It wasn’t going well, not at all. Collin recognised a testing blow when he saw one, mere fodder thrown at the walls in great volumes, sent to die in droves and expose useful weaknesses in the process. Well, they were certainly dying. And the fact that Venka could order so much death for knowledge alone said more about the General’s resources than his skill.
Galukar, where the fuck are you?
Easy to call the King useless, easy to spit at his feat, when the bastard was standing idle and passing judgement on workers. So much harder to prop himself up by his morals when the matter of killing turned up. Collin watched his right flank threaten to crumble, orcish elites mixed in with the grunts, easily one for every score, and found himself wondering how quickly that tide would be reversed if he had the Godblade’s Master to throw into it.
Then he pushed his thoughts elsewhere. Wondering about what he didn’t have was a surefire way to waste that little time remaining in his grasp.
He didn’t need to look around to find the suitable bunch of reinforcements, not physically. Collin had reserved a dozen battalions for just such occasions, and memorised each one. There still came a few moments of mental flailing as he searched his own mind for the information, thoughts somehow slowed by the daunting scale of his novel new assignment.
“The Third.” He commanded, knowing without looking that his orders were being sent down the line. “I want the Third up there on that section, order them to form a wall before they ascend, it’s going to be bloody vicious fighting and I don’t want to lose any more than is necessary in this shit an assault.”
It was already vicious fighting, as far as the eye could see. Collin saw nothing but dying men and killing men and three or four enemies for each one, their defence sustained only by the sole grace of being affixed to a wall that kept the foe from really bringing their numbers to bear. But there were siege towers coming, now, tall and plated in iron, ready to meet whatever counter-fire would strike them and come on anyway.
“I want the cannons on them.” He barked, a cold fear rushing through him. Four or five orcs at once spilling onto a wall from a shielded passage would be the end of it, that much Collin knew. There’d be no displacing them by simply cutting a chain, as with the scaling force from the other day. If a siege tower touched down, it might well spell the defeat of their entire defence.
He watched the cannons move out, and found himself able to do nothing but pray.
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Gyvain hadn’t expected the windmage’s help, and he hadn’t needed it. But he’d have died without it. He was a big enough man to admit that much, and a desperate enough man to not feel the slightest twitch of bitterness at seeing the killing power thrown out by a man so much more youthful and green than himself.
Cutting currents scraped the air, picking orcs and undead up to send them spinning from the walls, or driving chunks of mortar into them with bone-smashing velocity. It was a destruction possible only to one with magic, and no small measure of it. But Gyvain had seen far more skilled casters of far less talent. Falls was distracted, he realised. There could not have been a worse time than that moment for such things, but it was the nature of a magus to be inconvenient in their disposition. He got back to killing anyway.
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The attack had lasted a day, and the focus had intensified into a crescendo, when Ensharia finally made her move. It felt almost surreal to do, after her time of inactivity and imprisonment. Minds had inertia just as bodies did, and to suddenly spur oneself into action was a jarring thing. There was no choice now, though.
General Venka, fortunately, seemed busy conducting his siege still. Ensharia had counted on that, counted on the old narcissist being obsessive over his enemy’s unexpected resistance, counted on him monomaniacally focusing on breaking through their defences regardless. Counted on the nice, big lull that would leave in his observations around his own camp.
Of course he had not been so careless as to leave them entirely unobserved, perish the thought. Ensharia had to keep herself cautious, and keep her allies well hidden, as they made preparations. But the moment came eventually. A particularly dramatic flourish of the siege, a row of distracted guards, a carefully worn-down chain then snapped in one explosive lunge. She had cleared the way in moments.
It was thanks to the Saviour that, even worn down and exhausted by the passing days, Ensharia had enough strength to wring the necks of two orcs before either could make a sound. A stab of guilt hit her at the deed, but she buried it. These weren’t her friends, they weren’t even innocents. They were enemies, serving perhaps the worst man she’d ever seen.
She turned to find Garutan eying the display, a look of hurt disgust painted across his features. Ensharia felt it inspire very much the same sensation within herself.
“They are…” He breathed, looking away suddenly. Ensharia forced her heart to harden. There were times for kindness and compassion, times for steel and resolve. To be a Paladin was to be capable of both, and she knew that now called for the latter.
“Dead.” She replied. “Now let’s hurry, we don’t have long.”
Shargon was the first to move, as Ensharia might have expected. He was no colder or crueller than the others, but far more mentally nimble, and endlessly practical. He knelt beside one guard to claim their arms, then handed the others’ weapon over to Garutan. The larger orc hesitated a moment before accepting it, swallowing with nerves.
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It hadn’t been hard to free them, numbering only three as they had, and boasting such an excess of physical strength. What came next would be harder still. There were thousands of chained orcs in dozens of rows, and all were watched by their own squads of guards. Ensharia would need swiftness and brutality worked as one to manage her task.
Not for the first time, she felt the loss of her companions. Not a group of friends- never that- but they had been beyond effective. Falls or King Galukar might have made a considerable distraction, and the Saviour would surely have defeated any chains Venka had mustered with no issue at all. She buried the sense of worry their absence sprouted, moving on.
Firstly, Ensharia found the hardest band of slaves she could. One composed, she had carefully learned beforehand, of former warriors from the many tribes crushed and absorbed by Venka’s war machine. They would serve as a vital aid in keeping their momentum going.
Guarding them were orcish warriors, but not elites. Their bodies clattered with boiled leather bound around slabs of iron, but none so solid as plate, and their wearers not half the equals of Venka’s greatest warriors. Ensharia fell upon them like a plague. Her only weapon was the half-severed length of thick chain once used to bind her, but its sheer weight proved enough to split open skulls and ruin limbs wherever it touched. Within the span of a half minute she’d slain each of the ten or so guards around her prize, then she got to freeing the slaves.
“What is happening?” Asked one of them, instantly. He was a large orc, as the most confident and assertive of their kind tended to be, but did not seem as aggressive as he did cautious. Ensharia spoke with as soothing a tone as could be made, in spite of the adrenal convulsions of her vocal chords.
“We’re freeing ourselves.” She replied, quickly. “And you may help if you’d like.”
The orc blanched.
“Venka will kill us.” He replied, staring at her as if she were the one to pass the sentence. In a way, Ensharia supposed, she was.
“Only if he captures us all again, if you don’t want that to happen then you’d best get to work on helping us gain more slaves on our side and bolster the break-out.”
If it had been a human she was speaking to, or a particularly clever orc like Shargon, Ensharia might have feared he’d think to simply attack her with his hundred or so companions and try to apprehend her. She wasn’t certain a hundred slaves would even fail to best her, unarmed as they were, with such warrior backgrounds and natural strength. But the idea did not seem to occur.
Precious minutes slipped by as Ensharia helped free the rest of the line, and the orcs soon armed themselves in a fashion that was as crude as it was practical. They tore tent pegs from the great pavilions set up around, or smashed great clubs out of the palisades at the edge of the camp. Some even thrust their hands into dirt and ground to pry free boulders as bludgeoning weapons. It seemed the world was malleable, for creatures with so many times a man’s strength, and soon enough she had behind her hundreds of shoddily armed, but armed nonetheless, warriors tested in combat and growing more eager for it by the moment.
It was just in time for them to be unleashed as the first wave of guards came to investigate the noise of their disturbances.
Ensharia had seen undead eating men alive, and more beside. The years of war against the Dark Lord had washed the continent with some of the worst carnage in its entire history, and her earliest years had been spent in the beginnings of that conquest. But she had yet to see slaves turn upon their jailors, or men swarm against traitors. To witness both at once was a sight so savage in its violence as to almost transcend savagery.
Guards were simply taken from their feet, like leaves caught by a gale. Those few who were far stronger than their brethren lasted moments before being seized from enough sides and bludgeoned in enough ways to surrender likewise, and in seconds the battle was done. What followed grew only more twisted.
Clubs came down upon armour, then limbs and skulls as the iron quickly broke away. Punches and kicks fell like rain, interfering with one another in their volume, their victims kept alive only by the inefficiencies of so many at once attempting to strike them. Bodies broke, then broke more as they were hoisted up, grabbed and torn in every direction. Skin parted, blood spilled, limbs detached from torsos while skulls gave in to leave grey brain tissue spilling out in a visceral shower.
There was no concern of quietude or stealth, only hurting the men who had spent so long watching the slaves hurt. Ensharia didn’t even consider trying to stop it. Whatever control she’d had as the one to free these orcs, she had lost it the moment they fell into their frenzy. Within the span of this barbarity, anywhere touched by blood, there was no master but murder itself. And it was obeyed with relish.
By the time everything had finally finished, their position was known. Ensharia stood high atop a flagpole to watch as guards hurried over by the dozen- too many to simply be swarmed as the first few had, with their weapons and training.
“We need to galvanise.” Shargon growled, from below. He always had a grasp of the most important things. “You go and get the other slaves, leave this to me and Garutan, we’ll be trusted more than you.”
Ensharia didn’t need to ask why. Fellow prisoner or not, she was still a human, and these orcs hadn’t exactly had the best experience of her species. She hurried to do as he said, letting only one glance fall over her shoulder as she saw Shargon growling something to the half-maddened slaves, gesturing repeatedly to Garutan as he did. Their own group at least had not joined in the carnage.
But that wouldn’t help anyone if they didn’t gain some measure of coherence, and even that would mean nothing without yet more numbers. Ensharia hurried.
It was long work, hard work, dangerous work. But it was work Ensharia did well.
One chain of freed slaves became two, then five, then twenty. By the thirtieth minute since her escape the alarm was ringing out among the camp, and thousands of orcs stood waiting and twitching with nerves. Bereft of their chains, and bequeathed with an urge to unleash no less than the monstrous violence she’d seen before.
Ensharia forced herself not to look at Garutan or those few others who seemed more sickened than excited by the idea, speaking quickly.
“We can run now!” She called out. “But Venka will probably take Kaltan, and once done he’ll only hunt us all down to recapture. Our options to flee are non-existent. But he’s distracted now, busied with the siege. And if we were to crush his forces from behind…”
She watched the distant horizon, where a siege tower was torn nearly in half by some impact so quick and forceful she couldn’t even make out the projectile as a blur.
“...Then these defenders might well exhaust his armies enough that they can’t pursue us. Might well let us into their walls to further defend them. The choice is yours.”
The choice was theirs, because there was simply no other way to draw in recently freed men for another fight but to make it their decision. Ensharia was not surprised to find many choosing not to follow.
But she was not surprised to see so many more choosing to do so, either. Perhaps they were practical, perhaps they simply wanted blood, or perhaps the thought of fleeing scared them. She really couldn’t guess why they began plucking stolen weapons from the dead guards.
And it truly didn’t matter. She had her force, and was not slow in leading them on.