"Army? The fighting has lessened since our escape from the trolls," Galen argued. "We have reason to believe that many of our enemies have gone into tunnels heading for Mithral Hall."
"Aye, tunnels to Mithral Hall," said Dagna. "Which is why I come to ye this day. We found the way back, deep and quiet. We can make the tunnels afore the morrow and be well on our way."
"Have you not listened to a word I've said?"
"Have ye yerself heared them words?" Dagna replied. "Ye're for walking out from the protection o' the mountains onto open ground where yer enemies can sweep upon ye. Ye're to get yer people slaughtered."
"I am to save Nesme."
"Nesme's gone!"
"And would you so quickly abandon Mithral Hall, General Dagna?"
"Mithral Hall's not gone."
It was Galen Firth's turn to pause and take a deep breath against the unrelenting pragmatism of General Dagna. "I am of the Riders of Nesme," he explained slowly and calmly, as if reciting a vow he had made many times before. "My life has been given to the protection of the town, wholly so. We see a way back to our homes. If we get back behind our city wall—"
"The damned trolls'll catch ye there and kill ye."
"Not if many have turned their eyes to the north, as we believe."
"And ye'd be willing to risk all yer kinfolk on that belief?"
"Help will come," Galen declared. "Nesme will rise again."
Dagna locked stares with the man. "Me and me boys're heading for the tunnels and back to Mithral Hall. Ye're welcomed to join us—Steward Regis's offered his hand. Ye'd be wise to take it."
"If we go home—to our homes, good dwarf! — will Mithral Hall not offer us the support we need?"
"Ye're asking me to follow ye on a fool's errand!"
"I am asking you to stand beside your neighbors as they defend their homes from a common enemy."
"You cannot be serious," came another voice, and both Dagna and Galen Firth turned to see Rannek moving to join them. The young man's stride was purposeful and determined. "We have a way to the north, underground where our allies can better protect us."
"You would abandon Nesme?"
Rannek shook his head vigorously. "I would secure the wounded and those who cannot fight, first and foremost. They are the cause of the Riders, not empty buildings and walls that can be rebuilt."
"Rannek now determines the course of the Riders? Rannek the watchman?"
Dagna watched the exchange carefully, and noted how the younger man seemed to lose all momentum so suddenly.
"I speak for the Riders and I speak for all the folk of Nesme," Galen Firth went on, turning back to the dwarf. "We see an opportunity to return to our homes, and we shall seize it."
"A fool's errand," said Dagna.
"Can you say with certainty that these tunnels you have found will be any less filled with enemies? Can you be so certain that they will even usher us to Mithral Hall? Or might it be that we go underground, flee from the region, only to have the armies of Mirabar, Silverymoon, and Everlund arrive? What then, General Dagna? They will find no one to rescue and no town to help secure. They will believe they are too late and turn for home."
"Or turn north to the bigger fight that's facing Clan Battlehammer."
"That would be your hope, wouldn't it?"
"Don't ye be talking stupid," Dagna warned. "We come all the way down here, I put ten of me boys in the Halls o' Moradin, and all for yer own sake."
Galen Firth backed off just a bit, and even dipped the slightest of bows.
"We are not unappreciative of your help," he said. "But you must understand that we are as loyal to our home as Clan Battlehammer is to Mithral Hall. By all reports, the way is nearly clear. We can fight our way to Nesme with little risk and it is unlikely that our enemies will be able to organize against us anytime soon to try to expel us once more. By that time, help will arrive."
The dwarf, hardly convinced, crossed his hairy arms over his chest, his muscles tense and bulging around the heavy leather bracers adorning each wrist.
"And what of the remaining refugees who are still out there?" Galen Firth went on. "Would you have us abandon them? Shall we run and hide," he asked, turning quickly to Rannek, "while our kin cower in the shadows with no hope of finding sanctuary?"
"We do not know that more are out there," Rannek offered, though his voice seemed less than sure.
"We know not if there are none," Galen Firth retorted. "Is my life worth that chance? Is your own?" The fierce veteran turned back on Dagna. "It is,"
Galen answered his own question. "Come with us if you will, or run and hide in Mithral Hall if that is your choice. Nesme is not yet lost, and I'll not see her lost!"
With that, Galen turned and stormed away.
Dagna tightened the cross of his arms over his chest and stared at Galen as he departed for a long while before finally turning back to Rannek.
"A fool's errand" he said. "Ye're not for knowing where them trolls're hiding."
Rannek didn't offer any answers, but Dagna understood that the man knew that it wasn't his place to answer. When Galen Firth declared that he spoke for the folk of Nesme, he was speaking truthfully. Rannek had been given his say, short though it had been, but it was settled.
The young warrior's expression revealed his doubts, but he offered only a bow, then turned and followed Galen Firth, his commander.
A short while later, as twilight began its descent over the land, Dagna and his forty dwarves stood high on the side of a hillock, watching the departing march of Galen Firth and his four hundred Nesmians. Every bit of common sense in the old dwarf told him to let them go and be done with it. Turn about and head into the tunnels, he told himself over and over.
But he didn't give that command as the minutes passed and the black mass of walking humans receded into the foggy shadows of the marshland north of Nesme.
"I'm not for liking it," Dagna offered to those dwarves around him. "The whole thing's not looking right to me."
"Ye might be thinking a bit too much favor on the cunning of trolls," a dwarf near the old veteran remarked, and Dagna certainly didn't dismiss the comment.
Was he giving the trolls too much credit? The patterns of the escape thus far and the disposition of those refugees they had acquired had led him to consider the trap he might be laying if he was the one chasing the fleeing humans. But he was a dwarf, a veteran of many campaigns, and his enemies were trolls, hulking, stupid, and never strong on tactics.
Maybe Galen Firth was right.
But still the doubts remained.
"Let's follow 'em just a bit, for me own peace o' mind," Dagna told his fellows. "Put a scout left, put a scout right, and we'll all come up behind, but not close enough so that the durned fool Galen can see us."
Several dwarves grumbled at that, but not loudly.
* * * * *
"They coming, little dwarfie," an ugly troll, gruesome even by troll standards, said to the battered dwarf who lay on the ground below it. "Just like them drow elves said they would."
Another troll giggled, which sounded like a group of drunken dwarves forcing spit up from their lungs, and the pair leaned in close against the muddy bank, peering out through the scraggly brush that further camouflaged their position.
Below them, one heavy foot on his chest, poor Fender Stouthammer could hardly draw breath, let alone do anything to help. He wasn't gagged, but couldn't make any sounds other than a wet wheeze, the result of the male drow's clever work with his blade.
But neither could Fender just lie there. He had heard the drow telling the trolls that they would soon have all the refugees and the stubborn dwarves in their grasp. Fender had lain helpless throughout the last days watching those two dark elves orchestrate the movements of the trolls and the bog blokes. A clever pair, the dark elves had assured the biggest and ugliest of the trolls, a two-headed monstrosity named Proffit, that the stupid humans would walk right into their trap.