Rise of the Horde

Chapter 715 - 714

On the third day, Varen forced the crossing.

Eight thousand soldiers, the Second Reserve Corps' freshest formations, advanced on a three-mile front upstream of the ford where the river's depth was wading depth and the orcish defensive positions did not extend. The crossing was competent, well-organized, and achieved the objective of placing eight thousand soldiers on the western bank within four hours.

Khao'khen had expected the upstream crossing since the second day. The 1st and 2nd Warbands were waiting.

The Rakshas deployed at the center of the defensive line in the formation that had made the 1st and 2nd Warbands the campaign's most feared tactical element. Two thousand warriors in the spear wall, their ridiculously long spears extending forward in the bristling forest of points that the formation produced, each spear held by a warrior whose physical strength allowed the weapon's weight to be wielded with the control that the formation required. The great round shields, each one large enough to cover a warrior from chin to knee, locked in the overlapping pattern that created the wall's structural integrity, each shield supporting the shield beside it, the collective formation stronger than any individual shield's contribution.

The crossing force's advance guard hit the spear wall at the eighth hour and stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped. The way a wave stopped when it hit a seawall, the momentum absorbed by the structure's mass and the energy dissipated across the structure's width. The advance guard's front rank, moving at the assault pace that professional infantry used for contact, ran into the spear wall's extended points at the distance where the spears' length exceeded the advance guard's weapons' reach, and the advance guard could not close to the distance where its swords and shorter spears would be effective because the spear wall's points were in the way.

The killing began at the range that the Rakshas' long spears dictated. Threian soldiers who pressed forward into the spear points died on the points. Soldiers who tried to push the spears aside found that the spears were held by warriors whose grip strength exceeded the soldiers' pushing force. Soldiers who tried to duck under the spears found the second rank's spears at the level where the first rank's spears were not, the layered defense covering the angles that individual spear lines could not.

The grinding sound was the sound of the campaign's central mechanism operating at its design capacity. The spears found flesh. The flesh fell. The next rank pressed forward into the space the fallen had occupied. The spears found that flesh too. The cycle repeated with the mechanical regularity that made the spear wall what it was: not a formation that fought individual engagements but a formation that converted forward pressure into casualties at a fixed rate, the rate determined by the spears' reach and the warriors' strength and the speed at which the advancing soldiers could fill the gaps that the dying soldiers left.

"VOL DUUM MOK!" The 1st Warband's war cry rose from behind the spear wall, the Ashrock tradition's call to the ancestors, the words meaning no surrender, the dead watch. "DRAK'UL VOSH!"

"ZUG ZUG MAG!" The 2nd Warband's unity chant answered from the formation's right, the Ironmaw rhythm beating through the spear wall's ranks. "We are one, we are war! ZORK! ZORK! ZORK!"

The advance guard pushed. The spear wall ground. The dead accumulated at the rate that a formation designed to convert forward pressure into casualties always produced when the forward pressure was supplied by an enemy that could not reach past the spears to engage the warriors behind them.

The Roarers opened from the flanking positions where the 3rd and 4th Warbands had established fire lines. Rolling volleys, the coordinated fire that the Roarer crews had perfected across four months of continuous operations, each crew firing in sequence so that the suppressive effect was continuous rather than pulsed. The balls struck the crossing force's compressed formation at the angles that the flanking positions provided, the enfilade fire tearing through the column's depth in a way that frontal fire could not achieve.

* * * * *

Varen committed his reserve at the second hour of the engagement, four thousand additional soldiers pushing across the upstream crossing to reinforce the advance guard that was being ground against the spear wall's immovable front.

The reinforcement compressed the Threian formation. More soldiers in the same space meant more targets for the Roarers and more bodies pressing against a spear wall that converted pressure into death regardless of the pressure's source.

The Amazzfer stood at the 1st Warband's center, behind the third rank of the spear wall, the Golden Wolf raised above the formation in the grip of a warrior whose size and scarring made him visible across the battlefield.

"Grakh tor Urkhan grah," the Amazzfer roared. "The Chieftain is with us!"

The Golden Wolf blazed. The golden shimmer spread across the Horde's formation, the arcane shield that the warriors' collective belief in their chieftain manifested as physical protection. The shimmer was not invulnerability. It was the nullification of everything below the Fourth Circle of Magic, the threshold that Varen's mage corps discovered when their frost bolts and lightning arcs and force projections struck the shimmer and dissipated into harmless light.

The mages pushed harder. The Fourth Circle spells penetrated the shimmer and struck the formation, killing warriors where they stood. But the Third Circle spells, the workhorses of battlefield magic, the spells that every combat mage could cast repeatedly and that formed the basis of the combined force's magical doctrine, hit the golden shimmer and died.

"Shrak!" A Rakshas warrior in the second rank screamed the quick-fire insult at the mage positions as a frost bolt dissolved against the shimmer three paces from his face. "Less than nothing! Your magic is GUL! Empty! Hollow! Try again, pinkskins! The Wolf drinks your spells!"

The spear wall held. The Roarers fired. The Golden Wolf blazed. And the crossing force's casualties accumulated at a rate that Varen's professional experience had not prepared him for, because Varen's professional experience had not included a formation that converted numerical superiority into a disadvantage by making every additional soldier another body pressed against a wall of spears that did not move.

At the sixth hour, Varen ordered the withdrawal.

The crossing force recrossed the river with eighteen hundred fewer soldiers than it had crossed with. The spear wall had not moved from its original position. The Rakshas had held, the Roarers had fired, the Golden Wolf had blazed, and the meat grinder had done what meat grinders did.

"Grombash krul," Arka'garr said, and the words, the strong have earned this, were the most words the 1st Warband's master had spoken in sequence since the engagement began.