The Riders along with the Company had now arrived at Hornburg at the night of the next day and they had prepared for the defense of the place while Eomer and Aragorn taught the three men sword fighting with the little time they had. The scouts had said that they were outnumbered by the forces of Saruman who were composed of men of Dunland and of orcs. So Captain Price came to king Theoden to propose a weapon that could help them in the battle.
"What is this weapon that you are telling us?"
Theoden asked. The Captain then asked for a bottle, a piece of cloth and oil then proceeded to make a crude weapon. When he was finished, Price presented it to the king and those around him,
"We call this weapon a Molotov cocktail or a fire bottle. To make this weapon you will need a bottle or anything fragile that could hold liquids, next is oil, like the one that is used in lamps or anything that goes into flames when lit, and lastly we need a piece of cloth that is soaked in oil which will be the wick. If you are going to use it; ignite the wick and throw it to your enemies and they will burn."
"We have never heard or have seen such a weapon Captain Price. Our foes are burning everything they see. We shall burn them too. We need to make as many as we could for our enemies are drawing near."
The King replied so the men that could be spared set out to make Molotov cocktails while the rest prepared for the attack. Price then said before he assisted in making the cocktails,
"Have caution when you throw them, the fire spreads and it could be perilous for those who will throw it near themselves or their allies. It is best to use them when they are close to each other."
Meanwhile Captain "Soap" Mactavish and Sergeant Nikolai were in the wall with Legolas and Gimli and they were discussing the defense of Hornburg Mactavish said,
"If you wanted this place to be protected I'll just need about twenty men, arm them with machineguns with a lot of ammo. Maybe that will be enough or let us include some mortars and grenade launchers and our foes will never see the light of day again and they will have a very hard time just trying to get close to the walls."
Nikolai added,
"Add some anti-personnel mines and a barb-wire fence or coils and this place will be very secure that our enemies would not even come close to the walls"
Legolas then asked,
"How could twenty men and such contrivances help defend Hornburg against a vast number of foes?"
Mactavish answered while looking from the battlements,
"The machinegun is a weapon that could shoot a lot of bullets at your mark. They are very useful against massed enemies and it often strikes fear on them from just hearing it. Just ten of them placed on the walls would be enough to hold them back. Mortars and grenade launchers shoot ammunition that explodes and they have to be fired in angle like a bow and arrow. Mortars could fire bigger projectiles that have enough power to destroy a small house or wound and kill a score or more of enemies that are grouped closely together. Grenade launchers are smaller and those are the ones that we used against the orcs when we are on the river."
Gimli then asked,
"What about the fences and mines? Mines are not used for defenses they are for taking precious ore and valuable stones though they could be used as refuge."
"The mine that I am talking about Gimli is a weapon where you place it on the ground and wait for an enemy to step on it and it will blow them up to pieces, and a barb-wire fence is a kind of fence with wires with barbs that we basically use to keep intruders of our property and we also used barb wire coils where the enemy will be slowed down because they have to breach it before they get through which is very difficult to destroy then there will mines that will be waiting for them if they get through the fence and the machineguns will kill many of them before they could do even approach the fence."
The elf and dwarf were amazed by the Captain's tale but he said,
"And there more ways to defend this place if this happens in where we come from. And it will look like we just murdered them."
Mactavish and Nikolai thought of other ways that would make it happen; artillery barrage, air strike, or even a mechanized division of tanks or armored fighting vehicles to meet them and they could be finished in a very small time frame, even less than an hour whether it could be Panzer 4s, Sherman tanks, or T-34s from World War 2 or modern BTRs, BMPs, Bradley IFVs or M1 Abrams or Challenger Tanks. A number of Gatling guns could even cut their number way quicker and much simpler than what it required during the old times whether they were orcs or men or elves or dwarves. The two men had their rifles on their hands and were about to give their enemies a taste of modern warfare. Nikolai then said to Mactavish,
"I remember I have stashed some White Phosphorous grenades in our bags Captain Mactavish. It would be very useful for us this time."
Mactavish was about to answer when arrows from the enemy were fired on the defenders of Helm's Deep and the defenders returned fire. Mactavish and Nikolai now took their Phosphorous grenades from their bags and started to attach them to their utility belt with their other grenades. Nikolai and Mactavish aimed their rifles near the gates where their enemies were gathering to breach the gates. Price now joined them and said,
"We should concentrate our gunfire near the gates that's where the hostiles will be massed and it is our most critical area. Our bullets will be able to penetrate their armor so we could kill them quicker. We let the soldiers do their shooting and we will back them up. We use our swords in close quarter combat to conserve ammo or we use our handguns and we should watch each other's back. This one's very different than a firefight and our ammo is very scarce."
With that, the three assisted on the defense by keeping an overwatch at the gates shooting those who are closest to the gates and shooting through shield walls to expose them to the archers of Rohan and also taking out the enemy archers. Legolas was with the men also shooting with his bow and arrow until he went out of arrows to shoot. The three had already killed many orcs at the gates and the men of Rohan had seen them and when the Orcs had scaled the walls with ladders and hooks, a soldier had come for Captain Price and said,
"Our foes are scaling the walls! We need your weapons to hold them back. We had spent our arrows on them but they kept coming at us!"
Price answered
"We will help you but you had to hold back any orc or man that had scaled the wall away from us. We do not have enough ammo to kill every one of them from here even if we wanted to."
With that the soldier agreed and called for backup to cover the three men.
The Three first helped clear the areas on the wall where the enemies had already scaled with automatic fire from their rifles, then they fired their grenade launchers or threw grenades on the base of the scaling devices of the enemies below which instantly killed and wounded at least a dozen of them from the explosives or shrapnel of the grenades or the white phosphorous that created horrible burns all the while the soldiers of Rohan held back any foe that would try to attack the Three men. Finally the attack had ceased and the Three lowered their rifles and drank from their canteens. The three men remained on the wall with their men Price and Mactavish looked from the cover of a battlement and Price said,
"I do not like this."
Just then there was an explosion and the walls were scaled again and the orcs had overwhelmed the defenders of the wall and made the three men and their companions retreat to the citadel. Price and Nikolai fired their grenade launchers on their left and right side of the wall to buy time for their retreat. And they fought through the orcs with their rifles, spraying bullets to the orcs and men that opposed them which killed almost a hundred of them for they were too close to each other but they were already at point blank range for the rifles of the three men. When they passed through Aragorn and climbed the stairs to the citadel, Mactavish tossed an M67 grenade at a group of orcs and said to him,
"Come on Aragorn, that grenade will take care of some of them…"
The Three men were now inside the Citadel along with Aragorn and Legolas and took positions on the windows to shoot at the approaching enemies. The men conserved their ammo this time shooting the enemies in semi automatic to provide covering fire to the men of Rohan. A few minutes later, Aragorn appeared again after speaking to Theoden. Price saw the man and asked,
"Are you going back to the walls?"
"Aye Captain, Legolas will join me and we will take it back. There are places in the Citadel where you could shoot better."
Price looked at the walls and saw that there are soldiers of Rohan there fighting orcs. The Captain nodded and said,
"Good we'll cover you from here now move!"
Price, Mactavish and Nikolai provided covering fire for Aragorn and Legolas as soon as they left the Citadel. The Three later decided to follow Aragorn to the walls when they saw King Theoden approach them and said,
"The three of you should stay here. I will ride forth with my men and with Aragorn at dawn to the gate and I need you and your weapons to hold them back a little longer from the Citadel. I see that our foes fear your weapons and I hope that it will stop them. Worry not-"
The King was cut off by an explosion and the three men quickly fired at the orcs coming through the blown up gate. Aragorn came back to Citadel and said to the King,
"It is time for us to ride King Theoden!"
The King then replied as he walked to the stables
"Good, now blow the Horn…"
The Three men laid down their rifles and covered their ears because of the horn. But they watched in awe as the King of Rohan and his riders along with Aragorn charged to clear Helm's Deep. The Three men remained in the Citadel and watched from their vantage points how the enemies were taken by surprise by the attack. Then they saw that reinforcements had arrived and they charged on foot from a ridge and the enemy force were finally driven out of Helm's Deep into a strange looking forest.
"Now this is some unusual morning…"
Nikolai said as he yawned and safed his AK-47. He now looked for a place to lie down and sleep.
