Rise of the Horde - Chapter 778 - 777

King Aldric III rode through the capital’s eastern gate on the third day of the fourteen-day period.

The king’s return from the field produced the specific response that a monarch’s return from a lost campaign produced in a capital whose population had been watching the war’s progress through the dispatches that the council’s public notices disseminated: relief that the king was alive, anxiety about the war’s continuation, and the particular silence that civilians produced when the monarch who had ridden out at the head of thirty thousand soldiers rode back with the armor dents and the facial lines that losing battles against an enemy with superior weapons had carved into the features that the coins bore.

The Royal Guard formed the escort that the king’s security required for the ride from the field headquarters to the palace. The guardsmen’s armor was the armor that the campaign’s engagements had marked, the dwarven iron bearing the dents and scoring of thundermaker shrapnel and boomstick impacts and the specific weathering that sustained field operations produced in equipment that had not been properly maintained because the sustained operations’ tempo had not permitted proper maintenance.

Captain Kreese, the Sixth Realm Royal Guard officer whose campaign record included the killing of a barbarian chieftain at Harken Field, rode at the king’s right hand. His sword hung at his hip in the specific position that indicated the weapon had been drawn recently and would be drawn again at need. The captain’s face bore the scar that the chieftain’s war hammer had produced across his left cheekbone, the scar tissue a ridge of white against the tanned skin that the campaign’s outdoor operations had darkened.

“The city is quiet,” the king observed, as the escort moved through the streets that connected the eastern gate to the palace district.

“The city is listening, Your Majesty,” Kreese said. “The city has been listening since the dispatches from Harken Field described the barbarian thundermakers. The city is listening for the sound that tells the city whether the listening ends with relief or with the preparation that the sound’s absence would demand.”

“What sound?”

“The sound of victory, Your Majesty. The sound that the city has not heard since the war began.”

The king looked at the streets. The shops were open. The markets functioned. The civilian population conducted its daily commerce with the normalcy that civilian populations maintained when the alternative to normalcy was the panic that normalcy’s absence produced. But the normalcy was the specific normalcy of a city that was forty-three miles from a barbarian army with thundermakers and sixty miles from an orcish army that had marched to the city’s walls and shouted at its nobles.

The normalcy was performance. The performance was sustained by the discipline that civilian life imposed on civilian populations the way military discipline imposed itself on military populations: through the routine that routine’s continuation required.

* * * * *

The council convened at the palace’s war chamber at the fourteenth hour, the chamber’s oval table occupied by the nobles who had been managing the kingdom’s political dimension while the king managed the military dimension in the field.

King Aldric sat at the table’s head. The armor was gone, replaced by the formal attire that the council’s protocol required, the change of clothing the specific transition that the king conducted between the field’s operational identity and the palace’s political identity. The transition was physical. The transition was not psychological. The king who sat at the table was the king who had fought at Harken Field and Thornwall and every engagement between, and the king’s assessment of the council’s deliberations was the assessment that battlefield experience provided to political discussions.

“Report,” the king said.

The Baron of Lettra presented the diplomatic situation. “The Horde’s message arrived four days ago. The terms are unchanged from the original negotiation at Millbridge: recognition of orcish sovereignty, the word invasion in the preamble, withdrawal from the Tekarr Mountains, the frontier line. The deadline is fourteen days from the message’s delivery. Ten days remain.”

“The barbarian situation.”

“The barbarians have received a separate message from the Horde proposing a meeting. The scout’s surveillance, which we are informed of through Lord Aldrath’s intelligence sharing, indicates that the barbarian chieftains have agreed to the meeting but have not committed to its terms. The barbarian army remains at its positions forty-three miles north.”

“The Horde’s intentions.”

Lord Fairfax’s representative, the analytical advisor who carried Fairfax’s framework in Fairfax’s absence, presented the assessment. “The Horde’s intentions are consistent with the Horde’s demonstrated pattern throughout the campaign: the Horde positions itself to negotiate from strength with whichever party is most willing to provide what the Horde requires. The Horde’s requirements are their land’s security. The Horde will negotiate with us if we accept the terms. The Horde will negotiate with the barbarians if we refuse. The Horde will use military force against whichever party refuses if both refuse.”

“Both refuse is not the scenario we face,” the Baron said. “The scenario we face is: do we accept the Horde’s terms before the barbarians accept the Horde’s meeting proposal and produce an orcish-barbarian alliance that the kingdom cannot survive.”

The council was quiet. The quiet was the quiet of nobles processing the specific implication of the Baron’s scenario: the possibility that the orcish Horde and the barbarian clans might find common cause against the kingdom that had antagonized both.

“The Horde and the barbarians have no historical relationship,” a councilor said.

“The Horde and the barbarians have a common enemy,” the Baron said. “Common enemies produce alliances that historical relationships do not. The Horde’s commander has demonstrated, across four months of campaign, that he thinks very differently than any orc that we have encountered. With the way that he thinks, he will identify quickly that the Horde and the barbarians’ combined military capability exceeds the kingdom’s remaining military capability by the margin that makes combined operations decisive.”

“Then we accept,” the king said.

The council turned to the king.

“We accept the Horde’s terms. We accept them before the barbarian meeting produces the alliance that the Baron describes. We accept them because the terms are the terms that we should have accepted at Millbridge and the delay’s cost has been measured in the soldiers who died between Millbridge and today.”

“The word, Your Majesty.”

“The word invasion. The word that the council has been refusing since the orcish campaign began. The word that describes what the kingdom did to the orcish settlements. The word that the kingdom’s refusal to speak has cost us thirteen thousand soldiers and the dwarven trade and the northeastern provinces and the three months of war that the word’s acceptance would have prevented.”

He placed his hands on the table. The hands that had held the sword that killed no barbarian chieftain and cracked against a chieftain’s armor and broke in a chieftain’s breastplate. The hands that had signed the orders that sent soldiers to die in battles that the kingdom’s weapons inferiority made unwinnable.

“Invasion. The word is invasion. What the kingdom did to the orcish settlements was an invasion. I am the king and I say the word and the word is true and the word goes into the agreement because the word belongs there.”

The council was silent. The king had spoken the word. The word that the council had refused. The word that the king’s authority placed beyond the council’s refusal.

“Draft the acceptance,” the king said. “Send it to the Horde’s position at Ashwell. The terms are accepted. All of them. The Tekarr provision is removed. The frontier line is drawn. The recognition is granted. This war with the orcs ends today.”

The council’s scribes began drafting. The acceptance that the campaign’s entire history had been building toward was being written in the palace’s war chamber by scribes whose pens moved across parchment while the king sat at the table’s head with the hands that had fought and the face that had been carved by the fighting and the voice that had spoken the word that the fighting had been fought to produce.

The word was spoken. The acceptance was drafted. The war with the orcs was ending.

The war with the barbarians was not.