The valley march was thirty miles of darkness, confined terrain, and the specific, grinding physical endurance that distinguished soldiers who had been genuinely prepared from soldiers who had merely trained.
The track through the Ashwell Valley was not a road in any military sense. It was the kind of route that existed because people had walked it enough times to compress the vegetation rather than because anyone had engineered it for purpose.
It was wide enough for a cart and no wider, which meant the Horde's formations compressed from their standard marching width to columns of four, the reduction in width tripling the column's length and extending it across a distance that meant the rear elements were still entering the valley when the vanguard had covered the first six miles.
