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.
The goblins and ogres, thinking that they had routed their enemies, paused only to whoop out victory cries, then surged after the dwarves.
But deeper in the tunnels several levers were pulled. The final trap was sprung, and all of the tunnel entrances simply collapsed. The ground shook violently under the weight of the rock drop, the entire face of the cliff came crashing down.
The only monsters that survived were the ones at the very front of the lines. And disoriented, battered by the force of the drop and dizzied by the blast of dust, they were immediately cut down by the waiting dwarves.
Even the people as far away as Bryn Shander were shaken by the tremendous avalanche. They flocked to the north wall to watch the rising cloud of dust, dismayed for they beieved that the dwarves had been destroyed.
Regis knew better. The halfling envied the dwarves, safely entombed in their long tunnels. He had realized the moment he saw the fires rising from Caer-Konig that his delay in the city, waiting for his friend from Lonelywood, had cost him his chance to escape.
Now he watched helplessly and hopelessly as the black mass advanced toward Bryn Shander.
The fleets on Maer Dualdon and Redwaters had put back to their home ports as soon as they realized what was happening. They found their families safe for the present time, except for the fishermen of Termalaine who sailed into a deserted town. All that the men of Termalaine could do as they reluctantly put back out to sea was hope that their kin had made it to Bryn Shander or some other sanctuary; for they saw the northern flank of Kessell’s army swarming across the field toward their doomed city.
Targos, the second strongest city and the only one other than Bryn Shander with any hope of holding out for any length of time against the vast army, extended an invitation for Termalaine’s ships to tie up at her docks. And the men of Termalaine, soon to be numbered among the homeless themselves, accepted the hospitality of their bitter enemies to the south. Their disputes with Kemp’s people seemed petty indeed against the weight of the disaster that had befallen the towns.