Rise of the Horde

Chapter 832 - 831

Vor’gath departed Yohan on the twenty-third day after the Horde’s return with the understanding that twenty-three days of observation had produced in the shaman whose perception encompassed both the physical and the spiritual dimensions of what the observation encompassed. The understanding was not the understanding of simple facts catalogued and counted. The understanding was the understanding of a people revealed: their discipline, their grief, their ambition, and the quiet ferocity with which they had transformed ruin into foundation.

The departure was the departure that the departure’s formality and the departure’s significance combined to require: the eldest shaman, recovered, standing at Yohan’s northern gate with the Verakh escort that would guide the shaman’s party to the mountain road and through the Narrow Pass to the orcish lands’ northern reaches where the highland clans’ riders would receive the shaman for the final ascent to the Gorath Highlands. The morning was cool and carried the scent of forge-smoke and fresh bread from the city behind them, the smells of a settlement engaged in its daily labor, indifferent to ceremony, committed to continuation.

Khao’khen stood at the gate. Sakh’arran stood beside him. The two who had built the city stood at the city’s threshold and watched the elder who had assessed the city prepare to carry the assessment to the highlands. They stood the way the wolf stood when watching: still, attentive, without urgency, without performance.

"Twenty-three days," Vor’gath said. "Twenty-three days in a city that should not exist. Twenty-three days watching orc children learn to read and orc smiths forge weapons that rival the dwarves’ craft and orc farmers cultivate fields that produce surplus beyond the city’s consumption. Twenty-three days observing the thing that the mountains did not believe was possible."

"The thing is possible because the thing was built," Khao’khen said. "The building was the building that the builders performed because the builders decided the building was necessary. The decision is the decision that any people can make. The building is the building that any people can perform. The possibility is not the possibility that the orcish people’s uniqueness produces. The possibility is the possibility that any people’s determination produces."

"The mountain clans do not build cities."

"The mountain clans have not built cities. The distinction between ’do not’ and ’have not’ is the distinction that the future’s possibilities occupy. The mountains’ people can build if the mountains’ people decide to build. The decision is the mountains’ people’s to make."

Vor’gath’s near-Seventh Circle perception settled on Khao’khen for the final assessment that the departure’s finality demanded. The settlement was the settlement of understanding confirmed, the specific weight that the perception placed on the subject when the perception’s conclusion was the conclusion that the perception’s full engagement had produced. The shaman had assessed many leaders across sixty years of practice. Few carried the particular combination that the chieftain carried: ambition restrained by wisdom, strength restrained by patience, certainty restrained by the awareness that certainty’s excess was certainty’s undoing.

"The wolf teaches," Vor’gath said. "The wolf does not preach. The wolf does not command. The wolf teaches by demonstrating. The demonstration is the city. The lesson is in the stone and the iron and the children’s voices. The highlands will learn the lesson. The learning’s pace is the pace that the highlands’ tradition permits. The pace may be slow. The pace will be steady."

"The pace is the mountains’ to determine."

"The pace is the mountains’ to determine. And the mountains’ determination will be informed by what I carry back. What I carry back is the sight of a people who were hunted and scattered and burned from their lands, and who built the thing that the burning was supposed to prevent. If the orcs can build Yohan from ashes, the mountains can build from stone." Vor’gath paused, and in the pausing allowed the weight of the statement to settle into the air between them. "The highlands have stone in abundance. The highlands have always had stone. What the highlands required was the knowledge that stone could become more than shelter. That stone could become legacy."

The eldest shaman turned toward the gate. The turning was the turning that departure produced in a body whose recovery’s completion had restored the body’s function to the level that the near-Seventh Circle’s power sustained, the level that sixty years of shamanic practice had achieved and that the toxin’s assault had temporarily diminished. The body moved with the deliberate steadiness of a figure who had learned to carry great things without allowing the carrying to alter the stride.

"Shaman," Khao’khen said.

Vor’gath paused at the gate’s threshold. The pausing was the pausing that the chieftain’s address produced in the shaman whose attention the address requested.

"The highlands’ memory of the Horde will be the memory that the highlands’ elder carries. The memory’s content is the elder’s to determine. The Horde asks only that the memory include the truth."

"The truth is all I carry," Vor’gath said. "The truth is more remarkable than any story I could invent. No one in the highlands will believe the truth immediately. That is acceptable. The truth does not require immediate belief. The truth requires patience. The truth waits."

"The truth waits," Khao’khen agreed. "The wolf waits."

"The wolf waits," Vor’gath confirmed. "And the mountains wait. And between the waiting, the future assembles itself from the materials that the present provides."

The eldest shaman walked through the gate. The Verakh escort fell into formation around the shaman’s party with the practiced efficiency of soldiers who understood that this particular departure was the kind that history recorded. The party moved north along the road that the road’s direction led toward: the Narrow Pass, the frontier, the mountain road, the highlands. The city did not stop for the departure. The forges continued. The children continued. The fields continued their slow work beneath the morning’s light, indifferent to ceremony, committed to growth.

Khao’khen watched the party diminish along the northern road until the party’s diminishment produced the point at which the party’s visual identification transitioned from the identification that the eyes’ resolution provided to the identification that the memory’s continuation supplied after the eyes’ resolution’s limit had been reached. He watched until the watching became something else: not observation but acknowledgment, the specific recognition that a threshold had been crossed and the crossing’s consequences now belonged to time.

Sakh’arran said nothing. The nothing was appropriate. Some moments required only presence.

The elder was gone. The elder’s understanding traveled with the elder. The understanding would reach the highlands and the understanding would settle into the highland clans’ collective assessment of the world beyond the mountains and the people who inhabited it. The settling would not be immediate. The settling would not be complete. The settling would be the slow work of truth finding the cracks in assumption and filling those cracks with something harder than assumption, something that the light and the cold and the years could not easily erode.

The understanding was the seed. The seed’s growth was the growth that time and patience and the truth’s persistent presence would produce. The growth’s pace was unknown. The growth’s direction was the direction that the truth’s content determined.

The wolf had planted the seed. The wolf could not control the growth. The wolf could only provide the conditions that the growth required: the city’s continued existence, the treaty’s continued honoring, the arrangement’s continued maintenance, the truth’s continued demonstration through the actions that the Horde’s character produced day by day, season by season, in the accumulation of ordinary decisions that extraordinary futures were built from.

The conditions were the conditions that the wolf’s method provided. The method was forward. The method was building. The method was the specific combination of military capability and diplomatic wisdom and strategic patience that the wolf’s character produced.

Forward. Always forward. Building the future that the forward led toward.