The Horde reached the capital’s eastern approach at the midnight hour.

The capital’s walls were visible in the moonlight, the forty-foot stone construction whose western and northern sections bore the damage that one hundred and twenty-one thundermakers’ sustained bombardment had produced. The breach at the northwestern corner was visible as the gap in the wall’s profile, the gap that the barbarian assault force had poured through eight days ago and that the barbarian occupation’s engineering had not repaired because the repair’s urgency was the urgency that an occupying force assigned to the repair of the breach that the occupying force had created, which was the urgency of zero.

The eastern wall was intact. The eastern wall had not been bombarded because the barbarian assault’s axis had approached from the west and north and the eastern wall’s structural integrity had been irrelevant to the assault’s planning. The postern gate at the eastern wall’s southern section was the gate that the Verakh intelligence had identified as the insertion point: the small gate whose mechanism operated from the exterior and whose exterior was unguarded because the barbarian force’s perimeter security was the security that celebration had degraded to the level that celebrations produced in victorious armies whose threat assessment had dismissed the threats.

Tul’rok, the senior Verakh who had delivered the diplomatic message to the drunken gate guards, led the advance element to the postern gate. The Verakh’s familiarity with the gate’s location and the approach routes’ concealment features was the familiarity that the diplomatic mission’s route had provided. The advance element was twelve Verakhs whose specific assignment was the gate’s opening and the approach routes’ security during the four hours that the full force’s insertion would require.

The postern gate’s mechanism was unlocked. The gate’s interior latch, which operated from the interior and not from the exterior, had been left in the unlatched position by the last person who had used the gate. The last person who had used the gate was Lord Fairfax, whose escape with the unconscious king had passed through the gate eight days ago and whose departure’s haste had not included the specific action of latching the gate behind him.

The gate opened. The eastern wall’s interior was the interior that the barbarian occupation’s eastern district provided: quiet streets, vacant buildings, the specific emptiness that urban occupation produced in the districts that the occupation’s forces had not yet fully occupied because the occupation’s forces’ attention was concentrated in the palace district and the northwestern district where the victory’s celebration was centered.

"The gate is open," Tul’rok reported to Sakh’arran through the hand signals that the Verakh network’s silent communication protocol prescribed for operations whose silence requirements precluded spoken reports.

"Begin insertion," Sakh’arran signaled back.

The Horde entered the capital single file through the postern gate.

The 1st Warband first. The Rakshas, their long spears carried vertically in the configuration that single-file movement through a narrow gate required, their great round shields strapped to their backs in the position that the gate’s width demanded. The warriors moved through the gate with the discipline that Arka’garr’s training had produced: each warrior entering the gate at the interval that the gate’s single-file constraint demanded, each warrior moving through the gate’s three-pace depth in the time that the movement required, each warrior emerging on the gate’s interior side and moving to the assembly position that the insertion plan’s interior deployment prescribed.

The 1st Warband’s insertion took forty minutes. Two thousand warriors through a gate that accommodated one warrior at a time at the rate that the gate’s width and the warriors’ equipment’s dimensions allowed.

The Yurakk warbands followed. The 3rd through 12th, their rectangular shields and stabbing swords suited for the urban combat that the capital’s streets would demand. The warbands moved through the gate at the same rate that the 1st Warband had established. Each warband’s insertion took twenty minutes. Ten warbands. Three hours and twenty minutes.

The Rumbling Clan did not enter through the postern gate. The Rhakaddons’ three-ton mass could not fit through a gate that had been designed for human-sized traffic. The Rumbling Clan’s insertion used the breach at the northwestern corner, the breach that the barbarian assault had created and that the barbarian occupation had not repaired. The Rhakaddons moved through the breach in the darkness that the second hour before dawn provided, the beasts’ cloth-wrapped hooves producing the muffled sound that the wrapping’s absorption allowed, the riders’ silence the silence that the Rumbling Clan maintained when the Rumbling Clan’s chieftain ordered silence and the chieftain’s ordering was the ordering that even Dhug’mhar’s voice complied with because the ordering’s operational necessity exceeded the chieftain’s preference for volume.

The warg cavalry entered through the breach behind the Rhakaddons. The wargs’ padded feet produced no sound that the breach’s stone rubble’s surface could transmit. The riders’ silence was the silence that warg cavalry maintained as a matter of operational doctrine because the warg cavalry’s function included the specific operations that silence’s maintenance enabled.

The ogres entered through the breach last. Thirty-two beings whose footfalls on the rubble produced the specific vibration that beings weighing eight hundred pounds produced on surfaces that the weight compressed, the vibration detectable by the ground’s transmission to any observer whose feet were in contact with the ground within fifty paces.

No barbarian observer was within fifty paces of the breach. The barbarian sentries at the nearest position were two hundred paces distant and the sentries’ attention was the attention that the celebration’s eighth hour produced in warriors whose wine consumption had exceeded the wine consumption that attention’s maintenance required.

By the fourth hour, the Horde was inside the capital.

Thousands of warriors deployed through the capital’s eastern and southern districts in the formation that the urban combat deployment prescribed. The 1st and 2nd Warbands held the central axis that ran from the eastern district to the palace district. The Yurakk warbands deployed in the flanking streets. The Rhakaddons held the intersections whose width accommodated the beasts’ mass. The warg cavalry deployed in the alleys and the side streets whose width accommodated the wargs but not the Rhakaddons. The ogres positioned themselves at the siege equipment positions that the urban terrain’s open spaces provided.

The Golden Wolf blazed.

The Amazzfer raised the totem at the deployment’s center, the Golden Wolf’s golden light spreading through the capital’s streets in the shimmer that the warriors’ collective belief produced, the shimmer’s warmth visible to every warrior in the deployment and the shimmer’s protective nullification of magic below the Fourth Circle active across the deployment’s entire area.

The capital’s streets held the Horde. Thousands of warriors in the positions that the urban combat deployment prescribed. The barbarian army’s more than twenty thousand warriors occupied the northwestern district and the palace district and the celebration’s venues. Between the Horde’s deployment positions and the barbarian celebrations’ positions, the capital’s streets connected the two forces in the specific geography that the dawn’s engagement would be fought across.

"Duum," Khao’khen said. No retreat. The word was spoken at the volume that the word required, which was the volume of conviction rather than the volume of projection. The word carried through the deployment’s nearest positions and the positions’ warriors repeated the word and the repetition carried through the adjacent positions and the adjacent positions’ warriors repeated and the repetition propagated through the deployment in the wave that a single word produced when the word was the word that the deployment’s warriors understood as the word that meant: we are here, we are not leaving, and the thing that happens next is the thing that we are here to do.

"Duum." Thousands of voices, whispered in the darkness of a capital city’s streets, the whisper the specific sound that commitment produced when the commitment’s volume was controlled by the operational silence that the predawn’s remaining minutes required.

The fifth hour approached. The hour before dawn. The hour that the wolf had chosen.

The wolf was inside the walls. The wolf was in the streets. The wolf was among the prey that slept and celebrated and did not know that the wolf was there.

"Grak’thar," Khao’khen said.

The fifth hour arrived. The dawn’s first light touched the capital’s rooftops.

"GRAK’UL MOK! THRAK VOL DUUM!"

A cry roared by thousands of throats inside the capital’s streets, the sound exploding through the urban canyon’s acoustics with the amplification that stone walls and confined spaces provided to large-scale vocal projection. The sound struck the barbarian celebration’s venues with the force that the sound’s volume and the sound’s surprise combined to produce: the force of an army announcing its presence inside the walls that the army’s target occupied. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

More than twenty thousand barbarians woke to the sound of thousands of orcish warriors roaring that meant blood of the strong, earth of the fallen, no surrender, inside the capital that the barbarians had conquered and that the barbarians had believed was theirs.

The wolf was inside the walls. The hunt began.