The walking radical wraps around the lower-left - three strokes condensed from a foot pictograph. Here it tags 述 as a movement, but the movement is verbal: words traveling from speaker to listener. It indexes 述 with 进 advance, 退 retreat, 还 return.
术 supplies the sound shù unchanged. There is also a faint semantic echo: 术 means method or art, and 述 is the art of stating something properly - relating an account with method. Historically 术 was a path through plants, fitting 'way of going'.
