On the thirty-fifth day, the Verakh network reported the Second Reserve Corps' advance elements crossing the provincial boundary.
Twenty-two thousand soldiers. The force that the council had promised and that the six-week window had been counting down toward. The force that was supposed to change the arithmetic from twenty-five thousand against eight thousand to forty-seven thousand against eight thousand.
The force arrived to a theater that was not the theater it had been briefed to enter.
The combined force that the Second Reserve Corps was joining had lost, in five weeks of the Horde's new-phase operations, the following: its mage corps' replacement equipment, permanently. Its farrier capability, for four days that had produced lasting cavalry readiness degradation. Its forward supply depot, twice.
