Chapter 597: Chapter 596

The first wave hit the western defenses at midmorning.

Trot’thar’s column …the 3rd, 5th, and 6th Warbands, supported by Rhakaddons and siege engines …struck the fortified ridgeline that formed the left flank of the Winters position. They came not in a headlong charge but in a methodical advance, shield walls interlocking as they climbed the broken terrain, siege shelters rolling ahead to absorb the initial arrow volleys.

The Winters archers opened fire at three hundred yards. Two hundred frost-enchanted arrows streaked downward, their crystalline contrails painting white lines against the gray sky. They struck the advancing shield walls and the results were devastating …orcs frozen mid-step, bodies shattering on impact with the ground, shields coated in killing ice that spread along arms and across torsos.

Fifty orcs fell in the first volley.

The shield wall closed the gaps and kept advancing.

“Second volley! Loose!”

Another rain of frozen death. Another fifty orcs down. The frost-enchanted arrows were hideously effective against unprotected targets, but the orcish formations had been drilled for exactly this scenario. Shields overlapped. The front rank crouched low, presenting the minimum target area. The rear ranks held their shields overhead, creating a crude but functional tortoise formation that deflected most of the incoming fire.

“They’re learning,” Captain Lysa of the Frostguard said through gritted teeth, watching the orcish advance absorb her volleys with a discipline that the scattered clans had never displayed. “These aren’t the rabble we’ve been fighting.”

“No,” said Aliyah, who had moved to the western wall to assess the attack personally. “They’re not.”

She raised her hand, and her 7th Circle magic energy flared. The air temperature around her dropped by twenty degrees. Frost crystallized on every surface within fifty yards. Her frost-weaving operated at what her tutors had classified as the epitome of 6th Circle of Magic …among the most powerful magical abilities in the kingdom, exceeded only by a handful of legendary practitioners.

She thrust her hand forward, and a wall of ice erupted from the ground in front of the advancing orcish formation. Not a thin sheet but a solid barrier, ten feet high and three feet thick, stretching across the full width of the approach. Razor-sharp icicles protruded from its surface, turning it into a killing obstacle that no mere shield wall could penetrate.

The orcish advance halted. Warriors crashed into the ice wall, their momentum absorbed by the mass of frozen water. Some died on the protruding icicles, their bodies impaled and frozen in grotesque poses. Others fell back, regrouping, their formation adapting around the obstacle.

It was an impressive display of magical power. Under normal circumstances, it would have broken an assault entirely.

But Khao’khen had anticipated frost magic.

From behind the stalled western column, the catapults fired. Not stones this time, but bundles of burning Bufas fruit, the incendiary mixture that the goblins had been harvesting and preparing for months. The fireballs arced over the ice wall and slammed into the ground behind it, splashing liquid fire across the defensive positions.

The heat was immediate and intense. Soldiers scrambled away from the burning patches, their formation disrupted. And against the ice wall itself, the heat began to work …not melting it instantly, the magical ice was too strong for that, but weakening its structure, creating fractures that the orcish warriors attacked with their weapons and shields.

“They’re breaking through the wall!” a sergeant shouted.

“Mages, reinforce!” Aliyah commanded. But even as her frost-weavers channeled their diminished reserves into shoring up the barrier, the eastern assault began.

*****

Gur’kan’s column hit the opposite flank with the Warg Cavalry leading.

The wargs came out of the tree line at a full gallop, fifty riders on massive wolf-like beasts that bounded over rough terrain with terrifying speed. They didn’t charge the walls directly …instead, they swept along the base of the eastern defenses, their riders loosing crossbow bolts at any exposed defender while the wargs’ mere presence panicked the horses in the cavalry paddock behind the lines.

“Cavalry! Counter their mounted forces!” Sir Rhaegar bellowed, leading the remnants of what was once the Winters cavalry which was reinforced by infantry soldiers, who were provided with steeds, out through the eastern gate. A hundred horsemen, armored and desperate, thundered toward the warg riders.

The collision was catastrophic.

Rhaegar, fighting at the 6th Realm, carved through the first warg he encountered with a single devastating stroke, his frost-enchanted blade splitting the beast from skull to spine. The warg rider flew from the saddle and was trampled before he could rise. Rhaegar pressed forward, his battle energy blazing silver-blue, each strike precise and lethal.

But the warg riders had been trained for this. They did not meet the cavalry charge head-on. They split, flowing around the Threian formation like water around a stone, reforming behind the cavalry and striking at their unprotected rear. Crossbow bolts found gaps in armor. Warg teeth closed on horse legs, bringing riders crashing down into the mud.

The cavalry engagement devolved into a swirling melee, and while it consumed Threian attention, Gur’kan’s infantry reached the eastern wall.

The 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Warbands hit the defenses in sequence, each warband arriving just as the defenders were recovering from the previous wave. Ladders slammed against the palisade. Grappling hooks bit into wooden stakes. Orcs swarmed upward, their shields deflecting the desperate spear thrusts of the soldiers above.

An orc at the 5th Realm …a warband leader whose battle energy manifested as a flickering red aura around his body …crested the wall and immediately engaged three Threian soldiers. His blade shattered the first soldier’s shield, then crushed the second’s helmet in a single backswing. The third managed to land a spear thrust that pierced the orc’s shoulder, but the warband leader simply snapped the shaft, grabbed the soldier by the throat, and hurled him off the wall.

“Eastern wall is being overrun!” a runner screamed, bursting into Aliyah’s command post. “Section twelve through fifteen! The orcs are on the wall!”

Aliyah’s mind raced through calculations. The western assault was pressing hard against her ice wall, the Bufas bombardment slowly degrading the barrier. The eastern assault was achieving footholds on the wall itself. She had committed the cavalry to the eastern flank. The mages were split between both positions.

She was being stretched thin. Exactly as the enemy commander intended.

“Reserves to the eastern wall,” she ordered. “All of them. We seal the breach, then…”

The ground shook.

A sound like rolling thunder built from the south, growing louder, building into a physical pressure that vibrated through the bones. The command platform trembled. Loose stones tumbled from half-repaired walls. Soldiers grabbed for handholds as the earth itself seemed to groan.

The Rhakaddons.

Six of the massive armored beasts charged the southern approach, the main gate of the Winters position. Each one weighed as much as a small house, their bone-plated heads lowered like battering rams, the ground cracking beneath their thunderous steps. Behind them, orcish warriors ran in the beasts’ wake, using their massive bodies as mobile cover.

The first Rhakaddon hit the gate.

The impact was cataclysmic. Reinforced timber, braced with iron bands and magical wards, buckled inward as if struck by a siege engine. The wards flared and shattered, their magical energy dissipating in a shower of sparks. The gate held, barely, its structure groaning under the strain.

The second Rhakaddon struck the same point three seconds later.

The gate exploded inward, sending splinters and iron fragments flying like shrapnel. Three soldiers were killed instantly, crushed beneath the debris. The Rhakaddon, momentum barely slowed, crashed through into the interior of the camp, its armored head swinging left and right, scattering men and equipment.

“BREACH! BREACH AT THE SOUTH GATE!”

Aliyah felt the battle shifting beneath her like sand under a receding wave. Three simultaneous assaults. The western wall crumbling under bombardment and magic. The eastern wall overrun in multiple sections. The southern gate smashed open by siege beasts.

And she still hadn’t seen the enemy’s reserves.

She closed her eyes for one second. One second of absolute stillness in the chaos, drawing on the wellspring of power that made her a 7th Circle mage. When she opened them, her decision was made.

“All forces, fall back to the inner ring. Controlled withdrawal. Mages, cover the retreat with everything you have left. We consolidate, we hold, we survive.”

She descended from the command platform and walked toward the southern breach. Not ran. Walked. Her frost-forged armor blazed with cold energy, ice forming in the air around her with each step, the temperature dropping so dramatically that soldiers’ breath misted and the mud beneath her boots turned to frozen earth.

The Rhakaddon that had breached the gate saw her coming and charged.

Aliyah planted her feet.

Her magical energy erupted.

The temperature within fifty yards of her position dropped to forty degrees below freezing in an instant. The Rhakaddon’s charge slowed, its muscles stiffening, ice crystallizing on its armored plates. Its roar became a strangled bellow as frost crawled down its throat and into its lungs.

Aliyah raised her weapon and struck.

The scepter, amplified by the full force of a 7th Circle mage’s magical energy and the concentrated fury of frost magic, cleaved through the Rhakaddon’s armored skull as if it were paper. The beast’s head split in two, its frozen brain shattering like glass. It collapsed, a mountain of dead flesh, sealing the breach it had created with its own massive carcass.

The orcs behind it hesitated. Just for a moment. Just long enough for the Winters soldiers to begin their withdrawal.

Aliyah stood over the dead Rhakaddon, her weapon covered in frozen blood, her body radiating a cold so intense that the nearest orcs’ skin blistered with frostburn simply from proximity.

She was magnificent. She was terrifying. She was everything a 7th Circle mage was supposed to be.

And she was alone.

Because beyond the dead Rhakaddon, advancing with the disciplined patience that defined everything they did, came the Yohan First Horde. Thousands of warriors, shield walls locked, spears aligned. Not charging. Not rushing. Simply advancing, step by relentless step, filling the breach as water fills a broken dam.

And behind them, watching from a rise that offered a clear view of the entire battlefield, Khao’khen observed the Countess’s devastating display of personal power and nodded slowly.

“Impressive,” he said to Sakh’arran. “She is everything the reports described.”

“She killed a Rhakaddon with a single stroke,” Sakh’arran said, and there was no shame in the awe that colored his voice. A Rhakaddon was one of the most heavily armored creatures on their side. Killing one required either sustained bombardment from siege engines or the combined effort of dozens of warriors. She had done it alone, with one swing.

“One warrior,” Khao’khen said. “However powerful. She is one warrior. And she just used a significant portion of her reserves to kill one beast and freeze one breach. She cannot do that again and again without exhausting herself.”

He turned to the horn bearer.

“Signal Dhug’mhar. The Rumbling Clan enters the battle. Southern breach. Full assault.”

The horns sounded.

And from the reserve line, three hundred of the strongest, most aggressive, most enthusiastically violent warriors in the entire Yohan First Horde surged forward with a roar that echoed off the mountains like the voice of war itself.

At their head, Dhug’mhar …a 6th Realm warrior whose battle energy manifested as a visible shimmer of raw force around his massive frame …flexed his arms and grinned with the boundless confidence of someone who considered every battle a performance and every enemy an audience.

“PERFECTION ARRIVES!” he bellowed, and charged.

The Battle of the Lag’ranna Passes entered its next phase.

And the outcome was far from decided.

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