Molten Iron and Heavy Cavalry

"Boom!" Yet another barrel packed with strong spirits and gunpowder detonated midair, engulfing hundreds of surrounding orcs in roaring tongues of flame. Raging fire burned before the city wall like a blistering rampart, bringing the orcs to an involuntary halt. "Do not fear!" "All-Father Gruumsh watches over us! The brave shall be reborn in the flames!" An orc officer burst from the ranks, hoisting his spear high and howling in religious fervor. "Charge!" "For All-Father Gruumsh!" Whipped into a frenzy under his lead, several hundred orc warriors braved the raging inferno behind him, lunging toward the wall in relentless waves. Yet the ground before the wall suddenly caved in. Orcs tumbled into the deep pit traps one after another, impaled on sharp steel spikes lining the bottom. "Curse it, it's a trap!" "No, save me! I haven't even crossed blades with the dwarves! I can't die here like this!" Across the chaotic battlefield, detonations and war cries drowned out everything, making the shrieks from the pits nearly impossible to hear. The orcs pressing behind knew nothing of what lay ahead, jostling and urging one another forward in a mad rush. By the time they saw the pit gaping before them, bristling with spikes and corpses, it was already too late to halt. They plunged in one after another, filling the chasms with their own flesh and blood. At last, an orc officer on high ground noticed the disaster. Hill giants and half-orc giants hoisted massive crossbeams to bridge the gap. Orc shamans brandished bone staves, chanting ancient incantations to cause stone to surge and sprout, steadily closing the fissures in the earth. Atop the wall, dwarven archers and crossbowmen fired without pause. Flaming arrows and bolts laced with deadly poison rained down like a relentless storm. This stretch of level ground, spanning a mere few hundred meters, became a bloody millstone, endlessly grinding any orc who set foot upon it into gory fragments. The exquisite craft the dwarves had refined over millennia now manifested as ingenious traps and lethal armaments, mercilessly harvesting the lives of their foes. Yet when the orcs closed to within a hundred meters of the rampart, hidden mechanisms beneath the earth triggered once more. The dwarven statues sculpted along the wall opened their stone mouths in unison, baring metal tubes that spewed an endless barrage of venom-coated silver needles. *Whirrr—* A shrill, air-rending screech tore through the field, and entire ranks of orcs dropped like cut wheat, faint wisps of poisonous vapor rising from their corpses. The orc shamans raised their hands to the sky, their expressions reverent as they chanted fervently: "Praise be to the great All-Father, One-Eyed Gruumsh! You are the incarnation of strength, the gale, the tempest! Your single eye makes the world tremble and carries the will of vengeance!" Their raspy voices echoed endlessly across the battlefield, and a miracle truly seemed to answer. *Whoosh—* A gale thick with the stench of blood howled across the plains, blowing away every trace of the lingering poison fog. The orcs' morale surged, their deafening cheers shaking the heavens. Braving the rain of arrows, bursting kegs, and plummeting iron spheres, the orc host finally dragged itself to the foot of the wall at tremendous cost. "Evindeldan is right ahead!" "Scale the walls, crush the dwarves, take Evindeldan!" "Quickly! Charge! Great Gruumsh is watching us! Divine favor awaits the warriors who take the wall!" Towering hill giants, half-orc giants, and ogres hauled massive siege ladders from their shoulders, propping them against the towering battlements. The orcs swarmed like dense colonies of ants, scrambling over one another to climb, each desperate to be the first hero upon the wall and win the favor and praise of the All-Father. Yet atop the parapet, the dwarves fought tooth and nail to push the ladders away and pick off the climbers. Collapsing ladders crushed dozens of orcs beneath them, inflicting hundreds of casualties in mere moments. "Slaughter them!" "Defend Evindeldan to the death! Never let these mongrels set foot up here!" "By Moradin! For the glory of the dwarven race!" By now, however, the sheer weight of orc numbers had completely overwhelmed the traps and arrow barrages. They packed tightly beneath the city, crashing against the seemingly impregnable ramparts time and again like a mottled, surging tide. Bjorn stood at the wall's edge, his brow furrowed. At over four hundred years of age, he appeared even shorter and more stooped than ordinary dwarves, yet his eyes shone with unyielding resolve. "By Moradin, the orcs will pay for their greed and folly. Three hundred and eighty-seven years ago, I witnessed with my own eyes as our valiant dwarven warriors drove them into the north. Today... history shall repeat itself." The old minister walked slowly into the gatehouse tower, took a firm grip on an iron lever, and steadily pulled it down. *Clack.* A crisp mechanical snap rang out. Immediately afterward, tongues of fire surged from the great forge at the center of Evindeldan, billowing with scalding steam. The molten iron that originally flowed toward the dwarven homes altered its course under the control of massive valves. Tens of thousands of jin of bubbling, white-hot iron surged toward the city wall. The orcs looked up. Feeling the blistering heat wave rolling over them and hearing the muffled rumble from within, their expressions warped in terror. "Not good!" "Watch out! What are these dwarves trying to do?" Metal hatches along the wall swung open with loud clangs. Accompanied by a deafening roar, glowing molten iron erupted from the openings, cascading downward like a searing waterfall. In an instant, blinding sparks sprayed everywhere. The superheated iron poured directly over thousands of orcs and half-orc giants, swallowing them whole. "No—!" "It burns!" "It's molten iron, get back! Curse these wretched, underhanded dwarves!" The orcs wailed in agony, thrashing and clawing to escape the glowing torrent, but it was utterly futile. Dense steam hissed from their bodies. The instant all moisture was vaporized, their bare flesh met liquid iron heated to over a thousand degrees. Rolling steam blanketed the battlefield. Soon, only the crackle of vaporizing fluid and the dry snaps of fire remained; the screams of the orcs dwindled to near nothingness. Within this terrifying inferno of steel, all flesh was consumed by the raging liquid metal. Every orc who had been the first to touch the walls of Evindeldan was fused into the cooling slag, their remains reduced to charred dross within the refined dwarven iron. When the molten metal finally hardened, not a single standing orc remained beneath the wall—only warped, heat-radiating lumps of dark iron. "Taste that, you orc bastards! How do you like being charred to a crisp?!" "Hahaha! That's Moradin's judgment upon you!" The dwarven warriors atop the wall laughed without restraint, thoroughly exhilarated by the sight of the orcs' gruesome fate. "Think of how many fine weapons that could have forged... What a waste of such good iron." "Aye, pouring it over a pack of Gruumsh-worshiping mongrels is an absolute waste." "By Moradin, forgive our extravagance..." Former dwarven craftsmen gazed at the cooling iron beneath the wall, sighing in lament. Yet though the spectacle of steam and falling iron shook the orcs, they did not abandon their assault. They remained convinced that Evindeldan would fall. More orcs surged forward, crowding against the iron-crusted base of the wall to launch a fresh offensive. "For All-Father Gruumsh!" "Crush the dwarves! Take the fortress!" Ladders slammed once more against the soaring ramparts, swarming with hundreds of climbing orcs like jagged fangs sunk into stone. Across this narrow killing ground, Death swung his scythe without pause, yet the orcs only grew more bloodthirsty under the howling exhortations of their shamans. ... Behind Evindeldan's inner gates, the air was solemn and heavy. Hundreds of dwarven cavalry clad in plate armor gripped heavy warhammers and iron maces, mounted atop muscular bighorn goats as they awaited their king's command. The riders' armor gleamed brilliantly, and even their goat mounts were draped in finely crafted leather barding. Heavy cavalry—the mightiest dwarven cavalry in all the Mountain Kingdom, undefeated for a century. Bards had once sung of them: *"These dwarves charge down the slopes like collapsing mountain crags."* Now, five hundred heavy cavalry stood in disciplined formation, poised to launch a counterattack against the orc host. Under the relentless tide of the orc army, Evindeldan's outer defensive stores were depleting by the hour. If the horde gained a foothold atop the walls, the fortress would fall. "The time has come..." "Hiding behind these walls will only feed their arrogance and sap our warriors' spirit. We must strike back! We must ride out and teach these filthy orcs through blood and death—dwarves never yield! Evindeldan shall never fall!" A deafening roar erupted from the ranks of the dwarven heavy cavalry, shaking the very stones. His resolve firmly set, King Ed mounted a massive bighorn goat and tightened his grip on his heavy hammer. "Open the gates!" Ed commanded in a deep voice, slowly lowering the metal visor of his helmet. *Rumble—* With a heavy, grinding groan, dwarven guards strained against the winches, slowly hauling the massive gates apart. The orcs battling fiercely outside caught sight of the gates parting and erupted in ecstatic clamor. "Have these cowardly dwarves come to surrender? Evindeldan is ours!" "Hahaha! They can't withstand our might!" "Wait... what is that?" Their joy curdled into horror. What awaited them behind the gaping gates was no dispirited surrender party—it was the dwarven heavy cavalry, poised and thirsting for battle. At the head of the formation, the dwarven king behind his metal mask spoke with words that boomed like war drums: "All units, hear my command!" "Charge!" The earth trembled, and clouds of dust billowed. Accompanied by a thundering rhythm, a torrent of steel poured through the gates, the iron-shod hooves of the armored goats trampling straight over the fragile bodies of the orcs. Riding tall in their saddles, the dwarven riders brought heavy warhammers and iron maces crashing down, shattering orc skulls and reaping lives with practiced ease. "In the name of the Mountain Kingdom, Evindeldan shall never fall!" At the vanguard of the heavy cavalry, Ed raised his warhammer with one arm as his mount leaped several meters into the air. *Crack!* A hill giant's head shattered instantly on impact, showering gore, gristle, and bone fragments in all directions before the headless colossus crashed to the earth. Carrying his downward momentum, Ed slammed the head of his hammer into the ground. The divine weapon, blessed by Moradin, flared with blinding light. *Boom!* The hammer gouged a massive crater into the earth. With a chorus of splintering cracks, web-like fissures and scorched streaks spread across the terrain. Flames erupted from the crater and chasms, roaring fiercely and incinerating several orcs standing upon them to ash. Acrid, billowing smoke rose into the air, and a metallic, earthy stench washed over the battlefield. Ed swung his warhammer once more, aiming toward a cluster of hundreds of orcs ahead. "In Moradin's name! Dwarves will never be slaves!" Before the words had faded from his lips, a hammer-shaped boulder weighing hundreds of tons coalesced in midair. As he brought his warhammer down, the colossal rock crashed violently to the earth. *Boom!* The ground caved in, showering jagged stone everywhere. A violent gale swept up sand and rock, the shockwave of the impact rippling out and shaking the earth for a hundred meters around. The band of over two hundred orcs was buried beneath crushed bedrock, reduced to an indistinguishable paste of pulverized flesh and bone. With a single blow, hundreds of orcs were sent straight to Gruumsh's Realm of Nishrek. Yet the slaughter did not pause. The dwarven king broke away from his cavalry formation, plunging alone deep into the heart of the orc army. Wherever he passed, dust swirled and shattered rock flew. Any foe daring to draw near was pulverized into red mist beneath his bloodstained warhammer. In just a few sweeping charges, nearly ten thousand orcs besieging the walls were slaughtered wholesale, until not a single orc dared approach him. This was the dwarven king hailed by bards as the "Lord of the Mountain" and the "Controller of the Forge." —Ed Klein. A mighty legendary fighter, wielding the Hammer of Bedrock said to have been forged by Moradin's own hands, clad in ancestral plate handed down through generations of shield dwarf royalty. A century ago, it was this very dwarven king who had saved the Mountain Kingdom. In that historic conflict, Ed had held off the godblood of Holy Fadlan almost single-handedly, forcing the old emperor to abandon all thought of enslaving the dwarves. And now, history seemed poised to repeat itself. "By Moradin... All-Father, grant us your blessing to weather this tribulation." Ed tightened his grip on his warhammer, glaring intently at the churning orc host. For reasons he could not name, an ill premonition stirred in his heart. This time, the orcs had come with everything they had, driven by an unyielding determination to seize Evindeldan. The wild blood of Gruumsh had been stirred, rushing through their veins and feeding an insatiable ambition. This held all the truer for Monk Limb-Cleaver, an Eye of Gruumsh. The vanguard general stood atop the ridge, hoisting his double-headed axe, his lone remaining eye veined with crimson. "Neither dwarven traps nor their cavalry can halt our warriors' march, nor shall they make us fear! Until we take what belongs to us, we remain worthless cowards with nowhere to stand! The All-Father's Realm of Nishrek will never welcome such trash! Remember: until Evindeldan falls, do not stop moving forward!" A crimson light flickered in Monk's single eye. Thick veins bulged across his muscular frame like gnarled tree roots. *Awoooo—* A mournful howl echoed through the peaks. A black worg as massive as a hill bounded over the ridge, crouching before the orc vanguard. It was the mightiest worg of the Red Blood Tribe, revered by the strength-worshiping orcs as the "Black Knoll." Rumor held that this proud beast had mauled seven beastmasters to death, refusing to let anyone mount its back—save for Monk, who had subdued it with his bare hands. Gripping his double-headed axe, Monk vaulted onto the worg's towering spine and let loose a throat-tearing bellow: "Charge!" "For Gruumsh!" The worg cavalry throughout the army answered the call. Their mounts lifted their heads and howled in unison, a piercing chorus of bloodlust. Brandishing spears and battleaxes, mounted atop famished worgs with glinting, ghostly eyes, the riders swept across the battlefield in a surging deluge. Ed hoisted his heavy warhammer once more, rallying his heavy cavalry as he roared with unbridled fury: "In Moradin's name—dwarves will never be slaves!" "Dwarves will never be slaves!" The earth shook gently beneath the thundering hooves of armored goats. Like a solid wall forged of cold iron, the dwarven heavy cavalry advanced, crashing headlong into the charging worg riders.