The Threian western column hit the highland build site at dawn on the fourteenth day following Brekk's departure, with sixty soldiers in a force composition that was not a patrol. Sixty was a company, and a company had objectives rather than routes.
Brekk had been in the north for two weeks, fighting the Threian advance at the Ravine settlement. He had sent back the numbers Drakk asked for: approximately two hundred soldiers in the western column's main force, operating in rotating detachments of forty to sixty, pushing south along the highland terrain's western ridge system. He had also sent back the intelligence Drakk had not asked for but needed: the western column was being supplied by a forward depot three days north of the highland boundary. The depot's existence meant the column's presence was not a probe. It was a sustained operation.
