Children of the Apocalypse

The great dark tide of the enemy flowed down into the ditch, up the bank, and around the wooden stakes. Despite losing much of their momentum dropping into the ditch and climbing the rampart, the enemy crashed into the dwarves like surf pounding a sea wall. Jon tensed at the moment of impact, ready for action, but the shield wall held. Several of the shafts of the pikes around him bowed considerably as goblins and orcs skewered themselves, but none of them broke. Bending his knees slightly and repositioning his shield, Jon made sure he was ready to spring forward into a gap or fall back to move across the lines as necessary. His eyes darted from side to side, trying to take in the nearby screams, thumps, cracks, and other battle sounds. The din of battle and especially the sound of metal raking on metal was a complete sensory overload. In the numb silence that comes when the mind recoils from its own senses, Jon felt himself hunger to engage the enemy. At first this feeling surprised him, but he soon recognized its familiarity. Though he was well aware this was life and death and not a game, the feeling was basically the same as when the offense started to move and he sprang forward with an almost physical need to drive the ball carrier into the turf. The elven pikemen moved their pikes back and forth, thrusting at the enemy’s thighs, torsos, and heads. With the pikemen blocking the direct line of fire, the archers fired now at a higher arc doing damage to the rear echelons, but Jon’s best view was of the dwarves on the shield wall. They were magnificent. The goblins and orcs chopped and hacked furiously with swords, cleavers, and axes and thrust with spears and other polearms—there being no specific formation or order to their arms. The dwarves covered most of their bodies with their great shields, which, together with their helms, took the brunt of the damage. The thrusting pikes combined with the steepness of the bank and the disadvantage of fighting uphill kept the majority of the enemy off the shield wall. Nevertheless, enough of them got through to keep the dwarves busy. Rather than slashing wildly like the enemy—especially the orcs—they would take shelter behind their shields and strike out with axe, hammer, and punch blade when an enemy pressed in too close, opened itself up with a wide swing, or was preoccupied with the pikes. The enemy stretched out across the rampart and ditch and as far as the eye could see until they faded into the ash clouds stirred up by so many feet. Even though he saw the strength of their position and tactics, he almost couldn’t believe their formation was holding against so many. A roar from an unusually large orc spun Jon’s head. The beast brought down a broadsword in a powerful overhead stroke at one of the dwarves. The dwarf bent his knees to crouch behind his shield, but for an instant Jon worried that such a blow would split both the shield and the dwarf. The blade cut deep into the shield, but didn’t split it as Jon had feared. The orc growled and pulled back for another strike, but when he did the sword didn’t move. It tugged quickly again, but the weapon was stuck fast. Dread flashed in the orc’s face as recognition of the situation struck it just before the dwarf popped up and brought his axe down on its chest. There was a pop as the axe broke its collarbone and continued down into the ribcage. The orc’s mouth opened in a groan—all but inaudible in the tumult—before it fell backwards and rolled down the bank, knocking down a few of those scaling the bank in the process. The dwarves certainly had the metal working skills to rim their shields in iron for extra durability, but Jon suspected they left the edges as raw wood for this very purpose. With so many goblins and orcs attacking the shield wall within his gaze, it certainly wasn’t the only time he saw the enemy get their weapons stuck in the dwarves’ shields. Jon smiled to himself. The combination of the shield wall with the pikes was working wonderfully. The whole thing made Jon think of some strange cross between a turtle and a porcupine. The elves would probably appreciate the animal reference—at least if they had porcupines and turtles in this world--Jon mused. Glancing at Linder and Silven, he saw that they too were ready but not tense. Although they still looked like teenage boys to him, they were both battle-tested veterans. Jon, too, was not as tense as he had been before the enemy collided with the shield wall. Taking stock of his own physical and mental state, Jon found that his adrenaline had returned to a manageable level. He was pumped enough to have reserves of energy and strength ready to be called upon, but not so much that battle rage or fear would suppress the skills he had acquired. The battle raged on and on and still the dwarves held the shield wall on top of the rampart. If it hadn’t been for the bank the enemy had to scale, Jon guessed the sheer numbers of the enemy could have pushed through. He recalled stories of engagements between massed forces of opposing Swiss and Landsknecht pikemen in which they got so pressed together that the dead couldn’t even fall. The waiting was starting to make Jon feel useless, but he could tell the dwarves on the shield wall were getting tired.