Rise of the Horde

Chapter 884: Chapter 883

The Ironbeard response arrived at Yohan’s northern gate seventeen days after Durrek’s departure. Sakh’arran had estimated twelve to fifteen days for the journey north and a day or two for the Thane’s decision-making. The response took seventeen, which meant the Thane had taken four days to decide what to send.

Sakh’arran received the arriving party at the northern gate himself. He had been expecting a decision-maker, which he had interpreted as a senior official or military representative. What arrived was a party of eleven dwarves: four guards, five administrative staff, and two principals.

Durrek Stonepick was one of the principals. He was back, which meant the Thane had kept his commercial envoy involved. This was a signal: the Thane was treating the situation as a matter that overlapped his commercial and security interests and was keeping the person who understood the commercial relationship in the conversation.

The second principal was a woman. She was a head shorter than Durrek, which put her at approximately Sakh’arran’s chest height, and she wore the heavier administrative dress of a senior official rather than the commercial envoy’s travel clothes. She had the specific quality of posture that Sakh’arran recognized in people who spent their working lives making consequential decisions: upright without stiffness, present without agitation.

"Brekka Hammerfall," Durrek said, introducing her. "Senior Trade and Security Minister of the Ironbeard Clan. She speaks for Thane Borin Ironbeard in commercial and security matters equally."

Sakh’arran received this with a bow at the appropriate depth. "Sakh’arran, intelligence director of the Yohan First Horde. Chieftain Khao’khen is currently at the Tekarr Arch. He is aware of your arrival and will return within two days." He looked at Brekka Hammerfall. "The Warden of the Gates, Aliyah Winters, is also at the Arch. If you would prefer to travel north and meet them there, we can arrange the escort. If you prefer to wait in Yohan, we will provide quarters."

Brekka Hammerfall looked at Yohan’s northern market street, which was visible through the open gate as a functioning, populated commercial district. She looked at the gate’s architecture, the quality of the stone, the precision of the installation. She looked at Sakh’arran.

"I will wait in Yohan," she said. "I want to see the city before I see the Arch. I want to understand what we are being asked to defend."

Sakh’arran provided her with his own office, which was the best working space in the intelligence building, and sent a runner for Mekka to arrange suitable food. He answered her first questions, which were not about the Arch at all but about Yohan’s population, its supply lines, its construction timeline, and the terms of the Threian treaty that governed the frontier.

She asked precise questions. She listened to precise answers. She wrote nothing down, which meant she was keeping it all in her head, which in Sakh’arran’s experience meant she was either very capable or very confident or both.

Then she asked the question she had been building toward.

"The Thane’s response to what Durrek brought us was measured," she said. "He is not a man who reacts before he understands. He took four days because he spent those four days with his senior mining director reviewing the operational reports from the northern Iron Hills for the last three months."

She reached into her document case and produced a folder of papers.

"Seven mining teams in the northern Iron Hills ridgeline area have not returned from their survey assignments in the past six weeks," she said. "The assignments were six-day circuits. Five of the teams were overdue by two weeks before we dispatched recovery parties. The recovery parties found the teams’ equipment at the survey sites. They did not find the teams."

Sakh’arran was very still.

"Seven teams," he said.

"Approximately sixty dwarves in total." She set the papers on the desk. "The Thane initially assessed it as weather-related incident. The Iron Hills’ northern ridgelines are treacherous in winter and the teams were working at high elevation. But the recovery parties found the equipment in place and accounted for. A weather-related accident does not leave equipment neatly at the survey site."

"No," Sakh’arran said.

"The last contact from the teams closest to the Ferrath Arch’s location was six weeks ago," Brekka Hammerfall said. "Consistent with the timeline your rider Takar provided for the Arch’s destruction."

"Yes."

"What does six weeks of Abyss presence in the Iron Hills northern ridgeline mean for the sixty dwarves who were working those ridgelines?"

Sakh’arran considered his answer carefully. He considered the founding documents of the Order of the Seal that Aliyah had summarized for him. He considered the concept of incorporation that Aliyah had described: the Abyss did not kill in the way that an army killed. It absorbed.

"I cannot give you a certain answer," he said. "I can tell you what Warden Winters has described as the Abyss’s behavior in documented historical breach events."

"Tell me," she said.

He told her. He watched her face while he told her. She was a minister who had survived in the Ironbeard Clan’s political structure long enough to reach her position, which meant she had a face that did not easily show what it was processing. But Sakh’arran was a trained observer and what he saw in her face while he talked was the specific quality of a calculation being revised downward against the person’s wishes.

When he finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"I will need to see the Arch," she said. "And I will need to speak with Warden Winters."

"The Chieftain will return in two days," Sakh’arran said. "He will take you north himself."

"Good," she said. Then: "Your city is impressive, Sakh’arran. The scope of what you have built here is not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"A military encampment with better walls," she said. "What you have is a city."

"That is what we are building," Sakh’arran said. "It is also why what is happening at the Arch matters to us as much as it matters to you."

Brekka Hammerfall left the office and walked through Yohan’s eastern market street with Durrek at her side and two of her guards three steps back. She walked slowly, which was not her pace: she had a minister’s pace, efficient and purposeful. But she was walking to look, not to move, and looking required a different pace.

She looked at the market stalls and the quality of the goods in them. She looked at the learning hall’s open windows and the sound of instruction coming from them. She looked at a crew of four construction workers repairing a section of the main road’s drainage with the methodical efficiency of people who had done this work before and understood why it needed doing.

"How long has this city been here?" she said to Durrek.

"Perhaps two years at its current scale," Durrek said.

She made a sound that was not quite a word. Two years. She thought about what the Ironbeard Clan’s settlements had looked like at two years of age and did not say what she was thinking, because what she was thinking was complicated.