Troll Ambush

"In the name of our ancestors, there are too many of them! Like army ants, only bigger and better equipped!" Kurdran cursed, his voice a gravelly rumble, as he peered down at the scene unfolding below. He and his entire hunting team were suspended in the air, the sheer advantage of air superiority allowing them to adjust their altitude at will, giving them a bird's-eye view of those strange, green monsters. But everything before him looked absolutely dreadful.

When his sentinels had first spotted these bizarre, ugly creatures and scrambled back to inform Kurdran, they'd estimated the enemy was still at least three days away. Unfortunately, these brutes moved like greased lightning, and now they were less than half a day's journey from the dwarf-controlled territory beneath Aerie Peak.

At first, Kurdran only saw a small team, but then he noticed at least three more teams popping up within a fifty-meter radius. These greenskins were divided into squads of about twenty, and it was clear as day that more were pouring out of the forest's shadowy depths. Kurdran flew about a kilometer and discovered over forty teams of these greenskins.

The Wildhammer dwarves never shied away from a challenge, but if these guys weren't just useless show-offs, their sheer numbers alone would be enough to flatten Aerie Peak. For some reason, Kurdran suddenly found himself missing his Bronzebeard cousin. Among the three major dwarf tribes, Bronzebeard was undoubtedly the king of close combat. Their iron defense line should be able to effectively block those hulking, green-skinned abominations. Unfortunately, there are no "ifs" in war.

In any case, Kurdran and his people couldn't just sit idly by and watch their homeland get trampled. Kurdran looked around, then hoisted the Storm Hammer in his hand high. "Wildhammer dwarves, attack!" he bellowed, blowing a deafening blast on his horn. The dwarves raised their hammers high, a unified roar echoing through the sky. The griffins responded with a piercing cry, spread their massive wings, and swooped down, eager for the fray. More than a dozen yellow lightning bolts screamed earthward at nearly vertical angles. Of course, their target wasn't the greenskins themselves. Letting a giant griffin charge headlong into a dense forest would be truly courting death.

They let the griffins skim flat over the tops of the treetops, then hurled their storm hammers at the tree trunks below, letting the hammers slam into the wood with bone-jarring force. Don't think for a second that the Dwarven Griffin Riders had simply tossed aside their weapons. The Storm Hammer wasn't just a simple chunk of metal. This hammer, forged entirely of lightning power, had long since entered the realm of arcane mystery. Even though the lightning contained in the hammer was deliberately weakened, the powerful impact still caused leaves, berries, and needles to rain down like confetti. The green monsters were completely blindsided by this sudden, bizarre attack.

Small pieces of leaves were one thing, but nuts were a whole different ballgame. The colossal nuts in the woods near Aerie Peak were bigger than a human head when ripe and weighed nearly five kilograms. How does it feel to be hit on the head by a five-kilogram object falling freely for more than ten meters?

THWACK!

A poor greenskin got his head smashed by a rogue nut, a sound like a melon hitting pavement. The greenskins had no idea what had just hit them. Since the woods were no longer safe, they scattered, jogging frantically to the nearest clearing. This was exactly the opportunity the Wildhammer dwarves had been waiting for.

The god of death, which had been hovering in the air, patiently waiting for its moment, began its grim harvest.

"Go to hell, greenskin—" With a thunderous battle cry, Kurdran Wildhammer launched the first true attack. The Storm Hammer, flashing with dazzling lightning, smashed out fiercely, making a whistling sound that promised pain. The first greenskin reacted quickly, raising his huge battle axe to block. Unfortunately, the object attacking him wasn't solid. With a deafening CRACK, a hammer made of pure thunder passed clean through his axe, sending a paralyzing electric shock through his body, and slammed firmly into his jaw. From his chin, which had instantly turned to rubber, it was clear all the bones in that place had been shattered, and his body flew backward like a sack of potatoes.

"Greenskin bastards are unworthy of defiling our forests!" Kurdran's roar, a booming declaration of defiance, greatly boosted the morale of the Wildhammer dwarves.

Almost the moment the orc was sent flying, the Storm Hammer zipped back to Kurdran's hand and vanished again, only to reappear, cracking another greenskin's head open like a ripe coconut. The Griffin King Skarre, a blur of golden feathers, drew a graceful S-shaped arc in the air, beautifully dodging the thrown weapons of two greenskins, then swept one of them with a claw, ripping it open from gullet to groin.

Skarre flapped his huge wings, circling in the air without missing a beat, then immediately launched a second round of attack. If they were caught off guard just now, now everyone had raised their weapons and was ready.

However, this was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. For the Storm Hammer, which couldn't be blocked and could only be dodged, this tactic of gradually gathering together was a suicidal act. The essence of the Storm Hammer was thunder and lightning, and its power varied from person to person.

One of its key characteristics was its splash damage. If the poor soul who got hit was too close to his buddies, they'd definitely get zapped by the lightning's aftermath. Just like this time, Kurdran pulled the war hammer behind him and flung it out like a javelin. The heavy hammerhead, which looked solid as a rock, first slammed into a greenskin's right eyebrow. The next moment, his head exploded with a sound like a large-caliber dwarf musket. As this poor brute hit the dirt, the sparks of lightning that sprayed from his body also made the hands and feet of the two other greenskins trying to dodge beside him go numb.

This gave the two dwarf griffon riders who swooped down behind Kurdran a golden opportunity. In addition to throwing storm hammers, a row of three colossal griffins unleashed their power at the same time. Especially Skarre, her powerful front claws, moving at blurring speed, tore a greenskin's head, complete with scarlet spine, clean from his body.

She ripped the second's head apart with her sharp beak as she zipped past, and simultaneously, used her wings to send the third reeling, stunned. The Griffin Knights plowed bloody paths through the greenskin army as easily as a farmer harvesting crops in a field.

Unfortunately, the griffin's power only went so far. A huge rain of spears suddenly erupted from the forest. The range of these crude weapons was comparable to human archers, but they packed a far more terrifying penetrating power.

At that moment, Kurdran felt as if his heart was being carved out with a dull knife, because he heard the agonizing cries of at least twenty griffins and the screams of dozens of dwarf knights. Almost simultaneously, Kurdran heard the heart-wrenching cry of his adjutant, Emhar.

"Troll!" Following the adjutant's shout, Kurdran saw with his own eyes a not-too-sharp stone axe spinning through the air at high speed, drawing an evil arc, and slamming into the shoulder of another griffin knight in his team, Befulan. Befulan's left arm immediately went limp, flapping uselessly in the wind, and a wound near his shoulder bled bright red blood in the strong wind.