The Threian council received the Horde’s ssage on the morning after the Thornwall dispatch arrived, and the two docunts sat on the council table side by side like the two halves of a problem whose solution required reading both halves simultaneously.
The Thornwall dispatch said: the army advanced, the thundermaker threshold was reached, the barbarians were stalled forty-three miles from the capital. The exchange rate favored the kingdom for the first ti.
The Horde’s ssage said: accept our terms in fourteen days or the Horde’s military capability, undiminished by the barbarian campaign, will be applied to the kingdom’s weakened forces.
"He is giving us fourteen days," the Baron of Lettra said.
"He is giving us fourteen days to accept the terms we have been refusing for months," a councilor said. "The sa terms. Recognition. The word invasion. The Tekarr withdrawal. The frontier line."
"The sa terms offered by an army that has been sitting in a camp for weeks while our army bled itself against the barbarians. The sa terms offered at the mont when our boomstick ammunition is functionally zero and our army’s effective strength is twenty-eight thousand soldiers who are exhausted and wounded and forty-three miles from the capital fighting barbarians with fifteen thundermakers."
The council chamber was quiet. The quiet was the quiet that the council had been producing at intervals throughout the campaign, the quiet that occurred when the council’s options contracted to the point where the quiet was the last thing standing between the council and the decision that the contraction demanded.
"What is our alternative?" the Baron asked.
"Our alternative is refusal. Refusal produces the Horde’s military response. The Horde’s military response, applied to our current forces’ condition, produces the Horde’s victory. The Horde’s victory produces the terms’ imposition rather than the terms’ acceptance. The terms are the sa. The manner of their implentation is different."
"Then acceptance is the rational choice."
"Acceptance has been the rational choice since the Horde marched to our walls and roared at us. Acceptance has been the rational choice since the reinforcent army was committed to the barbarian front. Acceptance has been the rational choice since the dwarves cut the trade and our ammunition beca finite. Every day that we have delayed acceptance has been a day that the delay’s cost has exceeded the delay’s benefit."
* * * * *
The barbarian chieftains received the Horde’s ssage through the Verakh rider who approached the barbarian camp under white flag at the following morning’s dawn.
Garrok read the ssage. The highland dialect’s translation of Sakh’arran’s Threian script produced the ssage’s content in the words that the highland tradition’s diplomatic conventions understood: the tusked ones acknowledged the barbarians’ strength, the tusked ones had no quarrel with the barbarians, the tusked ones proposed a eting to discuss mutual interests.
"The tusked ones want to talk," Garrok said, at the chieftains’ council.
"The tusked ones want to talk because talking is cheaper than fighting," Kael said. "The tusked ones have been talking instead of fighting for months. Talking is what the tusked ones do when talking produces what fighting would produce at lower cost."
"The tusked ones’ talking has been effective," Tharn observed. "The tusked ones talked the pinkskins to the point where the pinkskins’ army marched away from the tusked ones and toward us. The tusked ones talked our enemy into becoming our problem. The tusked ones’ talking is a weapon."
"We are not pinkskins," Brokk said. "We do not negotiate with our problems. We hit our problems with axes."
"The tusked ones are not a problem we can hit with axes," Kael said. "The tusked ones defeated the pinkskins’ army of forty-seven thousand. The tusked ones sat outside the pinkskin capital and the pinkskins could not remove them. The tusked ones’ thousands of warriors are fresh and rested and fully supplied with weapons that do not depend on the dwarves. If we hit the tusked ones with axes, the tusked ones hit us back, and the tusked ones’ hitting back has been more effective than every other army’s hitting back for the past four months."
"Then what does Kael suggest?"
"Kael suggests we talk. Talking with the tusked ones costs nothing. Talking with the tusked ones tells us what the tusked ones want. What the tusked ones want may align with what we want. The mountains and the tusked ones’ southern territories are not the sa territory. There is no conflict between the mountains and the south. The conflict is between the mountains and the valley, and the valley belongs to the pinkskins. If the tusked ones want the pinkskins to suffer, the tusked ones and the mountains want the sa thing."
Garrok considered. The consideration was the consideration of a Sixth Realm warchief whose jaw wound ached with each word and whose campaign’s montum had stalled at the thundermaker threshold and whose army’s position between the Threian force to the south and the orcish Horde to the southeast was the position that the orcish commander’s patience had been designed to produce.
"We talk," Garrok said. "We talk with the tusked ones. We learn what the tusked ones want. We decide after the talking whether the talking produced sothing the mountains can use."
"And the pinkskin war?"
"The pinkskin war continues. The talking does not replace the fighting. The talking occurs beside the fighting. We talk with one hand and we fight with the other. The mountains have always had two hands."
The barbarian council agreed. The eting with the Horde would be arranged. The war with the Threians would continue. The two hands would operate simultaneously because the highland tradition’s pragmatism was the pragmatism that had kept the mountain clans alive for centuries in terrain that did not forgive the luxury of using only one approach to any problem.
At Ashwell, Khao’khen received both responses through the Verakh network’s relay system. The council’s response was the response that the council’s position demanded: agreent in principle, request for the specific terms’ formal presentation, the diplomatic process’s initiation. The barbarian response was the response that the chieftains’ pragmatism produced: agreent to et, location and terms to be determined, the eting’s purpose exploratory rather than committal.
Both responses were positive. Neither was acceptance. Both were the opening moves of the negotiations that the campaign’s patience had been designed to produce.
"Both doors are open," Sakh’arran said.
"Both doors are open," Khao’khen confird. "We walk through both. The door that opens widest is the door we commit to. The door that closes is the door we do not need."
The wolf’s direction was no longer a single direction. The wolf faced south toward the council and northeast toward the chieftains and the wolf’s snarl covered both directions because both directions contained the potential for the thing the wolf required and both directions contained the potential for the refusal that the wolf’s military capability would address.
Fourteen days. The countdown began. The doors were open. The wolf walked through both.
"Summ’kar," Khao’khen said. The words were quiet. The words were for himself and for the wolf and for the city that had sent the wolf north and that was waiting for the wolf to co ho with the thing the city needed to be safe.
Fourteen days. The wolf was patient. The wolf had always been patient. But the patience was ending, and the ending was the thing that the patience had been aid at since the day the wolf was raised above a city that had decided to exist.
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