Glod spoke first, coughing in the thick clouds of gunsmoke. "Well, if anything in Moria didn't hear the actions of master Took, they certainly heard that!"
"You're right. Mithrandir, we need to move. As soon as possible. Follow us, we know the way. Second, you're fire by movement if we need it."
Second squad checked the load on their Isens and left their revolvers open to cool down. First and Fourth left both weapons' chambers open, and Fifth also had their revolvers cooling. The fast-paced firefight had left most of the short platoon's guns dangerously hot.
"Fireless dark, I wish the crows could fly in here…" Lurtz said to himself as half the platoon flowed through the same door they had entered, then the other half followed the Fellowship. At a series of hand signals, they formed a cordon to protect the travellers. "I've been spoiled."
For the next few seconds, the only sound was the thudding of boots on stone. Then the column came to a halt at the entrance to the next hall.
"Goblins in the hall." One of the point troopers hissed back.
"How many?"
"Only a few, but more pouring in."
"Right. Everyone, we'll have to take the hall at a run. Through to the stairway as fast as possible." He took a moment, letting the command sink in. "Forward!"
The entire unit broke into a fast jog, pacing themselves as best they could with the knowledge of how much further it was to the exit. The exhilaration of the moment, however, tended to accelerate them past that optimum.
Four of the Uruks bodily picked up the Hobbits, who had begun to fall behind almost immediately.
Arrows began to fly. At this close a range, the goblins' shots could bruise even if they failed to break the chain mail – and all too many did. By the time they reached the other side and a rearguard slammed shots back from their revolvers, several Uruks were sporting minor wounds. And one arrow, fired from high up, had managed to pierce the shoulder of its' target.
Lurtz took one look, caught the eye of the trooper, and shook his head. "That arm's useless now."
"I'd guessed." The trooper grunted out, still running alongside. "Must have been the strongest damned goblin under the mountain, the way it feels."
A deep rumbling began to sound as the party continued their flight. What felt like the entire mountain shook as if in an earthquake, and it was mixed with a sort of snarl.
"It is the Balrog of Morgath." Gandalf said, sounding actually afraid. "A demon from the ancient world. We cannot hope to stop it."
"It's an incarnate Maiar, right?" Lurtz checked. "Can it fly?"
"I do not believe so, no." Gandalf replied, checking his footing as they began to run down the long pillared stairs. "The wings it possesses aid it in a jump and allow it to delay a fall, but they do not support it entirely."
Gunshots boomed out from ahead as the squad Lurtz had sent as vanguard shot down Goblin snipers and reloaded on the run.
"Tell me more about it. What are its' powers, what can hurt it?"
"It is mortal, though barely." Gandalf said, thinking hard. "The powers of a Maiar are limited by the form they have taken." For a moment, the ghost of a smile formed. "Some more limited than others, I admit. The Balrog is aligned with Shadow and Flame. But no weapon I know of could harm it unless reinforced with very strong magic."
"Well, there goes our usual tactic of shooting things to death." Lurtz commented absently, stepping over a crack in the stairs. By now, they were trembling alarmingly as the wrath of the Balrog shook the mountain.
He looked back, and caught a glimpse of the thing itself. Just a sight of fire, roiling in the distance.
He wished he hadn't.
"I have a plan, Mithrandir." He said. "But it's more of an improvisation, and either way there's going to be one angry Balrog around here for a long time to come."
"Such is the way of things." The Wizard said gravely, then breathed a sigh of relief. They'd reached the bottom of the staircase, and the extra solidity of the dwarven stone work appeared to reassure him.
Lurtz ran past, building up into a sprint. Using the width of the second hall to bypass his running troops, he pelted over the Bridge of Khazad-Dum and into the improvised defensive position.
"Sergeant, get the other two platoons to gather as many of their grenades as they can." The occasional shot from outside indicated that Goblins were still trying to retake the gate, but there wasn't the thundering tempo of the massed volleys that would be employed against a charge, so he was fairly confident they could spare the time.
"And get me some fuse cord."
After that, and with the rest of the platoon coming over the bridge, he took a moment to scratch his worried Warg. She leaned into it, sniffed his arm, and quietened down a bit with the proof he was still alive. She could also smell his anxiety, though, so she wasn't all that calm.
"Platoon!" he barked.
The Uruks all stood to attention, though some of them were sheened with sweat. The few Dwarves and Men had taken it rather less well, panting and heaving, but their part of the run was almost over.
"Grenades. Link them with- thank you," the Uruk sergeant he'd spoken to earlier had passed him the fuse cord he asked for, "With this. Build a big pile of them on the bridge. Use a spare ammunition bag or a blanket or something to hold them in place, it only has to be for a few minutes."
With careful deliberation, he loaded a round into his Isen as the troops fell to their work.
"Mithrandir. Go ahead with the Fellowship. If I recall rightly, you next go to Lothlorien, and we are not welcome there. If you plan on riding the Anduin to your destination, we will make a feint at Dol Guldur to distract the Shadow there and then ride East. With hope the association between us will distract Sauron."
"I think we need to talk longer on this, Lurtz of Isengard." Gandalf replied. "It was always my design to plan out the second part of the quest at Amon Hen, from whence can be seen the whole of Middle Earth. Find us there."
Lurtz gave a brief smile. "When the hurlyburly's done, then."
Gandalf chuckled. "I always forget your scholarly ways. A poetic orc-kin… something that most, even of the wise, would say was like a burrowing eagle."
"I'll choose to take that as a compliment."
The ground shook. Lurtz pushed Gandalf's shoulder. "Go."
"Alright, what's the problem this time?" Lugdush sighed.
"One of the trunion wheels broke." An artillery battery commander replied. "I'm replacing it from the spares, but it'll take ten or so minutes."
"Right. Shift the rest of the batteries forwards in the schedule, you'll have to move to the last slot. We want to waste as little time as possible, since our maps of the region aren't good and we need to put forces at all the potential blocking positions."
Under "normal" circumstances, with a pitched field battle, the Rohirrim would have been utterly annihilated, facing a force equal in number with the heavy Isen rifles. But their objective was to reach and raid a dispersed migration, rather than a specific target – and that meant they could split up into individual Éored and cross the river in several places. Or, more importantly, that they could use any of those places and the infantry had to cover all of them.
Their planned tactics were for each infantry detachment to take a few signal rockets, and call in the dragoons for reinforcement when they sighted the enemy. At the moment they were prepared for those detachments to be company strength and placed at the river, but if the scouts found better places with more command over possible routes that could change.
The occasional rifle barked from First Squad and felled a questing goblin. Lurtz watched with no little trepidation as they came on.
"It's like they're being driven by fear. They don't actually think they can survive against us, but to their minds staying back is worse."
"May the devil take the hindmost." A soldier chuckled.
"Unfortunately true. That charge?"
"Laid. Thirty grenades total, in a sack and linked together. I put some of the detritus from the hall atop it – metal armour, that kind of thing – to channel the blast downwards."
"Excellent."
Then, with a roar, the Balrog of Moria appeared within the Second Hall. Several of Lurtz' soldiers flinched back from the wall of heat it brought with it.
"Men!" Lurtz bellowed. "The bastard with wings, five rounds rapid!"
As he'd hoped, the familiar order gave them a shield against terror. They felt they were doing something.
Lurtz himself examined the impacts of the stuttering, unusually imprecise volleys carefully. The Balrog did not seem to notice them at first, but the shots that hit it in centre mass punched holes through the darker, cooler skin in a shower of sparks. This revealed the central flames, which themselves were unharmed by all he could see, but it at least showed it was material.
His own first shot hit the sword of fire it had formed, and it cracked slightly. No more than the stone of the mountain, but again encouraging. If he had a few field pieces he might have tried solid shot or canister.
As it stepped onto the bridge-
The radiant heat finally ignited the detonation cord, which burned back to the grenades in a split second. They all went off in a single thunderous blast, and the Bridge of Khazad-Dum fell into the abyss it spanned along with the Balrog.
Lurtz breathed a sigh of relief, then waved to the musician. "Sound Fall back. Men, we're off to the northeast to the Gladden Fields, skirting Lothlorien, and then to actions against Dol Guldur."
Most of the soldiers didn't hear at first, still in shock from seeing the Maiar so close. Their Wargs butted them impatiently, freed from their lines, and broke them out of their moods as the trumpets snarled.
"Lieutenant."
"Sir. No fatalities, five minor wounds from sniping goblins atop the gate – my fault, I should have expected it. Wounds are dressed and shouldn't be an issue."
"Add to that several more flesh wounds and one major. Invalided out, by the looks of him – we'll see if we can link up with the forces headed to the Dale and send him with them, he can always do logistics."
"Ouch. That's harsh. What was it?"
"Shoulder wound. Cut a few of the tendons."
The Lieutenant winced in sympathy. The Isen required two arms to use, at least unless the rate of fire was to be reduced substantially – and a wound like that would be almost as bad as having had the arm cut off, from the point of view of anything major.
"Suppose he could join their scout echelon as well. Nothing wrong with his eyes." Lurtz mused. "Alright, we're moving out. Pick up as much of the brass as you can, we're off in ten minutes."
"Aye, sir. Second, cover third's section of the perimeter! Third, pick up the brass! Come on, lads, we're moving out!"
Saruman examined the lie of the land. "It is beyond my power to influence the events on the lower Isen, now."
Command and control is always a major concern. You are advantaged compared to most powers in this time owing to the crows.
"Indeed. But did I commit enough forces? Or too much?"
I can not answer. I can only predict.
Observe the possibilities.
-and a dozen artillery shells burst in unison over the charging line of horsemen. The terrible flail of the case shot cut them down in their hundreds, and the rapidguns knifed through the cohesive sections. The Rohirrim broke to run, and hundreds of dragoons thundered past the artillery to pursue them, sabres drawn…
-and a square stood in open ground. The guns vomited flame, cutting down dozens of horse with each volley. Spears and arrows came in from knots of galloping horse that swirled in and out in a classic Rohan raider's tactic, and the numbers of dead on both sides climbed…
-and the Rohirrim burst from the trees barely a hundred metres from the column of Uruks. Hurried volleys from the troops with loaded guns brought a few down, and then the horse-lords cut the column into small sections and overran them, spearing the snarling Wargs and killing any soldiers who tried to load.
Without the stand-off power of their rifles and with little ready ammunition, the troopers were just inferior spearmen, and in little more than a minute the survivors were fleeing desperately…
"Lord."
Eomer slowed Firefoot to a walk, allowing the tired horse of the scout to keep up. The rest of the unit slowed likewise, rear contingent first. To do otherwise, as all éored leaders knew, was to invite a gigantic pile-up.
They were around five miles south of the Isen river, in the last stretch of broken terrain before the nascent floodplain. He'd planned to halt here anyway, but the arrival of the scout at this point was serendipitous.
"What is it?"
"Marshal, the closest fords are held by an unknown force. I did not approach close enough to count them, but I saw light glinting off many steel points or blades."
Eomer swore softly. The Isen was fordable in places along here, but they were hardly the easy crossing that could be gained near Isengard. Here the fords could be defended by only a few hundred spearmen and the same number of archers – the spearmen to prevent mounted Rohirrim from gaining the bank, and the archers to sweep the river and knock horsemen off their mounts.
"It must be the Uruks that Saruman has bred in his fortress. They were disciplined when they came to Edoras – did you see any Wargs?"
"Wargs?" The scour frowned. "Not in the open. They're large enough I should have, if they weren't concealed."
Well, even if they had been there they would have been used in a countercharge if he gained the bank, which was for the future. The problem was how to do so in the first place. He would have numbers at the point of attack, he had to, it would take twenty thousand to cover all the fords with forces equalling his own, and if there were that many Uruks they wouldn't need subtlety.
But three or four thousand was entirely possible, and if that were the case the Isengard forces could shift reinforcements to the point of decision quickly.
The tactical situation was similar to a Rohan speciality, in fact, trading off the flexibility of their éored to hammer weak points in a line, swirl away and pick on the weakest to try again. He knew well that the counter was to strengthen the points where the horsemen would press the attack – and on the occasions when Rohan had fought an enemy disciplined enough to adjust their formation on the fly, they had lost many.
He dismounted, letting his horse rest, and as the rest of the Rohirrim began to follow suit he waved over his quartermaster. "Garwine, ask around. How many men have a hunting bow?"
"You mean how many brought theirs with them?" Garwine checked. "I'll get on it." He began instructing his own sworn men to help him, two to an éored.
Eomer decided he could leave that matter in Garwine's capable hands. The man was the leader of the second company of horse from the Third Marshal's personal demesne, and was well used to acting as part of his staff.
Of the men of this scratch force, around half were used to working together – mainly those from near his own seat in the Eastfold. The rest had ridden to his banner in individual éored from all over Rohan. He'd been sounding out their commanders as he rode, but he couldn't be certain of their mettle.
With the tip of his spear, he began drawing in the soil. Various of the company commanders came around to watch as he crudely marked in the position of the known fords, occasionally conferring with the odd local.
Garwine returned as he was finishing. "They're fairly spread, but there are about five hundred bowmen between ten companies. The other fifteen mostly only have their spears and swords – though we got lucky. Two of the éored from the Hornburg are horse archers."
"Two companies of mounted archers?" Eomer checked. "This changes my plans. I was prepared to have the hunters dismount and deliver fire on foot, but that would leave seven hundred men as part of much diminished companies."
He began drawing again. "My plan for the assault on the picked ford itself is to make use of the archers to sweep a clear space, and have some éored make the crossing to gain the bank." He gave a questioning look to one of the Hornburg captains. "Is my thought right, that loosing arrows in a gallop will make them fly further and strike harder?"
"It is, marshal. We could reach across the river for two or three volleys before reaching it, and unless it is particularly wide we could sustain the bombardment."
"Then your éored will precede the others in our first attack, forming flanks to each side of the ford itself." Trying to halt two hundred and forty mounted soldiers with a charge of over a thousand more coming up behind them would have been a recipe for disaster without some kind of lateral separation. "Aim for any archers as you close, then switch to their spear when you reach the river. Try to cross your fire, to meet at the same point – a shield can only be braced in one direction. That should give the rest of us the time we need to cross."
"But how will we stop them from seeing us?" another captain, Tonghere, asked. "If they know where we will strike, then they could move on horse – on warg – to strengthen that point. Even if they knew we were coming by sorcerous means, they would have to be mounted to get here that fast."
"I have a plan. How many of your forces have more than one guidon pennant?"
Several captains indicated that they did. It wasn't official policy, but the banners were often subject to damage, and they served a vital purpose in preventing an army of mixed éored from degenerating into a confused mob. Many commanders had additional copies of the flags, to be tied to a spear in an emergency.
"I'll need them." He checked numbers mentally. Eleven éored he knew and could predict. Four more he knew the commanders of fairly well. Two companies of horse archers.
That left eight he didn't want to test in combat just yet. They could cross after the main body were on the northern side of the Isen and could keep a ford clear.
Lugdush looked out across the Isen from the third of seven redoubts. He was in this position for better command and control – it was the one closest to the centre of his dispersed force, since the first two were much further apart than the remainder. To the east of his position the only fords were where the river became channelled so that the majority of the water passed through a number of leapable deep sections; to the west, the river was much flatter and spread to a full hundred metres in places. It was barely flank deep across the whole width there.
He'd just received a scout report about eight éored moving slowly eastwards parallel to the river, potentially making for a ford further upstream.
"Hm. Eomer may be a hot headed youth, but he's no idiot."
"Sir?"
"There are eight guidons there, alright, but there's barely enough horse for two éored. He's messing with the size of his companies, to stop us from getting a precise count easily. Good thing he doesn't know about the telescopes."
"What do you think he's planning, then?"
"I'll have to wait for other scout reports." Lugdush frowned, then checked his map on a folding table. This one was of the campaign area only, in much more detail than the map of all Middle-Earth.
"Hm. If he does this trick several times he could manage to make quite a large force drop off our accounting. Then, cross with the greater part of his host. Let's see… depending how he does it, over two thousand horse could come in as a single blow, and he can use the éored which are in sight as scouts to tell whether there's a weaker position. I can't tell Mauhúr where to send his dragoons until Eomer commits."
A grin slowly spread across his face. "Bet he doesn't know about the crows, though. We'll know where he's committed his actual force almost as soon as they reach gun range, and then I can have the greater part of the dragoons hit them from behind."
Captain Radnag frowned as he saw something move in the trees.
"Sergeant, is that-"
Then the movement coalesced into hundred of horsemen, with more streaming abruptly from the tree line.
"-damnation! Artillery, ready, and launch the rocket! Trumpeter, sound prepare to receive cavalry! Brising," this to one of the crows accompanying 1/2nd company, "message to the Colonel. Rohirrim attacking my position, estimate one thousand-plus."
He gave a quick glance to his artillery as the signal rocket hissed skywards, bursting with an audible pop. He had a single Anduin on his left flank, but the next strong point over was close enough to lend supporting fire – though not with rifles. He had a Lune with him as well, that was going on the right of his line along with the operators.
The Rohirrim were moving at a fast walk, perhaps three metres per second. It was hard to judge when his vantage point was barely four metres above the lay of the land.
The artillery rangefinder was having no trouble, though. "Four thousand, five hundred metres."
"Load case shot." He said absently. "Have canister ready to hand."
With a tool hanging from his neck, the loader twisted the base of the first shell and exposed a length of beechwood-encased gunpowder trail within, carefully calibrated. Judging distances and times was an art – thankfully, here, the flood plain was more or less level and the mechanics were simplified.
A crewman twisted the elevating screw, raising the muzzle of the gun. Another three took up a second shell, passing it one to another to a third – the excess manpower was required to allow for casualties. A final uruk, the second in command of the gun, aligned it carefully and stood back for the shot to be loaded.
"Forty-one hundred!" Maximum range, by conventional doctrine, was four thousand metres. Most of the crew ducked away, hands over their ears and mouths open – overly cautious, perhaps, but many of them had test-fired on the heavy fortress guns which were far more punishing to those nearby. And the habit was good to get into, since ears would be damaged over time.
"Fire!"
The shell shot forwards in a dense cloud of powder smoke, and the movements better choreographed than a dance began.
Two of the crew handled the artillery piece forwards again, moving it back to the original firing position. As soon as it was, another opened the breech, loading in the new – and already fuzed – round. The gun commander observed the fall of shot to check his elevation, ready to reduce it or adjust the timing depending on how fast the enemy were coming on.
"Damn." Radnag said absently as the Rohirrim formation opened up near the centre, along the flight path of the shell. "Those are good troops."
Case shot was outside their experience – it had to be, this was as far as he knew the first such round ever fired in anger – but ballistae and other artillery were not, and it was curst hard to actually hit an enemy in open country with small numbers of artillery shots unless they were packed in too close to move out of the way.
No, the primary effect of artillery used on a relatively small force like this one was to make it spread out.
The thrack of the bursting charge, the spread of the dense cloud of lead balls and the collapse of a dozen or so men and horses was a reminder, though. The Rohirrim didn't expect a weapon that lethal, or with that much spread.
The charge spread the shot, but it was the velocity of the shell itself that made the balls lethal.
Twenty seconds later, the second shell went in. The crew could fire faster than that, but the build up of heat and the extreme pressures combined to gradually strip the lands of the rifling from the guns. Better to conserve them.
Eomer cursed bitterly. He hadn't expected field artillery – nobody used field artillery! How had they got it here? – and that it was some new and unexpected type was clearly unsettling the Rohirrim and their horses both.
Still, it didn't come over very often, and there was just the one. And the trajectory was like that of a ballista, which was easy enough to dodge now they knew what to expect. And, finally, it wasn't always aimed or timed right – one had plunged into the mud ahead of his men, for no effect, and two or three more had burst behind the horsemen.
It was just somehow… unnatural.
He checked his spear, still supported by his foot. In a few minutes, he'd be taking it in hand to attack the spearmen holding the far bank.
They were already moving faster than he really wanted. This pace had the potential to tire the horses. But the entire unit wanted to close in, to get in under the range of that terrible weapon and do some damage in return.
Gramhane watched as a number of wargs suddenly splashed across the river at the nearest crossing. It was between one and two miles away at this point, so he couldn't see them very well, but the movement was unmistakeable.
"Eldred! Form your éored up on the right flank! I'll take the left – and single rank!"
There were only about a hundred of the enemy, he estimated with the skill of a veteran. And those men who had been in Edoras at the time of Saruman's arrival had mentioned that their spears were only around six feet long – and not well suited to cavalry work, at that. Either they were dragoons and their schiltrom would be easily bypassed, or they were poor cavalry.
He outnumbered them two or three to one. He'd be able to meet their charge in the centre and sweep his flanks around in a double-envelopment. And that would be the end of a hundred orc raiders.
As the Rohirrim countermarched into their positions and took their spears out of the buckets that usually held them, he kept a weather eye on the approaching wargs.
Something about them unsettled him. It was somehow familiar, but not quite right…
They're coming on in column, he realized. Good discipline. Too good.
That was worrying. It implied that maybe the orcs wouldn't be simply ridden into the ground.
A movement caught his eye. The column of twos split into four as they advanced, the front halves drifting out to the flanks and the rear halves separating to produce four ruler-straight lines.
Gramhane began to feel a sinking feeling in his gut as he watched, which only increased as the four columns opened out in turn. Each spread like an opening fan, and within a minute he was facing a single long line.
That's better than most any éored could do, he thought. By now the éored were aligned properly, and he ordered them forward. "At a walk!"
The two lines of cavalry approached one another. At about a half-mile of distance, the orcs slowed to a stop and stood in their stirrups.
He could barely make out individuals moving, now. They were doing something-
White smoke puffed out from the line of stationary warg riders.
Seconds later, with a sound like demonic hail, spears shattered and men and horses fell like they had been speared.
Gramhane heard a horn blow the charge.
"No, you young fool!" he shouted, as the line began to surge forward. At this kind of distance, all a gallop would do was tire the horses and leave them vulnerable. "Hold, men of-"
A hammer slammed into his chest, and he toppled soundlessly from the saddle.
They were closer now, Radnag thought idly. It didn't take long to cover four kilometres at a canter. Perhaps eight minutes.
The next shot from the field gun was accompanied by a shell from the next strongpoint, a few kilometres down the river. They were too far to offer any more help, but what they did was much appreciated – the shell took the line of horse in a partial enfilade, and together with his battery that resulted in thirty or forty casualties.
About fifteen hundred metres to go.
With a brrrap, the Lune fired. It punched a hole into the Rohirrim formation, five or six going down.
"Traverse, you lazy sods!" Radnag shouted. "Sweep the gun across them!"
The loaders for the Lune were already replacing the plate. Another brrrap, and this time the spray of bullets caught at least twenty horsemen.
Eleven hundred metres.
"Company-"
"Platoon-"
The lieutenants began pointing out aim points with their sabres.
"By half-platoons, volley fire, fire!"
The acrid clouds of gunsmoke hid their target for a moment. As the infantry reloaded-
"Aule." Radnag whispered.
As many horse had gone down as from one of the artillery rounds. But whereas the artillery and the Lune punched holes through the formation, this took a tithe from much of the front rank. More of the riders piled into the dead and dying, shock preventing them from turning aside or leaping the barricade.
One by one, the six half-platoons began firing again. They were loading slowly for now, so the volleys were spaced by one-and-a-half seconds, each cutting down a small number of the Rohirrim.
"Come on, come on you mad bastards, break…" Radnag said quietly. "Don't kill yourselves like this…" The horse-lords had taken nearly forty percent casualties by now, much worse in the éored in the front lines. They must be nearly berserk to be coming on through that kind of loss rate.
The tempo of the rifles paused for a second, as lieutenants ordered a switch of the sights to six hundred metres. Radnag also noticed that the gun commander was getting out canister. As he watched, the last regular round in the pile was fired – cutting another swathe – and the canister round loaded.
Movement caught his eye, and he brought up his telescope. Wargs – dragoons, racing along the southern bank. Cutting off the line of retreat for the Rohirrim.
He couldn't say he was sorry about what was about to happen. These misguided idiots had planned on doing worse to the Dunlendings. But this kind of slaughter wasn't right – they weren't bad men, just misled.
Brising flapped back to his shoulder as the thunderous crashing of the rifles accelerated. "The other battalions of Rohirrim were intercepted by the dragoons. These are all that's left as a coherent force."
"My thanks for the message." He said absently. He noticed a trooper digging at an extraction jam out of the corner of his eye. Tradeoffs; faster firing caused more jams.
The canister slashed out. At two hundred yards, the shot cone was at maximum effectiveness, and nearly a hundred horse-lords died in a welter of blood.
They were firing back now, arrows launched at the gallop. A trooper next to him went down with an arrow in his throat – bad luck, that, nobody was that good from the back of a charging horse. Others took arrows to the thigh, to centre mass, to the arm… but the horse archers were melting away under the fire of the bone-smasher bullets, that could go through armour and a man and armour again and another man at this range.
A knot of cavalry, by the looks of them and their good unit coordination mostly from a single éored, plunged recklessly into the river at a dead gallop. The Lune punched fifteen of them down, the slamming close-range volleys from the rifles got more, and a last blaze of canister wiped away most of the remainder.
As the last of them turned back, they saw the ruin of their force and the six hundred Uruk dragoons, and retreat became rout.
Radnag sighed in relief, then noticed an arrow in his upper arm. He hadn't felt it when it arrived, though the broken chainmail testified that it had had a lot of force behind it.
He probed at it for a moment – there was pain, but only shallowly in the muscle. He'd have to avoid using that arm until he received the attentions of a medic, but it wasn't at risk of cutting tendons.
Certainly he'd come off better than many of his company. By the looks of things, at least five were dead, and maybe thirty would need some kind of help from doctors – whether it was just removing barbed arrows or, for one, most likely amputation. A spear wound, that – the thrown spear had gone through the chain mail at the elbow with the speed granted by the gallop.
Lugdush rode up a minute or so later on his warg, Morna. "Good work, Captain. I'm coordinating with the logistics and medical contingents to get some help for your company over here, and… wait a minute…"
He dismounted and hurried over to the river, plunging in and pulling one of the humans off a sandbank that was only just underwater. The captain watched, and saw that the human was wearing unusually impressive armour – there was a lead-splashed dent, probably a hollow-point round that had hit at extreme range and failed to penetrate. "Give me some help with him. I think this might be Eomer."
"Will he be alright?" Radnag asked dubiously. Looking the noble Eorlingas over, he had lost his left arm at the elbow and passed out in the water from shock. Of his famous horse, Firefoot, there was no sign. Probably part of the horseflesh tinting the water pink.
"Humans take a few minutes to drown. Get his lungs clear and put a tourniquet around his arm! Come on!"
Tonghere and the shattered remnants of the Rohirrim, barely three hundred strong, straggled into the fort of the Mithburg with the heavy gait of horses on the edge of their endurance.
The sun was setting – they had been fleeing for hours, and the warg riders had been toying with them. Always pacing them, with their infernal beasts loping along with hardly any sign of exertion – it had been clear they could catch up at any point, but they hadn't.
As he slid off his heaving horse and began shouting orders to close the gates, he took his panic in hand.
They were behind stout walls of good wood, nearly fifteen feet high and with a fighting platform. This kind of fort was built to make escalade assaults impossible – and the local garrison of villagers, even now turning out from the village within the walls, would have food for many weeks left. They could hold out until the rest of the muster could ride to their rescue.
And be slaughtered in their turn, a treacherous thought whispered. He ignored it.
"As you said, sir. We didn't push the wargs, so we couldn't catch most of them before the gate – and now it's shut, and I doubt we can force it easily."
"Quite right of you." Mauhúr said firmly. Most of the dragoons were now concentrated, and they were investing the small fort.
He checked the time with a glance to the sky. "How long until the artillery arrives?"
"At last check, they were ten minutes away."
"Thank you. I think we could end this tonight – after all, my orders only say that most of them should not escape, and the cover of night will give some of them a chance to run for it."
"What of the village?"
"True, true. We should follow protocol. Flag party with me. Colour sergeant, break out the truce banner."
Tonghere watched with apprehension as the orc camp set up. They had only arrived ten minutes or so ago, but they were already establishing a trench-and-berm, with a party of soldiers of about company strength cutting sharpened logs for a palisade and another placing them within the berm.
The organization it displayed frightened him. That section that was already constructed looked like it was close in quality to the very fort he was in – and they were building it at alarming speed.
"Sir, look."
The captain glanced over – the speaker was a fairly old warrior, but he looked as staggered by the industry of the orcs as he himself was.
Then he turned back to what the man was pointing to.
A party of mounted orcs a dozen or so strong was moving towards the gate at a slow walk, with a white flag flying on their banner.
They stopped outside easy bow-shot, and one of them called up for a truce.
"I can't say I want to, but it's best if I do." Tonghere muttered. "Ethelred! Get my senior sergeants, and a guidon with a white cloth if there's any here!"
"Not very impressive, are they?" The colour sergeant muttered.
"Now, now, be nice." Mauhúr replied. "It can't be easy for them, after all."
"Men of Rohan," he said formally as the somewhat ramshackle Rohirrim party arrived. "By the laws of war concerning fortified places, I must summon you now that I have begun investing your fort. I offer you terms, surrender with parole and an oath never to take up arms against the Army of Isengard."
The Rohan captain looked mortally insulted, but somehow held his tongue. One of his sergeants was not so restrained.
"Orc filth! Why should we give oath to you, you-"
"Raiders?" Mauhúr said acidly. "Killers of women and children, attackers unprovoked, men who would rather drive a nation to starvation than coexist with them? Because all that merely sounds to me like a description of your intent this day."
Two of the other Rohirrim made ready to take the sergeants' arms if he lost control of himself completely, but he did not make it necessary. "Pretty words, orc. But we men of Rohan have long memories, and your kind have pillaged and burned the land of Rohan many times."
"The Dunlendings have longer memories. They remember when this was their land, until fair-haired invaders from the north were given it in return for fealty to a steward who did not in truth have it to give." Mauhúr shrugged. "But we can bandy words all day. Do you accept these terms, or will we have to summon you once more when the walls are breached? I should warn you that terms become more strict with each refusal."
"We can hold our fort against the likes of you, orc." The Rohan captain said, and turned away without another word.
"Pity." Mauhúr observed clinically. "Runner to the artillery unit, have a flare rocket ready at all times and load explosive shells."
In the world of Central's visions, fortifications had undergone several revisions with the march of technology. At first, the wide use of the trebuchet had led to high and thick curtain walls. Even the first cannon, such as bombards, had simply been countered with ever higher and ever thicker walls – until it was eventually realized that the racking stresses of a cannonball hit or the like would tear a rigid wall apart.
A man called Vauban had been the most iconic architect of the new style of fortifications, which focused on preventing a cannonball from hitting the wall at all. Those walls were sheltered behind huge berms, and their height was primarily to prevent an escalade assault. Their substance was less solid than the old stone walls, making the damage from a hit less able to propagate through the entire structure.
Siege warfare became a kind of dance of ravelin, assault trench, enfilade, circumvallation and countervallation, where both sides knew to within days how long a siege would take from the beginning.
Even these fortifications were rendered obsolete eventually, primarily by the mortar and the howitzer – weapons that fired on high trajectories and could bypass the wall entirely, or lob shells clear across the fort to strike the inner surface.
Central had not been able to render fortresses of the Vauban type obsolete with the weapons Saruman was capable of reproducing in quantity. But this hardly mattered. Only the great walls of the Black Gate, the Twin Cities of Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul, or of Isengard itself were any true problem for the artillery he could provide.
This wooden fort was almost laughable.
"Come right another two degrees!" the battery commander shouted to one of his crews. "We have all the time we want to get this right, don't we?"
The fourth gun in the battery turned slightly so that it was focused on the same section of wall as the rest, and at the same elevation.
"Right. One round, explosive, contact fuzed. Elevation… up one quarter turn."
All four guns moved up in unison, even though only the number two gun had been loaded. As per normal procedure, one gun would be used to determine the fall of shot, and then all the guns would fire for effect once the optimum elevation was determined.
"Number two gun, fire!"
Everyone ducked aside as the Anduin fired, and less than a second later a yellow-cored blast blew a hole in the earth two feet short of the wall.
"Up one half turn." He said, and watched as torches appeared on the walls. They weren't expecting that…
Twenty seconds for the reload. Fairly normal. "Fire!"
This time the round blew a hole halfway through the first layer of logs, striking about halfway up the wall.
"Battery shoot, standard fire, explosive, five rounds, fire for effect!"
Shattering explosions tore the night.
Next morning, the shell-shocked captain of Rohan and two hundred survivors surrendered themselves into Mauhúr's custody, to be returned to Isengard as prisoners and used for labour – probably work on the railways and roads.
They'd been indignant about the second set of terms, but Mauhúr had reminded them of their refusal of the first – and then warned them that the consequences of a second refusal would be a sack of the fort.
That had provoked a shudder. A "sack" was when the storming army, having paid the price to get over the wall, was essentially allowed to run rampant in the town. Many of the men of Rohan had been puzzled that the uruks had not sacked the fort as a matter of course, as well – which Mauhúr considered a small victory.
Isengard's word was steel. And steel is a metal by which people live, as well as die.
AN: Okay, that's another chapter done. Hopefully the Rohirrim came across as less of a pushover than they might have been otherwise.
The system of terms that were used here is vaguely reminiscent of that from the Napoleonic era mixed with that from Genghis Khan's armies. Though the Napoleonic armies wouldn't have taken in labourers as prisoners, instead giving parole when a breach was made – and Genghis would have simply changed the number of executions he would make.
As for the reference to railways - while he can't make many, Saruman can manage the odd steam engine. And railways allow movement of troops with great speed - and, more importantly, without tiring them out in the process. They're still under construction, of course.
