“Listen! Just listen!” Ankhar drew a deep breath. He looked at Laka, and she raised her talisman, rattling the skull with the glowing emerald eyes, and that produced a general silence. “Lots and lots of knights are in big camp. Many soldiers sleep; they live there. They not watch for us because these forts are here. But tonight, there is no moon. We go-all of us go-between two forts, very quiet. We march all night, and come to big camp. We attack there, when the sun comes up, and kill many, many knights.”
He exhaled, finally sensing that he had their attention. “Then we come back and smash all the forts,” he concluded.
“All right. We try your plan,” Heart Eater said, nodding and scratching his bulging chin.
“And what about my flyers?” Guilder, the aurak, wondered gutturally.
“I have a plan for them: they fly over knights’ camp and land on other side, where horses are. Scare all the horses, and the knights cannot ride.”
Guilder nodded, hissing his approval. Bullhorn, too, agreed with the plan, and at last the scheme was set. The great column gathered at the edge of the woods, still concealed by the dense foliage. With some difficulty, the captains persuaded their troops to wait for the signal to move out.
“You two will wait here,” Ankhar told Laka and Pond-Lily seriously. “I send for you when fight is over.”
Pond-Lily nodded vacantly, staring at him with the limpid puddles of her small, deep-set eyes. Even Laka, to the half-giant’s mild surprise, accepted her role of waiting, perhaps understanding that she was no longer capable of keeping up with a night-long march.
Darkness was complete a few hours later, and Ankhar led the great column, thousands of ogres marching on foot, between two of the border outposts, the forts with the towers and horsemen that could be seen from the woods and were spaced about every five miles along the line. Moving quietly, with many whispered admonitions to avoid making any noise, the band somehow escaped notice as it swept toward the great garrison camp, the place where the real defensive force awaited, all unaware.
Dawn turned the eastern sky blue as the ogres came into sight of the vast wall around the fortified camp. Made from sharpened birch stakes driven into the ground to form a palisade, the barrier would have been a formidable obstacle to goblins, hobgoblins, even some ogres. But Ankhar had taken note of the weaponry preferred by Heart Eater’s warriors, and his plan was shrewd.
“You lead the way,” he said to the strapping bull. “Use your axes and break down wall-make many holes. The rest of us come after you, charge through holes, and kill the knights.”
Naturally, Bullhorn raised some objections-“Why Heart Eater go first?”-but was mollified by the argument that the axe-wielders had a special job in the attack. Guilder, concealed by a spell of invisibility, quickly ventured out for a look and was pleased to report the vast horse corrals on the north side of the camp were very lightly guarded.
“We can stampede the herd,” he reported with confidence.
The ground was still shrouded in shadow, though the sky grew steadily lighter as the ogres spread out into a line more than a mile long. There was as yet no sign that they had been noticed when, at Ankhar’s command, the monstrous warriors raised a great shout and charged forward en masse.
Almost immediately a trumpet brayed within the Solamnic camp. Ankhar loped along in the front rank, and from within the palisade he heard orders shouted, cries of panic and alarm, and the frantic neighing of horses. All the while his ogres pounded closer, the ground trembling under their massive, lumbering weight. A few arrows arced from behind the palisade, many falling harmlessly to the ground, a few puncturing the flesh of the hulking attackers.
But it took more than one lucky arrow hit to stop a massive ogre. The brutish warriors who were struck typically plucked the annoying missiles out of their hides and cast them away-the glancing wounds merely enhanced their fury, their determination to wreak terrible havoc. Tusks slick with drool gleamed in the eerie darkness. Eyes wild, throats hoarse, the horde swept closer.
Soon the picket wall loomed before them, and Heart Eater’s axemen attacked with a vengeance, whipping their heavy, bladed weapons through roundhouse swings, right into the bases of the stout timbers. Several of the posts snapped free with the first blows, while others could withstand only two or three smashes before splintering.
Looking up, Ankhar’s heart filled with pride as he saw the company of sivak draconians, some fifty strong, flying overhead, winging toward the great corrals.
The attackers pressed forward, and the logs of the palisade toppled inward on the knights and infantrymen who were scrambling to the defense. Some men were crushed outright, while the rest were forced to back out of the way, beating a hasty retreat before the barrier collapsed on top of them. Bloodthirsty howls rang out along the whole mile of the front as ogres spilled into the breached camp and lay about with axes, clubs, swords, and spears.
Ankhar’s army hit the fort like a wave, a tide surging against a picket fence, finding gaps in the barrier, crashing and seeping through. Like water, the warriors spilled through the gaps, widening them, dragging down more and more of the birch poles as the trickle became a flow and the flow became a flood.
The half-giant yodeled a great battle cry, feeling a joy he had not known since his defeat in the foothills. This was the life! He thrust with his emerald-tipped spear, piercing a footman like a piece of meat on a spit. With the limp body still hanging from his mighty weapon, he smashed to the right and left, stabbing another swordsman, smashing the weapon-and arm bones-of a frantic archer. Blood ran down the shaft, slicking his hands, and he relished the moment.
Finally he gave the spear a contemptuous flip, tossing the slain man from the end of his weapon, while he looked for his next victim. The ogres were roaring everywhere, smashing through the Solamnic camp. Their quickness belied their huge size as they rumbled through tents, kicking through cook fires and mess halls and canvas-sheltered armories where the knights’ weapons had been neatly stacked.
Human warriors were still scrambling from their tents, strapping on breastplates, sometimes fighting without boots or helmets. Officers screamed and shouted, directing their troops this way and that in the face of howling, growling foes. Often the tents were cut down even before the men emerged, and the trapped humans flailed around under the smothering tarps while ogres gleefully danced across the heaving fabric, bashing it down any place where it moved.
One knot of men fought in a little circle, shields raised and swords brandished as the attackers swirled around them. Bullhorn led a charge, crushing the captain of the company with a powerful downward smash of his club. The circle breached, every man fought for his own life as dozens of ogres pierced the formation. Any place a human looked, there was a deadly enemy, and in a few moments, the last of those brave men had been battered into a slain, bloody pulp.
A trumpet brayed from the rear, and a column of horsemen bearing lances charged the ogre line. They were not many in number, but several of the brutish attackers went down, stabbed by the long spears rendered especially lethal by the driving power of the charging horses. Their armor was incomplete, but the knights wore breastplates and helmets, and their horses were saddled securely. Ankhar wasted no time wondering how they could have equipped themselves and counterattacked so quickly; instead, the half-giant bellowed furiously for a response from his followers.
Ogres rushing behind him, he raised the glowing spear and charged at the leading horseman, a knight with a gray mustache and long, silvery hair. The man lowered his lance and urged his warhorse forward, and the half-giant halted. Bracing his feet and crouching, Ankhar bashed the long weapon out of the way. But the horse surprised him, lowering a shoulder and knocking him backward.