased. What changed was the quality of the silence between the warriors, the silence that, on the northern campaign’s hardest days, had been the silence of endurance, and that now was the silence of anticipation. Two silences that resembled each other from the outside and that only the warriors who carried them could distinguish from within.

On the eleventh day, the Verakh scouts reported movement on the southern horizon.

The movement was not hostile movement. The movement was the movement that the scouts’ assessment identified as friendly movement before the scouts’ report reached the column’s command position. The movement was riders. Warg riders. The riders’ wargs carried the riders at the pace that greeting’s urgency sustained.

Yakuh’s riders.

The 2nd Horde’s advance screen, forty warg riders whose assignment was the screen’s function at the range that the screen’s operational protocol prescribed, had detected the 1st Horde’s approach and had dispatched the riders whose dispatch communicated the detection’s result to the column that the detection had identified.

The riders reached the column at midday. The lead rider dismounted and approached the column’s command position with the bearing that the approach’s formality and the approach’s excitement combined to produce: formal, because the approach was the approach to the chieftain whose command the rider served; excited, because the approach was the approach that communicated the city’s proximity and the city’s readiness for the chieftain’s return.

"Clan Chief Yakuh reports the 2nd Horde’s welcome to the Yohan First Horde," the rider said. "The city prepares for the chief’s arrival. The gates are open. The forges burn. The banners fly."

Khao’khen received the report. The receiving was the receiving that the report’s content produced in the chieftain whose return the report announced was anticipated and prepared for. The city prepared. The gates open. The forges burn. The banners fly. He looked past the rider, south across the plains whose distance contained the city that those words described, and he held the image that the words produced against the image that departure’s memory had preserved: the gate as it had looked on the morning the column had marched north, the banners in the early wind, the faces of those who had stood at the wall to watch the army go. The two images, the departure’s and the return’s, occupied the same space within the chieftain, the same gate, the same wall, different mornings separated by the campaign’s full weight.

Home was four days away. Home was preparing for the return that four days’ march would produce. Home’s preparation was the preparation that a civilization performed when the civilization’s founder and the civilization’s army returned from the campaign that the civilization had sent them on and that the campaign’s success had justified.

"Tell Yakuh the wolf returns," Khao’khen said. "Four days."

The rider remounted. The warg carried the rider south at the speed that the message’s delivery demanded: fast, urgent, the pace that converted the message from the column’s position to Yohan’s gate in the time that the pace’s distance and the warg’s endurance combined to determine.

Four days. The wolf returns in four days.

The column marched south with the specific energy that the rider’s departure and the message’s content and the city’s proximity combined to produce in warriors whose march’s conclusion was four days away and whose conclusion’s destination was the destination that the warriors’ entire campaign had been fought to preserve.

Four days. The countdown that led to the gate. The gate that led to the streets. The streets that led to the families. The families that the campaign’s purpose had been fought for and that the campaign’s conclusion was returning the warriors to.

Four days.

Home.