Chapter Ninety: The Final Battle — Break of Dawn

At first light, the human encampment beneath High Court City was already stirring. Since mobilization had begun early the day before, the humans assembled with remarkable speed.

The sun broke above the horizon, and the blush of dawn swept across the human ranks in perfect order, then gleamed upon High Court’s walls.

Sneetch led a host of officers up the steps, bamboo blade and shield in hand, mounting the ramparts to receive the baptism of dawn. Around them, ratfolk warriors had already filled nearly five hundred meters of wall, waiting in stern array.

The remaining seventeen ballistae had been dismantled and installed at key points throughout High Court itself, hidden from view by the outer walls so that the humans could not see them at all.

The one-eyed commander stared fiercely toward the distant horizon. Today’s sunrise was an astonishing red.

The human forces had also finished forming up. Feng Wanqing and Liu Wei were in charge of the flanking assaults.

At the center gate, Xue Hui’s main force, the dwarf shock corps, would take the lead in the assault. With four thousand troops under the command of Ghorik, storming a wall only a hundred meters wide posed no difficulty whatsoever.

Xue Hui knew full well that the middle stretch of the ratfolk wall was guarded by elite troops and would be a hard nut to crack, but his thinking was crystal clear.

He meant to crush the ratfolk main force head-on, elite against elite. Watch me smash you to pieces in three exchanges.

...

“Big brother!”

Feng Wanqing stood behind Xue Hui, wanting to speak but hesitating.

“Mhm.”

Xue Hui nodded, raised his right hand high, brought his fingers together, and slashed them down.

...

“Pass the order: commence the attack!”

Gimli stood at the very front of the battle line, both hands waving the war banner with its iron hammer emblem.

The horn of war rang through the entire field, facing the gold of dawn!

All three human battle groups moved at once.

The captain of the dwarf shock corps, Butcher Ghorik, had been nearly driven mad these past few days, waiting only for this chance to truly let loose.

Roar!

Like a wild horse broken free, he led the shock corps charging toward the gatehouse section of the High Court wall.

Ghorik and the troops under his command were swift beyond belief, sprinting forward with ladders on their shoulders as though they weighed nothing.

“Loose arrows!”

One-Eyed Sneetch on the wall barked the order, and the crossbowmen behind the parapet immediately pulled their triggers. A dense storm of bolts spilled toward the dwarf shock corps, glittering in the sunrise.

Yet the dwarf warriors seemed not to see them at all, charging on without pause.

Ghorik raised his great axe like a shield and took the lead at the front, while the dwarf warriors behind him roared like men possessed.

More and more dwarves were struck and fell, but it did nothing to slow the corps as a whole.

At the same time, the left and right battle groups began moving as well, though at a far slower pace than the dwarf shock corps. Seen from above, the advancing formation took on the shape of a tightly packed arrowhead.

And Xue Hui’s most elite thousand-strong War Hammer Corps had still not yet appeared on the battlefield...

On the walls of High Court, the greatest change among the ratfolk warriors was their newly standardized equipment: stone axe and small round shield. In the previous fighting, the rats had found that spears simply could not be used properly on the wall, so they had made the adjustment overnight.

In addition, every ratfolk soldier wore a wooden bucket over his head. This had been Old Sand’s idea. Do not underestimate a wooden bucket: in close combat, it might be the difference between taking one more stone axe blow than the enemy.

As Sneetch wrapped and rewrapped the grip of his weapon with fine hemp cord, he continuously inspected the line. Many of these were children not long grown. At the crisis of their race’s survival, they had nonetheless stepped onto the battlefield without hesitation.

“Today!”

“It will be a battle of life and death for our Andean ratfolk!”

“Below the wall are only the invading enemies!”

“And behind us stands our royal city, High Court!”

“That is our home. Our families are there, waiting for us to return victorious!”

“Today’s battle!”

“I will live and die with you all!”

“Tell me loudly: what are we!”

...

“We are the backbone of the clan!”

“The pride of the tribe!”

“The blade thrust into the enemy’s heart!”

“The nameless heroes who defend our home and country!”

“We are the iron wall of the Andean wild ratfolk!”

Killing cries rose again and again, deafening in their force, echoing over the entire battlefield as morale surged to its peak.

Below the wall, Ghorik’s dwarf shock corps was already closing in.

“Spear line, heed my command!”

“Break!”

The dwarf spearmen behind Ghorik hurled their spears up toward the wall in a single motion. Then they seized the stone axes at their waists, ready to scale the battlements.

Ladders were leaned against the wall one after another, and the dwarves of the shock corps surged upward without the slightest hesitation.

“Prepare to meet the enemy!”

“Drink!”

...

The defenders pressed tight against the wall; in such a clamorous uproar, one could even hear the grating squeal of the ladders outside.

The final battle had begun...

As Xue Hui’s main force, the dwarf shock corps needed no question to its fighting strength. They all carried short-handled stone axes and small round shields.

This equipment was the most practical in siege warfare. The wall was terribly crowded, and long-handled weapons simply could not be used there.

One band of dwarf warriors after another climbed from the ladders onto the wall, and the one-hundred-meter defense line burst fully into war.

This time both sides fought with nothing but stone axes and small round shields. There were no fancy techniques—whoever got within reach received a savage pounding, and even friendly fire was entirely normal.

At the same time, the northern and southern walls also came under attack. From this point on, the full five hundred meters of High Court’s outer wall were locked in battle!

The ratfolk made full use of their supply lines and the terrain to stubbornly hold back the enemy. The four arrow towers behind the wall, along with the soldiers of the allied camp below, kept up relentless ranged harassment, heavily suppressing the enemy troops who managed to clamber up onto the battlements.

Human warriors kept being picked off by stray arrows.

Bright blades are easy to dodge; hidden daggers are far harder to guard against.

Dwarf warriors continued to climb the wall, and the ratfolk reserves likewise filed upward in ranks.

The several-hundred-meter wall of High Court was like a meat grinder of the mortal world!

Just then, Ghorik, who had been commanding from below, rolled his neck.

Time to enter the fray.

He yanked a dwarf warrior who had just stepped onto a ladder to one side. The soldier was about to flare up in anger, then glanced back and instantly wilted, retreating meekly aside.

Taking three steps in two, Ghorik leapt up onto the ladder. His round, barrel-like body showed not the slightest heaviness; with a single bound he landed on the wall.

He plunged into the center of the battle, swung his great axe in a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, and sent the five nearest fighters flying at once—three of them his own men...

Then his whole body became a fighting top, both hands clamped around the battle axe as he spun and drove forward at high speed along the wall. No matter whether dwarf or ratfolk, anyone struck by him was blasted away in an instant.

He carved out a vacuum of dead space across the battlements in a heartbeat; his destructive force was terrifying beyond measure.

His sweeping attacks made no distinction between friend and foe, because both sides were packed together so tightly. For Ghorik, wielding a two-handed broad axe, chopping one blow after another was simply too cumbersome.

Not far away, the one-eyed Sneetch quickly noticed this outrageously arrogant butcher. After casually wiping the blood from his face, he tightened his grip on the bamboo blade and snatched a round shield from the ground before striding forward.

His cold gaze fixed on the dwarf warrior with the ridiculous haircut. No doubt this was one of the enemy’s commanders. Without the slightest hesitation, he quickened his pace and rushed toward him...