Day 6 of the War. Dawn.
Location: The Western Border, The Allied Line.
Weather: Stagnant air, heavy with the stench of decay.
The sun rose on a landscape that had changed overnight.
For five days, the battlefield had been a flat expanse of mud and craters.
Today, a mountain range had appeared in the middle of the valley.
It was not made of stone. It was made of meat.
Warlord Gorr had forced his slave-orcs to work through the night. They had dragged the thousands of corpses from the previous days' slaughter—Orcs, Trolls, and Humans alike—and piled them into a gruesome barricade.
The Corpse-Wall stood twenty feet high and stretched for half a mile.
It was positioned perfectly between the Swamp Sector and the Royal Center.
Baron Aris stood on the firing step of the gray trench, staring at the wall. He gagged, pressing a scented cloth to his nose. The smell was indescribable—a thick, oily miasma of rot that clung to the back of the throat.
"He blocked us," Aris choked out. "Viscount, he blocked the guns. We can't see the Royal Army anymore. We can't fire across their flank."
Rian Thorne stood beside him, measuring the wall with a sextant.
"It's crude," Rian noted coldly. "But effective. It cuts our Line of Sight. My 12-Pounders shoot in a straight line. If I fire now, I just churn up dead bodies."
"The King is alone," Varg growled, looking at the wall. "Gorr isolated the Center. He's going to swarm them, and we can't help."
The Blind Slaughter
Location: The Royal Center.
King Aric realized the trap the moment he saw the wall.
He looked to his left. He couldn't see Rian's cannons. He saw only a towering mound of limbs and armor.
"He cut the cord," the King grimaced. "No more thunder from the flank. We are on our own."
The Orc drums began to beat.
DUM. DUM. DUM.
But this time, the rhythm was faster. Manic.
Sixty thousand fresh Orcs—the main body of the host—surged forward.
They didn't attack Rian. They ignored the Swamp entirely.
They poured everything into the Center.
"Hold the line!" Cassius Thorne screamed, his voice cracking with panic. "Shields up!"
The wave hit.
Without Rian's enfilade fire to shred their flanks, the Orcs hit with full force.
The impact was catastrophic.
The Royal Shield Wall buckled. Knights were dragged down into the mud. Horses were hamstrung.
Duke Ironwood's mages threw fireballs, but there were too many targets. The Orcs climbed over their own dead, using them as ramps to vault the human defenses.
"They are breaching the gate!" a messenger screamed. "The Iron Bear Guard has fallen!"
The King fought like a demon, his greatsword cleaving three Orcs at a time. But he was tired. His Qi was fading.
He looked toward the Swamp, hoping for a miracle.
But the Corpse-Wall stood silent and mocking.
The Geometry of the Arc
Location: The Swamp Sector.
Rian could hear the screams from the Center. He could see the dust rising.
He knew the King was dying.
"Boss," Varg said, his hand twitching on his sword hilt. "We have to charge. We have to leave the trench and flank them on foot."
"Sit down, Varg," Rian ordered. "If we charge five hundred men into fifty thousand, we achieve nothing but heroic suicide."
Rian turned to the rear of the trench.
"Uncover the Toads."
The soldiers pulled the canvas off five strange, squat weapons.
They didn't look like cannons. They looked like cast-iron cauldrons tilted at a steep angle toward the sky. They were short, fat, and ugly.
The 10-Inch Siege Mortars.
Baron Aris looked at them. "Viscount... those tubes are pointing straight up. If you fire those, the ball will fall on our heads."
"Not straight up, Baron," Rian corrected. "75 degrees."
He drew a curve in the mud with a stick.
"A cannon throws a stone like a spear. Straight and fast."
"A mortar throws a stone like a ball. High and heavy."
Rian pointed to the Corpse-Wall.
"Gorr thinks in two dimensions. He thinks a wall stops a projectile."
"He forgot the third dimension."
Rian turned to his specialized Mortar Crews. These men were not gunners; they were mathematicians.
"Range: 800 yards," Rian called out. "Elevation: 75 degrees. Charge: 4 ounces of powder."
"We are not aiming at the front line. We are aiming behind the wall. At their reserves. At the crush of bodies waiting to attack."
"Load Explosive Shells," Rian ordered.
The crews lifted heavy, round iron bombs. These weren't solid shot. They were hollow spheres filled with gunpowder, fitted with a wooden fuse cut to burn for exactly 10 seconds.
"Fuse set!"
"Prime!"
"FIRE!"
The Rain of the Iron Toads
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The sound was different from the cannons. It wasn't a sharp CRACK. It was a dull, heavy cough.
Five black spheres were launched almost vertically into the gray sky.
They climbed high—hundreds of feet up—disappearing into the low clouds.
Baron Aris watched them go. "They missed," he groaned. "They went into the clouds."
"Wait for it," Rian checked his pocket watch.
"Gravity is a harsh mistress."
Location: Behind the Corpse-Wall (Orc Staging Area).
Ten thousand Orcs were packed into the staging area, waiting for their turn to charge the Royal Center. They were cheering, listening to the sounds of humans dying on the other side.
They felt safe. The massive wall of bodies protected them from the "Thunder-Tubes."
Then, a low whistling sound began.
WHEEEEEEE...
An Orc looked up.
"Bird?" he grunted.
CRUMP.
A black iron ball fell from the clouds. It landed in the center of the mob.
It didn't bounce. It sank into the mud.
The fuse hissed for a fraction of a second.
BOOM.
It wasn't a kinetic impact. It was a high-explosive detonation.
The shell shattered into jagged iron shrapnel. The blast wave liquefied the organs of every Orc within thirty feet.
Red mist sprayed into the air.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Four more shells landed seconds later.
Because the Orcs were packed so tightly, the damage was maximized. There was nowhere to run.
The "Safe Zone" turned into a slaughterhouse.
The Panic of the Invisible
"Where is it coming from?!" an Orc Chieftain roared, wiping blood from his eyes. "The wall protects us!"
Another volley came whistling down.
THUMP. BOOM.
This time, a shell landed directly on an ammo dump of Orcish fire-pots.
A secondary explosion ripped through the crowd, engulfing hundreds in green fire.
The panic was total.
When you are shot from the front, you can raise a shield.
When you are shot from the side, you can turn.
But when death falls from the sky without wings, without arrows, without magic... there is no defense.
"The Sky is falling!" the Orcs screamed.
The reserves broke. They turned and ran back toward their camp, trampling their own officers.
The pressure on the Royal Center vanished instantly because the reinforcements stopped coming.
The King's Reprieve
Location: The Royal Center.
King Aric swung his sword, decapitating a goblin. He was exhausted. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds.
He prepared for the next wave.
But the next wave didn't come.
The Orcs at the front looked back. They heard the explosions behind them. They saw the smoke rising from their own rear lines.
They heard the screams of their brothers.
"Ambush?" an Orc shouted. "Are we surrounded?"
Confusion rippled through the Orc ranks. The momentum of the charge died.
"Push them!" The King roared, sensing the hesitation. "They are breaking!"
The Royal Knights, seeing their enemy falter, rallied.
"For Oland!" Cassius screamed, leading a desperate counter-charge.
They pushed the Orcs back from the gate. They pushed them back into the mud.
The Mortar's Rhythm
Back in the Swamp, Rian watched through his binoculars as the smoke rose from behind the wall.
"Adjust aim," Rian ordered calmly. "Drop 50 yards. Walk the fire toward the wall."
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The mortars fired again.
Rian watched the arc.
"It's not magic, Baron," Rian said to the stunned Aris. "It's a parabola. Gorr built a wall to stop a line. So I threw a rock over it."
Aris looked at the squat, ugly "Toads."
"They are slow," Aris noted. "And they don't look impressive."
"But..." He listened to the distant booms.
"...they reach where hands cannot."
"Indirect Fire," Rian murmured. "The ability to kill what you cannot see."
The Warlord's Rage
Location: The Orc Camp (Rear).
Warlord Gorr watched his army fleeing from nothing.
He looked at the Corpse-Wall. It was intact.
He looked at the sky. No birds.
But his reserves were being blown apart.
He picked up a fragment of a mortar shell. It was hot. Jagged cast iron.
"He throws them," Gorr whispered. "He lobs them over the wall like a child throwing an apple."
Gorr crushed the iron in his hand.
His blood boiled.
He had fifty thousand men. He had monsters. He had magic.
And he was losing to a human who refused to fight like a warrior.
A human who fought like a... machine.
"He mocks me," Gorr roared. "He mocks the Old Ways!"
He turned to his Beastmaster.
"Unchain the Earth-Breaker."
The Beastmaster went pale. "Warlord... the Earth-Breaker is wild. It eats everyone. Even us."
"I don't care!" Gorr screamed, spitting foam. "Unchain it! Point it at the Swamp! If he wants to play with the ground, let the ground eat him!"
The Tremor Returns
Evening.
The shelling stopped. The mortar barrels were too hot to touch.
Rian sat on a crate, drinking water.
The Royal Center was safe for now. The Orcs had pulled back to regroup.
Suddenly, the water in his cup didn't just ripple.
It splashed out.
The ground jumped.
BOOM.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a footstep.
A footstep so heavy it registered on the seismograph in Rian's mind.
[Ding! System Alert]
[Massive Biological Signature Detected]
[Class: Titan]
[Identification: Ancient Behemoth (The Earth-Breaker)]
[Height: 60 Feet]
[Armor: Rock-Plate (Impervious to Small Arms)]
Rian stood up.
He looked at the horizon.
The Corpse-Wall... moved.
A massive hand, the size of a carriage, reached over the twenty-foot wall of bodies and swept it aside like it was made of twigs.
Rising from the dust was a monster.
It looked like a gorilla made of granite and magma. It was ancient. It was blind. And it was angry.
The Behemoth.
"Baron," Rian said quietly, holstering his revolver.
"Yes, Viscount?"
"Tell the men to pray."
"And tell Varg to bring out the Big Kegs."
"The Big Kegs?" Aris asked. "More vodka?"
"No," Rian watched the Titan roar, a sound that flattened the grass for a mile.
"Black Powder Charges. The 50-pound kegs."
"We can't shoot that thing. We have to bury it."
Rian looked at the monster lumbering toward his trench.
Gorr had escalated again.
"He brought a Raid Boss," Rian whispered.
"Fine. I'll bring the landscape."
Rian turned to Livia.
"Evacuate the forward trench. Pull everyone back to the Red Line."
"We are going to blow the dam."
End of Chapter 78