Rise of the Horde - Chapter 641 - 640

Colonel Gresham received the report on the evening of the fourth day.

He was in the command post at Valdenmarch, a stone-walled fortress that the Threian military had maintained as a frontier garrison for three generations and that Gresham had spent six months transforming from a neglected border outpost into the operational headquarters of the Frontier Force. Maps covered every wall. Dispatch riders came and went through the courtyard with the regularity of a pulse. The officers who served under him had learned that the Colonel’s work hours were defined by the existence of work rather than the position of the sun, and that interrupting him with important information was never wrong regardless of the hour.

The dispatch rider who brought the southeastern observation report was a young cavalryman whose horse was lathered and whose face carried the particular expression of a man who had ridden hard because the content of his message demanded it.

“Large force moving through the southeastern highlands, sir. Estimate eight thousand or more. Orcish banners, A Snarling Wolf along with Melting Wings. Heavy equipment in the column. Moving at accelerated pace.”

Gresham read the written report twice, the second reading slower than the first, his experienced eye extracting details that the observer’s trained but young assessment might have emphasized differently. The force composition was significant. Eight thousand warriors was larger than any orcish formation that had been reported in the eastern territories since the Lag’ranna campaign. The presence of heavy equipment, the Rhakaddons and the wheeled platforms that the report described, indicated a force that had been equipped for sustained operations rather than a raid. And the accelerated pace suggested that the orcs knew they had been observed and were trading concealment for speed.

This was not a raiding party. This was an army.

Gresham set the report down and looked at the map that dominated the command post’s central table. The southeastern corridor, which his predecessor had dismissed as impassable for large forces and which Gresham himself had considered unlikely but not impossible, was now confirmed as the approach route. The orcish army would emerge from the highlands in approximately three to four days, depending on their pace, and when they emerged, they would be within striking distance of Valdenmarch and the frontier settlements that the Frontier Force existed to protect.

* * * * *

He summoned his officers within the hour.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and the word carried the calm authority that his subordinates had learned to associate with situations that were serious without being panicked. “The orcs are coming.”

He briefed them with the methodical precision that defined his command style. Force estimates. Approach route. Timeline. The assessment that the orcish force was equipped for a sustained campaign rather than a border incursion. The implication that this was the Yohan Horde, the same organized, disciplined force that had fought the Countess Winters at Lag’ranna and had demonstrated tactical capabilities that no previous orcish army had possessed.

The Frontier Force at Valdenmarch numbered fifteen hundred soldiers. Infantry, cavalry, a small contingent of mages whose capabilities were useful for reconnaissance and communication but insufficient for the kind of battlefield magic that the Countess Winters had employed at Lag’ranna. They were well-trained, well-equipped, and positioned in fortifications that multiplied their defensive capability significantly.

But they were fifteen hundred against eight thousand.

“I have dispatched riders to General Snowe requesting reinforcement,” Gresham continued. “The Lord Marshal’s response will depend on the forces available and the time required to move them to our position. We should expect to hold Valdenmarch for a minimum of two weeks before significant reinforcement arrives.”

He paused, letting the arithmetic settle into his officers’ understanding. Two weeks. Fifteen hundred against eight thousand. In fortifications, yes, with the defensive advantage that stone walls and prepared positions provided. But the orcs who were coming were not the disorganized warbands that previous frontier garrisons had faced. These were the orcs who had fought Aliyah Winters to a strategic draw and who had, according to the intelligence reports that General Snowe’s office had distributed, developed ranged weapons, siege capabilities, and tactical doctrines that approached Threian standards of sophistication.

“We prepare the fortress for siege,” Gresham ordered. “All outlying patrols recalled. Supply inventories confirmed. Water reserves checked. Mage communications established with the Baron’s garrison and with General Snowe’s headquarters. I want every approach route observed and every defensive position manned by dawn.”

His officers moved with the disciplined efficiency that their training and his leadership had produced. Valdenmarch would not be caught unprepared. Whatever the orcs brought to its walls, they would find a garrison that understood its purpose and was ready to fulfill it.

Gresham returned to the map after his officers departed. He studied the southeastern corridor, tracing the route that the orcish army was following with a finger that moved slowly across the terrain, assessing each feature, each advantage, each vulnerability.

He thought about what he knew of the orcish commander. The intelligence reports from General Snowe’s office had described a leader who approached warfare with a methodical precision that was fundamentally different from the chaotic aggression that had characterized every previous orcish military effort. The Lag’ranna campaign had demonstrated tactical capabilities, ranged weapons, coordinated formations, combined arms operations involving infantry, cavalry, and siege elements, that suggested the orcish commander had either been trained by someone familiar with Threian military doctrine or had independently developed approaches that paralleled it.

Neither possibility was comforting.

He drafted two additional dispatches. The first went to the Baron of Frost’s garrison at the Tekarr approaches, requesting that the griffon knight patrols be redirected to provide aerial reconnaissance of the orcish column’s movement. The griffons could cover ground that cavalry scouts could not, and their elevated perspective would provide force composition details that ground-level observation could not match. The second dispatch went to the Countess Winters at the Tekarr Arch, informing her through the Order of the Seal’s communication network that the orcish main force had departed its city and was moving toward the frontier, and that the city of Yohan was now defended by a reduced garrison.

Whether the Countess would act on that information was beyond Gresham’s authority to determine. But providing it was within his responsibility, and Gresham was a man who fulfilled every responsibility that his position required.

He was not afraid. Fear was a luxury that frontier commanders could not afford. But he was realistic, and realism told him that the next two weeks would determine whether Valdenmarch held or fell, and that the margin between those outcomes was thinner than he would have liked.

He looked out the command post window at the southern horizon, where the orcish army was approaching through terrain that his observation network had been designed to monitor. Somewhere in those highlands, eight thousand warriors were marching toward his fortress with the organized purpose that made this threat different from every orcish incursion that Valdenmarch had faced in its three generations of existence.

“Well then,” he said to the empty room. “Let them come.”

He returned to the map, and began to plan.

The candles burned low as the night deepened. Outside, the fortress prepared itself with the steady efficiency of a garrison that had drilled for this moment. Sentries doubled on the walls. Cavalry horses were saddled and held in the courtyard. The mages established their communication crystals in the tower rooms where the stone walls would protect the delicate instruments from the weather and the disruption that combat produced.

Valdenmarch had stood for three generations. Gresham intended to ensure it stood for a fourth.