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 eting 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 chanism 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 sa thing most people took in when they t Khao’khen for the first ti: 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 ," Khao’khen said. Not to Skarra, who understood imdiately, 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 rembrance wall was on the northern side of the residential quarter, where the city’s original defensive periter had been before the expansion pushed the outer walls further out. The stone wall faced east and caught the afternoon light directly. The nas were carved in deep clean letters, each one precisely spaced, the work of hands that had treated every na as an equal weight.

Three hundred and twenty nas. The dates ran from the early frontier engagents through the capital’s battle. Each na had the warband designation beside it.

Drakk read slowly down the columns. He was not a fast reader; literacy had co to him the sa way it ca 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 nas in the highland script, carved with the sa care as the orcish nas around them, at the sa size, in the sa depth. Highland warriors who had died in the capital’s battle. So he recognized. Two had been from a neighboring clan’s warband. One had been a young fighter he rembered 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 titable couldn’t reach all of them. They belonged to a people and a tradition that the wall honors the sa way it honors any warrior who died in combat."

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

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

"Brokk’s body was returned to your people during the withdrawal. His na 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 nas 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 nas. 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 nas. "He says the work is the sa, 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 ca 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 mory. But the thing he said that stayed with 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 mont. A forge bell rang sowhere 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 sa terms he’d proposed to the chieftains before it. Garrok refused those terms and died for what the refusal cost."

"Yes."

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

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

Sothing 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 listone 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. "Co and eat. And tell what you ca here to actually ask."

Drakk followed. After a mont, 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 so conversations needed space to finish.

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

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