The Horde moved before dawn on the day after the herald's return, and it moved in a direction that the Verakh network had spent three days preparing.
Not north. Not back toward Irenmere. East, along a route through the foothills that the Verakh scouts had been mapping since the campaign crossed the frontier and that connected, after forty miles of secondary terrain, to the Meren River valley, which was the main waterway that drained the eastern province into the central kingdom and that carried, along its banks, the road that connected the provincial market towns to the northern capital.
The Meren valley was the province's artery.
Everything that moved between the eastern province and the kingdom's heartland moved along the Meren.
Grain wagons.
Tax records.
Military dispatches.
The courier riders who carried Snowe's communications north.
