‘Offense is the essence of air power’

Henry H. Arnold

The roar of the dwarf powder cannon tore through the air of Razork village like an ancient demon awakened from a long slumber.

It’s every shot rebounded with an echo that traveled through the tiny beating hearts of every Kobold that stood around it, each one waiting for the command to move out and slay what was left of the pathetic ratlings who still lived in their tiny little border village.

When the cannon was recalibrated and smashed clean through fort Spearclaw, a general call went up, and two hundred mounted Skogsriders raised their scimitars into the air and charged forward in a single organic mass – a living wall of biting, slashing claws and bloody teeth bared for their furry enemies. They needed no war drums, for the claws of their bouncing, starving mounts beat against the hard rock of the ground and sent an earthquake radiating up its grey veins.

The line of one hundred slingers followed them behind, each Kobold lamenting to his comrade Yips that they would barely have any good killing to do here. Their spirits were raised, however, by the suggestion from one of their lieutenants that, perhaps, they would be given the glorious job of ‘rounding up’ the wounded or lame that Boss Skegga was so found of taking as prisoners. Each little demon whooped and clapped his hoofed heels as he imagined it – taking a ratman, strapping him to their wooden beams, setting them ablaze and then delivering them to Skegga just before they took their last breath. With any luck, perhaps they could get the Queen herself. Perhaps Skegga would even allow them to have their way with her. As ugly as the ratling matriarchs were…females were females. Besides, one slightly more muscled Yip joked, none of Kobold kind had ever broken in a royal arsehole before.

Such philosophical musings were, however, rudely interrupted by one Kobold pointing up at the stalactite-laden sky and shouting something above the din of the cannon’s roaring.

“Shut that Yip-Yip up!” came the shout of one of the Slinger Head-Yips, readying his claws to rebuke the screaming subordinate.

Yet, the perceptive amongst the Kobolds followed the eyes of their comrade and saw what he beheld: a cloud of puffing Glitterpak sailing above them, belching out their vile black gas.

“Glitterpak!” a Head-Yip squealed. “The smelly ratman-farmers are mad-mad! They have let their meals go-go!”

As powerful as the Yips voice was, his scream was lost to the thundering of the Scogs’ scrabbling feet on the Underkingdom floor. They only noticed the puffing bulbs of dumb, grey life when the creatures started falling slowly towards them.

“EEEK!” one Skog rider yipped. “These ugly ball-balls are getting in the way!”

The riders at the vanguard of the formation quickly realized this Yip was right – the Glitterpaks had plummeted towards the ground with a speed that the Kobolds had not seen before, and had come to rest just above the horde of red waves.

“Pop these dumb-dumbs!” Came the collective shout from the head Yips – a shout that was, again, partially lost in the echoing of another cannon shot.

The scimitars of the cavalry sliced up at the stupid creatures, knocking them away like the gassy balloons they were. However, they could not penetrate the armed grey hides of the things.

“ARGH! Kill-kill! These dumb things get in our way-way!”

The cavalry charge – once confident and resolute – suddenly came to an abrupt halt.

Now, those looking on from the village of Razork saw the Kobold army come about and turn back on itself, Skogs bumping against Skog and Kobolds being thrown from their saddles as they tried to pierce the skin of the Glitterpaks to no avail, growing more and more irate with each useless poke and stab.

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And all the while, their little Kobold lungs were filling with the black gas of the useless creatures, prompting coughs and sputters that did nothing more than spur on the fury of the yipping beasts.

Not a single one of them decided to scan the hill where the burning fort spearclaw still stood overlooking the entire flatlands of the North Warrens.

If they had, they would have seen the sight of one of their own, holding their doom within his tiny claws.

…

“Hold,” Marcus told Ix. “Hold…”

The Kobold cavalry was, by this point, engulfed in a sea of gaseous onyx. The smell was rancid. Even from this distance, it was beginning to numb Marcus’s senses.

It had had the same effect on him the first time he had taken a whiff of the gas and pondered where he’d smelled something similar before. It was only when he arrived in Razork that he’d realized, with quiet certainty, just how right he’d been.

Beside him stood the straight-backed form of the Kobold, Ix, his arms faltering every so slightly as he drew back the sinew on the string of his longbow and waited.

One single, flaming arrow flickered before him.

“Sire,” he croaked. “I am never using big-big bow like this. I cannot promise I can hit-hit Skogs.”

Marcus kept his hand raised, nodding to Skeever who waved to him from the left embankment of Razork village, he and his riders hidden from sight by the smoke left in the wake of the dwarf-cannon’s onslaught.

“Who said anything about hitting them?” Marcus said, sweat pooling on his forehead as he watched the Kobold forces become more and more enveloped by the Glitterpak’s gassy belches with each passing second.

They were scrabbling. Their formation was already broken. In the next few minutes, their morale and bodies would be broken, too.

“There is a famous quote from an old warlord of my world,” Marcus said with a slight smirk. “’Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.’”

He looked at his Kobold archer that held the death of hundreds in his hands.

“Are you ready to become a destroyer, Ix?”

The little Kobold returned his Sire’s dry smile.

“Ix only kill a few hundred Yip-yips,” he said. “Not world.”

Marcus had to laugh. Maybe these Kobolds had more intellectual wit than everyone thought.

But that idea wouldn’t serve him here. Right now, he had to give the order to have an entire army of them burn.

Only when he could barely even see their furious forms from within the black haze did he finally give the command:

“LOOSE!”

Ix’s tired arm released its projectile. The ratmen of Razork, the guards of Spearclaw, and the cavalry of Clan Marrow all watched it fly through the dark skies of the Underkingdom – a tiny, insignificant thing that trailed smoothly through the air until, finally, it plummeted towards the black-cloud that had enveloped the Kobold army.

And the skies of the Underkingdom were bathed in red.

…

All the Kobolds saw was black become a kaleidoscope of red-orange light.

Light that seared their eyes and threw them from their mounts.

No one saw which Glitterpak’s spume began the chain reaction. In the years after the battle of Razork field, there would be no historians to extol the brave sacrifice of the first creature to die as its own plumes of expelled gas were ignited to become a blooming flower of carmine destruction that, in a matter of seconds, seared the flesh from the bones of every Kobold stuck within the cloud.

What future generations would all agree on, however, was the simple fact that the confidence of the army was snuffed out like the briefest of candles as the bonfire of the Sha-Alud swept over them.

The earth-shattering wail of the explosion came after the sight of the fiery sphere erupt amongst the horde. The ratmen hiding in the dark corners of Razork watched transfixed as the pillar of flame roared and flared up to touch the ceiling of the cavern, stretching out and silencing even the dwarven cannon behind it.

Then the screams came.

From within the bulb of fire, the Kobolds and their Skogs were cooked alive. Their skin was stripped from their bones and replaced with a bright sheen of living flame that jumped and followed them in smoky trails as those who were not immediately killed in the blast fell to the ground and rolled frantically without once looking to see what was coming for them, thundering up from the burning ratman village.

Two forces of Spineripper cavalry emerged like gnashing specters from the left and right ends of Razork, barreling down the open field towards what remained of the immolated Kobold line while their scorched bodies tried to wail for help from their God that had forsaken them.

The two wedge formations of Spinerippers bore the largest rats the Kobolds had ever seen – each one an armored knight of filth ready to rend their pray apart.

The Kobold slingers watched their cavalry fall away with shaking legs that simply would not function. And it was their firing line that saw exactly what fate awaited them. It was they, the historians of the Underkingdom would later say, who first heard the chilling call of the Shai-Alud as he stood on the hill above the scorched field and gave his second, and last, command to his forces that day:

“CHAAAAAAAARGE!”

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