For the refugees forced to camp beneath its walls, the Dwarven border represented an impassable obstacle on their simple quest for salvation. While their misery stagnated, however, the barracks within were anything but inhospitable. The rich scent of marinated meat and freshly-baked bread permeating the endless walkways could have stimulated the appetite of a dead man.
Foam flew like spittle from tankards as they clunked together in the warm torchlight. For Dwarves, every night was an occasion worthy of a feast, and that boiling, twilight hour was no exception. Songs of war and victory were slurred through soused lips, intermingled with pointless arguments which inevitably escalated into fist fights. But there was never any love lost between those soldiers. Conflict was in their blood, and none of them would remember disagreeing by sunrise anyway.
A pair of fat fingers tapped against the wooden table, "Hit me."
One playing card slid across the table to join his other two, each of them depicting Alberich in a number of victorious, courtly, or outright compromising positions. All of them seemed very much alike to that Dwarf in the moment - a fact that was technically illegal to admit.
"Hm…" He bundled the cards up in one hand and squinted his eyes to get a better look at the value in each corner, "...Hit me."
Another card came, which he greedily added to his hand. His odds were good, he thought. "Hit me." he said again, already holding his palm out beneath the table to catch the next card which slid off the edge. Someone placed a hand onto his shoulder and bellowed something into his ear, but he was so drunk that it managed to fade right into the background despite the volume.
"...Hit me." He said again.
"Erna! You went bust three cards ago, you fuckin' clot!" His companion screamed, "What game do you think you're playin'!?"
"Shut up… shut up." The Dwarf named Erna waved his hand in dismissal, "Tryin' to concentrate…"
His companion, relinquished to being ignored, turned his attention to the dealer at the other end of the table, who was beset on all fronts by a storm of incessant giggling. "Tell him he's gone bust already!" he demanded.
"Why would I?" A great, yellowed grin was plastered across the Dwarf's face, "This is just too entertaining. I want to see how many cards he'll take before he remembers we're playin' blackjack."
Their merriment was interrupted by the horrid screech of a horn penetrating the walls. Suddenly, the barracks were silent, every head raised to attention as if they would turn to stone if they so much as twitched a finger. The song lingered in the eardrums in the seconds following its conclusion, before a single Dwarf began his conversation once more as if nothing had happened, followed swiftly by his comrades. Soon, the horn was a distant memory, and comfort had returned to the room.
"Bah…" The drunken player, now with twelve cards in his hand, raised his eyes towards the ceiling, "Some folk jus' take it too far, eh? Doesn't he know he'll be thrown into a cell if one of the captains finds him blowing on that horn…?"
"That's the third time this week." His companion replied, "If this keeps up, we'll never take that fuckin' signal seriously. What's gonna happen when someone blows on it and nobody sobers up?"
"Go and have a look, Dirn." The dealer nodded his head towards the door, "If you find whoever did it, give 'em a smackin' around and throw 'em behind bars for a week. That'll teach him well enough."
Dirn didn't feel like leaving the raucous atmosphere behind to perform duties, but the dealer was his superior, and there was no room for an argument. With a quiet nod, he slapped a hand on the shoulder of his inebriated friend and slipped through the door into the torch-lit hallways. A horn was installed at the top of every battlement, so he knew exactly where to begin looking.
A minute later, he was ascending the layers of the wall, feeling a chill pouring down from the hatch where the celestial tapestry could be seen spreading out above. With a tiresome heave, he emerged outdoors, dizzied by the sight of the ballista's silhouette blotting out the starry sky. He glimpsed the perpetrator instantly - a recruit who was leaning over a gap in the square battlements.
"Oi!" Dirn shouted, "What the fuck do you think you're doin', soundin' that blasted horn in the middle of the night!? D'you even know how much fuckin' trouble you're in, rookie!?"
He was perplexed by the recruit's lack of discipline. His eyes were focused on the far horizon, armoured foot tapping against the floor with rigid nervousness. If Dirn hadn't known any better, he would have said the boy was afraid. He reached out to take a hold of the recruit's shoulder, forcing him to turn around.
"Are you fuckin' deaf, boy!?" He screamed, "What's gotten into you!?"
His eyes widened. The young man's expression was contorted into one of frozen horror, easily perceptible beneath the scraggly beginnings of his beard. His teeth, which were far cleaner than the average Dwarf's, parted with reluctant expectation.
"Corporal Dirn…" He stammered out, "Th… They're coming…"
Dirn blinked, "What the fuck are you on about, lad?"
The boy's trembling finger went out into the dark, towards the sprawling, inhospitable plains. Dirn pushed the recruit aside and leaned over the battlement, squinting his eyes to spot anything of interest traipsing through the darkness. He was expecting to see the thorny silhouette of a Denper or the insectoid mandibles of a Crestworm - something harmless and tangible that had the potential to terrify a young recruit from the mountains.
But he saw neither, and for the longest time, he saw nothing. That was, until he directed his gaze towards the far and shadowed crags, where his vision was suddenly filled with movement skulking across the dark plains. Gargantuan, shambling silhouettes were creeping towards the walls, sprawling from one end of the horizon to the other. Dirn tried to convince himself that he was seeing things, but as reality set in, his anger quickly turned to fear, which he swallowed into the depths of his stomach.
"By the Gods…" He spoke beneath his breath, "It's them… it's the fuckin' Order of Necromancers! Recruit - blow that horn again! Blow until your fuckin' lungs explode! Our defences are facing the wrong bloody way! How did they manage to get behind the border!?"
The horn sounded once more. Then again. Then a third time for good measure. Slowly but surely, the alarms of neighbouring battlements took the signal seriously and sounded their own horns. Dirn could hear the sounds of tables flipping within the walls, followed by a chorus of heavy footsteps from below as chaos engulfed the border.
...
..
.
"...We've been spotted." Lieze lowered her spyglass, "I suppose it was only a matter of time."
She and Drayya were standing on a crest in the landscape which overlooked a great deal of the border. She couldn't help but marvel at the structure which stretched from coast to coast, finding herself somewhat amused by the Dwarves' insistence on keeping humans from marching into their territory.
"Those fools can't resist drinking and making merry every night of the week." Drayya said, "We picked a good time to approach. Half of the defenders will be drunk, and the other half will be scrambling to fill the boots of those who are too inebriated to function."
Lieze swivelled her head around. The Manticore was enjoying a lounge within a shallow valley. With a simple nod, she commanded it to attack - watching with unrestrained glee as it took to the skies in a single, graceful movement before gliding towards the walls. "The length of the wall will make it difficult to eliminate every ranged defender." she said, "-But the Manticore should be able to clear out a portion of the arbalests and crossbowmen, or at least keep them busy for long enough to cover the army's approach."
Thanks to the border's ballistae facing the wrong way, there was no hope of shooting the Manticore out of the sky with any measure of success. As she pulled her gaze back to Drayya, Lieze noticed that the Void Beast, which had developed a habit of curling around her ankles, was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's the ca- uh, the Void Beast?"
Drayya smirked and tapped a finger against her nose, "I sent Fudge ahead an hour ago. By now, I imagine she's drinking the blood of any Dwarf irresponsible enough to be dozing off at this hour."
Lieze paused, "...Fudge?"
"Well - you weren't interested in giving her a name, so I went ahead and did it for you." She replied, "Fudge is a nice name, isn't it? She does look a bit like you could lean in and take a bite out of her."
"Don't ever do that."
"I was joking! Don't look at me with those accusing eyes!" She exclaimed, placing both palms up in defence, "Like you said, she's suited for stealth, so I wanted to make sure she was pulling her weight, considering how much we had to go through just to catch her."
"Will it be able to hold its own against a garrison of Dwarves?" Lieze asked.
"Even if she couldn't, there's no pinning her down. Not when she can disappear through the smallest cracks." Drayya shrugged, "We needed a thrall like her, anyway. Ever since Sokalar dispelled the Wraith, we haven't found many opportunities to attack quickly and quietly."
Being involved in a battle after so long was stimulating Drayya's bloodlust. Lieze could see the excitement in her eyes as she spoke longingly of her beloved pet tearing through a garrison full to bursting with Dwarves. Lieze's comprehensive view over the battlefield allowed her to manage thralls individually if she so desired - a strategy made all the more effective by her recent specialisation.
"The Dwarves will funnel their manpower up to the battlements. That will give us the chance we need to infiltrate the walls, where our Briarknights and Horrors will be most effective." She placed a hand to her chin, "Their minds will be too focused on reorienting the siege weapons to consider the possibility that they'll be useless once we've closed the distance."
While her main force focused on forcing its way into the walls, Lieze had instructed the Deathguards to approach from a few kilometres east and west from the main army's position, tasked with moving in to secure abandoned areas of the border once the Dwarves' manpower naturally funnelled towards Lieze's position.
By the time the thralls were a few hundred metres from the border's gate, a disorganised battalion of Dwarven warriors had emerged onto the plains to delay them from entering. All the while, arbalests scattered across the walls peppered the army with high-velocity bolts, but struggled to pierce through the conjoined mass of Lieze's Rot Behemoths.
"Focus your fire on the little ones! Those monstrosities are bait!" A Dwarven captain commanded his men from atop the walls, directing his booming voice at a number of cannonball-heaving recruits sprinting up the nearby staircase, "Come on, you two-toed welts! I was hefting cannonballs faster than you before I'd learned to stop shitting myself!"
The iron-lipped cannons were rolled into place. Lieze peered through the spyglass to have a look at their make, wondering if they were more effective than the sort used by humans. She could notice a distinctive sheen coating their wrought-iron barrels, almost incandescent.
"They're enchanted…" She muttered, "I knew it. That must be Alberich's doing…"