R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

The others began to chuckle, knowing well that this would soon devolve into an argument. Breaking through a wall to another vein was considered a point of high honor, after all.

“I telled ye a tenday ago that there be another tunnel just behind that vein!” Bellows predictably complained to Junky and Minto. “I’ll flip a gold piece against Minto for the first chop, if ye want, but-”

His rant, and the corresponding chuckles, ended abruptly with the sharp crackle of energy, a single pop that straightened Bellows where he stood and painted his face with an incredulous expression.

Then came a second, louder pop, followed by a resounding and continuous crackle, like the cacophony of a multitude of fireworks released into the air after the explosion of the main rocket. Poor Bellows flew forward, trailing smoke.

The others watched his flight in stupor, then collectively looked back to the iron door just in time to see blue fingers of crackling magical energy crawling all around it, popping and singeing and cutting lines in the iron.

“Suren to blow!” Minto cried, grabbing Junky and pulling him into the side corridor as the other dwarves scrambled.

The tunnel shook with a tremendous explosion, and Minto watched in shock as the heavy door, as thick as a strong dwarf’s chest, went soaring past the opening of the side tunnel, clouds of dust and splinters of stone chasing it in its flight. He heard the grunt of a companion who had fled straight back along the main corridor as the door caught up to him, and a second grunt as the door crashed down-upon poor Bellows, it seemed.

Out rushed Minto and Junky, side by side, and they didn’t turn for Bellows, but for the now-opened corridor, knowing that an enemy was upon them.

How they gulped when they realized that enemy to be an army of dark elves.

“Cave collapse?” a miner in an adjacent tunnel breathlessly asked his digging buddy, for the ground had shaken under their feet.

The two rushed out of their dig together, to find other dwarves coming out of side tunnels and into the main corridor, all looking wide-eyed, which seemed wider, given that their faces were all covered in dark dirt and torch smoke, and all looking to each other for answers.

Another blast reverberated around them, and the group turned as one to a perpendicular main corridor.

“Collapse!” one yelled, and they all started running-not away from the suspected area, but toward it, toward their fellow dwarves. Picks in hand, torches in hand, the gang rumbled down the side corridor. They all knew these reaches of the mines as well as they knew their own homes above, and knew, too, that they had friends in that adjacent tunnel. Several began to call out for Junky.

Still convinced it was a collapse, the dwarves were ready to dig. As they neared the parallel main corridor, though, the flash of a lightning bolt stole that idea as surely as it stole the darkness, and then the dwarves knew the truth.

And then the dwarves were as ready to fight, whatever enemy had come, as fully as they had been ready to dig.

Ravel Xorlarrin grinned wickedly as the door blew asunder, yet another victim of the spell of his own creation he called the lightning web. Through this spell, he and his fellow wizards had joined their lightning energy together into one deadly stroke that obliterated the formidable barrier.

None of them, not even Archmage Gromph had he been there, could have sundered that iron door with a single bolt. But with their energies combined, the lightning web had blown it from its jamb and sent it flying down the corridor behind it, chasing the scurrying dwarves.

And that sight turned Ravel’s grin into open laughter.

In went the goblin shock troops, crossing over the blasted portal to engage the few dwarves that stood to muster a defense.

Ravel looked to Tiago, who nodded, and in response, in went the next magical barrage, a volley of fireballs falling over dwarf and goblin alike, and when the burst of flame and smoke cleared, the line of tough dwarves had held, though shakily, but no goblins remained alive.

Ravel put a lightning bolt into the center of the dwarf line, and more pointedly, a bolt that pressed through and reached back from that point as one fleeing dwarf sprinted away down the corridor.

Tiago kicked his lizard mount into a charge, Jearth Xorlarrin at his side, a host of running warriors at their back. As they neared the portal, Tiago and Jearth broke left and right, rolling their mounts up the side walls and slowing, allowing the drow warriors to pass them by and engage the dwarves.

The forces came together just inside the blasted door with a thunderous ring of metal on metal, roaring dwarves, and stomping boots. These were drow warriors, supremely skilled and trained and outfitted. They were used to winning such fights, and used to winning them in short order.

But their opponents were dwarves of Clan Battlehammer and of Icewind Dale, hardened by the stones they mined, by the endless cold winds of the dale, and by many years of desperate fighting against all sorts of powerful enemies, from white worms to orcs to the ever-present tundra yetis. Many drow swords and spears found their marks in those early moments of battle, but no one strike felled a Battlehammer dwarf defending his home.

“Flight! Flight!” the drow group commander yelled back to Tiago and Jearth, telling them that that runner was still on his way for reinforcements.

The two shared a nod and sent their mounts away, riding up to the ceiling, sticky feet holding fast. Side-by-side they charged out over the battle line. They spotted the fleeing dwarf immediately, far down the corridor, and made for him, but up came a line of dwarf shovels and picks to stab at them and engage them before they had even crossed over the combatants.

Tiago cut in front of Jearth, his shield spinning out to its full size as he swept it across, his sword going out the other way to deflect the remaining weapons.

“Go!” he ordered his companion, and Jearth rushed past the Baenre noble, and beyond the fighting dwarves and drow.

Jearth spurred his lizard mount into an awkward, upside-down gallop, easily outdistancing the few pursuing dwarves, and quickly closing in on the one who had fled.

Never slowing, riding easily though he was hanging upside down from the ceiling, Jearth pulled a barbed javelin from a long quiver behind his saddle and quickly fastened a cord to the catch-weapon’s end loop. He leveled his arm to throw, taking a moment to remember that down was up and up was down, so that to account for the natural fall of the thrown weapon he had to, from his perspective, aim lower.

He reached back to throw the missile, but found himself distracted by other missiles-a barrage of spinning missiles, and a volley thrown at him.

Jearth’s sprint brought him right past a side tunnel at the same moment that a host of dwarves had reached the same juncture, and the bearded folk wasted no time in launching their mining picks the drow’s way. Some bounced aside harmlessly, skipping off the uneven ceiling, while others battered both the rider and his lizard, mostly to minimal effect.

But one pick turned around perfectly to stab its tip deeply into the lizard’s rear flank, into the thigh of its back leg.

The wounded beast stopped its run and wriggled around, battling the determined tug of Jearth. The lizard’s rear right leg detached from the ceiling, waving around in the air as it tried to dislodge the pick, and it even tried to turn around to bite at the pained area.

Jearth fought hard to keep his mount straight and to keep it moving, realizing all the while that it was probably not a good idea to idly hang there with a mob of angry dwarves closing in.

He had to leap free of the saddle, he realized, but too late, as another mining pick spun in, barely missing him as he ducked back from it.