General Dagna exhaled deeply, his whole body finally seeming to relax. Good news at last, he thought, for one of his scouts had returned with word that tunnels had been found leading straight and deep to the north, back to Mithral Hall, in all likelihood.
For more than a tenday, Dagna, his forty remaining dwarves, and Galen Firth and his human refugees had been moving fast across the muddy, scraggly terrain, collecting remnants of the scattered folk of Nesme. They had more than four hundred Nesmians in tow, but less than half were battle-capable, and many were wounded.
Worse, their enemies had been dogging their every step, nipping at them in scattered attacks. The skirmishes had diminished to nothing over the past couple of days, but the nagging thought remained with Dagna that those fights had not been so haphazard, that perhaps they were a coordinated effort toward a larger goal. In fact, it occurred to Dagna, though he did not mention it to Galen Firth, that the last couple of bands of refugees, mostly women, children, and very old folk, had been left alone by the trolls purposely. The apparently cunning trolls seemed to recognize that Dagna and Galen would absorb the refugees, and that those less able would surely slow them all down and drain their resources. Dagna recognized that he and his comrades were, in effect, being herded. The wise old dwarf warcommander understood the ways of battle enough to realize that time was working against him and his impromptu army. Tough as the humans were showing themselves to be, and determined as Galen Firth might be, Dagna believed in his heart that if they couldn't find their way out of there, they would all soon be dead.
Finally on that cold and rainy day had come the welcomed news of a potential escape route, and one through tunnels, where Dagna knew that he and his boys could be much more effective in slowing the powerful trolls. He found Galen Firth a short while later, and was surprised to see that the man was as excited as he.
"Me scouts're back," Dagna said in greeting.
"As are my own," Galen replied with equal enthusiasm.
Dagna started to explain about the tunnel, thinking that perhaps Galen had heard a similar tale, but the man wasn't listening, he realized, and indeed, Galen soon began talking right over him.
"Our enemies are weak between here and Nesme," Galen explained. "A thin line, with no support to be found anywhere around the town."
"The ruins of Nesme, ye mean," Dagna corrected.
"Not so ruined. Battered yes, but still defensible."
The dwarf paused for a moment and let those words digest. "Defensible?"
"Behind our walls, we are formidable, good dwarf."
"I'm not for doubting that, but are ye forgetting that yer enemy already chased ye out from behind those walls once?"
"We weren't properly prepared for them."
"Yer forces were many times yer present number!"
"We can hold the town," Galen insisted. "Word has gone out to Everlund, Mirabar, and Silverymoon. Surely help will soon arrive."
"To bury yer bones?" Dagna said, and Galen scowled at him. "Ye can't be thinking to move closer to the Trollmoors with an army o' bog blokes and trolls on yer heels."
"Army? The fighting has lessened since our escape from the trolls," Galen argued. "We have reason to believe that many of our enemies have gone into tunnels heading for Mithral Hall."
"Aye, tunnels to Mithral Hall," said Dagna. "Which is why I come to ye this day. We found the way back, deep and quiet. We can make the tunnels afore the morrow and be well on our way."
"Have you not listened to a word I've said?"
"Have ye yerself heared them words?" Dagna replied. "Ye're for walking out from the protection o' the mountains onto open ground where yer enemies can sweep upon ye. Ye're to get yer people slaughtered."
"I am to save Nesme."
"Nesme's gone!"
"And would you so quickly abandon Mithral Hall, General Dagna?"
"Mithral Hall's not gone."
It was Galen Firth's turn to pause and take a deep breath against the unrelenting pragmatism of General Dagna. "I am of the Riders of Nesme," he explained slowly and calmly, as if reciting a vow he had made many times before. "My life has been given to the protection of the town, wholly so. We see a way back to our homes. If we get back behind our city wall - "
"The damned trolls'll catch ye there and kill ye."
"Not if many have turned their eyes to the north, as we believe."
"And ye'd be willing to risk all yer kinfolk on that belief?"
"Help will come," Galen declared. "Nesme will rise again."
Dagna locked stares with the man. "Me and me boys're heading for the tunnels and back to Mithral Hall. Ye're welcomed to join us - Steward Regis's offered his hand. Ye'd be wise to take it."
"If we go home - to our homes, good dwarf! - will Mithral Hall not offer us the support we need?"
"Ye're asking me to follow ye on a fool's errand!"
"I am asking you to stand beside your neighbors as they defend their homes from a common enemy."
"You cannot be serious," came another voice, and both Dagna and Galen Firth turned to see Rannek moving to join them. The young man's stride was purposeful and determined. "We have a way to the north, underground where our allies can better protect us."
"You would abandon Nesme?"
Rannek shook his head vigorously. "I would secure the wounded and those who cannot fight, first and foremost. They are the cause of the Riders, not empty buildings and walls that can be rebuilt."
"Rannek now determines the course of the Riders? Rannek the watchman?"
Dagna watched the exchange carefully, and noted how the younger man seemed to lose all momentum so suddenly.
"I speak for the Riders and I speak for all the folk of Nesme," Galen Firth went on, turning back to the dwarf. "We see an opportunity to return to our homes, and we shall seize it."
"A fool's errand," said Dagna.
"Can you say with certainty that these tunnels you have found will be any less filled with enemies? Can you be so certain that they will even usher us to Mithral Hall? Or might it be that we go underground, flee from the region, only to have the armies of Mirabar, Silverymoon, and Everlund arrive? What then, General Dagna? They will find no one to rescue and no town to help secure. They will believe they are too late and turn for home."
"Or turn north to the bigger fight that's facing Clan Battlehammer."
"That would be your hope, wouldn't it?"
"Don't ye be talking stupid," Dagna warned. "We come all the way down here, I put ten of me boys in the Halls o' Moradin, and all for yer own sake."
Galen Firth backed off just a bit, and even dipped the slightest of bows.
"We are not unappreciative of your help," he said. "But you must understand that we are as loyal to our home as Clan Battlehammer is to Mithral Hall. By all reports, the way is nearly clear. We can fight our way to Nesme with little risk and it is unlikely that our enemies will be able to organize against us anytime soon to try to expel us once more. By that time, help will arrive."
The dwarf, hardly convinced, crossed his hairy arms over his chest, his muscles tense and bulging around the heavy leather bracers adorning each wrist.
"And what of the remaining refugees who are still out there?" Galen Firth went on. "Would you have us abandon them? Shall we run and hide," he asked, turning quickly to Rannek, "while our kin cower in the shadows with no hope of finding sanctuary?"
"We do not know that more are out there," Rannek offered, though his voice seemed less than sure.
"We know not if there are none," Galen Firth retorted. "Is my life worth that chance? Is your own?" The fierce veteran turned back on Dagna. "It is,"
Galen answered his own question. "Come with us if you will, or run and hide in Mithral Hall if that is your choice. Nesme is not yet lost, and I'll not see her lost!"
With that, Galen turned and stormed away.
Dagna tightened the cross of his arms over his chest and stared at Galen as he departed for a long while before finally turning back to Rannek.
"A fool's errand" he said. "Ye're not for knowing where them trolls're hiding."
Rannek didn't offer any answers, but Dagna understood that the man knew that it wasn't his place to answer. When Galen Firth declared that he spoke for the folk of Nesme, he was speaking truthfully. Rannek had been given his say, short though it had been, but it was settled.
The young warrior's expression revealed his doubts, but he offered only a bow, then turned and followed Galen Firth, his commander.
A short while later, as twilight began its descent over the land, Dagna and his forty dwarves stood high on the side of a hillock, watching the departing march of Galen Firth and his four hundred Nesmians. Every bit of common sense in the old dwarf told him to let them go and be done with it. Turn about and head into the tunnels, he told himself over and over.
But he didn't give that command as the minutes passed and the black mass of walking humans receded into the foggy shadows of the marshland north of Nesme.
"I'm not for liking it," Dagna offered to those dwarves around him. "The whole thing's not looking right to me."
"Ye might be thinking a bit too much favor on the cunning of trolls," a dwarf near the old veteran remarked, and Dagna certainly didn't dismiss the comment.
Was he giving the trolls too much credit? The patterns of the escape thus far and the disposition of those refugees they had acquired had led him to consider the trap he might be laying if he was the one chasing the fleeing humans. But he was a dwarf, a veteran of many campaigns, and his enemies were trolls, hulking, stupid, and never strong on tactics.
Maybe Galen Firth was right.
But still the doubts remained.
"Let's follow 'em just a bit, for me own peace o' mind," Dagna told his fellows. "Put a scout left, put a scout right, and we'll all come up behind, but not close enough so that the durned fool Galen can see us."
Several dwarves grumbled at that, but not loudly.
"They coming, little dwarfie," an ugly troll, gruesome even by troll standards, said to the battered dwarf who lay on the ground below it. "Just like them drow elves said they would."
Another troll giggled, which sounded like a group of drunken dwarves forcing spit up from their lungs, and the pair leaned in close against the muddy bank, peering out through the scraggly brush that further camouflaged their position.
Below them, one heavy foot on his chest, poor Fender Stouthammer could hardly draw breath, let alone do anything to help. He wasn't gagged, but couldn't make any sounds other than a wet wheeze, the result of the male drow's clever work with his blade.
But neither could Fender just lie there. He had heard the drow telling the trolls that they would soon have all the refugees and the stubborn dwarves in their grasp. Fender had lain helpless throughout the last days watching those two dark elves orchestrate the movements of the trolls and the bog blokes. A clever pair, the dark elves had assured the biggest and ugliest of the trolls, a two-headed monstrosity named Proffit, that the stupid humans would walk right into their trap.
And there they were, not so far from the abandoned city of Nesme, cleverly hidden in a long trench to the north of the west-marching humans, while on the right, their comrades, the treelike bog blokes, lay in wait.
The troll pinning Fender started laughing even harder and began jumping up and down, each descent crunching the dwarf a little deeper into the muck.
Reacting purely on instinct, thinking he would be crushed to death, Fender quickly reached out and grabbed an exposed tree root, then rolled back, pulling the soft wood out with him. As the troll came down the next time, its foot settled on the root instead of the dwarf, and to Fender's relief, the troll seemed not to notice - the root had about the same give, he figured.
Not pausing to savor in his minor victory, Fender bent the root so that it would remain sticking out far enough to accommodate the troll, then rolled back the other way, coming up to all fours as he wound about. He crept off quietly behind a line of equally distracted trolls, but couldn't begin to imagine how he might escape.
Because he could not, Fender Stouthammer admitted to himself. There was no way for him, battered as he was, to hold any hope of getting free of the wretched trolls.
"Next best thing, then," the dwarf silently mouthed and he moved into position at the base of the most gently sloping region of the trench, and near to a series of roots that climbed all the way to the crest, some eight feet from the muddy bottom. With a deep breath and a moment of regret for all those hearty friends and family he'd not ever see again, Fender exploded into motion, running up the root line, hand over hand.
He counted on surprise, and so he had it as he crossed out of the pit and away from the nearest, startled troll. Back behind him, he heard the hoots of his guards, and the growing rumble of outrage.
Fender sprinted for all his life, and more importantly for the lives of all those humans unwittingly approaching the designated kill zone. He tried to scream out to warn them off the trolls, but of course he could not, and he waved all the more frantically when several of the leading men began rushing his way.
Fender did not have to look behind him to know that the trolls had come out in pursuit, for he saw the humans blanch and skid to a stop as one. He saw their eyes go wide with shock and horror. He saw them start to backpedal, then turn and run off shouting in terror.
"Run on," Fender gasped. "Run far and run free."
He felt as if he had been punched hard in the back then, his breath blasted away. He didn't go flying away, though, and strangely felt no pain. When he looked down to his own chest, he understood, for the thick and sharpened end of a heavy branch protruded from between his breasts.
"Oh," Fender remarked, probably the loudest vocalization he had managed since his throat had been cut.
Then he fell over, hardly free, but satisfied that he had properly executed the next best thing.
Stupid trolls, Tos'un Armgo's fingers flashed to Kaer'lic in the silent hand code of the dark elves. They cannot be trusted to guard a single wounded prisoner!
Equally disgusted, Kaer'lic held her tongue and watched the unfolding events. Already, the humans were in full and furious retreat, running back to the east. From her high vantage point in the north, Kaer'lic began to nod with renewed hope as the human line predictably began to veer south, away from the charging trolls.
"Is he dead?" Kaer'lic asked, motioning toward the dwarf.
As she spoke, though, Fender squirmed.
"Run for the cover of the trees," the drow priestess said. The copse was comprised of three bog blokes - which very much resembled dead, wintry trees - for every real tree. "Yes, there you will find wood with which to burn the trolls!"
Kaer'lic's wide smile met a similarly knowing one from her partner, for he too recognized the certain doom looming before the ragtag bunch.
But Tos'un's growl stole her mirth, and she followed his scowl back to the east-northeast, where a second force appeared, sweeping down a rocky slope, whooping for war, rattling weapons, and calling out to the dwarf gods Moradin, Clangeddin, and Dumathoin.
Then, amazingly, the dwarves all joined voice in song, a single refrain repeated over and over again, "Along our wake ye people flee. We'll hold 'em back and get ye free!"
Over and over again they sang it out, more emphatically at every juncture when it seemed as if the folk of Nesme wouldn't veer back to the northeast.
"They've seen the truth of the bog blokes," Kaer'lic observed.
Tos'un gave a derisive laugh and replied, "Of all the races on and under Toril, are any less adept at holding a simple trap than smelly trolls?"
"Any that were less adept than trolls likely were exterminated eons ago."
"What now?"
"Watch the fun," the priestess replied. "And go fetch that fallen dwarf.
Perhaps Lady Lolth will grant me the power I need to keep him alive, so that we might find more enjoyment from him before we kill him."
Dagna's scouts had picked the perfect route for intercepting the chase. The dwarves came down from on high, their short, strong legs gaining momentum as they rambled down the slope. They rushed past the fleeing Nesmians to the left, to a dwarf hollering angrily at those few human warriors who seemed ready to turn and join in the dwarves' charge.
Dagna led his boys right around the humans, hardly slowing as they met the charge of the trolls. Axes, swords, and hammers chopping, they slashed through the front ranks. Those leading trolls who were still standing turned around to fight their new, closer enemies.
Thus, by their own tactics, the dwarves found themselves surrounded almost immediately. There was no despair at that realization, however, for that was exactly as they, to a dwarf, had planned. They had stopped the troll charge in its tracks, and had given the Nesmians a free run.
They knew the cost.
And accepted it with a song of battle on their lips.
Not one of Dagna's boys came off that field alive.
"Look how easily Proffit's fools are distracted!" Kaer'lic said. "They turn on a force of two score, while twenty times that number run away!"
"They'll not escape," replied Tos'un, who had climbed a tree above Kaer'lic and the panting Fender, which afforded him a wider range of view. "The bog blokes outpace them from the south. Already the humans see that they will be caught. Many of their males are forming a defense."
Kaer'lic looked up to her companion, but her smile became a curious frown, for high above Tos'un, the priestess saw a line of fire streaking across the sky west to east, descending as it went. As the fiery object crossed over Tos'un, Kaer'lic began to make out its shape. It was some kind of a cart, a chariot perhaps, pulled by a team of fiery horses.
Tos'un glanced up, too, as did everyone on the field.
Down the chariot swooped, cutting low over the humans, many of whom fell to the ground in fear, but with others suddenly cheering.
Then, just south of the cluster of humans, great fireballs erupted, flames leaping into the night sky.
"The bog blokes!" Tos'un cried out.
East of his position, the humans started on their run once more.
Her long silvery hair flying out behind her, Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon held the reigns of her magically-created chariot of fire in one hand and waved the other hand in a series of movements that brought another tiny pill of glowing flame to her grasp. She veered the chariot for a run over the largest remaining cluster of bog blokes and tossed the pill upon them as she passed.
The fireball erupted in their midst, the hungry flames biting at the bark-like skin of the creatures.
Alustriel banked to get a view of the scene below, and saw that the humans were well on their way again, and that the remaining bog blokes seemed too busy getting away from burning kin to offer any more pursuit. Alustriel's heart sank more than a little when she glanced back to the west, for the battle was all but over, with the trolls overwhelming the dwarves.
Her admiration for Clan Battlehammer only grew that dark night, not only for the actions of that particular brave force, but for even sending any warriors south at such a dark time. Word had come to Silverymoon from Nesme of the rise of the Trollmoors, and further information had filtered down through King Emerus Warcrown of Citadel Felbarr detailing the march of Obould Many-Arrows. Alustriel had set off at once to survey the situation.
She knew that Mithral Hall was under terrible duress. She knew that the North had been swept by the ferocious orc king and his swarm of minions, and that the western bank of the Surbrin had been heavily fortified.
She knew that she had done little to help that situation, but in looking at the fleeing, desperate Nesmians, she took comfort that she had helped a bit at least.