glee at the easy slaughter of dwarves, came tumult and confusion. Giants howled and orcs, dozens and dozens of the creatures, scrambled to and fro, caught completely unawares.
"Press forward!" Hralien called down his line. "None get close enough that we must draw swords!"
Grim-faced to an elf, each adorned with identical silver helmets that had flared sides resembling the wings of a bird, and silver-trimmed forest green capes flapping in the breeze behind them, the moon elf brigade marched in a perfect line. As one they set arrows to bowstrings, as one they lifted and leveled the bows, with permission to seek out the best targets of opportunity.
Few orcs seemed interested in coming their way, however, and so those targets grew fewer and fewer.
The elves marched south, clouds of arrows leading their way.
* * * * *
Wulfgar led the charge over the mountain spur, where he and the dwarves were met immediately by a host of orcs rushing south to reinforce their line.
With Aegis-fang in hand the mighty barbarian scattered the closest monsters. A great one-armed swing of the warhammer, and he clipped a pair of orcs and sent them flying, then stepped ahead and punched out, launching a third into the air. Beside him, the dwarves came on in a wild rush, weapons thrusting and slashing, shouldering orcs aside when their weapons didn't score a hit.
"The high ground!" Wulfgar kept shouting, demanding of his forces that they secure the ridgeline in short order.
Up went Wulfgar, stone by stone. Down went the orcs who tried to stand before him, crushed to the ground or tossed aside. The barbarian was the first to the ridge top, and there he stood unmovable, a giant among the dwarves and orcs.
He called for the dwarves to rally around him, and so they did, coming up in scattered pockets, but falling into perfect position around him, the first arrivals supporting the barbarian's flanks, and those dwarves following supporting the flanks of their kin. Lines of dwarves came on to join, but the orcs were not similarly bolstered, for those monsters farther down the northern face of the mountain spur veered east or west in an effort to avoid this point of conflict, to avoid the towering and imposing barbarian and his mighty warhammer.
From that high vantage point, Wulfgar saw almost certain disaster brewing, for farther to the east, down at the riverbank, such a throng of orcs had gathered and were streaming south that it seemed impossible for the dwarves to hold their hard-fought gains. The dwarves, too, were at the river then, south of the spur, trying hard to fortify their tentative position.
If they lost at the riverbank, the brave Felbarrans in the river would have nowhere to land their rafts.
Looking out at the river, at the splashes of giant boulders and the flailing dwarves in the water, at the battered craft and the line of missiles reaching out at them, Wulfgar honestly wondered if holding the riverbank would mean anything at all. Would a single Felbarran dwarf get across?
Yet the Battlehammers had to try. For the sake of the Felbarrans, for the sake of the whole dwarven community, they had to try.
Wulfgar glanced back behind him, and saw Bruenor leading another force straight east along the base of the mountain spur, driving fast for the river.
"Turn east!" Wulfgar commanded his troops. "We'll make a stand on the high ground and make the orcs pay for every inch of stone!"
The dwarves around him cheered and followed, rushing down the rocky arm toward where it, too, spilled into the river. With only a hundred warriors total in that group, there was no doubt that they would lose, that they would be overwhelmed and slaughtered in short order. They all knew it. They all charged on eagerly.
They made their stand on a narrow strip of high, rocky ground, between the battleground south, where Bruenor had joined in the fighting and the dwarves were gaining a strong upper hand and the approaching swarm from the north.
"Bruenor will protect our backs!" Wulfgar shouted. "Set a defense against the north alone!"
The dwarves scrambled, finding all of the best positions which offered them some cover to the north, and trusting in King Bruenor and their kin to protect them from those orcs fighting in the south.
"Every moment of time we give those behind us is a moment more the Felbarrans have to land on our shore!" Wulfgar shouted, and he had to yell loudly to be heard, for the orc swarm