At Ashwell, the Horde’s camp had become a settlement.

Three weeks of occupation had transformed the farming village’s fortified perimeter into something that resembled, in its organizational structure and daily rhythms, a smaller version of Yohan. The earthworks were permanent. The Roarer positions were constructed with the precision that the troll specialist corps applied to structures expected to last. The market that the village’s farming population operated had expanded to serve the additional demand that seven thousand warriors’ daily requirements produced.

Khao’khen walked the camp’s perimeter each morning, inspecting the fortifications that were stronger than any previous camp because they had been improved daily for three weeks by engineers with nothing else to do and whose professional standards demanded that idle time be converted into structural improvement.

"The barbarians took Westmoor yesterday," Sakh’arran reported at the morning’s intelligence briefing. "The town’s garrison held for two days. Thundermakers breached the walls on the first day. The boomstick-equipped infantry overwhelmed the garrison on the second. Four hundred Threian dead. The barbarian advance is now sixty miles from the Snowe dominion."

"And the pinkskin king’s ammunition status?"

"The Verakh reports estimate his remaining thundermaker ammunition at approximately fifty-three percent of the stockpile that existed when the dwarven trade was cut. His boomstick ammunition is at approximately sixty-one percent. At current expenditure rates, his thundermaker capability will be exhausted within four to five additional engagements. His boomstick capability will last slightly longer because boomsticks consume less powder per shot."

"Five engagements," Khao’khen said. "And the barbarians’ supply?"

"Unlimited. The dwarven wagons continue arriving through the mountain passes. The Verakhs have counted fourteen supply wagons in the past week alone. Each wagon carries approximately two thousand thundermaker balls and ten thousand boomstick charges. The barbarians are being resupplied at a rate that exceeds their consumption."

"The pinkskins are fighting a war they cannot sustain against an enemy whose supplier they alienated by allying with the supplier’s enemy."

"The irony is structural," Sakh’arran said.

"The irony is the consequence of making decisions without understanding the systems that the decisions affect. The pinkskins allied with the elves for diplomatic advantage and lost their weapons supplier as a consequence. The weapons supplier now sells to the pinkskins’ enemies. Every decision has a system. Every system has a consequence."

The Horde’s camp at Ashwell had become the most fortified position in the eastern theater, not because the Horde expected attack but because the Horde’s engineering standards demanded that every position be fortified to the maximum capacity that time and materials allowed, and three weeks of time and unlimited local materials had allowed the troll specialist corps to produce a position whose earthworks and firing positions and covered approaches represented the accumulated engineering knowledge of four months of campaign experience applied to a defensive position that had no time constraint on its improvement.

The Roarers in the firing positions were maintained at full operational readiness. The fire sphere caches were buried at the approaches in the patterns that the campaign’s defensive doctrine prescribed. The catapults and ballistae of the 1st Kani’karr Corps were positioned behind the main earthworks with the firing arcs that the troll crews had calculated for the approaches that an attacking force would use. The ogres guarded the siege equipment with the specific patience that the recent Eastern Plain engagement’s smashing had temporarily provided.

* * * * *

"Zug zug, the pinkskins fight barbarians now," Krak’thul said from the 4th Warband’s position, monitoring the Verakh reports with specific interest. "The barbarians have dwarven thundermakers! Dwarven boomsticks! Dwarven armor! And the pinkskins have the same things but they are running out because the dwarves hate elves and the pinkskins love elves! Krak’thul is impressed by the pinkskins’ ability to create problems for themselves! The barbarians did not even need to be clever! They just needed to buy weapons from merchants who were angry at the pinkskins! MORG!"

"Krak’thul’s geopolitical analysis is surprisingly accurate," Sakh’arran observed.

"Krak’thul’s geopolitical analysis is always accurate. Krak’thul simplifies complex systems into their essential components. The essential component is: the dwarves are angry and the pinkskins are running out of balls. Grombash krul! The strong earned this, and the pinkskins earned it for them by being thrak’gul about their alliances."

The camp continued its daily routine. The Horde maintained its readiness. The Amazzfer rested at the camp’s center, the Golden Wolf across his knees, the totem’s bearer recovering from the sustained activations that the campaign’s battles had required. The ogres guarded the siege equipment. The 1st Warband drilled under Arka’garr’s supervision, the drills unchanged by the camp’s defensive posture.

The Horde waited. Not to help. Not to intervene. To watch, and to be ready for whatever emerged from the northeast, and to negotiate or conquer depending on whether the emerging victor was willing to provide what the Horde required.

The wolf did not care which side won. The wolf cared about Yohan. The wolf would deal with whoever was left standing.

The deterioration in the northeast was proceeding. The wolf watched. The wolf waited. The wolf was ready. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The deterioration was proceeding on schedule.

The schedule was the schedule Khao’khen had identified when the invasion first registered: the schedule by which the kingdom’s resources, divided between two fronts, degraded simultaneously. The barbarians were the catalyst. The Horde was the constant.

"If the barbarians take the kingdom, we negotiate with the barbarians," Khao’khen said at the evening assessment. "If the kingdom defeats the barbarians, we negotiate with the kingdom. If whoever wins refuses, we take what we need. The capability has been demonstrated. The capability does not expire."

"And if both sides exhaust each other before either wins?"

"Then the Horde is the only intact force in the region. Exhausted parties negotiate differently with intact parties. We wait for the exhaustion."

"The wolf waits for both prey animals to tire," Sakh’arran said.

"The wolf waits because patience is cheaper than fighting and produces the same result at lower cost."

The wolf waited at Ashwell. The ammunition counted down. The Horde watched the situation develop with the attention that predators applied to situations developing in the predator’s favor without intervention.

The Horde’s waiting was not passive. The waiting included the active improvement of the Ashwell position, the continuous training of the warriors, the maintenance of the Roarers and the siege equipment, the surveillance of both theaters, and the specific planning for every contingency that the northeastern campaign’s outcome might produce. Khao’khen’s approach to waiting was the approach of a commander who understood that the waiting period was the preparation period, and that the force whose preparation was most thorough when the waiting ended was the force whose position was strongest when the action resumed.

The Horde’s intelligence advantage was the advantage that the Verakh network provided over every other force in the region. The kingdom’s scouts were being killed by barbarian patrols. The barbarians’ scouts were highland trackers whose range was limited to the terrain they knew. The Verakhs were the Horde’s eyes across every theater, the surveillance architecture that allowed Sakh’arran to track the ammunition expenditure rates and the casualty accumulation and the territorial changes and the supply wagon counts and every other variable that the strategic picture required, the variables that the Horde’s waiting strategy depended on and that the Horde’s eventual action, whether negotiation or conquest, would be calibrated to.