cut through the line of orcs and another pair of unfortunate giants. Alone in the crowd, one warrior kept on fighting, though. Too blinded by pain and anger to even hear the blast and the screams, Wulfgar gained momentum, swatting with abandon, growling like an animal because he had not the sensibility remaining to even form the name of his god.
He stumbled as much as he intentionally moved forward, crashing through the lines of distracted orcs. He hardly heard the next loud report, though the sudden vibration nearly knocked him from his feet as a large rock crashed down behind him, clipping one orc and smashing a second. Had he turned back, had his sensibilities not been shattered by the pain, emotional and physical, Wulfgar would have recognized that particular boulder.
But he didn't look back, just drove forward. With the help of the distraction from the door blast, he managed to plow through to Bruenor's ranks. Dwarves surged out all around him, swarming behind him like a mother's loving arms and gathering him into the tunnel before them.
"Aw, get him to the priests," Bruenor Battlehammer said when he finally got the chance to take a good look at his adopted son.
Spear tips and orc arrows protruded from the barbarian in several places, and those represented only a fraction of the battered man's visible wounds. Bruenor knew well that Wulfgar likely had many more injuries he could not see.
The dwarf king had to move past his fear for his boy, and quickly, for the organized retreat reached a critical juncture that required absolute coordination. Bruenor and his warriors kept up the stubborn fight, but at the same time began to flow backward from the wider chamber, tightening the line appropriately as they melted into the single escape corridor.
Those in the first few ranks held tight their formations, but those farther back from the fighting broke and ran, clearing the way for the flight that would soon follow.
Farther back, in hidden side rooms, engineers held their positions at peg-and-crank mechanisms.
Bruenor stayed in the center of the trailing line of flight, face to face with the pursuing orcs. His axe added more than a few notches that day, creasing orc skulls. With every step he took backward, the dwarf king had to battle against his outrage that the filthy beasts had come into his sacred halls, and had to remind himself that he would fall back on them before the turn of day.
When his line passed the assigned point, Bruenor called out and his voice was joined by the shouts of all those around him.
The engineers pulled their pegs, literally dropping the ceiling of the corridor back toward the great entry hall. Two huge blocks of stone slid down, filling the corridor, crushing flat the unfortunate orcs beneath them and sealing off a score of their comrades, those closest to Bruenor's boys, from their swarming kin in the foyer.
The outraged dwarves made fast work of the trapped orcs.
Any joy that Bruenor had at the successful evacuation and upon learning that Wulfgar's injuries were not too serious, was short-lived, though. A few moments later, Bruenor's retreat route intersected with that of the dwarves fleeing the ledge, dwarves who carried Catti-brie tenderly in their arms.
* * * * *
Tucked into the secret cubby, Regis rubbed his chubby hands over his face, as if trying to brush away his mounting fear. He glanced up often to the light streaming in through a neatly-blown hole in the solid stone wall of his hiding place. Regis had heard the blast, and knew it to be the trapped wax door. Apparently, one of the projectiles had been deflected - off an orc skull, he hoped - and had rocketed up high, cracking through the outer stone wall of the cubby and splitting the air barely an inch in front of the poor halfling's face. Every so often, Regis glanced across at the other, far more substantial stone wall, where the projectile, a metal sling bullet, could be seen embedded in the rock.
The halfling fought hard to keep his breathing steady, realizing that the last thing he could afford was for orcs to discover him. And they had come up to the ledge, he knew, for he could hear their grunting and their large feet slapping on the stone behind him.
"Five hours," he silently mouthed, for that was the planned pause before the counterattack. He knew that he should try to get some sleep, then, but he could smell the