The roar hit like a pressure wave, rattling teeth and making the slope feel smaller. It wasn’t the chaotic screaming of confused soldiers; it was a single, directed sound. Command-shaped. The kind of roar that pulled spines straight, whether you wanted it to or not.
"BOULDERS DOWN!" Ludwig imdiately gave the order. Unlike the rest, he was the first to notice. The Red King’s roar was effective at bringing so of the red orcs’s senses back.
Ludwig’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. The ward’s window was closing, he could feel it. The red bodies on the slope were already shifting from random violence back into coherent movent, heads turning the sa way, shoulders squaring. That roar wasn’t just noise. It was a leash snapping taut again.
Trolls heaved rocks that would’ve taken ten n to lift, but compared to earlier boulders, these were smaller, faster to throw, easier to deflect. They sailed down in ugly arcs, cracking against bodies and dirt, bouncing and rolling to knock legs out from under the nearest wave. A few red orcs went down hard, ribs caving or knees breaking, but the rest kept coming with that maddening stubbornness.
The red Orcs that woke up realized that their jaws were full of their brethren’s blood, but instead of feeling pity or sadness, more rage welled up in them.
They didn’t recoil from what they’d done. They accepted it as fuel. You could see it in their eyes, no sha, no confusion now, only that bright, hateful focus. A few wiped blood from their mouths with the backs of their hands and then howled, charging uphill as if the taste had reminded them what they were made for.
"Damn, brace again! Second impact!" Ludwig raised his sword forward, expecting another brutal clash. Even though so of the boulders were falling, since these ones were lighter, they got swatted away.
Ludwig’s stance lowered, feet digging into the slope. He felt the line behind him tighten, ogres stepping in, allied orcs raising weapons like a wall.
The lighter boulders hit the front of the charge and still did damage, but the red orcs were learning. So batted them aside with clubs, others simply took the hit and kept moving, pain ignored by whatever twisted engine was driving their bodies.
Their last line of defense, the wards, the boulders, were all failing.
This was the mont Ludwig had been trying to delay: when tricks beca decoration and it ca down to whether flesh and steel could hold against a heavier tide. He could feel fatigue creeping in, not just in his arms, but in the entire allied formation, in the subtle sag of shoulders and the way breaths ca louder.
This will be the ti when they’ll be fighting for real.
No way to back away.
The slope behind them was indeed there, but retreating now would an losing cohesion. Losing cohesion ant being run down. It ant goblins crushed and lizardn pinned and ogres isolated. Retreat wasn’t movent anymore, it would be collapse.
Ludwig thought for a second, since he had replenished a third of his mana, if he were to raise so boulders, they could also be used to hurl them down.
He weighed it fast: a third of his mana ant a single sharp spell before the headaches hit, before his body started lagging behind thought again. It was tempting, clean, tactical, sothing he could control.
Yet his thinking was cut short imdiately when a second roar ca from the base of the mountain.
It wasn’t a rally roar. It was a command that sounded like a threat even to the ones obeying it. Ludwig felt it in his spine, in the way the red wave hesitated, not from fear, but from obedience so absolute it didn’t allow choice.
The Red Orcs stopped, turned, and rushed down. disappearing from the hill in droves.
The reversal was so sudden it looked wrong. Bodies that had been charging uphill twisted and surged back the way they ca, stampeding downward with reckless speed. They didn’t collect their wounded. They didn’t finish kills. They just left, as if the slope itself had beco forbidden by decree.
Leaving nothing but piles of bodies, and orcs that couldn’t move.
Prey to the mountain that slowly claid what was owed to it.
Already, thorns began to creep toward the fallen, slow at first, then hungry. Vines tested flesh the way fingers tested fruit. Ludwig watched a red orc try to crawl, legs ruined, dragging itself by elbows, only for a thorn to hook under its armpit and pull it back like a child being dragged into tall grass. The scream didn’t last long. The mountain didn’t like noise.
"Huh... what do you know, they actually retreated..." Dedal said.
Dedal’s voice carried disbelief, almost relief, like he didn’t trust his own eyes. His shoulders loosened a fraction, weapon dipping as if the fight had granted them rcy.
"Nah, this doesn’t feel like a retreat..." Ludwig said, "The Red King is preparing sothing. Be on your toes, get the supply lines, eat, drink, and rest if you can. We’re not moving from this spot. I also need scouts, soone to inform us of what the Red Orcs are doing... the fight had just turned to its second phase... don’t hope too much, hope is a killer."
Ludwig’s gaze stayed down the slope where the red tide had vanished, where smoke and heat shimr still hung like a veil. He didn’t let himself enjoy the quiet. He’d seen too many battles where the enemy "retreated" only to return with a weapon you didn’t know existed. The Red King had called them off for a reason, and Ludwig didn’t believe in kindness from tyrants touched by Pride.
He barked orders as he spoke them, forcing movent into weary bodies. Goblins were pointed toward wounded and supply bundles. Ogres were told to rotate to rest their arms. Trolls were ordered to gather whatever stone remained usable. Lizardn were sent to water-adjacent positions with strict warnings about what they drank. Scouts were picked from the nimblest, those who could move without being seen and return with information instead of dying gloriously for nothing.
Because if there was one thing Ludwig trusted less than enemy rcy, it was the silence before a planned disaster.
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