Rise of the Horde

Chapter 716 - 715

Aldrath's response to the spear wall's defensive success was the response of a commander who understood that the problem was not the wall but the approach.

He deployed his archers. Twelve hundred longbowmen and four hundred crossbowmen, the combined force's full ranged capability, positioned on the eastern bank's high ground where their elevation provided the arc that the arrows needed to fall behind the spear wall's front face and strike the warriors from above, the angle that the round shields' forward orientation could not cover.

The arrow storm began at the ninth hour of the fourth day.

Sixteen hundred ranged weapons firing in disciplined volleys, the arrows rising in the coordinated arcs that massed archery produced, the sky darkening with the density of the volley as the shafts reached their apex and began the descent toward the Horde's positions.

"TOHR'TERRA!"

The command rippled through the 3rd through 12th Warbands, the Yurakk formations that flanked the Rakshas center. Ten warbands responded simultaneously, the rectangular shields slamming together in the practiced synchronization that Arka'garr's drill had converted from a formation exercise into muscle memory.

Front ranks locked edge to edge. Side ranks angled inward. Rear ranks raised shields overhead. Each warband became a moving shell, the iron surfaces creating a continuous coverage that left no gap wider than the shield edges' overlap, the warriors beneath the shells braced in the posture that absorbed the arrows' impact through the shields' surfaces rather than through their bodies.

The arrows fell.

Iron struck iron. The sound was the sound of hail on a tin roof multiplied by a thousand, the rhythmic percussion of sixteen hundred projectiles striking the Tohr'terra's surfaces in the compressed timeframe that volley fire produced. Arrows that hit the shield faces at the steep angle that the elevation provided skidded and deflected. Arrows that hit the overhead coverage drove into the shields' wooden cores and stuck, their points protruding through the inner surfaces but stopping before reaching the warriors beneath.

The shield surfaces absorbed the impacts with the structural integrity that the formation's engineering provided. Each shield bore the impact of its portion of the volley, the force distributed through the interlocking structure to the shields adjacent, the collective formation functioning as a single surface rather than a collection of individual shields. The warriors beneath held their positions with the stillness that the formation required, their arms braced against the shields' mounting points, their bodies compressed into the space beneath the overhead coverage, their breathing controlled in the rhythm that the drill had taught them for the specific purpose of maintaining consciousness and composure while the sky fell on top of them.

Some arrows found gaps. The Tohr'terra was not perfect coverage. Gaps existed at the shield junctions where overlapping was thinnest, at the formation's edges where the shell's coverage was less complete, at the points where warriors shifted their grip and created momentary openings. Orcish warriors fell, struck by arrows that found the gaps in the iron shell, their bodies collapsed beneath the shields' coverage and absorbed by the formation without the shell's integrity being compromised.

"DUUM!" The defiance cry came from inside the 6th Warband's Tohr'terra, the single word audible through the arrow storm's percussion. "We do not go back! DUUM!"

"VOSH NAK'ROSH!" The 8th Warband answered. Never yielding, never stopped. The words carried between the shell formations in the specific register of warriors who were being shot at and whose response was not retreat but the Orcish vocabulary of refusal.

The arrow storm continued for forty minutes. Aldrath's archers fired until their quivers were depleted, the sustained volley consuming the combined force's arrow supply at a rate that the quartermasters had calculated would produce the casualty effect that justified the expenditure.

The Tohr'terra absorbed the supply.

* * * * *

When the arrows stopped, the shells opened. The Yurakk warriors emerged from their formations bristling with arrows, the shafts protruding from their shields like quills, the iron surfaces dented and scarred by the impacts they had absorbed. The warriors themselves were intact. Not unharmed. Sixty-three dead across ten warbands, the arrows that had found gaps. But the formations were intact, the warbands were functional, and the combined force's arrow supply was expended.

"Zug zug, pinkskins!" Krak'thul's voice erupted from the 4th Warband's position as the warrior emerged from the Tohr'terra with seventeen arrows embedded in his shield and a grin that was visible from the Threian positions across the river. "Your arrows are in our shields! Your quivers are empty! What do you shoot now? Angry looks? NAK'ROSH! Krak'thul absorbs your supply and asks for more! VRAAK! Your archers' arms are tired! Their bowstrings are loose! Their supply master weeps again, pinkskins! He weeps for the arrows that are stuck in our iron!"

"Perfection absorbs arrows, not Krak'thul," Dhug'mhar's voice carried from the Rumbling Clan's position further down the line. "Perfection's shield has twenty-three arrows. Krak'thul has seventeen. The mathematics favor Perfection."

"Perfection is Dhug'mhar's word," a warrior beside Krak'thul said.

"Perfection is everyone's word when the pinkskins' arrows are in everyone's shield. Krak'thul claims shared magnificence. And Krak'thul's seventeen arrows are better placed than Perfection's twenty-three. Quality over quantity, as the chief would say."

Aldrath watched from the eastern bank's command position and made the calculation that the arrow storm's failure demanded. Sixteen hundred ranged weapons had fired their full complement into the orcish formations and had produced sixty-three casualties at the cost of the combined force's entire ready arrow supply. The resupply would require three days from the provincial depot. Three days without ranged suppression capability.

"He absorbed our arrow supply," Aldrath said, to Snowe.

"He used his warriors' shields as a sponge," Snowe said. "And the sponge worked. We fired everything we had into formations that were designed to absorb everything we had, and now we have nothing and they have the same defensive capability they had before we started."

"The resupply takes three days."

"Three days during which his Roarers are the only ranged weapons on this battlefield. Three days during which our soldiers cannot be suppressed by arrows but his soldiers can suppress ours."

The Snarling Wolf held its position. The arrow supply that had been the combined force's ranged advantage was now protruding from orcish shields across the western bank, seventeen hundred arrows embedded in iron and wood, each one a small monument to the expenditure that the Tohr'terra had been designed to produce.

The meat grinder ground. The sponge absorbed. And the campaign's arithmetic continued to favor the army that was smaller and smarter and fighting with the combination of ferocity and discipline that no force in the Threian military's history had encountered.