Agorwal gained a high point and looked back toward the city. The fleeing women were a good distance across the field, but moving slowly. If his men broke their ranks and fled, they would overtake the refugees before the slopes of Bryn Shander. And the monsters would be right behind.
“We must go out and support Agorwal!” Glensather yelled at Cassius. But this time the spokesman from Bryn Shander remained resolute.
“Agorwal has accomplished his mission,” Cassius responded. “The refugees will make the wall. I’ll not send more men out to die! Even if the combined strength of all of Ten-Towns were on the field, it would not be able to defeat the foe before us!” Already the wise spokesman understood that they could not fight Kessell on even terms.
The kindly Glensather looked crestfallen. “Take some troops down the hill,” Cassius conceded. “Help the exhausted refugees up the final climb.”
Agorwal’s men were hard-pressed now. The spokesman from Termalaine looked back again and was appeased; the women and children were safe. He scanned up to the high wall, aware that Regis, Cassius, and the others could see him, a solitary figure on the small rise, though he could not pick them out among the throng of spectators that lined Bryn Shander’s parapets.
More goblins poured into the fray, now joined by ogres and verbeeg. Agorwal saluted his friends in the city. His contented smile was sincere as he spun around and charged back down the grade to join his victorious troops in their finest moment.
Then Regis and Cassius watched the black tide roll over every one of the brave men of Termalaine.
Below them, the heavy gates slammed shut. The last of the refugees were in.
While Agorwal’s men had won a victory of honor, the only force that actually battled Kessell’s army that day and survived were the dwarves. The clan from Mithril Hall had spent days in industrious preparation for this invasion, yet it nearly passed them by altogether. Held by the wizard’s compelling will into discipline unheard of among goblins, especially varied and rival tribes, Kessell’s army had definite and direct plans for what they had to accomplish in the initial surge. As of this point, the dwarves were not included. But Bruenor’s boys had other plans. They weren’t about to bury themselves in their mines without getting to lop off at least a few goblin heads, or without crushing the kneecaps of a giant or two.
Several of the bearded folk climbed to the southern tip of their valley. When the trailing edge of the evil army flowed past, the dwarves began to taunt them, shouting challenges and curses against their mothers. The insults weren’t even necessary. Orcs and goblins despise dwarves more than anything else alive, and Kessell’s straightforward plan flew from their minds at the mere sight of Bruenor and his kin. Ever hungry for dwarven blood, a substantial force broke away from the main army.
The dwarves let them close in, goading them with taunts until the monsters were nearly upon them. Then Bruenor and his kin slipped back over the rocky ledge and down the steep drop.
“Come an’ play, stupid dogs,” Bruenor chuckled wickedly as he disappeared from sight. He pulled a rope off of his back. There was one little trick he had thought up that he was anxious to try out.
The goblins charged into the rocky vale, outnumbering the dwarves four to one. And they were backed by a score of raging ogres.
The monsters didn’t have a chance.
The dwarves continued to coax them on, down the steepest part of the valley, to the narrow, sloping ledges on the cliff face that crossed in front of the numerous entrances to the dwarven caves. An obvious place for an ambush, but the stupid goblins, frenzied at the sight of their most-hated enemies, came on anyway, heedless of the danger.
When the majority of the monsters were on the ledges and the rest were making the initial descent into the vale, the first trap was sprung. Catti-brie, heavily armed but positioned in the back of the inner tunnels, pulled a lever, dropping a post on the vale’s upper crest. Tons of rocks and gravel tumbled down upon the tail of the monster’s line, and those who managed to keep their precarious balance and escape the brunt of the avalanche found the trails behind them buried and closed to any escape.
Crossbows twanged from concealed nooks, and a group of dwarves rushed out to meet the lead goblins.
Bruenor wasn’t with them. He had hidden himself further back on the trail and watched as the goblins, intent on the challenge up ahead, passed him by. He could have struck then, but he was after larger prey, waiting for the ogres to come into range. The rope had already been carefully measured and tied off. He slipped one of its looped ends around his waist and the other securely over a rock, then pulled two throwing axes from his belt. It was a risky ploy, perhaps the most dangerous the dwarf had ever tried, but the sheer thrill of it became obvious in the form of a wide grin across Bruenor’s face when he heard the lumbering ogres approaching. He could hardly contain his laughter when two of them crossed before him in the narrow trail. Leaping from his concealment, Bruenor charged at the surprised ogres and threw the axes at their heads. The ogres twisted and managed to deflect the half-hearted throws, but the hurled weapons were merely a diversion.
Bruenor’s body was the true weapon in this attack. Surprised, and dodging from the axes, the two ogres were put off-balance. The plan was falling into place perfectly; the ogres could hardly find their footing. Twitching the powerful muscles in his stubby legs, Bruenor launched himself into the air, crashing into the closest monster. It fell with him onto the other.
And they tumbled, all three, over the edge.
One of the ogres managed to lock its huge hand onto the dwarf’s face, but Bruenor promptly bit it, and the monster recoiled. For a moment, they were a falling jumble of flailing legs and arms, but then Bruenor’s rope reached its length and sorted them out.
“Have a nice landing, boys,” Bruenor called as he broke free of the fall. “Give the rocks a big kiss for me!”
The backswing on the rope dropped Bruenor into the entrance of a mineshaft on the next lowest ledge as his helpless victims dropped to their deaths. Several goblins in line behind the ogres had watched the spectacle in blank amazement. Now they recognized the opportunity of using the hanging cord as a shortcut to one of the caves, and one by one they climbed onto the rope and started down.
But Bruenor had anticipated this as well. The descending goblins couldn’t understand why the rope felt so slick in their hands.
When Bruenor appeared on the lower ledge, the end o’ the rope in one hand and a lighted torch in the other, they figured it out.
Flames leaped up the oiled twine. The topmost goblin managed to scramble back on the ledge, the rest took the same route as the unfortunate ogres before them. One nearly escaped the fatal fail, landing heavily on the lower ledge. Before he could even regain his feet, though, Bruenor kicked him over.
The dwarf nodded approvingly as he admired the successful results of his handiwork. That was one trick he intended to remember. He slapped his hands together and darted back down the shaft. It sloped upward farther back to join the higher tunnels.
On the upper ledge, the dwarves were fighting a retreating action. Their plan was not to clash in a death fight outsside, but to lure the monsters into the entrances of the tunnels. With the desire to kill blotting out any semblance of reason, the dimwitted invaders readily complied, assuming, that their greater numbers were pushing the dwarves back into a corner.
Several tunnels soon rang out with the clash of sword on sword. The dwarves continued to back away, leading the monsters completely into the final trap. Then, from somewhere deeper in the caves, a horn sounded. On cue, the dwarves broke away from the melee and fled down the tunnels.