Rise of the Horde

Chapter 875 - 874

The rider Khao’khen had dispatched to the Ferrath Arch returned on a morning when the cold had deepened and the forge district’s smoke rose slow and straight in the windless air. His name was Takar, a Verakh scout with years of mountain operational experience and the specific quality of composure that mountain work developed in riders who understood that what they found was what they found and that composure served the situation better than reaction.

He arrived at the northern gate at the eighth hour and asked for Maghazz. The gate watch sent a runner while the rider dismounted and walked his horse to the stable without being told to. He had the habits of a professional who did not need to be managed through the standard procedures.

Maghazz received him in the Verakh operations room and sent immediately for Khao’khen and Sakh’arran. They arrived to find Takar seated at the operations table with a cup of water he had not touched and the expression of a man who had decided precisely what he was going to say and was holding the decision steady while he waited.

"Report," Maghazz said.

"I reached the Ferrath Arch’s location on the ninth day," Takar said. "The approach was difficult. The weather above the Iron Hills was severe in the final two days. I had to take the eastern ridgeline approach rather than the direct route because the direct route was impassable." He stopped. He drank from the cup. Not because he was thirsty. Because he had learned that a pause before the significant information gave the listeners time to settle before the information arrived. "The Arch is destroyed."

No one spoke.

"Not failing," Takar said. "Not damaged. Destroyed. The structure that was there, the stone building and the installation it housed, is gone. What remains is a site approximately forty feet across where the stone has been subjected to heat and force of a type I cannot characterize accurately. The stone has melted in some locations and shattered in others, in a pattern that is consistent around a central point. Not random. Centered."

He set the cup down.

"I found no bodies. I found no equipment. I found no debris that was recognizable as what the building’s contents would have produced if the building had been destroyed by fire or explosion or collapse. What was inside the Arch left no identifiable residue."

A pause. "The site smelled of nothing. Not of burning. Not of cold stone in winter air. Not of dust. Nothing. I have been in mining collapse sites and fire sites and battlefield sites. Every one of them smells of something. This did not."

Khao’khen was standing at the room’s far wall with his hands at his sides and his posture the specific stillness that he used when processing information that required all of his attention.

"How long ago?" Sakh’arran asked.

"The site’s condition suggested at least six weeks. The growth patterns of lichen on the melted stone perimeter were consistent with six to eight weeks of undisturbed cold-weather exposure. Nothing had disturbed the site in that period."

Takar reached into his travel pack and produced a cloth-wrapped object. He set it carefully on the table. "I collected a sample of the melted stone from the central point. I did not know if it would be useful. I collected it because I thought someone who understood these things might want to see it."

Sakh’arran looked at the cloth-wrapped object without touching it. He noted the care with which Takar had set it down. A rider who had carried something carefully for nine days across mountain terrain had decided that the thing was worth carrying carefully.

"The dwarves," Khao’khen said. "The Iron Hills’ populated areas. How far from the Ferrath Arch site?"

"The nearest dwarven settlement, based on the maps I was carrying, is approximately thirty miles south of the site. In the lower hills, not on the ridgeline. The ridgeline where the Arch stood is above the mining territory." Takar paused. "I did not go into the dwarven settlements. My orders were to observe the Arch site and return."

"You did correctly," Khao’khen said. He looked at the cloth-wrapped stone. He looked at the silence where the Arch’s operational reports had been for six to eight weeks. He looked at Sakh’arran.

Sakh’arran was already writing. He was writing the message to Aliyah at the Tekarr Arch, and he was writing the message to Durrek Stonepick, and he was writing the assessment header that would begin a new document titled: confirmed: the sequence has begun.

"Send for Durrek Stonepick," Khao’khen said. "Now. Tonight. Tell him the Cheiftain requires him, not the trade liaison. The Cheiftain. He will understand the distinction."

He picked up his travel coat from the chair. He was not leaving yet. He was holding the coat the way a person held something familiar when the ground had just shifted.

Then he set it down and sat at the table across from Takar and asked the second set of questions: the approach terrain, the temperature at the site’s perimeter, whether the surrounding ridgeline showed any signs of movement or disturbance beyond the Arch site itself.

Takar answered each question with the same composure he had used throughout, and the answers were what Khao’khen had already calculated they would be, and knowing they were right did not make them easier to hear.

Durrek Stonepick arrived at the Verakh operations room thirty minutes after the runner reached him. He was not yet prepared for what he was going to hear, but he was prepared to hear something serious, because Sakh’arran’s runner had used the word warchief rather than trade liaison in the summons, and Durrek had been in commercial work long enough to understand the distinction between those two categories of request.

He sat across from Khao’khen and looked at the cloth-wrapped stone on the table.

Khao’khen told him. He told him everything, without abbreviation, because Durrek needed the full picture to carry back to the Thane accurately. The site’s condition. The warmth in the stone. The absence of debris. The timeline of six to eight weeks. The fact that the nearest Ironbeard settlement was thirty miles south of a site where a dimensional gateway had been destroyed and whatever had destroyed it had been operating for six to eight weeks.

Durrek listened. He listened with the stillness of a man who was receiving information that was changing the shape of something he had thought he understood.

When Khao’khen finished, Durrek looked at the cloth-wrapped stone for a long time without speaking.

Then he said: "The northern mining teams. Seven survey circuits that did not return in the past six weeks. We attributed it to weather and difficult terrain. The terrain above the Ferrath ridge is severe."

"Yes," Khao’khen said. "We need to know the number."

"Approximately sixty," Durrek said. He said it quietly. The number of sixty dwarves who had not come back from the northern ridgeline in the same six-week window that the Ferrath Arch had been destroyed was a number that had a specific weight once the context was known.

"I am asking you to carry this to the Thane yourself," Khao’khen said. "With everything you know. With everything I have told you. And with Warden Winters available to explain the Archs to whoever the Thane sends south to understand them. He needs to send someone who can listen."

Durrek looked at him. Then he picked up the sealed box containing the stone sample and stood.

"I will leave tomorrow morning," he said.