"Good place to direct!" Bruenor yelled, coming through the trapdoor. He ran to the southern edge of the tower top, overlooking the battlefield.
The wide smile on the fierce dwarf's face lasted until he looked to the east, to the river.
* * * * *
The jolt when they hit the stone wall rattled their teeth and compressed all eight of the dwarves in the ore cart into an area that two had fully occupied just a moment before. They weathered it, though, to a dwarf. And not just in that cart and in the other nine in the same train, but in the twenty carts of the other two trains as well.
Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder stretched and shoved with all their might, trying to keep the dwarves in their cart from crushing each other. The jolts continued, though, the iron carts twisting and straining. Rocks bounced down as the train rumbled about.
When it finally settled, Ivan was first to put his feet under him and strain his back against the dented cover of the cart. He pushed it open a bit, enough so that he could poke his head out.
"By Moradin!" he cried to his companions. "All of ye boys, push now and push hard!"
For Ivan saw that the plan had not worked quite so well, at least with their particular train. They had hardly cracked through the mountain wall, instead beginning an avalanche over them that had left the train half buried, twisted, and still blocking the tunnel exit so that the soldiers running behind could not easily get out.
Ivan grabbed at the twisted metal cart cover and shoved with all his strength. When that did nothing, he reached out over it and tried to pry away some of the heavy stones holding it down.
"Come on, lads!" he shouted. "Afore the damned orcs catch us in a box!"
They all began shoving and shouldering the metal cover, and it creaked open a bit more. Ivan wasted no time in squeezing out.
The view from that vantage point proved no more encouraging. Only two of the other nine carts were open, and the dwarves coming out were bleeding and dazed. Half the mountainside had come down upon them, it seemed, and they were stuck.
And to the east, Ivan saw and heard the charge of the orcs.
The yellow-bearded dwarf scrambled atop his damaged cart and pushed aside several stones, then reached back and tugged the cover with all his strength.
Out popped Pikel, then another and another, with Ivan shouting encouragement all the while.
The orcs closed.
But then a second roar came down from just north of their position, and Ivan managed to get a peek over a pile of rubble to see the countering charge of the Battlehammer dwarves. The center train and the northern one had pounded right through, exactly as planned, and the army was pouring out of Mithral Hall in full force, sweeping east and fanning south to form a perimeter around the catastrophe of the southernmost train. The fierce dwarves met the orc charge head on, axe against spear, sword against sword, in such a violent and headlong explosion that half the orcs and dwarves leading their respective charges were down in the first seconds of engagement.
Ivan leaped from the rubble and led the charge of those few among the dwarves of the southern train who could follow. Of the eighty in the carts of that southern train, less than a score came forth, the others out of the fight either because of serious injury or because they simply could not force open their twisted and buried carts.
By the time Ivan, Pikel, and the others joined in the fray, that particular orc charge had been stopped in its tracks. More and more dwarves poured forth; formations gathered and marched with precision to support the flanks and to disrupt the in-flow of orc warriors.
"To the river, boys!" came a shout from the front of the dwarven line, and Ivan recognized the voice of Tred. "The boys of Felbarr have come and they're needing us now!"
That, of course, was all the ferocious Battlehammers needed to hear, and they pressed all the harder, driving back the orcs and raising their cheers in the common refrain of, "To the river!"
* * * * *
The progress in the center and south proved remarkable, the dwarves crushing the resistance and making good speed, but from the tower top in the north, Bruenor, Wulfgar, and Regis were granted a different perspective on it all.