An excerpt from the journal of Soizic d'Karak, a Questing Knight-
Dear diary, forgive me for this delay, but duty demands I transcribe such notes as I had into your pages afore I entrust to you the events following.
And the shaking of my hand upon recollection of those events yet demands time to soften.
_____________________________________________
For a moment, there was a gash in the world of such blackness such that it would swallow even dragonfire. The sun itself was wrenched from the sky behind me, the shadows blinking into their new orientation as if suddenly slapped awake, throwing the whole of the caldera into darkness. The snow-coated peaks above the pitch shown blinding white, driven to eye-burning incandescence by the contrast alone.
The shadow of Karag Nar fell across the horde, and in the moment it touched them they died.
I know not what magics the Grey Wizard conjured. I know not how much was planned by our clever King. I know not what sacrifices of blood or bone or souls were made. (I do not wish to know, for my heart worries and my lessons tell me that the old stories are correct: no imperial magic of this magnitude may be done without sacrifice. I hope only that those who died to give us this chance were willing, and are honored by their gods in the afterlife for their choices.)
All I know is that we required a miracle for even the least number of us to survive what was coming. And that miracle was delivered beyond the wildest hopes I dared entertain! An army burned to ash where it stood, struck down as if by an angry god. (And I write, dear diary, not from ignorance in such matters, for I have seen the foot of Mork crushing his own followers in a blind rage.)
My Lady, I give thanks you that you stretched out your benevolent hand, sheltering your servant and offering her only those tasks she might overcome. I would thank you twice over, for the lessons in war and glory that thou hast shown me, for the sight of victory by that strength that lays beyond feats of arms.
Ranald the Protector, my thanks to you for your servant amidst our ranks.
(Dear diary, the woman I was four years ago would rather have cut her own throat than write such words as above, but such has been this adventure that I can scarce limit myself to them.)
T'was the cold truth of the world that one blow, while vast, was not the end of this battle. I saw columns of dwarves running out of Karagil and Mhonar, rangers shifting about Ziflin and Yar, bolting to bar the western gates with their bodies. From my perch it seemed painfully slow progress across the distance, even as the greenskins piling through the gates slammed themselves to a halt upon seeing what had become of their compatriots. Though they tried to turn, they were shoved forwards by those behind them.
I could see the trail of the dwarves by the swaths they cut through the standing corpses, clouds of ash billowing about them and flat roads of beaten dust behind them, stretching back through fields of orcs like grotesque pillars.
I rallied the undumgi, pulling back as many as I could from the checkpoints above and below, to join with the detachment in the underway facing Mhonar which was to be mostly abandoned: the dwarves were advancing, not retreating, and so it had become superfluous. Seven hundred and fifty above, seven hundred and fifty below. Four thousand and a hundred with me, four hundred dead or unable to fight.
We exited through Mhonar, waved onwards by one of the Princes of Karak Azul, who was standing guard over the massed bolt throwers in the entrance tunnels. Outside, in the caldera, it was eerily silent, the greatly muffled shouts and clashes of metal from a melee less than a mile away barely making it to my ears, as if the dead orcs were eating the sounds.
Dear diary, such a sight was it! I weep to think I might never again see it's like. It was as if the entire Waaagh was frozen in time, thousands upon tens of thousands upon hundreds of thousands, all staring upwards, at Karag Nar and it's crown of towers. Armor yet hung on them, and their brandished weapons mostly stood upright in brutish fists; but every square centimeter of exposed once-green flesh had burned to black. (I have seen black orcs before, and confess with laughter that I much prefer this version.) If you so much as touched one, they fell to pieces, bones burned to a degree even beyond the skin.
There was, disappointing as I may have felt it to be, little time to linger amidst this wonderland. Princess Edda was sallying forth, her runners confirming to me that the foe yet remained in the crude tunnels they had dug. King Kazador likewise sent word, for despite all the devestation wreaked by our Dame Magister near a hundred thousand of the orcs remained beyond the broken gates. (Ah! I was much amused at the time by the news that the first force to fight its way west out of the gates was, in fact, the few orcs who had seen the burning shadow consume their brethren while they were yet sheltered from it's reach.)
I left Johnathan with a thousand pike under the princess, for she seemed confident that her engagements would be limited in scope, if prolonged in time. Even as I left with the remainder of my command, she had formed the pike into an inward facing circle, surrounded by her crossbows. I heard two sharp hammerblows ring out from the top of the towers of the citadel, and knew them for the Runelords and their anvils: such a noise is riven into my very bones I feel, after the last time. The ground in the circle of pike began to steam and bubble, boiling as if it were a pot of water, and threw back our forces from heat alone. Lucky, then, that our pikes were long and our crossbow skilled- screaming orcs and lesser greenskins roiled to the surface like small onions in a soup. They did not last, for the heat killed almost as quickly as the bolts and stabbing pike.
Princess Edda moved onto the next space, clearly intending to proceed as if on a grid. (Although, she looked oddly... thankful? as Johnathan responded to her orders. Such is worrying to me, for it might be that she did not think he would respect her authority, and we cannot have that impression among the dwarves here, lest they cease to trust us. Bah! T'is for another time.)
My command, with Hubert at my side and Matthew as my second, moved to the gates through avenues opened by the king in his haste. (Though the almost-feeling of the sheer satisfaction that the throng had taken in the disintegration of their foes under their boots still lingered.) Joyfully did we make the short march.
But the West Gate was sobering.
A wedge of armored dwarves had driven forward through the oversized barbican, but had stalled against the press of bodies against them. The sheer weight of orcflesh attempting to enter was compressing the wedge from the sides, and there were greenskins as far forward as the remnants of the gate itself on the flanks. King Kazador was roaring orders from the center of his wedge, loosing a bolt with every fourth word.
My Lady, should I grow in your esteem, grant unto me the skill in command as I saw then, for I was humbled by it, as I am humbled before you.
He saw us and laughed, his grin growing fiercer, and in moments began ordering maneuvers in a most *audacious* manner. The Undumgi he split in two, we lined either side of the passage through the mountains behind the gate, our backs against the mountains and a quintuple row of pike facing inwards. That portion of his throng not yet though the gate, perhaps four of five, he stacked in a column ten across down the center of the road between the ranks of the undumgi. Our pike reached towards them, perhaps three meters of space clear on their flanks, with a broad shieldwall of dwarves to close off the entire gap between the two mountains, beyond the end of our ranks nearest the caldera.
Imagine yourself a bird, dear diary, or perhaps a dragon flying above. Imagine a glittering arrow of dwarves, the broad head of the arrow passed through the gates and blocking entrance, the shaft stretching towards the caldera and the fletching closing off the pass, many dozens of ranks deep. Imagine the pike on either side of the shaft, as if we were the boltgroove of a crossbow.
The King shouted an order, and the broad head collapsed into a bodkin. The greenskins poured in through either side where passage through the gate was exposed, and with the sudden release of pressure at the point, the arrow was loosed. He drove forward, extending deep into the horde and splitting it in twain. The outer four ranks of the arrow shaft held where they were, the inner six marched forward to extend the shaft behind the king, and the ranks of the fletching flowed up to replenish them.
And my brilliant undumgi? We ground the orcs against the dwarves from both sides. You see, dear diary, that the greenskin masses who strove to break through the gates had a sad clarity of focus once they succeeded: seeing the dwarves to one side, the pike to the other, other brutes pressing from behind them and a clear path ahead? They spilled straight forward, between us.
And we picked them apart as they ran in front of us. We formed a gauntlet, thousands of spearpoints pressing them to grind against a Dwarven shieldwall, and the few that made it all the way to the end died against the fletching of our formation.
King Kazador was amazing, for the whole maneuver was precarious almost beyond belief- should the shaft be breached, his flow of reinforcements would be cut off and he would be surrounded- and the shieldwalls of the shaft were thin indeed. But as long as the orcs could be induced to rush forward in parallel rather than stop and press, he was free to push forward. I saw him manage the orcs with flickering charges out sideways, the shaft growing and retracting thorns, convincing them that his front was broader than it actually was. He baited the crush of the Waaagh outwards away from the center, where he cut forwards almost unimpeded.
Audacious! And skilled, for once he had extended his throng by two thirds through the gate, he blew again his horn. The forward thrust stopped, and instead two wedges were thrust sideways, out towards the walls of the pass, where it had widened considerably. Thus the arrowhead mushroomed to fill the entire width of the passage even as the front ranks reversed and gave ground, flowing with the pressure even as the shaft and fletching spent themselves forward, thickening the ranks pushing left and right. The Undumgi ground apart the remaining orcs behind the gate, who were faltering without the press of reinforcements, then flowed forward through and behind the last ranks of dwarven reinforcements, untill we filled the shaft of the arrow entire, the whole of King Kazador's command extended into a T rooted at the gates and the pass's walls.
We lowered our points and pushed forward through the two dwarven shieldwalls, skewering our foes against the mountains, while the dwarves broke rank and moved up to consolidate the throng.
Four maneuvers, dear diary, to go from a wedge bogged down in the gate, to a broad position consolidated forward of it, where the weight of bodies could no longer force entrance Thousands of the foe dead traded for mere dozens of our own. Forming up, thrusting forwards, extending to the wings, surrounding and eliminating the foes to the flanks. Four maneuvers, with a masterful command of his enemy's momentum, clean advances, and disciplined fighting retreats. And he was not done.
He had chosen carefully how far to extend, just far enough that the slopes to either side were climbable rather than sheer where his front ranks ceased giving ground and set themselves. His back ranks split to either side, and began climbing the mountains. My command he formed up some ways behind his rapidly thinning center, a proper full pike formation arrayed before the gates. Maneuvers five, and six.
A blast of the horn, and his center parted, pulling back to the slopes and up, dwarves looking almost like ranks of mountain goats as they formed up on the sides of Ziflin and Yar. Away went the shields and axes, out came the crossbows. Maneuver seven, and he had reversed his position entirely while gaining ground. Instead of a wedge thrusting forward and pressed from the sides, he had two flanks of archers mostly out of reach pressing on either side of the orcish wedge.
In the center, we received the greenskin thrust. I stood once again in the front ranks against an orcish charge, for I know my Lady favors me and I would not have had another stand in front of me 'gainst this peril. But compared to those two I faced before, this was anemic. Perhaps t'was the blizzard of quarrels falling from both sides upon them as they can forwards. Perhaps it was the goblin wolf-riders and gyrocopters that I began to glimpse, cutting at their rear. Perhaps it was King Kazador, and his horn. Regardless, their morale was weak, their bellowing sub-par, and their choppas dull. We tore them apart.
It was not easy, dear diary, never believe fighting a Waaagh is easy. (In all honesty one must ignore the taking of the citadel, for never before have I even heard of such loss of ferocity, and so cannot believe it repeatable.) But as the minutes grew to hours, we held them and broke them.
King Kazador was forced to come down from the slopes as his quarrels were exhausted. The Undumgi were forced to retire behind reinforcements from exhaustion. Even near the end of their numbers the orcs grew close once again to the gates, until a swirl of duels saw the Bosses and Big Bosses dead to lightning bolts and runed axes.
It was that which finally broke them, and with mere tens of thousands remaining they began falling back. The wolf riders hesitated, but did not challenge us, choosing instead to harry the losers even unto annihilation.
We stood triumphant.
A miracle and more besides we had needed, but looking out the western gates of the Karak as I once looked out the western gates of the citadel, it could not be denied.
Victory, utter and crushing and unlikely beyond belief. Our home secured entire, our curtain walls reclaimed, our enemies broken- and all this before our swiftest allies could even arrive! Ah, I look forwards to telling tales to the winter wolves, for to gently mock them for missing the greatest of the battles of reclaimation, an entire war packed into two days.
A lightning war, a weekend war. If my first campaign might be called the Damsel-Tale War, then this most certainly is the Two-Day War. (Is the conquest of Karagil enough to stand with these? I doubt, for it was but a single battle.)
My Lady, my heart sings with your grace and glory. My lips and pen run over with your praises, and my mind dwells on this victory that I might turn it to your service. I do not deserve your favor, but I shall strive all my days to be worthy of that which you have lifted me to.
Dear diary, I close your covers now, to go wash and feast. Wish me luck!
A/N: Whew! Long time coming, this. Turned into an opportunity to detail that bit of the battle Mathilde missed, that Boney said most of the songs would end up being about. From here, we write towards Soizic getting a sword!
