Rise of the Horde

Chapter 662 - 661

The valley march was thirty miles of darkness, confined terrain, and the specific, grinding physical endurance that distinguished soldiers who had been genuinely prepared from soldiers who had merely trained.

The track through the Ashwell Valley was not a road in any military sense. It was the kind of route that existed because people had walked it enough times to compress the vegetation rather than because anyone had engineered it for purpose.

It was wide enough for a cart and no wider, which meant the Horde's formations compressed from their standard marching width to columns of four, the reduction in width tripling the column's length and extending it across a distance that meant the rear elements were still entering the valley when the vanguard had covered the first six miles.

The Rhakaddons moved through with the careful deliberateness of creatures navigating terrain that their bulk made inherently difficult, their riders maintaining contact with the animals' heads to guide them through the sections where the track narrowed further between limestone outcroppings that had not been cut or smoothed for anything larger than a farmer's pony.

Haguk's Warg Cavalry moved ahead of the column from the moment the march began, the riders operating in two-warg pairs along the valley's length and across its flanks, identifying the observation posts that Snowe might have positioned to watch the secondary route.

They found three.

The Verakhs had already located and marked two of them during the afternoon reconnaissance, and the Warg Cavalry's pairs dealt with those first, the action quick and quiet in the way that the Verakh-trained scouts and the riders who worked with them had learned to make action in confined terrain.

The third was a two-man cavalry observation post that the Verakhs had missed, positioned behind a limestone formation at the valley's midpoint where the route bent sharply eastward and the formation provided natural concealment from the surveillance approaches the Verakhs had used.

The Warg Cavalry pair that found it dealt with it in the same way, and the valley's silence resumed before the following infantry column reached the bend.

The march's character changed as the hours accumulated in the way that long marches always changed, the first hours carrying the focused alertness that the operation's stakes demanded, every warrior understanding that the valley route's value depended entirely on not being detected before the column completed its passage.

The middle hours held the particular sustained awareness that experienced soldiers developed for conditions that were uncomfortable and demanding without being immediately threatening, the kind of attentiveness that kept formation intervals correct and feet moving at the prescribed pace even when the darkness made both difficult and the cold and the physical strain of confined-terrain marching made everything more so. The final hours before dawn held the sharpening awareness that approaching action always produced, the physiological response to proximity of engagement that combat-experienced soldiers had learned to channel into preparation rather than anxiety.

Arka'garr moved along the column's full length throughout the night. He did not confine himself to the 1st Warband or the vanguard or any section of the march that could be called his tactical position.

He appeared at the points where his presence was needed, at a formation that was losing its interval in the valley's darkness, at a Roarer crew whose weapon had developed a mechanical issue that required two men and a particular sequence of operations to correct, at a supply wagon section of track so deteriorated that the wheels were cutting through the clay to bedrock and required every warrior in the adjacent formation to put their shoulders to the wagon bed.

He said little.

He was there, which was the instruction.

The valley's southern mouth appeared at the fourth hour after midnight, the track emerging from the limestone walls into the open farmland of the provincial interior with the abruptness that confined terrain always released its travelers into open ground, suddenly, fully, the compression of the valley replaced in an instant by the horizon that the sky above open fields provided.

The terrain ahead was the same rolling farmland they had been marching through for days, familiar from the advance north but now oriented toward the south and east rather than the north.

Two miles east, General Snowe's army was deploying to its blocking position in the predawn darkness. His formations were spreading across the provincial road in the arrangement that would receive the orcish force that was supposed to be driving south from Irenmere along that road. The advance guard was already positioned. The main body was still moving from its marching columns into the battle lines that the engagement required.

Snowe's army was facing north.

Khao'khen deployed from column to battle formation with the controlled speed that Arka'garr's drilling had made habitual. The warbands peeled off the valley track and into the farmland, their formations expanding from the compressed columns of the confined march into the staggered battle lines that open terrain permitted.

Every warband master knew his unit's position in the deployment pattern from the briefing twelve hours before and the drills that had rehearsed the pattern before the campaign began.

The Rhakaddons moved to the right wing at the deliberate pace that their battle deployment required. The Warg Cavalry fanned into screening positions ahead and to both flanks, creating the surveillance curtain that would delay Snowe's scouts from immediately identifying the Horde's approach angle.

The Roarers distributed through the formations with the tactical placement that Arka'garr's system specified for an advance-to-contact, distributed rather than concentrated, positioned to provide overlapping fire on the multiple sectors that a deployed enemy force would present rather than massed on a single point of maximum effect.

Fire sphere teams moved to their assault positions behind the shield wall units. The anti-air platforms were assembled with the efficiency that their crews had developed through repeated practice into something close to automaticity.

The Snarling Wolf banner was raised from the travel position to the combat position as the deployment completed, the standard-bearer lifting the pole to the full height that the wolf's profile required to be visible across the engagement range that the approaching battle would cover.

The banner caught the first gray light of the false dawn, not the sun but its precursor, the lightening of the eastern sky that preceded the actual sunrise by thirty minutes and that was sufficient to make the wolf's outline visible against the brightening horizon.

Warriors who saw the standard rise from travel to combat knew what the movement meant without needing it explained. They had seen it at Thornfield and at North Bridge and at Greywater. They knew what followed it.

"Dawn advance," Khao'khen said to Arka'garr, who stood beside him at the formation's center. "We close the distance before their scouts fully identify our approach angle. When the Roarers open fire, we are already inside the range where their deployment cannot adjust to meet us. Speed first. Formation integrity second, because speed that costs us the formation costs us the battle."

"Understood," Arka'garr said, which was all he ever said when an order was clear and the plan was sound.

Khao'khen looked east across the darkening farmland to where the gray shapes of Snowe's army were visible as masses against the lighter ground, their formations distinguishable from terrain features by the movement within them and the faint, distant sound of an army still settling into its positions.

An army that was facing the wrong direction.

The Horde moved east at the controlled rapid advance that maintained formation while closing distance. The Snarling Wolf moved above them, forward, fixed, the wolf's snarl aimed at the approaching shapes with the expression that had carried it through every engagement of the campaign and that carried it now through the predawn farmland toward the battle that would determine whether the Horde's months of work ended in a position of strength or a strategic reversal.

The wolf did not look back. It never did.