R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

Tiago turned a scowl on his companion.

“They have priests,” Ravel explained, and calmly, as if this was a not-unexpected complication. “To more conventional tunnels, then. We have scouted them extensively and will find our way.”

His calm was not persuasive, though, and Tiago continued to scowl as he swung his lizard mount around and waved for the others to follow him, and quickly.

Ravel called ahead to a pair of his fellow wizards, and they ran off, leading the way and motioning for the main drow contingent to follow. Ravel and his magical peers had indeed scouted the tunnels in this part of the dwarven complex and could make their way to the throne room through more conventional routes.

“We will get there,” the brash Xorlarrin wizard told Tiago. What he didn’t add, however, was that it would take some time-likely more time than those forces caught in the throne room could afford.

Tiago’s returning look, however, showed that he saw right through that phony confidence. A dozen drow, a handful of driders, and a few score of goblins had gotten into the throne room, the main dwarf stronghold, before the passwall tunnel had been dispelled. A powerful force by most standards, but they were up against the bulk of the fierce dwarves of the complex, and were without magical aid.

The young Baenre warrior was trained enough and seasoned enough to understand what they’d likely find when they reached that stronghold.

Tiago grimaced and cursed the clever dwarves when the ground rumbled in the distance, as more rigged tunnels collapsed.

The dozen-and-two goblins fleeing the battle, which had become a rout, almost made it out of the room. But as they finally breached the door, they found not an open corridor waiting for them but a quartet of grim-faced dwarves, holding firm in the narrow exit, two abreast and two deep.

The lead goblins hesitated, but their frantic kin pushed them ahead, and even when they were dead, one skull split by a battle-axe, the other crushed by a warhammer, those leading goblins remained upright, pinned between the crush of their desperate kin and the braced shields of the sturdy dwarves.

“Can’t hold ’em!” warned Tregor Hornbruck, a yellow-bearded shield dwarf in the front rank. He lowered his shoulder some more, and managed a weak swing of his heavy hammer, but had to retract it immediately to doubly brace the shield against the press. He was the largest and strongest dwarf under Kelvin’s Cairn, so those words struck an alarm indeed.

The corridor widened just beyond the door, and if the goblins got through that bottleneck, they’d swarm.

His companion beside him grunted, too strained to even articulate his concern.

To the surprise of Tregor and his struggling sidekick, the two in the second rank didn’t press in more tightly, but suddenly ran off.

“Hey, now!” Tregor roared at them, and the other dwarf grunted again.

A goblin spear propped in between the shields then, nicking Tregor’s shoulder, and the sting just made him set himself more firmly and push back with all his considerable strength.

“Back!” came the call behind him, and the two returned, and Tregor understood when black-shafted pole arms prodded out beside him, stabbing past the dead goblins to weaken the press behind.

“Well-thinked!” Tregor congratulated, for just back of their position stood some stone statues, and the artists had completed the sentry sculptures with actual pole arms, albeit of simple iron instead of prized mithral or adamantine.

Despite the desperate situation, Tregor couldn’t help but chuckle when the pole arm stabbed past him again and he noted a stone hand, broken off at the wrist, still grasping the iron shaft.

The goblins came on again, more furiously, and the shield dwarves began to slide once more, and the pair behind them stabbed with abandon, trying to break the press.

They could not, though, despite the goblin blood pooling on the floor, and for a brief moment, the four thought their position surely lost.

But then the press disappeared, and the four soon realized it to be the last desperate move of the fleeing goblins as Stokely and his boys caught up to them inside the room.

“Well fought,” Stokely congratulated when the last of the wretched goblins breathed its last.

Tregor looked past him into the throne room to note the carnage. It was hard to visually separate the bodies enough to determine where one torn corpse ended and the next began, so tight had been the fighting. Despite that chaos, the young warrior dwarf noted many of his kin among the piles of dead.

“The drow have gained this level, and own everything below it,” Brimble said, running up to Stokely.

“Where’re they coming up?” Stokely asked.

“East stair, but …” Brimble replied, and she ended there, and with a bit of a sigh, reminding Stokely of the pit that had appeared in the throne room. With their passwall spells and other magic, was there really a line of battle to be drawn?

Stokely looked to Tregor and his three companions, then glanced down the tunnel behind them, which led to the uppermost area of the complex and the outer door. “What word?” he asked hopefully.

“Bryn Shander’s hours away,” Tregor grimly reported. “If the folk’re even comin’, I mean.”

“Three hours o’ sunlight left,” Brimble reminded him, and in looking at her plaintive expression, both Stokely and Tregor understood her intent.

“Nah!” Tregor boomed, and those around him, catching on, began to shake their heads.

But Stokely Silverstream looked back into the throne room, where at least a score of his kin lay dead. And several more had fallen through the vanished floor, surely dead or captured. They had fought terrifically, by any measure, and the goblins lay dead by the dozen, and a few monstrous driders dominated the scene, upturned and with their ugly spider legs curled upward. And drow had died, but Stokely had seen those fights, and indeed had been in one of them.

It took two of his boys to kill every drow, it seemed, and even then, it would not be an easy fight.

“Call in every outpost, gather ’em all!” he called out to all around. “We’ll make for the daylight in the dale, and them damned drow won’t follow!”

Not a dwarf moved, but many sets of disappointed eyes stared back at him. He had just called for them to abandon their home, something no dwarf was ever wont to do.

“We’ll be back!” Stokely promised. “And we’ll have the garrisons of the towns and a horde o’ barbarians aside us! Don’t ye doubt!”

Several dwarves began to nod.

“Now get ye going!” Stokely ordered, and that broke the trance, and all began to scramble.

But then the darkness came, blinding them all, and even the lightning bolts sizzling through the magical blackness and the brilliant, flaming bursts of fireballs could not be seen.

But surely felt.

Stokely Silverstream and Brimble staggered into a side room to catch their breath.

“Junky’s down,” Brimble said. She leaned on a chair by the door off the main corridor, while Stokely raced across the room to a second door. He cracked it open.

“Way’s clear,” he said, turning back to face her. “This’d be a better run to the front door.” Even as he spoke the words, they stung him profoundly. His group had been routed and scattered in and about the throne room, overwhelmed by the dark elven magic and spinning blades in the darkness.

Now it was every dwarf for himself, something no clan leader ever wanted to face.

He knew Brimble’s words to be true. Junky and some others had been catching up, but, alas, they hadn’t made it. Now the best Stokely could hope for was to get out of the complex and round up some reinforcements to try to take it back.