Chapter 53: The Battle of Razorpeak — Part 3
The orc army appeared with the dawn.
I'd been watching from the command position since before first light, unable to sleep despite knowing I'd need every scrap of energy the day would demand. Now, as golden light crept over the mountain peaks, it illuminated a river of dark figures filling the pass below.
"Eighteen hundred." Maeglin's count was precise despite the chaos of the advancing horde. "Maybe more. They've committed everything."
"Good." The word came out steadier than I felt. "That means we only have to win once."
Around me, the allied position buzzed with final preparations. Archers checked their quivers. Infantry tested shield straps. The dwarven siege engines stood ready on the flanks, their crews running through targeting calculations with mechanical precision.
"They're forming for assault." Glorfindel had joined me on the ridge, his ancient eyes reading the enemy movements like text. "Standard orc tactics. They'll send wave after wave, trying to overwhelm through numbers."
"Can we hold?"
"We can. For a time." His expression held no false comfort. "The question is whether we can hold long enough."
The orc charge began without warning.
No signal, no battle cry—just a sudden surge of dark bodies flowing across the killing ground. They came in waves, each wave larger than the last, a tide of armor and fury crashing against our prepared positions.
"Archers! Loose!"
Two hundred bows sang in unison. Tauriel had trained most of them, and their aim showed her instruction. The first orc wave dissolved into chaos, hundreds falling to feathered death before they crossed half the distance.
But more came. Always more.
The second wave reached our lines.
[THE LINE]
The crash of impact shook the entire position.
Orcs slammed into shield walls held by dwarves and men, the force of their charge absorbed by braced bodies and desperate determination. Spears stabbed over shields. Swords hacked at exposed limbs. The screams of the dying mixed with war cries in a cacophony that obliterated thought.
I moved behind the lines, watching for weaknesses, directing reserves where they were needed. A gap opened on the left; I sent twenty men to fill it. The right flank bent under pressure; I ordered the ballista to focus fire there, and the massive bolts carved lanes through the orc mass.
"Center's holding," Gorlim reported, his armor splashed with blood that might or might not be his own. "But they're pushing hard. Another hour of this—"
"We don't have another hour. Where's Halbarad?"
"Rangers spotted approaching from the north. They'll hit the orc flank within minutes."
As if summoned by the words, a new sound rose from the left—Ranger war cries, the distinctive call of the Dúnedain announcing their arrival. The orc left flank, already engaged with our lines, suddenly found itself attacked from behind. Chaos erupted as warriors tried to face two directions at once.
"Now." I drew my sword. "Tell Thorin to fire into the rear. Full barrage."
The dwarven engines spoke with voices of thunder. Catapult stones crashed into the orc reserves, scattering formations that had been waiting to reinforce the assault. Ballista bolts skewered three and four orcs at once, the massive missiles punching through armor like paper.
For a moment, it seemed like we might actually break them.
Then the center collapsed.
[THE BREACH]
I didn't see what caused it—too many bodies, too much confusion. One moment the center was holding. The next, orcs were pouring through a gap that hadn't existed seconds before.
"Reserve! With me!"
Two hundred soldiers—our last reserve—followed me into the breach. Not a charge so much as a desperate plug, bodies thrown into a gap to stop a flood.
The first orc reached me before I was ready. I blocked its swing on instinct, the impact jarring my shield-arm to the shoulder. My counter-stroke opened its throat. Another took its place. Then another.
Time dissolved into a red haze of combat. Block, strike, dodge, strike. My arm screamed with each impact. My lungs burned. Somewhere nearby, Grimbeorn's hammer rose and fell with metronomic regularity, each blow crushing an orc skull or shattering a ribcage.
Tauriel appeared at my side, her bow replaced by twin blades that moved faster than mortal eyes could follow. Where she passed, orcs fell in pieces.
"The line," I gasped between sword strokes. "Is it—"
"Reforming. Hold here. Just hold."
I held.
Minutes passed like hours. The orcs kept coming, kept dying, kept coming. My shield-arm had gone numb—sprained, possibly broken, I couldn't tell and didn't care. All that mattered was the next strike, the next block, the next breath.
And then, suddenly, the pressure eased.
[THE TURNING]
"They're breaking!" Someone shouted the words—Gorlim, maybe, or one of the Rangers. "The flank is collapsing!"
I looked up from the orc I'd just killed and saw it happening.
The dwarven siege engines had shifted fire, concentrating on the orc rear where their war chief was trying to rally broken formations. Stone and iron crashed into packed masses of orcs, and the masses came apart like wet paper.
Rangers hit from the north. Elves, impossibly, had circled to strike from the south—Glorfindel leading thirty warriors through terrain I hadn't thought passable. The orcs found themselves surrounded, their assault broken, their escape routes closing.
Their war chief—Grishnak, I remembered, the name spoken with fear—tried to restore order. He was massive even for an orc, his armor black and spiked, his voice carrying over the chaos with supernatural force.
Glorfindel rode toward him.
The duel lasted perhaps thirty seconds. The ancient Elf fought with a grace that made combat look like dance, his blade weaving patterns too fast to follow. Grishnak was strong, experienced, driven by decades of hatred.
It wasn't enough.
Glorfindel's final stroke took the war chief's head from his shoulders. The massive body stood for a moment, as if uncertain what had happened, then toppled into the mud.
The orc army shattered.
Not a retreat—a rout. Warriors who'd been fighting with savage determination suddenly fled in every direction, their cohesion destroyed with their leader. Those who tried to surrender were cut down. Those who ran fast enough might escape.
I stood in the center of the battlefield, sword dripping, arm hanging useless, and realized we'd won.
"Breathe." Tauriel's voice came from somewhere beside me. "You need to breathe."
I hadn't realized I was holding my breath. How long? I didn't know. The world seemed distant, sounds muffled, colors too bright.
"We won," I said. The words felt strange.
"We won. Now sit down before you fall down."
I sat. The battlefield spread before me—bodies everywhere, orc and ally alike, the ground churned to bloody mud by the passage of armies. Somewhere distant, the pursuit continued. Closer, the sounds of wounded crying for help.
Victory never felt like the stories.
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