Prologue:
The human kingdoms of the south had been invaded.
For generations those that dwelt in the cold mountainous north, orcs and goblins for the most part, had been at odds with the richer kingdoms south of them.
Raids had been a constant threat for those living in what was known as the borderlands. War parties of goblins or orcs would swarm across the border striking at isolated homesteads, lumber camps, trade caravans and the occasional small village.
These raiders sought gold, food, weapons, slaves. Whatever of worth that they could carry easily enough to disappear back to their holds in the north. For the most part caravan guards, brave homesteaders, the occasional local militia or even a roving patrol of regular cavalry from one of the kingdom's standing armies were enough to combat these raids. The raiders were normally only interested in easy prey and a stiff defence could discourage large scale bloodshed. There were occasions when an actual war party would venture south, young warriors seeking to blood themselves and earn glory and status. These were infrequent however but might involve a number of weeks of terror as the warriors carved a bloody path through the countryside. Only ending when they returned sated from their excesses or were driven back bloody and beaten.
Then, four years ago everything changed.
Some said it was down to one harsh winter too many, others that raids were no longer enough to quench the creatures' thirst for death and still others speculated that something far worse that the fell races of orcs and goblins had stirred and were driving them south.
Whatever the reason, in the spring of the Year of the Sparrowhawk, thousands of slavering orcs and goblins had exploded from the mountains of the north all along the borders of the three human kingdoms of the south, pushing south at an alarming rate. For a month it was mayhem- bloody mayhem.
King Patric of the Eastern Realm first brought them to battle, his heavy lancers driving the rude hedgehog defensive formations of the goblin foot soldiers into ruin. The warhorses trampling over the creatures time and again as their riders turned from one charge into another until the few remaining goblin troops from that particular host broke and ran.
Queen Bea of the Western Realm also led her army against the invaders. Her disciplined troops, supremely trained and in solid shield walls, allowed the orc troops to batter themselves against their iron shields hopelessly. Short swords flickered in the light as they stabbed out from the human lines, each unfailingly finding a target amongst the packed flesh of the orcs pressing against the shields. Over and over the swords sought out the orcs' lives until, defeated, the orcs reformed and retreated.
Finally, King Tonar of the Middle Realm met the invaders with his forces. Skirmishers from his army slowed the goblin forces long enough for the King's army to deploy. War engines shot rocks, javelins and pitch at the mass of goblins, tearing and rending gory holes in the creature's lines. Light cavalry with infantry then charged forward, outnumbered, but advancing under cover of withering sheets of arrows from the royal archers they hit the depleted front ranks with a crash of thunder. The sight of so many of their kin dead before the human army had even reached them was enough for the goblins. They fled.
Three battles, three victories. All said it was over and for that year at least, it was.
The next spring they returned. This time there was no howling advance with scant regard for strategy and tactics. This time they advanced slowly, securing whatever territory they seized. Rough palisades were thrown up around camps and occupied villages, something approaching discipline taking hold of the invaders. The discipline wasn't the only difference.
Instead of separate hosts comprising of orcs or goblins, now the invaders joined forces. Tribes, clans and septs that were once as much against as each other as they were humankind now worked in concert. The reason for this became obvious soon enough.
Giants had taken over leadership of the invaders. Not the giants of tales told by mothers to children half asleep in their beds. These giants were not 30 feet tall with booming voices, bearing trees as clubs. They stood between nine and ten feet tall for the most part, grey of skin with eyes and hair of the deepest black. Clad in piecemeal armour, a mix of both leather and iron, they carried large double-bladed axes or huge iron capped war hammers. These new 'officers' were responsible for the new army.
The goblins, small and scrawny, topping at just five feet on average, but possessed of a wiry strength and surprising turn of speed became the new skirmishers and light infantry. Their brown mottled skin an added bonus when operating in the dense woodlands that covered much of the borderlands.
Orcs became the heavy infantry, six to seven feet in height, broad muscular warriors. Their black skin and hairless pates, often decorated in red paint, had inspired terror in their foes when they were raiders. Now standing in disciplined ranks, working as a collective, that terror had magnified in line with their new efficiency in battle.
Along with these changes the giants had brought one new element to the invading force. Cavalry.
Dire wolves, twice the size of their forest cousins, possessed of human intelligence and cunning they answered the giants' commands in battle.
This new force had met King Patric's first. The eastern generals had not recognised the danger when they had seen the invading army forming up in an efficient manner never seen before. The generals had opted to deal with the enemy in the time-honoured fashion with a massed charge by the heavy horse.
Before the human cavalry had crossed half the distance between the opposing sides the dire wolves had streamed out from either end of the enemy's ranks, curling in towards the charge on an intercept course. The horses were terrified by the tide of white furred death pouring across the field towards them and they began to rear and baulk against their rider's commands.
This confusion brought the charge into a tangled whinnying mess two hundred feet short of the enemy's lines. Soon the wolves were among them, horses lamed through bites, disembowelled by sweeping strikes from razor sharp paws, their riders toppling to the ground either thrown by a panicking steed or pulled from the saddle by a leaping wolf.
And then the orc charge hit them.
By the time the Eastern Realm's force could disengage two in five of the total number of soldiers were dead with the cavalry having the worst of it, losing four in five of their men.
Neither the Middle nor Western Realms armies fared any better, suffering huge losses in their opening battles.
Over the next three years the human troops continued to fare badly against the northern alliance, though never again suffering the disastrous losses of the first battles in the second year. Steadily through defeats, bloody stalemates and rare victories the human realms lost men, material and land.
