Rise of the Horde

Chapter 849 - 848

Khao’khen found Drakk at the city’s water distribution point.

He had been told about the highland chieftain’s arrival within twenty minutes of the gate log reaching Sakh’arran’s desk. He arrived with the composed unhurry of a man who had decided in advance that the meeting would happen on the other person’s terms and that pushing it would accomplish nothing useful.

Skarra was in the middle of explaining the bypass valve mechanism when he appeared. She acknowledged him with a nod that was simultaneously respectful and proprietorial: she had found this visitor first.

"Skarra," Khao’khen said.

"I’ve shown him the distribution point and the main line and the manual bypass," she said. "We were going to the learning hall next." She looked at Drakk. "Unless the chieftain needs you."

Drakk had stood when Khao’khen arrived, the automatic response of a warrior recognizing the authority figure in a space. He was taking in the same thing most people took in when they met Khao’khen for the first time: the stillness. Warriors who were confident in their capability moved a particular way, and most of them moved like they were demonstrating it. Khao’khen moved like the capability was simply there, not performing, just present.

"Walk with me," Khao’khen said. Not to Skarra, who understood immediately, and not with the tone of an order. The tone of an invitation that he expected to be accepted.

They walked north through the quieter residential streets, past buildings going up and buildings that had stood for two years now, through the particular quality of a city in the middle of its working day: a smith adjusting a door hinge, two goblin children racing each other along a wall top, a troll worker carrying cut stone blocks balanced on one massive arm, a kobold with a delivery manifest moving at the rapid efficient walk that kobolds used as their standard pace.

Drakk was quiet as they walked. He watched things the way he had watched the water distribution point: not cataloguing for tactical purpose but trying to understand what he was seeing at a level deeper than the surface.

The remembrance wall was on the northern side of the residential quarter, where the city’s original defensive perimeter had been before the expansion pushed the outer walls further out. The stone wall faced east and caught the afternoon light directly. The names were carved in deep clean letters, each one precisely spaced, the work of hands that had treated every name as an equal weight.

Three hundred and twenty names. The dates ran from the early frontier engagements through the capital’s battle. Each name had the warband designation beside it.

Drakk read slowly down the columns. He was not a fast reader; literacy had come to him the same way it came to most highland warriors, late and in pieces, learned out of necessity rather than instruction. But he read.

He found what he had half-expected to find.

Fourteen names in the highland script, carved with the same care as the orcish names around them, at the same size, in the same depth. Highland warriors who had died in the capital’s battle. Some he recognized. Two had been from a neighboring clan’s warband. One had been a young fighter he remembered from a clan gathering five years ago, maybe seventeen then.

"Why are they here?" he asked.

"They died in the city," Khao’khen said. "The withdrawal’s timetable couldn’t reach all of them. They belonged to a people and a tradition that the wall honors the same way it honors any warrior who died in combat."

Drakk looked at the names for a long time. The afternoon light lay flat across the stone and made the carved letters cast thin shadows that sharpened the letters’ edges.

"Brokk’s name isn’t here," he said. His voice was even.

"Brokk’s body was returned to your people during the withdrawal. His name belongs on a wall in the highlands, carved by highland hands, in the place where his people will see it every day." Khao’khen paused. "The names here are for the warriors who had no other wall. Your people’s dead deserve their own wall, in their own place."

Drakk touched one of the fourteen names. The stone was warm from the afternoon sun. The carving was deep enough that he could feel each letter’s edge.

"The man who carved this," Drakk said. "He was a warrior?"

"Tharuk. He was a Fifth Realm warrior until an injury during the Season of Damnation ended his combat capability. He taught himself stonemasonry during the recovery." Khao’khen watched Drakk’s hand on the carved names. "He says the work is the same, in the important way. You learn the material, you understand what it can bear, you put the thing in it that you want to last."

Drakk lowered his hand.

"I’ve been thinking about what Vor’gath said when he came back," Drakk said. "He told us what he saw here. He talked for an hour and the hall was completely quiet, which has never happened before in my memory. But the thing he said that stayed with me wasn’t about the water or the learning hall or the forges."

Khao’khen waited.

"He said you told him the difference between ’do not’ and ’have not’ is the future’s space. The highlands do not build cities. The highlands have not built cities." Drakk turned away from the wall to face him. "I’ve been trying to understand that since he said it. Not as a concept. Specifically. What the difference looks like from inside it."

"What do you think it looks like?" Khao’khen asked.

Drakk was quiet for a moment. A forge bell rang somewhere in the district behind them, marking the hour.

"A decision," he said. "Not a plan. Not a treaty. A decision that gets made before any plan is possible." He looked at the wall again. "Garrok died here."

"Yes."

"I was raised to think of that as a defeat. The warchief brought down by tusked lowlanders, the campaign that failed." Drakk’s jaw worked. "But Vor’gath said the terms you offered after the battle were the same terms he’d proposed to the chieftains before it. Garrok refused those terms and died for what the refusal cost."

"Yes."

"And now his name is on your wall. Because he was a warrior."

"Because he was a warrior," Khao’khen confirmed.

Something shifted in Drakk’s posture. Not a relaxation exactly. More like a weight being set down from a carrying position it had been held in for too long.

"The highlands have stone," he said.

"More than Yohan does, in many ways. Better quality in the upper ranges. The limestone in the eastern valleys would build walls that would stand for a century." Khao’khen turned from the wall and began walking back toward the city center. "Come and eat. And tell me what you came here to actually ask."

Drakk followed. After a moment, his four riders, who had been maintaining a respectful distance while watching the wall, fell in behind them.

Skarra appeared from around the corner of the nearest building where she had been waiting with the patience of a child who understood that some conversations needed space to finish.

"Learning hall is still open if you want," she said.

"After," Drakk said. "After we eat."