by Warhammer
Haldora was surprised that she was pleased that the assault was coming. The waiting, the drumming and shouting, had made her tense with foreboding. It had been wearing away at her since she had first heard it in the halls beneath the mountain. Seeing the primal fury of the horde had unnerved her, but now the force was expended, rendering the enemy just a horde of savage warriors, nothing legendary or mystical at all.
‘The others are on the western bulwark,’ said Gabbik, pointing towards an outcropping of the bastion about a quarter of the way from the opposite end. ‘We should stand with them.’
‘I’ll be getting some food on,’ said Friedra, stepping towards the arched gate back into the hold. ‘It could be a long few days.’
‘Aye, that would be grand,’ said Gabbik, smiling fondly at his wife.
They set off along the wall to meet up with the rest of the survivors of Undak Grimgazan. Haldora kept looking down the valley to see what was happening, though the others spared little interest to the burgeoning assault. The goblins were flooding along the road and to either side, a welter of rocks and bolts falling into their midst as more and more of them came into range of the engines. Some tried to scatter from the impacts, but many were so tightly packed by their numbers that there was no escape from the bombardment, crushed beneath huge rocks or ripped apart by shafts three or four times as long as they were tall.
And they were still a thousand paces from the bastion, their course lined with emplacements and ramparts thronged with crossbows and war machines.
‘I’m not sure they’re actually going to reach the bastion,’ Haldora told the others.
‘We might be lucky yet,’ replied Skraffi, cocking an eye towards the greenskin army. ‘But let’s not count the gold ’til it’s smelted.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘Grimbalki was not without some feeling for the Drakkanfolk, and he sent warriors to man the towers around Ankor-Drakk, ensuring that the goblins could not get out by way of the main road.
His nephew, the new Lord Garudak, asked that his people be spared the grudges against their ruler, though he did not ask for himself. Impressed by this selfless display, the king agreed to a compromise. From that day forth the realm of Ankor-Drakk would belong to the descendants of Lord Garudak, but their leading thane would have to take his name also and remember the shame of his treachery.’
Haldora’s prediction proved partially correct. The goblins’ initial enthusiasm for the assault waned quickly in the teeth of the dwarfs’ war engines and by noon the smaller greenskins had retreated out of range. They tried again that afternoon, bringing with them three giants, but when one of their immense allies was beheaded by a particularly fine bolt shot they fell back in disarray once more, the surviving two behemoths retreating with them.
However, the rest of the army had not been idle during these attacks. The spider-riding forest goblins had made good progress up the eastern side of the valley, protected in part by the slope of the mountain itself and the boulders and ridges that broke its flanks. Though not huge in number, these goblins were able to get within bow range of the towers and wall, and until dusk they unleashed volleys of darts from their short bows, forcing the crews of the engines stationed there to keep their heads down, slowing their rate of fire.
As late summer day became dusky summer eve, lanterns were lit all along the walls and fires burned in the camps of the greenskins. Canteens of stew and platters of bread were brought out to the defences but Gabbik felt little appetite. This was no goblin raid, easily driven off with a few stout hearts, a bellyful of kuri and some determined axe swings.
His gaze was drawn to the figure of the massive orc warlord atop its wyvern. Neither rider nor beast had shifted position since landing. The orc’s eyes were ever on the defences, not its army, and though Gabbik could not believe such a creature knew too much of siegecraft, it was clear the orc general was studying the fortifications of the dwarfs.
‘See how he watches us,’ Gabbik remarked to Fleinn.
‘He can watch all he likes,’ the other dwarf replied with a mouthful of spiced flatbread. ‘Angry stares can’t pull down walls or topple towers.’
‘I don’t think that’s what it has in mind,’ said Durk. He gestured down the valley with a half-eaten sausage.
The goblins assembled their war engines, raising giant catapults, towers and covered battering rams from the mess of rigging and timber on their wagons. Dozens of constructions took place down the valley, sharing no common design beyond basic shape and function. Some catapults towered over the horde, capable of hurling boulders as big as anything the dwarf engines could loose; others were portable, wheeled creations with basket buckets designed to hurl clusters of smaller rocks. Spear throwers were much in evidence, some mounted on wolf-drawn carts and boar wagons, some atop the siege towers that were slowly rising up from the mass of greenskins. Covered with metal shields and hide and planks, these rickety giants looked as likely to topple over or collapse under their own weight as they were to reach the walls, but there were an awful lot of them.
For the gates there were battering rams aplenty, ranging from simple sharpened logs bound with rope handles to building-sized frames carrying immense trunks mounted with iron bands and heads shaped like wolves and wyverns and other monsters. There were even some drills and picks amongst the bizarre inventions.
Through all of this goblin activity strode orc overseers, whips and prods in hand, bellowing and striking at any they thought shirking. The goblins didn’t need much encouragement, and worked with surprising speed and dexterity to hammer nails, tighten screws and bind ropes.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’ve been practising,’ said Stofrik, observing this efficient labouring.
‘It’s one thing to build ‘em, another to use ‘em properly,’ said Horgir. ‘First sign of trouble, they’ll run off and leave ‘em behind, mark my words.‘
Gabbik did mark his words and did not agree with them, but he was not about to start a debate. He’d seen goblin delving first-hand, as had the rest of them, and knew that though they were disorganised and petty, they were not without some guile and craft.
He looked again at the warlord watching everything from the back of its wyvern. Was there craft and guile there too? Somewhere inside that thick skull there was a cruel mind, but was it really capable of plotting the destruction of Ekrund? Just a few days ago Gabbik would have scoffed at any dwarf who suggested as such, but there was planning in evidence, from the war machines to the way the general had mustered its brutish forces.
Gabbik brought himself up short. He was thinking nonsense, he told himself. It took more than a few crudely built engines and numbers to overrun a hold. The elves had tried, with their dragons and magic and thousands of years of experience, and they had failed. No grubby greenskin on a half-drake was going to get the better of Ekrund, even if it was considered a genius amongst orc-kind.
After the food was finished, Gabbik put his head down with the others, sleeping on the rampart. He was used to falling to slumber with the distant sound of axes and picks and hammers at work, but this night the noises were different. The thud of mallet and the rasp of saw was less than comforting, but given the exertions of the previous days it was unsurprising that he fell asleep not long after dark.
Skraffi watched the orcish engines advancing up the valley, seen by the light of hundreds of torches and the westering moons. Some of the taller towers had fallen over when the slope had steepened, crushing dozens of greenskins beneath timber and metal, but for the most part the rock- and spear-throwers, the battering rams and siege towers were making steady progress.
The engines on the walls had relented as darkness had filled the valley, but now they awoke with the slap of rope and thud of wood, launching their missiles into the approaching masses. Towers hit by catapulted rocks exploded into splinters and shards, while bolts gleaming with runes punched through the hide coverings of battering rams and parted the twisted springs of bo
lt hurlers. Amidst the destruction the goblins and their orc masters pressed on heedless, perhaps fearing something else more than the dwarf machines.
Thinking of this, Skraffi turned his eye to where the orc commander had been sat with his wyvern for most of the day. The ridgetop was empty, no darker shadow against sky and stars could be seen.
‘Where’s that greenskin general?’ he asked no one in particular, looking up and across the valley. Nobody seemed to know, or could recall seeing the orc warlord taking off.
From the western bulwark Skraffi had a good view of the main gatehouse, and the royal party encamped upon the summit of its tallest tower. He could not make out much by the lantern light, but there seemed to be quite a bit of movement; evidently the king and his advisors were also concerned by the missing warlord.
Horns blasted commands from the gate fortifications, rousing dwarfs to their posts. Gabbik, asleep against the wall not far from where Skraffi stood, woke with a yawn and a wordless grumble.
‘Are they coming?’ he muttered.
‘Not here, not yet,’ said Skraffi.
‘Fine,’ replied Gabbik. He rolled over and pulled his cloak tighter across his body. ‘Wake me if they do.’
‘This is it, the real attack,’ said Stofrik, standing at Skraffi’s right elbow. ‘The cunning beggars have been testing the ranges and the road all day and now they know the best route up.’
‘It won’t help them,’ said Durk, joining them with a mug of steaming tea cupped in his hands. ‘Rams and siege towers are no good unless they can reach wall or gate, and those aren’t getting anywhere near us.’
‘Look how shoddy they are,’ said Stofrik. A three-tiered tower with a roof of hides caught fire as a blazing rune-crafted catapult stone split its timbers. Flames caught tarred ropes and soon small burning figures were cascading from the tower’s upper reaches like sparks as the robes and rags of the goblins within burned.
Though the dwarf engines were taking their toll, the goblin machines were now within range to reply. Lacking the elevation of the dwarf emplacements, these war engines could only target the lower towers and walls, and they were not as powerful as the machines of the Ekrundfolk. Nevertheless, they kept up an impressive weight of fire, the diminutive crews large in number, motivated by the lashes and punches of their orc bosses.
Boulders and bolts flew out of the darkness, shattering lanterns and pummelling millennium-old stones. The ramparts were filled with stone shards and ricocheting splinters of wood and metal fragments, scoring timbers, cutting ropes and injuring the dwarfs manning the defences.
The spider riders crept closer, scaling cliffs and walls on their arachnid steeds to fall upon the machines directly. Scuttling bodies and spear-armed greenskins overran three of the towers at the far end of the valley before swarming together to pour up and over the wall above them.
Reinforcements surged out from within the halls of the Lower Gate. Axe-wielders and hammerers waded into the forest goblins while quarrellers turned their heavy crossbows onto the machine crews below.
And then the wyverns attacked.
Screeching madly, the two beasts shot down from dark skies, wings folded as they stooped to the kill. Jaws and claws raked bloody furrows along the walls where the goblins were assaulting, killing as many greenskins as dwarfs with reckless abandon. Skraffi saw pale fire burning from the warlord’s axe as it swung the great blade left and right, hewing through dwarf and machine with equal ease.
The second wyvern settled on the rampart of a tower, stone crumbling in its clawed grip, showering jagged blocks down onto the lower levels. A green nimbus of energy shone from the rider and Skraffi realised that it was an orc shaman. Jade lightning forked down from the magic-wielder’s outstretched staff, blasting apart dwarfs, engines and ramparts with detonations of green fire.
‘Grungni’s hammer, look!’ Fleinn had them all turn southwards, where the siege towers were. The orcs and goblins had abandoned their machines and were pouring up the valley with ropes and ladders.
‘A ruse?’ Skraffi could barely believe it even as he uttered the words. ‘The towers were a trick just to distract the engines.’
‘More likely they’ve just given up trying to get the towers close enough,’ said Durk. He looked at the other dwarfs, uncertain. ‘Right?’
The dwarf crews of the bolt throwers and stone lobbers on the surrounding battlements were divided. Some turned their aim towards the monsters rampaging along the walls, others continued to bombard the goblin engines while the rest tried to force back the coming tide of greenskins.
‘It’s not a fluke,’ said Stofrik. ‘See how everything is directed at one side, at the lower defences. If they can get a foothold, they’ll work their way along the valley, moving up the siege towers and rams behind until they reach the bastion.’
Skraffi could see the truth of this. In fact, the plan was blindingly obvious now that he knew what he was looking for. The spider riders had fallen back from the dwarf counterattack but were now gathering for a fresh assault further to the north. The goblins clung nimbly to the backs of their eight-legged steeds as they skittered over the rocks towards the stairs and archways where the reinforcements had emerged – as though that was what they had been waiting for, perhaps.
The shaman had taken flight again and was circling the lower towers, shredding armour and flesh with a tempest of emerald shards that whirled ahead of it along the ramparts; its wyvern finished off any dwarf fortunate to survive the sorcerous blasts.
‘The giants are coming again,’ muttered Stofrik.
In the smoky, ruddy glow of the torchlight the immense figures strode up the valley. They stooped to pick up boulders, heaving them hundreds of paces to crash into the walls and mountainside.
The storm of bolts and rocks from the defenders’ engines was lessening as more positions were overrun or the dwarfs counterattacked and the crews could not risk hitting their own kin. Stones and bolts continued to plough into the goblins and orcs advancing up the road, leaving piles of dead and wounded, but the fighting on the valley walls was rapidly turning against the Ekrundfolk.
‘Here now, this’ll change things,’ said Skraffi, spying several figures atop a tower a hundred paces or so from the closest orc attack. ‘Nordok and his runesmiths.’
Nothing outwardly changed. There were no flashy blasts of light, no glittering domes of power. Instead, it felt as though something was sucked out of the air – a dryness on the lips and in the eyes and an itching of the beard and back of the neck.
As soon as the runesmiths began their work, the shaman’s magic failed. Devastating swirls of green energy became trickles of fading sparks. Chanting their dispels, the runesmiths redirected the shaman’s forks of jade lightning, causing the magical storms to earth harmlessly or shoot into the sky; plumes of green fire eddied away to nothing before licking flames could singe whisker or set fire to ropes; spears of pure magic seemed to turn to dust in mid-flight.
The shaman, incensed, turned its wyvern to the cabal of rune-priests huddled on the tower top, but it was driven away within moments by a fresh barrage of bolts from the war engines around them. The other wyvern broke away from clawing and biting its way through the dwarfs trying to hold one of the arched gates into the secondary halls and turned its attention to the crossbow-armed dwarfs taking a heavy toll of the greenskins flowing past the goblin catapults.
Fresh horn notes sounded over the clamour of fighting, rebounding back from the valley walls.
‘That can’t be right,’ said Skraffi, listening to the rise and fall of the tune.
‘Your ears are not so old,’ said Fleinn. ‘That’s the signal for retreat.’
‘Retreat? Already?’ Stofrik glowered towards the main gatehouse, where the king watched the unfolding battle with his advisors. ‘We’ve barely started, it’s no time to be giving up after one night.’
The horns sounded the withdrawal again, ensuring there had been no mistake.
There was comm
otion on the bastion wall as waking dwarfs heard the horn blasts and thought that they were being overwhelmed. Those that had remained awake assured them in no uncertain terms that they were far from danger, and to calm down and stop acting like beardlings, or worse, elves. This caused a few scuffles – many of the dwarfs were on edge and short of temper and wardens from Lord Garudak’s household intervened to issue stern reprimands and threats of worse for any troublemakers. More of Garudak’s senior warriors moved out through the fortifications, their purple and blue livery plain to see in the lantern light, shouting for the dwarfs to obey the retreat order.
Skraffi spied a familiar face amongst those that were coming along the bastion: Menghir. The others got to him first though, forming an intimidating yet respectful crowd around the lordling. Veterans with rune hammers and golden armour created a cordon around their masters, glaring at anybody that stepped too close.
‘What’s this?’ the dwarfs asked.
‘Why’s the king sounding the retreat?’
‘Let us have a go, we’ll kick these greenskins back down the valley come dawn!’
‘We’re doing no good back here, we should be up there fighting it out.’
‘This is some ploy, isn’t it?’ said Skraffi. ‘Lure the orcs in and then get them with a counterattack.’
‘No ploy, no games,’ Menghir said. His words went unheard in the chorus of demands. ‘Quiet! Cease your prattling!’
His bellow silenced them all. A few muttered apologies, Skraffi amongst them, while others retreated into the anonymity of the throng, eyes averted in shame.
‘Good.’ Menghir looked at the crowd, eyes stern beneath the brim of his boar-crested helm. ‘The Lower Gate cannot hold.’ There were a few protests, quickly stifled by snarls and admonishments from the veterans. When calm was restored, Menghir continued once more. ‘My father and the king are agreed on this. The orcs are too many to hold at the outer defences. You do not know this, but the battle goes poorly to the west and we are only just holding our own to the east. Already inside Ekrund the inner gates are being shut, barred and locked. A timely withdrawal, giving ground on our own terms, is the only way we can be sure to get as many back to the central halls as possible.’
