Banak Brawnanvil had answered that call. And how telling that Banak had asked Torgar for some runners to spring his trap upon some of the closest of the approaching orc hordes. Torgar knew there and then that he had done right in leading the Mirabarran dwarves to Mithral Hall. He knew there and then that he and his Delzoun dwarf kin had truly become part of Clan Battlehammer.
"Signal them running," Banak turned and said to the cleric Rockbottom, the dwarf credited with keeping Bruenor alive in the subchambers of the destroyed wizard's tower in Shallows through those long hours before help had arrived.
Rockbottom waggled his gnarled fingers and uttered a prayer to Moradin. He brought forth a shower of multicolored lights, little wisps of fire that didn't burn anything but that surely got the attention of those dwarves stationed near to the channel.
Almost immediately, Torgar's boys, Pwent's Gutbusters, the other fighters, and the brothers Bouldershoulder came scrambling over the sides of the channel, along prescribed routes, leaving not a dwarf behind, not even the few who had been sorely, perhaps even mortally, wounded.
And another of Pikel's modifications—a huge boulder almost perfectly rounded by the druid's stoneshaping magic—rumbled out of concealment from behind a tumble of stones near the mountain spur. A trio of strong dwarves maneuvered it with long, heavy poles, bending their shoulders to get it past bits of rough ground, and even up one small ascent. Other dwarves ran out of hiding near the top of the channel, helping their kin to guide the boulder so that it dropped into the back end of the channel, where a steeper incline had been constructed to usher it on its way.
The rumbling, rolling boulder shook the ground for great distances, and the remaining orcs in the channel issued a communal scream and fell all over each other in retreat. Some were knocked to the ground, then flattened as the boulder tumbled past. Others were thrown down by their terrified kin in the hopes that their bodies would slow the rolling stone.
In the end, when the boulder at last smashed against the channel-ending barricades, it had killed just a few of the orcs. Up higher on the slope, Banak, Torgar, and the others nodded contentedly, for they understood that the effect had been much greater than the actual damage inflicted upon their enemies.
"The first part of warfare is to defeat yer enemies' hearts," Banak quietly remarked, and to that end, their little ruse had worked quite well.
Banak offered both Torgar and Rockbottom a wink of his torn eye, then he reached out and patted the immigrant from Mirabar on the shoulder.
"I hear yer friend Shingles's done a bit of aboveground fighting," Banak offered. "Along with yerself."
"Mirabar is a city both above and below the stone," Torgar answered.
"Well, me and me kin ain't so familiar with doing battle up above," Banak answered. "I'll be looking to ye two, and to Ivan Bouldershoulder there, for yer advice."
Torgar happily nodded his agreement.
* * *
The dwarves had just begun to reconstitute their defensive lines along the high ground just south of the channel when Wulfgar and Catti-brie came running in to join Banak and the other leaders.
"We've been out to the east," Catti-brie breathlessly explained. A half foot taller than the tallest dwarves, though not nearly as solidly built, the young human did not seem out of place among them. Her face was wide but still delicate; her auburn hair was thick and rich and hanging below her shoulders. Her blue eyes were large even by human standards, certainly much more so than the eyes of a typical dwarf, which seemed always squinting and always peeking out from under a furrowed and heavily haired brow. Despite her feminine beauty, there was a toughness about the woman, who was raised by Bruenor Battlehammer, a pragmatism and solidity that allowed her to hold her own even among the finest of the dwarf warriors.
"Then ye missed a good bit o' the fun," said an enthusiastic Rockbottom, and his declaration was met with cheers and lifted mugs dripping of foamy ale.
"Oo oi!" agreed Pikel Bouldershoulder, his white teeth shining out between his green beard and mustache.
"We caught 'em in the channel, just as we planned," Banak Brawnanvil explained, his tone much more sober and grim than the others. "We got a few kills and sent more'n a few runnin'..»
His voice trailed off in the face of Catti-brie's emphatic waves.
"You used yer decoys to catch their decoys," the woman explained, and she swept her arm out to the east. "A great force marches against us, moving south to flank us."
"A great force is just north of us," Banak argued. "We seen it. How many stinking orcs are there?"
"More than you have dwarves to battle them, many times over," explained the giant Wulfgar, his expression stern, his crystal blue eyes narrowed. More than a foot taller than his human companion, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, towered over the dwarves. He was slender at the waist, wiry, and agile, but his torso thickened to more than a dwarf's proportions at his broad chest. His arms were the girth of a strong dwarf's leg, his jaw firm and square. Those features of course brought respect from the tough, bearded folk, but in truth, it was the light in Wulfgar's eyes, a warrior's clarity, that elicited the most respect, and so when he continued, they all listened carefully. "If you battle them on two flanks, as you surely will should you stay here, they will overrun you."
"Bah!" snorted Rockbottom. "One dwarf's worth five o' the stinkers!"
Wulfgar turned to regard the confident cleric, and didn't blink.
"That many?" Banak asked.
"And more," said Catti-brie.
"Get 'em up and get 'em moving," Banak instructed Torgar. "Straight run to the south, to the highest ground we can find."
"That'll put us on the edge of the cliff overlooking Keeper's Dale," Rock-bottom argued.
"Defensible ground," Banak agreed, shrugging off the dwarf's concerns.
"But with nowhere to run," Rockbottom reasoned. "We'll be putting a good and steep killing ground afore our feet, to be sure."
"And the flanking force will not be able to continue far enough south to strike at us," Banak added.
"But if we're to lose the ground, then we've got nowhere to run," Rock-bottom reiterated. "Ye're puttin' our backs to the wall."
"Not to the wall, but to the cliff," Torgar Hammerstriker interjected. "Me and me boys'11 get right on that, setting enough drop ropes to bring the whole of us to the dale floor in short order."
"It's three hunnerd feet to the dale," Rockbottom argued.
Torgar shrugged as if that hardly mattered.
"Whatever you're to do, it would be best if you were doing it fast," Catti-brie put in.
"And what're ye thinking we should be doing?" Banak replied. "Ye seen the orc forces—are ye not thinking we can make a stand against them?"
"I fear that we might be wise to go to the edge of Keeper's Dale and beyond," said Wulfgar, and Catti-brie nodded, in apparent agreement with him. "And all the way to Mithral Hall."
"That many orcs?" asked another visitor to Mithral Hall who had been caught up in the battle, the yellow-bearded Ivan Bouldershoulder, Pikel's tougher and more conventional brother. The dwarf pushed his way through his fellows to move close to the leaders.
"That many orcs," Catti-brie assured him. "But we cannot be going all the way into Mithral Hall. Not yet. Bruenor's the king of more than Mithral Hall now. He went to Shallows because his duty took him there, and so ours tells us that we cannot be running all the way into our hole."
"Too many'll die if we do," Banak agreed. "To the highest ground, then, and let the dogs come on. We'll send them running, don't ye doubt!"