Rise of the Horde

Chapter 795 - 794

The Horde marched at the second hour past midnight.

More than seven thousand warriors in the night march formation that the campaign’s operations had refined across four months of continuous movement through hostile territory. The formation’s silence was the silence that the Horde’s operational discipline produced when the operation’s requirements demanded the silence that detection’s prevention required: boots placed on earth rather than stone where the terrain allowed, equipment secured against rattling, the Rhakaddons’ hooves wrapped in the cloth that muffled the beasts’ massive footfalls, the warg cavalry’s handlers maintaining the animals’ silence with the specific commands that warg cavalry used for stealth movement.

The Snarling Wolf at the column’s head was furled. The banner’s fabric wrapped around the pole in the specific configuration that night operations prescribed: the banner visible to the warriors behind the standard bearer through the silver thread that the banner’s construction included for the specific purpose of night identification, the thread’s low reflectivity providing the recognition that the warriors required without the visibility that enemy observation would exploit.

The column moved north through the landscape between Ashwell and the capital in the terrain’s concealment features that the Verakh network had mapped during the weeks of surveillance that the observation period had produced. The route followed the drainage systems and the tree lines and the stone walls and the terrain’s dead ground that the Verakh scouts had identified as the route whose concealment capacity accommodated the column’s full width and whose detection risk was the lowest of the routes available.

The distance between Ashwell and the capital was sixty miles. The forced march’s pace covered sixty miles in the time that the pace and the terrain combined to determine: eighteen hours at the standard forced march pace, reduced to twenty-two hours by the terrain’s concealment features’ effect on the column’s movement speed. The column would reach the capital’s approaches at the midnight hour of the following day.

Khao’khen walked at the column’s center, the position that the chief occupied during the marches whose destination was the engagement that the march’s completion would produce. The chief walked because the chief’s walking communicated the specific message that the chief’s walking communicated to the warriors who saw the chief walking: the chief was with them, the chief was marching the same miles that they were marching, the chief was carrying the same weight that they were carrying, and the chief would be fighting the same fight that they would be fighting when the marching was done.

"Sakh’arran."

"Chief."

"The barbarian dispositions."

"The Verakh reports from the midnight surveillance describe the barbarian force’s deployment within and around the capital. The thundermaker batteries remain in the siege positions at the capital’s western and northern approaches, the positions that the bombardment’s arc had established. The batteries’ crews are celebrating with the infantry. The ammunition stacks behind the batteries are unmanned. The barbarian infantry is distributed throughout the capital’s interior, the distribution following the occupation pattern that the street-by-street advance produced: concentrated in the northwestern district where the breach occurred and thinning toward the southern and eastern districts."

"The patrols?"

"Minimal. The victory’s celebration has degraded the barbarian army’s operational discipline. The sentry positions at the capital’s gates are manned but the sentries’ alertness is the alertness that wine and celebration produce, which is the alertness that wine and celebration degrade. The patrol circuits around the capital’s exterior perimeter are not being conducted. The barbarians’ perimeter security is the security that a victorious army provides when the army’s assessment of threats is the assessment that victory produces: the assessment that the threats are gone."

"The threats are not gone," Khao’khen said.

"No, Chief. The threats are marching north at the forced march pace and the threats will arrive at the capital’s approaches at midnight tomorrow."

"The insertion point."

"The eastern wall’s postern gate. The gate that the Threian king’s escape used. The gate is small, accommodating single-file entry. The entry will require approximately four hours for the full force’s passage through the gate’s single-file constraint. Four hours during which the entry’s detection would compromise the insertion’s concealment."

"Four hours is acceptable. The barbarians’ celebration will sustain the alertness degradation that the four hours’ undetected entry requires. The entry begins at midnight. The full force is inside the capital by the fourth hour. The engagement begins at the fifth hour, the hour before dawn, the hour when the celebration’s physiological effects are at their maximum and the barbarians’ combat readiness is at its minimum."

"The hour before dawn," Sakh’arran said.

"The hour before dawn. The hour that the Throat Teams used for the camp penetration against the Threian combined force. The hour that the Horde uses for the operations whose success requires the enemy’s awareness to be at its lowest. The hour that the wolf chooses because the wolf hunts when the prey sleeps."

* * * * *

"Zug zug, Chief," Krak’thul said, from the 4th Warband’s position in the column. The warrior’s voice was at the volume that the night march’s silence protocols permitted, which was the volume that Krak’thul considered the minimum volume compatible with human communication and that the soldiers around him considered approximately three times the volume that the silence protocols actually permitted. "The barbarians drink the pinkskins’ wine and celebrate the pinkskins’ city and dismiss the Horde’s agreement and now the Horde marches to teach them the specific lesson that the pinkskins learned over four months and that the barbarians are about to learn in a single night."

"Krak’thul is speaking above the silence protocol’s volume," Sakh’arran observed.

"Krak’thul’s voice operates at the minimum volume that Krak’thul’s anatomy permits. Krak’thul has attempted to speak more quietly and the attempt’s result was the volume that Krak’thul is currently producing. Krak’thul’s vocal apparatus is calibrated for the battlefield, not for the night march. Krak’thul apologizes for the calibration’s limitations."

"Krak’thul does not apologize," a warrior beside him said.

"Krak’thul apologizes when the apology serves the operational requirement. The operational requirement is silence. Krak’thul’s apology is the acknowledgment that Krak’thul’s contribution to the silence is limited. The acknowledgment is Krak’thul’s form of silence."

"The acknowledgment is louder than the silence it replaces."

"Krak’thul’s contributions are always louder than the things they replace. That is Krak’thul’s function."

The column continued north through the darkness. Seven thousand warriors marching toward a capital whose occupiers were celebrating a victory whose celebration’s consequences the occupiers had not yet begun to understand. The consequences were the consequences that the Horde’s march produced in the strategic landscape’s configuration: the specific consequence of an army whose patience had been mistaken for passivity and whose passivity had been mistaken for weakness and whose weakness had been mistaken for the absence of the thing that the army had been accumulating across weeks of rest and preparation.

The thing was readiness. The readiness was complete. And the readiness’s application was twenty-two hours of marching away.

The wolf moved through the darkness. The wolf was silent. The wolf was patient. And the wolf was hungry.

The wolf was coming.

The column’s rhythm was the rhythm that the forced march produced in a formation whose warriors had been resting for weeks and whose resting’s accumulated energy was now being converted into the specific expenditure that sixty miles of forced marching demanded. The warriors’ legs drove the march’s pace with the sustained effort that the legs’ rested condition provided, the specific physical advantage that weeks of inactivity had produced in muscles whose glycogen stores were full and whose recovery from the campaign’s previous exertions was complete.

The Rhakaddons moved with the column at the pace that the beasts’ massive legs sustained over distance, the pace slower than the infantry’s forced march pace but sustained over the distance that the column’s timeline required because the Rhakaddons’ starting position was closer to the capital than the infantry’s assembly point and the Rhakaddons’ route was the direct route rather than the concealed route that the infantry’s detection avoidance demanded.

Dhug’mhar rode at the Rumbling Clan’s center with the specific posture that the chieftain adopted during the marches whose destination was the engagement that the chieftain had been waiting for. The posture was upright, the scarred face directed forward, the expression the expression that Perfection produced when Perfection’s operational deployment was imminent and Perfection’s readiness was the readiness that weeks of transcendent preparation had produced.

"Perfection is coming," Dhug’mhar said, to no one in particular and to everyone within the considerable radius of his voice. "Perfection is coming for the barbarians who dismissed the agreement that Perfection’s chief negotiated and that Perfection’s army bled for. Perfection’s response to the dismissal is the response that Perfection applies to all dismissals of Perfection’s legitimate interests: the overwhelming, magnificent, decisive response that Perfection’s operational capability provides."

"Perfection should conserve energy for the engagement," Graka said.

"Perfection’s energy is unlimited. Perfection’s voice is the expenditure that does not deplete the reserve. Perfection’s voice is, if anything, the mechanism by which Perfection’s reserve is sustained, because the vocalization of Perfection’s intent is the process by which Perfection’s intent is converted from potential energy to kinetic energy, and the conversion’s efficiency is maximized by the vocalization’s volume."

"The vocalization’s volume is also maximized by the vocalization’s volume," Graka observed.

"That is the specific quality that Perfection’s voice provides. Self-reinforcing excellence."

The column continued north. The darkness continued. The destination continued approaching at the rate that the forced march’s pace and the distance’s diminishment combined to produce. And the wolf at the column’s head, furled but present, moved through the darkness with the patience that the darkness required and the hunger that the destination would satisfy.