Rise of the Horde - Chapter 768 - 767

The Battle of Kellsworth Ridge was fought with thirty-one thundermakers on the barbarian side and the memory of fifty on the Threian.

The king’s army held the ridge that Captain Merritt had defended six days earlier, the timber-framed earthworks that Merritt’s garrison had constructed from Snowe’s dispatches still standing, the earthworks’ timber-and-stone construction bearing the scars of the barbarian bombardment that Merritt had endured. The king’s engineers had reinforced the earthworks during the three days of preparation that the retreat from Harken Field had provided, the reinforcement using the timber-framed technique that every Threian engineer had now learned from the dispatches that Snowe had disseminated and that Snowe had learned from fighting the orcs.

The barbarian assault began at dawn with the thundermaker bombardment that every engagement since Fort Harken had begun with. Thirty-one weapons on the ridgeline opposite the Threian position, the weapons’ crews firing in the staggered sequence that sustained the continuous bombardment rhythm.

The rhythm was different. Thirty-one weapons produced a different cadence than fifty. The interval between impacts was longer. The density of the bombardment across the Threian position’s frontage was thinner. The psychological effect, the specific oppression that continuous thundermaker fire produced in the soldiers absorbing it, was reduced by the interval’s lengthening from every four seconds to every six.

Two seconds of difference. The soldiers in the earthworks felt the two seconds the way soldiers felt every variable that affected their survival: with the specific attention that proximity to death produced. Six seconds between impacts was six seconds of breath that four seconds between impacts did not allow. Six seconds was the interval that allowed a soldier to raise his head above the earthwork’s crest, aim his boomstick, fire, and drop below the crest before the next impact arrived. Four seconds had not allowed that sequence. The Baron of Frost’s thundermaker destruction had purchased two seconds per cycle, and two seconds per cycle was the difference between a formation that could return fire and a formation that could only absorb it.

“They are thinner,” Aldrath said, from the command position behind the central earthwork. “The bombardment is thinner than Harken Field. The Baron’s work.”

“Thirty-one confirmed by the scout’s reports this morning,” Fairfax said. “Down from forty-eight at Harken Field. Seventeen batteries destroyed or silenced by the Baron’s griffon squadron in eight days.”

“Seventeen batteries.”

“Seventeen batteries, at the cost of one griffon knight killed and two wounded. The dwarven supply is replacing some of the destroyed weapons but the replacement rate is slower than the Baron’s destruction rate. The net reduction is approximately two to three thundermakers per day.”

The mathematics of the thundermaker reduction were the mathematics that the kingdom’s survival depended on. Thirty-one thundermakers today. Twenty-eight or twenty-nine tomorrow. Twenty-five or twenty-six the day after. The decline’s trajectory intersected the threshold at which the thundermaker fire’s density became insufficient to suppress the Threian formation’s boomstick response, the threshold below which the Threian army’s numerical superiority could be applied without the thundermaker fire grinding the numbers away faster than the numbers’ advantage accumulated.

“What is the threshold?” the king asked.

“Approximately fifteen to twenty thundermakers,” Fairfax calculated. “Below twenty, the bombardment’s density is insufficient to suppress our full frontage. Below fifteen, the thundermakers become a supporting weapon rather than a decisive weapon. The decisive capability shifts from the thundermakers to the boomstick exchange, and the boomstick exchange is the exchange where our numerical advantage produces the casualty differential that our strategic position requires.”

“Our boomstick ammunition.”

“Eight percent. Approximately one engagement at full expenditure. Two engagements at reduced expenditure with conservation measures.”

“Then we fight this engagement at reduced expenditure. We hold the earthworks. We absorb the thundermaker fire. We fire boomsticks at the targets that the thundermakers’ reduced density allows us to engage. And we wait for the Baron to reduce the thundermaker count further.”

* * * * *

The barbarian infantry assault hit the earthworks at the third hour.

Fourteen thousand barbarian warriors, their dwarven armor bearing the scars and dents of the campaign’s previous engagements, advanced up the ridge’s slope toward the timber-framed earthworks in the loose formation that highland assault doctrine prescribed. Their boomstick fire preceded the assault, the rolling volleys sweeping across the earthworks’ crest with the sustained density that unlimited ammunition provided.

The Threian soldiers behind the earthworks returned fire in the conservation pattern that the king’s order specified: aimed shots at specific targets rather than volley fire at the formation’s general area. Each soldier selected a target, aimed with the care that the ammunition’s scarcity demanded, and fired. The boomstick’s ball crossed the three-hundred-pace distance and struck the selected target’s armor. Some balls penetrated. Some did not. Each ball that penetrated was a ball well spent. Each ball that did not was a ball wasted, and wasted balls were the specific waste that eight-percent ammunition could not afford.

A Threian corporal in the central earthwork aimed his boomstick at a barbarian warrior who was running uphill at the two-hundred-pace mark. The warrior was a large man, his dwarven breastplate bearing the rune patterns that shamanic enhancement painted on warriors before assault operations. The corporal aimed at the breastplate’s center, the largest target, the highest probability of hit at the range that two hundred paces represented.

He fired. The ball struck the barbarian’s breastplate and the rune-enhanced iron held. The ball dented the plate and the barbarian stumbled but continued running, the runic enhancement providing the damage absorption that the standard iron did not. The corporal had spent one ball on a target that the ball had not eliminated.

“Thrak’gul,” the corporal muttered, using the orcish word for rock-brained that had entered the Threian military’s vocabulary through four months of campaign osmosis. He reloaded. He aimed at the next target. He selected the neck, the smaller target, the lower probability of hit but the higher probability of kill if the hit connected. He fired. The ball struck the barbarian’s gorget and deflected. Two balls spent. No kills.

The soldier beside the corporal fired his boomstick at a barbarian at one hundred and fifty paces. The ball caught the barbarian in the face, entering through the eye slit of the helmet’s visor, and the barbarian dropped without a sound. One ball. One kill.

“Aim for the face,” the soldier said.

“The face is a two-inch target at one hundred and fifty paces.”

“The face is the target that kills. The chest is the target that dents armor. We have eight percent ammunition. We cannot afford dents.”

The exchange continued. The barbarian assault pressed uphill against the boomstick fire that the conservation pattern produced. The conservation pattern’s rate of fire was lower than the volley fire’s rate. The barbarian casualties were lower than they would have been under volley fire. But each casualty was a kill rather than a wound, the aimed shots’ precision producing the lethal hits that the conservation’s selectivity required.

The thundermaker fire struck the earthworks at the six-second interval. Each impact shook the timber frames. Each impact cratered the earth behind the earthworks where the reserve formations waited. Each impact reminded the soldiers in the earthworks that the thundermakers were still firing and the thundermakers’ fire was still the thing that had broken the center at Harken Field, the thing that had killed four hundred soldiers per minute, the thing that had made fifty weapons decisive against forty-two thousand soldiers.

Thirty-one weapons were not fifty weapons. The difference was real. The difference was the Baron of Frost’s contribution, measured in cracked ammunition wagons and silenced batteries and the two seconds per cycle that the reduction had purchased.

The earthworks held through the first assault. The barbarian infantry withdrew at the sixth hour with approximately eighteen hundred dead. The Threian casualties from the thundermaker fire and the boomstick exchange were approximately twenty-two hundred dead and thirty-one hundred wounded.

The exchange rate favored the barbarians. The exchange rate had favored the barbarians at every engagement since Fort Harken because the exchange rate was determined by the thundermaker advantage that the barbarians possessed and the Threians did not. But the exchange rate at Kellsworth Ridge was less favorable to the barbarians than the exchange rate at Harken Field, and the difference was the seventeen thundermakers that the Baron of Frost had destroyed.

“We held,” the king said.

“We held, Your Majesty,” Fairfax confirmed. “At a cost that our remaining strength can sustain for approximately three more engagements at this casualty rate. The thundermaker count continues to decline. If the Baron maintains his destruction rate, the count will reach the threshold within ten to twelve days.”

“Ten to twelve days.”

“Ten to twelve days of holding. Of absorbing thundermaker fire. Of spending boomstick ammunition at the conservation rate. Of soldiers dying in the earthworks at the rate that thirty-one thundermakers produce while the Baron reduces the count toward the number that changes the mathematics.”

The king looked at the ridgeline where the barbarian thundermakers were being repositioned for the next assault’s bombardment. Thirty-one weapons. Each one a three-ton monument to the dwarven grudge. Each one a weapon that the Baron of Frost was hunting from the sky with the specific persistence that a man defending his family’s dominion produced when the defense required the elimination of the thing that threatened the dominion.

“We hold,” the king said. “Ten to twelve days. We hold.”

The army held. The thundermakers fired. The Baron hunted. And the number that determined everything continued its slow decline toward the threshold that would change the war.