Rise of the Horde - Chapter 734 - 733

The column crossed the Meren river at the ford that the Horde had fought for and won, the water parting around seven thousand warriors and fifty-seven Rhakaddons and four hundred and sixty wargs and the catapults and ballistae and supply wagons that the campaign required, the crossing taking four hours and producing the specific visual that Khao’khen had designed the crossing to produce: an army moving north in the organized formation that communicated intent rather than retreat.

Aldrath’s scouts reported the crossing within the hour.

The Lord-Commander received the report at his command tent and sat with it for three minutes before calling for Snowe.

“He is moving north,” Aldrath said.

“Toward the capital.”

“Through us.”

“Around us. He will not fight us unless we force the engagement. He is not interested in our army. He is interested in our capital. The army is the obstacle between him and the capital, and his operational history suggests he will treat the obstacle the way he has treated every obstacle in this campaign: he will go around it, through it, or make it irrelevant.”

Aldrath studied the map. The Horde’s column was moving north on the valley road. The combined force was positioned east of the valley. The road between the valley and the capital ran through three provincial towns, two river crossings, and the agricultural belt that fed the eastern province’s population. The terrain was open, favorable for the combined force’s numerical advantage, and familiar to the Threian military’s operational planning.

“We intercept,” Aldrath said.

“He expects us to intercept. He has been expecting us to intercept since the ford. Every interception of this campaign has produced an engagement on his terms. The terrain between here and the capital will not change that pattern.”

“Then what do you recommend?”

Snowe looked at the map for a long moment. The look was the look of a thirty-year commander who had spent four months fighting a war he could not win and who was running out of the professional distance between assessment and despair.

“I recommend we escort him,” Snowe said.

“Escort.”

“We march parallel to his column. We maintain contact without forcing engagement. We protect the towns and the river crossings but we do not attempt to stop the column. We let the column reach the capital and we let the nobles see what we have been telling them in dispatches for four months. We let the nobles see it because seeing it is the only thing that will produce the decision that our dispatches have failed to produce.”

Aldrath absorbed the recommendation. The recommendation was not a military recommendation. It was a political recommendation delivered by a military officer who had recognized that the campaign’s resolution was political and that the military’s role in the political resolution was to stop pretending that the military could produce a different outcome.

“We escort,” Aldrath said.

* * * * *

The Horde’s column moved north at the standard march pace, the formation maintaining the discipline that four months of continuous operations had instilled. The Snarling Wolf at the head of the column caught the wind that came from the north, the banner stretching toward the destination that the wind was coming from, the wolf’s snarl directed at the landscape ahead with the expression that the landscape would learn to recognize as the expression of an army that was coming and that was not going to stop.

The combined force moved parallel, three miles to the east, the two armies marching north together in the specific configuration that escorting produced, the combined force’s cavalry screening the space between the two columns and the combined force’s infantry maintaining the march pace that kept the parallel formation intact.

Two armies. Marching north. Together. One moving toward the capital because the capital would not listen. The other marching beside it because the army that was marching beside it had spent four months learning that stopping it was not possible.

The parallel march produced a visual that the countryside between the valley and the capital had never witnessed and that no one who witnessed it would forget: two columns of dust on the horizon, separated by three miles of farmland, both moving north at the same pace, neither deviating from its course, neither engaging the other, the specific configuration of two forces whose relationship had moved past combat into the territory of grudging coexistence that mutual exhaustion produced.

The combined force’s officers watched the Horde’s column from the parallel position and noted the column’s discipline, the formation’s integrity maintained through the march’s daily routine, the Snarling Wolf visible at the column’s head, the Rhakaddons’ dust cloud at the column’s rear. The officers wrote reports. The reports described what the officers observed. The observations were the observations of professionals watching an army that their professional experience told them they should be fighting and that their commander’s orders told them they should be escorting.

The towns between the valley and the capital watched both columns pass. The civilians stood at their windows and their doorways and watched an orcish army and a Threian army marching north in parallel, neither fighting, neither retreating, both moving toward the same destination for different reasons that produced the same result.

“Zug zug, pinkskins!” Krak’thul shouted at the combined force’s parallel column from the 4th Warband’s position, his voice carrying across the three-mile gap with the projection that three months of screaming insults across battlefields had developed. “We march together now! Like friends! But Krak’thul’s friends do not keep ice queens on Krak’thul’s doorstep! Krak’thul’s friends understand boundaries! DUUM!”

“Krak’thul, the combined force cannot hear you at three miles,” Sakh’arran said.

“Krak’thul’s voice has no maximum range. Krak’thul’s voice is limited only by the atmosphere’s willingness to carry it, and the atmosphere has always been cooperative. The atmosphere understands that Krak’thul’s observations improve the quality of everyone’s experience, including the pinkskins’, who benefit from being informed of their tactical shortcomings in real time.”

“The atmosphere is neutral in conflicts,” Sakh’arran said.

“The atmosphere has never heard Krak’thul at full volume. If the atmosphere heard Krak’thul at full volume, the atmosphere would take sides. Krak’thul’s side.”

The warriors around Krak’thul maintained their march pace while grinning at the exchange, the specific grin that the 4th Warband’s warriors produced when their most vocal member was performing, the grin of fighters who had been marching and fighting for months and whose morale was sustained by the warrior among them whose voice turned the campaign’s tension into the specific humor that warriors needed to carry the campaign’s weight.

The march continued. The wolf moved north. The capital waited.