Chapter 718: Chapter 717

While the ford battle consumed the combined force’s attention, the 1st Kani’karr Corps moved into position.

The troll-operated siege element had been moving through the Meren valley’s western terrain for two days, the catapults and ballistae disassembled into their transport components and carried by the ogre teams whose specific assignment was the protection and positioning of the Horde’s heaviest weapons. The ogres, each one standing a three times a full head taller than the largest orc and weighing twice as much, carried the catapult arms and ballista frames across terrain that wheeled transport could not navigate, their massive hands gripping the timber and iron components with the casual strength that made ogres the Horde’s premier heavy labor asset.

The ogres were bored.

They had been bored since the campaign entered the valley, because Khao’khen’s specific instruction to the ogre contingent was to guard the siege equipment and to smash any pinkskin that came close to it, and no pinkskins had come close to it because no pinkskins knew where it was. The ogres’ enthusiasm for smashing was directly proportional to the duration of their boredom, which meant that any Threian soldier who discovered the siege equipment’s position would encounter not just catapults and ballistae but the accumulated frustration of two months of ogre inactivity.

The 1st Kani’karr Corps established its firing positions on the ridge two miles south of the ford, the elevation providing the arc that the catapults required for maximum range and the sight lines that the ballista crews needed for aimed fire at specific targets.

Twelve catapults. Eight ballistae. Crewed by the troll specialists whose engineering competence had been demonstrated in every siege operation the campaign had produced. Protected by thirty-two ogres whose orders were absolute and whose enthusiasm was considerable and whose patience had been tested for two months by the specific torment of being told to guard equipment while battles happened elsewhere, battles they could hear and smell and whose outcomes they followed through the vibrations in the ground beneath their massive feet.

The bombardment began at dawn on the sixth day.

The first catapult stone struck the combined force’s eastern bank positions with the sound that catapult stones produced when they hit packed earth, the compression wave radiating outward from the impact point in the ground-shaking tremor that was as much psychological weapon as physical one. The stone was the size of a small cart. It landed in the space between two infantry formations and scattered the soldiers in both formations across a fifty-pace radius.

The second stone followed four seconds later, the troll crews’ reloading cycle producing the sustained bombardment rate that training and practice had refined. The third stone. The fourth. Twelve catapults firing in staggered sequence, the rhythm of the bombardment maintaining a continuous fall of stones that prevented the combined force’s positions from stabilizing between impacts.

“THRAK’DUM GOR!” The Stonecaller earth cry rose from the troll crews as the catapults fired, the words carrying across the battlefield with the deep resonance that troll voices produced. “The earth shakes, we charge! GOR’MASH THRAK! The mountain charges with us!”

The ballistae fired at specific targets. The ballista bolts, each one the size of a spear and tipped with iron heads that could penetrate wooden fortifications, were aimed at the mage positions on the eastern bank’s forward slope, the positions from which the magical assault had been launched the previous day. The bolts’ accuracy at two miles was imperfect, but their psychological effect was considerable: mages who had been told that the orcish army’s siege weapons were guarded by ogres and that the siege weapons’ range exceeded the mages’ ability to silence them were mages whose concentration was divided between casting and survival.

* * * * *

Aldrath sent a cavalry force of five hundred riders on a flanking route to silence the siege equipment. The cavalry rode south through the farmland, circled west, and approached the ridge from the direction that the Horde’s defensive positions did not cover.

They found the ogres.

Thirty-two ogres, each one standing at the siege equipment’s perimeter in the specific posture that bored, frustrated, extremely large beings adopted when they had been told to guard something and were hoping, with considerable sincerity, that someone would give them a reason to stop guarding and start smashing.

The cavalry commander assessed the situation from four hundred paces and sent a runner back to Aldrath with the assessment that the siege equipment’s guard force was not a formation that five hundred cavalry could overcome without losses that exceeded the mission’s value.

“GRAKH!” An ogre spotted the cavalry’s observation position and produced the greeting with the volume that ogres used for all communication, which was the volume that shook leaves from trees. “GRAKH’VOL! Hello, friends! Come closer! We are bored! Chieftain says we smash pinkskins who come close! Please come close! PLEASE!”

The cavalry did not come close.

The bombardment continued. The catapult stones fell on the combined force’s positions for three hours, the sustained fire producing the specific effect that siege bombardment produced against field positions: not the destruction of fortifications but the degradation of the defenders’ willingness to maintain positions that were being struck by objects too large to dodge and too heavy to survive.

The combined force’s eastern bank positions withdrew to the secondary line, three hundred paces further from the river. The withdrawal conceded the forward slope to the bombardment and created the space between the positions and the river that the Rakshas spear wall needed to advance without the combined force’s archers, who had no arrows, and the combined force’s mages, who were being targeted by ballista bolts, providing the suppressive fire that an advancing formation required suppression against.

“Morg,” Khao’khen said, from the market hall where the battle’s progress was being tracked on Sakh’arran’s maps. “The siege equipment has achieved its purpose. Tell the 1st Kani’karr Corps to cease fire and relocate. They will be needed elsewhere tomorrow.”

“The ogres will be disappointed,” Sakh’arran said.

“The ogres are always disappointed. It is the specific condition of beings whose primary desire is to smash things and whose primary assignment is to guard things. Tell them they will have their opportunity. The battle at the ford is becoming the battle that the campaign needs it to become.”

The wolf waited. The catapults fell silent. The ogres relocated with the specific reluctance of beings who had been promised smashing and were being asked to walk instead. But the promise was the promise, and the promise came from Khao’khen, and Khao’khen’s promises were the most reliable things in the Horde’s universe.

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