The battlefield was fire and blood.
Even before the sun had passed its zenith, the Threian trench lines had become a crucible. Smoke choked the air, tinged green with goblin firepowder. The dead piled high at the lip of every ditch. Still, the orcs came.
Sappers from the goblin horde scrambled forward, their wiry bodies painted in red and black grease. They moved beneath the cover of the remaining tribal charges…throwing charges into broken trench mouths and lighting short fuses with shaking hands.
The explosions came seconds later.
Sections of the front trench disappeared in bursts of sound and pressure, throwing men and soil into the sky. Screams echoed through the haze. Entire squads were buried alive. Lieutenant Deramis pulled three of his men out from the edge of a collapsed trench wall, coughing blood through grit-covered lips.
"Patch it! With whatever you've got!" he barked.
"Sir, we have no lumber!"
"Then use the dead!"
*****
