Horns pealed and their notes were answered as commanders of the other battalions directed their troops toward the battle. But they were over a thousand feet away. Adding to this confusion was the sudden division of the panthers in to two groups. The smaller group with large bears tore into the lizardfolk rear but those Ayr following them veered off as one group and sprinted across the undefended plain between the ranks of orcs and the former lizardfolk positions.
This second group sprinted straight toward the back of the underworlder host at General Imok and the command camp.
General Imok swallowed hard, eyes wide with alarm. The bloodborn orc leader had lost two thousand orcs inside the ruins, lost his lizardfolk auxilliaries, lost his umberslogs which were of the greatest value to the Warlord. Now he had divided his forces by sending all of his basilaks and hammertaurs inside the city ruins and another two thousand orcs. Further, too close to Sigils Arch to help him now were three thousand more hornback orcs that were on their way into Sigils Arch through the second breach when the Ayr stampeded out the first breach.
The titan ogres, with the slave ogres, pagai, mageguards, warsorcers and warlocks were with the goblin archer brigades toward the front lines. The damned headhunters were with the pteragaunts searching the expansive upper ruins and towers for the enemy. Three thousand orcs, a whole three battalions, were camped with the train of provisions, wagons, cave buffulo brought up from the Deep and the chained prisoners. They were too far to help.
General Imok was encircled by the command force of two thousand hornback orc soldiers and his personal guard of hornhulks. He realized that in this battle these were the only help he would have. Before anyone could possibly arrive this contest would be over.
As he marvelled at the oncoming black and brown wave of writhing bodies quickly nearing in the tall plains grass toward the front ranks of the command force, he listened to his herald blow the signal horns over and over as his battalion commanders turned their own troops back to aid the general. A futile gesture.
The apanthoi were suicidal. Like a tidal surge overtaking a beach the strong and fast black panthers pulled down the front ranks of armored orcs. As many hornback warriors found their hands and arms firmly in the jaws of the Ayr they were pulled forward onto the ground and chewed or clawed apart as other panthers leapt over them to those standing behind. Panthers scrambled over the dead and dying, over the living and unhurt as well as each other in their pursuit to find victims. Embattled orcs having never before dealt with such organized ferocity went down before they could gather their wits.
Swords did not seem to cut them down nor did shields appear to fend them off. The center ranks folded down to hit the ground in heavy armor under the weight of the concentrated assault. There was no strategy. The orc flanks were unmolested and all those hornbacks in the middle found themselves either killed or overtaken and passed.
Myriam led the charge. Panthers at her sides, behind her and sometimes even leaping over her, clamping their powerful jaws onto orc wrists or hands still grasping weapons or their armored arms. Other apanthoi bit their legs and many went for their necks, biting through armor and bone. Several pantheresses found that the easiest way to get orcs out of their way was to simply slash at their faces with their powerful claws. Many orcs were not killed, only injured to take them out of the battle temperarily. Ribboned faces were very effective. The orcs putting up the most resistance found many sets of panther jaws sinking into their flesh from all directions.
Imok stood rigidly on his observation platform surrounded by hornhulks on the ground. He could clearly see the wedge formation of the panthers and how his orcs were dragged off just to get them out of the way for more apanthoi to fill the holes. He did not have to order the flanks to close around the enemy. Hornback orcs are unlike their surface kin. In the past few centuries in Hollowrealm the hornback orcs had been rigidly trained and disciplined in many combat scenarios. The military prowess of the Deep Men hated by almost all underworld species made this necessary. In the underworld horde warfare was a primitive mode of engagement.
As orcs died by the hundreds and hundreds more kicked about and flailed from their injuries or were hauled forward as panthers dragged them, Imok's large hornhulks, fifty in all, readied themselves. These were a breed of very big underworld orcs heavier than the hornbacks wearing thicker armor and weilding heavier weapons. Their own training was more advanced than bloodborns. Their shields were spiked. They did not fear the panthers, waiting quietly with iron spike helms having visors, great broadswords, battleaxes and spiked maces.
An orc ran Myriam through with a spear penetrating her breast as he yelled his gutteral war cry in her face while she morphed back into humanoid form. The orc stared astonished, gazing at a beautiful, slender woman on his spear until a storm of panthers ripped his head off. Her body was guarded in the press until it was realized that she was dead. All of the lifetimes combined of those orcs fighting in this battle could not add up to the years the ancient faery woman had seen.
Through a sorrow communicated telepathically the Ayr hardened their hearts and channelled their anguish into a pure focus in slaying the enemy. General Imok saw the change in their behavior tactics from his platform, having no idea the reason.
Orcs were shredded, dropped violently, guts were pulled out, bodies eviscerated with talons, fanged jaws were seen opening everywhere as the helms of orcs went below the shoulders of panthers. The arrow formation of the Ayr pierced the orcan ranks all the way to the line of hornhulks before stalling. The orcs along the flanks untouched by the panthers now closed in on the Noble Ones to the detriment of the tiring cats.
Attempting to overcome the hornhulks but beaten back by powerful blows of metal weapons, apanthoi found themselves run through from the right and left with orc swords and spears and the underworlders closed in on them. These orcs pursued and attacked from behind a wall of densely packed shields. The struggle raged with mounting passion and General Imok trembled when he saw the panthers abandon all hope of personal survival as they began recklessly leaping forward atop the hornhulks as other cats were impaled before they could jump.
Some of the armored great orcs went down under the slashing and biting, others by the sheer weight of the giant panthers. Hornhulks largely faught back, sliced through descending apanthoi and one huge orc barbarian grabbed a cat, wrestled her to the ground and held fast as other hulks ran her through pinning her shuddering body to the ground. Still, panthers slipped into the hornhulk press causing them to tighten their formation, using closer in weapons, axes and maces to take down the big cats. With a tightly packed front the leaping apanthoi were skewered on a wall of spears as others were hacked as they passed through the air. The Ayr struggled valiantly, tooth and talon against sword and steel.
The primal intensity of the embattled faeries saw to the deaths of more than half of the hornhulk knights. But it was not enough. Drenched in sweat and the body fluids of orcs the apanthoi inched their way to General Imok's position. Seeing the last panthers advancing, their bodies damaged, bleeding and almost unrecognizable as panthers, Imok pulled his two-hand axe off of his back and inhaled deeply.
With only a dozen giant panthers remaining the hornhulk guard renewed their defense like a machine of many bladed parts. Several hulks now launched themselves bodily at the panthers. The apanthoi were speared, impaled, gashed open trailing their guts and one was decapitated. A few others were beaten down, exhausted, unable to move forward as spears and swords ran them through. The entire path taken by the Ayr was filled with dead and maimed orcs and scattered dark-furred feminine forms of faeries passing on to The Other Side. Those nethering, a faery ability to descend into a deep trance to heal rapidly, were butchered where they laid.
Walls of sharp spears closed in on the last of the Noble Ones led by Myriam.
* * * * *
Over forty-five hundred feet high in the sky circling over the field of battle a gray giant hawk soared silently with his back warmed
by the brilliant sun. He watched the lizardfolk flee and die on the plain and over four hundred apanthoi and bruun hidden in the grass to the east began moving away. There was nothing they could do.
The hawkman's heart burned molten in his chest as he viewed the orcs butchering his exhausted and wounded kin. Two pantheresses had reached the enemy general but were hacked down by his guardians. The Ayr assault had killed or injured at least fifteen hundred orcs. Now the orc general walked the battlefield personally killing prone pantheresses too hurt to fight back.
The hawkman's keen eyes searched the whole landscape. The Noble Ones had not failed.
He turned into the wind.
* * * * *
General Imok handed his great axe to an attendant to clean. Sigils Arch had fallen. Sentries reported that the interior was empty. He had lost about thirty-five hundred orcs but with Legion Four's addition to his own force he still had the largest army apart from the Taran Warlord's own host. His ground and aerial cavalries were intact, seige engine brigades, wizards and all of his precious archers, titan ogres and duskim. Only the slogs were really a loss.
Suddenly an unexpected horn sounded from a nearby battalion commander. Another horn pealed from the direction of the headhunter standing on the walls of the ruins. Imok looked around.
"What are the signals for?" he demanded of his herald, who looked all about as confused as he was just as a third horn blasted three times rapidly. Three hornhulks exploded into a rush holding up their shields lunging for General Imok as he stood dumbfounded at their behavior.
Alarmed, he turned as a shadow dimmed the burning disk.
It was the last thing General Imok ever saw. The impact of talons, feathers and a heavy body moving at great speed splattered Imok's own body into bone splinters and a pink mist as entrails plastered the hornhulk knights.
Smiths forged the warhammer from the enchanted
metal of the maul of Mygok the Titan, but the
dwarven chief was killed by the mighty orc. And
thus began Hammerworn ascendancy, 5183 years
before Ghul-run, when Theol Hammerworn lifted
up Quakemaker and slew the axemaster of Devil-
spire, ending the seige of Dijin Castle.
Codex Caerea XII:8
Dijin Castle...northern Devilspire Mountains
I made good speed flying above the valley floor on my way north toward Dijin Castle, the northernmost stronghold of the Bholbash orcs. By day's end I would come to realize that I should have flown somewhere else. Matthias went the opposite direction, away from Kag'ar Grul toward Ebrog Pass in ther south. As I flew through the cool air my mind was on Abdias.
I had sent him from Conclave to fly straight for Deckers Port. He would have no way of knowing that his younger brother Lucretius was dead. The valley floor below me passed by silently, still as death and growing darker. This was the perfect backdoor ambush but the orcs would not see it, too confident in their impregnable citadels. The legacy of dwarves who long ago abandoned them, they were massive constructions on sheer cliff faces with drawbridges and heavy stone doors. The entrance to Dijin keep had a deep gorge dropping about three hundred and fifty feet to a narrow brook. The only way across was an ancient slab of gigantic narrow rock over a hundred feet across but a mere seven feet wide. How the dwarves of old managed to emplace it was a mystery. Further, in those days the stone was raised like a drawbridge but the orcs did not possess that kind of knowledge. Lesser bridges spanned the gorge that could be pulled back. The mountainhold came into sight where the valley narrowed to a taper.
All appeared normal. My steed was not yet tired so I slacked my ankle tethers so the animal could slow down if it wanted to. Orcs were on patrol along the uppoer cliffs making things at least seem normal.
But I was uneasy. What if I am wrong? I wondered if perhaps there was no other army trying to gain the valley, that maybe I misinterpreted the Warlord's hesitance for something else. Matthias remembered the dwarven underveins but that could be entirely coincidence.
Is there something else I have yet to see?
We rangers are no friends to orcs. But it was not for their welfare that we were here. True, we were using them as a bastian to hinder the enemy to allow time for our allies and the residents of Borderealm to plan, gather and prepare for their defense. And we are sworn to extend our protection to all races within our territories of patrol.
The revelation that entire underground highway systems were underneath the lands of Borderealm was entirely new to me. Not even Jebrael had ever mentioned it. I do not know of anyone who knows of these underveins, nor have dwarves told me of their existence. Matthias said they were relics of the Old World and I have to believe that. Surely the dwarves did not use them any more. But I had never heard of the ancient city of Nimbolc either, which Matthias said was the first civilization of dwarves located inside and under Mount Thokax in Darkfrost Peaks.
He said it was already old before the first appearance of the Broken Moon.
Talk of these old places disturbed me. Cavin was obsessed with the earliest site of human occupation, Talan Dathar in Dimwood, also of the Old World. Darkfrost Peaks was nearby. Now Nimbolc and underworld armies, undervein highways leading to former dwarf strongholds occupied now by orcs. Things were not simple anymore. I remember Matthias telling us that in Lower Thokax below the ruins of Nimbolc were caverns with caves leading downward all the way to Hollowrealm but that the Warlord's forces chose to come up another way. Instead, they ascended by some unknown route and then attacked Thokax from the surface ending the trollock civilization.
What lurks below that mountain that whole armies avoided it?
As I neared the fortress mired in thoughts two flames suddenly burst alive at the summit of Dijin Castle's highest tower. It blossomed brightly in the darkness so that all in the valley could see it. The tower construction appeared like a gigantic candle in the night. Next two enormous brazen bowls flashed as they caught fire, flames quickly ignited by some fast-burning fuel.
Signal fires.
I turned my head and looked backward as my steed flew on. The far away blackness of the mountains along the valley was penetrated by a flame that grew brighter and brighter several miles away. I blinked. Further off in the very far distance toward Kag'ar Grul, a second signal flame burst alight. In moments the chiefs of the Bholbash Alliance at Kag'ar Grul would know something was wrong at Dijin Castle.
Before I could wonder where the enemy was located and what exactly was going on, I saw Bholbash orcs running out of the castle toward the slab bridge as I passed by overhead. So many sprinted for the bridge that only those pressed in the center of the crowd made it while screaming orcs on either side plunged downward to their deaths far below, unable to find purchase on the bridge or outright shoved out of the way. The fleeing orcs left in their wake a trail of weapons and shields, helms and hurt orcs who had gotten in someone's way. Hundreds flooded out of Dijin Castle, a thousand at least, before the tide trickled, stemmed and totally stopped.
No more orcs came out of the keep but something else did. Something I'm sure no human in living memory has ever seen. It was like a dwarf but so much taller. Huge. Covered in red armor and with a wicked short but very broad sword, the gigantic dwarf had dark skin and stood on the bridge, turning around as if to stop any more orcs from escaping. I knew that there were more of these enormous dwarves just inside the entrance. It was too late.
Knowing that panicking orcs are deadly idiots, I opted not to land in the valley. My drake would need at least some rest before we made the return journey to Kag'ar Grul. I landed on a high ridge to watch the scene below after dismounting to stretch my legs.
* * * * *
The Grimh were one of the few races in all of the Deep unconquered by the Taran Warlord. Since the days of the Horn-Helm War between the Taran ogres and the giant dwarves in Hollowrealm, the chieftains of the Taran Wastes never again attempted to contend with the Grimh. Only because of a common enemy,
the Barad-ai, odd humans living in a far off secluded cavern city, had the ogres and giant dwarves formed a tenuous compact.
The Grimh were an anomaly in the world of dwarves. They were the height of tall humans, some standing seven feet tall, but they retained the dense constitution and brawn of dwarves. They were almost as wide with thickly packed muscle as they were tall. Fierce in battle, with a love for warfare found to be true of all dwarvenkind, they were the titans of the dwarven race. Unfortunately for other dwarves, especially those residing in the cavernholds of Hollowrealm, the Grimh were separatists and supremists who engaged in unrelenting war against all other dwarven and dwarf-kin peoples. They shared no affinities for others, enslaved a whole race of gnomes for their utility and unfortunately for the Warlord, he had only been granted the use of one legion of these notoriously violent warriors. Six thousand Grimh.
All led by one of the feared Undyrchiefs of their race.
The Grimh wore ringmail shirts of armor hanging to their knees, a protection of hundreds of layered triangular interlocking pieces over hydrahide armor. The hydras were abundant in the lower cavern marshes and lakes of the underworld. Each warrior had the symbol of their clan burned into the side of their necks and their black-haired beards were braided into locks like dark snakes. They all carried a large waraxe, a handaxe, a halfspear and a very wide, flat broadsword that was more like an angular blade for thrusting. Seige warfare and infiltration was their specialty. Their commanders had reddish iron longknives and for many years in the Barad-ai wars the heroes among the Deep Men kept these red knives as trophies of their kills. Those wars were always offensive campaigns because the Barad-ai never attacked the domains belonging to others. But their own cavern city of Arud-run they defended mightily.
Beyond Dagothar (The Oraclon Chronicles Book 1) Page 11