Rise of the Horde

Chapter 824 - 823

The march south crossed the Threian heartland at the pace that seven thousand warriors and three hundred wagons sustained across terrain that the warriors had fought through in the opposite direction months before.

The terrain was different in the southward direction. Not different in geography. The hills were the same hills. The rivers were the same rivers. The farmland that the Horde’s northward advance had crossed was the farmland that the Horde’s southward departure now crossed. The difference was not the terrain. The difference was what the terrain’s inhabitants did when the Horde passed.

The northward march had produced evacuation. The Threian civilians in the towns and farmsteads along the route had fled before the Horde’s advance with the urgency that an invading orcish army’s approach generated in civilians whose understanding of orcish armies was the understanding that centuries of border raids and the kingdom’s official characterization had produced. The evacuation had left empty towns and abandoned farms and the silence that evacuation created in countryside that silence was not the natural condition of.

The southward march produced something different. The southward march produced observation.

The Threian civilians who had returned to their towns and farms during the weeks since the Horde’s northward passage and the barbarian invasion’s conclusion now stood at their doorways and their field boundaries and watched the Horde pass with the expressions that observation produced when the observation’s subject was the army that had liberated the capital from the barbarian occupation that the kingdom’s own army had failed to prevent.

The expressions were not the expressions of gratitude. The expressions were not the expressions of hatred. The expressions were the expressions of assessment, the specific facial compositions that civilians produced when the civilians’ understanding of the army passing through their territory was being revised by the evidence that the army’s conduct provided.

The evidence was the conduct. The conduct was the Horde’s passage through the farmland without deviation into the fields, without appropriation of the farmsteads’ stores, without the specific behaviors that armies on the march produced when the armies’ discipline was the discipline that permitted the behaviors that undisciplined armies committed. The Horde marched on the roads. The Horde purchased provisions from the towns’ remaining merchants at the prices that the provisions’ fair market value determined. The Horde’s scouts announced the column’s approach to the towns’ authorities before the column arrived, the announcement providing the preparation time that the authorities required to manage the civilian population’s response.

Sakh’arran had designed the return march’s protocol with the specific attention that the protocol’s diplomatic purpose demanded. The protocol was not the protocol of a retreating army. The protocol was the protocol of a departing friend whose departure’s conduct was the final evidence that the ally’s character provided to the population whose memory of the ally’s character would inform the population’s future understanding of the orcish people.

"Every interaction is a message," Sakh’arran had briefed the warband masters before the departure. "Every warrior who passes through a Threian town without incident is a message. Every provision purchased at fair price is a message. Every field left unburned and every farmstead left intact is a message. The message is the message that the treaty requires the kingdom’s population to receive: the orcs are not what the kingdom told them we are."

The warband masters had received the briefing with the professional attention that the briefing’s content warranted. Arka’garr’s reception had been the reception that the 1st Warband master’s precision produced: the nod that confirmed the order’s receipt and the execution’s guarantee. Dhug’mhar’s reception had been the reception that the Rumbling Clan’s chieftain’s theatrical nature produced.

"Perfection’s conduct has always been exemplary," Dhug’mhar had declared. "Perfection does not require instruction in exemplary conduct because exemplary conduct is the conduct that Perfection produces by the nature of Perfection’s existence."

"Perfection’s Rhakaddons destroyed twenty-three buildings in the capital’s market district," Sakh’arran had observed.

"Perfection’s Rhakaddons destroyed twenty-three buildings in the capital’s market district because the destruction of twenty-three buildings was the exemplary conduct that the tactical situation required. Exemplary conduct is context-dependent. Perfection understands context."

The march continued south. The towns passed beneath the column’s progression. Ashford. Irenmere. Greywater. The names that the Horde’s northward campaign had converted from names on Sakh’arran’s maps to names in the Horde’s operational history. The names passed in reverse order now, the reversal the reversal that the campaign’s conclusion and the homeward march’s direction produced.

At Millbridge, a girl of perhaps eight years stood at the roadside and watched the Rhakaddons pass. The girl’s expression was the expression that eight-year-old children produced when the expression’s cause was the passage of three-ton armored beasts through the street where the child’s home stood: wide-eyed, the mouth open, the assessment that the expression communicated neither fear nor welcome but the pure observation that children performed before adults taught the children what the observation should make them feel.

Dhug’mhar saw the girl. The Rumbling Clan’s chieftain, mounted on the beast whose passage the girl observed, performed the gesture that the observation’s subject warranted: a nod. A nod from the chieftain whose volume exceeded every other warrior’s volume and whose narcissism exceeded every other warrior’s narcissism and whose nod to an eight-year-old girl at the roadside was the nod that the girl’s observation’s honesty deserved.

The girl waved.

Graka, riding beside Dhug’mhar, observed the wave’s receipt.

"Small," Graka said.

"Small humans become large humans," Dhug’mhar said. "The large human that the small human becomes will remember the Rhakaddon that passed through the small human’s street. The memory will be the memory that the nod produced. The nod is the nod that Perfection provides to all observers whose observation deserves acknowledgment."

The column continued south. The girl’s wave receded behind the column’s progression. The wave’s memory traveled with the column the way that waves’ memories traveled with the observers who received them: in the specific place that memories occupied in minds whose occupation included the memories that the campaign’s duration had accumulated.

The march continued. South. Toward the frontier. Toward the mountains. Toward home.