novelraw Chapter 719 - 718
Chapter 719 - 718
On the seventh day, Khao’khen committed the Rhakaddons.
Fifty-seven armored beasts, each one weighing three tons and carrying a rider whose position atop the beast’s massive shoulders provided both elevation and the leverage that the rider’s spear required for the downward strikes that Rhakaddon warfare employed. The beasts’ paired horns, sheathed in iron caps that Zul’jinn’s forge had produced, were the weapons that no formation on the battlefield could resist at close range because no formation on the battlefield was designed to absorb three tons of momentum delivered through two iron-capped points.
The Rhakaddons crossed the river upstream of the ford at the deep crossing where the water reached the beasts’ chests, their massive legs finding purchase on the riverbed with the surefooted stability that three-ton animals provided. The crossing was visible from the combined force’s positions. The combined force’s soldiers watched fifty-seven Rhakaddons emerge from the river and form the assault line on the western bank with the specific emotional response that soldiers produced when they observed very large animals with very large horns arranging themselves in a formation that was obviously preparatory to charging in their direction.
Dhug’mhar led the assault. The Rumbling Clan chieftain’s mount, the great-horned beast that had carried him through the depression engagement and the valley night fight and every Rumbling Clan operation since the campaign began, took its position at the assault line’s center with the confidence of an animal that had been doing this for months and that regarded the Threian formations with the professional assessment that experienced war mounts applied to the things they were about to run through.
"GET READY TO RUMBLE!" Dhug’mhar’s war cry, the specific phrase that the Rumbling Clan had adopted as its signature, erupted from the chieftain with the volume that the phrase demanded. "Perfection is coming, pinkskins! Perfection and fifty-six of Perfection’s closest friends! Your formation is about to have a very bad day! GRAK’THAR! VRAAK!"
Graka’s mount took position at Dhug’mhar’s left flank, the trusted wing’s standard deployment. "Perfection’s count is fifty-seven, including Perfection."
"Perfection rounds down because the number fifty-six allows Perfection to be the one additional, which is Perfection’s natural position: the one that makes the difference."
"GROMBASH KRUL!" The Rumbling Clan’s riders took up the victory cry before the charge had begun, the preemptive celebration that was either supreme confidence or supreme audacity and that, in Dhug’mhar’s case, was both.
The Rhakaddon line charged.
The ground trembled. Not metaphorically. Physically. Three tons multiplied by fifty-seven, moving at the gallop that Rhakaddons achieved over the hundred-pace acceleration distance, produced a seismic effect that the soldiers in the path of the charge felt through their boot soles before they saw the beasts clearly enough to understand what was about to happen.
The charge hit the combined force’s left flank where Varen’s infantry had established a defensive position following the withdrawal from the forward slope. The defensive position included a trench line, wooden stakes, and the layered infantry formation that Threian doctrine used against cavalry charges.
The stakes stopped horses. They did not stop Rhakaddons. The three-ton beasts ran through the stakes the way they ran through everything that was not a stone wall, the wooden poles snapping against their armored chests, the fragments scattering across the trench line as the Rhakaddons’ momentum carried them through the defensive preparations that had been designed for a different scale of threat.
* * * * *
The Rhakaddon assault broke the combined force’s left flank in twelve minutes.
The trench line, which should have held, was overrun by animals that the trench could not contain because the trench’s depth was designed for human-scale threats and the Rhakaddons simply stepped across it. The infantry formations that should have held were scattered by impacts that no infantry formation’s shield discipline could absorb because the impacts were delivered by animals whose mass exceeded the formation’s collective weight at the contact point.
While the Rhakaddons hammered the left flank, Haguk’s warg cavalry struck the right.
Four hundred and sixty warg riders, deployed from the concealed positions south of the ford where they had been holding since the battle’s first day, hit the combined force’s right flank at the point where the flank’s attention was directed leftward, toward the Rhakaddon assault that was producing the catastrophic noise and ground-shaking impacts that drew every soldier’s instinctive attention.
The wargs hit the right flank’s overextended screening cavalry at the speed that wargs achieved over short distances, the burst acceleration that exceeded horses’ sprint speed and that produced the contact at a range where the cavalry’s lances could not be lowered before the wargs’ riders were inside the lance points and fighting at the close range that orcish warriors preferred.
"GRAK’ THAR!" Haguk’s war cry, delivered in the quiet, precise tone that the Warghen chieftain used for everything including war cries, which somehow made the words more unsettling than volume would have. "Break them without mercy."
The right flank bent. The left flank was broken. The center, the Rakshas spear wall, advanced.
The spear wall moved forward for the first time since the battle began, the Rakshas taking the ground that the flanking assaults had created the conditions for them to take. The long spears’ points advanced into the space that the combined force’s collapsing flanks were evacuating, the wall’s forward movement slow and deliberate and utterly inevitable, each step accompanied by the grinding sound that the spear wall produced when its warrior’s boots moved across ground that had been fought over for seven days.
"Mok’sharag, vol duum krul," the 1st Warband chanted. Ancestors watch, now we take what is ours. The words that were spoken before battles fought to reclaim lost territory.
The combined force withdrew across the river. The withdrawal was organized, professional, and costly. Fourteen hundred dead on the seventh day alone. The total battle losses at Harren’s Ford now exceeded six thousand Threian soldiers. The Horde’s losses were nine hundred and twelve.
The ford was the Horde’s. The river crossing was the Horde’s. The western bank, the eastern bank’s forward slope, and the terrain that the combined force had held at the battle’s start were the Horde’s.
"Grombash krul!" Dhug’mhar roared, his mount standing amid the wreckage of the trench line that the Rhakaddon charge had destroyed. "MOK GROMBASH KRUL! The ancestors witnessed it all! Perfection’s contribution was, once again, the decisive factor! The trench line disagreed with Perfection’s assessment and the trench line has been corrected!"
The Snarling Wolf advanced to the ford’s eastern bank for the first time, the banner planted on the ground that the combined force had held that morning and that the Horde held now. The wolf’s snarl directed east, toward the combined force’s camp, toward the forty-seven thousand soldiers who were discovering that forty-seven thousand was a number and that numbers alone did not win battles against an army that had spent four months learning how to make numbers irrelevant.