Rise of the Horde - Chapter 748 - 747

The council in the capital received the latest dispatches from the northeastern front on the morning of the seventh day of the Snowe dominion’s siege.

The dispatches were not encouraging. The king’s army, reduced to eighteen thousand effective soldiers, had fought two additional engagements since Vinefield Ridge. The first, at the town of Gorham’s Bridge, had cost fourteen hundred dead and nine percent of the remaining thundermaker ammunition. The second, at the Ashfield crossroads, had cost eleven hundred dead and seven percent more. The king’s thundermaker ammunition was now at thirty percent of the original stockpile. His boomstick ammunition at forty-two percent. The barbarian advance had not been stopped.

The council read the dispatches in the chamber where the memory of the Horde’s chanting still lingered, the specific vibration that stone walls absorbed and held in the way that stone held everything, permanently and without comment.

The Baron of Lettra looked at the numbers.

“We are losing,” he said.

The statement was not an opinion. It was the reading of the dispatches’ arithmetic, the arithmetic that said the king’s army was shrinking and the barbarians’ was not and the kingdom’s ammunition was running out and the barbarians’ was being resupplied by the dwarven forges that the kingdom had alienated by allying with the forges’ enemies.

“The Snowe dominion holds,” the Lord Marshal said. “General Snowe’s earthworks have resisted the barbarian thundermakers for seven days. His ammunition will sustain the defense for approximately five more days. After twelve days total, the dominion’s defense becomes untenable.”

“And the Horde?”

“The Horde remains at Ashwell. Fortified. At full strength. They have made no aggressive moves since establishing the camp. They have made no diplomatic overtures. They are watching.”

“Watching what?”

“Watching us lose,” the Baron said. “Watching the barbarians advance. Watching our ammunition run out. Watching the situation deteriorate to the point where whoever survives this will be too weak to refuse whatever the Horde demands.”

The council absorbed the observation. The observation was the observation of a nobleman who had been watching the orcish campaign for months and who recognized the Horde’s strategic patience for what it was: the patience of a force that understood that time was its ally and that the kingdom’s simultaneous crises were doing the Horde’s work without the Horde spending a single warrior.

“What does the Horde want?” a councilor asked.

“The same thing they have wanted since the campaign began,” the Baron said. “Recognition of their sovereignty. Acknowledgment of the invasion. Withdrawal from the Tekarr Mountains. The Horde’s demands have not changed. Our ability to refuse them has.”

The envoy’s message and the Horde’s response were the latest exchange in the specific dialogue that the campaign had been conducting between the Horde and the kingdom since the first day, the dialogue whose language was military action and whose grammar was strategic positioning. The kingdom’s envoy had spoken in the language of need. The Horde’s response had spoken in the language of position. The kingdom needed help. The Horde had position. The exchange rate between need and position favored the party with position, which was the Horde, which was the party that had been cultivating position for four months while the kingdom’s position eroded on two fronts simultaneously.

The council would read the Horde’s response and understand that the response was not a refusal but an invitation to negotiate on terms that reflected the reality of the council’s situation rather than the council’s preferences. The reality was that the council’s military leverage was being consumed in the northeast by barbarians with dwarven weapons. The reality was that the Horde’s military capability was intact and undiminished. The reality was that the council’s options had narrowed to the specific set of options that the Horde’s patience had been designed to produce.

* * * * *

The discussion that followed was the discussion that councils produced when the options had narrowed to the point where discussion was the last thing standing between the council and the decision that the narrowing demanded.

The kingdom could not fight the Horde and the barbarians simultaneously. The ammunition that the barbarian front consumed was ammunition that could not be used against the Horde. The soldiers that the barbarian front killed were soldiers that could not be deployed against the Horde. The kingdom’s military resources, already divided between two fronts, were being consumed on the northeastern front at a rate that would leave the kingdom unable to address either front within weeks.

“We could approach the Horde,” Lord Fairfax’s representative suggested. Fairfax himself was with the king in the northeast, but his representative carried the lord’s analytical framework. “The Horde’s commander has demonstrated, throughout this campaign, that he thinks in systems. He understands that the kingdom’s collapse serves no one, including the Horde. A kingdom in chaos cannot honor agreements. A kingdom overrun by barbarians cannot provide the stable border that Yohan requires.”

“You are suggesting we ask the Horde for help.”

“I am suggesting we explore whether the Horde’s strategic interests align with the kingdom’s survival. If they do, there may be a basis for cooperation. If they do not, we lose nothing by asking.”

“We lose the appearance of strength.”

“We lost the appearance of strength when the Horde marched to our walls and chanted at us for four days. The appearance is gone. What remains is the reality, and the reality is that we need every ally we can find.”

The council voted to send an envoy to Ashwell. Not Westyn. The diplomatic arbiter was in the northeast with the king. A different envoy, a minor official from the foreign affairs bureau, carrying a message that was not a proposal but an inquiry: was the Horde willing to discuss the possibility of mutual interest in the kingdom’s defense against the barbarian incursion?

The envoy departed the capital’s eastern gate and rode toward Ashwell with the message and the specific expression of a minor official who had been given a task that exceeded his rank’s usual responsibilities and whose expression reflected the understanding that the task’s significance was larger than the official who carried it.

At Ashwell, Khao’khen received the envoy at the camp’s forward position, the same position where Sakh’arran had received every delegation the campaign had produced. He read the message. He looked at Sakh’arran.

“The pinkskins are asking if we are interested in defending them.”

“They are asking if our strategic interests align with their survival.”

“Our strategic interests are served by the kingdom’s survival in a weakened state that cannot threaten Yohan and that must honor agreements to maintain the stability it requires. Our strategic interests are also served by the kingdom’s collapse if the collapse produces a power vacuum that the Horde fills. Both outcomes serve us. We prefer the outcome that costs us the fewest warriors.”

He looked at the envoy.

“Tell the council that the Yohan First Horde will discuss mutual interests when the council is prepared to discuss them on terms that reflect the reality of the council’s position. The Horde does not rescue kingdoms. The Horde negotiates with kingdoms. If the council wishes to negotiate, the council knows our terms. The terms have not changed. The council’s position has.”

The envoy departed with the response. The response was not a yes and was not a no. The response was the specific answer that Khao’khen gave when the answer’s purpose was to let the other side’s situation continue deteriorating while the Horde’s position continued strengthening.

The wolf watched. The wolf waited. The barbarians advanced. The kingdom bled. The ammunition counted down. And the wolf, patient and ready, held its position at Ashwell and watched the northeast with the attention that predators applied to situations that were developing in the predator’s favor.

The wolf did not hurry. The wolf did not need to. Time was the wolf’s weapon, and time was running out for everyone except the wolf.