The Wargs hit the final fifty feet of open ground before the North Gate at full gallop, and the sound alone was a physical assault. It was the sound of massive, armored bodies accelerating—not the clean rhythm of warhorses, but a sickening, guttural rumble of predatory muscle and heavy padding.
Deacon stood rigid in the command tower, his hands gripping the stone crenellation. His ears were already strained by the howling of the beasts, a feral, echoing sound that drowned out the frantic prayers of the town below. He could hear the militia at the gate—Staff Sergeant Rodriguez's Trios—muttering their formations, their discipline hanging by the thinnest thread.
The Goblins' strategy was clear: rely on the initial shock and terror of the Warg vanguard to splinter the wooden gate and collapse the peasant morale before the main infantry column even had to engage.
Deacon saw the first Warg—a black, hulking shape ridden by a squat Goblin covered in bone spikes—hit the fifty-foot mark.
And then, the hidden defense sprung the trap.
The Wargs hit the caltrops. The effect was instantaneous and horrific. It wasn't the sound of an organized stop, but a terrible, collective shriek of agony. The sharpened bone spikes, placed just beneath the layer of dust, found their mark in the massive, unprotected paws of the beasts. .
The lead Warg shrieked, its immense speed turning into devastating rotational energy. It flipped end-over-end, snapping its rider's neck against the frozen ground, its mass colliding with the two Wargs immediately behind it. The sound was a sickening cacophony of breaking bone, tearing muscle, and splintering steel armor. The cavalry charge, the pride of the Goblin advance, dissolved into a thrashing, screaming traffic jam of panicked, injured beasts and Goblins hurled into the dirt.
"Now!" Deacon roared, slamming his fist onto the stone sill.
Commander Harl, stripped of his command but still possessing his military discipline, was waiting at the base of the tower. He had a simple horn signal ready. He blew a single, piercing, sustained blast.
The militia fireteams on the rooftop, executing Harl's artillery orders, unleashed their first saturation drop. It wasn't organized, but it was massive. Hundreds of stones, old bricks, debris, and chunks of splintered furniture, all hauled up by Miller's work crews, rained down onto the concentrated chaos at the gate.
The North Gate's kill zone became a nightmare. The sheer weight of the drop smashed riders, crushed the exposed legs of the Wargs, and annihilated the tightly packed vanguard. The Goblins, expecting a simple gate to rush through, were instead met with a sudden, localized geological catastrophe.
The main Goblin infantry column, now less than twenty yards behind the wreckage, instinctively jammed up, their advance stalled by the sudden weight of their own dead and the paralyzing sight of their vanguard collapsing.
But the defense was far from secure. The final, massive Warg—the one that had escaped the worst of the caltrops—managed to stagger toward the gate. It slammed its full weight against the wooden barrier.
The gate, already weakened by age and lack of maintenance, shrieked. A wide, splintering fissure opened, running from the lock mechanism all the way up to the crossbeam. The wood groaned, ready to give way at the next impact.
"The gate is breaching, My Lord!" Harl cried, grabbing a spear and instinctively running toward the splintered wood, his pride overriding his demotion.
Deacon ignored him. He was watching the Trios. Staff Sergeant Rodriguez had trained them well, but their morale was evaporating like mist. They were shifting, their spear points dipping, ready to flee.
The window was now.
Deacon spotted his runner, a pale youth named Tomas, desperately weaving his way back from the gate, having delivered the final order.
"Tomas! Did you confirm the message to the Pepper Twins?" Deacon yelled over the pandemonium.
Tomas gasped, pointing toward the rooftop. "They saw the breach, My Lord! They're ready!"
"Execute Project Grog!" Deacon commanded, his voice absolute. "Now! Collapse the attack!"
On the rooftop of the North Gate, Pyper and Elan—The Pepper Twins—did not check their cover or their balance. They moved with the silent, fluid grace of mercenaries executing a clean job. They lit the pitch fuses on their clay charges, timing their drops to land precisely inside the open, splintered cavity of the gate.
The first charge detonated just as the final Warg reared back for a killing blow.
The sound was a raw, physical force that slammed against the stone of Oakhaven. It wasn't a metallic blast; it was a devastating CONCUSSION, a wave of pure atmospheric pressure that deafened everyone within a football field radius. A sickening, blinding white-yellow flash erupted from the breach, accompanied by a tremendous wave of heat and thick, suffocating smoke that smelled violently of sulfur and burnt earth. .
The Goblin infantry closest to the gate, already disoriented by the stone drop, were thrown backward like rags, their hearing destroyed, their eyes temporarily blinded by the intense flash. The massive wooden gate, already compromised, was not just broken—it was vaporized inward, collapsing in a catastrophic, echoing crash of rubble, debris, and shredded timber.
But the Thunder Clap had achieved its critical objective: it hadn't killed hundreds; it had achieved absolute psychological annihilation. The lead Goblin forces, now facing a chaotic mess of screaming, injured beasts, raining stones, and a sudden, supernatural explosion from an already broken wall, completely broke formation. They screamed in genuine, instinctual terror. This wasn't war; this was magic designed to punish them.
Rodriguez, deafened but utterly focused, seized the moment of paralysis. Her soldier's instincts took over.
"Close the gap! Swords out! Focus on the legs!" she screamed, her voice a raw sound in the sudden, echoing silence.
The small militia Trios, finding their fear temporarily overridden by the absolute horror of the enemy, surged forward. They didn't engage in a line. They moved as fireteams, dodging debris, driving their spears into the shocked, fleeing Goblin vanguard. They used the density of the kill zone against the enemy, exploiting the momentary paralysis caused by the Thunder Claps.
Deacon watched as the Goblin column—hundreds strong—stopped. They turned. They began to flee back toward the Blackwood Forest. Their commander was dead, their shock troops were crippled, and their morale was shattered by an unknown, exploding defense they could not comprehend.
The battle had lasted less than ten minutes, and it was over. The Goblins had broken themselves on the walls of Oakhaven.
Deacon stood in the command tower, his ears ringing with a high-pitched whine. Smoke drifted up from the shattered North Gate. He was alive. The city was standing. He had survived the first 96 hours.
But the consequences of his victory were immediate. Below, Commander Harl, having survived the explosion, stood shell-shocked beside the wreckage, staring at the collapsed gate. His hands trembled, clutching his spear. He had witnessed a spectacle that defied every rule of war he knew.
And across the city, Major Kiley, Dr. Kelly, was already hearing the cries of the first casualties—the militia who had been too close to the blast, and the civilians injured by the falling debris.
The victory was complete, but the hard, grinding work of the post-siege consolidation was only just beginning. The city was saved from the Goblins, but it was still starving, politically unstable, and now forced to reckon with a breach in its strongest wall and the existence of a terrible, explosive secret.