Black-mana arrows drew back, toxic energy hissing against taut bowstrings. The goblin archers atop the corpse mountain had the three unarmored humans dead to rights.
Kent gripped his broadsword. There was nowhere left to step back. A charge up that mountain was suicide.
"Dig in!" Kent roared, his voice tearing through the freezing rain. He grabbed the collar of a dead goblin and hauled the heavy, limp body directly in front of himself. "Use the dead! Build the wall!"
Krag and Vane didn't hesitate. Survival instinct overrode revulsion.
Vane, the rookie running purely on grit, dropped his rusted sword into the mud. He hoisted a heavy iron goblin shield, then scrambled to pile severed limbs, crushed torsos, and dead Greenskins over the metal. Krag used his one good arm to do the same, hauling the armored vanguard corpses to form a gruesome, semi-circular barricade at the absolute edge of the bridge.
The archers fired.
Thwack. Sizzle.
A volley of black-mana arrows rained down, slamming into the wall of flesh. The dark magic instantly began to sear the corpses, filling the air with the suffocating, nauseating stench of burning necrotic meat.
"Get down!" Kent shoved Vane into the mud, pulling another dead goblin over the rookie just as a second volley struck.
The three men huddled in the freezing mud, entombed inside a claustrophobic bunker of dead monsters. The sheer weight pressed down on them. The heat of the black mana sizzled inches from their faces, turning the dead goblins into a toxic, smoking roof.
It was psychological hell. Vane clamped his hands over his ears, his eyes wide in the dark, listening to the sickening thud of arrows tearing into the meat above. They were pinned. The moment they stood up, they would be turned into pincushions. All they could do was lie in the blood and pray the wall held.
Miles down the road, the sky bruised purple.
Elara rode at the front of the ninety elite cavalrymen, the wind whipping his soot-stained face. His heart hammered against his ribs. He was leading his riders directly behind the Greenskin horde, preparing to drop the hammer.
Behind him, four combat mages began to channel raw mana into their staffs. The air crackled with ozone and volatile energy.
"Commander, what magic should we prep?!" the lead mage shouted over the thunder of hooves.
"Give me options!" Elara yelled back, eyes locked on the bridge in the distance.
"Fireball! We can burn the horde where they stand!"
"No, the blast radius is too wide. The Lord Commander is up there!" another mage countered. "Chain Lightning. Stop them in their tracks and fry them in a single sweep!"
Elara ran the scenarios. He needed precision and lethality. He pointed his sword forward. "Stick with the lightning! Prime it now!"
On the other side of the riverbank, Maltida Armstrong's pristine cavalry was closing in. From her vantage point, she saw dark, unnatural storm clouds gathering directly above the bridge the unmistakable signature of high-tier mages preparing a strike.
She didn't need to communicate to know the play. She wouldn't charge the packed bridge; she would snap the trap shut.
"Riders, push the pace!" Maltida commanded. They would use their horses' leaping potions to drop directly into the muddy banks below the bridge, using their momentum to slash through the goblin flanks while Elara crushed the rear.
Back on the bridge, Kent's line was failing. The arrows weren't stopping, and feral goblins had begun leaping over the corpse wall, forcing Krag and Kent into desperate, close-quarters stabbing just to keep the bunker intact.
Then, the air pressure changed. The hairs on Kent's arms stood on end.
The first pure ray of morning light pierced the gray sky.
Kent looked up through a gap in the rotting meat. A swirling black storm cloud churned directly over the bridge. Breaking through the tree line behind the horde, illuminated by the dawn, were the flying banners of the charging cavalry. The golden Stag his own banner led the vanguard.
"We held the line," Kent breathed, a bloody, exhausted smile cracking his face.
Beside him, Vane collapsed. The adrenaline that had kept the boy alive was spent. "My Lord... we won," he whispered, his eyes rolling back.
"Stay with me, boy!" Kent yelled, grabbing the rookie's shredded tunic.
A massive surge of wind blasted up from the riverbanks below. Kent glanced down and spotted the silver banners of the Sword and the Crown. Maltida.
"Now!" Elara's voice echoed from the rear.
The mages unleashed hell.
Kent saw the sky split open. "Jump back!" he roared, hauling Vane's limp body backward by the collar, Krag scrambling frantically beside them.
The light was so blinding it turned the morning sky pitch black for a fraction of a second. A catastrophic pillar of pure, white lightning crashed down, striking dead center of the Goblin horde.
The deafening boom shattered eardrums. The sheer electrical force was so violent it cracked the ancient stone bridge right down the middle. Hundreds of electrified goblins were incinerated instantly, the collapsing stone sending charred bodies plunging into the roaring river below.
A few elite goblins managed to survive the blast by hastily wrapping themselves in thick black mana, but their relief was short-lived.
The surviving archers spotted Maltida's cavalry sweeping the riverbanks and desperately fired their remaining black arrows. But Maltida's soldiers simply infused their blades with pure white mana, slicing the toxic bolts out of the air like paper. Maltida's unit swept the banks in a brutal arc, executing every goblin that had fallen from the shattered bridge.
Up above, the Greenskin rear guard was trapped. They couldn't retreat, not with Elara and ninety elite cavalrymen diving into them. The goblins' dark magic broke uselessly against the protective wards Elara's mages cast over the riders.
The horde was caught in an inescapable meat grinder. Between the shattered chasm of the bridge, Elara's charge, and Maltida's sweeping blades below, the threat was snuffed out.
The battle was over. The bridge belonged to the living.