The collapse of Chieftain Ymir-Krag and the destruction of his legendary runic hammer didn’t right away end the battle.
Across the northern snowfield, the leftover giant war-beasts were seized by a blind, primal hysteria.
Deprived of their titan chieftain’s telepathic command runes, the surviving twenty War-Mammoths panicked.
These were huge, four-tusked mountain behemoths, each weighing fifteen tons, their shaggy hides matted with ice and their heads wrapped in heavy iron-plated crests.
Scared by the roaring detonations of the rail-lances and the metal shriek of the rotary repeaters, the beasts formed into a tight, desperate herd.
Led by a huge scarred matriarch with twenty-foot curved tusks, the herd swung away from the shattered ice mantlets and charged directly toward the only open gap they could see. The central stonework raised stone road leading to the North Barbican of Grey Crag.
Master Duncan Stone-Splitter stood beside the main gatehouse winch. He wiped stone dust from his heavy leather mittens.
Around him, the massive clockwork works of the North Gate stood ready.
