---
"Yavri," Vorak said, "is not dead. Yavri chose the word that saves her wall and her women from being ground into a shape I cannot fix later. I did not order a cloth; I did not forbid one. Record this: if she had broken her line on a desert that did not want to hold her, I would have lost more than a thousand. As it is, I have one vice general troops alive, disciplined, and sitting where I can still use them or burn them if I must."
No one nodded. No one dared to look like they were relieved. Vorak did not reward relief when it lived in men who had not earned it with blood.
He looked at the horizon again. The line of dust that meant "army" kept moving, patient as an old animal. He lifted his chin a half-invisible amount.
"Form the second front," he said. "Not for assault. Not yet. I do not hit a door that has learned my fist. We sit outside his air and make the ground teach us. We watch the edges of his light and find out where water climbs and where it falls."
