Rise of the Horde

Chapter 713 - 712

On the thirty-fifth day, the Verakh network reported the Second Reserve Corps' advance elements crossing the provincial boundary.

Twenty-two thousand soldiers. The force that the council had promised and that the six-week window had been counting down toward. The force that was supposed to change the arithmetic from twenty-five thousand against eight thousand to forty-seven thousand against eight thousand.

The force arrived to a theater that was not the theater it had been briefed to enter.

The combined force that the Second Reserve Corps was joining had lost, in five weeks of the Horde's new-phase operations, the following: its mage corps' replacement equipment, permanently. Its farrier capability, for four days that had produced lasting cavalry readiness degradation. Its forward supply depot, twice.

Three weeks of provisions, half returned. Four hundred ammunition crates. Six hundred and twelve soldiers killed in the valley ambush. Two hundred and fourteen cavalry killed or wounded in the ghost fire and drum wall operations. The accumulated soldier-days of lost operational capacity from the singing advances, the ghost fires, the drum wall, and the Throat Team operations numbered in the tens of thousands. The planting delay had extended the supply timeline. The bridge at the valley's center was collapsed. The road's paving stones had been removed and replaced and removed again.

The Second Reserve Corps' commander, a general named Varen who had been briefed on the campaign's progress at the capital before departure, arrived at Aldrath's camp and received the operational briefing that the five weeks since his departure had produced.

The briefing took four hours. Varen's expression shifted three times during the four hours, the shifts marking the points where his understanding of the theater transitioned from what his briefing documents had described to what the theater actually contained.

"He returned the food," Varen said, at the briefing's conclusion.

"He returned the civilians' food," Aldrath said. "He kept the ammunition."

"Why?"

"Because he is fighting a campaign that is not the campaign we are fighting," Snowe said.

"We are fighting a military campaign. He is fighting a political campaign that uses military operations as its instrument. Every operation he has conducted in the past five weeks has been designed to produce two effects simultaneously: a military effect that degrades our operational capacity and a political effect that reaches the capital through channels we do not control. The food return is the most visible example but every operation has a political dimension."

* * * * *

Khao'khen received the report of the Second Reserve Corps' arrival with the calm assessment that the campaign's every development received.

"Forty-seven thousand," Sakh'arran said.

"Forty-seven thousand mouths," Khao'khen said. "Not forty-seven thousand fighters. Forty-seven thousand mouths in a province whose harvest has been delayed by three weeks, whose forward supply depot has been destroyed twice, whose bridge is collapsed, whose roads have been interdicted. Forty-seven thousand mouths is a logistics problem before it is a military advantage."

"The military advantage is still real. Forty-seven thousand soldiers, even poorly supplied, can overwhelm eight thousand through sheer mass if the engagement is forced in open terrain."

"Then we do not fight in open terrain. We have not fought in open terrain since Thornfield. We fight in terrain we choose, at times we choose, in conditions we prepare. Forty-seven thousand changes the scale. It does not change the principle."

He stood at the market hall's window and looked at the valley where the Horde's formation was conducting its daily routine, the eight thousand warriors whose operational capacity had not diminished in five weeks of continuous operations because the operations had been designed to degrade the enemy's capacity rather than expend the Horde's.

"Grak'ul mok, thrak vol duum," he said. Blood of the strong, earth of the fallen, no surrender. The Full Horde Battle Oath. The oath that had been spoken only seven times in recorded orcish history, the oath that contained elements of every clan's tradition, fury and earth and ancestors and unity and defiance combined into a single phrase that was spoken when the thing being faced was the largest thing that could be faced.

"The Full Horde Battle Oath," Sakh'arran said. "You have never spoken it."

"I have never faced forty-seven thousand soldiers with eight thousand warriors in hostile territory with no possibility of reinforcement and no diplomatic solution available. The oath exists for this. The oath was made for this."

He turned from the window.

"Assemble the formation. All eight thousand. The chieftains at the front. The warband masters in the line. Every warrior in position. They will hear the oath from me, and they will answer it, and the answer will be the answer that forty-seven thousand soldiers hear from the ridgelines and the valley walls and the terrain that we have been preparing since the day we arrived."

The formation assembled in the field south of Millbridge in the afternoon light, eight thousand warriors in the arrangement that full formation required, the chieftains at the front rank, the Snarling Wolf at the center.

Khao'khen stood before the formation. He looked at the warriors who had followed him from Yohan across the highlands and through the corridor and across the frontier and into the heart of a kingdom that wanted them destroyed. Warriors who had fought at Thornfield and North Bridge and Greywater and the depression and the valley and the camp penetration and every engagement between. Warriors who were still here, still in formation, still ready.

"Grak'ul mok," he said. His voice carried across the formation with the clarity that the open field provided. "Thrak vol duum."

Blood of the strong, earth of the fallen, no surrender.

The formation answered. Eight thousand voices producing the sound that the Full Horde Battle Oath produced when it was spoken by an army that understood what the oath meant and what the oath committed them to.

"GRAK'UL MOK! THRAK VOL DUUM!"

The sound rolled across the valley and up the ridgelines and north toward the position where forty-seven thousand soldiers were assembling, the sound of eight thousand warriors who had been told that the force against them had doubled and whose response was not retreat and was not despair but was the oldest oath in the orcish language, the oath that said we are here and we are not leaving and the cost of removing us is a cost you have not yet imagined.

The Snarling Wolf caught the afternoon wind, the banner stretching south toward Yohan, the wolf's snarl directed north toward the force that was coming, the expression unchanged, the direction unchanged.

Forty-seven thousand. The number was the number. The wolf did not count. The wolf simply faced whatever was in front of it, regardless of how large that thing was, and snarled.

"Vraak duum," Khao'khen said.

"VRAAK DUUM!" Eight thousand voices.

No retreat. The campaign continued. The wolf continued. And the Horde, outnumbered and deep in hostile territory and facing the full weight of a kingdom's military power, continued because the alternative to continuing was the alternative that the oath had already rejected.

No surrender. The earth of the fallen. The blood of the strong.

The wolf waited. The wolf was patient. The wolf had been patient since the city that raised it decided to exist.

The wolf would be patient still.