Elvenshore: 01 - The Dwarves of Elvenshore (14 page)

“The gate has been broken down and the towers also. There are two breaches in the wall, but there are still dwarves that walk the ramparts. They shot an arrow at me but missed.”

Sarchise was delighted by the news that the dwarves still had possession of what was left of the gates. They rushed the warriors the last mile or so to the destroyed gates. As they neared the dwarves on the walls prepared to shoot off a volley, but cheered when they saw who it was.

The battle scars were all over.  Dead dwarves were stacked like cordwood until they could be buried in their crypts. Piles and piles of dead gremlin littered the ground. Both towers had been burned and collapsed in on themselves.  The Tower Bridge fell when the towers did and took the gate with it.  The house that was built for the scouts was torn down. 

As they neared the broken gates the surviving dwarves issued forth out the mountain and hugged the newly arrived army.  They kept up their march into High Mountain, hoping to find out news of friend and family. Sarchise ran up to his room to find if Ammlee was alright.  He passed many workers carrying off the carcasses of gremlins. When he reached his door he saw that it had been broken off the hinges.  He rushed inside to find that there were two dead gremlins in his room.  Ammlee as holding her stomach and Sarchise could see that she had blood between her fingers. There was a sword by her side stained with green blood.

She was crying, sobbing that they had stabbed the baby.  Sarchise lifted her hands gently to see how bad she was.  The bleeding had stopped but it was a deep wound so he took her down to the healers.  It was a madhouse down there. Every table was full, along with every available floor space.  The wounded stretched out into the hall.  A healer came up and checked all the new arrivals.  He looked at her and told them that she could wait, as she was not bleeding and then found her a spot on the floor to sit.  Sarchise stayed with her until she fell asleep and then put his tunic over her. 

A little while later the King spotted Sarchise and came up to him. He had a large bandage on his shoulder. “I should blame you for this, but it would have happened anyway, and without you we never would have known it was coming.  When we got your first letter saying that you had found gremlins in the woods, we doubled the gate guard and had an army of low dwarves here just in case.  They would have cut us to shreds otherwise. Have all the armies returned?”

Sarchise looked up with sad eyes. “We tried to warn you that they were coming but our messengers were caught and killed.  We met this same army in the forest and they nearly destroyed us.  I have only managed to bring back seven hundred.  The rest are making their way to the Elf Tree.

“We were surrounded in the woods. Caspin is dead and Cazz is badly
wounded.  They fought well and thinned out the ranks of the enemy.”

With the news the king sat down on the floor and cried. Ammlee woke up and tried to put an arm around the king, but in the process strained her wound and grimaced with pain. The King saw for the first time that she was injured and called for a healer.  They took her in another room and worked on her for an hour. 

A healer came out and talked to Sarchise.  “She will be fine but, I am sorry
,  she
has lost the baby.”

“I didn’t know she was with child,” he said. “Can I go into her?”

“Yes of course.”

With that Sarchise went running into the room.  One of the healers was just taking some bloody sheets out of the
room,
Sarchise put his arm around her.  “I’ve lost the baby!” she howled.

“It’s alright, you are still alive and we can make another baby.”

She was still sobbing an hour later, but had begun to calm down.  He could wait no longer to find out.  “Did you kill those two gremlins?”

“When they started breaking the door down
I
grabbed a sword.  I stabbed the first one through the door but the second one got me.  I was not very brave and pretended to be dead until he turned his back to me and then I stabbed that one too.”

“I think that you were very brave,” Sarchise said.

After Sarchise left, Cazz studied his position. He had over a thousand wounded and tired dwarves. This did not include the dead on both sides.  He could not hope to move them all at once.  As for
himself
, he knew that he was in no shape to travel.  He had the fittest of those that were left making camp and put up some type of shelter against the elements. He then sent the same ones out to find food.

They were able find a few rabbits but that was all.  He then had them make them into a stew so that there would be enough to go around.  After everyone had eaten, he gathered those that were strong enough to move.  Half he would keep there and the other half he would send ahead to bring back some food that was at the elf tree fort.

After doing this he had his men stack all of the dead dwarves in the handcarts. When those filled up, he piled them beside the
carts
. 

His commander,
Oswin
, came up to him and said
,  “
Sir, we cannot stay here. The dead will start to rot soon.”

Cazz knew he was right.  “Unload the handcarts and stack the dead into piles. Don’t put the dwarves in the same piles as the gremlins.  Load those who can’t walk into the handcarts and those that can walk, will walk.  If there are any handcarts left over, we will rotate the wounded that can walk but are very weak so they won’t slow us down t
o
o bad
ly
.  Then when we are ready to leave, torch the dead.

This of course was the last thing that a dwarf wanted to do to another dwarf.  There being no choice, however, that is what Cazz was forced to do.  He would always feel bad about. He did not torch Caspin, his brother however.  They tied tunics around him and had two of the less wounded carry him back to the elf tree with them. 

Going was slow.  The wounded, especially those
who
had lost a lot of blood were weak and would tire easily.  The caravan had to stop quite often.  Food was scarce and the hunters were not bringing back any large animals. Those all
seemed
to have been eaten by the spiders. 

Cazz realized that it just wasn’t going to
work;
most of the warriors would starve to death before they made it back to the fort at this rate.  He divided the army into three groups.
The slightly wounded, the badly wounded, and the very badly wounded.
  He would lead the badly wounded group himself.  He sent
Oswin
with the
slightly wounded group, and kept just enough of that group to pull the handcarts. 

He sent the
lightly wounded to the elf-tree fort.  He had the second proceed to the fort at a slower pace, the third group he unloaded from the wagons and had a few of the
less
wounded watch over them.  He left them at a small hill.  He would come back for them.

The slightly wounded made fast progress to the elf-tree.  If one of them could not go on then they were to leave them and the second group would pick them up with the handcarts. After four days the first group reached the fort and the food that had been sent by the King.

The elf-tree encampment had been well supplied with food. The King had sent commander
Korun
and fifty dwarves to pull the loaded handcarts there. 

When the first group arrived, they got there just a day behind the group that Cazz had sent ahead to bring back food.  They were preparing to do so until the commander
Korun
of the fifty that had just come from High Mountain saw how bad
of condition
that they were in and forbade them.  He took ten men and two handcarts of food and started up the path.  I
n
two days journey, he met Cazz’s group in the handcarts. They had stopped again.  It was quite a frequent occurrence.  They were either burning the dead or letting the living rest.  It was the la
t
ter this time. It was too late for some.  Thirteen had died from their wounds, or starvation, or both.  They were fed by
Korun
and his dwarves.

“I am so glad to see you,” Cazz said.  He was weak and tired, but still able to speak.

“My prince, it is an honor to serve you. What else can I do for you?”

“Leave one of the carts for my men, but the other one you must take down the trail, there is yet another group that will need to be fed,” Cazz said.

“I will feed you first, as you have no one that is well enough to take care of the rest of you.  While I am feeding you I will send a cart to the other group,”
Korun
replied.

Cazz was in no position to argue, so he just nodded his head.

The food and water had to be hand fed to many of the survivors.  They were very tired and their progress over the last day had almost come to a standstill.  If not for the rescue party there would have been no one left alive.

The other handcart continued down the trail. It was dotted with fire pits where Cazz had stopped and burned the dead.  In the end he even had to burn Caspin because he was starting to smell.  The King would grieve not being able to say goodbye to his son.

After three more days on the road they finally arrived at the hill where Cazz had left the badly wounded.  There were not many left at that point.  The healer that Cazz had left there
was
shaking he was so tired.  They had expected over two hundred survivors. There were less then fifty.

“What has gone on here?” one of the rescuers asked.

The Healer answered. “Some of the wounded died, so we had to burn them.  It was not a good idea. When we did this it attracted some spiders.  They killed a few of us and tried to carry them off, but we were able to kill them.  We burned both spider and dwarf.  The second fire attracted some bears.  The
re
were about five of them.  They killed some of us and dragged them away.

“Then more of us died, so instead of a fire we buried them in the ground, with logs all around.  We figured, as soon as we were rescued, we could remove the top layer and burn those as we were leaving. But none of us have the strength for that.  We have been without food or sleep for a long time. Can you take care of it for us?”

The dwarf nodded and the dead were uncovered and burned.  They put as many as could fit into the wagon.  The others would have to be carried.  It didn’t take long before the wagon had enough room for those that remained as the others were still dying of their wounds. 

By the time they made it back to the elf-tree fort, there were only thirty-one left.

Cazz stood there, amazed. “Only thirty left? What have I done?”

Korun
heard the prince and walked over. “You did what you had to do. You would have lost a lot more had you tried to take them all back with you.  Your group barely made it as it was.”

Cazz had his face in his hands anyway.  He knew that
Korun
spoke the truth, but it was a hard decision and he had hoped that it would turn out a lot better.

They put the worst of the wounded near the elf-tree where the healers were working on them.  There were not enough herbs to go around in the forest after the battle so a lot of the wounded were starting to infect.  Cazz worried about his wounded warriors and made them as comfortable as possible.

Still he sent out regular patrols.  At first there were not a lot of fighters to choose for the patrol, but as the dwarves healed the number of those available increased dramatically.

They le
f
t the army to heal and fortified their position while waiting for a decision from High Mountain for what was going to happen next.

After two days back at High Mountain the King showed up at Sarchise’s door. “How is she doing?” he asked.

“She is resting.  The sword did not hit her vitals but pierced the baby.  If not for the child, she would be dead right now. She is sad and sleeps a lot, for she has been through much.”

“I did not know that they made it up this
far
.” said the King. “We have caught some trying to steal food, they did not all retreat, but most did.”

“How were you able to beat them back?”

“When they approached, they did not hesitate but came straight at the wall.  We lined the wall, as fast as we could, with arche
r
s and filled the ground with their dead. Still they came on.  They had ladders and hooks.  They would throw a grappling hook over the wall and pull on it till it stuck fast,
then
they would pull the wall down with it.  We learned to cut the ropes as soon as the hook came over the wall, but they still managed to breach the wall twice.  I sen
t
warriors to protect the breaches.  They did, and very few gremlins entered in that way.