Henry pretty much spent the next few days just waiting. He and the team killed time like usual: studying up on local wildlife, reviewing maps, and generally just lounging around until someone found an excuse to do something productive.
Sinclair had gotten the Council’s sign-off faster than expected, probably thanks to the goodwill from the mountain rescues. The finalized OPORD came down on the second day, most of which Henry spent briefing his team. The plan had a few minor adjustments since Sinclair’s original proposal – mostly related to the dwarven order of battle – but the core of it remained intact.
Alas, neither his role nor Lucan’s had changed. But he’d made his peace with it, more or less.
There wasn’t much he could do about that besides adapt on-site, so he focused the rest of his time on preparation. Resupply and repairs were completed the day after, so that was one less thing to worry about.
And now here they were, five days after the Gigolith insanity, en route to the Ovinnish camp.
Henry glanced down at the map on his lap, trying to gauge their position. He gave up the attempt almost as soon as he started it, for obvious reasons. Between the predawn darkness and the lack of any real landmarks along the road, he’d be mostly just guessing based on how long they’d been driving.
What did actually help pinpoint their location, though, was the smoke in the distance, drifting up from the Ovinnish camp.
It seemed like a bad move at first, especially considering military history – letting the defenders prepare to their hearts’ content. But this wasn’t a historical siege; they had the gift of the glorious F-15EX Eagle II. More goblins on the walls only meant more kills when the bombs hit.
They reached the camp about ten minutes later, pulling off the main road onto a dirt path that cut through the tree line. The place was already loud – with a few thousand men getting their shit together at five in the morning, how could it not be?
A pair of sentries at the outer perimeter waved them through after a brief double-take at the MRAPs. Henry more than reciprocated, taking in the camp through the windshield as they rolled through.
He’d seen formations like this in paintings and textbooks, but seeing a whole medieval army assembled for battle was nothing if not sick as fuck. No modern force would ever stack up this dense, but then again, without artillery or airstrikes to worry about, there wasn’t really any reason not to.
Ron pulled into a space near the command tent while Yen brought the second MRAP in behind them. Henry stepped out to Drunn’s voice carrying across the formation.
The dwarven commander stood on a platform at the head of the assembled force. Henry moved closer with Sera and the rest of Alpha Team, picking up the speech as he got within earshot.
“—they’ll strike the walls afore we move, so fix it in yer heads. Ye’ve seen siege magic bring a fortress low; this shall do the same, only it comes in force and does not cease till the work is done. Ye’ll see the enemy broken under it, plain as day – and ye’ll have cause to rejoice.
“But ye will not let that carry ye off. Do not suffer it to disrupt yer line or turn ye from yer place. Ye stand as ye are and give it no answer. When it is spent, I shall give the word, and then we go in.”
His head turned toward Henry and the others. “An’ there they are! Our American allies, arrived in good time. Ye’ve seen their iron wagons; now ye’ll see what their weapons can do to a fortress.”
“Right, then; that’s all of us, and there’s naught left to wait on. Ye know yer duties. Phalanxes shall take the breach and push down the main avenue. Adventurers, ye support as needed an’ clear as ye go. Once we’re through, the parties on the walls to sweep what’s left an’ get that main gate open. Officers, form yer columns and move to position.”
The formation shifted into march columns without a hitch.
Once the dwarves were fully underway, Drunn stepped off the platform and walked straight over.
“Captain. Miss Sinclair.” He looked them over, clearly jittery even through all the armor. “Ye’re set, then?”
“Ready when you are,” Sinclair said.
“Good.” He cracked a grin. “I’ll speak it plain – I’ve been keen to see what yer thunder will do to a fortress set proper since first ye told me of it. Hammers an’ magic I know well enough, but what yer thunder shall do to those walls, I cannot reckon till I see it with me own eyes.”
“Oh, trust me. You’re gonna love it,” Henry said.
Drunn let out a short laugh. “Aye, I think I shall.” He turned to Sinclair. “Miss Sinclair, follow me. Tormund’s already at the tent.”
Sinclair gave Henry a quick nod and followed Drunn toward the command tent.
Henry turned to the others. “C’mon. Let’s get behind the dwarves. We don’t wanna miss this show.”
They piled back into the MRAPs and followed the tail end of the column down the main road. The dwarves had already reached the staging line by the time Henry’s vehicles pulled off to the side, tucking in just behind the rear formations where they had a clear view past the army.
Velkrath sat at the end of the field, maybe a mile out.
The walls looked a lot more imposing in person than they had on the drone feed. Drone footage had a way of flattening things, and this was no exception – the overhead shots hadn’t done the walls justice at all. They were forty feet of solid dwarven stonework, built to withstand centuries of siege warfare and looking every bit of it. If not for the jets, they’d have a real tough time cracking those walls open.
Henry checked his watch. It was a shame, really. In about twenty minutes, all that craftsmanship and history would be nothing but smithereens.
Though if it was any consolation, a whole lot of goblins would be going down with them. More and more kept appearing along the ramparts, scrambling into defensive positions as the army came into view. A few of the bolder ones tried loosing arrows at the army – ambitious, and laughably futile. The projectiles didn’t even make it halfway.
The dwarves certainly didn’t seem too concerned about it. Though, as a matter of fact, they didn’t seem too concerned about anything at all. Throughout the whole wait, they’d hardly made a sound – no chatter, no banter, nothing. Most units Henry had met couldn’t keep quiet for five minutes, let alone this long.
The adventurers, on the other hand, were more in line with what Henry was used to. Plenty of chatter and laughter erupted from their ranks, no different from a locker room before a big game. A couple of the Mithril Order parties had their composure together, but most of the smaller groups were visibly restless, burning off the pre-battle jitters any way they could. Most of that, naturally, was focused on the upcoming airstrike.
Henry’s alarm went off a minute before the strike was set to begin. Right about then, the radio crackled with the flight lead checking in – all six aircraft were on station and beginning their attack run.
Henry turned his attention to Velkrath, zooming the RWS out wide enough to capture the whole fortress. The goblins on the ramparts had no idea what was coming.
The jet noise reached the ground about thirty seconds later – a deep, building roar from the south that Henry barely registered, but the army sure as hell did. Every head in the formation turned at once, and the adventurer chatter died instantly. Even the dwarves looked unsettled, though to their credit, they held exactly where Drunn had told them to hold.
Then the bombs hit. They arrived with no more warning than a handful of dark blurs that lasted milliseconds before the wall erupted. The JDAMs blew it apart on impact in a blinding flash, stone and goblins alike launched into the air like they weighed nothing. The blast threw up a wall of dust and pulverized rock that completely obscured whatever was left behind the breach.
More explosions followed almost immediately, lighting up the dust cloud from the inside. Henry couldn’t see through the dust, but the columns of smoke and fire shooting up above the walls confirmed that the SDBs had done their job.
The detonation sound reached them a few seconds after the visual, loud enough to rattle the windows on the MRAP even from a mile out. Chunks of debris started raining down across the field ahead of them, some of it landing uncomfortably close to the forward phalanxes.
“Vector One, off target,” the flight lead announced over their radios.
By the time the noise of the blasts finally tapered off, the dust had started to thin. The detonations had opened up four holes in the wall, each wide enough to drive both MRAPs through side by side. Beyond these breaches lay only rubble and smoke, with some residual fires burning wherever the bombs had struck something flammable.
Yet as thorough as the strikes may have seemed, they hadn’t gotten everything. Henry spotted a handful of fenwyrm lords on the RWS, pulling themselves out of the wreckage of the stables before clawing for altitude.
The radio crackled before they’d even cleared the rooftops. “Vector One, tally five fenwyrm lords, low altitude, vicinity target area. Engaging.”
Bright streaks separated from the jets overhead, dropping fast toward the stables on thin white contrails.
The first Sidewinder missile caught the lead fenwyrm lord dead center, eviscerating it in a burst of meat and fire – wings shearing off in opposite directions while the rest of it rained back down onto the ruins. The second missile hit another one a half-second later with the same result, turning it into a fireball that slammed into what was left of the outer wall. Neither fenwyrm had even gotten the chance to screech.
The surviving fenwyrm lords scattered – one banking east, one climbing hard, one trying to dive back into the smoke for cover. Their attempts were all futile; the jets ran them down like it was target practice. Two more Sidewinders streaked down in quick succession, catching the eastern fenwyrm lord mid-turn in a blast that sent fragments spinning across the field. The climber took a direct hit moments later, dropping straight out of the sky trailing fire and viscera the whole way down. The last one nearly made it back into the smoke before a fifth missile caught it from above, punching it into the ground hard enough to kick up a secondary dust cloud.
“Vector One, splash five. No joy additional contacts. Establishing CAP, angels eight. Strike Eagle element prosecuting targets of opportunity.”
Henry never got tired of watching American air power do its thing. He could only imagine what it was like for the dwarves seeing it for the first time.
With the main show over and the ten-minute hold now in effect, he glanced over at the dwarven formations.
It was pretty hard to tell their reaction from inside the MRAP, on account of the vehicle’s insulation and the relative lack of movement among the dwarven ranks. He caught a few soldiers turning to talk to their comrades, some pointing back toward the fortress, but that was about as far as the excitement went. Beyond those small tells, every unit had held its position through the entire strike – which was no small feat, considering they’d just had front-row seats to the most violent thirty seconds in Gaerran history.
The adventurers, obviously, were a lot easier to read. Half of them had broken whatever loose formation they’d been holding, clustering together in animated groups that made pre-game tailgaters look composed by comparison. A few had dropped to their knees – whether from shock or reverence, Henry couldn’t tell from the feed. Even the Mithril Order parties, who’d kept their cool before the strike, had visibly loosened up, with members gesturing enthusiastically toward the fortress.
The encores only made it worse. Every few minutes, one of the Strike Eagles would drop an SDB on some unfortunate target of opportunity, and the whole cycle of pointing and shouting would start up all over again.
The reactions eventually settled as the ten-minute hold wore on, ending with Vector One’s report over the radio.
“Vector One. Airspace is sanitized, no remaining airborne contacts. Ground element, you are cleared to proceed.”
Seconds later, war horns sounded across the forest, deep enough to echo throughout the MRAP’s hull. The dwarven formations surged forward in unison, phalanxes leading the advance while the adventurer parties followed in support.
It was a hell of a sight.
Henry keyed the radio. “Alright, let’s move up with them. Pull onto the field and hold behind the rear formations.”