CHAPTER 12. THE DARKEST HOUR
As even more goblins and ogres emerged out from the worm-holes and stormed into the city of Dale in the vast legions, filling quickly most of the city's northern side's streets and small squares with their vast numbers, slaughtering all humans on their way...
...while on the battlefield outside of the wall, some large goblin legions started to spread all around of the city to look for another weak spots in the wall, from which they could breach through into the City and some of the goblins, along with the wargs and warg-riders, taking over the city's northern causeway and overrunning the northern gate...
...while the catapults on the giant mountain apes backs and handled by the goblin crews kept firing the large boulders over the walls into the city, destroying many buildings and killing both lakemen villagers and soldiers as well as their own...
...and after sending his children to gather all survived women, children, elders, wounded and sick ones and take them to the safety to the Great Hall in the citadel, while he's holding off the goblins to buy for them as much time as they can...
...Bard gathered many handful of Laketown soldiers and armed militia together and launched a fresh attack against the Moria/Guldur goblins and ogres, whose were pouring as a endless wave over the wall, thanks to the ogres onto backs of which had been attached the wide siege ladders, and attacking the to the lakemen.
And within the seconds, the fight between lakemen and the Moria/Guldur goblins had became a vicious and bloody street brawl, locked into tight corners of one-on-one fights and the streets were filled within the seconds of the slayed or mutilated bodies of men and goblins.
Bowmen fired the arrows upon the goblin legions approaching the wall, killing dozens of them in the process.
With the long swords and shields armed lakemen put into the fight all strength they got to protect their bowmen and prevent the walls being overrun by through of the siege ladders to the walls climbing goblins.
Laketown guards and armed militia kept back the waves of goblins with the spears, swords and other melee weapons, with Bard with the long sword fighting at their head, and his second-in-command Percy and the dozens of laketown bowmen led by him giving the support for him and the Laketown soldiers from behind the lines by firing the arrows at the goblins with their long bows, killing many goblins in the process.
Both Gandalf and even Bilbo had joined to the bloody brawl alongside the lakemen, with their elven-swords Glamdring and Sting, which blades shined fiercely the blue light at the presence of the goblins.
Gandalf struck down several goblins with his staff and used Glamdring to behead and cutting dozens of goblins down, while Bilbo, using his hobbit-size as his advantage against the bigger goblins, slashes at the legs of a few goblins with his Sting.
However, the Moria/Guldur goblins heavy armors proved to be the superior against the lakemen's own protection, and that and each fallen goblin soldier was quickly replaced by five new ones, whom proceed by ruthlessly knocking with their shields to the lakemen faces and whacking them with their swords and halberds... The Laketown militia did their best to prevent the goblins from advancing further into the city, but the mass of the heavily armored goblin soldiers and their vast numbers kept pushing them back with the raw force.
However, the goblins elite-soldiers, whom wore a little protection, only the armor shirts and from the thick fur or leather made tunics, with except for the helmets, and were armed with the two one-handed, long and straight-bladed goblin-scimitars, proved to be more tricky even for ten Laketown soldiers, as the goblins swung their long blades with a deadly pace from the side ot another, beheading and slashing the dozens of lakemen to death within seconds... forcing the lakemen to fend them off with the spears and bows rather than with the swords and close combats.
The ogres - and the giant troll-like goblins - among of the Moria/Guldur goblins, as the ogres and gigantic goblins in some places of the city's streets were the only ones whom the goblins willingly allowed to lead the way, crushed dozens and dozens of armed lake-men militia to death and out of their way with ease with their wooden clubs with the spikes. Even though some lakemen militia boldly held their ground even against the larger and physically superior ogres and giant goblins with the bows and spears, many of them abandoned their posts and retreated out of the way of the bigger ones, though many of the fleeing lakemen were killed either by the goblins or giant ogres.
Some of the streets were filled with the wargs, that mercilessly hunted down either fighting or fleeing lakemen, brutally mauling many of them to death with their claws and fanged jaws and feasting with their flesh.
And the armored goblins of the Goblin Town swarmed everywhere, climbing onto the buildings for ambush and either jumped off from the roof tops onto the backs of against the Moria/Guldur goblins struggling and unsuspecting laketown soldiers with the daggers, stabbing many of them to death, or either fired the arrows or threw the javelins down at them. The goblins of Goblin Town also threw the javelins over of their own at the men of Laketown and sneaking quickly and unseen between of the legs or the men and goblins, slashing the bad wounds to the Laketown soldiers legs or cutting one of the legs off.
...
Meanwhile, while Laketown militia was holding off the enemy, Bain, Sigrid, Tilda were both searching, helping and leading all survived Laketown villagers, women, children, elders, wounded and sick ones make their way through the deserted buildings of the city until they arrive at the citadel.
"Hurry! Make it to the Great Hall! Hurry!" Bain yelled to the villagers, as he helped one elder villager to make it to the citadel... while Sigrid and Tilda were helping wounded Laketown's man, who had lost his arm, either from the Dragon's attack or from the goblin-blade.
Even some refugees were helping each others to make it to the citadel.
However, there was only one person, who didn't help anyone.
Alfrid Lickspittle.
When Bard had tried to convince his children to gather the villagers to the citadel to safety, and when the children had refused to leave from their father, Alfrid had sided with Bard, volunteering to escort the elderly, the wounded and the women and the children to safety to avoid getting involved to the fighting like coward he is, until Bard had rejected his offer and ordered him - as well as every man able to fight - to have a some weapon and stand against the enemy by giving him the sword.
However, Alfrid had thrown away the sword and cowardly followed the elderly, the wounded and the women and the children to the citadel.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY! ABANDON THE CRIPPLES!" Alfrid cried as he hastily rushed through of the villagers at the citadel, rudely and selfishly pushing the villagers, the elderly, the wounded and the women and the children our of his way to get faster into the safety.
...
Elsewhere...
The enemy had found another weaker spot from the wall of Dale in the northern gate's west-side and sent the gigantic ogres to tear down the wall to make an another breach into it.
Despite the archers efforts to fend off the giant monsters, the gigantic ogres successfully poured through of the wall, creating a new wide breach into it before they proceed by advancing deep into the city...
...and they were soon followed by the legions of Moria/Guldur goblins and the swarms of the goblins of the Goblin Town, who broke through of the wall and spread deeper into the city's western side's streets. And because the breach, as well as the wall itself, was on the top of the small rocky hillock, the goblins were allowed to proceed to the breach by the ogres, into the backs of which had been attached the wooden bridges instead of siege ladders, who settled on their knees to the ground that the ends of the bridges they were carrying were attached to the breach in the wall and against the ground.
And as even more goblin legions and the several of ogres carrying the goblins war-banners advanced from the four worm-holes into the city...
...Thranduil, who had realized that Bard was in trouble and heavily outnumbered, had gathered a large company of the elven swordsmen and elven archers and led them towards city of Dale to aid its defense... and Thranduil himself was leading a charge towards the city's northern gates, which were at the moment overrun by the Moria/Guldur Goblins.
Thranduil rode ahead of his forces on his giant stag, who trampled down and slayed dozens of Moria/Guldur Goblins that have occupied the bridge leading to the gate. The stag knocked with his massive antlers all the goblins off the bridge and even caught several goblins in his antlers, to which the king of the wood elves dispatches them quickly by beheading all of them with his sword.
However, just as Thranduil rode through the open gates of the city, the Goblin Town's goblin archers waiting in ambush shot down his stag, forcing the Elven king to leap down from his fallen mount and find himself surrounded by dozens and dozens of Moria/Guldur Goblins.
Wielding his two curved Elven swords and using his for centuries trained swordplay skills and the elves smooth physical speed, Thranduil furiously attacked the goblins by giving to them the quick yet extremely lethal slashes with the tips of his swords, slaying a large number of the goblins before the rest of his warriors joined him in the fray to protect their king.
The wood elves spread all around of the city's streets that were occupied by the Moria/Guldur Goblins, fighting furiously and fiercely against the goblins and wiping out the most of them, covering the streets with the hundreds of slayed goblin-bodies and -blood.
However, the elves were still were still heavily outnumbered and the fighting in the narrow space on the city's streets was mostly against them and as the advantage for the goblins, whom slaughtered the elves one by one with the surprise attacks from behind of the back of with numbers.
...
Meanwhile, Bolg kept witnessing from his command post the lakemen and the woodland elves desperate struggle against his overwhelming forces within the city's streets and squares, while the giant mountain apes and the goblin crews of the catapults on the apes backs had started to bombard the city with the oil covered and into the flames ignited boulders, that caused the several fires to be unleashed into the city.
"DOUBLE OUR ATTACK WAVES! THEY CANNOT HOLD THE CITY!" Bolg ordered his generals, knowing that doubled attack waves of goblins and ogres will overrun the whole city of Dale in no time.
As his generals rushed to fulfill his orders, Bolg turned from the city to the Valley, where the visibly thinned dwarf army kept desperately fighting against his widely spread legions, and were forced to retreat towards the gates of the Mountain.
"Aah, perfect! The dwarves are in the trouble... and they're almost spent." Bolg declared...
...and, as he said, both the remaining elves of the woodland and the dwarves of the Iron Hills, whom were still making their stand against their common enemy on the Valley and in front of the gates of Mountain, were in the big trouble indeed.
...
Upon the arrival of the heavy infantries of the goblins and the gigantic ogres, along with a new fresh swarming herds of the Goblins of the Goblin Town, the situation was quickly turning from bad to worse for Dáin's and Thranduil's remaining united forces.
As the battle raged on for several hours, the allied forces of the elves, dwarves and men became increasingly demoralized and exhausted as even more and more the goblin reinforcements continued to pour out of the tunnels onto the battlefield plain and into Dale simultaneously.
And it was then when Dáin along with the Dwarvish and remaining elvish forces found themselves caught in a deadly battle of attrition, as the numerical advantage of the goblins and them supporting brutal force of the ogres was slowly but certainly proving more decisive than the superior soldiery skills of the allied forces.
Slowly and certainly, Bolg's forces begin to overpower Dáin's own troops and the remaining elves who had joined them at the beginning of the battle.
And without the elves superior long-bows and their deadly volleys and without the dwarves heavy ballistas and their spinning tailed javelins, the enemy was free to reach to the touch with the allied forces of elves and dwarves.
And, as a new, fresh and massive chaotic waves of the heavily armored and armed Moria/Guldur Goblins swordsmen, halberdiers and maulers charged with an unstoppable pace and smashed against the reformed lines of dwarves and the elves, the dwarves' and elves' lines were instantly broken in the contact, quickly send into the wide mayhem and brutally devastated, as a new wave of goblins caused with the raw force the gaps into the elves and the dwarves lines by pouring through from the exhaustion weaker spots of their lines, pushing dozens and dozens of the elves and dwarves backwards or out of their way over to the ground. And once the elves and dwarves were either widely scattered or pushed over to the ground, they were easily slaughtered by the Moria/Guldur goblins and the goblins of the Goblin Town.
But the gigantic ogres and ten-twelve ft sized ogres created much wider havoc by swinging their wooden spiked clubs or metallic spiked maces upon the elves' and dwarves' ranks, killing and sending to fly across the air roughly over two dozen of elves and dwarves with one swing, brutally demolishing the stronger lines of the elves and dwarves - along with the gigantic, pale-skinned and amputated war-ogres with their deadly spiked flails - and the havoc their caused allowed the Goblin-Town and Moria/Guldur goblins to advance even deeper into the elven/dwarf lines.
Goblins and ogres breaking the lines of the elves and dwarves allowed also a huge packs of mounted and dismounted wargs to charge onto the scattered lines of the elves and dwarves and either knock dozens of them brutally over to the ground or then the hungry wolf-like monsters attacked in the groups of four wargs onto one elf or dwarf soldier, mauling them to death with their fanged jaws and claws.
The exhausted elves and dwarves had no match for the charging man-sized goblin berserkers, whom charged towards the dwarves and elves spearmen and swordsmen. Swinging their massive war-hammers and spiked maces in the lateral arches upon the dwarven lines, each goblin berserker armed with the war-hammer or spiked mace slayed with every swing of their hammers five-six dwarves with ease and kept going devastating their lines before their met their end from the dwarves' spears... while elves faced the same goblin berserkers armed with the two-handed, long and wide swords, with which the goblins surprisingly and with the brute force knocked the elves down or chopped the elves in half or beheading them with an easy.
Inside of the elves and dwarves lines, some of the dwarf and elf infantry soldiers were attacked from beneath of their feet by the smaller were-worms, whom either quickly bit into the elves legs or coiled themselves into the squeezing grips around of the dwarf soldiers...
...in the close combat between of the Goblin Town's and Moria/Guldur goblins and elves and dwarves combined armies, the obese and muscular giant goblins smashed down with their staff-like spiked wooden clubs the elves and dwarves' lines, leaving their clubs covered with blood and even some elf and dwarf soldiers were impaled by the spiked and were hanging in them like some kind of rag dolls...
...behind of the enemy lines, the goblins javelin-men kept throwing the javelins upon the elves and dwarves, killing some of them...
...and even further behind of the enemy legions, the mountain apes with the catapults and the goblin-crews in their backs, launched the volley of with the oil covered and into flames ignited boulders upon the fighting armies of elves, dwarves and goblins, not caring if they kill their own in the process.
Upon realizing that they were heavily outnumbered and soon to be overrun by the ferocity of the goblins, wargs and ogres, most of the surviving elvish forces were either withdrawn by Thanduil and pulled back into Dale or retreated back to Dale a bit later, leaving the Dwarves and a small number of elves to to their fate on the plain.
Dain's forces tried desperately to reform their ranks and push the enemy back, but for their best efforts too powerful waves of the goblin armies, packs of wargs and the giant ogres rapidly pushed the dwarves back instead, crushing and slaughtering dozens/hundreds of the Dwarves in the process.
And during of chaos, three Moria/Guldur Goblins killed Dáin's armored hog with their curved and serrated-bladed pikes.
Shrieking in pain, Dáin's war hog jumped on its hind legs, tossing Dain off its back, before it fell on its right side to the ground, mortally wounded from the goblin pikes.
"YOU BUGGERS!" The dismounted Dwarf-lord accursed the goblins for killing his mount...
...before Dáin furiously attacked the goblins, wielding his red axe and beheading or fatally striking several of them to death... and also giving the stone-hard headbutts to the goblins heads, when either accidentally when pulling his head backwards while dodging the goblins spears and swords targeted to his head or when in the close combat.
After killing several Moria/Guldur goblins, there was a pause for Dáin's fighting as the Dwarf-lord looked all around... even though his thought were not in the chaotic and bloody battle between of his forces and the goblins and giant ogres, whom were all around of him crushing and slaughtering his soldiers and surrounding from all sides all of it, what remained of his fortress, though some legions of his army tried to defend their ranks from the goblins and ogres.
Dáin was looking for someone else from the battlefield... his cousin Thorin, as he was not seen in the battlefield.
"WHERE'S THORIN?! WE NEED HIM! WHERE IS HE?!" Dáin called out to his troops.
...
"LET THESE LANDS RUN WITH BLOOD!" Bolg declared, as he was not interested of taking war prisoners from elves, dwarves and men.
All what he wanted was the death and blood.
"Slaughter them all!" Bolg ordered his generals.
And when the horn sounded another throaty sound upon the Valley, and when the generals signaled to their troops with their war-banners the one simple order...
...No prisoners! No mercy!
...the goblins on the battlefield and in the city cheered to this order and gained a new frenzy, doubling and even hardening their attacks out of their lust for blood and the mindless killing their enemies to the every last one, without taking the prisoners.
...
Bard and his men remained to stand their ground and attempted to kill as many goblins as possible...
...but they soon found out that the Moria/Guldur goblins and the ogres have doubled and even hardened their waving attacks, pushing the lakemen back with the unstoppable raw forced, their vast numbers and their mass on the streets, heavily outnumbering and killing dozens of already from the fighting exhausted lakemen with their spears and swords.
And with all survived villagers safely inside the citadel and dozens of his men being slain by the rapidly advancing enemy and their fresh reinforcements...
"FALL BACK! TO THE CITADEL!" Bard ordered to his remaining forces.
And upon of his order, which Percy spread to all so far lasted lakemen all over the city of Dale, the entire lakemen militia abandoned their posts in the streets and squares and fled hurriedly towards the citadel gate and the stairs leading to the citadel, because it was the higher place on the entire city and the last place, where they could make their last stand...
...but during of the lakemen soldiers and militia's retreat to there, the waves of the goblins and ogres pursued them, slaying several more as they retreat, leaving behind the streets covered mostly with the slaughtered or mutilated bodies of the laketown militia and villagers.
The elves elsewhere continued fighting fiercely against the Moria/Guldur goblins to protect their king, but the exhausted soon or later got best of them and dozens and dozens of elves were slain with the lethal slashes or stabbing strikes before being roughly pushed over to the ground, some were forcefully dragged to the ground and mauled to death with the goblins swords and spiked maces, in the process, filling the streets with the slaughtered or mutilated bodies of the elves, as the goblins begin to overpower the elves with their numbers, pinning them down to the ground for slaughter and retaking the streets which the elves were close to retake from the goblins.
And as the battle rages, and the city's streets kept filling from the bodies of the goblins, Bilbo, Gandalf, Bard, his lakemen militia and Thranduil and his Silvan Elves kept desperately fighting and killing many of the goblins as possible as they become surrounded on all sides... while they attempted to make it to the citadel.
...
Meanwhile, on the battlefield in the Valley, where Dáin and his remaining dwarves still kept fighting against the goblins and ogres...
"FALL BACK! FALL BACK! TO THE MOUNTAIN! FALL BACK!" Dáin called to his troops, upon realizing that they would soon be overrun by the vehemence and overwhelming numbers of the enemy.
The remained and all around of the battlefield scattered dwarves regrouped together around of their leader, helping their slightly wounded own ones up from the ground on their feet and killed several hundreds of goblins within their regrouped ranks and several hundred more from the front lines in order to temporarily disengage Bolg's forces.
Eventually, Dáin and nearly three thousands of surviving Dwarves managed to break through the ranks of the goblins began to retreat towards the barred main gateway of Erebor.
From his command post, Bolg witnessed that the dwarves are broken and were retreating towards the main gateway of the Mountain, while all around of the Valley scattered goblin legions were either finishing off the wounded and behind left dwarves or waiting for the orders.
"They're broken. I've got them on the run. I hope that you would be here to see the end of the soldiers of the Line of Durin, father." Bolg said quietly, indeed hoping his father, Azog the Defiler, to be here to witness the massive defeat of the Line of Durin.
And then, Bolg turned to his goblin generals.
"They've broken and trapped against the Mountain. NOW comes their certain end." Bolg said to his generals.
Bolg remained then briefly silent, considering his next move upon the dwarves, before he gave his orders.
"REFORM THE LEGIONS AND PREPARE FOR THE FINAL ASSAULT!"
The goblin generals immediately rushed to the war-banners to signal from them the order of regroup and prepare for the final assault for the troops, while the goblin general with the horn blew another throaty sound upon the Valley...
...and upon of hearing it and gaining the orders from the signal of the war-banners on the top of the ruined tower of the Ravenhill's fortress, the Moria/Guldur goblins began to regroup onto the new either separated or even wider and larger legions, preparing for the final assault...
...while the dwarves kept retreating towards the sealed gateway of the Mountain.
