Arrows and stones hissed like serpents through the sky.
Then came the screams, short, sharp bursts of agon, followed by the wet, sickening thuds of bodies hitting earth. Limbs twisted at wrong angles. Skulls cracked open like fruit beneath the hammer of a cruel harvest. Blood sprayed in bursts, soaking into the dirt, and the ground drank deep, as if the earth itself were a starving beast eager for flesh.
Then the front shattered.
The enslaved tribesmen, barely held together by fear and threats, met the forward line of Valen's defense, and smashed like waves against the stone.
Their formation, loose and chaotic from the start, collapsed into a mess of desperate men trying to push through angled stakes, trenches, and screaming steel. From above, it looked like a boat already halfway to sinking, punched full of holes, now splintering into driftwood.
Valen's preparations held firm.
The angled stakes funneled the attackers inward, dragging their chaos into a bottleneck of death.
