Chapter 720: Chapter 719

The Battle of Harren’s Ford became the Battle of the Eastern Plain on the ninth day, when both commanders committed everything.

Aldrath’s decision was the decision of a general who understood that the ford battle’s attrition was unsustainable and that the only path to the decisive engagement that his numerical superiority required was the open-field battle where forty thousand soldiers could bring their weight to bear simultaneously rather than feeding units into the ford’s constrained terrain where the Horde’s defensive advantages negated the numbers.

He moved the combined force east, onto the plain that stretched between the Meren valley and the provincial road, the terrain that was open and flat and devoid of the terrain features that Khao’khen had been using to constrain the combined force’s numerical advantage. Forty thousand soldiers deployed in the standard three-line formation that Threian military doctrine prescribed for decisive engagement, the formation’s width extending across three miles of frontage.

Khao’khen followed.

He followed because the ford battle had achieved its purpose, the attrition of six thousand Threian soldiers and the expenditure of the combined force’s arrow supply, and because the open-field engagement that Aldrath was seeking was, for the first time in the campaign, the engagement that Khao’khen wanted.

Not because he believed he could win a pitched battle against forty thousand soldiers with eight thousand warriors. Because he believed he could fight a pitched battle against forty thousand soldiers with eight thousand warriors and produce results that made the pitched battle’s cost unbearable for the side paying the larger share.

The Horde deployed on the eastern plain at dawn. The formation was the formation that every engagement since Thornfield had been building toward, the integrated deployment of every capability the Horde possessed, applied simultaneously in the combined-arms doctrine that Khao’khen had developed from nothing and that no orcish army in history had employed.

The 1st and 2nd Warbands held the center. The Rakshas. Two thousand warriors in the spear wall, the long spears bristling forward, the great round shields locked in the overlapping pattern that made the wall a single defensive structure rather than a collection of individual fighters. The center was the anchor. The center held whatever came against it. The center was the meat grinder.

The 3rd through 12th Warbands deployed on the flanks and in reserve, the Yurakk formations with their rectangular shields and stabbing swords arranged in the flexible deployment that allowed them to respond to threats from multiple directions, their Tohr’terra capability ready to deploy against arrow storms, their assault formations ready to exploit gaps that the center’s grinding defense created.

The Roarers deployed in the gaps between warbands, the crews positioned to deliver flanking fire into the combined force’s formations as they pressed against the center. Fourteen hundred weapons with the ammunition that the campaign’s supply chain had maintained through the corridor convoys.

The 1st Kani’karr Corps established its firing positions behind the main line, the catapults and ballistae sited at the ranges that their weapons required, the ogre guard force positioned around the equipment with the specific enthusiasm of beings who had been told that today might be the day they got to smash something.

The Rhakaddons held in reserve behind the right flank, Dhug’mhar’s Rumbling Clan mounted and ready, the fifty-seven beasts arranged in the assault line that would be committed when the engagement’s geometry produced the moment that Rhakaddon charges required. The beasts’ armor gleamed in the morning light, the iron plates that Zul’jinn’s forge had produced fitted to the animals’ shoulders and flanks, the paired horns capped with the iron points that turned three-ton herbivores into three-ton battering rams.

Haguk’s warg cavalry deployed on the extreme left, the four hundred and sixty riders positioned to exploit whatever overextension or gap the battle produced on the combined force’s right. The wargs crouched in the tall grass that the plain’s edges provided, the predatory patience of animals whose instincts had been honed by generations of breeding for exactly this kind of waiting, the waiting that preceded the burst of violence that warg warfare produced.

And at the 1st Warband’s center, the Amazzfer raised the Golden Wolf.

* * * * *

The battle began with the catapults.

The 1st Kani’karr Corps opened fire at maximum range, the stones arcing across the plain in the trajectories that the troll crews calculated with the engineering precision that their training provided. The stones fell among the combined force’s rear formations, the reserve lines and supply positions that occupied the space behind the main battle line. The bombardment’s purpose was not destruction but disruption, the creation of chaos in the combined force’s rear that consumed command attention and prevented the orderly commitment of reserves.

“THRAK’DUM GOR!” The troll crews’ earth cry accompanied each catapult’s release, the rhythm of the bombardment providing the cadence that the battle’s opening movement required.

Aldrath’s advance began at the ninth hour. Forty thousand soldiers moving forward in the three-line formation, the front line at the assault pace, the second line at the march pace, the third line in reserve. The formation’s width created the overlapping frontage that ensured the Horde’s eight-thousand-warrior line could not extend its flanks far enough to prevent the combined force from wrapping around the Horde’s edges.

The advance crossed the open ground under the catapults’ fire, the stones falling among the formation with the random distribution that long-range bombardment produced, each impact scattering a section of the advance but not stopping the advance because the advance was too wide and too deep for individual impacts to produce a systemic effect.

The advance reached Roarer range. The Roarers opened.

Rolling volleys from both flanks, the coordinated fire sweeping across the advance’s front in the suppressive pattern that the Roarer doctrine prescribed, the balls striking the formation’s leading edge and producing the casualties that the weapons’ ballistic characteristics allowed at three hundred paces.

The advance continued through the Roarer fire because the advance was forty thousand soldiers and the Roarer fire was fourteen hundred weapons and the mathematics of that relationship meant the fire could slow but not stop the advance.

The advance reached the spear wall.

“GRAK’UL MOK, THRAK VOL DUUM!” The war chant erupted from eight thousand throats as the combined force’s front line closed the final distance. Blood of the strong, earth of the fallen, no surrender. The war chant that had been spoken seven times in recorded orcish history, spoken now for the eighth time, in the moment that the eighth time existed for.

The collision was the largest single impact the campaign had produced. Forty thousand soldiers hitting eight thousand warriors on an open plain, the sound of the contact audible for miles, the ground shaking with the force of the collision, the sky darkening with the dust that the impact kicked into the air.

The spear wall held.

The meat grinder began.

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