Elvenshore: 01 - The Dwarves of Elvenshore (18 page)

It was early in the morning when the night watch woke up Sarchise.  “Sire, the humans are dead!” the watchman said with alarm in his voice.  Sarchise sprang to his feet and ran over to where they were.  Each one lay in his own blood, an arrow piercing each heart.  Sarchise pulled an arrow out of the nearest human.  It was black hard and straight, an elf arrow.  Hemlot ran up a few minutes later.  Sarchise showed him the arrow.  “Our elf friend is doing what he thinks is best. The human shadowing us is most likely dead also.” Sarchise said.

“How does this change our plans?” Hemlot asked.

“It doesn’t.  Let’s get the troops fed then ready to march. Put your best
axe men
in the lead as we will be cutting our way through the forest before the day is out.”

With that the cooks prepared some venison strips for breakfast, as deer were plentiful in this part of the forest.  They still had some bread and cheese to go with it.  After that the dwarves mustered into ranks and set out for the deep woods. The
axe men
were in front and the archers were placed in the rear. Sarchise was gambling that the messenger got through to Cazz.  Everything depended on that.

At first the journey went smooth, but soon the forest began to close in around them.  As the day progressed the ax
e
men were cutting through more and more underbrush.  There were places that the trees were so close together that the army moved in single file.  The marching wasn’t bad, as the warriors had to wait for those cutting through to make a trail.  Sarchise found that the ax
e
men began to tire rapidly.  He
was having
to change them out every two hours.  After twelve hours he saw that they had only come five miles.  He ordered the column to stop for the night.  The warriors were spread out over the thin trail through the woods for a quarter of a mile.

The watch was small that night, as they only had to guard the trail behind.  The dwarves grumbled about eating dried meat, but Sarchise was unfamiliar with this part of the forest and decided not to chance it.  Besides, he reasoned, if they started a forest fire the whole army would be burned to a crisp in the narrow confines of the trail. In the morning he let the army sleep in, except for the axe men. 
They
were sent ahead to get a head start on the trail clearing. At noon, after a cold breakfast, the army set out again.  It was only about an hour before they caught up with the axe men. 

One of the watchmen came up to Sarchise.  “Sir, the watch reports that
gremlins have been spotted on the trail behind us. They are coming up fast and are in large numbers.” Sarchise rushed back to see what was going on, by the time he got there the rear of the column was fully engaged in a battle.  The wisdom of putting the best archers at the rear was evident, as they were mowing down scores of gremlins in the narrow path before they could get at the dwarves.  Sarchise climbed upon a low hanging limb to get a good view of the fight. 

“Pull the wounded out and pass them back,” he ordered. The warriors began grabbing the fallen and hauling them back to the front of the trail.  Sarchise also had the tired warriors move back and replaced by fresh ones.  In the narrow confines of the trail the gremlins could only advance two to five abreast and the arrows would stop most of them. 

The screech of wounded gremlins and the clash of metal and metal
on
bone echoed through the forest.  Time and time again, the gremlins would charge, just to be driven back.  Those gremlins
who
did not fall from the arrows, met battle axes and swords.  The dwarves were standing their ground, but more and more wounded and dead were passed to the back and there were no more fresh troops to put in the front.  The gremlins would crash through one line of dwarves just to be met by another line just behind the first. Sarchise and Hemlot joined the front troops to stabilize the line. Sarchise could swing his sword over the heads of the front line of dwarves. 

In another fierce charge, Hemlot fell.  Sarchise could not tell where he had been wounded, but he saw that he was bleeding badly.  He reached down and pulled Hemlot clear and handed him to the arms of the warriors behind the front line.  They dragged him back to the healer.  The archers were running out of arrows.  All of the arrows were passed forward and used.  They were trying to conserve, but this was letting more gremlins through and causing more casualties among the dwarves. 

Sarchise roared over the din of battle.  “I need twenty fresh troops.”  As the warriors gathered right behind the line Sarchise commanded them.  “We are going to rush forward.  You in the rear will rush forward with the twenty, but you will pull arrows out of the ground and gremlins on your way.  When we yell again, we give ground and you need to retreat and hand the arrows to the archers. Everyone understand?”  He was met with nods. He held his sword high into the air and yelled “Charge!”

At first the gremlins were surprised at the sudden onslaught, and fell back.  With war cries the dwarves came forward.  Always better at attacking than defending, the dwarves mowed down the stunned enemy.  The initial shock soon wore off and the gremlins started holding their ground.  Sarchise saw that it was no longer worth the cost.  “Fall back, fall back.” He commanded.  Several gremlins rushed him and threw him to the ground. He felt a sharp pain in his left arm as a gremlin stabbed him.  The gremlins were cleared off of him by a strong swing of a battle-axe.  Hands grabbed Sarchise and started dragging him back.  He was able to regain his feet and was saying, “I’m alright
,  I’m
alright, ” but nobody looking at the blood coming from his arm believed him.  Sarchise looked up to see that the gremlins that filled the void
of the dwarf retreat were met with a hail of recaptured arrows. He smiled within himself and let himself be pulled back to the healers. 

The trail was longer than he remembered, mainly because in the turmoil he had forgotten to have the axe men stop working.  The extra room was full of wounded however.  Moans and groans filled the air.  He saw Hemlot leaning against a tree.  He was as white as a sheet and had a fresh mudpack over his chest.  He glanced up at Sarchise and said, “Just a scratch, I’ll be alright in a minute or two.” With that, he slumped down and went to sleep.

A healer sat Sarchise on a stump and ripped open his torn tunic.  Blood was thick in the torn cloth.  The healer washed the wound clean and with one hand held the flesh back around the bone while he stitched it in place with the other hand.
             

“How is Hemlot?” Sarchise asked the healer.

The healer looked up from his sewing. “He is very weak.  We think that he
will  live
but it will take a long time for him to get his strength back. There,” he added as he finished the last stitch. “We are running low of herbs; if you are willing I will put some of this black elf goo on the wound?”

“That would be fine. I don’t like mud packs anyway,” Sarchise responded.

The healer put the spider’s blood on the wound and bound it up with rags.  He also put the arm in a sling then went on to the next patient. Sarchise stood up and looked around for his sword. H
is
scabbard was empty.  A wounded dwarf noticed and said “Here, take mine, I will not be using it anytime soon.” Sarchise nodded and took the sword. He rushed back to the fighting. A short dwarf sword would work better anyway, now that he was down to one arm. As he got back to the lines he noted that there were very few unwounded warriors. He had no reserve and he would not be able to hold off the gremlins much longer. 

The gremlins had just been driving back again.  The dwarves had fallen back a long way down the trail. The archers were out of arrows and there was no hope to rush forward and get some more as there were not enough warriors left. The gremlins were massing for another assault when one of the soldiers came up to Sarchise. “Sir, there is an arrow in my shield.”

Sarchise, through the fatigue and pain, tried to figure out what he was talking about, and then it dawned on him.  He said out loud. “That’s a dwarf arrow fired from the other side of the gremlins.” He looked around for a low-lying branch and said, “Quick, help me up this tree.” Four or five dwarves grabbed his feet and boosted him up.  He had a hard time han
g
ing on with only one arm, but managed to get his leg around it and sit up on the limb. He yelled while waving his sword back and forth.  In the distance behind the gremlins he heard someone yelling back.

Sarchise dropped down off the limb. “Form up, we must press them. Everyone that can wield a weapon, forward, Cazz is here; we have the gremlins in a trap!” With
that the tattered army pressed forward.  The gremlins were pressed on both sides and were trying to climb trees to escape.  Just as fast the archers were recovering spent arrows and knocking the fleeing gremlins down.  Meanwhile the attack pressed on, cutting down gremlins like a hot knife through butter.  The two dwarf armies met in the middle.

The trail was now awash in red and green blood.  The slow process of sorting out the living and the dead began.  Cazz brought up the wagons from his baggage train to put bodies into.
First the living and then the dead.
  Dealing with the spiders had taught them not to leave anything edible in the forest.  The dead were brought out of the deep woods and burned. There had been three humans in the gremlin army. They found them after the battle was over.  Two were dead and one was badly wounded. Sarchise spoke to the wounded one briefly before he died.  As they packed Hemlot into a wagon, he tried to protest but was too weak to finish his sentence.  H
e
and the other wounded they would take back to the fort at the
Ornamac
tree to rest and recover. Cazz got Sarchise to the side.

“We cannot win.  If every time we send an army into the woods it gets mauled. We barely have a full army between the two of us,” Cazz said.

“I spoke to the human leader of this army.” Sarchise said, “This was the only gremlin army left.  Tabor is breeding another one now but it won’t be ready to fight in many months.”

“This human, was he cooperative?”

“No, but I don’t think he lied to me as the other two did.  He knew he was going to die and had no reason not to tell the truth.  He was saying the same thing you just did, that there was no way we were going to win.  He didn’t seem to know that we had destroyed the breeding pits under High Mountain.  He kept saying that the dwarves there were in for a big surprise.” Sarchise said. “He was arrogant up to the end. He also said that when Tabor came down out of the mountains again, that he would have an army twice the size of his last one and sweep the forests and the valleys of all that will not bow to him.”

“How are we going to fight this?” Cazz asked.

“We have to destroy the breeding pits under the Mountains of Iron.” Sarchise responded. “But first I need to go into
Zor
. I feel that there are more answers to questions there that I do not know enough to ask.”

“You will need a larger army.  Two armies of Low Dwarves are now at the
Ornamac
tree.  I will send them here to camp.  After you have found your answers in the Kingdom of
Zor
send for them.  Meanwhile I will give you all of the warriors that
I can spare. I will take the wounded back with me to the
Ornamac
.  You took a big chance, if I had not received your message, you and all of your soldiers would be dead now.”

Sarchise smiled. “Thank you for the help. I seem to be leaving you with the wounded again.”

In the next few days Cazz broke camp and started back for the
Ornamac
taking the wounded with him.  Sarchise was left with just over half of his army’s original strength. He had a mixture of dwarves from both armies. As they were low on provisions, Sarchise stayed in camp for a week and sent out hunters.  Part of the game they brought in every day was dried to save for the journey ahead.  Wild berries were also dried to store them for the long journey.

They broke camp and immediately started back down the trail that they had cut through the deep woods. Sarchise had calculated that two more days of trailblazing and they would be through to the Kingdom of
Zor
. He halted the troops where the wounded had been put and sent the axe men ahead.  Every six hours he would send up fresh axe men and bring the tired ones back.  At night they chopped by torchlight, but had archers behind them to stop any creature and p
ails
of water to stop accidental fires. As d
a
wn was about to break on the second day, Sarchise was awakened.

“Sir, we have come upon a stone wall.  It is too high to climb and too wide to go around.” The scout reported.

Sarchise moved down the trail with his new commander,
Oswin
, to look at the wall. 
Oswin
had been Hemlot’s under-commander, and been with Sarchise since the first time that he had left the great hall.  When they came upon the wall, they noticed that it was about twenty feet tall.  It had been covered so with vines that it had been eaten up and disappeared into the vastness of the forest.  The axe men had cleaned off the vines in the one section and split up to clear a path against the wall in both directions.  Sarchise examined the stones intently.  There was no mortar between
them,
each stone was cut so the next one fit in.  There was not even enough room to get the tip of his sword between the stones.