Elvenshore: 01 - The Dwarves of Elvenshore (15 page)

“There were hundreds of ladders that they would use to scale the wall.  We pushed them down as fast as they went up, but still they managed to gain the top of the wall.  We were holding there also until they caught the towers on fire.  When the towers went the gate did also.  They flooded in faster than we could stop them, and we were fighting hand to hand in the halls.  They even cut through my bodyguard and attacked me.  I killed three of them, but they did manage to take a chunk out of my shoulder.

“Then, when we thought all was lost, they retreated.  There were but a few of them left and their leader was slightly wounded. That is why we think they retreated.  They could have done a lot more damage.  As it was, the captain of the guard is dead, and I the King am wounded.”

Sarchise looked puzzled.  “If he could have done more damage, why did he retreat? He was winning and he lost a lot of fighters getting through the wall? Maybe he didn’t have to. Where is Barazar?”

“Who?” the king asked.

For two days, patrols searched on the outside of High Mountain in vain for Barazar and the other Minotaur.  Knowing that Barazar would never be found unless he wanted to be, Sarchise searched for them, himself.  He found them roasting some chickens that they had ‘borrowed’ from a nearby farm.

“Why did you not come in with the army?”

“They shot their bows at us.  They look for us now.”

“I sent them to find you to bring you into the great hall. They only shot their bows at you when they thought that you were the enemy.” Sarchise explained.

“We don’t wander into caves and we don’t sleep in holes.” answered Barazar.

“Did you know that the gremlins withdrew in good order?” Sarchise asked.

Sarchise could not have surprised Barazar more if he had reached out and stabbed him.  He sat there for a moment with his eyes wide open before he finally spoke. “They only fall back in good order when they have achieved their objective,” Barazar said at length.

“That is precisely what I was thinking.  You don’t suppose that they have attacked just to cause confusion
?
  Maybe
if
they caused enough confusion perhaps that they could send someone down to an old breeding pit deep inside the mountain.  If they did,
they
could breed an army inside High Mountain. 
They
could attack from without and within.”

“No, I do suppose.  He would not have to attack without. He could do it within.  High Mountain is in deep trouble.  We must act at once.”

After the chicken dinner they headed to the great hall.  The gate guard watched the three large Minotaur warily.  In a meeting with the King and the dwarf commanders, they discussed the behavior of the gremlins during the last battle and tr
ied
to figure out what they were up to.  Old maps and a history of the details of battles under High Mountain were also brought forth. 

Finally the King said, “In times of old when both gremlin and dwarf fought for High Mountain, there was established an inner guard.  Certain tunnels had guards posted because the gremlins were present at all times.  We would clear caverns, just to have them move to other caverns.  There are so many places to hide under the mountain that we were never able to rid the mountain of the gremlins.  Large battles and small battles were fought in the halls and down by the root of the mountain.  The low dwarves were the ones hardest hit by the gremlins.  The battle of talon falls was lost and an entire army of low dwarves was destroyed, except for two. That was right before the gremlins left the mountain.”

“Talon falls?” Barazar said, “They need water for the breeding pits.  They will need an ample supply of fresh water to keep the pits clean.  Talon falls is a good place
to start the search.”

“Sarchise, take your army and search the Talon Falls area. I will reestablish the inner guard and warn the low dwarves that the gremlins have returned.” The King said.

Sarchise let Hemlot organize his army into groups of ten, as the dwarves did when they fought the gremlins before, under the mountain. Hemlot was an old gremlin warrior so he knew how to combat the foe.  Because of the narrowness of the passages, you could not have large groups of warriors in formations. The groups would be close enough to support each other if they were attacked, but far enough apart to cover a large area. They sharpened their axes and were on the
ir
way.  They brought Barazar along as an expert in where the pits could be located.

At first the halls they walked through were carved ornately and torches set in the walls provided light.  Dwarves had long ago found a slow burning tree that grew in the mountains.  They planted the tree in large numbers and used them to light their halls.  Each torch could burn for up to two weeks.

Soon the trail led into the lower caves.  These were not lit so the lead dwarf of each group would have to carry a torch.  Caves led
in  many
directions and the group had taken so many turns, that soon Sarchise was hopelessly lost despite his best efforts to keep track of where they were going.

There was always a group in front of them and a group behind.  They seemed to know how fast to walk as each group matched the pace of the others.  Soon they came to a large cavern where all of the groups halted and gathered together. There was a waterfall that seemed to come through the center of the roof of the cavern then from a stream that disappeared into another hole in the floor. 

“The upper Talon falls.  Here
Conras
, commander of an army of low dwarves met a large army of gremlins.  Outnumber
ed
ten to one he still fought bravely.  He threw back their attacks three times, but on the
fourth
time he was overwhelmed.  He died at the center of his army with his axe in his hand.  Only
two would live to tell the tale
as the gremlins slew all of the wounded.” Hemlot said in a reverent voice.

Barazar went to the stream and stuck his hand in the water then pulled it out and smelled it.  “This is not being used for the breeding pits; the water does not have a bad odor.”

“It is straight down, if we could go with the river, but a long journey by foot.  We will have to go to the far end of the cavern and through some very narrow caves.  Then we will find the cave that the river has carved out.  It is narrow and filled with running water.  We will have to walk through the water to get to the cavern where the lower falls are, according to the map.” Hemlot explained pointing out the path on his map. “Few dwarves go that way, because it is a hard journey. We only discovered the cavern of the lower falls recently.  After the gremlin wars were over, some of the dwarves took it upon themselves to search out the areas where the gremlins had been. 
It was denied them when the gremlins still occupied most of the areas in the roots of the mountain.

“After the battle the King sent three armies down here but the gremlins had already answered the call of Tabor. All the armies did was to gather up the dead.  Gremlins had never bred in such large numbers before.  Had they stayed here instead of going to the Mountains of Iron, it would have been us, not them that were driven from our homes.

“I will rest my men now for they will find it hard going during the remainder of the journey to the lower falls.” Hemlot concluded.

As the warrior lit a fire and cooked their noon time meal, Sarchise wander
ed
about the cavern.  He came upon a large rock in that had been chiseled smooth.  There was ancient dwarf lettering on it.  He tried to read it but found he could not. 

“Here died
Conras
, son of
Connar
, Commander of the Army, and while in the service of the King,” Hemlot read.

Sarchise turned around. “Oh, I didn’t know I was being followed.”

Hemlot smiled.  “I have been working on walking quietly, like you tried to teach us in the Westwood.”

“You did very well, Sarchise said, he then turn
ed
back to the rock. “He was commander of the whole army?”

“He was our greatest commander and his army was twice the size as our armies are now.  When he was defeated almost to a man it sent a chill down the spines of all of the dwarves.  He had pursued and killed
a very large enemy force just days
before he died.  We assumed that the enemy was on the run.  He chased a small group of them to this cavern, but when he got here the place was full of gremlins.  After the three armies arrived here when the battle was over they counted the dead. One thousand dwarves had died, and there were seven thousand dead gremlins. We had been fighting the gremlins for hundreds of years.  We knew that they did not breed that fast in the past.  There was a new evil that had come upon us. Someone was breeding the gremlin in large numbers.” Hemlot explained.

“That is why the King was too frightened to send armies out of High Mountain when the humans begged him to.  He knew that if the gremlins were still here, they could breed faster than he could kill them, so he kept his armies to himself for fear of the return of the gremlins.”

Hemlot and Sarchise rejoined the group.  They had just finished cooking up mutton and rabbit stew.  They all ate until they were full and then put out the fires and moved out. The cavern had three large tunnels that entered it.  There was also, one very small one that was discovered after the gremlin wars were over.  It was here that the army was headed.  There was only a small path to the entrance to the cave so the
group had to go in single file.  They formed back into the groups of ten. 

The dwarves had to get down on their knees to get through the opening.  Sarchise had to crawl on his stomach and Barazar had to be dragged through.  He stuck his head in the opening and two dwarves grabbed his horns and dragged him through.  If his horns had been any farther apart he would not have made it.  When they all had made it through, they started walking down the narrow cave.  Sarchise had to duck a lot because of the low ceiling. Barazar had to duck most of the time.  The path was easy to follow because the caves had a sand floor. 

They came to a crossroad where one cave led up and the other intersected an underground river.  There was an odd smell from the water.  Barazar recognized it immediately.  “They are breeding gremlins upstream.  I can smell it in the water.  All the refuse from the breeding pits is washed downstream.”  With that the company started into the streambed.  It was cold and slippery.  Sarchise could feel his
feet  going
numb.  Several times, one of the dwarves would slip and fall into the river.  Sarchise did too, on two occasions.  By the time they had traveled very far the group was wet and trembling. The smell was getting worse and was starting to make them sick.

As they rounded a corner the lead dwarf fell with an arrow in his chest.  The lead group retreated back around the corner.  “Gremlins don’t shoot arrows.”
Commented Hemlot.
By now the second group had caught up with them. They brought two archers forward. They turned the corner and let loose with the arrows, the rest of the group turned the corner after them and rushed the archer.  Another arrow let loose, hitting Barazar in the shoulder, but did not even slow down the angry Minotaur.  He was able to reach and kill the archer. Gremlins started coming into the cave but the dwarf archers let loose another volley and they fell back.  Sarchise and ten dwarves headed through an opening and found themselves in the cavern of the lower falls.

Gremlins attacked them from all sides, and they were just about to give way before them when
Hemlot
, a bleeding Barazar and another ten dwarves reinforced the small group.  Soon the
re
was a pile of dead gremlins at their feet.  More arrows rang out but missed
.
The group pressed forward and killed one archer, and captured two others.  To Sarchise’s surprise, the archers were human. He gathered the two for questioning, and had them tied up and set in the middle of the cavern.  Around the side
s
of the cavern there were pits dug into the rock, hundreds of pits.  Each pit was lined with a black material and was filled with the smelly water.  In each of the pits there was a half-grown gremlin.

Hemlot looked around then gave the order, “Kill them,
kill
them all!”  With that axes and swords came down on every fetus.  Soon the floor of the cavern ran green with gremlin blood. 

Sarchise came back to the two humans in the middle of the floor.  “I am surprised to see you here helping the gremlins in the middle of a dwarf mountain.
What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“Please
Sir,
they threatened to kill our families if we did not help them.” Al said.
he
was a medium built man. 

“Where are your families?” Sarchise asked.

“In the Kingdom of
Zor
.
We had come out of
Ril
to settle in
Zor
and rebuild that Kingdom.  Land was there for the taking so twenty families all settled in this village and started tending the land.
A
large army of gremlin came to our small village in
the
dark of night.  They surround
ed
it during the night and when we awoke we were besieged. We put up a fight, but we were soon overwhelmed. The rest of the men were killed during the battle or slain afterwards. They kept the four of us alive. When we were captured
,
they
took  four
of us to the Mountains of Iron and taught us how to breed gremlins. We followed the army through Westwood.  When they had breached the wall at High Mountain, we entered with a small group of gremlins and headed through a side cave to this cavern, where we were told to start breeding.  When we had enough gremlins down here, we were to take High Mountain and come out to report to Tabor. Then he said that our families would be returned to us.”