With Kyle given free reign to intervene in Lordaeron's orc problem, the mage-king had spent just as much time secluded in whatever sanctum he secreted himself into as he did attending meetings with his military advisors on planning the most efficient methods of dealing with the problem.
Despite her insistence otherwise, Lora had been included in the meeting. It was somewhat…nice that Kyle thought so much of her close-up experience with the savages, but it was also a chore to be part of a multi-layered discussion. Lora knew her limits, anything beyond some tactical planning was not for her, she much preferred being pointed to the enemy and let loose. Less thinking, less hassle.
But the humans, most of whom have never been in more than a couple of encounters with the orcs, had thought her insights to be invaluable.
"Nah, they use archers, how many is just dependin' on the clans."
"Can't rely on all orcs to accept challenges, even the stupid angry ones. Blame it on their lousy 'honor'."
"Nah, if you want 'em to charge your ranks like that, they'll hafta believe it's the best option. Give 'em no choice."
"If ye're gonna shoot them to death, up the arrow stock. Maybe double it to be safe. We ain't all elven rangers, and the brutes are too stupid to know when they're supposed to die."
Being part of the strategic meetings also meant that Lora had an eye on the scope of Kyle's ambition. Constant reports from Pelton and Valoghan as well as himself, provided constant updates of the various raiding parties and warbands throughout Lordaeron. To everyone's consternation, the mage-king personally dealt with the smaller elements by himself, reducing the number of orc groups each time the meeting began.
"Need to try a few things out," he will always say far too casually, as if facing down a dozen orcs was nothing. But seeing that Pelton and Valoghan had given up on lecturing him, the dwarf too didn't bother anymore. Knowing the boy, he probably could list down the precautions he took if she tried bringing it up with him, and the gnome would be trying to hide his surprise at how extensive it was. Again.
Then again, Lora probably couldn't fault the kid's confidence when he had magical shielding that could withstand a demon, and golden minions that had casually erased the demon-corrupted nobility of Stromgarde. Plus, he had a girlfriend now, so he shouldn't be too carefree with how he approached danger.
Or would he, since he'd be trying to show off more? Damnit…
Meh. Valoghan's watching over him, she'll leave it to the blue-loving court mage for now, and ready up a proper torrent of a lecture once…if Kyle slips up and needs to be dragged out of a mess.
In the meantime, the days spent planning was a small ordeal that Lora begrudgingly appreciated. There was a thoroughness that having magi with scrying provided that she envied. It especially helped in Kyle's overall plan to fight mobile but decisive battles. Just like the gnolls, just like Stromgarde, the goal was to strike quickly and with overwhelming force, and that sort of thing didn't work without knowing how your targets were laid out.
Having access to the crazy inventions Kyle had inspired the gnomes with also helped. The repeater bows would give the Alteraci soldiers one hell of an opening salvo during ambushes, the converted tractors promised to provide a hardy bulwark to anchor the front lines, and the much hushed 'Project Hollander' was no doubt going to be something utterly impossible again judging by how Kyle and the gnome engineers had been cackling.
Eventually, after more than a week of having to constantly watch the wooden pins on the map of Lordaeron being moved around, Kyle decided that it was time to strike. Several orc bands had congregated or were close enough to the main orc camp nestled in Redpine Forest.
"Remember, I want no heroics," Kyle reminded everyone. "Hit the orcs fast, hit them hard, and don't die. If they survive the alpha strike, finish them at a safe distance. Play to our strengths, not theirs."
After reemphasizing the point in a few more ways, Kyle finally let Lora and the other commanders muster their people. Other than hers, two other forces were organized, also primarily composed out of the very green and lightly equipped legions of Alterac, and even some lucky city and town guards. It was supposed to be a chance for them all to earn some invaluable combat experience; commanders would get to apply and experience Alterac's novel approach to warfare, while the troops would get a taste of disciplined violence.
Everyone would also get used to the mobile deployment Kyle insisted on. Instead of marching out, the strike forces would be gathered outside of the capital city at the break of dawn. All twelve hundred or so of them, a significant portion of Alterac's fighting ability, were assembled in neat ranks and rows, and spaced out by their groupings on a field beyond the city walls. Understandably, every footman, ranger and cavalryman were fidgeting nervously, no doubt hearing of Kyle's favored method of jumping about from the few who have experienced it.
Lora herself was still struggling with the self-consciousness of sitting awkwardly on a probe like the rest of the royal guard. At least now they had more comfortable saddles, and the golden mounts had wicked spikes welded onto them to make their rapid charges even more entertaining.
The proper, horse-mounted knights of Alterac gathered at the head of the other two strike forces had their own modifications that marked them as uniquely Alteraci. The bulkier elements of the knights' armor like pauldrons (especially the pauldrons) were reduced, mostly to save on metal and weight. They sported new lances, which were both hollow and much longer - just about damn more than double the length of any lance Lora had seen - with plenty of spares held by camp followers for replacing once the weapons inevitably broke on the charge. They had longer, thrusting swords as well, and a small collection of tertiary weapons in exchange for the usual shield.
Kyle had emphasized on maximizing his knights' ability to charge, and so doctrine and equipment were both adjusted for that. The king's decision to add 'wings' to them was overruled however, as it was just about the only thing about the whole getup that didn't make sense. Lora had to admit the image of it might be impressive, but the uncharacteristic impractical design choice from Kyle was just that: utterly impractical. No point giving an extra handhold for the orcs to leap up to and drag a knight down.
As the dwarf mulled, comparing the royal guards' own role as a more traditional heavy cavalry with the new knights, Kyle appeared with Valoghan and Pelton in tow. The air cracked from metal on metal as the assembled warriors of Alterac snapped to attention before their king.
There was no speech given, Kyle had already said all he had to the day before as everyone gathered, and the commanders had doled out reminders and reassurances earlier. By now, practically everyone was immune to the unnatural glow in their king's eyes as he swept his appraising gaze across the muster. Then, after a glance to his side to receive a nod from Pelton, Kyle seemed to draw in a breath.
"Marshal Colin," he announced, and the marshal standing proudly at the head of one strikeforce rapped his gauntleted fist against his breastplate.
"By your will."
"Your targets will be breaking camp right now. You know your orders."
"Aye, my king."
Kyle and his marshal exchanged a final nod, and then Lora felt the hairs on her body prick up as Colin's whole force shimmered in translucent blue light. Then with a soft crash of thunder, they were gone, hopefully to be instantly delivered safely outside the orcs' camp to pin them against a river.
"Commander Parston," Kyle said immediately after, as if a whole four hundred people vanishing wasn't a big deal at all.
The young leader of the Alteraci knights followed the same ritual as Colin, and then he too was sent off in a snap of arcane light with his warriors. His group was to intercept a Horde warband before they could prey on a poorly defended town.
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"Captain Lora."
And then it was her turn, and Lora tried to remain stoic and steely while the probe underneath her swayed gently in place.
"As you command, your highness."
Dark amusement leaked from Kyle's glowing gaze. "The enemy are still rousing from their previous night's feast it seems."
"We'll wake 'em up for ye," she replied. Then she steadied herself as light bathed her, and then she was fighting to calm her senses as her environment drastically changed from an open field to a lush glade. Quickly crushing her own unease, Lora turned about to hush the disoriented murmurs from the soldiers behind her.
"Shadap before the orcs hear us!" she hissed, and waited just long enough for everyone to obey before handing out orders. Men and women fell into disciplined lines, spears and repeater bows at the ready. A small team formed at the rear lines, arranging spare arrow clips, healing potions, and other items that might be required for when the push began. The royal guards' probes hummed softly, untroubled by the hushed chaos going around them.
It took longer than Lora liked, but still faster than their rehearsals had gone off, but eventually her little strikeforce was fully arrayed against the unsuspecting orc camp. Compared to what the other teams faced, this bunch of raiders were significantly larger than the taskforce by quite a bit, at least three times in size. According to Pelton, they'd also recently sacked a town before gorging on an impromptu feast the night before. Even from afar, Lora could tell that their crudely erected watchtowers were garrisoned by slouched and sleepy orcs, probably still digesting their meal. Considering that they've been left unmolested for quite a while now, maybe their complacency could be excused.
A pity Lora was here to ruin their fun, she thought with a grin.
With the spears and tall shields of the front ranks lowered, the Alteraci strike force declared their assault by precise arrow shots into the unwary camp guards from the rangers who'd already snuck ahead of the strike force. Some noise was created, but judging from the lack of actual shouting, Lora guessed that the simultaneous takedowns had stirred more confusion than alarm from the camp's groggy occupants.
Well, the follow up should wake them up.
With soft thuds and the crack of broken branches, the results of Project Hollander emerged from the treeline to tower over the Alteraci formation. Looking far from similar to the goblin wood shredders they were built around, the lunatic inventions of Kyle and the equally loony Galvan Wickflip moved with far less jerky clumsiness of their original incarnations. Likely out of spite, the gnomes had rebuilt the walker to remove every bit of goblin crudeness from the walkers. These Hollanders were devoid of maliciously grinning faces on their torsos, ran on a different fuel source that removed the need for rear exhausts to chug black fumes, and their arms ended with simple finger-like digits instead of the buzzsaw and oversized, lumber-gripping claws.
The biggest difference was with their 'heads' though. The open-topped cockpits were now covered under a metal canopy, and also shifted to the left to look like a strange tumor on a decapitated body. To balance out the asymmetry, modified naval cannons jutted out from the walkers' right shoulder, seemingly stuck from falling out from the massive boxy attachment that took up most of the back.
They looked weird, but Lora had seen their tests to know better than to laugh at the refined practicality of these machines.
Six Hollanders were assigned to this strike force, and all six stood stock still in front of the formation for a moment. Then their cannons fired, launching modified cannonballs - shells - that crashed into the orc camp and obliterated anything they ran into. Holes were punched through palisades, and the crude watchtowers and huts toppled like twigs in a gale. Then the alchemical concoctions in the shells detonated, showering their immediate area with liquid fire and fragments of the shells' shattered metal.
"Time to wake up, ye green fucks," Lora muttered not too softly at the sight of the destruction, drawing dark laughter from the soldiers who could hear her.
Before her, the Hollanders' slumped a bit as their pilots began hastily reloading their cannons from the safety of their canopied cockpits. As they did so, the main formation of the Alteraci strike force began their march out from the forest.
By the time the orcs had finally risen above the chaos to organize themselves, Lora had led her force several dozen yards closer to their camp. Credit to the savage race, they formed their ranks quickly considering the circumstances. Less than a third of a mile away from her was a bellowing line of axes and swords and spears, all ready for a fight. Some had bows and crossbows, judging from the desultory drizzle of projectiles falling towards the advancing Alteraci.
"Shields UP!" Lora bellowed, and as one the whole formation stopped. Shields were raised to meet the coming shower, and arrows and bolts thudded ineffectually against the barrier, many even outright bouncing off. For all the strength of the orcs, the extreme ranges in which they sent their projectiles robbed the attack of its lethality.
Lora and her royal guards stood (or more accurately sat) defiantly in the open, the probes not even rattled in the slightest as incoming arrows bounced off their invisible shield bubbles.
As the pattering against shields died out, a whistle sounded out from behind Lora.
Fortunately for the Alteraci, an orc archer's extreme range was well below a cannon's.
"ONE DOWN!" the captain of the royal guard ordered, and the entire formation dropped to one knee, still protected under and behind their shields.
There was a few seconds' pause before the booms of the Hollanders' cannons went off again. Six shells shredded six holes in the orcs' ranks before detonating, causing another round of agonized screaming from the greenskins.
"UP!"
The Alteraci line rose up, and as the orcs began to remember that skirmishing wasn't their forte and break into a charge, Lora glanced to a more decorated footman standing among the ranks.
"First rank!" the infantry's designated commander bellowed.
The whole formation took backward steps to create distance between each row. The frontmost rank of Alteraci planted their shields and spears to form a spiky shieldwall, while their comrades behind them shifted to place themselves between shields and raised their repeater bows.
"Loose!"
The twang-cracks of dozens of repeater bows working rapidly, and the arrows that they spat, filled the air. The orc charge immediately stumbled as those leading it fell with shafts studding their bodies. The infantry commander waited for the volleys to slow before bellowing again.
"Second rank! Loose!"
Just as the first row of arches emptied their bows' magazines, their fellows behind them filled in for them, giving them time to kneel and reload. The orc charge became a disorganized mess as they stumbled over their fallen kin and struggled with their shields to block all of the incoming arrows. Their flanks spread out, trying to encircle the strike force, but also presenting a wider target area for the archers. The Hollanders' cannon went off again, reminding the orcs of their presence.
"Third rank! Loose!"
The last rank of archers kept up the storm of arrows, and true to their nature the orcs still tried to close the distance. With this many arrows being thrown at them, they probably knew in their violent little brains that trying to simply weather it would be far more lethal than risking a frenzied charge. They were making some progress, some propping their dead up as shields, while others simply shifted to take the brunt of the damage on their left arms and shoulders.
They'd taken a lot of casualties, but the orcs still were about to reach the Alteraci lines, even more infuriated than before. From where she sat, it looked like a rolling tide of orc bodies was falling towards her, each dead arrow-pierced orc falling away for their comrade to take his place, eat an arrow or ten, fall away, and repeat the process.
"Shield rank!"
The frontmost rank, having already buried the hafts of their spears into the ground and leaning the weapons on their shields, were already drawing their own repeater bows. The orcs were just about a dozen yards away, close enough to make out their ugly tusked features. Lora grinned as the infantry commander waited for a bit more, ignoring his soldiers' obvious nervousness.
"Loose! Brace!"
The bows quickly spat death at the approaching orcs to reap a more accurate and fearsome tally, and then were promptly discarded in favor of spears again. More shells whizzed through and exploded among the enemy's left wing, poking holes in their flanking attack.
Their charge still made contact though, however disorganized it was. Axes and blades of arrow-studded orcs rushed out and were blocked by Alteraci shields. The green-skinned brutes roared in defiance as spears stabbed out to greet them. Already worn by the storm of arrows, the haggard momentum of the orcs' charge barely shifted the Alteraci lines.
"For the Alliance!" Lora roared in return, raising her axe. "For Alterac!"
"For Alterac!" came the vehement echo from the footmen as they pushed back the green tide and began fighting back in earnest. Those frontline infantry that weren't engaged lent their spears to aid their comrades beside them, at times resulting in five spears impaling a single orc. The ones behind that could loosed their repeater bows into preoccupied orcs to further lighten the burden of their fellows in melee.
With a light tap of her heels, the probe mount was urged forwards and Lora lurched with as much dignity as she could as she was flung towards the enemy. Her first kills were from her mount rising up into the air over the frontlines and then crashing down to lance a quartet of orcs with its spikes. Raw momentum sent it slamming more of the enemy into broken corpses. Lightning arced from the probe's iris to carve cauterized chunks of meat from orcs, further adding to the mayhem.
Only then did Lora finally get to let her axe fly, burying deep into a roaring brute to score her first real kill. The rest of the royal guard achieved similar results, managing to join the fight only after their mounts opened trails of bloody destruction. Kyle's constructs went on a rampage arguably far more terrifying than anything the orcs have seen so far. Impervious to retaliatory strikes thanks to their invisible shield and metal shells, the probes pulped the enemy with their bulk and sheer speed. If not for being chained to her mount, Lora would've likely fallen off from the erratic movements it took, zipping here and then to turn raging orcs into paste.
Not too far away, the Hollanders waded into the fight as well, their mechanized arms swinging away to send the pulverized enemy flying. Four of them held crushed orcs in their hands, humiliating the corpses by turning them into bludgeons against their own kin. With the support of the infantry, the towering walkers served as anchors for the strike force and literally beat back the enemy assault. One particularly spiteful gnome pilot grabbed an orc and jammed it into their Hollander's cannon barrel, pulping the unfortunate orc in the process. It then fired the clump of gore straight into the enemy ranks, showering the area in seared flesh and bones.
Between the unflinching shields, the arrows spat from the unengaged infantry and hidden rangers, the stampeding royal guard cavalry, and the sweeping strikes of the Hollanders, the orcs' resolve was quickly crushed and the battle was concluded before Lora could bag a fourth proper kill.
Their morale broken, the orcish ranks broke into a rout, which inevitably turned the battle into a complete slaughter. Spears were replaced by repeater bows again to bury arrows into their backs. Cannonfire boomed to send clumps of greenskins flying. Probes shot out to impale or flatten the enemy with cold efficiency.
The probes running them down and the arrows and cannonfire, not a single greenskin would escape the battle.
Those few orcs who remained in the camp - the Horde's peon class mostly - suffered a similar fate as the rangers formed a cordon and picked apart any orc that came into view. The arrival of the rest of the strike force to clean out the camp would mark an end to this little conflict. Alteraci wounded tended to, the lucky orcs who actually surrendered or had a chance of surviving past noon were clapped in chains, and anything of value was looted off the dead and the camp.
Which meant pretty much every piece of weapon and armor that had metal on them, as well as the rare baubles and trinkets.
By the late afternoon, the field behind them was littered with dead orcs, the camp was a burnt heap, and the strike force was reorganizing to prepare for an arcane return home. With only a bunch of truly serious injuries to worry about, Lora was satisfied with the overall outcome of the battle.
Her only disappointment was in knowing that this was only a trial of a battle. Every other engagement not taken up by a strike force would be dealt with by Kyle in some way or another. Lora bet it would be fireballs or whatever arcane spells he and Valoghan decided to throw.
And she was missing the real big fight, where Kyle was supposedly letting loose against the main Horde encampment with the toys he'd been hiding away up until now. Orgrim Doomhammer was supposed to be in there.
But then again, glancing back at a few of her royal guards still green in the face and on the verge of retching again from simply imagining their motion sickness, and then to gore covered probes hovering peacefully in place, maybe that's a good thing…