Chapter 75: Half and Half (2)

Half and Half (2)

Contrary to Maximilian’s expectations, the Warlord did not join in the battle.

He did nothing; he was just there. Yet, his mere presence changed things radically.

The orcs had been courageous and fierce before, but not fearless monsters. After their king had arrived, they became beasts that knew no fear or pain.

They became berserkers.

They cared not if they lost limbs or were pierced by dozens of arrows. They fought on until they died. Even before this change, the soldiers could barely stem their tide.

Now, facing such unbridled rage, the soldiers died in their droves, unable to mount a defense. The heavy infantry of the high lords was wiped out to a man. The long-spearmen were annihilated next. Knights entered the fray and tried to hold the line, yet their efforts were in vain. Four-hundred exhausted knights could not hope to stop the two-thousand orcs who had already crossed the bridge. The soldiers supporting the knights were locked in their terror. The nobles could not effectively command their troops due to the Warlord’s overbearing presence on the other side of the Rhinethes.

Even the inspiring presence of the Second Prince, who led from the front, was not enough to ease the terror in the hearts of men. The formations collapsed before the orcs, and the casualties mounted as the monsters continued their assault.

A few brave commanders were trying to organize a retreat, yet the orcs targeted them. The moment that the commanders tried to rally their troops, the orcs focused on them, and fear silenced the tongues of these officers.

The command structure had disintegrated, and each unit fought on its own. It was an embarrassing state of affairs: Soldiers being abandoned in the middle of their army.

No one had time to consider the absurdity of it, least of all the soldiers who were dying in their droves in the center of the tumult. It was only a matter of time until all the lines were broken.

The champion of the kingdom joined the battle then, and the powerful energies that Count Lichstein wielded brought a semblance of calm to the terror-stricken soldiers. However, sanity was not enough to turn the tide of the slaughter. The champion was forced to battle ceaselessly instead of bolstering the troops’ already broken morale.

The forces in the center of the fight suffered far more during this single day than they had in the previous ten days combined. Heavy infantry and spearmen continued to be eradicated. The archers who had joined in the battle also suffered considerable losses.

Yet, the most painful losses occurred among the knights. On that single day, a whopping one-hundred-and-forty-two knights had died.

They had suffered these losses after attempting to push back the orcs without support from the soldiers.

“We can’t deal with them in the open like this, we need to retreat to a fortress!”

“We have to concede the battle and retreat!”

Not so long ago, these nobles had stated their defensive setup was like a heavenly fortress that could withstand double the number of orcs they now faced. These nobles now all cried out in terror.

“If you retreat, the central kingdom will suffer like the north! Where can you retreat to?”

“Tai Lien Fortress is nearby, surely if we reach its walls we can defeat them!”

“What stupidity! How do you know they will head there, and not scatter throughout the kingdom?”

“Then you want us all to die here? I shall rather risk dishonor and withdraw, it allows us to come up with better strategies!”

Maximilian had his head in his hands as he faced the cowardice of the nobles. He had thought that they could endure the onslaught, at least for a few days after the Warlord would make his arrival.

His supposition had been unveiled as nothing but an illusion.

The soldiers were terrified merely by the presence of the Warlord across the banks. The Second Prince had tried to bolster the soldiers’ spirit until his throat had become raw under the effort. It had all been for naught. Only now did Maximilian appreciate how brave and hardy the soldiers of Winter Castle truly were. He also knew that he lacked his brother’s ability to bring hope and fire into the hearts of fearful men. Maximilian knew that if Adrian had been here, the lines would not have broken within an instant. A sense of futility coursed through Maximilian’s entire body, yet he knew now was not the time to blame himself.

He knew that if things went on like this, defeat was assured in but a day.

If the kingdom’s champion, Count Richter Lichstein, had not joined the battle, then the battle would already have been lost.

“I will stand with the knights to the end,” Richter had said. It was a reassuring statement yet had done nothing to ease Maximilian’s anxiety. When besieging Winter Castle, the Warlord had roared several times and made a great show of its terrible battle fervor. Here, however, the Warlord was completely silent. It had barely shown itself.

The Second Prince could not understand this and felt that it boded ill.

If Count Lichstein had felt the Warlord’s presence, then surely Maximilian should have felt it as well. Maybe he was looking at the situation from the wrong perspective. Did the Warlord view the central army as a cold soup to be gulped down quickly or a boiling hot soup that would peel the skin from the roof of its mouth?

Regardless, Maximilian knew he had to prevent the monster from enjoying its meal in the first place. If the kingdom did not stand strong here, the entire war would become a brutal affair of constant attrition. Even so, not even the presence of Count Lichstein had been able to bolster the troops and maintain the lines. Maximilian mulled over it all yet could not think of a solution. A day passed without him gaining any answers. Upon the next day, just before dawn, the orcs launched a violent assault, which was repulsed by the gifted knights who held the front lines. Two more days passed, the knights barely holding the front but enduring nonetheless. The fifth morning dawned brightly. The orcish horde was still across the river banks, and the human army was still tattered and exhausted.

The only difference upon this day was the strange silence that had fallen over the great army of orcs.

“What now? Why are they so quiet?”

“You think they are resting?”

The knights were speaking in hushed and weak voices. At that very moment, a command erupted over the lines:

“Cover your ears!”

Then, a terrible bestial roar of pure malignance broke across the Rhinethes.

* * *

The Orc Warrior sagged to the ground, gurgling as blood spilled past its fingers that clutched its throat. The orc stared dumbly at his draining lifeblood, then raised his head, staring at a man who regarded him balefully, his sword at the ready.

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The Orc Warrior thrust his arm out, his grip still strong enough to crush a human’s neck. He could not grab his foe, failing to get a grip. The man sliced out and once more slashed the orc’s neck. The Orc Warrior shuddered and fell face-first into the snow.

The man cleaned the blood from his blade.

He looked at the surviving orcs. They did not number much, and they were rapidly being thinned out. Finally, the death screams of the orcs were heard no more.

“We have dealt with all the orcs inside the castle, my lord.”

“Only inside?”

“The outlying regions are being scoured.”

The man, Vincent Balahard, scanned his surroundings after the officer had given his report. Soldiers and knights were covered in blood, and the determination in their eyes pleased Vincent. He climbed the stairs to the castle’s walls. When he gained the wall, a knight handed him a pole that bore a furled banner.

Without a word, Vincent installed the pole into a groove in the wall. The cloth banner unfurled then and started to flutter in the wind. Upon the blue cloth was a pattern of three intersecting shields.

It was the Triple Shield, the symbol of the House Balahard.

Vincent stared at the banner for a while and then turned his gaze to those who stood beneath the walls. The blood-drenched knights and soldiers looked up at him with expectant faces.

“You brave boys of Balahard!” Vincent shouted, meeting each man’s gaze in turn. “We are finally back were we belong!” His declaration came out as a great roar as it echoed against the walls.

“We have struggled to gain what is ours!”

Those gathered below answered him with almost bestial cries of triumph.

“The shield that stands against the wind is eternal!” Vincent cried, raising his arms to the mountains. “Winter is ended, and conquered evermore!”

‘Oooh hoo! Oooh hoo! Oooh hoo!’ came the chanting of knights and soldiers alike.

Some of them had tears flowing down their faces, others smiled brightly at one another, and a few even kissed the ground and the walls of Winter Castle. They kissed the hard stone of their home. Others had their eyes tightly shut, taking in the gravity of the moment.

Even if they expressed it in different ways, all of them shared a single emotion: Joy.

They felt elated and excited at having regained the fortress that had so cruelly been taken from them. The other remaining lords of the north looked as the soldiers of Balahard cheered on. How great had the grief of these men been, after losing that which their ancestors had held for centuries? And how great was their joy after having reclaimed their heritage!

The nobles did not dare share in the cries of victory. They softly congratulated the victors, and even this did not come easy to these guilt-ridden men.

Winter Castle itself was not a pretty sight.

There remained traces of the previous battle around and within those walls. The frigid land had frozen corpses scattered across it. A severed arm, not eaten by the orcs, still clutched its sword. A frozen ranger’s vacant eyes were staring into the void. The walls were covered in frozen blood. It was hard to estimate how long the brutal siege had dragged on and how much blood had been spilled.

“Let us go to him,” Count Shurtol said firmly. He then led the hesitant lords up the stairs to Count Vincent Balahard.

As they climbed the stairs, a blade-like wind scratched at their faces. They struggled to keep their eyes open and could hear little over the roar of the wind. It was so cold, yet they dared not complain as they looked at the many corpses littered upon the walls.

Pieces of broken armor and the snapped hafts of spears were scattered everywhere. Here and there, a frozen ladder or siege hook remained. The tale of Winter Castle’s siege was painted in a grim tableau, the nobles almost hearing the roar of the orcs and the screams of dying men. How could these men stand to live, much less fight, in a place like this?

They had fought here for months on end, through blizzards and constant cold, a cold that these nobles struggled to bear for even a moment. They had fought and died here, waiting and hoping for reinforcements that never came.

“If you had not come up, I would have already headed down,” the Count of Winter Castle said as the nobles reached him. He was also looking at the frozen carnage upon his walls.

“Congratulations on the retaking of Winter Castle.”

“Congratulations, Count Balahard.”

Only

The lords had said this much, reflexively delivering their praise.

“Thank you,” was all that Vincent said, and the nobles lowered their heads and said no more. They knew all too well that they did not deserve to be thanked at all. Count Balahard looked at the nobles with indifference and then once more studied the state of his walls and the lands beyond.

The pure whiteness of the snowfields stretched to the great Blade’s Edge Mountains. It was a picturesque landscape, a picturesque landscape crawling with all manner of vicious monstrosities.

For this reason, the winter lords, the Balahards, had built their fortress here instead of in the milder climes of the south. This pass guarded the kingdom, and just because the orcs had once taken the castle did not mean they could be allowed to do so again.

“Give me a chance to rectify my mistakes,” Prince Adrian had said. He knew that this was their last chance of saving the kingdom. “Help me, and restore Winter Castle. Defend its walls, for you are Count Balahard.”

Besides the restoration of the castle, the other remaining task was to guard against monsters from both directions.

“Do not let even one of these orcs escape back into mountains,” the First Prince had instructed. In his own words, Winter Castle had to become the guillotine that decapitated the last remnants of a fleeing orc army.

And Count Vincent Balahard had been appointed as the executioner.

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