The Threian council received the Horde's message on the morning after the Thornwall dispatch arrived, and the two documents sat on the council table side by side like the two halves of a problem whose solution required reading both halves simultaneously.
The Thornwall dispatch said: the army advanced, the thundermaker threshold was reached, the barbarians were stalled forty-three miles from the capital. The exchange rate favored the kingdom for the first time.
The Horde's message said: accept our terms in fourteen days or the Horde's military capability, undiminished by the barbarian campaign, will be applied to the kingdom's weakened forces.
"He is giving us fourteen days," the Baron of Lettra said.
"He is giving us fourteen days to accept the terms we have been refusing for months," a councilor said. "The same terms. Recognition. The word invasion. The Tekarr withdrawal. The frontier line."
