Rise of the Horde

Chapter 793 - 792

Vor’gath lay unconscious in the palace’s eastern wing, and the poisoning’s source was the wine that the celebration had provided.

The eldest shaman’s body, sustained by sixty years of shamanic practice and the Seventh Circle’s autonomous life-support functions, breathed in the shallow rhythm that the body’s minimal function produced when the body’s conscious systems had been disabled by the specific toxin that the wine contained. The toxin was not barbarian. The toxin was not natural. The toxin was the specific compound that the Threian intelligence service’s covert operations division maintained in the capital’s secure storage for the specific purpose that the compound served: the incapacitation of high-value targets through the contamination of consumables that the targets’ celebrations would include.

The Threian intelligence service had poisoned the wine before the capital’s fall. The contamination had been conducted during the three days between the breach’s opening and the palace’s capture, the three days during which the intelligence service’s remaining operatives had prepared the specific contingency that the capital’s fall demanded: the contamination of the palace’s wine cellars with the compound that the service’s pharmacological division had developed for the precise scenario of a conquering army celebrating its victory with the conquered city’s provisions.

The eldest shaman had drunk the wine at the celebration’s height. The Seventh Circle’s resistance to toxins had delayed the compound’s effect by approximately three hours, the delay the difference between the immediate incapacitation that the compound produced in unenhanced targets and the delayed incapacitation that the Seventh Circle’s metabolic resistance sustained before the resistance was overwhelmed by the compound’s engineered persistence.

The barbarian healers attended the shaman’s unconscious body. The healers’ shamanic diagnostic techniques identified the toxin’s presence in the shaman’s blood and the toxin’s resistance to the shamanic purification methods that the healers’ training provided. The toxin was designed to resist shamanic purification because the toxin’s designers had studied shamanic biochemistry and had engineered the compound’s molecular structure to bind to the specific receptors that shamanic purification targeted, the binding preventing the purification’s function by occupying the receptors that the purification needed to access.

"His life is uncertain," the senior healer told Garrok. "The toxin resists our methods. The Seventh Circle’s power sustains his body’s function but the toxin degrades the power’s capacity. The degradation’s rate suggests the eldest shaman will either recover or expire within seven days. The outcome depends on whether the Seventh Circle’s remaining capacity exceeds the toxin’s remaining potency."

Garrok received the assessment in the throne room where the celebration’s aftermath was visible in the empty cups and the overturned furniture and the specific disorder that highland warriors’ celebrations produced in spaces whose previous occupants’ orderliness was the orderliness that the celebration’s participants did not share.

"Who poisoned the wine?" Garrok asked.

"The pinkskins. Before the fall. The wine was poisoned before we arrived. The pinkskins poisoned their own cellars."

"The pinkskins poisoned their own wine rather than let us drink it."

"The pinkskins poisoned specific barrels. The barrels whose vintage markings indicated the quality that a victory celebration’s most important participants would select. The eldest shaman selected the finest vintage. The finest vintage was the poisoned vintage."

* * * * *

The morning brought the delegation’s departure.

Garrok did not send the delegation. Tharn sent the delegation. The chieftain whose crooked elbow bore the campaign’s early damage had assumed the diplomatic function that the eldest shaman’s incapacitation had vacated, the assumption based on the chieftain’s seniority among the remaining chieftains and the chieftain’s interpretation of the council’s consensus regarding the Horde’s messenger’s visit.

The delegation consisted of twelve warriors and a sub-chieftain named Vrekk, a Fourth Realm warrior whose diplomatic experience consisted of the specific experience that highland warriors accumulated during the inter-clan negotiations that the highland tradition’s seasonal gatherings produced. Vrekk’s diplomatic capability was the capability that the seasonal gatherings’ requirements had developed: direct, unsubtle, dependent on the specific assumption that the party receiving the diplomacy was the party whose position was weaker than the delivering party’s.

The delegation rode south from the capital’s eastern gate toward the Horde’s position, the ride covering the sixty miles between the capital and Ashwell in the time that the mountain ponies’ pace required. The delegation arrived at the Horde’s forward perimeter at the ninth hour.

Sakh’arran met the delegation at the perimeter’s observation point. The analytical officer’s assessment of the delegation’s composition was the assessment that the composition’s specific elements provided: twelve warriors whose armor’s quality indicated standard infantry rather than elite guard, a sub-chieftain whose Realm was Fourth rather than the Fifth or Sixth that a significant diplomatic mission would have warranted. The delegation’s composition communicated the delegation’s purpose before the delegation’s words were spoken.

"The delegation from the mountain clans," Sakh’arran said, in the trade dialect.

"These are now our lands!" Vrekk said. The sub-chieftain’s voice carried the volume that highland diplomatic tradition used for statements whose delivery’s force was intended to compensate for the statements’ content’s weakness. "The valley is ours! The capital is ours! The pinkskins’ agreements are the pinkskins’ problem! The tusked brutes sat in their camp while the mountains took the city! The mountains owe the tusked brutes nothing!"

Sakh’arran’s expression did not change. The analytical officer’s face was the face that four months of diplomatic interaction with hostile parties had refined into the specific instrument of assessment that hostile parties’ statements required: the face that absorbed the statement’s content and the statement’s delivery’s emotional loading and separated the content from the loading and processed the content’s implications while the loading’s energy dissipated against the face’s professional composure.

"The Horde’s commander will receive the delegation’s message," Sakh’arran said.

He led the delegation to the camp’s command position where Khao’khen stood at the table with the maps and the Snarling Wolf banner and the specific posture that the Horde’s chieftain adopted when the chieftain was receiving communications whose content the chieftain had anticipated and whose anticipation’s preparation was already complete.

Vrekk repeated the message. "These are now our lands! Leave, less we make you taste the fury of the mountains!"

The words settled into the space between the delegation and the Horde’s command structure. The words’ content was the content that insult produced. The words’ delivery was the delivery that contempt sustained. The words’ implication was the implication that the barbarian army’s twenty-nine thousand warriors and one hundred and twenty-one thundermakers and the capital’s occupation provided to the delegation’s position: the implication of overwhelming force whose overwhelming quality made the courtesy that negotiation required unnecessary.

Khao’khen looked at Vrekk. The looking lasted four seconds. The four seconds were the four seconds that the orcish chieftain’s assessment of the situation required, the assessment whose conclusion had been determined before the delegation arrived and whose determination the delegation’s insult had confirmed.

"ZUG’NAR!"

The roar erupted not from Khao’khen. From the camp. From the seven thousand warriors who had been standing in their formations behind the command position since the delegation’s approach had been reported by the Verakh perimeter observers, the warriors whose weeks of waiting had been the waiting that the campaign’s patience had demanded and whose patience had been the patience that the warriors sustained because the chief’s judgment had demanded it and the chief’s judgment had been correct at every previous demand.

Thousands of throats. The sound rolled across the landscape between the camp and the delegation with the physical force that thousands of orcish voices in synchronization produced, the force that the air carried as pressure and that the delegation’s twelve warriors and sub-chieftain felt in their chests as the specific compression that large-scale vocal projection created in the bodies of men standing in the projection’s path.

The delegation flinched. The flinch was involuntary. The flinch was the body’s response to the sound’s physical force, the response that the body produced when the body’s auditory system received input that the auditory system’s evolutionary design interpreted as the sound of a very large predator’s vocalization at proximity.

The flinch lasted three seconds. The three seconds were the three seconds during which the delegation’s twelve warriors and sub-chieftain processed the flinch’s cause and the flinch’s implication and the specific assessment that the cause and implication combined to produce: thousands of orcish warriors in full formation, armed, armored, their formations’ discipline visible in the formations’ stillness and the formations’ alignment and the specific quality that disciplined military formations produced when the formations’ warriors were ready for the order that converted the formations’ potential energy into the formations’ kinetic violence.

Vrekk’s eyes swept the camp’s visible area. The 1st Warband’s Rakshas at the center, their ridiculously long spears vertical, their great round shields at rest, two thousand warriors at most whose reputation had been established across four months of the campaign that had defeated the Threian army. The Yurakk warbands flanking the Rakshas, their rectangular shields and stabbing swords deployed in the flexible formations that adaptation required. The Rumbling Clan’s Rhakaddons behind the formation, fifty-seven armored beasts whose heavy mass was visible in the beasts’ silhouettes against the morning sky. The warg cavalry on the flanks, four hundred mounts by a rough estimate whose predatory posture communicated the specific readiness that predatory animals produced when the animals’ riders’ tension transmitted through the reins to the animals’ awareness.

The ogres behind the siege equipment, thirty-two beings whose physical size exceeded the barbarian champions’ size by the margin that made the barbarian champions’ size unremarkable by comparison.

Vrekk gathered his bearings. The gathering was the gathering that the delegation’s numerical and weapons assessment provided: more than twenty thousand warriors with one hundred and twenty-one thundermakers against approximately seven thousand warriors with Roarers and Rhakaddons and the tactical capability that the assessment’s specific elements described. The numbers favored the barbarians. The thundermakers favored the barbarians. The gathering’s conclusion was the conclusion that the numbers and the thundermakers provided: the barbarians were stronger.

The gathering steadied the delegation. The flinch’s three seconds were processed. The assessment’s conclusion was absorbed. The delegation’s posture recovered from the flinch’s collapse into the posture that the assessment’s conclusion sustained.

"Think this through," Khao’khen said. His voice was quiet. The quiet was the quiet that the chief used for the statements whose delivery’s restraint communicated more than the delivery’s volume would have, the quiet that said the speaker’s control of the situation was the control that did not require volume. "Carefully."

Vrekk looked at the orcish chieftain. The looking was the looking that a Fourth Realm sub-chieftain produced when the sub-chieftain was standing in front of a commander whose campaign’s history the sub-chieftain had not personally experienced but whose campaign’s results the sub-chieftain had been briefed on: the commander who had defeated forty-seven thousand Threian soldiers with eight thousand warriors.

The gathering’s steadiness wavered. The briefing’s content contested the assessment’s conclusion. The numbers favored the barbarians. The history favored the Horde.

Vrekk chose the numbers.

"You want war," Vrekk said, "then war you shall have."

"Then war you shall have!" Khao’khen’s response was not the quiet that the warning had used. The response was the volume that the response’s content demanded, the volume that carried across the camp and across the formation and across the seven thousand warriors whose weeks of waiting had produced the specific readiness that the response’s content released.

"KRUL’NAR?!"

Sakh’arran roared towards the horde.

"ZUUUUUUGGGGGG!"

The combined voice of thousands of warriors was enough to send chill down the spines of anyone who faces down.

The delegation’s ponies shied. The animals’ response to thousands of voices was the response that animals produced when the animals’ survival instincts detected the specific quality of threat that the oath’s volume and harmonic content communicated: the quality of a very large group of very large predators announcing their intention to kill.

"Zug zug, barbarians!" Krak’thul’s voice erupted from the 4th Warband’s position with the volume that the warrior reserved for the moments whose significance matched the warrior’s assessment of the moment’s importance. "You had peace! You had an agreement! You had the eldest shaman’s wisdom telling you to honor the agreement! Now you taste the Horde’s fury! VRAAK DUUM! Our fury is not the fury of the mountains! Our fury is the fury of the wolf! And the wolf has been waiting! The wolf has been very patient! The wolf’s patience is finished!"

"VRAAK DUUM!" The 4th Warband answered.

"MORG!" Dhug’mhar’s contribution erupted from the Rumbling Clan’s position with the specific volume that the Rumbling Clan’s chieftain applied to moments whose historical significance exceeded the moments’ tactical significance. "GROMBASH KRUL! Perfection has been waiting for WEEKS! Perfection’s patience has been EXHAUSTED! Perfection’s operational deployment has been DENIED for the duration of the waiting that Perfection endured because the chief’s judgment demanded it! The chief’s judgment now demands ENGAGEMENT! Perfection’s mount is in TRANSCENDENT READINESS! The Rumbling Clan is ready! GET READY TO RUMBLE!"

"GET READY TO RUMBLE!" The Rumbling Clan answered.

The delegation rode north. The twelve warriors and the sub-chieftain whose diplomatic mission had delivered the insult that the insult’s delivery had been designed to deliver and whose delivery’s reception had produced the response that the reception’s content had guaranteed. The delegation rode fast. The riding’s speed communicated the specific information that fast riding communicated when the fast riding’s cause was the thing behind the riders rather than the thing in front of them.

The Snarling Wolf banner caught the morning wind. The wolf’s direction was north. The wolf’s snarl was the snarl that the observation’s completion had converted into the snarl that preceded the action that the observation’s conclusion demanded.

The wolf was done waiting. The wolf was done observing. The wolf was done being patient.

The wolf was coming.