Torgar, Ivan, and Tred—who continued to stubbornly wave away any who thought to tend his wounds—began to inspect the region near the center of the tunnels within the ridgeline, seeking the thinnest area of stone blocking the way to the east and the continuing battlefield. Torgar moved along deliberately, tapping the stone with a small hammer and listening carefully for the consistency of the ring. Convinced he had found an optimal spot, Torgar sent his diggers to work, and the team quickly bored a hole out to the east, breaking through the line of the stony ridge so that they could feel the open air upon them.
"That wide enough?" Torgar asked.
Ivan held up the small box he had constructed to Nanfoodle's specifications, with its mirrored side.
"Looks like it'll fit," he answered.
He moved close and held the box up tight. The diggers went back to work at once, shaping the hole so that it would be a better and more secure fit, then they moved back and Ivan squeezed in as far as he could, pressing the box, mirror facing outward, as far to the edge as possible.
"Seal it tight in place," Torgar instructed his team, and he and the other two leaders moved back the other way.
"What's that durned gnome thinking?" Tred asked.
"Couldn't begin to tell ye," Torgar admitted. "But Banak telled me to take the damned tunnels, so I taked the damned tunnels."
"That ye did," said Ivan. "That ye did."
"And good'll come of it," Tred offered with a nod.
"Aye," agreed Ivan. "These Battlehammers know how to win a fight."
Torgar patted his companions in turn, and it struck Ivan then how ironic it was that he, Torgar, and Tred had been given charge of so important a mission as retaking the cave complex, in light of the fact that not one of them was of Bruenor's clan.
The stomping of battlerager boots interrupted that thought, and their conversation. The three turned to see Thibbledorf Pwent leading his troops at a swift pace back to the south.
"Fighting's startin' again outside," Pwent explained to the three as he passed. He called back to his team, "Hurry up, ye dolts! We're missing all the fun!"
With a great cheer, the Gutbuster Brigade charged past.
"Glad he's on our side," Tred remarked, drawing a chortle from both of his companions.
* * *
Before the next dawn, with fighting continuing along the sloping ground to the east and with Tred sent along for some priestly tending, Torgar and Ivan stood at the edge of the southernmost of the complex tunnels, right near the lip of the cliff drop to Keeper's Dale.
"We spill good dwarf blood just to close it all off," Torgar remarked with a frustrated sigh.
"I'm thinking the gnome's meaning to stink them giants off the ridge," Ivan replied. He kicked at the length of tubing that had been laid down from the cliff face to inside the tunnel itself. "He's for bringing up the stink."
Before the pair, a group of dwarves worked fast, piling rocks all around the center reaches of the long metal tube, carefully placing the stones so that they supported each other without putting any pressure on the metal pipe.
"Have to be a pretty good stink," said Torgar, "to chase giants off the ridge."
"Me brother says it's a good one," Ivan explained.
As the workers scurried to the side, he nodded to the dwarf engineers standing to either side of the tunnel, warning them away. Torgar and Ivan took up heavy mallets and simultaneously knocked out wooden supports that had been set in place, and the end of the rocky tunnel collapsed, burying the entrance and the middle sections of the tubing.
"Seal it up good," Ivan explained to his workers. "Wash it all with pitch, pile it with dirt, then wash it all again. We're not wanting any of that stink backing up on us."
The dwarves nodded and went to work without complaint.
Ivan returned the nod, then glanced back over the cliff facing, at the line of harnessed dwarves hanging all the way down to the floor of the dale. Other ropes brought buckets of muddy stone and still others hauled length of the metal tubing.
So much metal tubing.
"Durned gnome," Ivan remarked.
CHAPTER 27 CONSCIENCE DECISIONS
"How fortunate for you that those giants decided to join with you," Obould remarked to Urlgen when he caught up to his son at the rear of Urlgen's encampment. As he spoke, the orc king directed Urlgen's attention to the western ridgeline, where Gerti's frost giant warriors were busily reconstructing their catapults. "Good fortune that this group happened your way."
Neither Urlgen nor Gerti, who was standing beside Obould, missed the orc king's sarcasm, nor his clear inference that he knew Gerti and Urlgen had tried to circumvent his control of the situation.
"I did not refuse valuable help," Urlgen replied, glancing at Gerti for support more than once.
"Valuable in scoring a victory without Obould?" the orc king bluntly asked, and both Urlgen and Gerti bristled and shifted nervously. "And still, even with the assistance of, what—a score of frost giants? — the dwarves remain."
"I will drive them from the cliff!" Urlgen insisted.
"You will do as you are instructed!" Obould countered.
"You would deny me this victory?"
"I would deny you a minor victory when a greater one is within our grasp," Obould explained. "Have everything in place to drive the dwarves from the cliff. I will quietly double your forces, out of sight of the foolish dwarves. After that, Gerti and I will march southwest and attack the dale below from the west. Then you can drive the dwarves from the cliff. They will have nowhere to run."
He looked from Urlgen to Gerti, who was clearly angry and just as clearly perplexed as she surveyed the ridgeline to the west.
"This should have been ended long ago," the giantess admitted, addressing Urlgen more than Obould. "Explain this delay."
"Two days ago the catapults were ready to finish the task," Urlgen growled back at her. "But our enemies came against them, and your giants failed to defend the war engines. It will not happen again."
"But there are reports that the dwarves retook the tunnels beneath the catapults," Gerti reminded, for word of the recent battle had been filtering through the camp all the day long.
"True," Urlgen admitted. "They have lost dwarves in retaking tunnels that were not worth defending. By the time they can dig through the thick stone to attack the giants, the battle outside will be long over.
"But that doesn't even seem to be their intent," he went on. "They fill the tunnels with stink—too great a stink for us to counterattack, and so great that your giants complain of it. Look on them closely, and you will see that they wear veils over their faces to ward the stench."
"Will an odor drive them from the ridge?" Obould asked.
"It is an inconvenience and nothing more," Urlgen explained. "The dwarves have assured that we cannot attack them through those tunnels. They believe they have protected their flank, but it was not an attack we would make anyway. Their fight in the tunnels has brought them no relief, and no victory."
Obould squinted his bloodshot eyes and stared at the ridge. In any event, it seemed as if the catapults were nearly completed and that work was continuing on them at a steady pace.
"We have a ten-mile march to wage the fight west of the dale," Obould explained. "When battle sounds in the southwest, begin your drive against the dwarves. Engage them fully and to the end. Drive them from the cliff into my waiting army, and they will be destroyed, and Mithral Hall will never again realize its present glory."
Urlgen glanced again at Gerti and seemed more than a little shaken.
"All glory to Obould," the younger orc said, rather unconvincingly.
"Obould is Gruumsh," the orc king corrected. "All glory to Gruumsh!"
With that, and with a warning snarl at both his son and the giantess, King Obould walked away.