When the dwarves had finished—finally finished, to Galen's thinking—General Dagna wasted no time in marching over to the human.
"We'll be considering our course this night," the dwarf informed him. "More'n a few're thinking it's past time we got back into tunnels."
"We just got chased out of tunnels," Galen reminded him.
"Aye, but not them kind o' tunnels. We're looking for tunnels deep, tunnels o' worked stone—tunnels to give a dwarf something worth holding onto. No trolls're gonna push Battlehammer dwarves out of stone tunnels, don't ye doubt!"
"You're forgetting our course and our reason for being here."
"Them trolls're onto us," Dagna replied. "They'll catch up to us soon enough, and ye know it."
"Indeed, if we continue to stop and pray every.. " Galen's voice trailed off as he considered Dagna's expression and realized that he was going over the line.
"I'll forgive ye that, but just this once," the dwarf warned. "I'm knowin' that ye're hurting for yer losses. We're all knowin' that. But we're running out o' time. If we're staying here much longer, then don't ye be thinking we'll find our way back to our home anytime soon."
"What do you mean to do?"
Dagna turned around slowly, surveying the landscape. "We'll head west, to that high ridge there," he said, pointing to a line of elevated ground some miles distant. "From there we'll take us the best look we can find. Might be that we'll see yer people. Might be that we won't."
"And if we don't, then you intend to turn back for Mithral Hall."
"No other choice's afore me."
"And where for Galen, then?" the man asked.
"Wherever Galen's choosing to go," Dagna answered. "Ye've proven yerself in a fight, to me and me boys. They'll keep ye along, and not a one's to complain. But it might be that ye cannot do that. Might be that Galen's got to stay and look, and die, if that's to be. Might be that Galen's doing better by his folk if he goes off to Silverymoon or some other town that's not being pressed by orcs and can spare more of an army. Choice is yer own."
Galen rubbed a hand over his face, feeling stubble that was fast turning into a thick beard. He wanted to yell and scream at Dagna, truly he did, but he knew that the dwarf was offering him all that he could under the present conditions. Somehow, the trolls were dogging them, and would find them again. How many times could Dagna and his small force hope to escape?
"We begin our march to the ridge this very night?"
"See no reason to be waiting," Dagna replied.
Galen nodded and let it go at that. He got his gear collected and his boots tightened as the dwarves formed up for their march. He tried to focus on the present, on the duty before him, for he knew that if he tried to think ahead, his resolve would likely crumble. For every question in Galen Firth's life at that point seemed to begin with, "What if?"
* * * * *
"I will not tolerate a retreat into the tunnels until we have discovered the disposition of my people!" Galen Firth grumbled as he pulled himself over the last rise of rock to the top of the windswept ridgeline. The man brushed himself off and stared at Dagna, looking for some reaction to his insistence, but found the dwarf strangely distracted, and looking off toward the southwest.
"Wha—?" Galen asked, the word catching in his throat as he turned to follow the dwarf's line of sight, to see the light of fires—campfires, perhaps—in the distance.
"Might be we done just that," Dagna said.
More dwarves came up around them, all hopping and pointing excitedly to the distant lights.
"Durn fools to be lighting so bright a burn with trolls all about," one dwarf remarked, and others nodded their agreement, or started to, until Dagna, noting the erratic movements of the flames, cut them short.
"Them fires're against the trolls!" the general realized. "They got themselves a fight down there!"
"We must go to them!" cried Galen.
"A mile…." a dwarf observed.
"Of tough ground," another added.
"Mark the stars and run on, then!" General Dagna ordered.
The dwarves lined up the fires with the celestial constants, and began to stream fast down the back side of the ridge. Galen Firth sprinted off ahead of the pack, foolishly so, for his human eyes weren't very good in the darkness. Before he'd gone half a dozen strides, the man tripped and stumbled, then ran face long into a tree branch and staggered backward. He would have fallen to the ground had not Dagna arrived with open arms to catch him.
"Ye stay right beside me, long legs," the dwarf ordered. "We'll get ye there!"
With their short, muscled legs, dwarves were not the fastest runners in the Realms, but no race could match their stamina and determination. The force rolled past and over rocks and logs, and when one tripped, others caught him, up righted him, and kept him moving swiftly along his way.
They charged along some lower ground, splashed through some unseen puddles and scrambled through a tangle of birch trees and brush, a snarl that got so thick at one point that several dwarves brought forth their axes and began chopping with abandon. As they came through that last major obstacle, the lights of the fires clearly visible directly ahead, Galen Firth began to hear the cries of battle. Shouts for support and calls of pain and rage split the night, and Galen's heart sank as he realized that many of those calls were not coming from warriors, but from women, children, and elderly folk.
He didn't know what to expect when he and Dagna crashed through the last line of brush and onto the battlefield, though he surely expected the worst scenario, a helter skelter slaughter ground with his people trapped into small groups that could offer only meager resistance. He began to urge Dagna to form up a defensive ring, a shell of dwarves to protect his people, but when they came in sight of the actual fighting, Galen's words caught in his throat, and his heart soared with renewed hope.
His people, the hearty folk of Nesme, were fighting hard and fighting well.
"They're in a double ellipse," one dwarf coming in behind remarked, referring to a very intricate defensive formation, and one, Galen knew, that the riders of Nesme had often employed along the broken, tree-speckled ground north of the Trollmoors. In the double ellipse, two elongated rings of warriors formed end-to-end with a single joining point between them. Worked harmoniously, the formation was one of complete support, with every angle of battle offering a striking zone to more defenders than attackers. But it was also a risky formation, for if it failed at any point, the aggressors would have the means to isolate and utterly destroy entire sections of the defending force.
So far, it seemed to be holding, but barely, and only because the defenders employed many, many flaming torches, waving them wildly to fend off the trolls and their even more stupid partners, the treelike bog blokes.
"Dead trees must fall!" Galen shouted when he realized that the common allies of the wretched trolls were among the attackers. For bog blokes resembled nothing more than a small and skeletal dead tree, with twisted arms appearing as stubby limbs.
As he spoke, the man noted one part of the Nesme line in serious jeopardy, as a pair of young men, boys really, fell back before the snarling and devastating charge of a particularly large and nasty troll. Galen broke away from the dwarves and veered straight for the troll's back, his sword leading. He hit the unwitting creature at a full run, driving his sword right through the beast and making it lurch forward wildly. To their credit, the two young men didn't break ranks and flee, but just dodged aside of the lurching troll, then came right back in beside its swiping arms, smacking at it with their torches, the fires bubbling the troll's mottled green and gray skin.