“When d’you think they’ll come at us, Geran?” Durnan Osting said quietly. The brewer and his company of Spearmeet volunteers lined the top of the dike to each side of Geran. Kara and Harmach Grigor had entrusted Geran with command of the right wing of their small army-two Spearmeet companies, a battered band of Shieldsworn, and a motley collection of mercenaries from Marstel, Sokol, and the Double Moon. He needed about three times as many men to properly defend the length of wall he had, but there simply weren’t any more to spare.
“Soon, Durnan,” Geran answered. “Before the sun comes up, I think, and that’s not far off now.”
The valley floor was a patchwork of gray shadows, growing brighter by the minute. On Geran’s end of the line, Lendon’s Dike climbed to meet the steep wall on the east side of the Winterspear vale. From Geran’s elevated vantage, he could see the torch-dotted line of the earthworks stretching across the valley floor to the inky shadow of Lake Hul, a mile and a half away under the western margin of the vale. The old dwarf Dunstormad Goldhead and Burkel Tresterfin’s Spearmeet company held the spot where the dike met the lake, strengthened by the Veruna mercenaries. In the center of the line, where the Vale Road pierced the old dike, the harmach’s banner fluttered. Kara and most of the Shieldsworn were there, along with the Icehammer mercenaries and the weaker Spearmeet companies. The heaviest blow would fall right in the middle of the line; Geran could see the dark, seething mass of the orc horde gathering only a few hundred yards from the dike.
The valley shook with orc shouts and chants. Dozens of massive drums thumped and battled with each other, and the clamor of spears striking shields was overwhelming. Geran looked at the militiamen around him; he saw faces gray with anxiety, knuckles white as they clenched their weapons close.
“Come on, lads!” he shouted to the men nearby. “Let’s make a little noise of our own. Show them that we’re still here!” He raised a piercing war cry, and the men nearby joined in. Within a few moments the cry spread up and down along the dike until hundreds of men were shouting together against the orc horde. The orcs were far louder, but Geran kept at it, and he heard the small echo of his warriors’ voices rolling back from the hills amid the orc clamor.
“A vain gesture,” Sarth muttered from close by, but a moment later the tiefling joined his voice to Geran’s and shouted defiance as well. Vain or not, Geran thought that the men around him looked a little less frightened. Perhaps they felt that way, too. He wished Hamil were at his back, but the halfling hadn’t been able to march; Geran had left him at the Troll and Tankard.
The orc chant reached a crescendo then broke apart into countless individual roars and cries. The front line of the Bloody Skull army surged forward and swept over the unplanted fields toward the dike-thousands of orc warriors, running headlong into battle with axes and spears high.
“Here they come!” Durnan Osting shouted. “Get ready for ’em, lads! They’ll no’ find a weak spot here!”
Geran drew his sword, weaving spells of ruin on his blade. The elven steel gleamed a deadly silver-blue in the gloaming, and he flicked the point from side to side to set the grip in his hand. He hadn’t expected the orcs to simply rush the entire line at once; it would have been more effective to concentrate a blow at a single point. Then again, the mass charge would keep him from sending help to any other point of the defenses as long as he was fighting to hold his own position. “Archers!” he shouted. “Fire at will!”
He had only a few dozen bowmen under his banner, so few that there was little point in trying to volley their fire. Most of the archers had no experience with the tactic, anyway-they weren’t even militiamen, just Hulburgans or foreign laborers who’d joined the effort to defend the town. Their arrows hissed out over the earthen rampart. Many missed, but as the orcs continued to close, Geran saw a few of the charging warriors stumble and fall.
“Sarth, save your spells for the moment,” Geran told the sorcerer. “I want your magic at the point of decision.”
“I understand,” Sarth answered.
Geran watched the dark tide rushing closer and seized the shoulder of a young Spearmeet lad next to him. “Get over to the far right, and tell whoever’s in charge of the Marstels and Sokols to bring all their men here, right now. We’re going to need them. Go swiftly!” The teenager nodded once and bolted off to the east, heading for the handful of mercenary fighters Geran had on that end of his line. Few of the orcs were heading toward the uphill side of the dike. Then he faced the oncoming horde and breathed a few words of warding, preparing for the fight to come.
The first of the Bloody Skulls reached the bottom of the dike. The old earthworks were not more than fifteen feet tall, but heavy brush and small trees grew thickly on the sloping mound; despite the ferocity of their charge, the orc warriors had a difficult time struggling through the thickets.
“Stay in ranks!” Geran shouted. “Let them come to you!”
A band of orc berserkers bulled their way up the embankment near Geran, and he hurried through the thickets to meet them when they crested the wall. He caught a thick-muscled orc axeman as he scrambled up the slope with a hand on the ground, and lunged down to bury his swordpoint in the orc’s neck. The apelike warrior bellowed, clapping his hand to the wound, and staggered up to swing at Geran. The swordmage danced back a few steps, avoiding the orc’s wild axe-swings until the dying warrior’s feet slid out from underneath him and he fell heavily to the ground. Geran found more orcs swarming up the slope all around him, and for a hundred furious heartbeats he slashed and stabbed, charged and retreated, wielding his blade of elf-wrought steel in a blinding blur of searing blue-white radiance.
“For Hulburg! For the harmach!” Geran shouted.
All around him Hulburgans set their spears in a deadly fence atop the dike and took a heavy toll on the orcs who recklessly attacked into the teeth of their defenses. They died too, overwhelmed by the sheer strength and fury of the orc assault. Near Geran’s banner Durnan Osting killed three orcs with a two-handed warhammer before several more swarmed over him and hacked him to pieces with their war axes. More Spearmeet men fell there, cut down as the Bloody Skulls scrambled up the suddenly undefended slope. But then the sorcerer Sarth stepped forward and sealed the breach with a devastating blast of fire from his fearsome rod, burning down most of the berserkers. “To the banner!” the tiefling cried. He held off the orc assault until the mercenaries Geran had summoned from the unengaged end of his line showed up and filled in to take the place of Durnan Osting and the other fallen Spearmeet there.
A shriek from overhead wrenched Geran’s attention from the roaring line of orcs trying to overwhelm the dike. He looked up and saw a huge bat-winged shape swoop low over the line of defenders. It seized a man in its talons and started to beat its way back into the air. Its tail whipped around to sink a long, wicked stinger into the back of another man fighting nearby as the monster flapped away from the dike. The stung man arched in agony and sank to the ground, and the monster dropped its first victim among the seething ranks of orcs pressing close to climb the dike.
“A wyvern too?” Geran muttered aloud. They hardly needed any more trouble. He hurried after the flying monster, trying to guess where it would swoop next.