Rise of the Horde - Chapter 783 - 782

The dwarven supply column arrived at the barbarian camp on the fourth day after the meeting with the Horde.

The column stretched for two miles along the mountain road, ninety-seven wagons bearing the output of the Ironbeard Clan’s foundries: one hundred and seven thundermaker barrels in their transport cradles, three hundred thousand boomstick charges in powder-sealed crates, iron balls for the thundermakers stacked in the wagons’ reinforced beds, replacement armor plates and weapon components and the specific miscellany that a dwarven military supply operation provided to the customers whose gold and whose enemies’ identity met the Ironbeard Clan’s requirements.

Behind the supply wagons, fifteen thousand barbarian warriors from the highland tribes marched in the loose formation that the highland march doctrine prescribed. The warriors wore the standard dwarven armor that the Ironbeard Clan’s trade provided. They carried the standard dwarven boomsticks that the same trade supplied. They carried the energy of warriors who had descended from the mountains to join a winning campaign, the energy that reinforcement produced in warriors whose arrival coincided with the campaign’s approach to the objective that the campaign existed to achieve.

Warchief Garrok received the column at the camp’s northern perimeter. The warchief’s jaw wound stretched as he set his expression to the expression that a commander’s reception of reinforcements required: the expression that communicated to the arriving warriors that the campaign they were joining was the campaign that their arrival would complete.

“One hundred and seven thundermakers,” Garrok said, watching the weapons’ transport cradles pass the perimeter’s checkpoint. “Count them.”

Tharn counted. The chieftain whose crooked elbow bore the campaign’s early wounds walked the column’s length and counted each cradle and each barrel and each ammunition crate and returned with the numbers that the counting produced.

“One hundred and seven weapons confirmed. Three hundred and four thousand boomstick charges. Forty-two thousand thundermaker balls. Fifteen thousand two hundred and thirty-one warriors.”

Garrok absorbed the numbers. The numbers were the numbers that Vor’gath’s counsel had predicted and that the dwarven trade’s reliability had guaranteed. The numbers converted the barbarian army from the force that fifteen thundermakers and fourteen thousand warriors represented into the force that one hundred and twenty-one thundermakers and twenty-nine thousand warriors represented.

* * * * *

The assembly of the reinforced thundermaker batteries took two days. The dwarven-engineered weapons were mounted on the platforms that the barbarian engineers constructed at the positions that the campaign’s targeting doctrine specified. The batteries were arranged in the arc that the capital’s western and northern approaches presented, the arc’s geometry designed to concentrate the bombardment on the wall sections that the campaign’s reconnaissance had identified as the sections whose construction was oldest and whose maintenance history suggested the structural vulnerabilities that sustained bombardment would exploit.

One hundred and twenty-one thundermakers in a semicircular arc spanning three miles of the capital’s approaches. Each weapon crewed by the nine-warrior team that the barbarian artillery doctrine prescribed. Each weapon supplied by the ammunition stacks that the dwarven wagons had delivered.

The capital’s walls were visible from the battery positions. Forty-foot stone walls, three centuries old, built by engineers whose defensive design had anticipated catapults and siege towers and battering rams and the specific threats that the pre-thundermaker era had produced. The walls had not been designed to resist the concentrated bombardment that one hundred and twenty-one dwarven-forged thundermakers delivered.

The Threian army’s remaining twenty-eight thousand soldiers occupied the approaches and the wall positions that the capital’s defensive plan prescribed. The soldiers’ boomstick ammunition was at the level that the campaign’s expenditure had produced: functionally zero for the field formations, the capital’s armory reserves providing the final stockpile that the garrison’s defense would consume. The thundermaker batteries were empty. The soldiers held swords and spears and the specific determination of men defending the walls behind which their families and their king and the kingdom’s central authority resided.

King Aldric stood on the capital’s western wall at dawn on the second day after the supply column’s arrival and looked at the barbarian batteries’ arc through the spyglass that the command position’s elevation required.

“One hundred and twenty-one,” Fairfax said, beside the king. The Fifth Realm lord’s magical perception had counted the thundermakers’ metallic signatures with the precision that the Realm’s enhanced sensory capability provided. “One hundred and twenty-one thundermakers. The number exceeds our original count by a factor of more than two.”

“How long will the walls hold?”

“The walls are three centuries of stone construction. The construction’s quality is the quality that three centuries of maintenance has sustained. Against conventional siege, the walls hold indefinitely. Against one hundred and twenty-one thundermakers with plenty of ammunition, the walls hold for approximately four to five days.”

“Four to five days.”

“The walls’ weakest section is the northwestern corner, where the original construction’s foundation shows the settlement that three centuries of ground moisture has produced. The northwestern corner will breach first. The breach will expand from the corner along the western wall as the bombardment’s sustained impact degrades the wall’s structural integrity from the breach point outward. The breach’s expansion will produce the gap that the barbarian infantry will exploit for the assault.”

The king looked at the northwestern corner. The specific section of wall that Fairfax had identified. The section where the wall’s stone facing showed the hairline cracks that ground settlement produced over centuries, the cracks invisible from the ground level but visible from the wall-walk’s elevation, the cracks that the thundermakers’ sustained bombardment would find and widen and exploit.

“We hold the walls until the walls fail,” the king said. “Then we hold the streets. Then we hold the palace. Then we hold whatever remains.”

“The orcs’ agreement,” Fairfax said.

“The agreement is signed. The agreement is law. If the capital falls, the agreement’s enforcement depends on the orcs’ willingness to enforce it against whatever authority the barbarians install. The orcish commander agreed to observe. The orcish commander agreed to let the barbarians fight. The orcish commander’s observance means the orcish army is intact while ours is being ground against the walls.”

“You trusted the barbarian shaman’s proposal.”

“I trusted nothing. The decision was not mine. The decision was the orcish commander’s. The orcish commander chose to observe rather than intervene. The orcish commander’s choice serves the orcish commander’s purpose, which is Yohan’s security. The question is whether the orcish commander’s calculation of Yohan’s security aligns with the kingdom’s survival or with the kingdom’s replacement.”

The king’s words carried the weight of a monarch who understood that his kingdom’s fate was being determined not by his own decisions but by the decisions of two other commanders whose interests intersected the kingdom’s survival at angles that the king could not control.

The thundermakers opened fire at the ninth hour.

The Baron of Frost observed the dwarven column’s arrival from the altitude that the shamans’ compressed air layer did not reach, two thousand feet above the barbarian camp. Two griffons, the Baron and Sir Harath, the squadron’s last riders, circled at the altitude that observation required and that intervention could not reach because the one hundred and seven thundermakers’ arrival made the thundermaker batteries’ defense the specific density that two griffon riders could not penetrate.

“One hundred and seven,” Harath said, through the communication crystal that the griffon knights’ formation flying required.

“One hundred and seven,” Valden confirmed. “The number exceeds anything we can address. The guerrilla campaign that reduced fifty to fifteen required twenty-five days and cost four griffon knights. Reducing one hundred and twenty-one to fifteen would require one hundred and seventy-five days at the same rate. We do not have one hundred and seventy-five days. We do not have one hundred and seventy-five nights of diving through boomstick fire.”

“Then the thundermakers win.”

“The thundermakers win unless something else changes the equation. The griffons cannot change the equation alone. The equation requires a force that the equation’s current variables do not include.”

Valden looked southeast, toward the position where the Verakh reports said the Horde’s camp at Ashwell existed. The force that the equation’s current variables did not include. Seven thousand warriors whose patience had been the patience that produced the position that the patience’s targets could not escape.

“The tusked brutes,” Harath said, following the Baron’s gaze.

“The tusked brutes,” Valden said. “The variable that changes the equation. If the variable enters the equation.”

The griffons flew south toward the capital. The observation was complete. The thundermaker count was one hundred and twenty-one. The capital’s walls had approximately four days before the bombardment’s sustained impact produced the breach that one hundred and twenty-one weapons’ concentrated fire would produce in stone that fifty weapons had not been able to breach in the time that fifty weapons required.

Four days. The walls. The capital. The kingdom.