“As is well known,” Lord Hammeredshield said. “But you’ll forgive me if I can’ look upon your elf face with much joy. I left fifteen hundred dwarves upon tha’ battlefield and I could use them now.” He sighed deeply. “And so my son goes unavenged. But let us get down to business for a moment. Aye. Tell me more abou’ wha’ you seek along the fron’ier.”
“The raids are of worry to King Geirwen,” Ironhelm said. “We are going to scout the wilderness, aye, to see if there is anything more to it all. Braemorgan fears there is a larger force across the frontier and has assembled this company to look into it.”
“If these attacks are the prelude to invasion, we shall find out and the right preparations can be made,” Ailric added.
“I do no’ know wha’ you hope to find, Durm,” Hammeredshield said. “Aye, we’ve sent scou’s through the gap. They’ve only gone a few miles, but they’ve seen nothing.”
“Even so, I should like to talk to them,” Ironhelm said.
“Aye, but they didn’ tell us anything we did no’ already know. On the other side of the gap is a long valley running north to south. Aye. There is the ancient road tha’ runs south along the edge of the valley all the way to the Teeth of Kaas.”
“The Old Guardian Road,” Ironhelm said.
“Aye,” Lord Hammeredshield said, nodding. “How well we know tha’ path, old friend!” He turned towards the others. “It was on the Old Guardian Road tha’ we advanced agains’ Amundágor’s forces in the war.”
“Well I remember,” Ironhelm said.
“It runs south from the Widowing Gap,” he explained to the others. “Then past the Nor Marshes. Ach. Do you recall the sight of tha’ black place? None who’ve entered them have ever re’urned. Aye, a thousand fell monsters dwell within and it is filled with perils beyond coun’, it is. Many have said tha’ vines creep down from the trees to strangle men and tha’ giant snakes a mile long live there.”
“Thorkell,” Lady Hammeredshield chided. “Such tales!”
“One cannot be certain they are mere tales, milady,” Ronias interjected. “The Nor Marshes were formed by great and terrible magicks in the wake of the expulsion of the Guardian Order from the West. Any manner of creature might dwell within.”
“It is best avoided, in any case,” Willock said sternly. “As are the White Moors.”
“The White Moors?” Flatfoot said. “I do recall hearing of them once.”
“They lay south of the marshes,” Willock explained. “They are frequently fog-shrouded and remain uncharted. Some years ago, a scouting party from Glammonfore Keep journeyed to the edge of the moors. They reported lightning coming down out of a clear night sky down into the moors. They smartly fled in the face of such deviltry.
“Aye, they are an evil place,” Lord Hammeredshield added. His voice was starting to be a bit slurred. “Somewhere south of the moors lays the ruins of Amundágor’s old ci’adel, thrown down and u’erly des’royed by The Eagleblade. Une bless him! Bu’ the echo of Amundágor’s evil remains. Aye, it leaks in’o the White Moors s’ill. Aye, me’hinks you all mad for journeying towards such a place.”
“I take it by your words that you are going to allow us to proceed,” Ailric said.
“No, I will. I only hope you can find something of some, um, use to my people. The raids have us sorely pressed, they do. King Geirwen promises troops but he is slow to send ‘em. If the gruks are opera’ing ou’ of some base, then maybe we could s’rike ‘em there. Aye, but our scou’s have found nothing. You passed through the main ga’e of our ci’y. No’ so long ago the fields before it would’ve been crowded with merchan’s and their stalls, aye, bringing trade and wealth to my people. Now the traders will no’ ven’ure into my lands, for fear of a’ack during the broad dayligh’ along the main road. Ach. During the broad dayligh’! You know, time was I would go with you myself. Aye, I would! Alas, all I am good for now is old war stories.”
“There may still be a bit of glory to be won, old friend” Ironhelm said.
“Bah, no’ for an old dwarf so far pas’ his prime,” Hammeredshield scoffed.
“Then drink to past glory, or just to glory,” Ironhelm said.
“Very well,” Hammeredshield said, standing shakily and raising his bowl of akavla up high before him. “If tha’ is wha’ I have lef’’ to drink to, then so be it. Glory!”
“Glory!” echoed the assembled feasters in the hall as they drank down the contents of their bowls.
Eighteen
It was easy to be impressed by the roads of the Silverspear Clan. They were wide and smooth, true marvels with perfectly straight lines and markers signifying the passage of every mile.
“In Linlund, even the main road from Falneth to Vistinar is barely a dirt trail,” Jorn said to Gram Hammeredshield. The dwarf rode with them towards the frontier along with a small guard of grim-faced warriors. “But these roads…”
“Roads are too important to neglect,” Hammeredshield said, nodding proudly. “They say much to anyone who would enter our lands, aye, be they friend or enemy.”
Jorn frowned, puzzled by the remark. His head still ached from the night before and he let the comment go unanswered.
Many bowls of akavla were drained as the night wore on. There were toasts to Courage and Victory, followed by quaffs in honor of a long line of dwarven heroes most of whom Jorn had never heard of. Finally, toasts to Bravery and Fortitude ended the evening. They stumbled back to their sleeping quarters and were roused at dawn by Ironhelm, inexplicably not the least bothered by drinking so much akavla, and rode off in the early morning calm of the mountains towards the frontier. It was a beautiful autumn morning, crisp and clear with a gentle breeze off the high mountain peaks.
They passed directly by the dwarf town of Gunderhagnr a few hours later, a sturdy-looking place surrounded by thick granite walls manned by grim-faced dwarves. After Gunderhagnr, they saw nothing of note until midday.
They’d been travelling for several hours, leaving Dunvögen after a breakfast of boiled eggs and cheese. Ailric, in particular, didn’t feel well and refused the food, his face grimacing in disgust as he got into his armor. Jorn chuckled, taking another bite of cheese and wondering loudly if there was any akavla still left. The younger Hammeredshield grinned, handing the knight a little pewter cup of steaming broth.
“This’ll make you feel better,” he said.
The knight sipped the broth.
“Never again,” he muttered.
“You’ll get used to it,” Hammeredshield said. “They say Eagleblade got sick a few times before he learned to handle his akavla. By war’s end, he could down as much as any dwarf and be awake again before dawn ready for another day of making war. Aye, tis true.”
Ailric felt much better by late morning as the road led them into a narrow cleft in the side of the mountains barely a hundred feet wide. They continued to climb through the cleft, clusters of pine trees and towering cliffs on either side of the road. The wind blew strong through the canyon, as well, buffeting them with blasts of mountain air.
“Welcome to the Widowing Gap,” Hammeredshield said. “I should think you would remember it well, Lord Ironhelm.”
Ironhelm grunted. He remembered it all too-well, in fact, though he didn’t care to discuss it. His eyes drifted up the soaring walls of the cleft. He saw those walls the first time when he was very young, an inexperienced soldier of Thunderforge marching hurriedly towards the scene of his first taste of battle. Hammeredshield had described Ironhelm as a Captain of Thunderforge the night before, but the old Clan-chief’s memory was growing foggy in his dotage. Ironhelm was but a common foot soldier. And he was too young to be that much, having joined the army marching south from Thunderforge to the aid of the Freeholds only by lying about his age.
It was night when he first entered the cleft all those years ago, only one dwarf out of nearly a thousand. The light of a hundred torches lit their way through the narrow mountain pass. Their flickering firelight
danced strangely on the bare rock as the dwarves marched by, the shadows of long lines of spears elongated against the cliffs. Ironhelm remembered thinking how odd it was to even notice something like that while nearing a desperate battle. Looking back, Ironhelm believed he noticed the shadows because, whatever was about to happen to him in the coming battle, he knew he would be forever changed by it. He’d never again be the same dwarf. The dancing, shadowy images of marching spears were among Ironhelm’s last memories of his former identity.
The scene following the flickering shadows was more desperate and horrifying than anything Ironhelm could have imagined up until that moment. The road went steeply upward before leveling out for a short distance just as the cleft narrowed to less than fifty feet. It was at that narrow point called the Widowing Gap that the defenders were making their stand.
A line of dwarves, shields raised high and standing shoulder to shoulder, filled the gap and barred all passage through it. Lines of dwarves stood behind them, ready to step in whenever a dwarf fell in the onslaught or pulled back out of sheer exhaustion. There were dwarves whose sole duty it was to drag their fallen brethren back from the Gap. There were still others tasked with caring for the wounded, overwhelmed by their task.
Hundreds of dead or wounded dwarves lay on either side of the road as Ironhelm’s column approached. Ironhelm’s attention couldn’t help but be drawn by their groans. He saw the dead and the gravely-wounded, oftentimes laying right next to one another. His hands began to tremble as one poor soul cried out desperately for water, begging the new arrivals for just a few drops of their canteens.
“Please!” he screamed. “Just a drop, brothers! Water!”
Ironhelm started to turn from the road, seeking the wounded dwarf. He felt a strong hand on his shoulder.
“Just look straight ahead, lad,” said an experienced old veteran, pulling him forward with the other marchers. “Don’t look at him. There are others whose duty it is to tend to his needs and they’ll get to him shortly. He’ll be helped. You, you just keep your eyes straight ahead.”
“Straight ahead,” Durm repeated.
A terrifying sight awaited them. The enemy was assaulting the gap in massive numbers, thousands of gruks and trolls throwing themselves against the lines of dwarves. Great clouds of arrows rained down upon the dwarves from the sky as dark wizards hurled mighty spells against the beleaguered defenders.
In all his life, Ironhelm was never so scared as during those first moments when he arrived at the Widowing Gap.
Despite the forces attacking them, the Hammeredshield dwarves held their own. The gap was too narrow for the enemy to bring to bear their full advantage in numbers. No matter how many thousands of gruks the enemy had, no more than a few dozen could assault the dwarf lines at any one time. The dwarves could even cycle front-line fighters in-and-out, serving shifts hacking away at gruks and then withdrawing for much-needed rest.
Unbelievably, the fight had been going on for a day when Ironhelm arrived and would continue for another two days and nights before it was all over. Ironhelm fought dozens of shifts standing in the Gap, going from an inexperienced youth to a battle-hardened veteran in short order.
When the bodies piling up in the gap got to be too many, both sides would withdraw, almost as though by common consent. They would drag their dead back from the line of battle, each side glaring at their enemy warily. These pauses never lasted long, however. As soon as the gap was cleared, both sides charged back into the struggle.
Ironhelm tried to sleep when not at the front line, but mostly he would simply flop to the ground and stare silently at the cliffs around them.
Lord Hammeredshield strode about the scene, a whirlwind of energy shouting encouragement and keeping the shifts cycling in and out. He was a magnificent figure in those days, a hulking dwarf with a bright red beard the color of fire. He spent more time than anyone else at the front line, too, never seeming to take a moment to eat or to sleep during the whole of the battle. His dwarves begged him to stay back from the line, but he ignored them. The gruks would go mad whenever they saw him, pushing and clawing to get towards the dwarf lord. He would stand there and swing his great hammer in wide arcs for what seemed like hours at a time, mowing down piles of gruks and trolls.
“Hold until the Knights arrive!” he could be heard shouting above the noise of battle and the blood-curdling screams of the gruks. “Yield not an inch, lads!”
The dwarves were determined not to give that inch. But they were only so many, and could hold out only so long. As the fight wore on, it grew worse for them. The dark wizards started firing fireballs into the dwarven lines, and then the giant ravens showed up, plunging down from the sky in immense flocks. Lord Hammeredshield was attacked, a bird clawing at his shoulder. He fought it off, leaving his side momentarily exposed to attack. A gruk lunged forward, about to slay the Clan-chief, when Ironhelm cut it down with a blow to its neck. Hammeredshield gazed wide-eyed at the fallen gruk, noting the face of this young Thunderforge dwarf who had just saved his life.
Early on the second day of the battle, Braemorgan arrived at the head of a thousand Knights of Havenwood. Cheers went up among the dwarves as the wizard charged forward into the fight. The gruks had been dragging a great catapult towards the Gap, but Braemorgan’s spells blasted it into splinters.
The knights rode like a wave of thunder towards the gap on a thousand heavy warhorses. They formed a column and charged into the gruks, penetrating deep into their lines. Panicked, the foul creatures turned and fled. The knights surged through the gap, the dwarves behind them, pushing the invaders back down the far side of the mountain pass. Braemorgan reigned them in, imploring them to pull back to the Gap. He seized Hammeredshield by the shoulder.
“Pull your dwarves back!” the wizard said. “When the enemy regroups below they will swallow you with their numbers in the wider avenues ahead!”
“The wizard’s right,” a tall Knight of Havenwood barked. “If they counterattack us in the open, we’re doomed. We must withdraw back to where they can’t apply their greater numbers.”
That tall knight was the one the dwarves would come to call the Eagleblade. He was not yet the legend he would become, but he already looked like it. He sat atop a magnificent brown stallion, the picture of calm confidence amid chaos and bloodshed.
Ironhelm was standing next to Lord Hammeredshield and heard all that followed.
“The enemy has fled the gap but they’ll be back once they’ve reorganized,” Braemorgan said. He looked upwards at the towering cliffs on either side of the Gap. “I have an idea.”
They all listened carefully to the wizard’s plan.
“Aye.” Hammeredshield smiled. “Let’s do it!”
They moved quickly. Braemorgan first set the dwarves to hauling rubble and stones into the gap until a massive barricade of rock fifteen feet tall spanned the pass. They also drove hundreds of spears into the pile of stones, their sharp ends pointing towards the enemy. On their side of the barrier they built a ramp of pine planks to make it easy for the defenders to climb into position. Atop the barricade they secure more planks, forming steady footing as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder.
The wizard supervised the entire project, glancing up the cliffs at the dwarves working on implementing the rest of his plan.
At dawn the enemy returned. They came charging up again, dwarves and knights standing atop the barricade awaiting them. The gruks were cut down easily as they neared the top. Even so, standing at the front line of the battle, Ironhelm saw thousands of gruk troops filling the cleft for as far as the eye could see. There were many black wizards among them whose spells might still defeat them.
Hammeredshield and Sir Edmund stood atop the barricade along with Braemorgan.
“It’s time to let ‘em have it,” Hammeredshield told Braemorgan.
The wizard nodded emphatically.
“Then let the mountains rain down upon them!” he said. Raising his staff, he fired a single
ball of light up into the air. It flew straight up for hundreds of feet, finally exploding in a flash.
Atop the cliffs on either side of the gap suddenly appeared hundreds of dwarves. They began to hurl down stones in a ceaseless deluge of deadly rocks on the attackers below. Ironhelm watched with rapt wonder as the sky in front of the barricade filled with falling rocks.
The dwarves had worked all night without pause. First, they nailed iron rungs into both sides of the cliffs until hundreds could climb high above the gap. There they gathered the stones and placed them in convenient piles by the cliff’s edge. Most of the stones were around twenty pounds, enough to crush even the thick skulls of trolls two hundred feet below. Lines of dwarves passed stones from the piles to the dwarves standing by the edge, keeping up a steady rain down in the gap below.
The effect on the enemy was devastating. Caught in the narrow cleft, there was no place to hide from the deadly barrage above. The gruks turned and fled, running right into their own brethren behind them still marching towards the gap. The result was a massive traffic jam, upon which the dwarves rained more stones. The gruk bodies started to pile up, clogging the road towards the gap as the fleeing gruks began attacking the newly-arrived gruks blocking their retreat. The gruk army ripped itself apart before their very eyes, disintegrating into a chaotic mass of panic.
The Knights of Havenwood took to calling the event the Battle of the Widowing Gap. Hammeredshield’s men called it the Battle of Three Days and Nights. Ironhelm’s folk had more poetic spirit, however, and referred to it as the Battle When it Rained Stones.
_____
A century later, the gap was much changed. The Hammeredshields had built a sturdy wall of granite across its width, fifty feet high and more than twenty feet thick. It was nothing complicated, merely a dense wall in the middle of the road completely walling-up the mountain pass. A walkway along the top overlooked battlements and a rectangular guardhouse was tucked off into one side of the cliff. A pair of stairs led up to the top of the wall and a trio of huge catapults sat about twenty feet back from the wall ready to hurl missiles against any attackers approaching the gap.
Child Of Storms (Volume 1) Page 36