The animals the goblins rode had the frame of a weasel. Six short legs, with two sets clustered together at the beast’s chest, held up a long and sinewy body. They were furred save for their heads, which were armored like a pangolin. Their scales flared up to form a crest that their riders attached the reins to. Even with their lithe build, each of the beasts, which I assumed to be the lanklatts, was large enough to weigh upwards of five hundred pounds.

  The riders were too far for me to make out the details of their gear, but I could see that each carried a ten-foot lance. With muted alarm, I watched the riders urge their animals forward, more and more of the creatures emerging from the lines. By the time the last of the riders left the press of bodies, those at the front had spurred their mounts into a charge. The leaping gait of the lanklatt eerily similar to actual weasels.

  Although I’d read about them in the history of the Hydralgo Dominion, I’d never seen an actual cavalry charge before. The forest was almost always too dense for it to work. The sight of the lanklatts, each at least five hundred pounds, springing at me faster than anyone under Tier three could move caused my heart to pound in my chest and my breath to speed up so much I almost broke the rhythm of the War Hymn.

  Iona, I give my doubts to you. May they sap the will from all those who enter the domain of Stagnation.

  I prayed, losing all formality drilled into me through years of study. I felt the spiritual hand around the back of my neck tighten. Iona’s grip forced me to straighten my spine. Phantasmal nails pierced the side of my neck, and the mounting doubt drained like pus from an infected wound.

  The sound of the charge was deafening. Rocks shook loose from the tunnel walls and ceiling to clatter against our armor. To my left and right, I noticed none of the [Brood Guard] falter in the slightest. Each held themselves rigid, their shields up and weapons in a casual but ready position. None shook with fear, none fidgeted. Hells, there wasn’t so much as a tremor in any of them.

  As the charge neared, I could see in full detail the deadly point of the lance bearing down on me. Flashes of blue from the shining moss above glinted against the polished steel.

  “Rise!” Helle commanded in the Trade Tongue.

  The command made no sense, and I braced myself behind my shield. Positioned so that Ellen was almost entirely behind me. Evidently, the call wasn’t for me. Just before the charge reached the corpse wall and would have smashed through it, spikes of earth shot up from an angle.

  The gruesome wall obscured the spikes for just long enough that they went unseen until the lanklatts in the lead impaled themselves upon them. The orc who led the charge was unlucky enough to have his mount drive itself so far onto the spike that it pierced through his armored thigh. He was an easy target for the casters, and one of them finished the job with a dart of stone that lanced through his eyes.

  The next three riders suffered similar fates; their mounts impaled. One would have speared me through the neck if I hadn’t blocked the lance with my shield. Splinters bounced off my chain mail veil as the lance head slammed into the shield and pierced out the back, splitting the grain as it went. Fire, quickly frozen over, scored up my arm as the lance head sliced a long gash across the top of my forearm. The goblin who stabbed me died to one of the [Brood Guard] while the other fallen riders died to spells from the casters. One of them fell with a collapsed throat curtesy of Nora’s constructs.

  Briefly I considered pulling the lance out but dropped that idea when I say the butt trapped beneath the corpse of a lanklatt. Iona’s calm enshrouding me I brought my hammer down on the lance shaft and snapped it in two. The impact jostled the blade head, carving it deeper into my arm before I reached back and pulled it the rest of the way through my shield. A small hole now opened in the wood.

  From what I’d read, the death of their commander should have destabilized the charge. Instead, the rear of the wedge split. With nimble dexterity, the charge split like a wave upon the rocks. Avoiding the gap and spears of rock to race along the lengths of the wall. Just as I watched, the rear ranks of the charge wheel out of sight lanklatts hauled themselves over the wall. Their four front legs gripping the stone so they could hang there indefinitely.

  Locked in the cold calculation of the Touch of the Black Hand, it was tempting to punish their idleness, but I crushed that urge. The very last of the lanklatts had pulled back and were launching spells at us. I blocked a hardened rod of stone with the boss of my shield. That marked the next five minutes as myself and the rest of the [Brood Guard] beside me blocked spells from the goblin casters riding behind the cavalrymen in the saddle. The part of me used to command wanted to know how the defense on other parts of the wall was going, but I was too focused on making sure no spell made it past me to shift my attention away from even a moment.

  There was a brief lull as the sound of a battle cry replaced the clatter of the cascaded of stone pillars against my shield. I looked up in time to see the cavalry moving out of the way for the largest goblin I’d seen yet.

  At a staggering eleven feet tall and wearing shining full plate, the goblin was a boulder falling downhill. The orc crashed through the corpse wall and stone spikes as if it was wet paper. Blood, stone, and offal smearing the polished steel of their armor. Stone sprayed against our shields and two of the [Brood Guards] beside me stepped forward to meet the goliath’s charge.

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  In unison, the pair drove the butts of their spears into the hard stone, the short dull spikes glowed with mana briefly before they implanted into the rock. Their spears failed to find purchase, sparking off the armor and bending dangerously as whatever skill kept them implanted fought against the goblin’s momentum.

  They’d done their job, however, and I, along with the other two on the frontline, stepped forward to deal with this behemoth.

  The massive orc moved deceptively fast for his size, and matched with the massive great sword he wielded, he became a nightmare to step into range of. Exploiting a gap created when one of the [Brood Guard] used a skill that created phantom spears, I stepped in to slam my hammer down on the connection point between two plates on his hip. I had to abort the attack and duck, shield raised to protect my face, when the follow through of one of his attacks nearly took my head.

  We piled onto the massive man like vermin, all five of us crowding him to not let him swing that massive sword. Still, he forced us back as he punched down at us with his off-hand. The sound of metal deforming rang out in my head as I dropped to a knee, my leg giving out as the orc kicked and almost broke my shin.

  The [Brood Guard] behind me filled the gap with the points of their spears, halting the orc from stepping over me and into the back line. Ellen’s maul parted the air above my head and my massive man’s sword deflected it down on the stones. On instinct, like a pissed off house cat, I swiped at the blade with my hammer to be rewarded with the sound of metal breaking as a large chunk in the center of the blade bent and broke.

  The orc lashed out, and I had to sway around a push kick that would have caved in my chest and duck behind my shield as a storm of sharp pebbles tried to take my eyes.

  Nora’s mist constructs battered at the orc’s feet and earthen spells pinged ineffectively off his armor. Runic series occasionally flaring a bright orange before they faded back into the steel. Spears jabbed into the gaps in his armor, and Ellen and I’s hammers battered at his joints. A [Brood Guard] from the second line stepped forward and jammed her spear down into the gap between plates on his hip. The tip of the spear glowed a molten red.

  The orc’s scream of pain reverberated in his helmet and the scent of cooking pork fought against the pervasive stench of death. The woman darted back, abandoning her weapon as the goblin’s retaliatory strike cleaved her spear in two and separated my neighbor’s arm from her shoulder. Blood painted the side of my helmet and blinded one of my eyes. The subtle hints of Ylena’s continued presence now glowed a soft bronze instead of gold.

  Half blinded, Ellen saved my life when she slammed her maul into the underside of the orc’s sword and redirected a swing that would have bisected me into one that passed harmlessly above me.

  The next thirty seconds were a whirlwind of ineffective attacks and spellcasters on both sides hesitantly launching spells while trying not to hit their allies. The stalemate would have continued further if not for Nora. All half dozen of her constructs battered at the orc’s feet continually, his feet glowing orange constantly, the runic series never having time to cool and deactivate.

  Eventually, something overloaded, and a small split opened in the metal. Like wolves after an injured buck, Nora focused all the constructs on that one spot. Blood and bone fragments exploded out of the gap in his armor like a geyser as Nora’s constructs pulverized it.

  The goblin dropped to his knees, his grey eyes visible now that our faces were level, and roared in pain. The sound loud enough to shake the earth. Skill inspired terror tried to worm its way into my heart, but Iona’s frozen grip on my neck halted it before it could take root.

  The hot, animal terror it tried to inspire sucked away and added to the Howling Wind’s laughing gale. What followed was a brief, if textbook, display on holding down a larger opponent while your allies stabbed into the joints of their armor. By the time we finished and I rose from my knee, the orc was dead and blood cascaded down in his armor like multiple waterfalls.

  His reinforcements arrived too late and without their battering ram, each goblin who threw themselves at us died uselessly against the cliff of our shields. When the goblin commanders finally called the retreat, those who had been about to throw themselves at us across the mounds of corpses looked relieved to escape the meat grinder.

  Using the retreat to survey how the rest of the battle had gone, I saw far less lanklatt bodies than I’d hoped for and far more aranae bodies than were ideal. Distantly, I could feel the System present me with notification I could accept when ready.

  Counting the bodies, for every lanklatt and their rider the aranae killed, we lost four warriors.

  Even through the cold of the Black Hand it took everything I had not to sigh in relief when I saw Mika unharmed and still working on the wall. Sections of un-runed stone stood warped and shattered, but laborers and scholars worked quickly to reform the stone construction. As I watched, I noticed that Mika had distinctly slowed since the start of the project, which was to be expected.

  “You, you, and you! Follow me!” Helle shouted from behind me, pointing at myself and the two [Brood Guard] to my left.”

  With a team of laborers following behind us, Helle approached the massive orc corpse and got into a position to lift him. Her spider legs curled slightly and her humanlike torso hunched ever so minutely. The hint wasn’t hard to get, and we all got into position to help her lift the orc.

  When we got the body off the ground, we only did so by a foot. The nine of us shuffling to bring the body closer to the smashed-up remnants of the corpse wall. Once we got there, I was more than happy to put the weight back down.

  Our labor soon continued, however, because within minutes dozens of laborers who’d come with us reformed the dry corpse wall. Left behind lances skewered through aranae, goblin, and sinewy lanklatt bodies to keep them in place. Helle had us roll the massive goblin onto its side and lean it against the wall. The orc’s armor did an excellent job of keeping him stable on his side, while the lances skewered the pile in such a way that the added weight from the orc only drove them further into the stone, keeping the whole thing up.

  There was an almost beautiful quality to the brutality of the wall. Effigies were a common tactic in the forest, and one that had been practiced extensively by all but one of the Sibling’s cults. The wall was such a slap in the face that it demanded quick action, demanded hasty orders. Which was why it surprised me when a team of scholars stepped forward, their robes sweeping through the puddles of blood that surrounded us.

  Earth and stone groaned as the scholars worked it, slowly heating and becoming malleable as it swirled under the surface. After about a minute, thin tendrils of stone hesitantly peeked through the earth; not dissimilar to new members of the Order of New Growth learning to use healing vines for the first time.

  The Touch of the Black Hand tightened as I watched the first tendril stab through an orc’s eye to fill their body. That first gruesome act opened the floodgates and the dozens of stone vines the scholars controlled stabbed into the corpses. Eyes, ears, mouths, it did not matter. Anywhere soft got injected with stone, breaking bone and rending flesh as they drilled and reinforced the wall.

  I doubt the sight of stone slowly creeping up and into the bodies of the wall. When the terrible orchestra of groaning stone, squelching bodies, and vomiting from human and aranae mouths finally ceased, there was a chest-high wall made from entirely smooth stone. Sitting in place of the somehow less grotesque wall of bodies that’d just been there.