Rise of the Horde

Chapter 721 - 720

The first hour of the pitched battle was the hour that the Rakshas had been built for.

The spear wall received the combined force’s front line the way a seawall received a wave, the contact’s energy absorbed and dissipated across the formation’s width, each warrior’s contribution to the wall’s integrity ensuring that no single point bore the force alone. The long spears struck the advancing soldiers at the range where the soldiers’ weapons could not reach the warriors behind the shields, and the killing at that range was mechanical, systematic, the product of training and physical advantage applied at the distance that the weapons’ geometry dictated.

Threian soldiers pressed forward and died on the spears. The soldiers behind them pressed forward and died on the spears. The soldiers behind those pressed forward because the forty-thousand-soldier formation’s rear elements were still advancing and the rear elements’ pressure compressed the front elements against the spear wall that was not moving.

"VOL DUUM MOK!" The 1st Warband’s cry carried through the grinding contact. "DRAK’UL VOSH! ZUG ZUG MAG!"

The Roarers fired from the flanking positions, the rolling volleys sweeping across the combined force’s compressed formation in the enfilade pattern that produced maximum casualties per volley. The Roarer crews fired, reloaded, fired, the rhythm of the weapons’ operation providing the sustained suppression that kept the combined force’s soldiers pressed against the spear wall rather than finding the space to maneuver around it.

The mages came forward.

Forty-three practitioners, the combined force’s magical complement, advanced to the casting positions and began the Fourth Circle assault that was the only magical capability that the Golden Wolf’s shimmer did not nullify. The Fourth Circle spells penetrated the shimmer at reduced intensity, the frost storms and force projections striking the Horde’s formation with a third of their original power, producing casualties among the warriors but at a rate that the formation’s reserves could absorb.

The Amazzfer stood at the center, the Golden Wolf blazing above the formation, the shimmer’s golden light washing across the Horde’s line and turning the Third Circle spells to harmless sparks while the Fourth Circle’s reduced effects landed among the warriors who fell and were replaced by the reserves that the formation’s depth provided.

"SHRAK!" The quick-fire insult erupted from a dozen voices as the Third Circle spells vanished against the shimmer. "GUL! NULL! Your magic feeds the Wolf! MORE!"

The combined force’s flanking elements began the envelopment that Aldrath’s formation width was designed to produce. The soldiers at the combined force’s edges moved forward past the Horde’s flanks, curving inward to attack the Horde’s line from the sides where the spear wall’s forward orientation could not protect.

The Yurakk warbands received the flanking attack.

The 3rd and 4th Warbands on the left flank, the 9th and 10th on the right, their rectangular shields and stabbing swords deployed in the formation that flanking defense required, the shields’ broader coverage providing the protection that the flanking angle demanded while the stabbing swords’ narrow points found the gaps in the flanking soldiers’ armor with the precision that the swords’ design and the warriors’ training combined to produce.

"DUUM!" The 3rd Warband’s defiance cry. "VOSH NAK’ROSH! Never yielding, never stopped!"

"KRAGH!" The 9th Warband’s answer. "VRAAK! GOR KRAGH! Earth-strike, CRUSH!"

The flanking engagements became the battles within the battle, each Yurakk warband fighting its own section of the combined force’s enveloping line, each warband holding its ground with the specific ferocity that the new phase’s full-release doctrine produced.

* * * * *

The second hour was the Rhakaddons’.

Khao’khen committed the Rhakaddon reserve at the moment that the combined force’s center committed its second line, the reinforcement that Aldrath sent forward to add weight to the front line’s assault against the spear wall. The reinforcement compressed the center, adding soldiers to the contact with the spear wall, which added bodies to the grinding effect that the spear wall produced.

Dhug’mhar’s Rumbling Clan hit the compressed center from the right flank, fifty-seven Rhakaddons at full charge, the three-ton beasts plowing through the combined force’s formation with the momentum that nothing on the battlefield could resist.

"GET READY TO RUMBLE! GRAK’THAR! VRAAK DUUM!"

The Rhakaddon charge tore a gap in the combined force’s center-right that was two hundred paces wide and filled with the wreckage that three-ton animals produced when they ran through infantry formations at full speed. The gap separated the combined force’s center from its right wing, creating the disconnection that the Horde’s flanking warbands exploited immediately.

The 5th and 6th Warbands drove into the gap from the left, their Yurakk formations moving at the assault pace, stabbing swords working in the close-quarter technique that the gap’s confused terrain produced. The combined force’s soldiers in the gap were fighting individually rather than in formation, the Rhakaddon charge having destroyed the formation’s integrity, and individual Threian soldiers fighting individual orcish warriors in close quarters faced the physical disadvantage that close-quarters combat against bigger and stronger opponents always produced.

Haguk’s warg cavalry sealed the gap from behind, four hundred and sixty warg riders sweeping across the rear of the combined force’s separated right wing and preventing the right wing from reforming its connection to the center.

The combined force’s right wing, separated from the center, fighting on three sides, its formation’s integrity destroyed by the Rhakaddon charge and exploited by the Yurakk warbands and sealed by the warg cavalry, began to collapse.

Aldrath committed his reserve. Ten thousand soldiers, the third line, the force that was supposed to be committed only when the engagement’s decisive moment arrived. The decisive moment was the collapse of the right wing, and the reserve’s commitment was the correct professional response.

The reserve’s arrival stabilized the right wing. The gap filled with fresh soldiers. The warg cavalry withdrew before the reserve’s weight could trap it. The Rhakaddons pulled back to reform.

But the reserve was committed. The third line was gone. Aldrath’s formation now had no reserve to respond to the next crisis, and the Horde’s formation still had uncommitted warbands in its rear line.

The spear wall continued to grind. The meat grinder did not stop because the reserve was committed. The meat grinder did not stop because of anything. The meat grinder was the 1st and 2nd Warbands, the Rakshas, the finest formation the Horde had ever produced, and the Rakshas did not stop.

"Grak’ thar," Arka’garr said, from the formation’s center. Break them, without mercy. The words were not a cry. They were a statement. The battle was three hours old and the spear wall had not moved and the combined force’s dead were accumulating at the wall’s base in the specific pattern that a formation designed to kill everything that pressed against it produced.

The grind continued.