Rise of the Horde

Chapter 820 - 819

The barbarian withdrawal completed at the seventy-first hour.

The final column passed through the northern gate with Tharn at the rear, the youngest chieftain’s position at the withdrawal’s end the position that the chieftain’s responsibility for the withdrawal’s completion required. Tharn’s crooked elbow caught the morning light as the chieftain paused at the gate’s threshold and turned to look back at the capital that the highland clans had taken and held for eleven days and lost in a single night.

The looking was brief. The looking was the observing that a chieftain performed when the looking’s purpose was the commitment of the view to the memory that the chieftain would carry back to the highlands and that the memory’s content would inform the chieftain’s future decisions regarding the lowlands and the forces that occupied them.

Tharn turned and walked through the gate. The gate remained open. The road received the youngest chieftain’s boots and the four thousand three hundred and twelve warriors who preceded him and the stretchers that carried the wounded who could not walk and the dead whose bodies the highland tradition required the mountains to receive.

Kael had departed with the main body at the forty-second hour, the analytical chieftain’s position near the column’s center the position that the column’s command required from the chieftain whose authority was the authority that the surviving chieftains’ agreement had designated as the withdrawal’s operational command. Morag traveled in the stretcher section, the recovered chieftain’s broken collarbone and fractured ribs immobilized by the binding that Rakh’ash’tha’s treatment had applied and that the barbarian healers had acknowledged was superior to the binding that the barbarian healers’ technique would have produced.

Vor’gath remained in the palace’s eastern wing. The eldest shaman’s breathing had deepened at the twenty-eighth hour of the neural compound’s administration, the deepening the specific indicator that the neural restoration’s progress produced in the respiratory function that the restoration was restoring. The deepening was not recovery. The deepening was the precursor to recovery that the deepening’s trajectory indicated was proceeding at the rate that the compound’s displacement of the toxin’s neural binding produced.

The capital was the Horde’s.

Seven thousand warriors in a city built for two hundred thousand civilians, the warriors’ presence distributed across the districts that the battle’s fighting and the withdrawal’s logistics had converted from the city’s peacetime geography into the operational geography that the Horde’s deployment required. The Rakshas held the palace district. The Yurakk warbands held the market district and the residential districts. The Rhakaddons were stabled in the market district’s largest warehouse, the beasts’ three-ton mass accommodated by the warehouse’s dimensions that the market’s commercial storage had produced. The warg cavalry patrolled the perimeter at the intervals that the perimeter’s security demanded.

Sakh’arran convened the operational assessment at midday.

The assessment was the assessment that the capital’s joint administration required from the strategist whose analytical capability was the capability that the administration’s complexity demanded. The complexity was the complexity that a conquered capital’s essential services produced when the essential services’ continuation required the cooperation between an occupying military force and the civilian administrative personnel whose expertise the services’ operation depended on.

"Water," Sakh’arran said. "The capital’s water system is an aqueduct from the northern hills. The aqueduct is intact. The barbarian occupation did not damage the aqueduct’s infrastructure. The water flows. The distribution within the city requires the pump stations that the civilian operators maintain. The pump stations require the civilian operators’ continued operation."

"The civilian operators are present?" Khao’khen asked.

"The civilian operators evacuated with the court. Some returned during the barbarian occupation when the barbarians required the services that the operators provided. The operators who returned are present. The operators who did not return are not present. The present operators are sufficient for the water system’s basic operation. The absent operators’ functions can be deferred until the transfer’s completion."

"Food."

"The capital’s food supply was partially consumed by the barbarian occupation. The remaining stores are sufficient for the Horde’s seven thousand warriors for approximately twenty-one days. The civilian population’s food requirements are the requirements that the civilian population’s size determines. The civilian population’s current size is approximately eight thousand, those who remained through both the barbarian occupation and the battle. The combined food requirement, military and civilian, reduces the stores’ sufficiency to approximately twelve days. The fourteen-day withdrawal timeline requires resupply from the Horde’s supply train at Ashwell by the tenth day."

"Send for resupply."

"The Verakh rider departs within the hour. The supply train’s delivery requires four days by wagon. The delivery arrives at the ninth day. The margin is acceptable."

"Sanitation."

"The battle’s aftermath requires the specific sanitation that battle’s aftermath demands. The streets contain debris from the Rhakaddon charge, the earth eruption, the building-by-building clearance, and the general destruction that urban combat produces. The debris includes structural materials, personal possessions, weapons, and the remains of the combatants whose bodies the battle produced and whose collection the withdrawal’s dead-carrying provisions did not fully address."

"The barbarian dead were collected?"

"The barbarian dead were collected by the barbarian healers during the withdrawal’s seventy-two hours. The collection was thorough. The collection was not complete. Approximately one hundred and forty barbarian dead remain in the buildings and streets where the fighting’s specific conditions prevented the collection’s access. Additionally, the battle produced Horde casualties. Approximately three hundred and twenty Horde warriors died in the battle. The Horde’s dead have been collected and prepared for the rites that the Horde’s tradition requires."

Three hundred and twenty. The number that the battle’s cost had produced in the Horde’s strength. Three hundred and twenty warriors who had entered the capital through the postern gate at dawn and who would not leave the capital through the southern gate when the Horde’s departure commenced. Three hundred and twenty warriors whose names Sakh’arran had recorded in the document that the names’ recording required and that the names’ families in Yohan would receive when the document’s delivery reached the city where the families waited.

Khao’khen was silent for the duration that the number required. The duration was the duration that the chieftain allocated to every casualty report, the specific interval during which the chieftain’s awareness of the number’s weight occupied the chieftain’s attention before the chieftain’s attention returned to the requirements that the number’s cause had produced and that the number’s cause’s resolution demanded.

"The rites will be performed tonight," Khao’khen said. "The Amazzfer will lead. The warriors’ names will be spoken. The warriors’ deeds will be remembered."

The rites were performed at sunset.

The Amazzfer raised the totem in the palace compound’s courtyard, the golden shimmer settling over the assembled warriors with the warmth that the shimmer carried when the shimmer’s purpose was remembrance rather than protection. The totem’s golden light touched the warriors’ faces and the warriors’ faces received the light with the expressions that remembrance produced in warriors whose remembrance was the remembrance of the specific warriors who had stood beside them and who no longer stood.

Three hundred and twenty names. Spoken individually. Each name followed by the silence that the name’s speaking required from the formation before the next name was spoken. The silence was the silence that the dead deserved from the living who had survived the battle that the dead had not survived.

The names took forty minutes. Forty minutes during which the capital’s evening settled around the formation and the evening’s light faded and the torches’ light replaced the evening’s light and the torches’ flames illuminated the warriors’ faces in the specific warmth that the flames’ color provided to faces that the remembrance’s solemnity had composed into the expressions that solemnity required.

"Vol duum mok," the formation said, when the last name had been spoken and the last silence had been observed. No surrender. The dead watch.

"Drak’ul vosh," Khao’khen said. Death before surrender.

The rites concluded. The formation dispersed to the posts that the capital’s security required. The night settled over the capital that the Horde held and that the Horde would hold for thirteen more days before the holding’s conclusion and the departure’s commencement.

Thirteen days. The timeline that led home.

And somewhere on the mountain road north of the capital, four thousand barbarian warriors carried their dead toward the highlands that the dead would be cremated on, the carrying sustained by the warriors’ strength and the warriors’ tradition and the warriors’ memory of the treatment that the orcish army had provided during the withdrawal that the treatment had characterized.

The memory traveled with the warriors. The memory would reach the highlands. The memory would settle into the highland clans’ collective understanding of the orcish people the way that the treatment’s character had settled into the individual warriors’ understanding during the withdrawal’s seventy-two hours.

The wolf had calculated the memory’s formation. The wolf had also meant it. The two were not contradictions. The two were the wolf.