War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  Ogres screamed here and there, and some fell, but even those who were actually on fire marched onward, for they were made for battle and their blood was up. They began to march faster, and Aelfric saw one particular ogre with a round shield and a black spiked mace urging them on. This one strode in front of the ogre line, ignoring the missiles and shot that flew around him as he rallied them to the charge.

  Their speed was remarkable, and they were shortly inside of the range of the mangonels, having stood to no more than two or three volleys. Aelfric could see their faces clearly now, and the ones with open faced helmets had features more animal than human, with exaggerated noses and thick brows and chins that made their eyes seem tiny. When they opened their mouths to scream at each other he could see fangs rather than teeth, like the mouths of wolves or bears. The archers fired at them as fast as they could nock and draw, but the arrows did little unless they hit an eye or a throat, for their armor was proof against such things.

  “Damn them.” Aelfric said. “They’re monsters.”

  “Back up, milord!” Anbarius shouted. “Need you out of the way!”

  Aelfric turned and saw the sand men coming up onto the walls, and he was forced to step back to give them room, even as they shouldered their way past the archers and to their stations. All along the wall the sand men stood, and these were by and large Anbarius’ old men, carrying heavy iron trays full of red hot sand, and each tray had two handles that they held with thick leather gloves and padding. The bellows men in the forges had been pumping furiously to get the sand hot, and even from two paces away Aelfric could feel the heat of the tray nearest to him.

  The sand men reached the wall just moments before the ogres did. The ogres, no longer fearing either the mangonels or the ballista, being inside of the effective range of both, clambered down into the trench before the wall, kicking aside the stakes and spikes there, although a few clumsy ogres were driven onto them by accident and hurt or killed. Far too few, in Aelfric’s estimation.

  “Milord, you need to get off of the wall. Get to the inner wall.” Captain Timerin said. “We’ll hold here.” Aelfric was reluctant to leave the front line, but already some of the ogres near the back of the horde attacking the fort were picking up ballista bolts or rocks or the spears of fallen comrades and hurling them at the men on the wall. An archer in piss purple caught what looked like a full-sized mangonel ball to the chest and was knocked flying to the ground behind the wall. He did not get up again and there was blood around his mouth and nose.

  “Hold them, Timerin!” Aelfric yelled, even as he climbed down from the wall. He saw timbers crack and bulge from the weight of the ogres slamming into them, then Timerin shouted a command.

  “Sandmen, release!” Anbarius’ old men took their trays of sand and hefted them to the wall, hurling the sand in sheets down on the ogres below. From his vantage point Aelfric couldn’t see what happened, but the hammering on the wall ceased and a fearful howling went up among the enemy.

  The hot sand coming down from the pigsucker wall exploded onto the helmets of the ogres below, even as they began knocking holes in the wall of the fort. Madfist, a blooded ogre from the Ironbridge Band, paid it no mind at first, intent as he was on his axe work. He was splitting the timbers of the outer wall when the sand poured down, and the red hot sand trickled into every crease and crevice in his armor. The intense smell of burning flesh came into his nostrils in the same instant that the pain hit him, and he abandoned all attempts to break the wall when the sand poured into his eyes and blinded him. He abandoned the attack, but he did not abandon his axe. Driven mad with the pain, he began swinging it in wild arcs, hacking into the ogres around him. He was not the only one.

  All along the line where the ogres were attempting to break the fort, the old men poured down the sand, and those ogres who weren’t blinded or maddened by the pain found themselves endangered by those who were. The sand did what no arrow or flung stone or spear could, which was to penetrate the marvelous armor of the ogres, get beneath their shields and into their flesh.

  Still, these were ogres, not men, and they were made for war and battle. The ogres in the second ranks threw aside those in the first, slammed shields over their heads for cover, and tore at the walls, sometimes with their bare hands. When they broke through the wood, however, they found that the walls were full of compacted dirt, dirt that had absorbed the snowmelt and rain for over two months, turning into a combination of ice and mud that was harder to break than the wood. When the ogres attempted to break it, their weapons and hammers stuck in it or bounced off, causing little damage. Whenever they stopped to growl in frustration or bitch, the old men threw down more sand.

  Gutcrusher saw that he would have several hundred cooked or blinded ogres if he continued to assault the walls, and this drew his attention to the gates. The gates of the Expanded fort were made of thick timbers, but lashed together with ropes, and Gutcrusher quickly saw his opportunity. “Axes!” His voice was loud, even in that tumult of screaming and dying ogres and men. “Axes to the gates!”

  The ogres who had axes took his meaning quickly, and they came running at his call. “Chop down their fornicating gate, boyos!” He roared. Axes to the fore, these ogres fell to with a will, while others held shields over their heads. They began cutting through the timbers of the gate and the ropes that held them together.

  But the gates of the Expanded Fort had been laid out and planned by the old men and engineers, and they were well aware that any Cthochi assault would focus on the gates. In preparation for this they had placed many small barrels of pitch there, and torches and tinder for the making of fires. These barrels they threw down on the ogres below, making sure that they loosened the tops first, until the ogres were soaked with stuff, each and every one. A single thrown torch ignited them all at once, and the heat from the explosion could be felt all the way to the last rank of ogres, fifty paces back. The ogres roared and danced in the flames madly until their fellows, put in harm’s way by flailing axes and burning limbs, cut them down.

  A brief respite occurred then, for the ogres were confused and enraged by the suddenness and ferocity of the defense, and the old men threw down another liberal dose of hot sand.

  “Gah!” Gutcrusher roared. “Back! Back! We need another plan. Pull them back!” His frustration and fury at having been balked seemed almost a living thing, and the ogres around him stepped out of his way as he stormed back to the tree line. The withdrawal was completed in good order, and an eyeball estimate of his losses would have been no more than ten or twelve hands.

  Ironspike came striding up, and the fur that lined his armor was still smoking from a bit of burning oil that had splashed him. “We almost had the gate down, king! Why did you pull back?”

  “Not enough boyos with axes Spike.” Gutcrusher replied curtly. “We got too many boyos spread out on the walls and not enough at the gate. We need to go at the pigsuckers a different way.” The ogres near the two of them backed away, forming a semicircle, for the two of them were plainly frustrated and furious, and no one wanted to be the object of their wrath.

  “Fine, Crusher.” Ironspike said at last. “But I’ve got an idea.”

  “We broke them.” Dander O’Maslit stared in wonder at the ogres as they retreated. “The fort beat them.”

  “Don’t you believe it.” Anbarius replied. Dander was fifty, and one of Anbarius’ picked old men, a carpenter who was handy with mechanics and building ballistas. “They came against us unprepared and without any kind of plan. Even so they nearly broke the gate and we’ve used up all of the pitch and most of the sand. It’s still a wooden gate and it will still break to strength. Do you go and tell Aelfric we’ve stood to one assault. Tell him we won’t likely stand to another.”

  In the parade ground nearly half of the Cthochi were gone, and piles of their discarded belongings littered the ground. Here and there an unlucky soul had fallen victim to the ballista bolts, rocks and other missiles that the ogres had h
urled over the wall. By Anbarius’ estimate over twenty thousand Cthochi still waited in lines to escape the fort, either by the tunnels or by the bridge.

  “They’ve stood to the first assault.” A runner dutifully told Aelfric after a few minutes. “Anbarius says they won’t likely stand to another.”

  “Get him off of the wall.” Aelfric replied. “Pull the archers and leave only the engineers. On the outer wall I don’t want any family men. Tell them if the wall breaks they’re to run to the inner gate as quickly as they can.” The runner sprinted away.

  Aelfric looked at the bridge that Anbarius had built, and it was swaying beneath the weight of the thirty or so Cthochi who were making their way across it. It was designed and built for the crossing of horses and small wagons, for this was how Aelfric had brought his lancers across the Redwater, so it was more than strong enough for a few walking people, but it was at its limit, and there were still thousands of Cthochi waiting to cross it. Aelfric saw that Sir Celdemer was helping to direct the people crossing, and that the godsknight had somewhere managed to find a war sword and light armor. It lay in a scabbard on his back, and was nearly as tall as the slender man. The Cthochi women and children waited stoically, but even fifty paces Aelfric could see the terror in their eyes.

  Some of the Cthochi were wounded, whether from flying shot in the parade ground or from earlier fighting, and many were barely dressed, having been roused from tents without time to bundle up against the cold. Night was coming on, and it was getting colder. A few Cthochi warriors stood beside the column of those leaving, helping the women and children to leave first.

  At the rate they were going, it would still take hours to get them all across.

  Ironspike went among his boyos, the Winter Mountain band, and they stood in disciplined lines among the trees, for that was their primary characteristic. They did not complain or bitch or whine like the ogres of the other bands. He was inwardly furious with Gutcrusher, for he felt their losses had been minimal. Compared to the battles his people sometimes fought against trolls or the packs of gigantic wolves that haunted the Winter Mountain range, this was a mere skirmish, and he doubted that more than a hundred ogres had been lost altogether. “Get us a tree.” He commanded, and Neckbleeder, his second in command, quickly began issuing orders. “Leave some of the bigger branches on it for handles. I’ll have that gate down, by the Dead God.” The sound of swords and axes hacking into the trunk of a thirty pace tall pine soon followed. His boyos hadn’t broke, he thought to himself. Nor would they.

  It was scarcely an hour later that the ogres began their third assault on the Expanded Fort. This time they massed behind the ogres of the Winter Mountain Band, and Ironspike stood beside them. Gutcrusher saw what he was doing and nodded.

  “Aye, knock down the gate and we’ll drive the boyos through. A good plan, Spike.” Ironspike merely nodded. He was not like Balls or Wolf to preen under the praise of the ogre king. He had been around and he knew what he was doing.

  There was no screaming and no hollering and no boastful roars this time. The ogres were still full of the lust for battle, but they had now seen that taking this fort would be no quick and easy bash and kill. They settled down to the task, and it was for such things that they had been made.

  From his position on the inner wall, the wall of the original sleeping fort around which the outer wall of the Expanded Fort had been constructed, Anbarius could see the ogres coming across the field in the failing light. The pristine snow had been churned up by their repeated attacks, and here and there lay one of their gigantic bodies, but far too few, by his reckoning.

  Together with the old men he had designed this fortification, taking the original sleeping fort design and improving on it again and again, for he’d meant this place to stand to an attack by Kerrick the Sword and fifty thousand Cthochi. Archers could shelter securely behind any point in the wall, and every ten paces he had put in a wider space for the placement of siege engines, the mangonels and ballista that forced any attacking force to pay a dreadful price for any approach.

  Still, it was but earth and wood, and the outer wall was scarcely more than twice the height of the monstrous forms that now crossed the field in their terrible numbers. He doubted that he’d killed more than four score of the beasts, and most of those by fire or sand, right up against the walls. He saw the ogres of the Winter Mountain Band, although he did not know who they were, and he saw that they had procured a battering ram, a crudely cut pine tree large enough to build a ship out of.

  Sheltered beneath a wall of overlapping and enormous shields, the ogres came on with the ram, headed directly for the outer gate. He knew in a moment that it would not stand before that ram.

  “Clear the gatehouse!” He shouted, and the message was relayed, but the men in the towers beside the gate ignored the command. As the ram came swiftly closer, the ballista men concentrated fire on it, and several ogres fell, but others rushed to take their place. The mangonels launched fire and shot at the approaching column, and again many fell, but the pace of the ram only increased as Ironspike rallied his forces to the attack.

  Behind the ram came a wider mass of ogres, those of the other bands, prepared to swarm into the outer portion of the fort as soon as the gate was breached. “Clear the gatehouse!” Anbarius shouted again, and again the command was relayed, but again the old men at the gatehouse ignored the order. Anbarius cursed when Barrim O’Dunwall, a broad shouldered mason with a thick gray beard grinned at him and gave an absurd salute. Together with Murim Tanner he hefted a pan of heated sand and hurled it over the side of the tower as the massive tree slammed into the gate and ripped it from its hinges. Only then did the men in the tower seek to escape, leaping to the wall and running along it, but ogres swiftly climbed up after them and ripped them to pieces with swords, claws and teeth.

  Barrim was the first to fall, holding a short sword that looked absurdly tiny compared to the massive blacksteel gladius that hacked his head from his shoulders. Of the twenty men at the gatehouse, not a single one escaped.

  Ballista men on the outer wall loosed their last missiles into the ogres who now swarmed through the gates, and killed one or two, and then they ran for their lives to the inner gate, which was set forty-five degrees off of the line of the outer. The ogres were incredibly fast, but the old men were motivated, and the last of them barely cleared the gate before it was slammed shut and barred.

  “Hold them as long as you can!” Aelfric shouted from the wall beside him, and Anbarius nodded. “When the inner gate falls, get to the bridge or the tunnel as best chance offers.” Aelfric then jumped down from the gate and began urging the Cthochi to move faster. Sand men came running up along the inner walls, and some of them were wincing as the forge-heated pans seared their fingers, even through the padded gloves. The gatehouse men gathered every bit of pitch and hot oil that could be found in Redwater Town, and prepared to receive the attack they knew was coming.

  When Gutcrusher came through the broken gate, along with a horde of his bloodthirsty fellows, he found that there was another fort inside of the fort the ogres had just breached, and for a moment he was stymied. There was a gap of fifteen paces between the inner and outer walls, and in this space the ogres massed, and some of them were driven by sheer force of numbers into the inner trench, there to fall upon stakes and spikes that had been profanely driven into the ground by Soolit and his ilk months before. He saw the inner gate, however, and he knew that it could be breached in the same way as the outer.

  Ironspike saw it too, and he was already issuing orders to his boyos. They found that the tree they had used to breach the outer gate would not easily turn in the space between the inner and outer walls, and a chorus of curses and shouted orders followed as the ogres shortened it and moved others out of the way to bring it in line with the inner gate. Whenever a pigsucker poked his head above the wall, whether an archer or a sand man, the ogres hurled stones or missiles or the heads or body parts of fallen men at the
m. One unlucky archer was struck by a large metal ring, the remains of part of one of the forges, and it was still hot. He was knocked from the wall and crushed, and the smell of his roasting flesh filled the air near him.

  Celdemer did not need to look to know that the outer wall had been breached. He could tell from the sounds of men screaming what had happened. He began shouting at the women in line to cross the bridge, and occasionally striking them to get them running. It was discourteous, but he was losing a race against time, and had not the luxury of good manners.

  Judging the time he had left and looking at the line of people waiting to cross, he strode halfway up the line and stepped into it. He pointed to the smaller line of people escaping through the tunnels. “You need to get out of this line and get to that line!” He shouted, but it took a long time for them to understand. Meanwhile his own line had stalled, and he had to run to the head of it and scream at a woman carrying a child to let go of the rope that formed a rail on the bridge, quit taking tiny steps and run. She seemed not to understand until he got right behind her and chivvied her along with his hands. “Move woman!” He screamed. “You’re killing the people behind you!”

  After perhaps half of an hour the Cthochi women and children in his line were all either on the bridge or across it, the inner gate still stood, and the character of people crossing changed. Instead of Cthochi women and children, the people coming to the bridge were now archers and old men from the Silver Run army, and still a ring of Cthochi warriors guarded the back of the line, grim faced men determined to be the last to cross. When Celdemer saw the old men in the gatehouse hurl barrels of pitch down from their towers and heard the explosion a moment later, he knew that he was out of time. Miraculously, he was out of refugees as well, and soldiers and engineers began abandoning the inner wall, running across the parade ground toward the bridge.