The mountain path that led back toward the lands of Threia narrowed as it climbed, winding between the ancient stone ribs of the Lag’ranna Mountains. Once, long ago, this stretch of land had been swallowed by thick growths of Vikor plants, their thorned vines and broad, waxy leaves forming a living wall that made passage difficult for armies. Only with the aid of the elves were they able to stripped the plants away during earlier campaigns, leaving behind scarred earth, broken roots, and the faint, bitter scent of sap that still lingered in the air.

It was here, at the very edge of that scarred pass, that the Winters’ Army finally stopped running.

They turned.

The order had been given quietly at first, passed from horn to horn, runner to runner. Columns that had marched in weary, uneven lines slowed, then halted. Standards dipped, then rose again, not in retreat this time, but in defiance. Boots scuffed into the dirt as men took their places. Shields were raised from slings and strapped onto forearms that still trembled with fatigue. Spears were planted butt-first into the ground while officers walked the lines, checking spacing, alignment, and resolve.

By the time the army fully faced south, the transformation was unmistakable.

This was no longer a broken host fleeing through hostile land.

This was a line drawn in blood and stone.

Aliyah Winters stood on a low rise near the center of the formation, her scepter planted firmly into the ground beside her. The blue crystal at its head pulsed faintly, reflecting the clear mountain light. Her cloak stirred in the cold wind that slid down from the peaks to the west, carrying with it the smell of stone, dust, and distant smoke.

She studied the ground with the eyes of both a mage and a commander.

To the west, the Lag’ranna Mountains rose steeply, jagged cliffs and sheer rock faces forming an impassable wall. No army could maneuver through that terrain. No cavalry could charge. No flanking force could slip unseen. The right flank of her army was protected by the mountains themselves, ancient and indifferent sentinels of stone.

To the east, the land opened slightly. Rolling foothills, broken by shallow ravines and scattered boulders, offered room to maneuver but also danger if misused. That was where the cavalry would stand. What remained of it, at least.

Aliyah exhaled slowly.

She had chosen this ground with care.

*****

The infantry formed first.

Those still capable of combat were brought forward, organized into neat, disciplined ranks despite exhaustion and wounds. Armor was dented, scarred, and stained dark with old blood, but it was worn with purpose. Shields overlapped. Spearheads angled forward in precise increments. Officers paced along the front, adjusting positions by inches rather than feet.

“Closer,” one captain murmured, tapping a shield rim with his knuckles. “Lock tighter. You’re not alone.”

The foremost line consisted of hardened veterans and those who had survived the worst of the previous clashes. These men had seen disciplined orcs tear through formations and had lived. Their fear had burned away, leaving behind something colder and more dangerous.

Behind them, a second and third line formed, staggered slightly to allow movement and reinforcement. A full thousand infantry were kept back as reserves, positioned on slightly higher ground where they could move quickly to reinforce any point that began to buckle.

Aliyah had insisted on this.

“No line holds forever,” she had told her commanders earlier. “Not against numbers. What matters is how quickly we respond when it bends.”

The reserve was not a sign of weakness. It was a promise of resilience.

Unlike most traditional deployments, the archers were placed a few paces ahead of the infantry line.

It was a calculated risk.

Aliyah walked among them personally, her presence steadying nerves that might otherwise have frayed.

“You will not stand here long,” she told them. “Your task is to bleed them before they reach us. Loose until your captains order you back. Do not linger. Trust the infantry to receive you.”

Quivers were checked. Bowstrings were tested and retightened. Many archers bore bandages beneath their tunics or moved stiffly from old wounds, but their eyes burned with anticipation.

Behind them stood the mages.

Far fewer than when the campaign had begun.

Some leaned on staves. Others clutched mana gems in gloved hands, the crystals dull and cracked from prior use. Aliyah inspected them carefully, her gaze lingering on those whose auras flickered unevenly.

“You know the cost,” she said quietly. “I will not order you to burn yourselves out.”

One mage, a young woman with ash-streaked hair, met her eyes. “If we do not slow them,” she replied, “there will be no one left to protect.”

Aliyah nodded once.

“Then we use restraint,” she said. “We punish, we disrupt, and we withdraw. No heroics. Live long enough to matter.”

The mages took their positions, spaced carefully so that a single blow could not fell many at once. They were positioned close enough to support the archers, yet far enough back to retreat swiftly behind the infantry when the time came.

*****

What remained of the cavalry assembled on the eastern flank.

Horses stamped nervously, sensing tension in the air. Many bore scars from the retreat, and some walked with slight limps. Cavalry officers moved among them, checking tack and murmuring reassurances.

Aliyah rode out to them last.

“You are not here to charge blindly,” she told their commanders. “You are here to threaten. To exploit mistakes. If they break formation or overextend, you strike. If they do not, you wait.”

One knight hesitated. “And if they overwhelm the center?”

Aliyah’s jaw tightened.

“Then you strike anyway,” she said. “Not to win, but to buy time.”

They nodded grimly.

They understood.

As the army finished forming, Aliyah withdrew slightly with her senior commanders to review contingencies one final time.

“If they rush the center,” Sir Helwain said, pointing at the map scratched into the dirt, “we hold with layered defense and rotate exhausted units back.”

“If they swing wide to the east,” Sir Ferin added, “the cavalry harasses and withdraws toward the foothills, forcing them to stretch their line.”

“And if they surprise us?” Rhaegar asked quietly.

Aliyah’s eyes flicked toward the south, where dust clouds were beginning to rise on the horizon.

“Then we adapt,” she said. “We learned the hard way that underestimating orcs is fatal. These may be undisciplined, but numbers alone can kill an army.”

She straightened, gripping her scepter.

“No one breaks formation without order. No pursuit unless commanded. If we win, we win by control, not by rage.”

Even as she spoke those words, she knew how fragile they were.

The men wanted blood.

They wanted revenge.

Discipline would be tested the moment the orcs came into sight.

As the final adjustments were made, the Winters’ Army stood in silence, facing south.

The eagerness for payback was unmistakable.

Men muttered prayers under their breath. Some kissed talismans or family rings. Others simply stared ahead, knuckles white around spear shafts and sword hilts.

They remembered the mockery.

They remembered the chants.

They remembered being driven back step by step by orcs who fought like soldiers instead of beasts.

This time, they would not be caught unprepared.

The banners of Winter’s Army fluttered behind the lines, their colors faded but unbowed. The Blue Countess’ standard stood near the center, visible to all, a reminder that she stood with them, not behind them.

Aliyah mounted her horse and rode slowly along the line, letting every soldier see her.

“We stand on the edge of our land,” she called out, her voice carrying across the ranks. “Behind us lies Threia. Our homes. Our people.”

She raised her scepter slightly.

“Before us comes an enemy who believes we are weak.”

A murmur rippled through the line.

“Today,” she continued, “we show them the cost of that belief.”

A low, steady cheer answered her, not wild, not reckless, but firm.

The sound rolled along the line like distant thunder.

*****

Far to the south, the orcish host advanced.

They came in vast numbers, their movement chaotic and loud. Banners of countless clans snapped in the wind. War cries rose and fell without rhythm. Drums pounded, not in disciplined cadence, but in wild, overlapping beats.

They saw the Threian line and laughed.

They saw archers standing exposed and howled in anticipation.

“They think us prey,” one orc shouted, baring tusks.

“They think wrong,” another answered, pounding his axe against his shield.

From their vantage point, the Winters’ Army looked small. Tired. Cornered against the mountains.

The orcs surged forward with confidence born of numbers and arrogance.

They did not see the care in the formation.

They did not see the reserves waiting.

They did not understand the calm that had replaced panic.

Aliyah watched them come, her expression unreadable.

Every calculation she had made now rested on one truth.

This line must hold.

The wind shifted, carrying the stink of sweat, iron, and blood from the approaching horde.

The archers raised their bows.

The mages felt the stir of mana in their veins.

The infantry locked shields.

At the very edge of the mountain path, where retreat ended and survival began, the Winters’ Army stood ready to receive what came next.

*****

The first horn did not blare.

It whispered.

A single, low note carried down the Winters’ line, not meant to stir blood, but to sharpen it. Officers repeated the signal with hand signs and murmured commands. Backs straightened. Knees bent slightly. Shields were raised a fraction higher, spear points leveled with deliberate care.

Aliyah felt the shift ripple through the army like a held breath.

She lifted her scepter.

The crystal at its head brightened, not flaring, but focusing, its inner light steady and cold. She did not speak. She did not need to. The archers’ captains were watching her hands, the angle of the scepter, the subtle tightening of her fingers.

The orcs were close enough now that there silhouettes were visible through the dust. Tusks bared in wide grins. Painted scars and crude symbols smeared across green, red and gray skin. Some pounded their weapons together. Others shouted insults in guttural tongues, pointing at the Threian line and miming exaggerated thrusts and slashes.

Aliyah’s gaze slid past them, not to the front ranks, but deeper into the mass. She watched how the clans moved. How some surged ahead while others lagged behind. How arguments broke out even as they marched, warriors shoving one another to get closer to the front.

No cohesion.

No patience.

She lowered the scepter an inch.

“Archers,” she said, her voice calm and clear, carried forward by the mountain wind, “take their pride from them.”

The bows rose.

The first volley was not loosed in haste. It was measured, timed to the exact moment when the orcish front crossed a line Aliyah had marked in her mind using a jagged rock half buried in the dirt.

“Loose.”

The sound was immense.

Thousands of bowstrings snapped forward together, a single tearing roar that drowned out the drums and the shouting. The arrows rose in a dark, shimmering cloud, sunlight glinting along their shafts, many of them etched with faint runes or wrapped in thin threads of spellwork.

They fell into the orcish host like judgment.

The front ranks collapsed almost instantly. Orcs were punched backward, their momentum turned against them as arrows drove into chests, throats, and faces. Some were lifted off their feet entirely, hurled back into their kin with wet, cracking impacts. Others stumbled forward a few more steps before collapsing, weapons slipping from nerveless fingers.

Blood sprayed across the ground in sudden arcs, dark and thick. Dust turned to mud beneath trampling feet and spilled gore.

The orcish advance faltered.

Not stopped.

But shaken.

A second volley followed before the screams had even faded.

This one was different.

Magic imbued arrows struck and bloomed. Ice burst outward on impact, freezing torsos solid and locking limbs in place. Warriors slammed into suddenly rigid bodies and shattered them, frozen flesh breaking apart like brittle stone. Lightning crawled from shaft to shaft, jumping through clustered bodies, muscles convulsing violently as orcs dropped, twitching and smoking.

Aliyah watched closely, counting heartbeats.

“Again,” she said.

The archers stepped back in perfect order, boots scuffing in unison, loosing another storm as they retreated. Orcish javelins answered, thrown in wild fury. One struck an archer square in the shoulder, punching through leather and bone. He screamed and fell, dragged back by two others without breaking formation.

The orcs roared louder, anger replacing laughter.

That was when the mages moved.

Aliyah raised her scepter fully.

“Circles one and two,” she commanded, “now.”

The ground in front of the advancing orcs erupted in pale blue light.

Frost raced outward in jagged veins, spreading faster than the eye could track. The earth hardened instantly, slick and treacherous. Orcs hit the frozen stretch at full speed and went down hard. The sound of bodies striking ice echoed like breaking pottery. Bones snapped. Skulls cracked. Those behind piled forward, momentum driving them into a growing heap of flailing limbs and crushed bodies.

A gust of wind followed, summoned by the second circle.

It slammed into the tangled mass with brutal force, ripping warriors off their feet and hurling them backward into those still advancing. Some were thrown so hard that they landed motionless, limbs bent at unnatural angles. Weapons spun through the air, clattering uselessly onto the ice.

The orcish host hesitated again, more visibly this time.

Aliyah did not allow the pause to stretch.

“Third and fourth circles,” she said. “Break their center.”

Fire answered her call.

Not a wall, but focused destruction. White hot lances of flame punched into the densest clusters of orcs and detonated. Armor glowed, then split. Flesh blackened and sloughed away. Warriors screamed as fire clung to them, rolling on the ground in agony, only to be trampled by those behind who refused to slow.

The stench hit the Threian line moments later, thick and nauseating. Burned hair. Cooked meat. Hot blood.

Some soldiers gagged. None broke.

Aliyah felt the recoil of the spells through her scepter, the vibration running up her arm and into her chest. She ignored the ache, her eyes never leaving the field.

The orcs tried to answer.

Shamans pushed forward, raising bone staffs and chanting in harsh tongues. Crude spells flared, fire sputtering and dying against the disciplined countercasting of the Threian mages. A few bolts of wild magic struck home, exploding among the archers and infantry, killing and maiming indiscriminately, but for every spell that landed, three were unraveled or redirected.

“Rotate,” Aliyah ordered. “Do not burn out.”

Mage circles shifted like clockwork. Those who had cast stepped back, chests heaving, sweat pouring down their faces. Fresh casters took their place, hands already glowing.

Another wave of arrows fell.

Then another.

The space between the armies became a charnel ground. Bodies lay piled upon bodies, some frozen, some burning, some torn apart by force and lightning. Orcs slipped on blood slick ice, fell, were crushed beneath the feet of their own kin. The advance slowed to a crawl, then surged again as fresh warriors from the rear pushed forward, roaring in defiance.

They would not stop.

Aliyah knew that now.

But neither would she.

“Hold this pace,” she said quietly, to herself as much as to her commanders. “Bleed them. Make every step cost.”

The infantry line still had not moved.

Shields remained locked. Spears steady.

They watched as the archers and mages punished the enemy, knowing that soon, very soon, the killing would come to them.

The mountains loomed silent at their backs.

The path home lay behind them.

And in front, the field was being written over in blood, spellfire, and broken bodies, each heartbeat buying another moment before the inevitable clash.

The orcish mass that surged northward was not a single army.

It was a flood.

They came in knots and clumps rather than ranks. Banners were raised but few were obeyed. Each cloth marked a different past. Split tusk clans. Broken skull tribes. Survivors of wars long lost and chieftains long dead. Some marched beneath hides stitched with crude symbols. Others carried nothing but trophies of bone and rusted iron. Many bore scars that spoke of defeat rather than victory.

They ran not because they were ordered to.

They ran because the sight of pinkskins standing still awakened something feral inside them.

The first arrows struck them at a distance.

The sound was like rain hitting meat.

A dozen orcs fell before the host truly understood it was under fire. They stumbled forward clutching throats and chests, gurgling in surprise. Others screamed in rage and sprinted faster, raising shields taken from fallen enemies, from old battlefields, from anywhere steel could be scavenged.

Then the volleys thickened.

The Winters Army archers did not loose in panic. They fired in measured waves. The front rank loosed, stepped back, and knelt. The second rank stepped through and fired. Then the third. A continuous wall of death that never truly stopped.

Orcs fell by the hundreds.

One tripped over a corpse and took an arrow through the back of the skull as he tried to rise. Another was struck mid roar, the shaft punching through his open mouth and bursting from the back of his neck. A pair of brothers running shoulder to shoulder were skewered seconds apart, collapsing into each other and rolling down the blood slick incline like discarded meat.

Still they came.

The ground between the armies became a killing field layered with bodies. Ice cracked under the weight of the dead and the living alike. Blood pooled and froze in dark glassy sheets that sent charging orcs sprawling. Those behind trampled them without mercy, boots crushing ribs, tusks snapping underfoot.

Then the mages spoke.

The air itself seemed to recoil.

A column of fire tore across the field, not wide but long, ripping through a dense knot of orcs who had bunched together as they charged. They did not burn cleanly. Armor cooked flesh beneath it. Skin blistered and split. Screams rose sharp and high before turning wet and choking as lungs filled with smoke.

Another mage slammed her staff into the ground.

The earth answered.

Stone spines erupted upward beneath dozens of feet, impaling bodies from below. Orcs were lifted screaming into the air, pinned on jagged rock, flailing uselessly until arrows finished them or they bled out slowly, hanging like butchered animals.

Ice followed fire.

A rolling wave of frost swept outward, locking joints, freezing weapons to hands. Orcs slowed, then stopped entirely, their momentum betraying them as those behind slammed into frozen bodies and shattered them apart. Limbs snapped. Helmets split. Frozen blood sprayed like shards of ruby glass.

The orcish host howled in fury and confusion.

There was no unified response.

Some warbands surged harder, screaming defiance at the magic. Others veered away instinctively, only to collide with neighboring clans doing the same. Fights broke out even as they charged. Old grudges flared. An axe meant for a pinkskin buried itself in an orcish spine. A spear was turned sideways into a rival clansman with a roar of accusation.

The Threians saw it.

Aliyah Winters narrowed her eyes.

These orcs did not move like the ones who had broken her before.

They were brave. Many were strong. But they were not one.

She lifted her scepter slightly.

The crystal flared again.

The archers adjusted aim.

They began to target density rather than distance.

Where orcs clustered, death followed.

A storm of arrows fell into a packed group of warriors who had surged ahead too eagerly. Bodies collapsed into each other. Shields were knocked aside. Survivors stumbled over the dead and were cut down by the next volley.

A mage raised both hands and screamed a word that tore her voice raw.

Lightning crashed down not as a single bolt but as a crawling net. It leapt from helm to helm, from axe to axe. Orcs convulsed violently, muscles locking, jaws snapping shut hard enough to crack teeth. Several collapsed smoking, eyes burned white and blind.

Behind the Threian lines, runners shouted numbers and positions. Officers barked corrections. Wounded were dragged back screaming or silent. Blood slicked armor. The air tasted of iron and ozone.

The orcs were closer now.

Close enough that the Winters Army could see individual faces twisted in hatred and fear.

Close enough to smell them.

The archers did not stop firing until the last possible moment.

When the horn sounded, they fell back through gaps in the infantry line, hands shaking, some weeping openly, others laughing hysterically as they dropped behind shield walls slick with sweat and blood.

The mages retreated more slowly.

One stumbled, exhausted beyond sense, and a spear punched through her thigh as she turned. She fell hard. Two soldiers dragged her back as another mage stepped forward without hesitation, staff already glowing.

Ahead of them, the orcish newcomers reached the final stretch of ground.

Thousands had already died.

Thousands more were wounded.

Yet more than ten thousand still ran screaming toward the shield wall, convinced now that they could taste victory.

They did not see the reserve infantry waiting.

They did not understand how much blood had already been paid for every step forward.

Aliyah watched them come, her face hard as stone.

These orcs sought glory.

They would find only graves.

The ground trembled under the weight of their charge.

The infantry lowered spears.

Shields locked.

And the world drew breath before impact.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep