Rise of the Horde

Chapter 853 - 852

The dwarven envoy arrived at Yohan’s southern gate on a dry-season morning with two guards and a mule loaded with document cases, and the particular bearing of someone accustomed to walking into rooms where they had not been invited.

His name was Durrek Stonepick. His letter of introduction, which Vess at the gate log transcribed with great thoroughness, identified him as a commercial agent operating on behalf of Thane Borin Ironbeard of Khaz-Dorum in an unofficial capacity and without commitments of any kind. He was shorter than every person at the gate by a significant margin and appeared entirely unconcerned about this.

The gate guard sent a runner. The runner returned with Sakh’arran twenty minutes later.

"Commercial agent," Sakh’arran said, reading the letter.

"Unofficial capacity," Durrek confirmed.

"Which means you can be disowned if this goes badly."

"And you are under no obligation to acknowledge the conversation happened if you prefer not to." Durrek’s expression was neutral in the specific way that professional negotiators’ expressions were neutral: not hiding anything, simply not signaling either. "The Thane thought the meeting was worth attempting. He thought it was worth attempting informally first. Whether it proceeds formally from here is a determination for your chieftain to make."

Sakh’arran folded the letter and put it inside his jacket. "Come in."

* * * * *

The meeting took place the following morning in the administrative hall’s secondary chamber. Khao’khen, Sakh’arran, and Zul’jinn were present on one side. Durrek had left his guards and his mule at the gate-adjacent lodging and arrived with two document cases and the punctuality that Sakh’arran filed as a professional indicator.

Durrek set both document cases on the table, opened neither of them, and looked at the people across from him.

"The Thane’s position on the thundermaker loss is closed," he said. "That account is settled against the highland clans. I am not here about that."

"Understood," Khao’khen said.

"What I am here about begins with an observation." Durrek’s hands came together on the table in the gesture of a man organizing his opening. "The Ironbeard foundries produce three categories of output that have no equivalent on this continent: high-temperature alloys for extreme-condition forge work, void-sealed containment systems for powder and volatile compound storage, and precision ore reduction compounds that decrease fuel consumption in the reduction process by thirty to forty percent." He paused. "We can make these things. We have always been able to make these things. What we have struggled with for the past three years is getting them to markets south of the Lag’ranna range. The war made those routes commercially unreliable. The treaty ended the war. Yohan now sits at the intersection of every viable southern distribution path."

"You want trade route access," Sakh’arran said.

"I want a formal agreement that Ironbeard caravans have safe passage through the frontier zone, access to resupply infrastructure in the city, and stable negotiated tariffs that don’t change between seasons based on political shifts." Durrek opened the first document case and produced a single page. "In exchange for access and infrastructure, the Ironbeard Clan offers two things. First: the void-seal storage process documentation. Your powder storage problem in the field is known to us. The void-seal process solves it. We provide complete documentation and two trained technicians for the initial implementation."

Zul’jinn, who had not spoken and had been sitting with the expression of a smith listening to someone describe engineering from the outside, became visibly more alert.

"The second offering," Durrek continued, opening the second case, "is geological survey access. The Ironbeard geological records include survey data for three ore vein systems in the southern territories that we know your current mining operations are not working." He produced a second document and set it beside the first. "Specifically: a mangithor compound vein system in the eastern reaches that your kobold mining teams have the right methodology to access and that produces an alloy precursor for high-hardness applications. Your current source for this precursor is a three-week supply route from the eastern trading settlements." He looked at Zul’jinn directly. "We believe you are sourcing it for the bolt shafts on a new installation weapon. The eastern route’s cost is a problem that the eastern vein system eliminates."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Zul’jinn said, "How does the Thane know about the installation weapon?"

"He doesn’t," Durrek said. "I inferred it from the materials you’ve been purchasing through the eastern route over the past four months. The pattern of purchases is consistent with one category of application." The envoy’s expression did not change. "The Thane told me to identify what Yohan actually needed rather than what Yohan would be willing to say it needed. I identified it."

Zul’jinn looked at the document with the ore vein survey data. He looked at it with the expression of a smith who was being handed something he had been wanting for six months and was calculating whether the wanting made him inclined to accept terms he might otherwise decline.

He picked it up. He read the geological coordinates, the vein depth estimates, the compound ratios.

"The survey data is accurate?" he asked.

"The Ironbeard geological surveys have been accurate within eight percent margin for two hundred years," Durrek said. "Our commercial relationships depend on that accuracy. Inaccurate survey data destroys commercial relationships."

"The void-seal process," Zul’jinn said. He set the survey document down carefully. "How complete is the documentation?"

"Complete enough for a competent smith to implement from the written record alone. For your smith, the implementation will take approximately two weeks. The improvement phase after implementation will take longer." Durrek’s expression shifted slightly. It was still neutral but there was something underneath the neutral that was almost dry. "Our experience with master smiths is that they are annoyed for approximately two days that they didn’t develop the process themselves, and then spend the following months improving it beyond the original design. The improvement phase typically produces something better than what we provided. This is acceptable to the Thane as long as the improvement is not then sold to our competitors."

Sakh’arran glanced at Zul’jinn.

Zul’jinn said, "No other forge on this continent is going to produce what I produce with the void-seal process. The process solves a containment problem. What I build with better containment is not something other forges can replicate regardless of having the containment solution."

"Good." Durrek opened neither document case any further. "Those are the terms. Trade route access, infrastructure rights, and stable tariffs, in exchange for the void-seal documentation and the geological survey access. Ten days to review and respond."

"The Thane expected three weeks," Sakh’arran said.

"He did. But your administrative officer at the gate is named Vess and he spelled my name correctly the first time, which suggests your city runs on better information management than I anticipated. Ten days is fine." Durrek began to close his document cases. "There’s one additional item that is not a negotiating term but that I was asked to convey directly."

"Convey it," Khao’khen said.

"The Ironbeard Clan’s archive division maintains historical records of the southern territories extending back three centuries. These records include documentation of orcish settlements that existed in the territories before the Threian expansion campaigns. Settlement plans, population records, the names of specific locations and what was built there." Durrek clasped his document cases and stood. "The Thane thought that this archive might be of interest to a chieftain building a city in the territories where those settlements once stood. The archive access is not part of the trade agreement. It’s offered separately, as a courtesy between parties who have decided to do business with each other." He paused at the door. "The Thane is pragmatic, not sentimental. But he thought you should know those records exist."