Rise of the Horde
Chapter 531 - 531

Smoke curled over the Garthum plains, rising from the charred remnants of makeshift palisades and broken siege gear. Blood soaked the tall grass and crusted into the earth beneath armored boots and severed limbs. The Threian army moved eastward like a crimson tide, General Snowe at its helm, yet the land ahead had grown crueler, rockier, as if the earth itself resisted their march.

Scouts reported a gathering storm ahead.

The orcs had regrouped. Survivors from countless tribes, remnants of shattered warbands, had rallied to a single banner. They called him Skull Crusher.

General Snowe stood beneath a crooked tree, map unfurled in his hands. The wind tugged at his white cloak.

"They've chosen their field," said one of his officers, a scar-faced knight named Drevon. "A natural bowl between twin ridges, three miles wide. Cleft stones at the back like a jagged wall. A trap if I've ever seen one."

Snowe nodded. "Then we'll turn the trap on its maker. Signal the warmages. Prepare the Thunder Makers on the southern rise. We will answer their fury with annihilation."

By dusk, the Threians had encircled the natural depression. Camps were pitched across the southern ridge, siege lines drawn. The warmages etched arcane runes into the soil and whispering winds stirred the tall grass. Engineers assembled the Thunder Makers and stacked powder barrels behind them. Veteran infantry sharpened blades and polished armor, while younger recruits struggled to hide their nerves.

Snowe moved through the camp, inspecting formations and issuing curt orders. At his side walked Drevon and Warmagus Tyrell, a gaunt man with pale eyes and fingers stained by ink and frost. The air buzzed with tension and magic.

"That bowl will swallow men alive," Tyrell muttered. "Wind won't pass easily through those ridges. Ice may shatter, but the aftermath... it won't be clean."

Snowe stared into the dark horizon. "This battle won't be clean. It never is."

*****

At dawn, the Threian army took its positions. The bowl had become a fortress of savage defiance. Orcs had raised crude wooden stakes and mounds of dark stone for barricades. Fires flickered in cauldrons of pitch, and the stench of blood and sweat already wafted skyward. Banners of flayed skin flapped in the wind.

And at the very center stood Skull Crusher.

Towering above his kin, clad in black iron and bearing a massive axe of chipped obsidian, he raised a severed Threian helm toward the rising sun. The orcs howled in unison. A thousand drums roared. Shields slammed against shields. The very ground seemed to thrum.

The horde charged.

Thunder Makers barked first. Explosive rounds shrieked through the sky and tore into the front ranks of orcs, dismembering scores. Limbs flew. Guts spilled. Earth buckled under the fury of the blasts. But the orcish tide surged forward. They climbed over bodies. They crawled through flame. They roared with hatred older than the Garthum soil.

Three lines of gunners opened fire, the crack of boomsticks echoing across the bowl. Shot tore through armor and bone, staggering the front. Some orcs fell in writhing piles, but others leapt over them, maddened by bloodlust.

"Infantry forward!" Snowe's voice thundered. "Hold the line!"

Spearmen braced, heels digging into earth. The clash was instant. Iron met bone. Flesh parted. The air turned thick with screams. Cleavers hacked into exposed necks. Maces shattered ribcages. Arrows rained from both sides.

The First Spear cavalry, resplendent in iron plate, flanked the orc left. Their charge split a cluster of heavy brutes, trampling warriors beneath iron hooves. They looped and cut back in, spears red with gore. Yet for every orc slain, two more closed in.

And in the center...Skull Crusher.

He moved like living wrath. Each swing of his axe tore through armor and man alike. A Threian captain raised his shield, only to be cut in two. Gunners targeted the chieftain, but he shifted between bursts, flanked by twin orcs wielding hooked chains. They dragged men from ranks, crushing them under foot.

"Target the bastard!" screamed Tyrell.

Warmages raised hands, conjuring wind and frost. Jagged shards of ice slammed into an advancing warband, freezing them in place. A gust of hurricane force sent them tumbling back. Yet Skull Crusher did not waver.

A massive spear of bone whistled through the air. One warmage cried out a warning...but too late. The weapon impaled him, lifting his body before pinning it against a boulder. Blood streaked down his robes.

Snowe's face twisted with fury. He stepped forward, summoning his battle energy. A vortex of wind howled from his sword, hurling several orcs off a ridge. His soldiers rallied at the sight.

Still, the ground drank blood without pause.

Hours passed. The sun climbed, then fell. Bodies piled high across the basin. The heat of noon baked blood into armor. Buzzards circled overhead. Threians pushed forward inch by inch, each gain paid in limbs and breath.

By nightfall, the bowl was a grave.

The orcs had fallen back to the cleft stones...dark spires of natural rock that loomed like broken teeth. A final barricade had been hastily raised. Fires glowed behind it, casting dancing shadows over bloodied orc faces.

Snowe stood amid the carnage, his breastplate cracked and spattered red. His sword dripped gore. Nearby, Drevon stitched a wound on his own thigh.

"We hold the center," Drevon rasped. "But we've lost three thousand men."

Snowe said nothing.

The wind carried the distant sound of chanting. Orcish war-prayers, guttural and low. A promise of another day.

"Tomorrow," Snowe whispered, "we break that Skull Crusher."

*****

The camp was eerily quiet that night. No singing, no fires. Only the sounds of wounded groaning and armor being mended. Physicians moved between rows of tents. Surgeons amputated shattered limbs. A priestess of the Goddess of Light whispered last rites.

Snowe paced outside his command tent, the weight of command heavy on his shoulders. Every decision had cost lives. And Skull Crusher was still alive.

He knelt beside a dying soldier, a boy with flaxen hair and one eye swollen shut. "Did we win, sir?" the boy croaked.

Snowe nodded slowly. "Today, we held. Tomorrow, we end it."

The boy smiled, then exhaled.

The wind shifted. From the cleft stones came the low beat of drums.

"They're not done yet," Tyrell murmured, appearing beside him.

"No," Snowe agreed. "But neither are we."

He turned to the horizon. The Tekarr Mountains loomed in the far distance, barely visible in the dark.

"They think this field will break us. But this is only the beginning."

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