Garrok felt the Seventh Circle’s death through the vibration that the shamanic field’s collapse produced in the earth beneath his boots.

The warchief stood at the palace compound’s northern gate with his war axe in his right hand and the specific awareness that the vibration’s cessation communicated: Shul’Korr was dead. The Seventh Circle shaman whose power had been the barbarian army’s magical decisive capability, the shaman whose atmospheric manipulation had pressed the Threian army into the ground and whose earth eruption had been the last magical weapon that the barbarian command possessed against the orcish advance, was dead.

The awareness settled into Garrok’s Sixth Realm consciousness with the weight that the awareness’s content demanded. The Seventh Circle was gone. The thundermakers inside the city were twelve of one hundred and twenty-one, the remaining one hundred and nine positioned outside the walls where the weapons’ direct fire could strike the walls’ exterior but could not reach the interior streets where the fighting was occurring. The barbarian army’s twenty-four thousand remaining warriors, reduced from twenty-nine thousand by the Rhakaddon ambush and the avenue grinding and the Yurakk street clearance, were fighting in conditions that favored the enemy’s close-quarters superiority over the barbarian army’s ranged weapons advantage.

"Tharn," Garrok said.

The chieftain arrived at the gate with the speed that the summons demanded and the specific expression that the campaign’s deteriorating situation produced in a chieftain whose assessment of the situation’s trajectory was the assessment that honest assessment required.

"The tusked brutes have killed Shul’Korr," Tharn said. "The avenue is open. The spear formation is advancing. The narrow streets are being cleared building by building. The market district is lost. The residential districts are being contested. The palace district is the district that remains under our control."

"How many of ours in the palace district?"

"Approximately twelve thousand. The remainder are in the residential districts fighting the tusked brutes’ flanking formations or dead in the streets that the tusked brutes’ advance has cleared."

Twelve thousand warriors in the palace district. Seven thousand orcish warriors advancing from the south and east. The numerical advantage was the barbarian army’s. The tactical advantage was not.

"The thundermakers inside the walls," Garrok said.

"Eleven remain. One was captured when the shaman fell and the avenue opened. The eleven are positioned at the palace district’s approaches. The thundermakers’ direct fire controls the avenue approaches. The narrow streets remain open to the tusked brutes’ advance."

"Concentrate the thundermakers at the palace avenue. The avenue is the axis that the spear formation uses. The spear formation is the weapon that has been grinding our warriors since the sixth hour. The thundermakers deny the avenue to the spear formation. If the spear formation cannot advance through the avenue, the spear formation’s grinding cannot reach the palace district."

"The narrow streets."

"The narrow streets are the streets that the tusked brutes’ smaller formations use. The smaller formations clear buildings one at a time. The clearing’s pace is one block per thirty minutes. At that pace, the tusked brutes require approximately eight more hours to clear the residential districts’ remaining blocks and reach the palace district through the narrow streets. Eight hours."

"Eight hours is the time that the dwarven supply’s emergency dispatch requires to reach us from the mountain road’s nearest staging point."

* * * * *

The emergency dispatch was the dispatch that Garrok had sent at the twelfth hour, the message carried by three highland runners whose mountain-bred endurance sustained the running pace across the distance that the message’s destination required. The message’s destination was the dwarven supply caravan’s nearest staging point on the mountain road, the staging point where the Ironbeard Clan’s logistics operation maintained the reserve stocks that the supply chain’s operational doctrine prescribed for the specific contingency that the supply chain’s primary delivery schedule’s disruption produced.

The message requested thundermaker ammunition. The message requested the ammunition’s delivery by the fastest transport that the staging point’s assets provided. The message’s urgency was the urgency that the message’s content communicated: the barbarian army inside the capital was fighting an enemy that the thundermakers outside the capital could not reach and the thundermakers inside the capital were the thundermakers whose ammunition the fighting consumed and whose ammunition’s depletion would eliminate the thundermakers’ contribution to the palace district’s defense.

Eight hours. The ammunition’s arrival from the staging point required eight hours. The palace district’s defense required eight hours of sustained engagement against the Horde’s advance through the narrow streets and the Rakshas’ avenue pressure against the eleven thundermakers’ denial.

"We hold for eight hours," Garrok said. "Eight hours and the ammunition arrives and the thundermakers’ fires sustainably and the palace district holds and the tusked brutes’ advance is arrested by the thundermaker fire that the narrow streets cannot escape when the thundermakers are positioned at the streets’ intersections and the thundermakers’ blast radius covers the intersections’ approaches."

"And if the tusked brutes reach the palace district before eight hours?"

"If the tusked brutes reach the palace district before eight hours, we fight them in the palace district’s streets with boomsticks and hand axes and the specific ferocity that highland warriors produce when the warriors are defending the ground that the warriors have taken and that the warriors’ pride refuses to surrender."

Garrok gripped the war axe. The weapon that had dueled the Threian king. The weapon whose edge had been dulled by the king’s armor and resharpened by the barbarian smiths and whose sharpness was the sharpness that the next engagement would test.

"The tusked brutes’ chieftain fights with his warriors," Garrok said. "I have seen the reports. The tusked brutes’ chieftain walks the lines and fights at the lines and the chieftain’s fighting is the fighting that the chieftain’s presence sustains in the warriors around him. The tusked brutes fight for their chieftain the way our warriors fight for the mountains."

"The chieftains are similar," Tharn said.

"The chieftains are similar. The chieftains’ purposes are different. The tusked brutes’ chieftain fights for a city. I fight for the valley. The city and the valley are in different places and the fighting’s resolution determines which place’s chieftain achieves the chieftain’s purpose." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"And if both chieftains meet?"

Garrok’s jaw wound pulled as the warchief set the expression that the question’s answer required. The scar tissue stretched across the mandible’s exposed surface. The pain was the pain that the Sixth Realm’s suppression managed but could not eliminate.

"If both chieftains meet, the meeting is the meeting that two Sixth Realm warriors produce. The meeting’s outcome is the meeting that the Sixth Realm’s balance determines. The tusked brutes’ chieftain has been fighting for months without a wound. I have been fighting for months with wounds. The balance favors the chieftain who enters the meeting at full capacity."

"You are not at full capacity."

"No. But the mountains have never been at full capacity. The mountains fight with what the mountains have. The mountains have always fought with what the mountains have. And the mountains have survived."

The palace district prepared. Eight hours. The defense’s timeline. The ammunition’s arrival. The fighting’s continuation.

The wolf advanced through the streets. The palace district waited. And the two forces, the wolf and the mountains, ground toward the collision that the capital’s geography was funneling them both toward.