The Half Dwarf Prince (16 page)

Crone stared at the dwarf in disbelief. “You are not an orc, and your dwarves will run me down if I kill you.”

“That is true. They aren’t going to give up the mountain, but after I kill you, if your orcs don’t resist, we will let them leave on their own,” Grundel replied.

Crone couldn’t help but laugh. “If I fall
, they will charge you and cut you down.”

Grundel saw
a flash of steel and started to bring his axe up to defend himself when he saw the knife bury itself in the big orc’s shoulder. Grundel didn’t hesitate; he swung one axe overhead at the orc, who was able to get his sword up to block, but with his wounded shoulder he couldn’t turn the blade around to block the other axe that was coming in at his side. Grundel’s axe broke through ribs and cut into the orc’s lungs. The orcs behind him charged forward just like he said they would. Jerrie was beside him in an instant.

“I had him
!” Grundel yelled over the squealing roar of the orcs.

“Y
eah, but he already denied your challenge!” Jerrie yelled back, and then he disappeared into the mass of orcs in front of him.

Jerrie slid between the two orcs in front
, cutting at the backs of heir knees. He got through the front line and all the orcs behind them were pushing forward, so there was almost no space between them. There was no reason for the second line to expect an attack because they weren’t at the front yet, and they were all preoccupied with trying to push to the front. Jerrie took advantage, staying low and sliding between the orcs’ legs, cutting at the back of knees and through the backs of heels as he passed. By the time any of the orcs could react, he was already three or four orcs away. That meant that the orcs who were trying to hit him were actually attacking other orcs. Within minutes there were orcs fighting each other all the way to the end of this tunnel.

Jerrie
didn’t want to turn down the next tunnel. He had already been kicked once. If he got too far away he wouldn’t have a safe direction to try to escape to. He worked his way back down the tunnel toward the dwarf line. He continued to cut at leg joints as he worked his way back. He broke through into an opening where fighting had broken out. He was in the middle of six orcs. He had just cut the back of the knee of one, so he only had to worry about five of them. There were three on each side. One of the orcs in front of him thrust at him with his sword. He brought his arm up, knocking the blade high so that it drove into the orc behind him, who was raising a club over his head. Jerrie ran his knife across the inside of the orc’s thigh, opening the artery, as the orc tried to free his sword. Another orc almost caught him on the side of the head with a mace. He dodged the attack purely by luck as he dove away from the dying orc. He slid his knife across the back of the orc as he went past and disappeared into the crowded mass of orcs.

Here
, in the thick crowd, was where Jerrie was most dangerous. He was safer lost in this mass of legs, moving as quickly as he could. Sometimes he crawled, other times he dove forward, but he kept moving fast enough that by the time any of the orcs realized he was an enemy he had already disappeared again. He came to the front of the orc line sooner then he had anticipated. Between the orc infighting he had caused, the dwarves’ shield wall tactics, and Grundel falling behind that shield wall to throw his axes into the masses of orcs—likely killing dozens with every throw—the dwarves were making steady progress.

Rundo walked next to Frau and Verrator. Grundel was in front of them now, throwing his axe over and over again. The shield wall had held, and they had lost only about a dozen dwarves so far. A couple others had been wounded and taken to the back of the formation. Rundo wanted to start letting his knives fly, but he couldn’t really get good throws over the shield wall in front of him.

Then
a thought struck him. He made the link, he focused on what he wanted to have happen, and he waited until he saw Jerrie again. He couldn’t do this with him in the midst of the orcs. Jerrie was insane! What in the world had prompted him to go flying into the fight alone? They knew he was still fighting in there, though, because the front line of the shield wall kept coming upon orcs thrashing on the ground with the backs of their knees or ankles slashed. Then he saw him. Jerrie emerged from the front line of orcs. The shield wall opened to let him through. Rundo didn’t wait; he was already linked with the air in the tunnel. He pushed the air in front of the dwarves. He pushed it out in front of the line of orcs, and then the air was moving at imaginable speed. He felt the pressure as the winds, moving so fast down the tunnel ahead of them, started to pull them forward. He released the link. The orcs all the way down to where the tunnel turned were on the ground. The shield wall opened up as the dwarves charged forward. Any orc who wasn’t stabbed, slashed, or smashed by a dwarf weapon was crushed under their stampeding feet.

The dwarves worked the next tunnel in much the same way. Jerrie stayed close this time. Rundo used the air to push t
he orcs twice on the command of Frau. Using this technique they cleared the next tunnel much more quickly. It had been over an hour of constant fighting, but finally there were no more orcs in front of them. The dwarves had rotated out a couple of times, moving the dwarves in the front to the back. All in all, forty to fifty dwarves had fallen. Some of them were likely still alive. Dwarves in the back stabilized the ones who could be saved and then caught up to the fighting. The wounded would be collected at the end of the fight. They couldn’t afford to leave dwarves behind when they were fighting so many.

Fredin charged up the tunnel. He had his own seven thousand orcs behind him. He left the other twelve thousand from Hure’s clan and the other clan he had taken at the entrance. The fighting would most likely still be heavy there. The dwarves weren’t foolish enough to abandon the easiest access to the mountain. He was halfway up the passage to where his uncle’s clan would be when he heard fighting behind him. Dwarves must have come through the small entrance the orcs had collapsed. How had they gotten through all the entrances so fast? For the second time in this fight Fredin had to turn around and he hadn’t even swung his sword yet. The dwarves had smashed right through the line of orcs and had a shield wall working in both directions of the tunnel. He looked to Vingaza.

“Now
.”

Vingaza and the other three wizards all threw spells down the tunnel to the intersection. Vingaza threw black
, oily fingers of energy—one of the most powerful spells a wizard could use. He could send out a dozen of them and control each one individually. Most wizards could barely control one. Each of his black tendrils flew over the heads of orcs and found dwarves. The dwarves who were hit fell dead instantly. Two of the wizards had used lightning blasts, but the fourth—fool!—had thrown fire into the mix. The orcs were rushing in to take back the ground they’d lost, collapsing both shield walls at once. The black tendrils hadn’t scared the orcs, the lightning hadn’t scared them, but when that ball of fire exploded on the backs of the dwarves of the collapsing shield wall, the orcs all pushed back in utter fear.

Fredin reached out and grabbed the wizard by the throat. Holding him off the ground he looked the human in the eye.

“No fire!”

He set the wizard back on the ground. He looked back to the dwarves. The dwarves hadn’t hesitated when the orcs had pushed back away from the fire. They rushed in to fill the gaps and began gaining ground again. They were fighting in both directions away from the intersection. They were too far apart now for the wizards to engage them all at once.
Fredin gave up on the wizards. He charged down the tunnel, forcing orcs out of the way. Lightning shot over his head and he knew the wizards were softening the shield wall in front of him. He made it through to the front line. The dwarves had killed a hundred orcs on this side already. They were thirty paces away from the intersection of tunnels. They had gained ground quickly. The tunnel was too tight for his greatsword, so out came both of his dwarven-made blades. It was fitting that he would fight the dwarves with their own steel in the tunnels of the mountain he had taken.

The other orcs weren’t getting through the shield wall
, and he didn’t even try. Instead, Fredin struck over the top of the shield wall at the dwarves in the second rank. After stabbing three of them, the dwarf in front of him tried to stab at him. He had been waiting for it, though. He kicked the dwarf’s shield as hard as he could striking off-center to spin him. He stabbed the dwarf in the back. The dwarf behind him had just been stabbed as well so the gap didn’t fill, and Fredin had his opening. He stepped into the gap and stabbed out at the dwarves to each side. They both fell and the orcs pushed forward. The orcs took back their first piece of ground. The dwarves behind the first ranks had already established another shield wall, though, and so it all started over.

The dwarves were still killing a lot more orcs, but they hadn’t brought enough dwarves to win this fight. They had brought
only a thousand. Crone was killing dwarves in the upper levels and dwarves were giving their lives for ground down below. The Dungin clan would be small when this was over, but they would still have the mountain, and more orcs would come. It would take time, but Fredin would eventually win. He was killing them slowly. He was gaining ground.

It was at least an hour before he made it the thirty paces to the intersection,
and the dwarves had paid for every step with dwarf lives. The wizards had been throwing lightning into the dwarves on the other side of the intersection, and they were falling back to the tunnel now. They had killed at least fifty of the dwarves. It had cost them three times that many orc lives, but that was a win to Fredin.

Fredin continued to lead the fight here at the intersection, but the tunnel the dwarves had fallen back to was narrower and easier to defend. They hadn’t been fighting here long when he heard fighting off to his left.

Grundel came around the corn
er running right up on the back end of an orc line. He didn’t even hesitate. His axes went to work. The first orcs didn’t see it coming, as they were focused on the fighting in front of them. Grundel’s axes worked back and forth, cutting into necks and skulls one after the other. They dwarves had made it about ten paces when all the orcs nearby had realized that they were being attacked from behind and began turning to fight. Grundel fell back behind the shield wall in time to hear Frau giving her orders to one of the other dwarves from Shinestone. Grundel couldn’t remember his name.

“
Take them around the other side,” she ordered. “It’s only three tunnels, and you will be behind them.”

The dwarf ran off
, gathering up the dwarves in the rear to follow him. Grundel had only looked back for a few seconds but when he looked again to the fighting he saw them: four Black Dragon wizards were standing behind the orcs about ten paces from the shield wall. He couldn’t get ahead of the shield wall in time. Black tendrils had shot from the fingers of one of the wizards, and all eight of the dwarves forming the wall fell dead instantly. Now Grundel and Jerrie were out front.

“Wizards!
” Grundel shouted. “Form a wall and stay back!”

When the dwarves fell dead in front of him, Jerrie sprang into action. He threw one knife into the throat of the nearest orc. He charged forward, ducking under the club of another as he slid his knife between the orc’s ribs and into his lungs. He opened the wound even more as he ripped the knife out. He turned back toward the orc who had caught his other knife with his throat and pulled the knife out. Grundel was fighting through the orcs on the other side, and Rundo’s daggers kept a steady pace, battering any orcs that tried to get between them. In less than a minute only a single rank of orcs separated them from the wizards.

Rundo used his magical daggers. They wouldn’t do any good against the wizard’s magical shields, but they had no problem with orc flesh. Any orc that made the gap between Grundel and his two axes or the spinning
, flailing, rolling Jerrie and his perfectly placed knives caught one of Rundo’s daggers in the face. The daggers were magically enchanted. They hit whatever they were aimed at, and after impact they returned to their sheaths, leaving an open wound; with no blade to stem the flow of blood, the recipient quickly bled to death.

Grundel and Jerrie were almost to the wizards when a bolt of lightning came shooting toward the dwarves. Without even thinking about it Rundo spun to the side
, wrapping up the queen. The lightning put down the two dwarves in the middle of the shield wall and slammed into Rundo’s back. He felt the force of the impact but the magical bolt did nothing more then knock the wind out of him. It was like he had been punched in his back. His magically enchanted jacket had done its job.

Grundel cut through the last of the orcs between him and the wizards. A bolt of lighting had gone by him a second ago, but he couldn’t afford to look back. He knew he needed to finish this and fast. He threw his axe at the nearest wizard just as
the wizard released a tendril of black energy at him. His belt had dissipated all of the magical energy from the earlier attacks during the fighting in the upper levels, so it was able to absorb this one. He saw the look of shock as his axe slammed into the wizard, but he didn’t know if it was because his belt had absorbed the attack or because his axe had cut through the wizard’s magical shield.