The Goblin Wars Part One Page 19

  Catapults, trebuchets, and all manner of siege equipment floated across the river alongside the endless army. Platoons of goblins all wearing leather vests stained with red hauled massive baskets and long lengths of animal hide that Yael had never seen before. He couldn’t begin to imagine what their purpose was so the commander shrugged and continued to watch the assembly. Finally, after the goblin horde had filled in the entire area of farmland between the rickety house and the river, Yael had to order a charge. There was simply nowhere else for the drones to continue their muster.

  A wicked and toothy smile broke out on the commander’s pale face.

  ***

  “GOBLINS FROM THE north!” The shout rang out from the parapet and all eyes turned to see a thin line of dark creatures running toward the city. “Push north! Defend the walls!” Herod called back with fervor. The horsemen and foot soldiers inched toward the northern walls, eager to spill goblin blood. There had been a lull in the action in the quiet hours since the alaris had galloped out, never to return. Master Brenning sat tall in his saddle next to the prince. His horse was barded in silver and gold armor that glowed in the soft light of the dying day. The burly smith wore plates of steel that he had crafted himself. They fit tightly over his chest and served as a painful reminder of how young and thin he had been when he made the armor.

  “It’s just a feint,” Master Brenning scoffed. He watched the soldiers moving away from the eastern gate and shook his head. “These goblins are much smarter than you think, my liege.”

  Herod turned his warhorse to face his most trusted advisor. “You presume to know much about our enemies, Master Brenning.”

  “I told you already, Gideon was working with two goblins. They saved me. The goblins were rogues who had left the army. You cannot afford to underestimate their cunning!” Brenning had told the prince a hundred times. No matter how much he told everyone, not a single person believed his story.

  “For the last time, Brenning, I will believe you when I meet these goblins myself! Why is it so hard for you to understand that these goblins we fight today are just as stupid as they look and act? We have scouted out their location, we know they will come from the north. Our walls are well defended from every single approach. We can hold off a million of the stinking creatures if we have to. Why should we not push out to meet their attack and crush them under our feet?” Herod’s horse whinnied and stamped the ground as a crudely-made goblin arrow struck near the animal’s feet.

  “What did I tell you?” Brenning screamed. He moved his powerful horse closer to the wall and looked up to the archers. “How many?” he called up to the lookouts.

  “None, sir, I can’t see a single goblin!” The lookout was leaning far over the wall and squinting against the darkness of dusk.

  Herod ordered the soldiers to crowd back against the gatehouse and called for the portcullis to be raised. “Where did that arrow come from?” he barked. None of the men could see anything other than darkness on the horizon.

  “The better question would be to ask why no others have followed it. The goblins test their range.” Brenning didn’t mean for the prince to hear his remark but he had said it louder than he thought.

  “Clever bastards…” Herod muttered. “One volley, flaming arrows, light up the sky!” he shouted to the wall. Within seconds the archers sent brilliant streaks of fire soaring out over the soldiers to litter the battlefield.

  “Get the men back into the city. We need to move behind the walls to hold our advantage as long as possible.” Master Brenning had his horse turned in an instant and galloped for the gate. The portcullis was slowly creaking upwards on its metal chains and offered just enough room for the soldiers to start pouring through on hands and knees.

  Remembering the river of undead men and women walking the dark tunnels from Reikall to Talonrend, Brenning realized the goblin plan. “They want us to cower behind our walls…” he said to himself. “We have no place left to run and nowhere to turn for help.”

  What the men had mistaken for empty darkness in the fields beyond the walls was actually an unimaginable sea of living creatures. The goblins were packed together so tightly that their dark leather armor had created the illusion of empty space. At the sight of the blazing flares, the goblin army charged.

  High-pitched wails and screams filled the night air for miles around the city. Herod commanded two of his best runners to order the retreat of his army from the north but, in the panic, it was impossible to know which orders had effect and which died before they reached their destinations. The alaris trying to push through the gatehouse was causing so much commotion that Herod ordered the unit of horsemen to sacrifice themselves in order to slow the goblins. Untrained militia soldiers stationed behind the walls only added to the quagmire of men attempting to run to safety. Herod was still outside the gate when the first line of goblins fell upon the retreat.

  “Brenning! I need you!” the prince called. The smith realized that in the tight quarters between the walls his horse was too frightened to be of any use. He dismounted the unruly beast and pushed his way out from the horde of soldiers back to Herod’s side. “Close the gate!” Herod yelled, even though only half of the soldiers had made their way back to safety. With a resounding crash, the heavy steel portcullis thundered into the dirt and sealed the city.

  “Rally around the prince!” Brenning waved his sword above his head to organize the remaining troops. The first line of the human defenses held well despite the confusion and panic behind them. Goblin corpses started to pile up around the gatehouse and each human that fell took at least 10 of the noisy creatures with them. The press of enemies was relentless. Pale-skinned goblins came in at every angle and with all manner of weapons.

  The archers overhead rained death upon the field, firing as fast as they could into the goblin tide. Dozens of goblins died with every volley but their numbers were simply too great for it to matter. Arrows, hammers, javelins, and even rocks answered the human volley with devastating effect. The goblins were completely unorganized in their attacks but fought with such numbers that they quickly broke through the initial human defense.

  Brenning leapt into the fight with reckless abandon. He wore a shield strapped onto his back and picked up a well-balanced mace to wield in his left hand. The burly man spun his way through the goblin ranks and used his short sword and mace combination to blast any foe unlucky enough to get in his path. The shield on his back rang out with hit after hit and many goblins got close enough to ding his chest plate just before they died.

  YAEL’S EYES GREW wide with amazement as he watched the onslaught. He had only intended to let a few thousand goblins die in the first real attack but the beauty of the carnage mesmerized him. The commander was drunk with power. He had never felt so alive in his life. When he gave an order, the telepathic relays of Lady Scrapple’s consciousness delivered the order instantaneously to the corresponding drones. Scrapple’s mental connections spread throughout the entire army, a sensation that felt awkwardly comforting to Yael. The goblin matriarch was helping Yael, but not directly controlling him or watching his thoughts.

  The goblin troops in red had cleared out a large area of the field and used it to light fires under their makeshift balloons. In groups of four the goblins piled into their wicker baskets and floated up into the air. Long ropes were passed along the ground through the goblin army and pulled the hot air balloons towards the towering walls. Yael couldn’t help but smile as he saw nearly a hundred such balloons dotting the battlefield.

  RAGE AND ADRENALINE coursed through Brenning’s blood, turning him into a senseless killing machine. Countless spear heads and arrow tips ricocheted off his polished armor every minute, but still the man fought on. His sword and his looted mace were so slick with goblin blood that they nearly flew from his hands as he executed a vicious two-handed swing that blasted a tiny goblin to pieces. All around the courageous smith, the humans at the gate rallied. Cheers floated through the air to mingle with
the deadly missiles flying to and from the wall.

  Covered in blood and missing a hand, one of Herod’s runners collapsed at the prince’s feet with a message. “Goblins…in the north…” the man gasped.

  “Yes, I know there are goblins in the north! What is it?” The soldiers outside the gate had formed a semi-circle around their commander with their backs to the wall and no goblin had yet tried to attack the regal man atop his warhorse.

  “Sir, the goblins in the north… they have been turned back! Our cavalry overran them, they are fleeing!” the winded runner used the shield of the nearest soldier for support as he delivered his message.

  “Good!” the prince bellowed. “Stay back behind the shield wall and try not to get in the way.”

  “Yes sir,” the man nodded before falling to the ground. The battle raged on all around the sheltered prince and his remaining soldiers.

  Herod looked to his last remaining runner. The man was young, maybe 20 years old, and wore a scrappy beard on his chin. His arms were scrawny and lanky, but the soldier’s legs were huge with muscle. “Get to the officers in the north,” the prince bade the runner. “Have them move every alaris in sight to our aid. Tell them to leave the archers and the militia where they are, but every other man is to relieve our position immediately! Return to me as soon as you have delivered the message. Go!” Herod watched the young runner depart through the shield wall toward the north.

  “My liege, on the horizon!” Herod’s gut churned as he imagined a mighty dragon swooping down from the clouds to lay waste to his precious city. He turned his head in the direction of the soldier’s pointing arm but saw no dragon.

  “What are they?” the prince asked but the men around him could only shrug. “Illuminating volley!” he called to the archers on the wall who fired a line of flaming arrows into the sky a moment later.

  “Flying machines, sir!” one of the soldiers guarding the prince shouted. “They are coming toward us, higher than the walls!”

  A fresh wave of panic filled the air. Herod stood with his back against Terror’s Lament and contemplated death. The balloon brigades made slow and steady progress toward Talonrend. An occasional arrow would fly from the basket of a nearing balloon but no real attack was ever mounted until the first line of balloons neared the wall.

  An alaris came thundering down upon the goblin flank from the north just in time to kill the few drones that had been holding the guide ropes to the flying machines. The balloons continued to drift lazily toward the high city walls as the alaris reached the main bulk of soldiers still fighting in front of the gate.

  A surge of morale propelled the soldiers at the front line into a killing frenzy. Horses shattered goblin skulls like a child stepping on insects. The relatively tiny creatures were no match for armored hooves and swinging flails that rained down upon them from impossibly high angles. Human warriors charged into the wake of the cavalry, eager to kill any survivors. After two devastating passes of the alaris, not enough of the riders were left alive to press their advantage again.

  For a brief moment, the tide of goblins seemed to slow. The humans reformed their barricade around the prince and more soldiers came from the northern flank to support them. Then, with precision that only comes from a hive mind entity, the goblins began their siege.

  Drone warriors fell back to get out of the way of the plethora of flying projectiles that bombarded the human position. Catapults and trebuchets sent huge boulders slamming into the thick stone walls of Talonrend at an alarming rate. Goblin archers unleashed a hailstorm of arrows accompanied by a shower of smaller rocks from soldiers wielding slings.

  Ingenious goblin miners and alchemists ensured that every payload of rock that slammed into the human knights and walls was laced with high levels of rich magnesium. The jagged shards of metal coated the battlefield in what the goblins frequently called “flare stone”.

  Goblins in red leather vests stood up on the edges of their floating baskets and leapt toward the gatehouse. Their outfits were coated in a volatile magical substance used in the mines of Kanebullar Mountain to blast through tough deposits of ore. On impact with the ground, the magically imbued oil turned the unfortunate bombardier into a highly explosive mess of goblin gore. Fires from the exploding oil quickly spread to the chunks of magnesium littering the battlefield and turned the ground into a blazing inferno.

  Steel-clad human knights were cooked alive in their armor and fell to the ground without a chance.

  “Open the damned portcullis!” Herod screamed. The prince scrambled out of his saddle as his horse’s mane caught fire. A sliver of shrapnel from one of the trebuchet blasts had punctured his fine armor and subsequently ignited. Herod clawed at the burning piece of metal but, with his bulky gloves, he couldn’t get the stubborn debris loose. He could feel the flesh over his ribs on his left side start to bubble and ooze as the fire took hold. Thinking to smother the ember, Herod clamped his gauntlet over the puncture, but the magically induced burn would not be extinguished so easily.

  Reeling from the agony and screaming at the top of his lungs, Herod pushed his way toward the opening portcullis. The heavy metal bars of the gate were slow to rise amidst the tumult of war. Soldiers scrambled all around the wounded prince to make it to the safety of the walls as the fires burned. Men fell flat on their chests to shimmy their way through to the other side where more soldiers waited to try to beat the fires from their armor and skin.

  A thoroughly blood-soaked hand ripped the prince from the burning ground and forcefully shoved him through the opening in the gate where a host of healthy warriors immediately attended to his many wounds. Master Brenning grinned at the prince and turned back to direct the flow of wounded soldiers through the gate. His sword and mace were long gone and the shield strapped to his back had taken so many hits that it was reduced to splintered bits of kindling and leather.

  Handfuls of mindless goblin drones rushed through the portcullis on the heels of the retreating men but were cut down almost immediately by the awaiting militia. Firebombs and boulders continued to hammer the walls and great chunks of stone began to fall from the parapets. The outer wall of Terror’s Lament was crumbling.

  More payloads of rock and magnesium flew over the walls and through the gaps in the portcullis bars, causing more panic and spreading flames among the militia and wounded. Through the smoke of chaos, Brenning spotted a group of five goblins rushing the gatehouse in unison. Each goblin wore a backpack filled with volatile ore attached to a red leather vest. The seasoned blacksmith beat his fists against his armored chest and grabbed the nearest healthy soldier by the wrist. “What’s your name, son?” he shouted into the knight’s face.

  “Nef,” the panicked soldier replied. “My friends call me Nef.” Master Brenning shook the knight violently by the arm in an effort to knock the confusion from his mind.

  “Build a pair of statues for us, Herod! Nef and Brenning are about to save Talonrend!” The smith smiled wildly as he shoved Nef through the portcullis and back into the licking flames. Master Brenning stood beside the young knight and patted him on the back. Nef drew his weapon, a curved scimitar that looked more like a mantle ornament than a tool designed to take life.

  “For Talonrend and King Lucius!” Brenning cried as the two poorly-armed warriors rushed through the smoke and fire toward the red vested goblins that dripped with volatile oil.

  The massive portcullis slammed shut just before the explosion.

  ***

  “WHAT DO WE do?” Vorst whispered into the night. The two goblins crouched down behind the tall grasses of the plain as the massive army of their kin marched to the city walls. Gideon knelt beside them and Nevidal glowed faintly in his hand.

  “We need to attack, to keep the humans from being overrun.” Gideon’s deep voice rustled the amber stalks like a ghost. Fires burned around the base of Terror’s Lament and threatened to spread throughout the plains.

  “If we attack now, we die. We must wait. There
are too many goblins for us to be effective.” Vorst tapped everything she said into the palm of Gravlox’s hand, translating the conversation as she went. “As long as the walls don’t come down, the humans can survive.” The shaking tone of her voice betrayed her fear.

  Gravlox gently kissed the back of Vorst’s hand. “If we can find Yael, we might be able to stop the invasion before they break through the walls. It might work.”

  After Vorst translated the message into the human language, the three agreed on their plan. They would find the goblin field commander, kill him, and hope that the war would end. If the death of Yael didn’t end the carnage, the three agreed that only Lady Scrapple’s demise would bring peace.

  As the blindingly bright fires continued to burn, there came a lull in the combat. The goblin balloons continued their aerial assault over Terror’s Lament but the bulk of the goblin forces held back. A broken stretch of thirty yards separated the battered stone walls from the sea of pale-faced creatures swarming about as far as the eye could see.

  Catapults and trebuchets continued to deliver their devastating cargo into the walls with great, thunderous reports. Thick plumes of smoke choked the air for miles around and the heat at the top of the walls was nearly unbearable. Archers covered their mouths with anything they could find and fired arrow after arrow into the tough leather of the hovering balloons. Many of the flying machines went down, but not before spreading more fire and devastation throughout the human ranks.