Verd, Veis, and Amber had been in many, many combat situations.

They had done a lot of sparring against other humans, humanoids, and their pets, especially on the little missions with Feist that Hazé had dropped them off on.

Then had come the more exciting minor missions for the Void Brothers, where they ran into things that were very magical and which brought up coldly chilling memories from the depths of the Ritual of the Silver Queen, recognition and an enmity that went deeper than bone.

Their work in Zynozure with Errant, especially the stuff going down deep, had involved more and more dangerous versions of this, necessitating ever more caution... and greater rewards.

And now... everything they had fought before was standing right across from them on an open field.

Feist was standing before the three girls, up on his Disk, watching the Warped anthros coming towards them with indifferent, deadly calm.

The girls had been in some larger scuffles, but they had never been on a true battlefield, where thousands contested in life and death, and one didn’t run out of foes in a mere handful of breaths, nor was there an easy place to retreat to.

This was a place of cooperation, of trust in the blades beside you and the orders of the officers who commanded you. Your willingness not to run could be the lynchpin that decided the battle.

The girls stared at the creatures coming towards them, reading them, realizing that these were mutated former humans, servants of the Warped devolved to bestial forms, blind in their faith and ‘gifts’ of their masters. Their souls were already lost, promised away for ephemeral blessings and zealous fanaticism, ignoring the fact that all that the Warp Gods gave them, they could have gained for themselves.

No one knew better the value of their soul than a Hagchild. Giving it away to entities who valued them not at all stirred a deathly cold fire in them.

“Missiles,” Feist ordered calmly.

The Quiver on Verd’s back disgorged her Bow, while Veis and Amber drew theirs from the holsters at their sides, deCompressing from Hand size to Light crossbow size, as did Feist.

“Pick your targets,” he ordered, as they looked over the ranks of Rockborn Spears in front of them. Around them, other arbalesters got ready, more Autobows rising and getting ready as they pointed at the sky. There was a scream of harpies flapping their way over, but they were just target practice if they stayed up there. However, winging in from the side was something moving very fast that was really going to give them a bad time...

Their Autobows had seen more action than those of the Dwarves, and despite the Rockborn having much bigger Heavy versions, the ranges of their weapons were the same. All of them had Archer Levels, after all, and hadn’t been reluctant to feed their Weapons.

A drum began to beat in their minds, as the Cantor of the Dwarves thundered through on his drums, a rhythm and beat deep from the heart of the Land, driving them on with the knowledge their ancestors were behind them and their hearts were one, giving everyone a cadence and pattern to fall into.

Lines of Rockborn, Gnomes, and even a striker force of vassal Ancients began to pivot and move, posturing up as the Warped closed in. Healers made ready, while the x-sprits of the Autoballistae began to thrum and hurl out dark and heavy loads into the distance.

Bleating and braying forms kicked over, impaled by hungry javelins. The great horned cyclops rose up from behind the anthros, hefted its Runeball, and keen-eyed gnomes watched and waited for the thing to be hurled out. Quick fingers and Featherweight spells were ready to render its weight down to a drifting mote and make it useless.

The ballistae re-angled to the new target. The brute would be down in a minute or two to the six autoballistae, but the fight on the line would begin before then. The bloodthirsty braying and howling of the Warped was already reaching them, but nobody cared, listening to the pounding drum gathering all the impetus of history and raising it before them, and the orders being barked in curt Dwarven through the Marktell, clear and precise in intent and meaning, no ability to misunderstand.

The enemy’s centaurs were also unlimbering powerful bows, motile horse archers that could be extremely annoying to face... not that the shielded and armored dwarven spears cared. Those centaurs were going to learn a deadly lesson about the range of heavy crossbows, and the firing rate of autobows.

Targets were dribbled out, the arbalesters oriented, and the silent command came.

There was no sound on the dwarven side, no calls to command, no deep singing, no pointing and shouting. Only silence, everything in Marktell, and the arcs of the first volleys shot out at their still-distant targets.

The Rockborn were firing salvoes, but the girls and Feist were aiming calmly, keeping their own target picks tight. Dark bolts of glassy material, trailing Banefire from borrowed Skulls, arced out and slammed into the middle front of the anthro lines. Two of the creatures were jerked off their feet with startled bleats, opening a hole in the rather loose lines that had to be quickly filled by those trampling over the ones in front.

They racked hard, lined up, fired again.

The two goat-headed sots moving up into the opening jerked and fell as the quarrels hammered into them. They racked together, aimed together.

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The centaurs were just approaching their range when the flat trajectory of heavy quarrels came buzzing in and scythed through them. Garbed in little more than some loose hides, they screamed and crumpled by the dozens, shocked at the driving power of the shafts. Still, they rode up closer, as they knew the reload time of heavy crossbows meant they might take a pounding volley, but they could ride out of range before the next volley went off.

Their own arrows had just taken to the skies when the next Rockborn volleys went off, and needless to say, they weren’t out of range.

They howled in disbelief as the bolts ripped through them, and turned to flee.

They weren’t happy to inherit a third, more arcing volley in their backs before they could get out of range, either.

Some centaurs came riding up on the flanks, easily screened out by walls of long spears. They unleashed shots at point-blank range, and the tings of dozens of yard-long shafts bouncing off dwarven metal spattered like rain over the silent ranks of spears. Without a word being spoken, the arbalesters behind rose up, the long spears knelt, the shooters leveled their autobows, and discharged at their taller enemies at point-blank range, punching the shafts deep into them with great bloody holes.

The spears rose to guard the shooters, the crossbows were racked twice to pump the heavy sprits back, poised to lift, and the spears dropped as one, autobows aimed and loosed as the centaurs tried to react in time. Their screams preceded their bodies tumbling to the ground at the flesh-punching impacts of the bolts.

To the left of the girls, the gnomes were using their own autobow variants. Being mechanically inclined and renowned for their gearsmithing, they naturally weren’t satisfied with just the power of a rapid-firing crossbow. Their weapons were lighter than those of the dwarves, but they had gone with a repeater variant, meant for closer support of a battle line, and could fire two bolts in series before pumping twice. It allowed them to capitalize on breaks and unready targets.

The whole corps of gnomes was standing on folding seats and flat boards, getting them up higher than the dwarves standing in front of them, who were almost a foot taller. With all those Spears in front of them, the gnomes could and would fire with near impunity... especially at anything that looked like it was going to throw something at them.

The anthros had elite troops, of course: seven-foot tall fanged gorehorns, ogre-sized minotaurs, and two hulking greathorns, twelve feet tall and massively overmuscled. They had horns and claws and fangs and hooves, were tall, strong, and brutal, painted all over in weird patterns, with skulls and teeth bracelets and trophies dangling about them.

Unfortunately for them, the dwarves just didn’t care.

The minotaurs and greathorns wanted to run right up into the dwarven lines, counting on the crude but heavy plates of their armor and their own strength and thick hides to punch into the lines of longspears. If they had been facing individual dwarves, they probably could have done so.

But, just to get into range of their axes and clubs would bring them into the range of two layers of gleaming Spears. If they wanted to plow in like bulls with their horns and toss dwarves in every direction in bellowing fury... three ranks, a minimum of six planted longspears... all of them with the hard silver edge of being Soulbound.

The gorehorns crashed into that hedge of death in their frenzy, and were impaled and killed before their own shorter weapons even came into range. Instead of trapping the weapons with their corpses, the Spears suddenly shrank to a mere yard long instantly, letting the corpses fall, and as the second rank impaled the next wave, the first rank shot out to full length once more, driving into the unprepared third wave behind.

The losses of the Warped beast-men mounted quickly...

The minotaurs and greathorns found that they were big, wide targets, attracting twice as many Spears at their size. One or two they could strike aside, but six planted Spears was enough to defy even the rumbling mass of the first greathorn that came barreling in, head low and horns glowing with bloody Runes to reap and slay.

The first two Spears were struck aside with its club, but there were four more planted, dropping to meet it, and punching into its shoulders and neck as it bellowed at them... and the boar-stops slammed into its bones, the Energized aluminum shafts flexed, driving deeper into the gritty grey, blood-soaked earth, and forced the huge minotaur up, up to its full height. Over a foot of spearheads were buried in its flesh, the metal shafts bending at its weight and strength.

The retracted Spears of the front pair of Rockborn coolly shot upwards into its throat from their advantageous position, butts slamming on the ground and reaching right up into its skull as they finished the job the dwarves behind them had started.

One of the ballistae behind them discharged, and the driving bolt blew the hulking corpse back off the gleaming Spears, sending it crashing down on the shrieking gorehorns behind.

------

None of the mutates wanted to get into the opening the girls had forced in their lines, as they were quickly shot down, even before they could hang themselves on the dwarven Spears. The dwarves all noticed it, and there was a subtle shifting in the Rockborn lines, helped by leaving some corpses hanging to block the view of the braying mutates.

The gnomish infighters streamed past the rear ranks of the dwarves behind the four, Rockborn shifting sideways just enough to let them slide past.

Feist and Veis took the middle, Verd and Amber took the sides. Behind them, the gnomes capered in with deadly little smiles and gleaming eyes, kukris held chop and stop pattern like wingblades, and they all suddenly drove into the mass of beastmen.

Veis and Feist were below their line of sight, just like the gnomes, and hacked and stabbed with crippling blows to groin, knee, and hamstrings. Beastmen bleated and collapsed, and kukris chopped into throats or plunged into eyes as gnomes scampered past.

Verd was stabbing and cracking, her Spear Hedge alternately acting as staff, glaive, or piercer, chopping down legs and bringing them down into the remorseless kukris of the gnomes. Heart-thrusts stabbed out, widening the road the gnomes were pouring into and past her, and then she was plying her Spear above them as the mutates brayed and tried to forestall the stream of undersized death that was cutting them down.

Amber just put on a display, distracting the mutates from the real threat of the gnomish infighters, killing with Elan, her Rose-style Rapier. It was a flicker of burning motion, never more than three inches of it committed as it sought out eyes, bellies, throats, hamstrings, and groins in whipping arcs of silver. She danced here and there through the press, her Thorn-dagger Style plunging in and out of inappropriate places with alarming frequency, in between blocking and turning spears, axes, teeth, hooves, and claws aimed in her direction.

Behind the infighters, the dwarves moved, advancing smoothly, cracking the mutate lines, and Spears began to split them apart, hitting them from the flanks, and then from behind as the dwarves moved with almost magical precision to start encircling them.

Getting cut apart from within and encircled from without, even the frenzied mutates began to panic and look for a way to flee. However, running a gauntlet of thrusting longspears to get away wasn’t a good way to stay alive, and presenting their backs to the waiting arbalesters willing to pick them off even less so...