Rise of the Horde

The battlefield was fire and blood.

Even before the sun had passed its zenith, the Threian trench lines had become a crucible. Smoke choked the air, tinged green with goblin firepowder. The dead piled high at the lip of every ditch. Still, the orcs came.

Sappers from the goblin horde scrambled forward, their wiry bodies painted in red and black grease. They moved beneath the cover of the remaining tribal charges…throwing charges into broken trench mouths and lighting short fuses with shaking hands.

The explosions came seconds later.

Sections of the front trench disappeared in bursts of sound and pressure, throwing men and soil into the sky. Screams echoed through the haze. Entire squads were buried alive. Lieutenant Deramis pulled three of his men out from the edge of a collapsed trench wall, coughing blood through grit-covered lips.

"Patch it! With whatever you've got!" he barked.

"Sir, we have no lumber!"

"Then use the dead!"

*****

At the center of the line, Captain Braedon braced for the next wave.

His section had already repelled three charges by tribal orcs. The trench was slick with blood, and every wall bore the mark of axe or claw. They fought with spears shortened by damage, crossbows stolen from the fallen, and teeth bared in defiance.

Boomsticks barked again behind them.

A shot from a Thunder Maker roared overhead, trailing smoke before crashing into a knot of advancing orcs and blowing them apart. The recoil knocked its operator back, shattering his shoulder.

Braedon didn't flinch. "Reload it with your other hand."

*****

South of the command trench, the Kani'karr Corps was reloading.

Agile trolls manned the catapults with callused hands and thick grunts. Their next volley came not as stone…but barrels of crude oil. When they landed behind the Threian lines, goblins ignited the fields with long-fused fire powder.

Flames danced into the sky.

The Threians were caught between walls of heat and iron.

And then the drums changed rhythm.

Four heavy beats. Then silence.

The tribal units pulled back.

Gresham's eyes narrowed.

"That's not a retreat," he said.

He turned to a runner. "What's happening on the west trench?"

"The orcish war-beasts," the boy said, panting. "We hear them."

*****

They did not see them.

They heard them first.

A thunder of hooves. A roar of beasts. And then through the fire and haze came the massive forms of Rhakaddons…living battering rams clad in metal plates, eyes glowing red, mouths foaming with war-foam.

Their riders screamed guttural chants, spurring them forward.

They struck the western flank like a hammer through glass.

Palisades shattered. Trenches folded. Threian spearmen died where they stood. Nothing slowed the charge. Oil pits ignited but did nothing to stop the beasts' momentum. The barricades at the western side crumpled under the weight.

"Fall back to the second line!" someone yelled.

But the second line no longer existed.

*****

A small band of Threians led by Odric tried to form a rally line behind a makeshift barricade of barrels and shields. For a brief moment, they slowed the charge. A Rhakaddon reared back, gored by a fire-slicked pike.

The victory was brief.

The rider drove his blade through Odric's chest, and the line collapsed.

*****

Major Gresham received the report within minutes.

His expression did not change.

"How much of the western flank?"

"Gone," said the messenger. "We've lost the western side."

Gresham turned to the other officers. "Begin fallback to the crater."

"We won't hold there for long."

"We'll hold as long as we need to."

He looked toward the smoke-cloaked no-man's-land, where the shape of the enemy continued to grow.

"Let them burn. We'll answer with blood."

*****

As the sun began to dip westward, the Threians rallied around the crater, forming a new semicircular defense. Every boomstick and Thunder Maker still functional was repositioned. Engineers used burning wood and torn cloth to make barricades.

And the orcs were coming again.

Not in tribal waves.

Not in chaos.

In formation.

The Yohan First Horde had arrived.

The sound changed.

It no longer roared like fire or howled like beasts. It marched. Iron-shod boots against dirt. Shields rising in harmony. The deep, steady chant of a thousand voices moving as one.

The Yohan First Horde had entered the fray.

They moved with terrifying precision. Columns of black-and-crimson armored orcs advanced across the burning field, shields interlocked, spears level, steps synchronized. Unlike the screaming tribal waves that had preceded them, these warriors did not shout. They did not roar.

They simply advanced.

From the battered Threian crater-line, Captain Braedon saw them coming through the dissipating smoke and ash.

"Gods help us," he muttered. "These aren't the same ones."

*****

Atop a ridge, Galum'nor stood among the vanguard, his weapon strapped, his shoulders squared. The Verakhs stood behind him, silent and grim, crossbows loaded, melee blades sheathed across their backs.

The signal came…a red flare shot skyward from the goblin engineers who had cleared the path through the outer trenches.

Galum'nor raised his hand.

"Advance."

*****

The outermost Threian defenses were little more than scorched earth and makeshift barricades. What few defenders remained fired crossbows from behind overturned carts and half-sunk wooden barriers.

The First Horde didn't flinch.

They marched into range.

The first volley of bolts struck shields and armor with dull thuds. Some bounced off. One or two found flesh…but the formation never broke. When the Horde reached the first barrier, they exploded forward.

The front ranks broke off, shields slamming into cover, swords stabbing through gaps.

Galum'nor leapt over the barricade, landing on a Threian soldier and crushing him into the mud. He swept his axe low, severing a pair of legs, then buried the blade into another man's chest.

The Verakhs followed him like shadows.

*****

Further down the line, Drae'ghanna led her own unit into the southern lip of the crater. Her swords flashed like arcs of lightning, cutting through shield and bone alike. Threian spears jabbed toward her, but she turned each aside with grace and fury.

Behind her, her warriors maintained the breach, stepping over bodies as they advanced deeper into the interior trench.

A warhorn sounded from the Threian side.

Captain Braedon had ordered a fallback into the final trench loop.

The inner perimeter.

*****

Major Gresham watched from the central wall as more red flares signaled multiple breaches.

"The line won't hold," said Deramis, bloodied and breathing heavily.

"It wasn't meant to," Gresham replied. "It was meant to buy time."

He turned to a nearby scribe. "Send a final message. Let them know what we face."

"What should I say?"

"That the storm has taken form."

*****

Back at the front, Aro'shanna slammed into the flank of a Threian gunner unit attempting to reposition behind the eastern trench wall. Her war axe cleaved through the wooden scaffold they had used as cover, and then through the first man behind it.

The second she crushed with a kick to the chest.

A boomstick went off too close…sending her stumbling…but she recovered and buried her axe into the gunner's shoulder before he could reload.

*****

All across the crater, the First Horde pushed with relentless force. They advanced by units of fifty, each one supported by goblin sappers clearing traps.

The Threians were skilled.

But they were tired.

And this wasn't a wave.

It was a hammer.

*****

By sunset, half the crater rim was under orcish control. Threian engineers tried one last defense…collapsing part of the northern trench wall in a controlled detonation…but even that only slowed the Horde.

The battle was far from over.

But the line was broken.

And the hammer had fallen.