Elvenshore: 01 - The Dwarves of Elvenshore (21 page)

Before they could make their move, a gremlin patrol came upon the camp and started running back to report their find.  Arrows dispatched most of them but one or two got away.  Feeling he now needed to hide the intent of his army, Cazz set a zigzag course towards the opening he planned to attack. He
never heading
straight for it.  Several times the gremlins tried to form up to block the way, but arrows or a turn in course kept them from their goal.  The gremlins were able to form up behind the column in large numbers so Cazz had Sarchise form a rear guard.  Sarchise would fight off the attacks and then retreat up the hill.  Cazz finally got to the opening and destroyed the guard there.  By now a massive gremlin army had surrounded his whole force. Cazz met up with Sarchise to decide what to do next.

“We can sneak down the entrance in hopes of not alerting them to our intent or go down in mass.” Cazz said “Which do you think is better?”

Sarchise, never one to do anything half way, said, “In mass and before they can react.  We will leave some of their army topside. I can go with the first wave. You can man the rear guard. It would be easier to fight a rear guard action where we don’t have to worry about the flanks.”

Just then, in the distance they heard the voice of Tabor.  “Welcome dwarves of the High Mountain, I see that you fell into my trap.  There are more gremlins here
than even my most trusted commanders knew about.  I hid them in the halls of the old King of the Iron Mountains.  They are all dead now you know.  Soon your kings will also be dead.  I will gather an army that no man has seen since the elves first stepped up on the shores of Elvenshore.  I will destroy your king, after I destroy you.”

At this some of the dwarves wanted to rush towards the voice, they were angry and ready to battle, but the commanders calmed them down.

Seeing that his words were having an effect, Tabor continued. “Your cousins in Lonely Mountains have fought long and hard.  But they too will succumb to my constant onslaught.  It’s only a matter of time before there will no longer be dwarves wandering the land.”

As the dwarves started to get riled up again, Sarchise and Cazz started pushing them through the entrance to the tunnels.  “Here,” they said, “no sense in killing the ones on top, kill the ones you find below.”

Cazz sent Sarchise down with the first group because he knew the way to the breeding pits. He would bring up the rear guard.  If they were all going to die then at least they could destroy the pits on the way insuring as eventual victory for the dwarves. Cazz left his parameter spread out as long as possible so that Tabor would not figure out what the dwarves were up to.  Tabor was going on and on about how great and wonderful he was and that he would rule the whole earth, not just Elvenshore, with his mighty gremlin army.  All the while more and more dwarves went underground.

Sarchise met resistance right away, when he entered the tunnel.  A group of about fifty gremlins had been sent to attack the middle of the dwarves and cause chaos while Tabor attacked the edges.  By going down into the tunnel and stopping this attack, Sarchise had delayed the attack
on  Cazz’s
perimeter. The fifty gremlins were taken by surprise and a lot of them had gone down before they started offering resistance. Five dwarves were wounded in the fight, but Sarchise had to leave them where they lay, as he had no where safe to retreat them too. 

Sarchise advanced so rapidly down the tunnel that he left the main body of dwarves behind. Gremlins attacking from the side tunnels quickly cut him off from any possible retreat, but not caring, he continued on.  He had about thirty warriors with him when he ran into the first of three forts.  It was unmanned and just as quickly as he came upon it, he was leaving it behind him.

Cazz was not making as good of progress.  The gremlins finally attacked when they saw that most of the dwarves had gone down into the tunnel.  Cazz was fighting a rear guard action and also cutting his way through the gremlins that had gotten between himself and Sarchise.  Resistance was getting heavier as the gremlins started to react to the change of events.  Behind him he placed most of his archers to slow the progress of the main enemy force.  The front group of warriors managed to cut their way through a group of about one hundred and fifty gremlins. He rushed his army
down the tunnel to find two more side tunnels were allowing even more gremlins to get in front of them.  Again the fighting was bitter and more gremlins and dwarves fell.  Again Cazz managed to bring his forces through.

Cazz finally gained the first fort.  Gremlins have no concept of fortified war so they had left it empty.  It was four walls set at a four way crossroads in the tunnel.  Nothing could get by the fort except by being exposed to
arrow  from
the slits in the walls.  The back wall still had
a
iron fortified timber door.  The timbers were old and nearly rotting through, but still useable.  Cazz rushed his forces past the fort until he came to the rear guard.  He used those archers to man the fort.

Sarchise had now passed the second fort.  He had proceeded down the tunnels so fast and was so far ahead of Cazz that the gremlins didn’t realize that his group was there. He was so deep now into the mountain that the tunnel he was in was only used to service the breeding pits.  He passed the third and last fort. It also was empty, so he just kept to his course. His warrior entered the underground river without hesitation.  It was only a few feet of this chest deep water and they were in the breeding pits.  There were only two men down there and no gremlins.  All of the gremlins had been sent up to fight the dwarves.  Two arrows killed the men before they could react.  Axes and swords were soon destroying the embryos in the pits.  After that they broke
the
pits open and destroyed the linings.  The breeding pits were now destroyed.

Cazz was now completely bogged down.  The gremlins had slowed him down enough to allow the armies to take side passages around his rear guard and get in front of him. He was now strung out between the first and second forts, both of which he occupied.  Lucky for him there was no side passages in the tunnel between the forts so he could put his wounded in the middle.  The number of wounded was growing rapidly.  Cazz had no way of knowing if Sarchise had broken through or not.  He did not know it the breeding pits were destroyed or still standing.  Every time he tried to advance he could not move forward. It only caused the number of dead and wounded warriors to increase.  He gave in to his fate and fortified his position to give Sarchise all the possible time that he could just in case he was still alive. Every time one of the forts was attacked, Cazz
would  reposition
the bulk of his forces to protect that fort. 

The gremlin dead were piling up.  They had stopped Cazz, but could not make any headway against the fortifications. Tabor finally thought it was wise to wait the dwarves out.  He pulled back his army away from the forts and their arrows.  He had sent runners down several times to see if his breeding pits were alright, but they never returned.  He didn’t know if there was another large group of dwarves in his caves or not.  He also sent some runners to the surface to see what was going on there; he heard rumors of another battle from his gremlins.  He could not always understand their gibberish. Those runners did not return either.  All was in confusion and he kept wondering where to turn. He had lost all of the men he had started out with except for the two in the breeding pits. The intelligence of the gremlin was poor, so he had to do all of the thinking. If he left to find out what was going on elsewhere the battle could
go sour and the dwarves escape. He had was a large group of dwarves trapped so he contented himself with believing that he had the only group of dwarves captured and was going to wait them out.

Sarchise had made it out of the breeding pits alive but now gremlins were everywhere.  Two times a group of them had come down the tunnel.  They had managed to kill all of them before they could report back.  But now Sarchise saw that the direct tunnel was full of gremlins and that there was no sign of Cazz.  He could still hear the din of battle up ahead but had no way to cut through the enemy with the small group he had with him. He was able to skirt around the main body of gremlins and, by using other passages get back to the third fort.  It was empty, and it did not look as though Cazz had gotten that far for there were gremlins rushing past the fort.  He again left by a different passage.  The clamor of battle had died down, Sarchise thought that it meant that Cazz had been defeated, which meant death, but there was still a glimmer of hope in his heart.  He had to know for sure so he tried to get close to the other two forts.  He found this impossible, the enemy got thicker every time he closed in on the forts. 

He had not been detected but it was only a matter of time.  Sarchise determined to try and fight his way through to the fort in hopes of saving some of the dwarves who could be there.  He was about to attack when he heard the sound of a large battle coming from behind him.  He turned his band around and raced towards the fighting.  The gremlins were being hard pressed when he arrived.  They scattered when Sarchise started attacking the rear of the enemy column.  To Sarchise’s surprise he was not facing a dwarf army, but a human one. 

“Greetings, from South Fort and the Four Kingdoms.” said one particularly blood soaked human soldier. “We were told by the people of
Zor
that you might be down here
and
we have come to rescue you.”

Sarchise recognized the voice. “Ermort?” he asked.

“Ermort of the Royal Scouts, Master of the Governor’s guard, on special errand of the King of
Ril
, at your service.”

Sarchise went up and hugged Ermort.
Ermort
let
out
a groan. “Watch the arm; I took a gremlin knife in it.”

“Sorry,” Sarchise said. “How many are there of you?”

“Five hundred.
  We have cleared the enemy off the surface, but we need to get you out of here before they regroup and trap us in these tunnels.”

“The main group of dwarves is missing.  I don’t know where they are or if they are still alive,” Sarchise said.

“We will go back up on the surface and retrace their steps from there.  I want an escape route open to my rear; there are too many gremlins around here,” Ermort
commented.

So the human army with a small group of dwarves broke through back up on the surface then went back to where Cazz and Sarchise had first entered the tunnels.  It was starting to get dark on the Surface when they headed back down, using the small torches that both the dwarves and the gremlins use in the caves. 

Ermort stationed men at every cross tunnel so that they would not get cut off.  At first they met light resistance, but the deeper in they g
ot,
the harder it was to make headway. 
When they were just around the corner from the first fort, Sarchise and his dwarves led the way with a charge.
  Gremlins were screaming and fighting. Pinned between two armies the gremlins fought ferociously, but it was only a matter of time before they were overcome.

Cazz had heard the battle going on by the first fort so he moved the bulk of his army in that direction.  He did not know who was coming to his
rescue,
he did not care, as long as someone was.  When he saw Sarchise break through with an army of dwarves and men, he was overwhelmed.

“Do we need to attack deeper into the mountains or are the breeding pits destroyed? Where did the men come from? How did you get on that side of the tunnel, I thought you were in front of me?” Cazz asked without taking a breath between questions, or letting anyone answer. 

There was a deep long painful howl from deep inside the mountain. The men and dwarves did not know the meaning but it did not seem like a good omen.

“The pits are destroyed,
“ Sarchise
answered, “There is still a massive gremlin army to deal with, and if we don’t get out of these tunnels now, we never will.”

With that the dwarves were off and running back up to the tunnel to the entrance. Sarchise and his small group, along with a dozen men, served as rear guard. After one last volley of arrows the second fort was abandoned. It took the gremlins a long time to realize what was happening.  This was mainly due to the fact that Tabor had gone down deep into the mountain to see if his breeding pits were still intact.  He had taken some of his best fighters with him.  He had been given so many mixed messages from his runners that he had to see for himself.  What he saw did not please him and howled a howl that shook the mountain.  In his heart he vowed to kill every dwarf and not wait for them to starve to death in the tunnels.  When he got back up to the army and found them guarding an empty fort
,
he killed the gremlin commander there with his bare hands.  “After them,” he screamed and the gremlins started after the escaping dwarves on a dead run.

Sarchise paused at the first fort to see if the pursuit was catching them, but there was no sign of it yet so his rear guard continued on.   When he broke the surface it was in the dark of the night, but he knew the direction the others had headed so he went after them in a trot.  When he was near the bottom of the mountain he had just enough moonlight to see gremlins coming out of every opening like ants storming out
of an anthill.  They were running in every direction, so he knew his army had not been spotted.  At the bottom of the hill he came upon Ermort and a group of about fifty men.  They were going to take over the rear guard.