“Sound the alarm!” a panicked scout screamed as he rode out the forest and into the clearing. Oliver scrambled to the nearest horn and blew it just in time to see the man take a spear to the chest. It had so much power behind it that it lifted him into the air before slamming into the ground, his limp corpse dangling upright.
A moment after he blew the horn, others joined in the call. Within seconds, the entire camp was a frenzy of movement. The rustle of feet and the clatter of weapons sounded along with the curses of sergeants and centurions.
“Gunners to the walls!” Iroh roared, within minutes the dozen or so feet tall walls were jam-packed with the four thousand or so surviving musket men. Oliver said a quick prayer as he checked his uniform for dust and ammo. Everything accounted for, he pulled the hammer on his firearm back and held it at the ready.
“Fire at anything that comes out of that treeline.” Sergeant Irons declared, “we need to hold them off long enough for the legions to fully gear up.”
“Aye, sir!” The soldiers responded with determination, completely ignoring the fact that some of the scouts were still out in the woods.
It was not the sight of the greenskins that alerted them of their presence. But the smell instead. The horrific stench of rotten flesh and fecal matter that had baked in the hot, humid southern heat. Wafted from the massive orc army, had men leaning over the side of the wall and vomiting on their companions below.
Then came the sound, the eldritch chanting of tens of thousands of bass line voices. Accompanied by their ear-piercing alien music, the drums pounding and death whistles shrieking. The thundering of their boots as they marched ever closer.
Only made even more bone-shakingly terrifying by the way that it all stopped in an instant. The entire forest going deathly silent, leaving the men to shuffle and cough in anticipation.
“Make way, make way!” Kaedin shouted, disturbing the uneasy peace. Men parted around him, desperate to get away. He cleared his throat and magic carried his voice to all corners of the fort, “Beyond these walls, our enemy awaits. Their silence shows their fear! Take in the air, smell their hesitation, sense their indecision, feel their panic. Each and every one of you is a Varus man and a legionnaire. You strike fear into all who oppose you on the field of battle. Only the foolish and ignorant dare face us on the battlefield.”
The men cheered, stomping steel-toed boots against the hard stone battlement.
“And I can say without a doubt, that these greenskins are both!” another cheer, “We will hold this fort! We will prove that since the end of the Reclamation Wars the Steel Legions have not become paper tigers!”
“We will rout these untrained pigs and burn their corpses and scatter their ashes so that nothing shall grow here for another hundred years! The men of Varus have not failed before and will not fail today. Our ancestors smile upon us. Let us show them that we are worthy of their name.”
“Varus Forever!” the commissars shouted.
“Varus Forever,” the men echoed, Kaedin nodded to them before turning around to face the forest. He deftly leaped onto the bulwark and took a seat, legs dangling over the edge like a child. Oliver could hardly believe how calm and relaxed the man looked. To his eyes, the Highlord seemed almost bored.
“Gunners prepare for rotating fire, quarter beat intervals,” Iroh called out from one of the towers where he overlooked the entire wall. Several dozen elite marksmen stood around him, their sharp eyes scanning the forest.
The order was quickly relayed across the entire army by messenger boys and the steady tempo of war drums. Oliver’s hands steadied and mind cleared as the sound reverberated through him. The magic imbued within them soothing the nerves of frightened men.
They knew what to do. For they had drilled for months to do exactly that. They would move to the slow pounding rhythm. Each beat meant a change in motion. One beat was firing, the next was a step to the left. Everyone after that was a step backward and a motion in the reloading cycle until they reached the front of the line to fire again.
“INCOMING!” Oliver’s attention snapped back to the siege at hand. From the underbrush of the forest, bright orange lights rushed towards the wall. They exploded with incredible flashes of heat and fire. The entire line flinched back instinctively before the commissars shoved them back into order.
“Aim into the treeline!” He pulled the musket up, “Fire!”
Thunder boomed under a clear sky, birds flew from the treeline and a wave of smoke billowed in the air. The second beat of the drum, so powerful that its vibrations caused the smoke to shimmer and clear, forced Oliver to move.
As he took a step to the left, the reverb rolled across the land, echoing back. The second row fired to the sound of the third beat and he took one perfectly measured step back, shoving a cleaning rod down his musket.
Fireballs raced up from the ground below to the sound of shamans chanting. They quickly reversed their flight as the forces of gravity took hold. The Varus battle priest knelt on the ground, raising their hands into the sky. A blue wall of magic shooting into the sky to meet the fireballs. They crashed into each other with another flash. Heat instantly sunburning unprotected skin and blinding opened eyes.
The torrent of musket fire refused to cease, half inch steel balls ripped the forest floor to shreds and cut down trees. None could tell if the fire had any effect on the greenskins but it ensured that they weren’t getting anywhere near the wall. That is until the first charge.
From the trees, the once silent orcs charged with a roar. They came forth from the forest in a wave carrying massive gleaming spikes, Hundreds fell under the deadly rain, casualties reaching numbers unimaginable even a few years prior. Yet the greenskins carried on long after the point when even the most dedicated human soldiers would have broken. The barely hundred or so that made it close to the wall jumped up, slamming their spikes into it, causing dust to puff outwards in a wave.
Oliver reached the front of the line again and he leaned over the edge. An orc was hanging from the spike, attempting to propel himself higher into the air. Oliver lined up the dots on his musket and fired down at one of the jumpers. The bullet passed through the top of its head and came out the bottom of its skull, spewing purple muck all across the wall. It dropped the spike and fell to the base of the wall.
“They’re trying to use the spikes as a handhold!” he warned the men behind him. The information was quickly relayed all the way down the column of men and to Iroh.
A second wave rushed out of the trees carrying comically large hammers that shimmered with eerie green light. It took two orcs, running side by side to move with one. With the exception of the few Given Men that carried them in a single hand, massive shields in the other.
Again, orcs were scythed down en masse. Oliver fired at one of the greenskins. The round dismembered its arm and caused it to drop the hammer. The other orc’s momentum carried it several more steps before the hammerhead sunk into the ground like an anchor. It roared with frustration, another orc shoved the injured one aside before hefting the hammer up again.
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Their numbers depleted rapidly but some managed to reach the wall in between rotations. Those that did took massive leaping steps, bounding the last twenty yards in under seconds. The two orcs would jump up at a spike as a unit, lifting the hammer above their heads. They pounded them down, driving the spikes firmly into the wall. Within seconds after using the hammers, the orcs shriveled up like flowers and died. Turning into dried husks.
The call for ceasefire sounded and Oliver gave a relieved gasp, leaning on his firearm for support. He stared down at the newly made mummies. “What the hell was that?”
“Beats me.” Simmons grunted, “I’m just happy to be alive.”
He reached to his side and pulled out his water flask. Uncorking the lid and offering it to him he said. “I’ll drink to that.”
He grabbed it and greedily downed the now warm liquid before gasping, “that’s not water!”
Oliver grinned at him, “nope.”
“Why do you have that filled up with whisky?!” he demanded, “you could get punished for that.”
“Not if you don’t tell anyone, and it’s not just any whisky. It’s Elexor.”
Simmon's eyebrows shot into the sky, “there’s no way. That stuff costs more than we make in a year.”
He shrugged, “I found a bottle of the stuff in the centurion’s tent back in first century. I took to uhh liberating it.”
“Whatever man, just don’t get caught with that shit.” he sighed, “probably not going to matter ‘cuz we’ll all be dead before the day’s out.”
/-/
Kaedin strolled into the command tent where his three generals were deep in a discussion.
“Thankfully there have been no casualties so far, though many are suffering from first-degree burns and loss of vision. Ammunition is down to about half, fire dust is a little more but most of it is still in its storage form. I suggest that we retire the gunners and move men of the 3rd Legion to take their place.” Iroh said, tapping the map.
Cahl shook his head, “why would we retire the gunners if they still have ammo?”
“Because the now orcs have a handhold on the walls, quite literally in fact. If we do not move them now, then the wall will fall. They are not nearly as well-armed for close-quarters combat as the legionaries. It would be a waste to let them die and we would lose control of the wall.” Iroh said.
“Why not both?” Stone asked, “you two are both so insistent on your way you have failed to consider the other options. Replace half of the gunners and put legionaries in their place. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Cohorts of 1st Legion would be more than willing to volunteer. Of that, I can assure you.”
“Then we would be cutting our volume of fire down to half. The greenskins barely even reached the walls in the last two waves. If the same number of them reach them and attack again, half or more will make it to the walls. Are you willing to bet on three cohorts being enough to beat them back in such confined spaces?”
“Not if we were to bring some of the mages along.” Iroh tapped the small models of robed men, “We could take those strong in transformation alchemy and have them turn dirt into viscus slime or mud. It would substantially slow them down and even outright kill in some cases.”
“But what of the cost?” Cahl countered, “to turn the land in front of the walls to muskeg would take half our magicians to do. That would leave us incredibly vulnerable if they have more shamans than a normal Warband.”
He shook his head, “we do not need to defeat them outright, for that would enact far too high a toll on the army. We need only hold out until it arrives.”
“Iroh, you say that but I am not sure that it will arrive. I fail to understand why we don’t just have it follow the army in the first place. Why let it return home? Why not keep it here for use whenever necessary. It’s not like we can’t afford the cost.”
Iroh’s eyes twinkled, “that my young friend is a question for Kaedin isn’t it?”
“Yes I would ask him if that fool would stop fucking around on the battlements and get his ass in here like a good commander should be.” he gritted his teeth preparing for a rant, “He nor I am as young as we used to be, we shouldn’t be fighting on the front lines anymore, we shouldn’t be fighting at all! There’s nothing out here to fight over. Bushes and trees are all I have seen for the last two months! All I want is to watch a tournament and talk to my grandchildren. But no, Kae’s gotten bored. He wants to show the rest of the highlords that he’s still got it. And now we’re stuck in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere fighting rancid foul putrid disgusting vile greenskins. The food sucks, the sleep sucks, and I got blisters all over my feet! I don’t remember it being this bad back in the day. So what changed?”
Iroh sipped his tea, concealing a massive smile, “I would not know, perhaps you could ask your old friend.”
“I would if he would stop acting like a child and get his ass in-” Kaedin cut him off.
“You want to know what changed?” Cahl’s face paled as the blood drained from it. He slowly turned around, “I’ll tell you what changed, you did. When we first set out for war. It was you, me, Iroh, and three hundred men disgruntled with how old Lord Taruto was running the town. We didn’t have all this fancy hardware. Muskets? Plate armor? Tents? What were those? We fought with the clothes on our backs and spears in our hands. It was only after we dangled that crazy old fucker’s flayed corpse on the walls of Freehold that we began to live in luxury. In the twenty years since then, we've grown soft. All that opulent wealth we brought back has made us complacent and fat.”
“Those first few battles we were in, fighting against the other cities. When we couldn’t even trust our own men, the people we were back then would have been disgusted with how we spend our day-to-day lives now.”
“So you’re fighting for nostalgia?” he snorted, “real impressive Kae. The families of the men we’ve lost will be so happy to learn that.”
Kaedin shook his head, “no I am not fighting for nostalgia, or pride, or greed.”
“Really then? So what are we fighting for?” Cahl asked, sounding impatient. Feared warlord that he now was, Cahl still remembered Kaedin as the dumber of the two childhood friends who had spent most of his time running away from his crazed sickly father.
“I’m getting there.” Kaedin shook his head, “so impatient. You know, your father always said tha-”
“GET TO THE POINT VARUS!”
“Fine.” he paused just long enough for the general to open his mouth again in irritation, “it’s because of those reports we received last year.”
The two younger generals stared at him for several heartbeats, “My lord, you can not be taking those accounts seriously.” Stone said.
“Why not? Are our spies not effective?”
“Their claims are too far-fetched to be true.” she protested, “Iroh, back us up.”
The elderly man looked alarmed. He glanced up from his tea, “don’t drag me into this.”
“You have the most experience here. You should know better than us.”
“What makes you think that?” he turned to Cahl, “I was the captain of your father’s guard. Most of my life I spent perfecting small unit tactics and on campaign. Politics were well and truly out of my reach. That has not changed since, you would know this if you cared to pay attention.”
“I do pay attention,” he said.
“If you’d paid attention then you would know the answer to your own questions, you foolish boy! We are here as a show of force. It has been too long since we have last proved to the other fiefs that Varus is not a force to be trifled with. Their attitudes toward us have shifted. Varus wishes to show them that nothing has changed and that we are still the dominant entity in the empire.”
“If that is the case, then why all the secrecy?” he asked, “why not just show them outright and for that matter, why not just hold a parade?”
This time Kaedin spoke, “any monkey with a stick can march in a straight line, it takes mettle to fight and there is no greater opponent than the greenskins. And do not insult me. Do you think that the obvious movement of that many troops and equipment was not intentional? That I would just forget that the other high lords have their own spies within our lands? If we announced that the orcs were on the move again then the other lords would have an excuse to flood our fief like a plague, looting and stealing at a whim. But now, they know that something is out here but none dare pass through our borders.”
“Fine, but I don’t understand why we don’t just have it fly out here and burn them all to ash and be done with it.”
Kaedin looked slightly offended, “It has a name you know. I think he’d like for you to use it.”
“I’d rather not.”
“That will not please him.”
“It’s a dragon, it’s not like it understands anything!”
“His name is Regulus, you should use it.”