billows that heaped up over the spot where it lay, quickly hiding it. Two more torches arced through the night and landed on the hillside by the foot of the wall and began to smoke as well. In moments the whole wall facing Mhurren was obscured by the growing cloud. Cries of consternation rose from the dwarves and humans defending the wall.
“Now for Guld’s part,” Mhurren said. “The second signal, now!”
Again the drummers began their ominous beat and scores of great, bellowing roars erupted in response. The Skullsmasher ogres rushed out into the open from where they had waited, swarming up the path to the gatehouse. Each ogre stood almost ten feet tall, with long, powerful arms and short, crooked legs. Many carried huge hide shields larger than a full-grown man or orc, and these led the way for their fellows. None of the Skullsmashers wore much armor, trusting instead to their size and thick hides to protect them from arrows and spears. In the middle of the ogre assault, a dozen of the hulking beasts carried a crude ram-a tree trunk thirty feet long. They vanished into the smoke, and a moment later the first great thudding boom! echoed from the Anvil’s gate. Stray arrows hissed out of the smoke, some finding ogre flesh, others simply disappearing into the night.
“Get ready,” Mhurren told his Skull Guards. Then he shouted to his drummers, “The third signal, now!”
The wardrums shifted from their slow, heavy beat to a fast, frantic double-time as a second drummer joined in at each, striking furiously. Mhurren leaped out and began to run toward the wall, his guards following him. From the dark streets north of the Anvil, hundreds of Bloody Skull orcs poured out in a black river, slipping and scrambling as they swarmed up the steep hillside toward the fortress wall. Five hill giants strode ponderously alongside the orcs. If Mhurren had timed it right, the ogre assault on the gate had drawn off many of the defenders, while on the south side of the Anvil-where its tower stood-the Red Claws showered the ramparts with arrows, giving a demonstration of their own and leaving the walls in front of the Blood Skulls with a perilously thin garrison. Those who remained raised more shouts of alarm and began to loose arrows as fast as they could at the oncoming horde, and the orcs answered with a wild sea of battle cries, shouts, and screams of murderous rage.
A wild arrow whistled out of the darkness; Mhurren caught it on his shield and kept going. Nearby, one of his Skull Guards suddenly screeched and dropped kicking to the ground, shot through the eye by a lucky or skilled archer. The defenders began to drop heavy stones from the battlements; even if they found no orc directly underneath, the stones bounced and rolled down the steep hillside with enough force to snap the legs or crush the ribs of those warriors who didn’t see them coming.
The warchief reached the relative safety of the wall footing, holding his shield over his head. “The grapples!” he shouted. “Hurry up, you dogs!”
The steep hillside made scaling ladders almost useless against the Anvil’s walls, so the Bloodskulls carried grappling hooks and knotted ropes instead. Dozens sailed up and over the walls. The hill giants-some fairly well pincushioned by arrows by then and furious on account of it-carried much heavier hooks affixed to chains that no mere sword blow would sever. They hurled their own hooks, and in moments dozens of orcs were swarming up the ropes and chains, pushing their way up with feet against the stone wall. The first few warriors to begin their ascent were cut down by arrows or crushed by stones dropped from above, and Mhurren swore viciously to himself. It was a good plan, but it could still go awry if…
“’Ware the manticores!” a panicked human voice shouted from over his head.
The warchief risked a look from under his shield, just in time to see three of the great bat-winged monsters swoop down out of the darkness overhead. Each snapped its wings out to full extent and arrested its flight for an instant as its long, barbed tail whipped beneath its body, unleashing a hail of metallic spikes as deadly as crossbow quarrels. A few hasty arrows shot back at the flying monsters as they flapped away, then a pair of wyverns streaked over the battlements low and fast, snapping with their powerful jaws and knocking men down with their thickly muscled tails. One unlucky human was caught by a claw and carried away screaming into the night sky. Mhurren grinned at the sight and threw away his shield to grasp the grapple line closest to him and begin his own ascent. The whole time the flying monsters were harrying the defenders, the Bloody Skulls continued to climb.
“Up the ropes, Bloody Skulls! Don’t give them a chance to recover!” he shouted and pulled himself upward. A handful of defenders returned to the walltop and dropped more stones on the orcs milling at the foot of the wall. The grapple line next to his was suddenly severed, dropping several warriors back down to the ground-not a lethal distance, but more of a fall than Mhurren would care to experience. Then two of the manticores swooped by again and loosed another fusillade of their tail spikes. Iron clanged and clattered against stone or sank into flesh with an awful sound.
To his surprise, Mhurren reached the top and clambered over unmolested. He quickly moved away from the rope to make room for the Skull Guards following him and drew a short fighting-axe from his belt, since he’d had to leave his shield and spear on the ground below. Dozens of Bloody Skulls were already on the battlements, with more swarming up over the edge every moment.
“We have them,” Mhurren snarled.
“Die, orc!” a dwarf shouted near him and sprang forward to bury his axe in Mhurren’s neck with a powerful two-handed swing.
The warchief leaped inside the dwarf’s axe swing and rammed the spike of his own fighting-axe into the dwarf’s face. Bone crunched, and blood spurted. The dwarf howled and reeled back, but Mhurren followed and butchered him with a hail of short, furious strikes, hacking the dwarf again and again. He roared in triumph and let the blood-madness take him, throwing himself headlong into the first knot of struggling warriors he saw. He struck with axe, with mailed fist, with kicks and punches, and even one frenzied bite when a luckless human was pushed into him. He sent the poor wretch screaming away from him, missing an ear that Mhurren spat out on the ground.
He looked around for another foe, but no more warriors stood against him. Mhurren roared in frustration, then slowly shook himself out of his rage. There was no one left to fight because the Bloody Skulls had taken the wall. His warriors were streaming into the Anvil’s crowded bailey, where the Glister-folk shrieked and ran and wept in terror. Across the way, Guld’s ogres had broken through the gate and were already at work on the small keep- whose rooftop had been left undefended, because the wyverns had alighted there to feast. “It’s done,” he said aloud. “By Gruumsh’s black spear, the Anvil is ours!”
Mhurren descended into the courtyard. Blood ran down his arm and dripped from his fingertips. Somewhere in the melee he’d taken a stab in the meat of his left arm, though he couldn’t remember being wounded. That was the nature of the battle-madness. Well, it would serve to increase his already considerable standing with his warriors. They would not forget that he had left some of his blood on the Anvil’s walls, just as they had.
“You have your victory, Warchief. Glister is yours.” Warlock Knight Terov approached, picking his way through the dead and wounded. The Vaasan’s face remained hidden beneath his horned helm, but Mhurren could feel the man’s confidence. “Are you satisfied with our bargain?”
“You have done all you said you would,” the chief answered. “But I think now that I could have taken Glister with the Bloody Skulls alone. It was weak.”
“Possibly,” Terov conceded. “But how many more of your warriors would have died taking this stronghold, I wonder? No ogres to break down the gate, no manticores to scour the walltops, no Vaasan magic to blind the defenders at the crucial moment? I think you might have found it too costly for your taste… especially if the Red Claws were still your rivals and perhaps jealous of your success.”
“Enough,” Mhurren said. “I know what you have done for me, Terov.”
“So, I ask again: Are you satisfied with our bargain?”
The warchief looked at the carnage of the taken fort, and smiled coldly. “I think I have a taste for more. We could be at Hulburg’s doorstep in a tenday, and that is a town worth pillaging.”
The Warlock Knight nodded. “And you may-if they refuse you tribute. But I have use for Hulburg, so if the harmach accedes to your demands, you will not destroy it.”
Mhurren scowled. “And if I refuse you?”
“You and your Bloody Skulls may go your way, but I think you will find that the Skullsmashers and the Red Claws no longer answer to you. Nor will the giants, the manticores, or the wyverns. I doubt that you have the strength to overwhelm Hulburg without the aid I can provide.”
Mhurren did not like the idea of submitting to the human, but Terov did not lie. Like it or not, he needed the Vaasan’s aid if he hoped to continue his conquests. “You have whetted my warriors’ appetites for plunder, Terov. Now that they have tasted a victory such as this once, they will demand another.”
The Warlock Knight remained motionless. “As I told you, Mhurren, I have need of Hulburg unless it refuses to
