came down from the wall, and he prepared to give the mental order for the mountain kings to retreat. Then he saw the champions of the Cragfist kriel moving toward him. They were finally giving up their position.
Madrak stepped forward and cleaved a farrow brigand in two, watching the group of warriors battle their way toward him. Though the Cragfist kriel was harried on all sides, the farrow lines had collapsed amid bouts of looting and arson, and the fighting between pigs and gators alleviated some pressure. Even so, the Cragfists moved slowly, one of their ancient krielstones carried at the center while the champions on the perimeter protected the rest. They would never make it.
“Close the gate!” Madrak called. “Make ready with ropes!” Without waiting for a reply, he turned his attention to the enemies between him and the warriors. A nimble bull snapper rushed from the fray to harass Madrak, driven by an unseen warlock, but the trollkin chief laid the beast low with a few rapid strikes. He could feel the power within Rathrok welling up, feeding on the violence. He paused to steady himself and push the encroaching darkness from his mind. “What in Dhunia’s name are you doing?” a voice shouted. Madrak looked back to see Grissel between the two halves of the closing gate. “Right behind me, is that not what I said?” “We can still save them!” Madrak shouted, pointing toward the kriel.
Grissel strode to Madrak’s side, unleashing a powerful vocal blast that shredded the approaching wave of farrow. Madrak glowered at her. “Are you disobeying the orders of your chieftain?”
“You’re not in charge here, Ironhide.” She matched his stare and he felt the truth of her words. The gathered warriors looked to her now. “You hoard blame for that which you cannot control. Thousands draw breath behind those walls. Tough times call for tough choices, and if you can’t make them, I will. So help me, I will haul you through that gate even if I have to knock you senseless and drag you!” Madrak looked from Grissel to the beleaguered trollkin and reluctantly nodded. The two fell back as Madrak gave the mountain kings a mental command to push toward the stranded warriors and defend them. He lamented leaving the warriors outside the wall, but he took solace in knowing the towering legends fought alongside them. The gate slammed shut with a resounding clang, its resonant echo rolling off the walls like the sealing of a tomb. Defenders slotted a series of bars across the gate to brace it against the assault to come.
The space inside the inner wall was crowded and filled with motion. Everywhere, battle preparations were underway.
Able-bodied krielfolk formed lines to receive weapons and armor. Others ferried ammunition, including fresh kegs of powder for dire troll bombers to hurl over the wall. Stone previously designated for late-stage construction was hauled up to the wall’s defenders to be dropped onto the enemy. Gunnbjorn’s pygs, sluggers, and scattergunners fired in sequence from atop the wall, pausing only to reload. Those few among the kriels too young, old, or maimed to fight took shelter in the feast hall and the storage caves set into the mountainside at the back of the fortress.
A cheer went up along the wall and through the inner village. It took Madrak a moment to realize they rejoiced at the sight of him. He felt a combination of gratitude and shame. He recalled his conversation with Kargess and their agreement to stand together, even to the bitter end. Grissel’s declarations, too, rang in his ears, and he looked to her now. They had time only for a single nod before each returned their attentions to the defense.
“Ropes!” Madrak called. He directed them up to the wall nearest the embattled warriors outside. “If the Cragfists make it to the wall, haul them up!” He ran up the stairs to the battlements to assist. Several kriel warriors followed to help as well.
He topped the wall. The sight beyond made a mockery of his previous perception of the onslaught. From his new vantage point he saw the battle’s enormity, and dread filled him.
Lord Carver surveyed the battlefield. To soften the foe, Carver sent the deranged Sturm and Drang against them, and he reveled in the resulting chaos. Midas and Helga had taken their forces along each of the flanks, forcing the trollkin to divide their attention. For a time the enemy had stalled his forces at the gaps in their unfinished outer wall, but with the weight of superior numbers and his own obvious combat superiority, he drove the defenders back. Now the warlord of warlords marched his warband through what remained of the trollkin village.
A force of gatormen had arrived from the west not long after the battle began. Early efforts to avoid engaging them soon failed, especially once the trollkin army withdrew behind the walls of their inner fortress. Now farrow and gatormen clashed between partially collapsed homes.
The area closest to that fortress had become a roiling mass of murderous warriors and beasts. Old rivalries between gators and farrow ignited, resulting in an undisciplined melee. Brigands ordered to assail the inner wall chose instead to pick their own battles. Carver could not recall the last time he had seen such a show of farrow military might, and its
primal energy spoke to his warlord nature. He hefted Hand of God over his head and loosed a deep bellow that carried over the incessant clash of battle. His followers raised their weapons and returned the cry in kind.
Not all farrow were battling gatormen or making advances against the inner stronghold. Many were busy rooting through the structures abandoned by the trollkin, seeking plunder before razing each to the ground. The destruction thrilled him, as did the knowledge that the morale of his people would be bolstered by the spoils. The deaths they endured just meant a larger portion for those who survived. “Now this is a raid!” Carver said to Dr. Arkadius. The doctor stood nearby, his oversized syringe ready and his expression dour. He had displayed nothing but disapproval since Carver announced his plans to march against the trollkin. The doctor had become downright incensed when Carver refused to delay the raid after learning of the gatorman army. “Your doubts would have cost us a great victory.” “This doesn’t qualify as victory yet,” Arkadius said. He turned to one of the battle boars flanking him and inspected the tubes that fed supplemental adrenaline into the beast’s body, then tapped a gloved finger against one of the gauges.
As much as Carver disliked the human, he did have his uses. The surgically altered boars had played a critical role in recent battles.
Carver was not discouraged. “I have raised the greatest army the Marches have ever seen.”
“Your great army is accumulating casualties by the minute,” Arkadius spat. “Do you have any idea how long it took to acquire the means to launch an assault of this magnitude? How many test subjects we have already left dead in the dirt? Besides, she doesn’t seem impressed with your accomplishments.” The doctor nodded at the farrow assaulting the wall, led by the prominent form of Helga the Conqueror. Unlike those looting the village and brawling with the gatormen, these farrow had maintained order, fighting in organized ranks and mitigating attacks from atop the fortress wall with bouts of covering fire. Some worked to assemble ladders. Helga stood at their center, clearly in charge, her voice stern and inspiring. Her attention was focused on the fortress walls as though the chaos erupting throughout the abandoned outer village held no importance. “Then I shall take the fortress first,” Carver said. He tightened his grip on Hand of God and looked up at the
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sloped fortress walls. As pressed as the trollkin were at the outset, they had gathered their wits and were holding against both the gatormen and the farrow from the top of their impressive battlements.
“I do not claim to be an expert on matters of the heart— beyond the purely anatomical sense—but I do not think stealing Helga’s glory will win you her favor. And even if it would, I am not certain we are in a position to take the fortress by ourselves.” As if to accentuate the doctor’s point, a flaming brigand ran past. “Perhaps a singular act of strength is needed. That would suit you better.”
Carver grunted but said nothing, feeling a familiar urge to pummel Arkadius to death. But he had to admit the human was right—he had no immediate inspiration for breaching the fortress walls.
“Look there,” Arkadius said, pointing to the mass of hungry reptiles. West of the fortress, just beyond where the fighting was thickest, a familiar hooded gatorman with skulls mounted to poles strapped to his back stood atop a mound of fresh corpses. “Eliminate their leader and the field will be yours.”
Carver recognized the figure as Bloody Barnabas, a gatorman bokor of great spiritual power and far-reaching reputation. He was supposedly ancient, but nothing in the way he fought suggested age or weakness. With each stroke of the bokor’s axe, a farrow went flying. As the brigands facing him expired, ghostly glowing forms emerged from their bodies to swirl about the bokor, joining a greenish haze that surrounded him. Nearby were several massive wheeled stone constructs, each pushed by a pair of large gators and covered in candles and runes that glowed brighter with each life Barnabas extinguished. Carver had fought Barnabas before at the Marchfells. It had been a difficult clash with no clear victor, since Carver had been forced to deal with other adversaries before finishing the bokor. The idea of ending the matter appealed to him.
Carver wrinkled his snout at Arkadius with suspicion. Never in the human’s years of service had Carver known him to suggest starting a fight when they did not have clear superiority. The doctor did not have a warrior spirit. As Carver puzzled over Arkadius’ intentions, one of the stone structures pushed by the gatormen pulsed, and a
band of slaughterhousers several yards away was reduced to charred meat and twisted armor. The smell was not entirely unpleasant.
“To me!” Carver called out, lofting Hand of God above his head once more, and again hundreds returned his rallying cry. Some of the lesser warlords directed gun boars to return fire on the trollkin while others rallied their warriors. Masses of loyal farrow heard Carver’s call and emerged from trollkin homes, eager to prove their worth. They swarmed about him, wild and frantic. At his command they pressed ahead, readying weapons to clear a path through the battle. Arkadius followed, and Carver could hear the hydraulic hiss and whine as modified hogs obeyed his command. Carver gave Helga a passing glance before turning his attention to the hooded gatorman at the center of the slaughter. He would cleave the bokor in two and deliver the creature’s head to her as an offering. Then, when the field was his, he would prove Arkadius wrong by leading his warband over the top of the wall.
Mordikaar had set out from Tyrant’s Lash with sixty Praetorians and half as many Venators. They made good time, following the unmistakable trail of the farrow north. All the while, the Void portal tethered to Mordikaar bent and bowed and elongated itself as the mysterious pull continued to grow. The void spirits swirled about the portal’s edge, issuing howls of agony and rage. They were more agitated than he had ever seen them. When the journey began, the skorne accompanying him had feared crossing the path of the farrow army that had passed the fortress a day earlier. As time went on they grew to fear him instead, carefully keeping their distance from the maddened void spirits.
The skorne climbed atop a hill, and the sight beyond gave even him pause. At the base of the mountains to the north stood a squat, wide stone fortress, and beyond the fortress was a large ring of half-finished walls, now in ruin. Between the two barriers, where a village might once have been, two seething bestial armies sought each other's annihilation. Mordikaar’s keen eyes picked out tiny figures on the fortress battlements fighting to repel those beyond. Near the walls, trolls the size of mammoths fought to dislodge smaller beasts assailing them, hammering with their great fists and punctuating each strike with a roar that shook combatants to pieces. The red sand of the Marches had been drenched in blood that clung to hooves, boots, and scaled feet. The entire gruesome scene seemed a manifestation of primal madness.
The cacophony of birds caught Mordikaar’s attention, and he looked up to see thousands of crows pass overhead.