Rise of the Horde - Chapter 727 - 726

On the twelfth day, the ogres got their wish.

Aldrath sent a strike force of eight hundred cavalry and four hundred dismounted heavy infantry on a flanking route through the southern farmland with the specific objective of destroying the 1st Kani’karr Corps’ siege equipment, the catapults and ballistae whose bombardment had been degrading the combined force’s positions since the ford battle.

The strike force reached the siege equipment’s position at the fourteenth hour. The position was on the reverse slope of a low ridge, the catapults and ballistae arranged in the firing configuration that the troll crews maintained, the equipment’s components visible above the ridge’s crest line.

The thirty-two ogres were sitting around the equipment in a loose perimeter, eating. Several were asleep. One was scratching its back against a catapult arm with the specific contentment of a very large being addressing an itch in the only manner available to it.

The cavalry commander assessed the scene from five hundred paces and concluded that the guard force was minimal, disorganized, and unaware of the strike force’s approach. He ordered the charge.

The cavalry came over the ridge at the gallop, eight hundred riders in a line abreast, lances lowered, the formation covering the distance between the ridge crest and the siege equipment in the seconds that a cavalry charge required to cross five hundred paces of open ground.

The ogres stopped eating.

They did not panic. They did not shout warnings. They did not form a defensive line. They simply stopped eating and stood up and looked at the cavalry with the expression that very large beings produced when the thing they had been waiting for had finally arrived.

“GRAKH’VOL!” The greeting erupted from the nearest ogre with a volume that the cavalry’s horses felt in their chests before they heard it in their ears. “FRIENDS! YOU CAME! ZUG ZUG!”

The ogre picked up the catapult’s ammunition stone, a rock that weighed approximately four hundred pounds, and threw it at the cavalry line.

The stone hit the ground twenty paces in front of the leading riders and bounced. The bounce carried it through the cavalry line at chest height, striking two horses simultaneously, the impact folding both animals sideways with a sound that was the sound of large bones breaking inside large bodies. The riders were thrown. One landed and rolled. The other landed and did not roll because the stone had caught his leg on the way through and the leg was no longer attached to his body in a way that permitted rolling.

The other ogres threw their stones. Twelve stones, each one four hundred pounds, each one thrown by a being whose arm strength was sufficient to make four hundred pounds an object that could be aimed and launched with accuracy at ranges that the throwing being found acceptable, which was ranges up to eighty paces.

The cavalry charge came apart. Horses hit by stones stopped being horses and became obstacles. Riders hit by stones stopped being riders. The charge’s momentum, which required continuous forward movement to generate the impact that cavalry charges produced at contact, was broken by the obstacles that the stones created, the charge becoming a swerving, dodging, decelerating collection of individual riders trying to navigate a field of thrown rocks and dying horses.

* * * * *

The dismounted heavy infantry reached the siege equipment’s perimeter sixty seconds after the cavalry charge broke. The infantry were professionals, well-armored, equipped with the polearms that anti-cavalry doctrine used and that the strike force’s commander had included in the formation because the strike force’s intelligence had mentioned ogres.

The polearms were designed for mounted opponents. They were not designed for opponents who stood nine feet tall and weighed eight hundred pounds and who regarded polearms with the specific disdain that very strong beings reserved for weapons whose reach was less than the being’s arm span.

An ogre named Grukk, the largest of the guard force, met the infantry’s lead element with the enthusiasm that two months of boredom had accumulated. He grabbed the leading polearm’s shaft in one hand, snapped it like kindling, and used the broken end to strike the polearm’s wielder across the helmet with a blow that dented the helmet so deeply that the helmet became a permanent part of the wielder’s skull.

“KRAGH!” Grukk roared the single-word war cry with a joy that shook the air. “SMASH! Chieftain promised smashing! SMASHING IS HERE!”

He picked up a second infantryman by the cuirass, lifted the man to eye height, examined him with the brief curiosity that ogres applied to small things, and threw him into the third infantryman with sufficient force to knock both men down and render the third man unconscious through his helmet.

The other ogres engaged the infantry with similar enthusiasm. The engagement was not a battle in the conventional sense. It was the interaction between a force designed to fight things roughly its own size and a force that was not roughly its own size, the polearms and the heavy armor and the professional training that the infantry brought to the engagement encountering opponents for whom polearms were sticks and heavy armor was clothing and professional training was an interesting concept that did not change the physics of what happened when eight-hundred-pound beings hit two-hundred-pound beings with their hands.

The strike force withdrew in twelve minutes. Forty-three cavalry killed by thrown stones. Thirty-one infantry killed or incapacitated by ogres. Zero siege equipment damaged.

“Grombash krul!” Grukk announced to the retreating strike force, his voice carrying across the distance with the volume that made the announcement audible to the cavalry’s rearmost elements. “COME BACK! GRUKK IS NOT FINISHED! GRUKK HAS BEEN WAITING TWO MONTHS! TWO MONTHS IS A LONG TIME FOR GRUKK! COME BACK AND LET GRUKK FINISH!”

The strike force did not come back.

The ogres returned to their meal. The catapults were undamaged. The ballistae were undamaged. The troll crews, who had retreated to a safe distance when the cavalry charge began and who had watched the engagement with the particular expression of small beings observing very large beings do the things that very large beings did, returned to their equipment and resumed the maintenance that the firing schedule required.

Khao’khen received the engagement report that evening.

“The ogres performed as expected,” Sakh’arran said.

“The ogres performed as they have been wanting to perform for two months. Inform Grukk that his contribution has been noted and that additional opportunities for contribution will be provided.”

“Grukk will be pleased.”

“Grukk is always pleased when smashing occurs. It is the absence of smashing that Grukk finds objectionable.”

The Snarling Wolf held its position. The siege equipment was intact. The ogres were satisfied, temporarily. And the campaign’s arithmetic continued to favor the army that understood the specific value of every component in its formation, including the components that weighed eight hundred pounds and whose primary tactical capability was picking things up and throwing them.