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FG: Chapter 71
🕑 Added 2024-06-07 14:32:01 +0000 UTCThey often said that the moments of calm before battle was where fear struck most men’s hearts.
But personally, Marcus found that the sprinting towards the enemy was generally worse.
He urged his Spineripper on, nestled amongst the inner ranks of Skeever’s advancing ratguard, and looked up at the increasingly large walls of Grindlefecht looming higher and higher above them.
The outlying villages were, by this point, nothing but rubble and dust – the Kobold loyalists had seen to it that they left nothing for their enemies to use. It struck Marcus as strange – this reversed Scorched-Earth approach to defense that Skegga had employed. Maybe he’d commanded that the remaining villages burn as he stumbled home, wounded and debased.
But that still didn’t explain why they flocked to his walls, now.
He rounded up the infantry and ushered them towards the fortress gatehouse, setting up Testudo formations that brought joyous nostalgia to both he and Skeever both. Even Ix had to smirk as he ran alongside his Sharpshots and noticed the strategy that his old pack leader had failed to account for. Back when the Underkingdom didn’t have its Shai-Alud. The formation meant a slow, cumbersome advance, but he wasn’t about to discount the possibility of ranged attacks from the battlements. Even if the walls still looked unusually quiet.
He eyed the cannons as the army advanced. Still silent. Like demons waiting to be woken and belch their infernal innards at their foes. If those beasts started firing, he’d have to rearrange the columns of ratguard and kobolds into a wide formation to compensate. Again, it would take time, it would expend energy, and it would lead to mass casualties…but it would work. These creatures of the dark had often proved more versatile to adaptive warfare than he had at first thought.
As Marcus pulled his infantry to the left side of the fort, the Spineripper detachment surged forward in a V-shaped wave that smashed through any obstacles in their paths. They were to be the vanguard, this time, and their commanders had taken the opportunity to lead the charge with pride in their furry hearts. Marcus and Skeever both looked on in awe as they made it to the walls in little over fifteen minutes and began their ascent – propelling their beasts to dig their claws into the beaten, broken ridges of the battlements and start climbing towards the dark heavens above.
“Phase one, complete,” Marcus told his Talon-Commander. “Ratguard! Into position! We won’t be caught with our breeches down when that gate falls!”
“HO! RAH!”
The army was arranged exactly as Marcus had envisioned it. To the North, he saw the stout gatehouse of gilded metal that barred him entrance to his objective. To the East, round the side of the fort, his Spinerippers were already nearing the tops of the walls, their cries of fury begging for battle.
But something was still bothering Marcus: the silence of their enemy.
“Sire-Sire!” Ix shouted from the firing-line he’d set up on their Northwestern wing. “Why do they not strike-strike?”
He looked to Skeever who nodded once, watching the Spinerippers made more progress than they’d envisioned. The ratguard waited, wondering when this great ‘battle’ was truly about to begin. Deekius walked among their front ranks, administering blessings with confidence. It seemed the ailing priest was the only one among them who could see their victory close at hand.
For the rest, there was a growing sense that something – somewhere – was about to go very wrong.
He looked about him for any signs of enemy activity, suddenly scanning the ruined twigs of the villages that had once stood as proud markers of Kobold civilization. Ix – he knew – was scanning them too, and seeing nothing. Hearing nothing. This deathly silence was not normal.
“Tell your men to assume a defensive position,” Marcus informed Skeever. “I have a feeling we’re about to see some-“
The earth shook like an undulating sea. Marcus saw nothing but his Spineripper throw him from his saddle and then felt the rocky earth beneath his hands. He saw the ratmen around him fall one by one like dominos, each one tripping over the reverberations that had just torn through the entire North Warrens. Then, Marcus felt head radiate up his back – gentle at first and then, gradually, rising to a fever crawling up his neck.
“THE – LEAN –“
He looked up, cupping his hands round his ringing ears as his blurred vision began to pick of Skeever’s face before his own, spittle flying from his teeth.
“W-wha-“
He couldn’t even hear himself form proper sentences. He watched the ratman’s lips moved, felt the ground continue to shake beneath his boots, and tried to keep from turning towards the source of the sudden fiery deluge at his back.
He saw a brilliant flaming flower burn into life in the ratman’s beady black eyes – like an atomic bomb shredding through a starless sky.
And only then did the sound of the explosions that had rocked Grindlefecht’s walls catch up to him.
He turned around just in time to see something the four dwarven cannons disappear in a plume of radiant light that seared the retinas of the ratguard’s sensitive eyes. They dropped their spears and shielded themselves, the entire army losing its cohesion just as quickly as he’d had them form up at the stronghold gates.
The Spinerippers who had reached the top had gotten the explosions full blast – they were sent flying from the walls trailing smoke after them, the charred bodies of rats and ‘rippers alike flying like fireworks across the now light-filled cavern skies.
Marcus staggered, taking in the sight of the chaos, and tried barking new orders to his units. He practically held on to Skeever for dear life, keeping the ratman close as a kind of crutch for his still shaking limbs.
“TURN AWAY!” he shouted. “RETREAT TO THE NEAREST VILLAGE AND TAKE UP A DEFENSIVE PERIMETER IN THE RUINS! THIS PLACE IS COMING DOWN!”
“WHAT-WHAT!?” Ix screamed from the western perimeter of the quickly crumbling force.
“I SAID THIS PLACE IS COMING DO-“
Once again, Marcus’s voice was lost in the chaos of yet another explosion – this time one not simply concentrated to the Eastern battlements. The cannons of Grindlefecht had crumbled, and the walls now went with them – before Marcus’s eyes a series of concentrated detonations occurred one after another along the foundations of the fortress’ which broke whatever structural integrity remained. The Spineripper units that had managed to continue their climb now fell with the wall sections as they crumbled into pieces, disappearing in the plumes of smoke that shot forth from the stronghold like a grey ring of death.
Marcus watched the cavalry fall with eyes that couldn’t conceive of the reality they presented to him. It took him all of his courage to not simply drop to one knee, then and there, and simply order a general retreat.
Only Skeever’s strong arm and dolorous barking at his men to stand firm and follow his orders kept him sane. It kept him standing even as the curtain of ash expelled by the fallen towers of the castle crept towards them all.
“HOLD YOUR BREATH!” Marcus ordered to the men still standing around him. “ASSUME A DEFENSIVE RING! MOVE BACK! MOVE BACK!”
He begged them to hear his shrill cry as the ashen clouds descended on them, burying the infantry units in their midst. The ratmen’s eyes were sharp – so too were those of the Kobold auxiliaries – but they were not immune to blindness. The power of the initial explosion’s searing light had brought them low, and now the ash infected their already blurred senses. Their forms became nothing but flickering shadows in the dark. He wouldn’t be surprised if some had already abandoned their posts.
“Sire!” he heard Skeever shout. “We – I cannot find –“
Marcus’s arm shot out to assure the rat that he was still here, even as his lungs filled with soot and he resisted the desire to vomit.
“Tell the men to keep retreating!” Marcus wailed. “Get them out of the radius of the smoke-screen. Find Deekius and have him clear this mess! Any minute now they’ll be upon us!”
“’They’, Sire?”
“Don’t you see, Skeever!” Marcus roared as both men began sprinting for the edges of the ash storm. “This cough this was always their plan! They never intended to give up Grindlefecht. Boss Skegga is taking his palace down with him!”
“That cough fiend!” Skeever sputtered. “He shall be feeling the brunt of my blade before this day is done! Be damned! EVERYONE, BE GETTING OUT! BE BRINGING ME GLOOMRAAVA DEEKIUS, NOW!”
The shrill screams of ratmen filled the filthy air. Combat had begun. The clashing of swords and evisceration of limbs came from all directions. Marcus and Skeever yelled into the world of grey, seeing nothing but shadows fall one-by-one, followed by the sounds of more explosions in the distance.
And the only voice that pierced the plume of death-fog that this battlefield had become, was a collective voice belched from the throats of a thousand fanatical demons:
“KLEANSING! KLEANSING! KLEANSING!”
