Rise of the Horde

Chapter 816 - 815

The withdrawal began at dawn as the terms prescribed and the dawn’s light revealed the capital’s damage in the specific clarity that daylight provided to the things that torchlight and firelight had obscured during the night’s fighting.

The capital’s northwestern residential district was the district that the Yurakk warbands’ building-by-building clearance had converted from the district’s pre-battle condition to the district’s post-battle condition. The conversion’s visible evidence was the evidence that systematic close-quarters combat produced in urban terrain: doors broken from hinges, the doors’ wooden surfaces bearing the marks of Fourth Realm kicks and Fifth Realm strikes; window frames shattered by the boomstick fire that the barbarian defenders had delivered from the buildings’ upper floors; blood on the cobblestones in the patterns that the cobblestones’ uneven surfaces produced when the blood’s flow followed the stones’ joints and the joints’ channels and the channels’ gravity-determined paths.

The market district was the district that the Rhakaddon charge had remade.

Twenty-three building facades were the facades that no longer existed. The facades’ former positions were the positions that the Rhakaddons’ three-ton passage had converted from architectural surfaces into the debris fields that the passage’s force had scattered across the market district’s intersections and side streets. The debris included timber and stone and plaster and the personal possessions of the market district’s former occupants who had evacuated when the barbarian army had taken the capital and whose possessions had remained in the buildings that the Rhakaddons had passed through.

A child’s wooden horse lay in the debris of the market district’s western intersection. The toy’s painted surface was cracked where the Rhakaddon’s passage had displaced the building’s contents and the displacement had deposited the toy among the rubble and the bodies and the weapons and the broken boomsticks that the intersection’s debris contained.

Arka’garr saw the toy. The 1st Warband master’s observation of the toy was the observation that the observation’s specific content produced in the warband master’s professional composure: the fractional adjustment of the expression that the composure maintained, the adjustment that the child’s toy’s presence among the battle’s debris produced in the warrior who had covered the enemy warchief’s body with the enemy’s own banner.

The adjustment was small. The adjustment was the adjustment that the campaign’s accumulated weight produced in the warriors who carried the weight and whose carrying’s duration had extended from the weeks that the campaign’s initial planning had anticipated to the months that the campaign’s actual execution had required. The weight was the weight of fighting and killing and watching warriors die and walking through the destruction that the fighting and the killing produced. The weight accumulated. The weight’s accumulation did not diminish the warriors’ capability. The weight’s accumulation changed the warriors’ understanding of what the capability’s application cost.

Arka’garr picked up the wooden horse. He set it on the building’s remaining wall section, the wall’s horizontal surface that the Rhakaddon’s passage had created by removing the wall’s upper portion and leaving the lower portion at the height that a shelf’s surface provided. The wooden horse stood on the wall section. The toy’s cracked paint faced the intersection where the battle’s evidence remained and where the barbarian withdrawal’s first column was approaching from the palace district’s direction.

The first column was the wounded.

Four hundred and twelve barbarian warriors whose wounds prevented walking were carried on the stretchers that the barbarian healers had assembled from the palace’s furniture and the market district’s salvaged timber. The stretchers moved through the streets in the column that four hundred and twelve stretchers’ sequential passage through the streets’ available width produced: two stretchers abreast where the streets’ width permitted, single file where the debris or the buildings’ collapse narrowed the passage to the single stretcher’s width.

The Horde’s warriors lined the streets. The lining was not the lining that triumphant armies produced when the lining’s purpose was the humiliation of the defeated force’s passage. The lining was the lining that the Horde’s chieftain had ordered: the warriors present at the positions that the withdrawal’s security required, the weapons sheathed, the posture the posture of professional observation rather than aggressive display.

A barbarian warrior on a stretcher looked up at the orcish warrior standing beside the street’s edge. The barbarian’s wounds were the wounds that the Yurakk street-clearing technique had produced: a stabbing sword wound in the armpit where the brachial plexus’s disruption had rendered the arm nonfunctional, a second wound in the thigh where the blade had found the gap between the leg armor’s plates. The barbarian’s eyes, visible above the bandages that covered the lower face’s wounds, focused on the orcish warrior’s face with the specific intensity that the wounded’s awareness produced when the awareness was the awareness of the enemy who had produced the wounds.

The orcish warrior looked back. The looking was the looking that one warrior performed when the warrior’s observation of the wounded enemy was the observation that the warrior’s professional assessment produced: the assessment of the wounds’ severity, the assessment of the wounded’s survival probability, the assessment of the wounded’s bearing under the wounds’ pain. The orcish warrior’s assessment produced the specific nod that the assessment’s result generated when the result was the result that the wounded’s bearing deserved.

The barbarian warrior blinked. The blinking was that of the nod’s receipt produced in a warrior who had expected the hatred that the nod’s absence communicated was absent. The hatred’s absence was the absence that the nod’s respect replaced. The warrior on the stretcher, whose wounds the warrior standing beside the street had likely inflicted or whose comrades had inflicted, received the nod that the warrior’s bearing had earned from the warrior whose discipline had produced the bearing’s cause.

The stretcher column passed. The walking wounded followed.

Eleven hundred barbarian warriors whose wounds permitted walking but impaired the walking’s pace moved through the streets behind the stretcher column. The walking wounded carried their personal weapons. The Horde’s terms had specified the personal weapons’ retention. The hand axes and the short swords and the boomsticks, the boomsticks unloaded, the ammunition’s absence the absence that the ammunition’s expenditure during the battle had produced, moved through the streets in the hands of the warriors who had carried them from the highlands and who would carry them back to the highlands.

Rakh’ash’tha met the wounded column at the market district’s eastern warehouse where Morag’s guard detail had maintained the chieftain’s detention since the Rhakaddon assault. The Horde’s healer entered the warehouse with the healer’s kit that the kit’s contents provided for the examination that the examination’s subject required.

Morag lay on the warehouse floor on the bedding that the guard detail had provided. The chieftain’s collarbone was splinted with the field splint that the Horde’s warriors had applied. The fractured ribs were wrapped. The concussion’s residual effects were the effects that the chieftain’s unsteady gaze and the chieftain’s difficulty tracking movement communicated.

"Rakh’ash’tha reports that the chieftain’s injuries are the injuries that recovery produces over six weeks," Rakh’ash’tha said. The healer’s assessment was the assessment that the injuries’ nature and the injuries’ recovery timeline combined to produce. "The collarbone requires immobilization. The ribs require binding. The concussion requires rest and the absence of vigorous activity. The chieftain can travel if the travel’s pace accommodates the injuries’ limitations."

"Can the chieftain walk?" Sakh’arran asked.

"The chieftain can walk. The walking’s pace is the pace that the ribs’ pain and the concussion’s balance disruption permit. The pace is slow. The pace is the pace that the mountain road’s gradient will further reduce."

"The chieftain’s warriors can carry the chieftain if the chieftain cannot walk the road."

"The chieftain’s warriors can carry the chieftain. The carrying is preferable to the walking for the collarbone’s healing and the ribs’ protection."

Morag’s eyes focused on Rakh’ash’tha. The chieftain’s gaze, impaired by the concussion’s residual effects, carried the specific intensity that the chieftain’s awareness of the situation produced: a barbarian chieftain, wounded by the orcish mounted beasts, treated by the orcish healer, prepared for the return to the highlands by the army that had produced the wounds that the treatment addressed.

"The tusked ones’ healer treats the tusked ones’ enemy," Morag said. The words were the words that the concussion’s speech impairment produced at the pace that the impairment permitted: slow, deliberate, each word placed with the specific care that the impairment’s effect on the speech centers demanded.

"The tusked ones’ healer treats the wounded," Rakh’ash’tha said. "The wounded’s identity does not change the treatment’s application. The treatment is the treatment that the wounds require. The wounds do not carry the identity that the wounded carries."

Morag blinked. The blinking was that of the stretcher-borne warrior had produced when the nod’s receipt communicated the hatred’s absence. The barbarians had descended from the highlands expecting the enemies they encountered to be the enemies that enemies were: hateful, vengeful, the victors’ treatment of the defeated the treatment that vengeance and hatred produced.

The Horde’s treatment was not the treatment that vengeance and hatred produced. The Horde’s treatment was the treatment that the Horde’s purpose produced, and the purpose was not vengeance and the purpose was not hatred and the purpose was the specific, calculated, deliberate construction of the outcome that the purpose’s achievement required.

The outcome was peace. The peace was not the peace that idealism produced. The peace was the peace that strategic calculation produced when the calculation’s variables included the highlands’ proximity to the territories that the Horde’s people occupied and the highlands’ warriors’ capability and the highlands’ warriors’ memory of the treatment that the highlands’ warriors received from the force that defeated them.

The memory would be the memory that the treatment produced. The memory would be carried back to the highlands by four thousand four hundred warriors who had been defeated and treated with the respect that the defeat’s aftermath’s specific character communicated. The memory would inform the highlands’ future decisions regarding the territories to the south and the people who occupied them.

The treatment was strategic. The treatment was also genuine. The two qualities were not contradictions. The two qualities were the specific combination that Khao’khen’s leadership produced when the leadership’s character was the character that studied military history and built cities and pursued diplomatic solutions and fought wars and treated the wars’ defeated opponents with the respect that the opponents’ warrior status deserved and the calculation that the opponents’ future behavior required.

The wolf’s method. Forward and patient and relentless and, when the fighting stopped, the specific restraint that the forward’s ultimate purpose demanded.

The withdrawal continued. The wounded passed through the streets. The Horde’s warriors watched. The capital’s damaged buildings stood around the passage like the witnesses that the buildings’ survival had converted them into: the witnesses to the battle and the witnesses to the battle’s aftermath and the witnesses to the specific character of the aftermath’s conduct.

One building at a time, the wolf had taken the capital. One stretcher at a time, the wolf released it.