CY 579, Month of Readying 14 (Freeday)
The straight- cut passageways, made firm in the blessed, grounding rock, echoed with faraway hideous laughter, distant screams and the unending, monotonous dripping of water. It filtered down through the foul, dark marshes at the surface through joints and faults in the stone – bless their structure, and their chaos, he thought – and fall drop by drop onto the floors of the Temple of Elemental Evil, making the tunnels of the subterranean sanctum humid or clammy with wet. A puddle even lay before them, pooling against the wall as they marched.
Canon Barkinar, High Priest of the Earth Temple, stepped over this pitiful sacrilege and swept onward down the hallway to the Greater Temple, the place of worship.
Canon Barkinar would not have permitted such a profanity within the Earth Temple – where the floors were kept deliberately dirty and dry, an outward manifestation of the choking end of life and its inevitable return to dust – but outside those sanctified halls he could well be subjected to the insults and vagaries of Water, Fire, and Wind: each uncontrolled, wild and aimless. Each of the other Temples had their own strictures: the Earth Temple used magical light for illumination rather than fire, which had failed the Temple before, while the Fire Temple was filled with burning torches and oil lamps at every turn which made the air hot, sooty and choking.
Inwardly Barkinar laughed at the inherent fallibility of the other temples: sanctuaries to fickle Fire, faithless Water, frivolous Wind – all of which could only exist in their underground refuge only by the support of stone, the highest and purest expression of Earth! The fools! They worshipped his element with every step they took and never knew it! He sneered at the thought.
Today, Canon Barkinar wore all his best attire: his full suit of plate – polished to a perfect sheen by a pair of human slaves taken in a caravan raid, for not for nothing did he mistrust the work of goblinkind – over his best brown cassock and cincture with the stones of cinnabar, jasper and tourmaline, evoking the stability of Earth… but coupled with tiger's eye stones set at the hems to remind all of the potential for motion, when necessary. Across his shoulders was draped his finest ochre mantle, his amice and stole decorated with patches of the distant, apocryphal mountain of his homilies: black, stark and imposing, evoking a malign, watchful consciousness. His thinning hair was freshly washed and combed over and his clutched in his spidery fingers were his prayer-book and his staff, each of which gleamed with wrathful magic. He was adorned with every fancy and mark of his rank, each perfect in their presentation.
For Bishop Barkinar was going this night to prayer.
Trailing behind him came his feckless dogsbody, Romag – a craven worm he had collected at the Battle of Emridy Meadows – and behind him came his own pathetic adept, a bootlicking servitor called Hartsch. They were trailed by nearly a score of the Temple Troops – a dozen hairy, snaggle-toothed bugbears skulking along and four huge, flat-browed ogres lumbering along on tree-trunk legs – and before them was thrust one other person who would be attending the ceremony, but who would not be leaving it the same way she arrived.
Barkinar had ascended to his leadership of the Earth Temple and of the Temple Guards – bugbears, ogres, trolls and the like – over the last six years with great struggle, ascending the ranks with charm, wisdom and ruthlessness. He supplied wisdom to his betters, avoided culpability for his failures, carefully courted his superiors – and murdered his rivals. The shrunken heads of two such – and even one superior cleric – decorated a marble mantle in his chambers, along with another from a woman of Nulb, a rare raven-haired beauty among those benighted wretches who had unwisely spurned his advances. Today, surprisingly, he considered that he would be dealing with still another impudent female: but that was no matter. The Lady would be honoured, and that was what was important. Perhaps it would be enough to make her rise at last from the sluggish slumber of thirteen years and join them on the Material plane once more. But succeed or fail, he would indeed try.
For Barkinar intended to rise still higher, much higher. It was inevitable to his mind that High Priest Hedrack, Supreme Commander of the Temple of Elemental Evil, would sooner or later commit some sin of omission in the eyes of the Dark Lady whom they served: the great goddess Zuggtmoy, many-shadowed Lady of Fungi, Mistress of Molds and Regent of Rots, and more lately the Queen of the Polarized Evils of the Elements themselves. Was there anything she could not achieve?
And when Hedrack's penultimate error came – a happenstance Barkinar would surely help along, if he could – he would be only too ready to step into the vacuum created by his master's very unfortunate but timely death. On that day, he would consolidate the Temple's complete power into his fist, raising the Earth Temple to absolute pre-eminence. The different factions of the Temple always made pretenses of unity, but it would be the Earth Temple that truly ruled from that point on. Barkinar's growing preeminence and power made that as inevitable and irresistable as a mountain slide.
And to think he had just barely escaped the debacle of the Battle of Emridy Meadows, when the accursed Viscount Wilfrick had managed – through dint of sheer luck! – to overcome the Temple's Horde.
It had all begun fifteen years before.
CY 564
The Battle of Emridy Meadows
A rogue preacher and deserter of yet another black faith had arrived at Nulb, no less a figure than the mighty Hedrack himself. A younger man then, he had seen a vision of the Dark Lady on her throne of rot as he thrashed with the flux on a rotten cot in some highwayman's back room. The vision had been mystical and intruiging with its promise of power and status. He had immediately established a small chapel there with some stolen coins and preached the evils of her ways. He had found a receptive audience in the Nulbites and before long he had gained himself a small but relatively loyal and zealous following among that bitter, impoverished people. Word of his fervent preaching – and the powers he promised his faithful converts – spread around the Southern Gnarled and soon new adherents were flocking to Nulb, seeking his blessings.
His coffers were not very full at first but soon dearest Hedrack had a new vision and began a new kind of preaching – about hunting, and taking; about snatching what the world possessed and making it your own. Let the wolf be loosed upon the flock! his preaching went, let the fox be among the fold! And so on and so forth; Barkinar had heard it all a hundred times by now. It had started with a little casual fleecing of passers-through by his supporters, then outright robbery, and then wholesale attacks on caravans passing through the woods: theft and blood. Hedrack's chests had filled with devotions to the new goddess: and what god did not love gold?
Hedrack had – wisely and with forethought, Barkinar was forced to admit – chosen to reinvest his ill-gotten gains. Money made money, as all knew. In Hedrack's case, money could be used to hire bandits, men with practical experience and suitable weapons for this work – and horses, which allowed them to range far. Now, instead of a mass of peasants armed with billhooks, gaffes and knives descending on an unsuspecting column of traders, armed riders ranged to loot caravans, farmsteads and villages all over the southern Verbobonc and Gnarled Woods as far as Dunmarsh and even Cienega Valley. That had been a particularly rich one and the forces of the Temple had feasted their triumph. That had been when Barkinar had joined them; the itinerant and uncelebrated priest of a lesser, certainly false goddess, he had been wandering the High Road between Sobanwych and Twilight Falls, preaching for a few pennies and a stale crust of breath when he had been set upon by armed men on horseback and – other options conspicuously absent – gone with them to tend to some of their wounded fellows in Nulb. And in that dark little harbour Barkinar had seen true mysteries, true magics, the acts of a real, present goddess conferring the one thing he desired most: power.
Barkinar had, that day, been utterly converted.
For eight years the power of the Temple – and of Barkinar, its newest adept – had grown and grown, getting fat off the riches they looted from the trade passing between Verbobonc, the Wild Coast, Greyhawk, Dyvers and even the Elven realm of Celene, although raiders that got too close to that shadowed land simply – disappeared, without trace. Barkinar had always assumed and hoped that the filthy Elves would be dealt with someday for their insidious interference, and eventually events had fallen into place to create such an opportunity.
As their wealth grew, so did the number of clerics coming to serve the Dark Lady; one, Barkinar recalled with amusement, had even risen higher than Hedrack in rank, supplanting him as leader. That man – a fool from the Wild Coast called Inoxis – was a servant of the Fire Temple from long before Hedrack had experienced his first 'vision', brought to bring order and leadership to the Temple itself. Hedrack had – grudgingly – accepted this change, though privately he had raged, of course. The Temple had also got itself a new military leader; a dangerous, imposing renegade lord named Auric. Barkinar should have suspected that such an appointment meant a new phase for the Temple, and so it did. The Dark Lady had grown impatient with their progress, demanding Commander Auric, in conjunction with Inoxis, had concocted a plan to expand the Lady's control and their thinking, such as it had been, had run thusly:
Ultimately, Verbobonc itself must be taken; the soft weakness of the southlands, coupled with the easy and abundant loot and the rich farmlands there made it a most tempting target. Why should not the Temple take that fattened, helpless land? Why should the fools of Verbobonc be permitted their unbelief, their rejection of the true goddess? The Temple would raise its pennants over Verbobonc City itself; ten thousand new subjects for the Dark Lady!
To the north, any relief from Furyondy and Veluna would be weeks of march away and across a river: the Velverdyva to the north, the Celebvara to the west. The fords across each were known and could easily be defended, but they would need more than just raiders and brigands. They would need an army.
And it was then that the fool Inoxis had come up with the plan to recruit humanoids.
There were goblinoids and giant-kin aplenty in the Gnarled, he argued, in the Welkwood, even on the southward slopes of the Kron Hills as they filtered in from the Lortmil Mountains – and the orcish kingdoms of the Pomarj were not so far away. That, High Priest Inoxis reasoned, was a limitless supply of troops. There was also Lord Mastryne's domain in the east, and Pastcorel, and perhaps even the great Green Dragons Chaustichlorinus and Rothcor could be persuaded to help! They would cut the road north from Celene and the filthy Gnomes of the Lortmils would be isolated too; and with the great God Iuz raising his forces north of Furyondy, that nation would soon be busy with other concerns. It could work! The Elves of Celene, already pressed from east, west and south would be isolated; a little island of light before even more goblins and giants could be collected to pour into that land and destroy it, lootings its magics, its treasure and its women. Perhaps the devoted followers of the Temple would even earn themselves a beautiful Elven concubine or two when all was said and done. The humanoids were stupid and malleable; yet Inoxis had not seen the problem in that, for all his alleged wisdom.
Goblins, Gnolls and giants began to appear at the Temple, rapidly formed into rough units and inducted. They began to support the Temple's bandit raids on the increasingly pillaged southlands of Verbobonc and, inevitably these raids became more vicious, more bloodthirsty in nature as the humanoids' savagery spread. Before, their bandits had raided villages for tribute, stolen cattle and wine. Now, Orcs would cut down every person in a little Thorpe and cook them all in front of the horrified Temple troops, leaving remains and bones everywhere. It could not fail to have an effect on the leadership of Verbobonc, and it did.
Viscount Wilfrick was raising the army, and they were coming south.
The Temple's spies in the city– one of the few moves Barkinar had approved of, as a junior cleric of the Earth Temple – reported back that he was gathering arms, organizing his housecarls and calling in the baronial fyrd. The word was that they would march within the month, or early next.
Inoxis and Auric conferred with the High Council; Barkinar, not a member yet of this august body of the leaders of the Temple of Elemental Evil, was forced to wait for their decision with the rest of the Temple. At last, it was decided: the Temple would gather all their forces, and march immediately on Verbobonc. They would bring every bandit, every recruit from Nulb, all the giants, ogres, Orcs and goblins into a mighty Horde and strike first, rushing up the Southway and putting every village and steading to the torch before rushing to the gates of Verbobonc, breaking through with their clerical magics and swarming into the city before Wilfrick could raise his army, smiting them in the cradle! – as Inoxis had put it. Crude, but effective. They need only hurry.
Yet Auric and Inoxis had tarried, a little, as more and more tribes of goblinoids came in to join; larger and larger their force had grown but the days ticked by and Barkinar's consternation had grown. Finally, Auric had agreed that no more humanoid forces were coming. Strapping on his dark, forbidding armour the Lord Auric had formed his troops into long, loose ranks and marched west towards Hommlet. All told, he had collected over eight thousand Orcs, five hundred Gnolls – big, dog-headed humanoids, stripey-furred from head to toe like hyaenas – thirty big ogres and five hill giants, one of whom was a war chief from the Lortmils. There were also four hundred light cavalry – bandits – collected from across the roads of the south Gnarled Woods, and a couple hundred lightly armed peasant troopers from Nulb, along with the priest-officers from the Temple itself. Lord Auric was an imposing sight atop his dark stallion, accompanied by his own household Guard of a score of experienced cavaliers.
Surely, this was an unstoppable force.
Their march had indeed been rapid: living off the land – and, for the Orcs, anyone they captured – they were unencumbered by long support trains and consequently moved quickly, though the constant need to forage and collect did cost precious time. And, of course, there was the screaming. Barkinar did not mind that – already several men and women had gone under the knife in home to his dark gods – but it unnerved the human soldiers of the Horde, and Barkinar shared some of that unease; there was a world of difference between him and most of what the Temple were using for soldiers, and it would take only a tribal war-call to start a wholesale massacre. Still, the Lady demanded and needs must when she called. Auric stationed the human forces far from from the humanoid camp at each halt.
Their advance in the Southlands went nearly unopposed; there were no castles there, no fortresses to be reduced, encircled or avoided and so the Horde moved westward to the Southway like a black tide. A paltry defense was encountered near Hommlet but was quickly scattered with severe losses to the humans and the village was empty by the time they arrived, frustrating the non-humans.
Their first objective had been captured almost without a fight and now Auric held the road junction between the Southway, running north to Verbobonc, the southern road to Sheernobb and Celene and the western track to the Kron Hills. In one stroke he had cut off reinforcements from the Gnomes or the accursed Elves.
Auric did not rest on his laurels. Quickly he set up a blocking force there behind heavy barricades, leaving a thousand Orcs and all of the giants and ogres to fend off any approaching Elven or Gnomish forces, since they were slower by far than the humanoid and human troops and speed was of the essence. Throwing his light cavalry ahead as a screening force, he hurried northward along the Southway with the bulk of his army, rapidly eating up the distance towards Verbobonc, and everything they came across.
It was not enough.
In the early morning on their fourth day out from the Temple, the Horde's horse scouts bumped up against what they described as a serious blockading force near a little village a day south of Cienega Valley – a collection of hovels and half-finished drainage ditches called Emridy.
Auric looked down upon the battlefield, his officers a loose gaggle arrayed behind him.
Before him lay a wide grassland, half a mile in all directions. Emridy village lay off to the left halfway between him and the enemy, already abandoned and mostly looted. A few thatched houses and barns were burning there – the victims of his scouts. Some were chivvying bullocks and cattle back to the Horde lines. Dark smoke drifted across the fields towards the river.
The enemy were drawn up across the road on a shallow rise behind the broad, open meadows; six hundred heavy infantry in mail with pike and sword, and two hundred archers behind them. Like his blocking detachment near Hommlet, they had set up stakes, barricades and ditches before them to slow a frontal assault. On their left were the fast-flowing waters of Nigb's Run, roaring and swollen by the spring melt but on their right was nothing, a vast misty gap and then a thick woodlot that stretched widely out westward. Behind them, the flag of Verbobonc green tree fluttered on its golden background, bordered by a green band with golden leaves and acorns, accompanied by the personal standard of Viscount Wilfrick himself, a mailed fist on a split blue-and-white background.
Auric had laughed, a deep rich noise from within his black helmet. 'Fools! Their fortified position is worth nothing – their flank is wide open! We will encircle,' he snorted, and issued orders for his officers to begin to chivvy the Horde into ranks. Red guidons were raised in the commander's camp and the Horde began to grudgingly shuffle itself into units.
The Orcs he assembled into two great divisions – right and left – because Auric did not think the Orcs would understand or be able accomplish anything more complicated than that. The larger and more fearsome but – frankly – cowardly Gnolls he put behind the right division to use their longbows and serve as his reserve of shock troops, at need.
The Nulbian foot-troops he put on the far right nearest the river, expecting little from them and knowing that the defending forces would not break south in any event. That would only cut themselves off from Verbobonc and, since he had no siege train, they were welcome to put themselves between his Horde and the forces left leagues behind in Hommlet. His own cavalry he held in reserve, to see what would happen when he committed the Orcs but, all in all, he knew it was a decided fight. His right wing would pin the human defenders with his Gnoll archers barraging theirs and their leaders, while his left wing would simply hook around their pathetic defenses and outflank them. Simple. They had no hope. Wilfrick was indeed a naïve fool.
The right division stamped impatiently. Auric and Inoxis had assembled many tribes: in their centre the Orc tribesmen carried the tarred wolf skull of the Death Moon tribe and the flayed womanskin of the Vile Rune, symbols of horror and fear branded clearly upon the pale leather, a ragged tuft of blonde hair still visible on the top of the vexillum like a grisly pennant. On the right nearest the Nulbians was the banneret of still another tribe – a sharpened three-pronged stake each with a rotted, blackened hand upon each tine. Other, equally gruesome pennants were held above the other mixed Orc tribes on the left and still higher than all were the pennants of Auric's command group: yellow Eyes and eight-pointed stars of Fire, a Golden Skull on a black field, a grinning horned skull, multicoloured circles, ovals, triangles and squares. Orcs with kettle drums stood at the side of each wing, ready to pound the cadence.
Then, the swirling mists had cleared and Auric saw another contingent appear, as if by magic, from the grey soup in the lower ground between the humans and the woods; a dark line of grim, squat shapes: Dwarves.
It was a company of Dwarves. They stood waiting in a line two deep and carried a mix of weapons: spears, short broad-bladed swords, two-handed war mattocks and the Dwarven favourite, heavy axes bearded for pulling down shields before landing a killing blow to face or neck. They wore a variety of armour, too, from old iron helmets and scale mail, to chain or ring hauberks. Barkinar could not be quite sure, but they seemed to range in age as well: thick-muscled oldsters with beards plaited or forked and tucked into their belts, and younger ones with shorter growths bushing out wildly.
To the left of the Dwarves, between their line and that of the Verboncian humans, was a unit of Gnomes of about the same numbers as the Dwarves. Unlike their larger cousins, the Gnomes were garbed uniformly in surplices of brown and green over chain mail, carrying shields, short swords and spears. The ranks of Dwarf and Gnome filled the gap between the Verboncian formation and the woods, with spikes, barricades and pickets on the right of the Dwarves so that the whole formation could not be outflanked. They waited, silent and grim. Barkinar studied them, dividing each unit's line in half in his head, then again as Auric had instructed him, and counted; there were nearly two hundred Dwarves and two hundred Gnomes by his estimate.
Quickly, Auric gathered his staff together again. This was unexpected; they had not anticipated that any of the Dwarven clans from the Lortmils could possibly have arrived in time to interfere with their lightning advance, and their presence almost suggested that the plan had been known from the start. But Auric was certain that this was not the case: the lack of uniformity in the dress and weapons of the Dwarvish contingent meant that they were clearly not a single Clan Regiment, but a mixed bag of unrelated volunteers, probably from Verbobonc. Such a unit was no unit: they must fight and fail as individuals. The Gnomes, he conceded, were probably housecarls from the ground-manors of Verbobonc, but that was all: the Horde still had strategic surprise and must use it before any other allied troops could intervene, he explained, wondering how his blocking unit at the road juncture south of Hommlet was doing. In any event, the forces of the enemy were simply not enough to stop them, being outnumbered five to one.
The plan would proceed as before. They would launch both wings, with the right pinning down the human forces and the left – all Orcs – attacking the detestable demi-humans with the object of punching through the Gnomish part of the line, which was bound to be the weakest. When that was accomplished, his cavalry would bolt into the rear of the Verboboncian fyrd while the Orcs encircled the Dwarves, and then each contingent would be finished piecemeal: the allied army was stuck to its lines, needing to be strong everywhere, but Auric's army could maneuver. By noon the allied forces would be dead or scattered, and they would carry Wilfrick's head on a pitch-pole before them like a talisman on the march north. How the Verboncians would quail and tremble! Auric would achieve his breakthrough, and after that he would set the Northerners to flight. Barkinar went to his unit, immeasurably cheered. Doom would fall on the unbelievers!
And then, the damnable singing had started.
It began as a deep thrum, barely audible at the distance, two hundred Dwarven throats raised in heavy, irresistible sonorousness. Their voices lifted their war-song into the air, the cadence strangely engrossing in their strange-canted tongue. Higher and louder their chant rose, defiant, taunting, growing. It was infuriatingly bold and, to Barkinar's mind, insolent: how dare they challenge the Lady's will not only by deed but by spoken word of their mouths, as well! A jackdaw fluttered past, heading south over their lines as Barkinar swore.
They added a rhymic clapping of axe or mattock on shield, pounding to the cadence of their challenge, deep voices calling out great huffs, mixed with insults and mocking calls in Orcish. On and on their low-pitched challenge sounded over the field, reaching the ears of the waiting Horde like a deep, persistent hum.
The rivalry between Orcs and Dwarves was of old date, seeded in their battle for high places of the mountains and the Orcs of the Horde were already seething at the sight of their hated foe, barely able to contain their utter abhorrence. Their reaction was immediate and extreme. Already slavering for blood, those on the left – nearest then Dwarves – began yowling and shaking their heads as if to clear the sound from their ears, then started gnashing their crooked teeth, clawing at their faces and tearing their coarse hair, howling in rage and hate at the challenge of their enemy. To them, the very idea of Dwarves was itself an abomination and to actually be taunted by such a chant absolutely intolerable.
Without warning, a sole orc sprang a few steps out of line, screeching and shaking his axe at the distant Dwarvish line, only to be sharply cut down a moment later by a quick-witted Horde officer. 'Back!' the man roared, aiming his dripping blade at the others. 'Hold your damned lines!'
But another orc took a step forward, screaming a war-howl, and then another. Then one darted into the open from the middle of the ranks where he could not be immediately reached for punishment, screaming and bolted for the Dwarvish line. Then another just ran out, legging it pell-mell towards the enemy, and then a whole troop broke free of the ordered lines and charged howling, uncaring about the rest of the army.
'Stop them!' Auric roared in his great helmet, but it was already too late. Company-sized groups, seeing their comrades running for the foe, broke free of their ordered ranks and joined them and in mere moments the entire left wing was thundering that way in a ragged mass, gangly legs pumping as they rushed north in a swarm, screaming for Dwarvish blood.
Auric cursed and slammed his fist on his armoured thigh. Inoxis had gone pale. 'What – what do we do?' he said unsteadily.
''What do we do, my lord,'' Auric corrected him darkly from the recesses of his boar-faced helm, his voice deep and dangerous. 'We attack, High Priest Inoxis.' He looked down on the small gaggle of men leading the right division. 'Canon Hedrack!' Auric bellowed, stentorian voice thundering in his helmet, louder than any human intonation had a right to be. 'Begin your attack!' The tall, pale Hedrack, Canon of the Wind Temple, looked back nervously to signal his acknowledgement of the order, then turned to give hasty commands to his under-officers.
Auric turned to Inoxis. 'Our foolish left – mongrels all,' he growled murderously, 'will win or fail on their own, but we cannot let the Northerners take us piecemeal. We will attack according to the plan with the rest of the army; left division to assault, and horse to await the breaking of the Gnomes. We cannot fail,' he concluded, sounding as much threat as promise. With that, Auric walked his horse forward, the other cavalry trailing in behind him in a long column that wound out onto the field.
Barkinar arrived at his own company and took stock of the gangy, hideous things.
Orcs were horrid creatures, with skin of an unpleasant brown-green lustre and ears and snouts red to pink underneath mats of bristly hair and whiskers. Their leering red eyes were narrow slits of hate and their rubbery lips peeled back to reveal sharp tusks and pointed teeth. They carried an assortment of crude weaponry – flails, swords and axes – and wore thick hide shirts that might turn a blade, treated leathers or the rudiments of ring mail that might have come from human victims. One, Barkinar noted, had the rotting head of what looked like a human baby on a chain around his waist; another wore long-haired scalps like a furred hat. Many had ritual tattoos, or scarring over shoulders, arms or snouts. They were covered in blood and filth and they cursed each other as they waited, ever Orc hating every other almost as much as their enemies.
Barkinar studied them: close up, they seemed menacing, dangerous – but they were primitive, tribal things, ignorant and fractious. They did not have the compact lines and organization of the Verboncian infantry a half-mile in front of them, seeming less a company and more a pack. He could not reconcile this inherent disorder with his devotion to the Lady, which to him was rendered in structure, order and solidity. He looked down. The summer meadow was shot with patches of flowers and a little damp underfoot from the morning dew.
He raised his head, looking out on the human lines far before him. 'Prepare to advance,' he pronounced, feeling for the handle of his mace and unhooking it from his belt. The Orcs looked contemptuously at him, then turned almost as one to the north, eyeing the opposing line, shifting from foot to foot as they waited.
They did not have long to wait. A single horn-call came from the officers around Hedrack moments later. 'Division,' a big-bellied Water cleric standing there bellowed, 'Advance!' The command rippled down the line, each company's officer amplifying the call, and the lines trembled as the Orcs stirred. Behind them, the Gnolls got to their feet – lazy to a creature, Barkinar thought – yawned and strung their heavy longbows.
'Forward!' Barkinar snapped, pointing, and his own company began to march, harness and weapons slapping and jingling, weapons hefted menacingly. The kettle-drummers began their rhythmic beat: thumpa-thump – thumpa-thump – thumpa-thump – thumpa-thump, interspersed with brash hooting and mocking roars and howls. A few Orcs trumpeted dark marching wails on crude corni made of ox horn and ligament glue while dark banners of grinning skulls, severed heads, and bloody runics bobbed and bounced as they marched along.
In the centre of the wing, a pair of burly porters in the entourage of the great Orc war-chieftain just under Canon Hedrack raised a great bronze carnyx: a tall vertical war-horn of brass shaped like a striking serpent, with a ridged head like a dragon's maw. A blower joined him, taking a great breath and winding, beginning with a heavy, warbling high pitch that descended into evilly sonorous rumbles and throaty squeaks, each note fit to put a man's nerves on edge, imparting unknown terror and mysterious dread.
The other units followed by stages, slightly staggered from their delay in receiving the orders. Curse and cajole as they might, the cleric-officers could not redress the skew on the march, and so the right wing tramped towards the Verboncians in a shallow echelon-left, heavy feet crushing grass stems and wildflowers, leaving muddy goblinesque prints behind. Barkinar did not know who they were, and did not care, but he felt frustration and worry creep up his spine as he watched the Orcs shuffle forward, already making a mess of their formations.
The left wing's impromptu charge was nearly the Dwarves and Gnomes now, their ranks settled into a running, disorganized mass, bandy legs flashing. Soon, the bloodletting would start and the fall of Verbobonc would begin. The leading elements of the mob were far ahead of the main body, under a quarter mile now and closing. They had lost their fervour for screaming but were running fast and eager, tongues lolling.
Then, to Barkinar's eyes, an orc at the front tumbled and fell. He would have thought it mere clumsiness, but there was something sudden about it that made him look again. Then another orc topped, and then more were falling. Barkinar shaded his eyes as his company jogged along, then gasped in shock.
A line of archers had appeared behind the Dwarves. They were tall, green-clad and slender; Barkinar recognized them instantly and cursed.
Elves.
He could tell there were not many of that ancient people, perhaps fifty or so but that was already more than he liked. Elves were not like Men, who died shaking out their lives easily on the end of a spear, but every one a cunning and skilled warrior – and sometimes worse. Gray clothyard shafts streaked out from their line, arranged so that every one of them could shoot, and their accuracy – and the tight mass of the charging Orcs – made nearly every shot tell.
It was slaughter. Orcs tumbled to the earth by the dozen as the Elvish shafts cut a swathe into them. The thin tip of runners at the front were the first to die, and then others coming up behind them began to trip and sprawl over the bodies as arrows struck them so that there was carnage and a chorus of orcish screaming. But the sight of Elves – which they hated nearly as much or more than Dwarves, and had for longer – leant strength to their limbs and they came on faster, screaming prayers to their evil one-eyed god and eating up the punishment. The main body of the left wing was getting closer and closer now; the Dwarves closed their ranks, shields coming up.
Barkinar's skin broke out in a clammy sweat as his mind worked over the rough math – but no! There were not enough Elves to stop them! The Orcs would reach the Dwarvish line and swarm over the filthy beard-faces long before they ran out of bodies! They would yet win! The thought made a thrill of excuberation shoot up through his heart. How could he ever have doubted the Lady's success? This would be a triumph! A shattering declaration of the Lady's power! The thought fired his mind, widened his strides.
Behind Barkinar, Hedrack's signaller blew two blasts for the right wing and the Orcs began a bow-legged trot as Barkinar's heart swelled. Three such blasts was the signal to charge, not to be sounded until they were within striking distance of the Verboncian front line. Soon! How the Lady would be served today! They would be victorious; he could taste it. 'Move!' he bellowed at the lollygaggers trotting in the rear. 'Move!' To his right and back even the Gnolls were coming along at an easy jog, already yelping and barking with excitement – though, to his surprise, he saw their formation was even more strung-out and loose than his was, despite the yelling and cajoling of the female cleric supposedly responsible for them. They were tall creatures, striped brown and tan, with yellow fur on their heads and napes, their eyes and nails shades of dark yellow. Though individually formidable, Gnolls were especially lazy, uncontrollable and disobedient and it showed in the shabby appearance of their skin clothing and the grubbiness of their gear. He'd heard that they supposedly had a king, somewhere, but that his authority even over his own species extended so far as his followers could reach.
Barkinar looked up, uncertain what the men of Verbobonc could possibly be thinking as the mass of the Horde's right wing approached. How could they really think eight hundred could stand against nearly seven thousand? Wilfrick had his housecarls, but Auric had his own personal Guard, and they were mounted! Not to mention the Gnolls. The humans would be annihilated. It was strange to think about it, using Orcs to slay humans; but these men, he told himself, were not followers of the goddess. Their lives did not matter. And, when they conquered Verbobonc, there would be no human opposition left. Their paltry gods would be thrown down, and the Dark Lady would have complete control of the city through those same Orcs, who would surely be grateful for such a prize. And if they persecuted the inhabitants a little – well, what was that? Surely the Orcs deserved it, as recompense for their labours and blood. With their support, the Lady could rule Verbobonc – indirectly through her loyal clerics, of course – forever. They would need some new laws – a prohibition on weapons or weaponlike tools to start – but in a few generations it would hardly matter; Verbobonc itself would be changed.
He could hardly wait.
His attention snapped back to the now. He was on the furthest left of the right division. It would be for his company to not only attack, but prevent the enemy from turning their flank. They would link up with the right side of the left wing, forming a unified front; not that their enemy could do anything at all, outnumbered as they were.
He glanced over to see the Orcs of the disordered left division. They were almost upon the Dwarves now, having suffered under the Elvish bows – curse them! – and strung out at the end of their too-long rush. They fetched up panting and sweating just before the Dwarvish line, axes raised –
– and then dozens of them just seemed to disappear.
Barkinar blinked, unsure of just what had happened, even as others also just seemed to vanish as they moved forward – and then Barkinar realized. They'd fallen into a line of pit traps! The accursed, cheating sub-humans had dug concealed pits before them and the stupid Orcs had blindly run right into them! Filled with sharpened wooden stakes too, no doubt. More tumbled in as Barkinar watched, jostled forward by their fellows only to meet the same fate as other Orcs shoved them forward in turn, their screams mixed with the sounds of grim Dwarvish laughter audible even at that distance. Barkinar swore and cursed the Elves – it was probably them that had set it up; typical filthy Elvish trick! Where were their officers?
'Close ranks!' came the call from Hedrack, forcing his attention back to the front. 'Close up!'
Barkinar, no warrior, thought he understood the significance of this command: a force spread out could be easily defeated, perhaps even scattered. Solid, tight ranks were the way to make sure a unit stayed together – and also to make sure that the ones at the front would be forced to fight. The Orcs, used to strongarm leadership but not to tactical thinking, obeyed as much as they might do but the action was wasted at their bouncing, jangling trot and so they still loped along in a loose formation.
On the left, the Horde forces – unable to see the danger – still pushed forward heedlessly, and more orcs were shoved screaming into onto the spikes by their fellows as the Dwarves laughed grimly. Finally, surviving subchiefs and other leaders pushed and shoved their way to the front, organizing them to pull the stakes and begin edging around the pits, or leaping where they could, as a renewed hail of Elvish fire ripped into them. Dozens fell but they surged forward and the first Orcs scampered past the pit lines to throw themselves against their enemy.
Auric had miscalculated this. While these Dwarves were indeed volunteers from Verbobonc rather than a single unit, they were not mere peasants. Nearly to a man they were older, experienced veterans of the savage Lortmil Wars against the bowlegged hobgoblins fought up in the bitter high places, retired from their Clan Regiments for a life of entrepreneurism and hard-knock commercial adventure. As such, they were grim, hardened fighters with spines of iron and no mind for mercy and they showed it, making brutally efficient work of the first attackers. Axes flashed and mattocks swung and the enemy fell like leaves before them: gutted, beheaded, skulls crushed. Black Orcish blood flew.
The Orcs, thrown back, rallied again on the inside of the checkerboard pit line and flung themselves on the Dwarvish host again shrieking bloodlust, but the Dwarves merely hewed them down as before, neatly and efficiently piling more Orcish dead and shrieking wounded before them as sheets of Elvish archery laid low those further back. Again scores of Orcs attacked the Dwarvish line, singly or in groups as they got across the pit line, and again they were slaughtered and sent off in disarray.
But now the Orcs pressed across the pits, filling their ranks from and shoving themselves against the Dwarvish shieldwall. A cohort of tall gangly mountain orcs shoved to the front, stabbing and slashing wildly over the Dwarves' shield rims with spears and axes, hacking at heads and helmets. 'Deadbeards!' they howled, an Orcish insult. 'Deadbeards!'
But the Dwarvish veterans had seen that simple tactic before too. They closed their shieldwall tight with the rear rank covering the heads of those in the front like a tortoise as the front rank belted their axes and drew short, stabbing swords – little more than long, broad knives with wicked points and edges. These they raked these up into unprotected groins and bellies, or slashed at their thighs for them to fall screaming before the shieldwall to be knifed or trampled by ironshod boots; or else Elves lunged through the Dwarvish lines to skewer them with long spears. More Orcish blood soaked into the meadows of Emridy.
Then the Dwarves braced their shoulders and heaved at the mauled enemy mass, and again, and again, shoving them back with short steps and toppling still more Orcs into the spiked pits. Then their axes came out again and they hewed and slashed the remaining enemy, sending them hurtling backwards – but there were twenty times this many now piled up between the spiked pits and the Dwarves, salivating for the chance to slay. Not even the shooting of the Elvish archers could stop them; there were just too many Orcs. The allies were bogged down by the sheer mass of the enemy.
The Gnomes tried to emulate their larger cousins but with less effect; their packed phalanx of spears were bringing down those Orcs that got through the pits but more and more piled in as before, overwhelming the pikes and tangling them down with their wriggling bodies. Like the Dwarves, the Gnomish contingent formed shieldwall but their even smaller size was more of a disparity and before too long their line was starting to bend under the weight of their enemy. Grinning Orcs slashed down at them, or seized individual Gnomes from the first rank and dragged them screaming into the masses of the Horde.
Not long now, Barkinar thought, but his own division must arrive soon if the plan was to work.
Something hissed past his head. He couldn't figure out what it was until he heard another to his right and saw an arrow sink into an orc's chest. Verboncian archers, Barkinar realized with horror as another orc nearly beside him fell dying. It was not so far now – perhaps three or four hundred yards – but he realized with a sickening feeling that he would be subjected to their fire for that entire distance! And still they only marched forward, the pace maddeningly slow.
Never having been under fire before, Barkinar's first impulse was to run, to flee or take cover. They were trotting right into arrow fire? An orc of his company was hit and fell and he watched in amazement as the others just trampled right over him, one orc actually tripping on his body and falling. But the rest simply kept moving forward. He realized, of course, that he could heal himself if he was hit – the Lady was prolifigate with her favour and even evil priests could use healing magics – but what if he was hit critically? Would she help him in such a case, or discard him like a broken toy? Zuggtmoy was not known for a love of things with no use.
More and more arrows hissed out of the blue sky like narrow adders, dealing death below them. One landed six feet in front of him, making him jump while the Orcs laughed mockingly. This was madness, Barkinar thought, desperately scanning the sky for dark falling streaks; an orc stubbornly stumped along with an arrow in its chest for a few moments before collapsing. Another arrow glanced from a horned helmet and skipped away into the grass. Was there really no better plan than to march blindly on, accepting the hail of ash shafts? How could the stupid and ignorant Orcs possibly have the will to keep going forward? What madness was war? When would the third horn sound? He wanted at least to run forward, to dash in so close to the enemy pikemen that the arrows would stop for fear of hitting their own men, but they could not start their charge too soon or else arrive exhausted. Every instinct told him to run, to flee or cower on the ground with his shield over him – but this was not the Lady's will, and moreover such a thing would have him as the Temple's next sacrificial victim. So he steeled his heart and marched on – but not without a nervous glance behind as another orc of his company fell. Where were the Gnolls? Why were they not shooting back?
As if summoned, the Gnolls were ambling along in the rear of the formation when suddenly the largest and most scarred of them gave a sharp trilling bark. The others pulled up alongside of him looking irritable and cross. He barked out more orders and they sullenly arranged themselves in a loose line. The Gnoll leader took out a yard-cloth shaft and fit it to his longbow – a simple but strong stave almost as tall as he was. Flexing corded muscles he drew back the string until it almost touched his ear, aimed at the still-distant humans and loosed, his bowstring vibrating with a twang. His fellows did the same, drawing and loosing, though entirely at their own discretion – a few did not even bother to shoot.
Their shafts, though, cut into the Verboncian pike. Men were hit here and there and to Barkinar's joy he could see humans falling, dying or wounded. But there were not enough; the Horde had marched in haste and only a fraction of the Gnolls had bows, the rest carrying axes, ironshod clubs and polearms. Moreover, the rear rank of the Verboncians had raised their shields over their heads like a vast turtle in imitation of the Dwarves. The Gnolls fired again, causing casualties, though the human shields and archer's pavises furnished good protection.
Immediately the human archers shifted targets to the exposed Gnolls and now arrows fell among the hyaena-men. Most skipped aside from the human darts, but some were hit and a few of those fell dying onto the meadow, yowling as they bled out in the grass. One was struck and fell, thrashing wildly and shrieking until its annoyed fellows set upon it with wicked morning stars, bashing its head in and laughing in their strange yapping barks.
'You're supposed to be up there!' snapped Mistress Telsa, coming to stand in front of the Gnoll leader. She was a moderately pretty Air Temple priestess charged with overseeing the Gnolls – probably as a joke, Barkinar had thought at the time.
The Gnoll leader, leered down at her, clearly unused to receiving orders from a human, let alone one of their females. It snarled and made to ignore her, plucking another arrow from its quiver.
'You have to go up! Now!' Telsa snapped, unhooking her mace from her belt.
That had been a mistake. Telsa had been told to mind the Gnolls, but not too closely and in truth her assignment had been more to get her out of the way than for any reason of practical command and control. Now, her ego and desire to be useful had clouded her judgement – only for a moment, but it was moment enough.
Aggravated by having to be fighting at all instead of taking easy pickings from frightened farmers and knowing full well the great value of his tribe in the fight made the Gnoll chieftain completely intolerant of such irritations. Moreover, as in all Gnoll tribes, his leadership was tenuous enough without a female – a human female at that, alike to him as a sheep to a wolf – snapping at his balls, as the Gnoll saying went, before the entire tribe.
He lunged forward, grabbing the diminuative Telsa by the head and hurled her bodily to the ground, then fetched his axe out of his belt as he loomed over the squirming woman.
Barkinar, aghast, looked for any other officer to intervene, but all were already well past the scene, except for him. 'Canon Ashrem!' he cried ahead to a more senior cleric officer that he saw, pointing backwards at the Gnolls, 'there's – '
'Attention to your front!' Ashrem snarled back at him, jogging forward. 'Get back to your unit!' He was older and already sore from the campaign and was of no mind to hear the whinings of some minor cleric from a different sub-temple. He wanted to win this fight, and then soak his sore feet in the river. 'Move!' he howled over his shoulder.
Barkinar glanced back just in time to see the chieftain's axe chop down into the helpless Kalsa's torso, cutting off her terrified scream. The priestess jerked, blood spraying, and the chieftain chopped down again and again into her, leaving her a red ruin as the other Gnolls laughed and jeered with belly-splitting hyaenic mirth. Then the chieftain picked up his bow and started to shoot again, some of the others joining him, others wandering off after the still-advancing Orcs and a few starting to pick at the body.
This was madness. It was all madness, he thought, as an arrow hit another Gnoll in the head, dropping it like a clubbed sow and the others around it broke out in hysterical, yapping laughter. Barkinar hesitated, trying to decide what to do, but realized he could not intervene against five hundred murderous hyena-men; and besides, Telsa's fate had been of her own making, the foolish woman. Later, he would see what could be done – that sort of thing was surely bad for morale and control – but for now their usefulness certainly exceeded that of one minor priestess. To the Hells with her, he decided, and ran to catch up with his company before they got too far ahead.
Barkinar stumbled along, struggling to catch up, but his chain mail and cassock slowed him and he was not a fit man: he was puffing hard and his back was dripping with sweat. His heels ached and a crippling cramp quickly started growing in his side. The enemy line jounced and shook in his view half a mile ahead and he glanced left again, trying to see what the other wing was doing, hoping the distraction would keep the burning out of his lungs, the weakness out of his limbs.