The blizzard was a chaotic system of wind vectors and ice particulates, but the Orc charge was linear.
They moved with the terrifying momentum of an avalanche. Fifty massive shapes clad in bone and ice armor thundered up the frozen causeway. They didn't scream; they conserved their heat. The only sound was the heavy, rhythmic crunch of iron-shod boots on rock.
I stood on the battlements, my hands gripping the brass nozzle of the garden sprayer we had scavenged from the greenhouse supplies. It was connected via a reinforced leather hose to the iron tank Tessa was hugging.
"Pressure," I said calmly, watching the distance markers I had painted on the stones.
To my left, Hareth and his archers stood ready, but their bows were lowered. In this wind, an arrow would be blown sideways before it flew ten feet. The Orcs knew this. That's why they weren't raising their shields.
They thought we were helpless.
"Thirty meters," I counted.
The lead Orc, the one with the polar bear skull helm, looked up. I saw his eyes—yellow, reptilian, and filled with contempt. He saw a pale man with black lips holding a brass tube. He probably thought it was a water cannon. He probably thought we were going to try to freeze them.
"Twenty meters. Elara, ready the igniter."
Elara stepped up to the embrasure. She held a long iron rod connected to the Leyden Jar capacitor tucked under her arm. The copper wire hummed.
"Ten meters."
The Orcs roared, raising their cleavers. They were close enough for me to smell them—rancid fat and wet fur.
"Open valve," I ordered.
I squeezed the lever.
The nozzle bucked in my hands. A jet of thick, black sludge shot out.
It wasn't a mist. Thanks to the tar I had mixed into the kerosene, it was a cohesive stream of viscous fluid. The wind tore at it, but the heavy mass punched through the gale.
It hit the lead Orcs like a physical blow. The black sludge splattered against their white bone armor, coating their chests, their faces, and their weapons.
The Orc leader stumbled, wiping the goo from his eyes. He laughed—a deep, guttural bark. He thought it was mud. He thought we were desperate.
"Now," I said.
Elara tapped the iron rod against the wet stone of the rampart, directly in the path of the stream.
CRACK.
A spark the size of a fist jumped from the rod.
It hit the atomized kerosene vapor at the edge of the stream.
The air in front of the wall didn't just catch fire; it detonated.
WHOOSH.
A rolling wave of orange and blue flame raced down the jet of fuel, chasing the liquid back to the source. It slammed into the cluster of Orcs.
This wasn't a campfire. This was sticky, chemically adhered, high-temperature combustion.
The silence of the charge shattered. The lead Orc screamed—a sound that was half-shriek, half-roar.
He flailed, trying to brush the fire off his chest. But you cannot brush off tar. The motion only smeared the burning gel across his arms and face.
"Thermal shock," I analyzed, watching through my double-paned goggles. "Their armor is made of ice and bone. The ice is sublimating instantly. The steam expansion is shattering the bone."
POP. POP. CRACK.
It sounded like popcorn. The ice-hardened armor of the Orc vanguard exploded as the water content flashed to steam against the 1,000-degree heat of the kerosene. Shards of hot bone shrapnel flew into the ranks behind them.
The Orcs behind the leader stopped dead. They had spent their lives in the Frozen Wastes. They understood cold. They understood hunger. They did not understand fire that stuck to you like a lover and screamed like a banshee.
"Sweep left," I ordered Tessa. "Maintain pressure."
I traversed the nozzle. The stream of liquid fire painted a line across the causeway. It created a wall of flame that the wind couldn't blow out.
The snow beneath the fire hissed and melted, creating a slurry of boiling mud, but the fire kept burning on top of the water.
The Orcs panicked. The disciplined charge dissolved into a chaotic rout. The ones in the back turned to run, but they slipped on the ice. The ones in the front were rolling in the snow, trying to extinguish the flames, but the oxygen-rich kerosene burned even when buried.
"Cease fire," I said. "Conserve fuel."
I released the lever. The jet died, leaving only the crackling roar of the burning bodies and the chemical smell of victory.
The surviving Orcs—about thirty of them—didn't look back. They scrambled down the causeway, dragging their burned kin, disappearing into the whiteout of the treeline.
I took off my goggles. My hands were shaking slightly—not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash of the arsenic damage.
Hareth was staring at the burning corpses. He looked sick, but impressed.
"What... what do you call that, My Lord?" he whispered.
"Greek Fire," I lied. "But in the North, we'll call it 'Boreas Breath'."
I looked at Elara. She was staring at the carnage with a dark fascination.
"Effective," she murmured.
"Brutal," I corrected. "But necessary. They won't come back. Not until they figure out what hit them."
The Frost-Hollow Caves (Three Hours Later)
The air in the cave was thick with the smell of wet fur and burnt flesh.
Grom, the Second-Spear of the raiding party, knelt before the Warlord's throne. The throne wasn't a chair; it was a massive ribcage of a leviathan whale, draped in snow-leopard pelts.
Warlord Thak sat in the shadows. He was huge, even for a Frost-Orc. His skin was the color of a bruised plum, and his tusks were capped in iron.
"You return with no meat," Thak rumbled. His voice vibrated in the stone floor. "And you return with half a pack."
Grom shivered. He had faced ice-bears and avalanche slides, but the memory of the black wall was fresh in his mind.
"It... it was not a fight, Blood-Father," Grom stammered. "It was... bad magic."
"Magic?" Thak sneered. "The pink-skins have no magic. Their wizards freeze in the wind. Their arrows break."
"Not this time," Grom insisted. "We charged the wall. The gate was shut. Then... the Pale Demon stood up."
"Demon?"
"He has skin like milk, but his mouth is black," Grom described, mimicking the baring of teeth. "Black lips. Black tongue. He holds a golden horn."
The other survivors nodded, murmuring fearfully.
"He spoke to the Thunder-Beast," Grom continued.
"Thunder-Beast?" Thak leaned forward.
"A female. Massive. Larger than a War-Mother. She wears grey, like a storm cloud. She touched the stone, and the sky cracked. Lightning came from her hand."
Grom acted out the explosion with his hands.
"Then... the black water came. But it was not water. It was the Sun. The Sun melted, Father. It stuck to Korg's face. Korg rolled in the snow. He screamed. The snow did not kill the fire. The fire ate the snow."
Silence descended on the cave. The idea of fire that could eat snow was a heresy to the Frost-Orcs. It broke the laws of their world.
"A Pale Demon who spits black sun," Thak mused. "And a Thunder-Mother who calls the spark."
He stood up, towering over his warriors.
"This is not a garrison. This is a nest."
Thak walked to the cave entrance, looking out at the distant, flickering lights of Boreas Keep.
"If they can burn the snow," Thak growled, "then they can melt the Ice Tomb. We cannot raid them."
He turned back to Grom.
"We do not attack the wall again. The black fire is too strong."
"Then we leave them?" Grom asked, hopeful.
"No," Thak smiled, a cruel twisting of his scarred lips. "Fire needs wood to burn. Men need food to eat."
He pointed a clawed finger at the valley floor.
"We do not fight the Demon. We starve him. Kill the Yaks. Poison the stream. Surround the mountain. Let the winter kill the fire."
"And the black-mouthed one?"
"Bring me his head when he freezes," Thak ordered. "I want to see if his teeth are truly black."